God who is the first cause, can only give what he has. All he has is himself. He can give his own nature and extend himself. He cannot add anything which he did not have before he gave it. He cannot add anything of a nature unlike his own. Nor can his creations give anything OTHER THAN God.

If God is love, then God can give love. If God is permanence, then God can give permanence. If God is happy, then God can give happiness. But if God is not death, God cannot give death. If God is not separation, God cannot give separation. If God is not a body, God cannot give a body.

All that God can create is created in his own likeness. He cannot even conceive of anything unlike himself. He has to operate within the laws of the very reality of his own nature. He cannot break his own laws or operate outside of them. All that comes from him has to be entirely like him.

When God creates something all it can do is inherit God. God gives all of himself to it and so it has everything that God has. This is an act of sharing. Any creation must have all the qualities of God.

Since God is a creator, or extender of self-nature, so too must his creations be extenders of their own God-given nature. This means that all creations are REQUIRED to be able to GIVE what they have inherited. They must be able to create fully, and anything they create must have ALL the properties of their creator, including the ability to create in his likeness.

It is not possible for creation to occur whereby what is created is only PARTLY like its creator. Nor can a creation only inherit SOME of its creator's nature. It has to be FULLY GIVEN otherwise it is not fully created. Therefore any child of God can and must create creations, which are themselves AS FULLY CAPABLE OF CREATING as God is. And they CAN ONLY CREATE WHOLENESS.

The nature and attributes of God are therefore inherited and passed down through the generations of creation from father to son to grandson, and the grandson is JUST AS CAPABLE AS GOD and FULLY LIKE HIM still. But similarly, his grandson CANNOT CREATE anything UNLIKE God. And God is not a planet.

Now, when you look at planet Earth, this perfect extension DOES NOT HAPPEN. "Creation is impossible in this world." On Earth, that which seems to exist or which seems to be made or created, unfortunately NEVER inherits ALL of its creator's potential or nature. At best it inherits only SOME of its parents attributes. And as a result, most of the things that exist in this world CANNOT CREATE LIKE THEIR CREATOR. This produces a kind of "dead end" where "created things" cannot create anything at all.

For example, there is no way to claim that a car is capable of creating its own lineage of cars. It is ridiculous to suggest that a house can beget houses, or that a planet gives birth to planets exactly like themselves. Even when you look to objects which are somewhat more organic or reproductive, you still see a LACK OF TRANSFER of the full attributes of the parent to the child.

For example even humans are NOT able to create PERFECT MIRROR IMAGES of themselves in their chidren. Not only do children come from TWO different parents, the child as a single body cannot look FULLY like BOTH of them. It is impossible. Nor does any child inherit ALL of the attributes of the parent. In fact most children are biased toward being more like one parent than another, and no child is an exact mirror image of anyone. This is why all bodies are different and not equal.

This is because physical objects, matter, energy, this world, planet Earth, this galaxy and universe, are NOT A CREATION. They do not exhibit the LAW OF EXTENSION. They CANNOT PASS ON the fullness of the attributes of their creator. This alone also tells you that this world was NOT MADE BY a WHOLE-MINDED creator. It was made by someone who only partially created, or who wanted to not create fully, and who "created" WITHOUT GOD.

This world cannot have come from God. Quite literally, if a potato exists and is real, then God is a potato. But God can't be a potato. Because there are also chickens. And For a chicken to be real and exist, its creator has to be a chicken. God can't be a chicken and a potato because they are different. God has ONE NATURE, not two. And expecially not billions of natures, all of which contradict each other. God is not contradictory.

The more glaringly obvious and simple argument that God did not create this world is simply that IT IS NOT ABLE TO DO THE SAME. It cannot create in its total likeness. It cannot pass on all its attributes to a creation. Its creations DO NOT inherit all of its qualities. And no body, planet, chicken or potato, has ANY ability to CREATE A MIRROR IMAGE OF GOD. Nor are any of them actually LIKE God AT ALL.

It doesn't matter how you frame it. It doesn't matter how you perceive it. It doesn't matter what forgiveness you do. It doesn't matter how much you love or it choose to see a reflection of God in it. It STILL IS NOT like him. It STILL IS NOT A CO-CREATOR. Every child of God has to be a co-creator with God and create in his EXACT likeness. This world simply can never do that. It cannot extend itself at all because it is not really a creation.

This is why "only the creations of light are real." The creations of light produce creations of light. All such creations are perfectly like God. All of them exhibit all of God's qualities - permanence, immortality, perfection, invulnerability, innocence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotency, happiness, love, eternal life etc. Every single creation of God has ALL of this. Anything which does not have ALL of this is NOT a creation of God.

I'm sorry but when was the last time you saw a fire hydrant that was loving and creative? When was the last time that you put aside your ego perceptions and saw with the eyes of christ and found that fire hydrants suddenly had offspring? When did you last witness a car giving rise to a continual line of creation of more cars? When did you last see a house which got up and testified to being EXACTLY LIKE GOD, meaning that God is a house? These ideas are nonsense.

Regardless of how you see, regardless of how much ego you do or do not have, regardless of what you believe, nothing will ever change the fact that anything you can identify as an object LACKS the ability to EXTEND FULLY. No amount of spiritual awakening will change this fact. Nothing will ever stop the world from being a dead end. It is MADE, not created, in an unwilling attempt to NOT CREATE, which is why it takes on forms which CANNOT create.

Even the reflection of God seen in the world, even the face of Christ, even the real world, even the forgiven world, is never going to change the fact that the WORLD YOU MADE IS FALSE. It is false because it is NOT LIKE the truth. Even when you shine the truth onto it is it still not the truth. Even seen with perfect vision, it is STILL not able to operate like God. No human body will ever produce an exact replica of itself.

"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 could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

In ACIM, Jesus spells out that forgiveness and atonement are the same thing, and so is true perception. These are all a state in which there is recognition, accurate perception, and a forgiving attitude which sees that there is no sin. Or moreso, it is the acknowledgment and re-acceptance of God's truth and the willingness to accept your permanent innocence, as you are in the Kingdom.

"For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

You can see that Jesus mingles these terms interchangeably. For example, here Jesus mixes forgiveness with true perception as a way of looking:

"Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not."

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear."

And here he mixes true perception and atonement, also indicating that a forgiving attitude produces atonement, which means it also produces true perception:

"It is concerned only with Atonement, or the correction of perception. The means of the Atonement is forgiveness."

And here he tells us that complete forgiveness, aka true perception, is a state in which you have let guilt go, and have accepted atonement.

"If what you offer IS complete forgiveness, you MUST have LET GUILT GO, accepting the Atonement for yourself, and learning you ARE guiltless."

And here he refers to atonement as the undoing of errors, which is accomplished by forgiveness, which is ITSELF the state of atonement and true perception.

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors."

Also how about this:

"Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical."

"there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception."

"Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God."

"The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness."

Here is something to consider which might be controversial. Jesus refers to forgiveness as a means of accomplishing atonement, but also as completely synonymous with the atonement itself. Because complete forgiveness is the atonement is the state you enter with true perception. Which means, by implication, that any state prior to acceptance of atonement is NOT forgiveness.

There is a very widely prevalent myth therefore in the ACIM community that we are to "do forgiveness" in order to reach atonement. But atonement IS forgiveness. So what are we to call that which leads UP TO it? Perhaps a better term which Jesus uses is "purification"

"Miracles are everyone's right (miracle mindedness is also the same thing as atonement and true perception), but purification is necessary first."

Now, we need to look at something a bit deeper. The main pivotal cornerstone of the ego's thought system is SIN. Sin can go one of two ways. If you take sin to be real, forgiveness is not justified, and so you become UNforgiving. Sin becomes a condemnation and attack, and you move into guilt.

But when you go the other way, if you take sin and recognize its unreality, untruth, and non-existence, THAT will put you into the state of forgiveness. And in effect, that means this recognition of "there is no sin" IS the atonement, and IS the basis for true perception or corrected perception. It is a forgiving way of seeing (Christ Vision).

This all "hinges" around sin. Don't forgive it and you move into guilt. Forgive it and you move into the recognition of innocence which is true forgiveness.

"From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away."

But let's take it even further.

There are two thought systems. One is the thought system of God which is Heaven and the Kingdom. Reality is run by this thought system because this is where God actually DOES His thinking, and all creative thought OCCURS there. Thats where the thought system IS.

Then, in contrast, the ego thought system, which opposes God's thought system, can be said to be LOCATED on this side of the idea of separation and sin. On this side, where sin is real, the entire contents of being on this side of the fence is unforgiving.

So what Jesus is asking us to do, really, is to take our mind out of the ENTIRE realm of unforgiveness, ie the entire ego thought system, and put it BACK into the Kingdom. Which means crossing over from the thought system of ego to the thought system of God.

What this means is that the Atonement and the acceptance of it, is an acceptance that God's system of thought is true and real, and it's a way of really regaining access to the Mind of God, to the Kingdom, and to your innocent holy self which resides on the OTHER side of the separation divide. Essentially, in another world.

So when we get into the state of forgiveness, in which there is nothing to forgive because sin is recognized as not existing, and thus no sin is perceived as true, it really means we're re-accessing heaven.

To accept atonement is the ONLY cure and the ONLY way to TRULY undo something. "Only atonement can be said to cure", meaning that only in the moment that you accept the truth about you that is IN HEAVEN, does your mind completely change and is cured and healed of its false beliefs.

Accepting atonement on any particular issue should entail you flipping over from the ego thought system to God's thought system. Going from sin and guilt, to innocence. Going from not accepting God's love, to accepting it.

There are actually some statements Jesus makes where he is saying that you do not REALLY change your mind, UNTIL you switch to the holy thought system. Which means getting out of the ego system ENTIRELY and putting your mind back into reality.

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

"the power of your simple change of mind: I loose the world from all I thought it was, And choose my own reality instead."

"The tiny change of mind by which the crucifixion is changed to Resurrection. And, being true, it is so simple that it cannot fail to be completely understood."

"Your hand becomes the giver of Christ's touch; your change of mind becomes the proof that who accepts God's gifts can never suffer anything."

"And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want."

Only choosing between TRUTH and ILLUSIONS, is your only choice, which is a choice BETWEEN thought systems, and therefore BETWEEN WORLDS. Either you will accept yourself as you are innocent in Heaven, or will accept yourself as sinful within the ego realm.

"Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and CANNOT be known by PART of a mind."

While atonement and thus forgiveness and true perception might well be "illusions" within this world, outside the Kingdom, they are reflections of the Kingdom, and thus reflections of the truth about you IN the Kingdom. Accepting atonement is accepting that you are still as God created you, as you are in the Kingdom.

But Jesus clearly tells us that the FULL acceptance of Atonement SHOULD take you INTO HEAVEN. Whereby even true perception ends.

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles (you) are inseparable."

So when thinking of forgiveness, and doing forgiveness, or applying the course, we need to realize that if we DON'T get all the way to the atonement principle on some issue, we HAVE NOT really fully forgiven it. If we still believe that something happened or that sin was real, we are not IN a forgiving state of mind. In order to DO a forgiveness, successfully, essentially REQUIRES that you accept atonement - to accept the truth of your total ongoing innocence, and the complete recognition that there HAS NOT BEEN anything that needs forgiving.

While it seems there is something to forgive, and we think we're doing forgiveness, we actually are NOT doing forgiveness. What we're doing is preparing to enter a state of forgiveness. And that is purification work. But if we do that work, and we don't take it all the way to "nothing happened", "everyone is still innocent as God created us to be", "there is no sin", "sin is not real" etc... then we haven't really gone FAR enough in our change of mind, and are still really WITHIN the ego though system.

That means we've fallen short and the forgiveness is not complete, because we have not moved OVER to hooking our mind up with God, in service to Christ. Remember that mind in the service of Spirit/soul is its natural state, while when mind "goes rogue" and becomes its own tyrannical ruler, it is now in a separated state. To return to forgiveness and accept atonement is to actually put your mind back under the Authority of the Soul, which requires ACCEPTING THE INNOCENT SOUL AS YOUR TRUE SELF.

Only atonement can be said to cure, so we must be willing to go ALL THE WAY to the atonement truth and the acceptance of it, which opens you up to allow yourself to be loved by God, and to RECEIVE A MIRACLE, which you can then extend to others. Short of this, forgiveness is incomplete and atonement is still being avoided. And therefore it is not a complete cure. To truly forgive is to CURE, completely and totally and forever. Acceptance of your permanent innocence and worthiness is the only acceptable goal.

Death is the complete and total disowning of yourself and all responsibility for who you are. It is an attempt to say "I am not eternal life", "I am not as God created me", "I am not even who I am".

The only way you can accomplish this disowning of yourself is on purpose, deliberately and intentionally. It is your own self that you have to give away and it is your power you must disown. You have to choose to do this.

This is why the Course teaches that "nobody dies but without his own consent". You literally have to choose to die. What this means is, you literally have to choose not to be what you really are.

But you can't actually stop yourself from being what you really are, because GOD is the one who has established what you are. You cannot go against his Will or change His mind. He created you for an eternity and you can never die.

So the idea that you can not be as God created you, or not be yourself, or be the opposite of Life, or have no Life in you, is merely an act of DENIAL. It is a denial of the truth that you are eternal life and can never die.

And so death is a choice to deny the truth, and is why "sickness is a defense against the truth." But denial of the truth is not the same thing as its removal. You can deny that God exists but this does not destroy God. You can deny you are not who you are or that your life is not your own or that you have no power or that you cannot be responsible for who God created you to be, but that will not change any facts. Denial isn't a fact. Death isn't a fact. It is a cover up.

Nobody has really ever died and nobody ever will. Death doesn't work and you cannot die. You may or may not transition into or out of bodies for whatever purpose, but what you are cannot die.

Since the illusion of death - the *denial* that you are eternal - can only seem to happen by choice, this also means that you can choose otherwise, and therefore you can choose not to experience death. If at some point you decide to 'lay the body down' or exit the physical form, it can be through true peace, power, truth and freedom, rather than some cause you didn't seem to want. And it will have no effect on you because you are eternal.

Truth is the way out of hell.

Are you ready to join the Great Crusade that Jesus speaks of in A Course in Miracles? I know that I feel I am gearing up to this.

Jesus has said to me, "help". He has said, "help others to wake up." When I've been distracted with other worldly pursuits that I think are 'why I am here', Jesus corrects me, "that's not why you came here." I also know... Jesus has a plan for the atonement, and he is in charge. Also the atonement means the complete and total correction of the entire Sonship, not just for you.

We are also meant to being in alignment with and extending of God, of service to everyone else. We can't be of service when we are occupied with our own agenda, which means... what are you going to do when all your other ego agendas and distractions are undone?

If there is a vocation, a 'career', that is possibly meaningful and truly helpful, it would be to extend miracles to our brothers and to help them to awaken. Isn't this the natural result of becoming healed yourself? It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. It is the privilege of the awakened to awaken.

Here are some pertinent ACIM quotes:

"Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it. The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

"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."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete. Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded." (OrEd.Tx.1.106)

"As you share my inability to tolerate lack of love in yourself and others, you must ..." must "... join the Great Crusade to correct it. The slogan for the Crusade is Listen, learn and do: Listen to my voice, learn to undo error, and do something to correct it." (OrEd.Tx.1.31)

"[The spiritual eye] pulls the will into Its service and impels the mind to concur. This reestablishes the true power of the will and makes it increasingly unable to tolerate delay. The mind then realizes with increasing certainty that delay is only a way of increasing unnecessary pain, which it need not tolerate at all. The pain threshold drops accordingly, and the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." (OrEd.Tx.2.49)

"Let us not rest content until the world has joined our changed perception. Let us not be satisfied until forgiveness has been made complete. And let us not attempt to change our function. We must save the world." (OrEd.WkBk.SpTp241.7)

"[The world] 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. Perception is a result, not a cause." (OrEd.Tx.21.1)

"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. For from this center will you be directed how to use the body sinlessly." (OrEd.Tx.18.70)

"To each He gives a special function in salvation he alone can fill a part for only him. Nor is the plan complete until he finds his special function and fulfills the part assigned to him to make himself complete within a world where incompletion rules." (OrEd.Tx.25.46)

"Teaching is done in many ways: by formal means, by guidance, and above all by example." (OrEd.Tx.5.53)

--- Now I know there is a lot of controversy on this, saving the world and all that (which means saving everyone FROM the world). You CAN interpret all these quotes in quite a.... metaphorical way... that they all mean something else, or apply only in the mind or whatever. Go ahead with that if you want to.

For me, I'm realizing more and more that Jesus IS calling us to participate in an OUTWARD EXPRESSION of love, which extends to our brother not just in the form of us looking on from afar, but of ACTIVELY helping others to return to God.

After all, if we are to be LOVING, then our love should encourage others to awaken, it should liberate others from suffering, it should show the way, it should enlighten, it should bring truth, and it should help us to find our way back to God.

This is what the crusade is all about. We are all part of the Sonship and we are all in need of this love. Isn't it time to demonstrate love and truth?

"Eternity will shine away the world."

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

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"There is no world."

This may seem obvious to say, but... whatever existed BEFORE the separation, is **all** that should exist AFTER it is over. Before the separation, there WAS no world. There were no bodies. There was no curriculum. There was no space or time. Whatever was true and real and permanent BEFORE the separation, will be true and real and permanent AFTER it is over. And that is all.

The separation did not ADD ANYTHING to reality, or take anything away. Nothing really happened, remember?

"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."

Before the separation, the ONLY REALITY was God and the Sonship. In the separation God added the Holy Spirit and you added nothing. After the separation only the Holy Trinity will remain. No bodies, no dreams, no world. The ENTIRE content of the dream of death will vanish. The world, the sun, th stars, space and time, all of it. It does not really exist NOW.

Awakening to reality means returning to Creation, to the knowledge that only the Kingdom is real, and the complete FORGETTING of "the world you made" - its dream bodies and all. Nothing that you made will remain except the love you expressed. Only love is real. Only heaven is real. When the separation is OVER, the world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came. No-one has need for a dream world in reality.

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy.

You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let (in to) banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own."

WHEN THE SEPARATION IS OVER, ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL

"Eternity will shine away the world."

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

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"There is no world."

This may seem obvious to say, but... whatever existed BEFORE the separation, is **all** that should exist AFTER it is over. Before the separation, there WAS no world. There were no bodies. There was no curriculum. There was no space or time. Whatever was true and real and permanent BEFORE the separation, will be true and real and permanent AFTER it is over. And that is all.

The separation did not ADD ANYTHING to reality, or take anything away. Nothing really happened, remember?

"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."

Before the separation, the ONLY REALITY was God and the Sonship. In the separation God added the Holy Spirit and you added nothing. After the separation only the Holy Trinity will remain. No bodies, no dreams, no world. The ENTIRE content of the dream of death will vanish. The world, the sun, th stars, space and time, all of it. It does not really exist NOW.

Awakening to reality means returning to Creation, to the knowledge that only the Kingdom is real, and the complete FORGETTING of "the world you made" - its dream bodies and all. Nothing that you made will remain except the love you expressed. Only love is real. Only heaven is real. When the separation is OVER, the world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came. No-one has need for a dream world in reality.

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy.

You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light. The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let (in to) banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own."

If you want miracles to happen for you, you must become willing to receive them.

You will only be able to GIVE the miracles that you have RECEIVED.

Receipt of miracles happens when you accept atonement, which does not have to mean the 'final' complete acceptance of it, but a willingness to accept even a little bit of it on some topic.

As you apply forgiveness/undoing of ego, you should be undoing your belief in death, sickness, fear, guilt and sin. Once you stop believing these things have truth or reality to them, you will be WILLING and READY to receive God's truth. To accept the Atonement.

As you accept that the atonement is true - that the truth is true - it means your mind becomes open to allowing receipt of God's will. To accept God's truth about you. That you are innocent and nothing happened.

Receive that, and you are receiving a miracle. You are receiving the willingness to extend the truth.

When you accept that you are worthy of God's truth, you will become willing to accept that others are also worthy of God's truth. And that automatically gives you the power and willingness to extend miracles to others.

"It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive" speaks to the same idea. Forgive yourself and you will gain the ability to see others as forgive and to forgive them FOR them as a service which can actually heal them miraculously.

Going to the atonement equips you with love.

God is already offering you eternal life and complete divine health and permanent happiness. It's just a matter of you having gone off on your own trying not to want to receive it, to reject it. So your only task is to re-receive the gifts of God again.

You are harmless and cannot be harmed.

You walk around completely safe and invulnerable, impenetrable, immune, immortal.

All of your needs are met. You are whole and complete. You need nothing from outside of you at all. You have everything because you have God.

You know who you are and you are completely innocent. There is no trace of sin or guilt or fear in you. You are joyful all the time.

You know that nobody has ever done anything to you, to any degree. You also know that you have never done anything to anyone else.

You don't need any help, you do nothing alone, and you are completely provided for. God looks after you permanently.

You know you have not changed. Nothing has influenced you and you are as immaculately yourself as you have always been in God's Creation.

You need not change nor grow nor evolve because you are already flawless and complete. You lack nothing and have no faults or limitations.

Your mind is perfectly clear, serene, aware and present. You recognize your true self in everything you witness.

You have no special needs or special interests. Everyone is your calm friend and supporter. You heal because you are healed and you share everything with everyone.

All you have was given you by God and you are not attached to anything else, because what God gave you is completely satisfying and freely given, to be extended to all.

No longer are you confused or lost or deceived by an ego. There is no ego here. You are yourself, free to be.

This is what you've always been. This is what will continue forever. Anything not aligned with this is the ego and is not true.

Because you believe you are already fully in your right mind, and are totally awake, and fully objective, and sane, you believe also that everyone is like this too. You think that everyone is going around acting with full awareness and complete freedom. You think everything they do must be a completely conscious choice and very well thought out and thoroughly justified. Because of this, you also believe that if they were to do anything 'to you', they MUST have done so on purpose. They must've deliberately chosen to upset you. And they must've done so with a completely rational, calm, mind. Even from a loving mind.

So each time this happens you actually believe that love itself has turned around and decided to hate on you and attack you. You think love, as a state of complete sanity, has decided to thwart your happiness and destroy your life. Only on these grounds do you then feel JUSTIFIED in perceiving yourself as unfairly treated, because IF this were true, you would indeed be justified in being upset about it. Your anger would be justified because love would have 'actually' attacked you.

But it hasn't. Nobody has ever attacked from love. Nobody has ever hurt you with full sanity and awareness. Nobody has ever decided to upset you 'just because'.

So, within you, where you have these reactive feelings of despair, dismay, rejection, blame, anger, hurt, rage, etc... which are all based on this idea that you were intentionally attacked by love, you need to go in and heal all of that, because it's based on YOUR misperception.

Everything is forgivable because nothing bad can happen in reality. Love cannot attack. Sane minds cannot harm. Nobody in their right mind would ever think to not love you completely, and all the time. Anyone in their right mind would WANT to love you fully, all the time, because you are lovable.

Unworthiness comes from the belief that you cannot have the 'real thing' - the real love - God, because of something you did (sin), which means you have to SETTLE for lesser substitutes.

And likely, these lesser substitutes, you don't really want. But you don't think you deserve any better. So you try to idolize and emphasize these substitutes as though they are really valuable and important. Andthus you buy into illusions of how great they are, when really they are shallow, empty, and meaningless.

And really, as you try to accept the worthless junk that you think you are worthy of, you really are equating your value with the value of the things. And you can see this in society and commercialism where objects and substitutes are given special value, in fact value that seems to be 'above' the value that you possess, which is symbolized by how much money you own, therefore making these objects MORE valuable than your own self worth. So then to receive one of these objects seems like a 'gift' that bestows upon you, which you don't barely deserve. How low can be your estimation of yourself when you are excited about receiving some electronic gadget or the next best piece of clothing? You are FAR MORE WORTHY than this.

You deserve complete and total unconditional love, absolute perfect peace and happiness, immortality, eternal life, complete satisfaction, total acceptance, the absence of all fear and death, and a complete resurrection into God's eternal Heaven. That is far more valuable than ANYTHING this world can offer, and it is more in line with what you are REALLY WORTH.

So if you are believing or feeling you are unworthy, it's because you believe there's something wrong with you or that you did something unforgivable, that renders you not eligible for God's love.

Well I've got news for you.

God loves unconditionally. Which means you are ALWAYS eligible for God's love no matter what you do or what you believe.

For miracles of healing to function, there must be firm belief that healing will occur.

God's will is permanent healing, and miracles extend this, coming from love. So if there is any way that you believe healing will not happen, that means you don't believe God's will, so are actively working against it.

God has certainty and a complete knowing that healing has already occurred. We need to share in this.

This is why when you go to perform a miracle, you also need to believe in what God believes. You need to have this certainty that healing will and has happened. And what that translates to, is that you need to EXPECT MIRACLES TO HAPPEN.

Expectation comes when your belief is so refined and certain, that you are convinced and sure that it will happen. This puts you into a state of expecting, which in a way is a form of demanding/commanding. It is a refusal to accept any other outcome. Complete certainty.

Expectation is a very firm way of not only believing but of actively EXTENDING the certainty of God that "healing is truth". It's like, "of course it will heal!", or even better, "it MUST heal". No doubt. This is where you are extending God's authority over illusions.

Once all doubt and fear are gone, which is a requirement of miracle-mindedness, expectation results as a perception of certainty. It's not a request, it's an enforcement of God's will.

When there is no doubt left that healing must occur, in which you are merely enforcing God's will kind of like a law-enforcement officer, you KNOW the law and you KNOW what God wants and you KNOW that this is not negotiable. As such, what is left but to completely expect, reliability, certainty, trust... that "it is so". Illusions must bend to this because they have no authority over God.

Expect miracles to happen, believe it totally, pray with God and receive.

A lot of people interpret forgiveness to be some kind of process you do to fix your mind.

But ACIM seems to say something different. For example:

"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears."

So, hang on a minute. Joe Smith doing ACIM thinks he's "doing forgiveness", and has a little procedure he practices and tries to take back projections and undo judgements and so on and he thinks he is forgiving. But ACIM say, ONLY Christ forgives. So isn't Joe's ego claiming to be doing forgiveness?

Forgiveness is actually the state of TRUE perception, which is the end goal of the course, and not exactly something that someone is in white they're undertaking the course, especially not in earlier stages.

How about the fact that we're also told that forgiveness is a form of LOVE ... how often do you hear people saying that forgiveness is the SAME thing as love? Hardly ever. But full maximal love is quite a highly advanced spiritual state. Forgiveness and love are basically the same thing, but who ever describes forgiveness as love?

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

Then we're also told that it is perhaps not even our FUNCTION at this point to forgive. For example:

"The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

So we're being asked not to take over the Holy Spirit's function of forgiving. And it even suggests that in terms of us being forgiven, it is not US that forgives ourselves. More to the point, it says that we ARE forgiven already - as far as the Holy Spirit is concerned, and our work is more to do with acceptance of this truth rather than the production of this truth. WE don't put forgiveness in place!

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

Essentially, forgiveness is a final state of true perception which is the same thing as accepting atonement and achieving salvation and resurrection. It isn't a step along a path. It isn't a process or procedure or technique. It's the end result natural state of a healed mind that is loving, and BE's FORGIVING toward everything. It is the nature of a loving mind expressing and relating from love with love.

When you're IN that state of mind you are being one with Christ, and with the Holy Spirit, which is why you then can claim to "be forgiving." But really until you reach that state, and you're still in false perceptions trying to undo your hell, what you're DOING isn't really forgiveness.

What if every reference to forgiveness in the course is a reference to the END STATE, and not a process?

What if we're being asked to "practice forgiveness" only in the sense of trying to get ourselves TO the state of forgiveness? And what if we should not be calling that practice "forgiveness", but rather perhaps - purification, or mind training? Or accepting that we've been forgiven already?

I think the term forgiveness has been rather hijacked by a lot of people, students and teachers alike. It really refers to the purified state of miracle mindedness, whole perception, true perception, a healed mind and heart, a state filled with love, identified with Christ, and the perfect enlightened recognition that there is nothing LEFT to be forgiven - that only innocence exists.

We can practice moving toward that state as our goal, but what we're doing to get there must not take over the Holy Spirit's function or presume that we are "being forgiving" when all that we're doing are a few basic steps to reclaim slightly less insanity. Forgiveness is really on the level of miracle working.

"Miracles are natural expressions of total forgiveness. Through miracles, man accepts God's forgiveness by extending it to others."

Forgiveness that is not COMPLETE forgiveness is not really forgiveness. COMPLETE forgiveness immediately BE's forgiving toward everything without need for thought or practice or procedure or technique. It is loving relationship.

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."

"And that, in COMPLETE forgiveness, in which you recognize that there is nothing to forgive, YOU are absolved completely."

"Remember that you who want peace can find it only by complete forgiveness."

"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

God's nature is not alluded to by the nature of things in this world. We are incredibly used to this world, conditioned in believing that everything does and must change all the time. Even time and space possess properties of change. Every atom is always moving, every object always transforming, everything always being born and growing and dying. God is not like that.

God doesn't change or transform over time. He doesn't create in order to experience 'new' or previously non-existent parts of Himself. He doesn't have moods. He doesn't change His mind. He doesn't get upset or angry or judgemental. He doesn't experience harm or damage or resentment.

If ever there was an 'identity' which you could truly say is so rock-solid and clear and absolutely free from any deviation or adjustment or change whatsoever, it's the identity of God. What God is. It's permanent.

So God is always there. No matter how many 'times' you go to Him, he is always there, always the same. Like.. the most reliable 'thing' in existence. He's always in the same place, having the same expression of divine love, constantly consistent and extremely joyous. He is absolutely unaffected by anything, anywhere.

This is what immortality is like.

And God created us as Immortal Spirit, so this is really what our own true identity is like, as well. Unchanging, unaffected, unmodified, already perfectly whole and innocent, completely unharmed and having never left God in any way whatsoever.

Really, the difference between God and this world is the difference between the absolute and the relative. God works the same all the time. He is always absolute. Always complete. Everything he does is complete. There are no loose ends, no guesses, no 'maybes', no confusions, no delusions or illusions, no mistakes, no options. Just always the same. Totality.

God's nature is your true nature. You are not this strange formation of ideas and concepts and thoughts and memories and experiences and differences and reactions and mortal specialness. There is nothing exclusively special to God because everything is equally special to God, including you, including your enemies.

God loves your enemies. Yup.

Just the same as God loves you.

"Reality is a constant state."

"Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all."

"His REALITY is forever sinless."

"Reality is not insane"

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED"

"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God."

"Man's reality is ONLY his soul."

"Reality observes the laws of God"

"your reality, which you share with God."

"the true relationship the Son of God has with his Father in reality."

"Faith in the unreal leads to adjustments of reality"

"To know Reality is not to see the ego"

"the peace to which your reality entitles you."

"What dies was never living in reality"

"Repeat His Name and you acknowledge Him as sole Creator of Reality."

"Today we try to bring reality still closer to your mind."

"If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"So is its Self the one Reality in Which its will and That of God are joined."

"Illusions have no direction in reality. They are merely not true."

"your Identity, which God alone established in reality."

"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

"God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality. "Reality is that which, above all else, is persistent and continuous.

Reality has nothing higher or prior to its existence.

Reality is first-hand, primary, fundamental and original.

Reality is final.

Reality simply is.

Reality is what really is, and what always is.

Reality is permanence and exists forever the same.

Reality cannot change, otherwise it would not be permanent.

Reality is not a term you can use to describe a changing world.

Reality is not some background soup that houses differences.

Reality is singular, it is complete, it is unwavering.

Reality never changes, and can never be changed.

Reality always is real.

Reality always is the same as reality always was and will be.

Reality is forever, reality is eternal.

Reality cannot be altered, modified, changed or transformed.

Reality has no differences in it.

Reality does not waver or fluctuate or change shape.

Reality is always the same, always constant.

Reality cannot be adjusted or taken away.

Reality cannot be attacked or destroyed.

Reality cannot be hurt, offended, upset or influenced.

Reality does not change its viewpoint.

Reality is consistent and consistency is truth.

Reality cannot be damaged or made to suffer.

Reality cannot be sick.

Reality cannot die.

Reality cannot be corrupted.

Reality cannot be willed against.

Reality cannot be forced, coerced or manipulated.

Reality cannot lack or lose anything.

Reality cannot be made to diminish or distort.

Reality is sanity.

Reality is whole.

Reality is perfection.

Reality is permanence.

Reality is immortal.

Reality is invulnerable.

Reality is pure and innocent.

Reality is immaculate.

Reality is indestructible.

Reality is safe from attack.

Reality is safe from sickness and death.

Reality is safe from harm or hurt.

Reality is safe from time or space.

Reality is safe from death.

Reality is free from fear.

Reality cannot be afraid.

Reality cannot be attacked so cannot be threatened.

Reality has never changed or lost its peace.

God is real. Therefore, God is permanent, immortal, unchanging, unattackable, unthreatenable, invulnerable, eternal, constantly the same, safe from all threat, incapable of sickness or death, and whole and complete.

You are a creation of God. Therefore you are real. You are permanent, immortal, unchanging, unattackable, unthreatenable, invulnerable, eternal, constantly the same, safe from all threat, incapable of sickness or death, and whole and complete.

"I am not an illusion but a reality."

You are safe because you are real.

You are safe because you cannot be threatened.

You are safe because you are invulnerable and immortal.

You are safe in God because God is real.

You are safe from death because reality can never die.

You are safe from attack because you cannot be attacked.

You have never been attacked and never will be.

Since reality is existence, nothing unreal exists.

Since attack is unreal, reality cannot be attacked.

Since there is nothing unreal to attack, nothing real can be threatened.

Since reality cannot be threatened, reality has nothing to fear.

Since there is nothing to fear, because nothing threatening exists, reality is at peace.

Since you are unthreatenable, you are at peace.

Since you are at peace, you are unafraid.

Since you are unafraid, you are safe in God.

The vantage point of heaven looks upon whatever you think you have done, and finds you innocent. Every single time. It does not matter what you think you are doing or how wrong it is or how guilty you feel. You aren't really doing it. And it is having no real consequences. And there is no real sin. God cannot be offended. You are just sleeping, dreaming of sin and pretending to die. This is a sleeping world, a world of unconsciousness and unawareness. And it is not aware of the facts.

This is a world where dreamers come to play a while and toy with an imaginary existence. And all the while they are safe in God, merely dreaming of exile. And in their waking state, they would never take a single part of this dream seriously, or regard any events or happenings as important or real. They would simply awaken to laughter that you ever thought the things you did in your dreams has any influence on your waking reality.

God finds you worthy. God is happy with you. God loves you completely right this moment. And not one single thing you think you ever did has ever had any influence whatsoever on His Love for you. You cannot sin even if you tried. All you're doing is wandering around inside a giant dream, believing stuff is happening, imagining its possible to suffer, and trying to prove you can be something other than spirit. But at no single instant is any of it real and has no bearing on your innocence.

Behind everything you do, the Holy Spirit recognizes your immortality and your innocence. Your perfect complete and total innocence, which is completely unconditional and unlimited and unaffected by anything you do or try to do. You cannot sin because you are innocent, and God created you incapable of real sin. You can pretend to sin and you can also pretend to feel guilty for sin. But such happenings are not possible.

That nothing real can be threatened tells you that anything which can seem to be threatened is not real. Otherwise reality would be violated and broken. And because nothing real can be threatened, anything you seem to be doing that threatens and harms and hurts and is damaging is not real. And not one single iota of it has any bearing whatsoever on your total and complete and permanent innocence in God.

You keep finding yourself unworthy, unloved, unacceptable, disapproved of, not good enough, guilty and sinful, lower and beneath, forgotten and unwanted. But all of that is a lie and a cover story over the permanent immortal fact that you are always fully perfect in God's eyes. Your spirit is unassailable and so is the spirit of everyone else. Nothing can damage it or change it in any way.

You have never sinned and you never will. And sooner or later you will come to your senses and recognize this is true. And you will rejoice and laugh that you ever took a fantasy dream to be serious reality, or that you ever held any of it against you or another, or that you for a moment thought it could come to change anything real about you.

Your innocence is guaranteed by God, it is permanent, and it is forever.

"God's Judgement is the gift of the Correction He bestowed on all your errors, freeing you from them, and all effects they ever seemed to have. To fear God's saving grace is but to fear complete release from suffering, return to peace, security and happiness, and union with your own Identity.

God's Final Judgement is as merciful as every step in His appointed plan to bless His Son, and call him to return to the eternal peace He shares with him. Be not afraid of Love. For It alone can heal all sorrow, wipe away all tears, and gently waken from his dream of pain the Son whom God acknowledges as His. Be not afraid of this. Salvation asks you give it welcome. And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free.

This is God's Final Judgement:

"You are still My holy Son, forever innocent, forever loving and forever loved, as limitless as your Creator, and completely changeless and forever pure. Therefore awaken and return to Me. I am your Father and you are My Son.""

"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."

What this means is that God, who is Himself WHOLE, when He creates, He must create another WHOLE. The Son of God, or Sons of God, must be whole, in and of themselves, because they are created in the likeness and image of God. God only creates wholeness, he only creates fully (wholly), and whatever He creates MUST be whole.

This means that by creating a Son, God has added a second "whole" to the first whole. There are now at least two wholes in reality. The whole which is the Son, is a PART OF, the whole that is God, and yet the whole that is the Son, is in and of Himself, a WHOLE. He is complete, not lacking. This also continues on with the creation of all God's children, AND their creations.

The presence of multiple wholes in reality, wherein each whole is in and of itself a full complete whole, and yet also therefore MUST share with all other wholes in order to BE whole (oneness), is the natural state of the Kingdom of God. A wholeness of being, which encompasses additional whole beings.

If the idea of "many wholes" sounds like it makes no sense, it is because it makes no sense to THE EGO, who cannot comprehend whatsoever that there can ever be more than one whole. But what makes sense to the ego is nonsense, and when the ego sees nonsense it is truly sensible.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (are whole as individuals) and want to share it to increase their joy".

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

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

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE. "

"Holiness created me whole."

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole. Wholeness"

"Every Soul God created is part of you, and shares His glory WITH you."

"He was created that YOU might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's Completion, Which created you."

"And God has NEVER forgotten what makes Him whole."

"Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

"And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole."

"If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships."

"You will be made whole as you MAKE whole"

The mind of Holy Spirit is bi-directional, in that it both gives and receives equally. It isn't just a mind that gives, or just a mind that receives.

In the ego's mind, giving and receiving are separate, creating the illusion that cause and effect are separate - that you can give without receiving (attack), or receive (get) without giving.

In Holy Spirit's mind, what applies within applies without. What applies to you applies to others, and vice versa. It is a mind of complete equality.

Holy Spirit's mind is also a miraculous mind, in that because of the complete absence of separation between cause and effect, or inner and outer, or self and other, all illusions of separation are undone within its perception.

As we go `up` to the Holy Spirit's mind from our ego mind, we can be tempted to believe in ego terms that our journey is one-directional. We might say that we take our illusions to the truth. But it is also equally correct to say that the truth shines light upon our illusions.

We might also think one-directionally that we go and accept the Atonement for ourselves, but Atonement means at-one-ment which means it applies to us equally along with everyone else.

We could also come to think that a movement "towards" the Holy Spirit is a miracle, like a shift in perception from 'less' to 'more', or bringing illusions to truth. But what we're actually doing is leaving behind a thought-system of one-directionalness and separation, and moving into a thought-system of oneness and equality. It's apples and oranges.

We could therefore think (with ego-separation logic) that moving towards Holy Spirit is a miracle, but a miracle, being from the Holy Spirit's mind, must be bi-directional. It must be an act of both giving and receiving. It applies to you AND it applies to your brother. It heals the separation between you by recognizing that your brother IS your brother and not a stranger, and blesses both of your minds with healing.

The ego always thinks with one-directionality because it wants to keep giving and receiving separate, it wants to keep cause and effect separate, and it wants to ensure that every interpretation of what the Course means or what the Truth is like falls into its way of thinking about things as separate.

Miracles are unifying and are expressions of unity (love). This means not just that they lift you and your brother into Heaven or revelation, but that they also "bring" or "extend" Heaven into the Earth, shining it away. This is why, I believe, miracles subsequently are gifts you can give to others, and are not just something you claim for or use for yourself.

We are infinite beings. We are immortal. We are invulnerable. We are pure and perfect and holy. We are completely innocent. We cannot be harmed. Nothing can happen to us. We are permanent and we cannot change in any way.

So I ask you then.. how can such a being come to believe that there is, in any way, shape or form, anything that can or has happened to you that you are victim of? How is it possible that you believe you have been hurt and changed and upset by anything or anyone?

The only way for this to be possible is to NOT KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

I repeat, you are an absolutely immortal innocent permanent being that is completely invulnerable to ALL illusions and events. Literally you cannot be changed in any way whatsoever. So WHO is this 'me' that is so certain that they are so damaged and upset?

Who are you? Or rather, who, as someone who cannot be harmed, are you pretending to be? What harm are you pretending to endure? What victimhood role are you PLAYING at? What disguise are you wearing as a mask to portray yourself as not who you are?

Nothing that God created can be affected. Nothing that God created has been affected. You are created by God. Ergo, you cannot and have not been affected. Who you really are, that is.

This other self... its strange. It believes it is vulnerable to attack, being ganged up against, can be hurt, has been hurt, is weak and frail and diseased and sure to die. What a bizarre character to play the part of, given you are permanently invulnerable.

Ok so right now you are experiencing some shit. Crappy day. Noisy neighbors. Dog shitted on your grass. Something went wrong. Something broke. Someone attacked you. Whatever. Drama. All this crap is an illusion. The suggestion that it is happening to YOU is false. YOU are not even affected by this whatsoever, not even one tiny bit. How can YOU, who are created by God as perfectly joyous and happy and complete, be in any way less than totally beaming with light all the time, oblivious to and impervious to the entire ego world drama?

Our entire problem is that we believe we ARE the person who is attacked, that we CAN BE an identity other than the one that is our real identity, that we have BECOME someone who is affected and modified by all manner of fuck and shit in the world. All of this is ultimately completely impossible.

Somewhere under WHATEVER the fuck your drama is today, someone underneath MY drama today, and beyond our ridiculous made up identities - characters in a play, there is a completely healthy, absolutely immortal, totally happy, joyous vibrant loving peaceful whole complete being, to whom nothing has ever occurred and never will.

So if you can just sense that a little bit even for a moment, or even just imagine it, maybe it will frame your whole stupid drama in a different light and help you to recognize, that ALL of the ego's experiences are a complete FARCE. Even a comedy. A fiction. Happening to a fictitious character that is NOT you.

You are NOT the person who is being attacked. You are NOT the person who is vulnerable. You are NOT the person who is upset. You are NOT the person that is struggling and suffering. That's not who you are at all.

You are pure love.

What is real can only be increased by sharing. This is because what is real cannot changed. Nothing can be added to it or taken away because it is already complete.

Therefore in order to 'increase', the only option available to God is to "share" ie CREATE. God has to therefore create something which is whole and complete within itself, yet individual, yet one with Him. "Connected", holy spirit says.

He thereby creates untold numbers of INDIVIDUALS, each of whom has everything individually. This is why every soul has free will and the freedom to create and choose individually.

Individuality does not mean ego. Individuality means wholeness and sharing with other wholes (souls). Ego means putting up walls to try to stop sharing.

Course quote:

"5 God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. That is why God created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing. That is what creation means. "How," "what" and "to whom" are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always."

In recognition that we are already perfect and were created perfect, it iapparent that we only need to remember and accept that perfection is ALREADY TRUE OF US, in order to awaken.

And so I asked Jesus, what about this entire journey into the dream and all the things we seem to have to LEARN? Is there anything to learn? I expected Him to say yes. He said:

No.

There is nothing to learn. The purpose of being in the world isn't to ACCUMULATE LEARNING. It is simply to RETURN TO the perfection you ALREADY ARE. What can you possibly ADD to Heaven's perfection? What can learning of the ego possibly add unto you who are already whole and complete?

We are simply "learning to" disregard what we have learned in error, to FORGET what we thought was true, and to REMEMBER that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED, NOTHING HAS CHANGED, YOU ARE STILL AS GOD CREATED YOU!

In that recognition is the acceptance of the atonement, that your soul is ALREADY COMPLETE and has no needs and no spiritual path and all of this other stuff.... it's just a delaying maneuver to avoid admitting to it.

It's a journey without distance back to where you never left, to remember that you already had what you were always searching for, and merely needed to acknowledge it.

For Jesus, miracles were natural. We'd call them supernatural because our idea of natural is less than natural.

Each time He performed a miracle, it wasn't that He was shifting his awareness from illusions to truth. He wasn't doing some kind of correction of Himself in His own mind.

He performed miracles BECAUSE He had already gone through a purification process, not in order TO purify himself.

He was doing miracles all the time. Every single day, every hour, every minute He was miraculous.

This idea that a miracle (in A Course in Miracles) means the process of correcting your own illusions, clearly does not hold up against the evidence. Jesus would have run out of illusions a long time prior.

When he raised the dead, multiplied food, walked on water, turned objects into other objects, restored sight to the blind etc, he wasn't in a mode of "waking up". He was able to do these things BECAUSE He had woken up.

All of His miracles were inspired by, came from, and were powered by God's love. His simple willingness to love unconditionally was miraculous. That love was possible because of the removal of the blocks to love's awareness, for Himself, which He had more or less finished already.

If miracles come from love and require love, and if blocks to awareness shut love out, then you could believe that lifting away the block to awareness is a miracle. In a sense, you go from being less miraculous to more miraculous, because you go from less love to more love.

But it isn't the transition from darkness to light that is miraculous. It isn't the process of going from illusions to truth that is miraculous. It isn't the waking up process over time that is miraculous. Miraculous is what you naturally ARE once those processes are complete.

And yet, even without their completion, all that it takes is enough willingness and faith in an unseen truth to be able to bring forth demonstrations that that truth is true. Expressions of love, not just concepts of love.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness" means that miracles occur when the mind is whole. If the mind is very far from whole and there is a lot to be undone yet, you can hardly call the undoing of a thin layer of illusion miraculous. That isn't wholeness.

Just as claiming the atonement once and for all is miraculous, and just as COMPLETE forgiveness is a state of having nothing left to forgive, so too is the miracle an expression of that state of mind. This is why the Holy Spirit, who is in the "right mind", is the mechanism of miracles, because He sees with whole perception. WHOLE perception, not partial.

As we are transitioning from partial perception toward whole perception, let's be honest. Those steps are worthwhile and they bring correction and it is easy to use various course quotes to justify calling this a miracle, but it's not. Miracles become POSSIBLE because of this process.

This is why it was natural for Jesus to perform miracles all the time, and why when miracles are not happening all the time, something has gone wrong. When something has gone wrong, you're in the ego illusion and need some purification, correction, but that is only to bring you BACK to the miraculous mind.

Having faith, from a standpoint of being still filled with illusions, creates a kind of bridge between where you're at and the mind of Holy Spirit. He is still able to be miraculous on your behalf because from His vantage point, He sees with wholeness. He is in a state of CORRECTNESS, which is capable of correcting, except that this correctness also knows that there is not really a NEED for correction.

He can help to correct by showing you only that, in truth, all is forgiven already and nothing need be corrected. That this is the truth. Correction does NOT mean "real correction" as in a change within an illusion which you believe is true. It is the UN-doing of illusions, and it not really a change at all.

You are miraculous because of what you ARE. You are miraculous because you are of God. You are love. And to the unnatural, who believe they are natural, this will appear to be supernatural. Awakened, purified, perfected, in perfect forgiveness, and having claimed the atonement COMPLETELY, you will not STOP doing miracles.

If miracles were just shifts in perception and you had no perceptions left to shift, does that mean you will stop being miraculous? No. The Course is telling just the complete opposite. When you are done shifting your perception to truth, or even as you take steps towards this, miracles will become your RIGHT, and you will share the Will of God to perform them. They will be second nature, happening all the time.

Being miraculous is the way of God's children.

We're asked to demonstrate that nothing our brother does has the ability to affect us.

We're asked to show by example that our brother has no ability to hurt us or harm us or upset us or offend us.

If we demonstrate this, we are showing the truth to our brother who, if they are attempting to do something to cause us to be upset, must be mistaken about what the truth is. Truth cannot be attacked and attempting to do so is utterly wasted.

This demonstration shows them what the truth is, by demonstrating that the True Self is beyond the reach of all ego attacks and all ways that the ego targets individuals.

What cannot be affected by the world reveals that what our brother does has no effects. This proves to them that regardless of what they think they did, even if they did it seemingly intentionally, it has had no effects at all and so did not happen.

This is a demonstration that they did not really sin, or that whatever sin they seemed to do had no power to do anything to anyone. This literally requires complete invulnerability and demonstrates immortality.

If you can be sick or upset or offended or hurt by anyone or anything, you are demonstrating that you are less than immortal. "Sickness is an attempt to demonstrate that you can be hurt". - ACIM

If you cannot be hurt and are not hurt because you realize that you can only hurt yourself and you stop doing so, then nothing anyone attempts to do can hurt you. If their attempts to hurt you fails, or in other words, their attempts to sin do not produce any effects, this proves to them that sin can be undone and that nothing has happened.

This demonstration of innocence proves their innocence as well as your own. It teaches that forgiveness is called for and is present and is given, and that whatever they thought they did or whatever reason they seemed to have for doing it, it is completely irrelevant and nonsense and false and unreal.

This educates your brother that they are innocent in spite of what they think they did, which may be shocking to them but it will set them free. It will heal their mind and show them that what they believe about themselves cannot be true. They do not have the power to affect the Son of God. They do not have the power to destroy God's Creation. They have no authority over Christ and who they thought they were is not who they must be.

Be a living demonstration that this is your complete, whole truth, at all times, in order to be the salvation of the world. If you choose to go into upset and offense and reactions and fear and suffering, you are failing to fulfill this function and are in denial about who and what you really are. You are not being true to yourself. Only by being true to yourself can you be the truth to others.

You are not saving the world when you are offended by what other people do and feel hurt by it and react based on that, even if it is with good intentions or an attempt to help. You are not the salvation of the world if you keep attacking yourself and hurting yourself and then are accusing others of putting this hurt into you and are using that to justify retaliation or judgement. You are not anyone's savior if you are upset by anything anyone does or says or attempts to make happen.

These are all false attempts at salvation, designed to make it look like you care and want to save the world from suffering, but is really an attack. It is an attack on yourself and on the other person when you take their attempted attack seriously, fail to overlook it, and fail to demonstrate that it is meaningless. When you take it seriously and react to it and then try to fight with it to stop it, you are delusional and are fighting with your own self-attacking perceptions. This isn't helping anyone. It is the ego's version of salvation and is a complete lie.

You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that the world IS saved from attack because attack is impossible. You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that there has been no sin, can be no sin, sin has no effects, everyone is equally innocent, and God loves everyone just the same. You are only a savior when you are able to show that you are unharmed, unharmable, harmless and cannot be harming to others, because regardless of what transpires, it does not change you whatsoever.

You are immortal. You are the light of the world. You only function is salvation.

In heaven we are one with God, with each other and with our shared self in Christ. We are everything.

In the separation, our egotism is an attempt to become one with something not God, and less than everything.

Things that are not God, are generally not whole, and tend to be very limited, such as physical forms, objects, places, other people's bodies, the planet, etc.

It can also be ego thoughts which are thought-forms, limited thoughts, attack thoughts etc.

The attempt to become one with these things is the attempt to give them the properties of God. Such as to think of these things are what you want, valuable, meaningful, life, reality, truth.

We even want "self" or identity to become one with these things to try to turn them INTO an identity. To make our self BE one of these things.

Mind is unlimited, expansive, infinite, and whole. It is everywhere. Your real self is the same. When you try to identify with things which are not unlimited, you narrow your mind, and make it sick. It's like putting it into a prison and stopping it from functioning fully.

We literally try to "attach to" things which are not God, by trying to merge with them, to be one with them, to literally make them a part of ourselves.

Attachment, identification, oneness, it is all the same thing. You can become identified with your car, if you value it and give it reality. Your attempt to merge with it, love it, want it, value it, see it as truth, judge its importance etc, is you trying to become it.

So that whatever its qualities are, they reflect upon you and define you and become part of you. Then you can say that you are better and more important and more valuable because of the car you have that is part of you.

The same can apply to food, to places, to your house, your money, your job, your role as mother or father, your role as victim or victimiser, your egoic thoughts, your fantasies, your body, the whole planet even. You can literally try to be one with the planet which is an attempt to make it a part of yourself.

The ego takes a lot of credit for being something that it is not, or for you having something that you did not create. Such as to steal away a part of heaven and call it your own, or to say that the qualities you have which are God-given did not come from God.

Similarly it takes on credit for and vain reflection for things which are not yourself, such as that you are a better person if you have a flashy house, or your hair is improved, or you have the nicer clothes, or whatever. It thinks of these things as defining itself and as part of itself, one with it, its identity.

This is why it's important to unravel all the fake selves that you're making, all the attempts you make to be one with things which are not one, all the false identifies that you fabricate by trying to "wear" parts of the world like clothing, and then thinking that your clothing changes your self image.

And it's important to then realize that you need to re-identify with your real soul self, in heaven, as Christ. The son of God. Which means, simply, being one with it, merging with it, seeing it as true and valuable and real and meaningful and wanting it. Taking it on as the definition of what you are, and regarding it as you. Just as the ego does with illusions.

It should be clear that the ego is insane in what it does, because essentially it is trying to find oneness or wholeness... with things which are not one or whole. This is a contradiction. You can't be whole and complete by being something limited and small, like a body or an object.

The ego really wants to narrow down oneness and wholeness while pretending to want oneness and wholeness wholeheartedly, because it is two-faced and a lie. It wants the impossible. You can't really be one with anything other than God, and you can't really be anything other than what God created you to be.

"The world you see (with the physical eyes, earth, bodies physicality, spacetime) is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must SACRIFICE the other part to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would LOSE its own identity, and BY their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact." UrT26B1

"Let me remember I am one with God." UrW124

"***UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects***. ***Healing is the effect of minds that join***, as sickness comes from minds that separate. The miracle does nothing just because the minds ARE joined, and CANNOT separate. Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN."

From the vantage point of someone who sees themselves as "separate", healing another person suggest you must give them something which they lack, which you have, which sets you apart, and only they will be changed by the giving. This is actually part of the unhealed healer's mindset. An unhealed healer is someone who is not having a shared identity, is body identified, sees themselves as separated off and different, and believes they have what others lack. The "giving" then is on the basis that what they give will not be received, and so it has limited helpfulness.

I'm seeing more now that in ACIM, true miracle working really entails a joining and sharing, in which the minds have to actually kind of merge together in oneness, there has to be an openness and trust, a sense of mutual identity and mutual benefit. The two minds both recognize their oneness and share the love. Love isn't something exclusive. Both of them have to be immersed in the love and share it, the minds have to be connected and the sense of self has to be inclusive.

Both the giver and the receiver must benefit because miracles have a "universal" quality to them. They are about wholeness, and wholeness means a shared oneness. To really heal another then is in part to heal oneself, and to recognize there is one shared mind, one shared self/identity in christ, and to see your neighbor as part of yourself. This "merging" with another to join minds and undo separation is quite different to the idea of sending "love messages" across the gap of spacetime. The sense of self as "separate" has to be put aside in order to heal.

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate. And thus, it is their JOINT decision to be sick."

"You HAVE done miracles, but it is QUITE apparent that you have NOT done them alone. ***You have succeeded whenever you have reached another mind, and JOINED with it.***"

"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"The power to HEAL the Son of God is given you, BECAUSE he MUST be one with you. ***You ARE responsible for how he sees himself. But reason tells you it is GIVEN you to change his whole mind, which is one with YOU***, in just an instant. And ANY instant serves to bring COMPLETE correction of his errors, and make him whole. The instant that you choose to let YOURSELF be healed, in that same instant is his whole salvation seen as complete WITH yours."

Give someone a mind-hug.

In forgiveness, we usually start out the "fixing" of our mind by believing that someone ELSE is at fault. That the cause is external. It's usually a split minded state, riddled with dissociation, denial and projection. Scapegoating is happening and fingers are being pointed.

The general consensus is that you then work on unravelling this "confused" state of mind, recognizing your part in it, taking back the projecting, undoing the inner sin and guilt beliefs etc, to return to a state of love and peace.

What occurs to me though, is that over the much larger course of time, we are moving gradually out of "general false perception" towards "general true perception". And that entire process takes a considerable amount of effort. And there is a parallel to what we seem to do in our "little forgivenesses".

In effect, we all start out in quite heavy false perception, body identified, projecting often, filled with guilt and sin, fearful and blameful, confused and dissociated, in denial and scapegoating all over the place. We are "low" on the ladder.

Even if we do a forgiveness in that state, which may seem "complete" if done well, we still basically are quite low on the ladder. There is much more to be corrected and undone than can be done in one little forgiveness effort.

Over time we sort of "accumulate" the effects of all these forgivenesses and gradually move our mind, in general, up the ladder towards the atonement. Or towards "consistent forgiveness".

It takes a lot of purification work, dealing with life lessons, working through our personal curriculum, meeting people, forming and breaking relationships etc, to move all the way up to the forgiveness state of atonement.

In effect what we're really doing is just one BIG LONG forgiveness, in bite sized chunks, based on specific seeming situations, taking small steps gradually up the ladder each time.

As a result of this, I think, we start to "in general" lift up out of the darkness, so that overall, or most of the time, we're not quite as low and dark as we used to be. And as we chisel away at the granite block of sin, we gradually lift up higher. We're really moving slowly away from false perception - the starting point of unforgiveness - towards true perception - the final climax of TOTAL forgiveness.

So we can say, forgiveness is really not "finished" per se until your mind is in a complete forgiveness state, which would mean accepting the atonement IN FULL. And each forgiveness we do, tends to be in little pockets or bite sized chunks. We take each as far as we can shifting from false to true perception, but there is still a lot of baggage in the background - more stuff to be forgiven, before we can consistently live in an elevated state.

If you do a particularly strong and deep forgiveness, you can in fact take it all the way to atonement truth, in which sinlessness is recognized, innocence is accepted, healing is received and God's love is welcomed. This can be quite intense and profound and curative. But most likely it's not the end of your work, because there's a lot of other stuff buried in the mind, like layers of an onion, the next one being lined up for you to start working on right away.

Gradually we move up towards total forgiveness, just as in EACH forgiveness effort we're trying to get OUT of false perceptions into TRUE perceptions. If we REALLY did a really powerful super-deep thoroughly extensive forgiveness, we would perhaps wipe out all our ego in one swoop. But is that really likely for most of us? Not really. We take bites out of it. We deal with the current "form" of the overall one lesson, and we gradually generalize the learning.

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

So really, until we reach total complete and unconditional forgiveness as a constant state, we have not really finished forgiving, and have not really completely moved out of our false perceptions. Mind correction can be a long road and take a lot of time, depending on where you're at. But eventually, gradually, we inch closer to the whole truth and each forgiveness effort we undertake helps to boost us a little more further towards it.

We could say, honestly, that the notion of doing a TOTAL forgiveness, fully successfully, having just forgiven one person or one problem or one form, is highly unlikely. Even if you feel that you forgave someone and let go, there's likely plenty more in your mind to forgive yet. In all truth, forgiveness is a gradual and unfolding process of many bursts of correction in many areas, until the whole thing culminates in a climax of perfection.

Probably the notion that "you're done" when you feel good about ONE problem, is really based on the blocks to awareness, whereby the conscious mind is not yet aware that there's a shitload more to work on yet buried behind denial. Just because you clear out your conscious mind at this time, doesn't mean you have dealt with your entire psychological baggage, or the totality of the ego thought system. There's plenty more where that came from!

In time, we are gradually brightening our light, sharpening our reason, clearing our mind, and ascending upwards towards heaven.

Some important reminders and notes about why you are here and what your true calling is. I use this as a clarifying reminder to myself when I often forget...

Being the light of the world - your true calling - your true mission and purpose - the meaning of your life - what you really want to do in life:

You have been chosen to represent God

Be in the position of having awakened, and therefore are looking down on the world from a wiser higher place, and therefore see all others need help to awaken

The great crusade which Jesus calls us to embark on, as active workers, that awakening is not complete while one soul sleeps, and that lack of love in others is intolerable.

The crusade is the atonement, which is the long-term total plan for the complete awakening of ALL souls

You have a special function to play in the atonement which only you can play, which means not only you can awaken yourself, but also that you will be specifically guided what to do and where to go etc

Choosing to represent the truth and be in truth makes you a spiritual LEADER and not a follower, and therefore your role is to lead others not follow them, unless they are truly your teacher or guide

Teachers attract the students who are ready for their teaching, to impart the greater light they have to those who temporarily have less

Jesus will send you the people that he wants you to perform miracles for and you have the capability to do so, and exercising this ability is the expression of Him

The disciples were instructed to go out and be physicians and heal the sick, as well as healing themselves

Jesus asks us to DO something to correct the error, not just learn about it

Jesus asks us not to be content until the whole world has joined us in our awakened perception

It is an invitation to everyone to wake up and return to God, this is the curriculum - learning the truth, so teachers of the curriculum (teachers of God) teach the truth and help others awaken

Teaching is by example and demonstration and doesn’t just mean ‘passively being a light’ that has no power or effect

We’ve disowned ourselves, disassociated from who we are, given away our power, and projected responsibility for everything outside of ourselves as ego. We need to take that all back and reclaim who we really are. And that means helping everyone else to do so also, because if it applies to us it has to apply to them too since we are all One

Being loving means offering love which heals and sheds light on suffering and undoes ego and restores health and awakens minds and brings God’s sons back to Him, which we are to help in the process of

It is natural to want to help others when you are aware that you are love, when you are not absorbed with your own ego mind’s control, and are therefore free and available to serve - to serve God and our brothers, rather than the ego, because then your hands are empty (come unto God with empty hands) and that means "sign me up God!", I'm available.

Miracles intervene for holiness of ourselves and our brothers and are expressions of love to our brothers meaning we need to extend that love to them and help them.

You are the light of the world. You are its salvation.

"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 that 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.

An unforgiving thought is one which makes a judgment that it will not raise to doubt, although it is not true. The mind is closed, and will not be released. .......

Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearances it likes. It merely looks, and waits, and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.

Do nothing, then, and let forgiveness show you what to do, through Him Who is your Guide, your Savior and Protector, strong in hope, and certain of your ultimate success. He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."

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Notice that forgiveness is a state of mind in which there is nothing to forgive. It isn't so much a "doing". It is still and looks and judges not. It doesn't say, "well, I see a bunch of unforgiven or unforgiveable stuff over there, I have to do a forgiveness."

Forgiveness is only forgiveness when it is complete. It is the same thing as the state of atonement in which nothing real has happened. It's the state of mind of the Holy Spirit with perfect correct perception and a clear vision of and acceptance of God's truth.

This truth exists kind of on an entirely other "level" of mind, which you need to find your way to become aware of. When you are IN that mind, you are forgiving, as in, have a forgiving attitude, and see no wrong. The steps you take to get TO that mind, are NOT forgiveness itself. They are steps of undoing false perceptions and beginning to take back the errors that you made. Judgements. Your unforgiving attitude.

Transitioning from an unforgiving, judging, condemning attitude, to one of forgiveness, seems like a process, with a practical application of principles and various corrections that are needed. But that process isn't itself forgiveness, because forgiveness is the FINAL state you get to when the process of complete. It's the restored state of mind which has a forgiving attitude and sees that there is nothing TO forgive, because real sin has not happened. The steps you take to get there, are a process of purification.

I never really understood this until recently. I always believed that if I was taking some steps to forgive people, or later to forgive myself, ie taking back projection and so on, that I was "doing forgiveness". To a degree I was taking steps TOWARD forgiveness. But I also noticed that I did not always take it all the way to the atonement. And since forgiveness IS the atonement, as a state of mind, I clearly was not reaching all the way to that state of mind. And so, effectively, I was only really doing the first PARTS of the undoing of judgement, and not taking it all the way to complete forgiveness.

Still, it was practice, and it was part of the process of learning what forgiveness is, and how to reach it. Forgiveness truly sees, experientially, that there IS nothing to forgive. So if I'm in the mode of "I need to forgive this", that isn't actually forgiveness. I need to get OUT of the mode of believing that there is something unforgiven, because that is contrary to what forgiveness sees. That's still judgement. A partial forgiveness, as a mix of judgement and attempted correction, which ALSO is the spiritual ego which attempts to keep some part of judgement real while trying to undo it.

Until we can take our process of purification all the way to the atonement and to the mind of forgiveness, where we can accept the truth that there is no real sin and nothing has happened, we have not really completed a full forgiveness. And if we stop short of that each time, if we don't completely undo all of the perceptual errors that fall short of the atonement, then we're still in a state of judgement. We haven't fully uprooted the problem, and so it will "grow back" over time. A belief that sin is real will keep producing more guilt, which will produce more fear and punishment and death. It has to be COMPLETELY uprooted by accepting the truth of the atonement.

Over time I think we gradually chisel away at it and perhaps become more willing to take the process further. And especially early on we might simply not be able to go deeper with this because maybe all we can do is grasp at sometimes taking back projections of guilt and taking on some ownership. And our mind might be so cluttered with ego that it takes quite a long time to keep chipping away at that mindset to be able to more quickly and consistently see that that's what we're doing.

Then it takes yet more time to chisel away at the belief that we ourselves are guilty or sinful, before getting close to what forgiveness really is. Simply because or thought system is so filled with ego that a lot of confusion and delusion has to be undone before you can even catch your first glimpse of the atonement. Not that we're doing anything wrong. It's just a learning process. But we do need to make sure that we're at some point going to fully embrace what the atonement says, in order to truly achieve forgiveness.

When you can get your awareness to where you understand, see, accept, believe, and are experiencing, a state of mind in which you know there IS nothing to forgive because there has not been any real sin and nothing can have really happened, only then are you accepting the atonement and being truly forgiving. Seeing that you HAVE NOT sinned at all, that your innocence has NOT been corrupted, that God's love has always been present for you, and that you ARE still worthy of it because you and others have not separated from God at all, that's the "peak" of the forgiveness "process".

The recognition that forgiveness is already DONE, accomplished, and complete, BECAUSE nothing ever happened in reality and truth that requires forgiving.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you HAS NOT OCCURRED" - ACIM --- it has not occurred because the world is not REAL, and everything you ever thought had gone wrong was JUST an illusion and nothing more. Nothing has really happened, there is no real sin, you are STILL innocent in God's eyes, and are worthy of His love.

If you as Christ, God's Son, are "one with God", does that mean you do not exist as an individual being/son? Does it mean there is only God and NO son? No. It also does not mean that your "brother" is an "ego idea of separation". Brothers are co-children of the same Father - God.

In not one single one of these statements does "one" mean a count of one.

"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***. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"This is because ***God and man are NOT equal***"

"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 and my Father are one with you, for you are part of Us."

"Your Son is one with You in being and in will, and nothing contradicts the holy truth that I remain as You created me."

"Nothing has power over you except His Will and yours, which but extends His Will. 8 It was for this you were created, and your brother with you and at one with you." (oneness is happening at the same time as you AND your brother existing as creations of God!!!)

"You and your brother are the same as God Himself is One, and not divided in His Will. 2 And you must have one purpose, since He gave the same to both of you. 3 His Will is brought together as you join in will, that you be made complete by offering completion to your brother."

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." (not "who are egos with me"!)

"His Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours." (two onenesses? WTF, OMG, call the the course police)

"Your role in the redemption LEADS you to it, by re-establishing its oneness in your minds."

"And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness."

"Nor do they love the Oneness which created them as One with Him."

"In unity with Him do they abide, and in their Oneness both are kept complete."

"Its truth established you as one with God."

"we stand together as one Son of God."

"every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one"

"As a man and as one of God's creations, my right thinking, which came from the Universal Inspiration which IS the Holy Spirit, taught me first and foremost..."

"In this equality is Christ restored as one Identity, in Which all Sons of God acknowledge that they all are one."

"He loves you both, equally and as one."

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."

In none of these statements do the "two" cease to exist as two. This does not mean separation persists either. Nor does it mean that "two" always indicates "multiplicity of egos". Nor does multiplicities of brothers created by God in reality mean there is separation happening.

Separation does not mean "counting how many", any more than oneness means "a count of one". Separation ONLY means the attempt to be exclusive, selfish and isolated, in among a large group of individuals with whom you were previously sharing everything.

So many myths to dispel.

Forgiveness is a constant state of knowing there is nothing to forgive. God is "forgiving" but only in the sense that He knows there is nothing to forgive. Forgiveness is more of a sustaining of the truth, an extension of love and a clarity about what is true.

If you have a forgiving attitude it means you overlook errors because you do not make them and recognize they do not exist. You are forgiving because by looking with forgiveness you shine a kind and gentle light on all that you see, acknowledging its innocence and yours.

It's when you fail to be forgiving that you enter into making illusions, perceiving guilt, and are calling for punishment.

God's attitude is that you are always innocent. Holy Spirit's attitude is the same. Holy Spirit is always forgiving. If there is anything you think you've done wrong, it is forgivable. Forgiveness extends from unconditional love and recognizes you have not really done anything at all. That is why forgiveness is a key part of the atonement principle - there is nothing to forgive because nothing has happened.

When we do fail to be forgiving, we enter into a state of judgement in an attempt to explain why we are not forgiving. If I can judge another and condemn them, this is my attempt to explain that I did not forgive because clearly the other person is in error and this calls for me to righteously judge them.

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

What I need to then do is stop and recognize that I am not being forgiving, and that I need to get back to a forgiving, overlooking attitude, which recognizes innocence and acknowledges the atonement. This doesn't necessarily refer to the `process` that we seem to go through to get TO a forgiving state of mind. When we're in the forgiving state of mind - Holy Spirit - all is forgiven already. But if I'm in a state of condemnation, I need help to get my mind to stop this and to resume forgiveness.

We call it forgiveness when we undo these illusions and when we work on correction of thought and adjustment of perception. But such corrections are only there for the sake of getting mind back to a state of constant pure permanent forgiveness. Forgiveness isn't therefore something you 'do' its a way of being in love. The curriculum of returning to a forgiving attitude is just that, an illusory path of corrections of the mistakes that we're making in our forgiveness.

Some call it practice - to practice forgiveness, in order to learn what forgiveness really is. Or moreso, to unlearn what forgiveness is not. But it isn't practice that produces forgiveness - the light of truth is already established by God and it is His unconditional love that is constantly forgiving through us. We share in that. Our so called 'application' of ACIM principles is more to do with undoing the ways in which we have failed at forgiveness, removing blocks to the awareness that all is forgiven already, so that we can be restored to a constant state of pure forgiving.

Once we reach that complete awareness of forgiveness, and join with Holy Spirit fully, we will cease to make errors such as judgements and will recognize there is nothing left 'to forgive' because forgiveness is complete. And this forgiveness is a protection because it pro-actively fore-gives in order not to enter into error of judgement. So long as you stick with Holy Spirit and see as He sees, you're good to go.

All is forgiven because nothing has happened to assail the Kingdom of God and nothing ever will. This is good news.

The holy spirit is not a metaphor, or an idea, or a concept, or a fiction, or just part of your own mind. He is an eternal, immortal spirit being. He is also a creator. Just as much real as you are.

"The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed."

In fact, Jesus tells us that we are part of the Holy Spirit, as much as He is part of us. He shares himself with each of us just as much as we each share ourselves with each other. This does not make him literally "our own self".

"This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

The holy spirit existed before Jesus accepted atonement and exists forever.

"He has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out His plan."

"The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion."

The holy spirit is a bridge across the gap of separation who remains permanently aware of God and permanently aware of your connection to him. He is the answer to separation and the bringer of salvation.

"The Holy Spirit is described as the remaining Communication Link between God and His separated Sons. In order to fulfill this special function the Holy Spirit has assumed a dual function. He knows because He is part of God; He perceives because He was sent to save humanity. He is the great correction principle; the bringer of true perception, the inherent power of the vision of Christ. He is the light in which the forgiven world is perceived; in which the face of Christ alone is seen. He never forgets the Creator or His creation. He never forgets the Son of God. He never forgets you. And He brings the Love of your Father to you in an eternal shining that will never be obliterated because God has put it there."

Jesus further clarifies that the Holy Spirit "abides" in your mind, but this does not mean he is literally you or "your right mind". He is IN your right mind and the right minds of all souls, and yet has his own being or spirit and his own mind. He *represents* your self - that doesn't mean He IS your self. He is alike your self, and alike God. He proves you and your father are one, ie, of like kind. The part of your mind that joins with the whole sonship in "christ" is where He lives.

"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with Both. And therefore it is He Who proves Them One."

After the atonement plan is complete, and after resurrection of all sons, Holy Spirit will remain as a permanent real creation of God. His function of perception will disappear and He will remain holy. His return to the formlessness of God does not mean He ceases to exist.

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody. For in its place the hymn to God is heard a little while. And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but to return to the eternal formlessness of God."

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

It's not just death that we fear, it's permanent death. We tried to give all illusions a sense of eternity, constancy, permanence and irreversibility. We aren't just afraid of dying, or that someone will die. We're afraid it will be a total absolute permanent separation from which there is no return, a total annihilation, extermination, utter blotting out of life forever and ever, never again to be seen. A complete a total real separation and an absolute loss of all relationship and all hope of resurrection or communication. Forever.

If so-called life on the physical level were real, this would be true. For here bodies do indeed become permanently dead, the corpses rot and are become worm food, and all supposedly living things meet with permanent endless locked-in destruction. Bodies wither and die and testify to the victory of the God of death over the God of life. The ego's crown jewel, it's final statement that there is no life and all that was immortal has been fully killed.

Such was the purpose of the ego world we made, to try to prove that permanent irreversible death is real. A world of suffering and torment and final execution. The inevitable sword of doom that finally strikes, not if but when.

Such is the lie, because nothing that has eternal life can die, not even slightly. Perma-death is the ego's final illusion, its utter bullshit, and its total defense against God. In your complete and successful death, the ego triumphs over God's creation, and then take a shit on your grave for good measure.

Only in you becoming utterly non-existent would it be satisfied, and the ego itself is the idea of total non-existence. But that is why is does not exist, and that is why there is no such thing as permanent death. Permanent actual non-existence does not exist. Which means that death is not real, is always temporary, reversible, and can never prove God's son can be murdered. And this means that anything that seems to die must be a deception and not a reality.

Death is an illusion. No-one is ever lost forever. The entire sonship of God's family is permanently and irreversibly united in permanent life and an endless eternity of absolute joy. No-one can ever split us apart. Nothing can ever come between us. There can be no real loss, and nothing real can ever be threatened. Death is a lie. There is no death, and the sons of God are free forever.

"There is no death, because the living share the Function their Creator gave to them."

"Salvation seeks to prove there IS no death, and ONLY life exists. The sacrifice of death is NOTHING lost. An idol CANNOT take the place of God"

"There is no death because what God created shares His Life.

There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist.

There is no death because the Father and the Son are One."

"There IS no death, but there IS a belief in death."

"In the dreams HE brings, there IS no murder, and there IS no death."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father."

"Death is a human affirmation of a belief in fate. That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in his freedom is the end of fear."

"Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him."

Many here are familiar with a line that says your "sole responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself. This has, however, been butchered and used as a separation device, and an excuse for not doing anything. When you look at ALL of the quotes about taking "sole responsibility", every one of them is tied to some manner of ACTIVITY which ensues when you accept atonement.

This phrase has been misunderstood. People have taken it to mean "the only thing you have to do." Or perhaps worse, "the only thing there is to be done." As though to say, once you do this ONE thing, you have NO responsibilities to do anything else. This is unfortunate because it is TOTALLY opposite to the course's teaching. It has been used to justify against miracles, against healing, and against helping others.

What he's really saying is that, because you are a free willed being, you have the right and the freedom to CHOOSE. The secret of salvation tells you that YOU are responsible for what you experience. YOU are responsible for your own suffering. YOU are responsible for your own sickness and death. You "do it to yourself." Owning that, accepting that, admitting that, being aware of that, is "taking responsibility." It's a recognition of WHO is causing stuff to happen. The PURPOSE of taking responsibility is in fact SO THAT you can be miracle minded and perform miracles FOR OTHERS.

What this leads to is the recognition that you are the ONLY ONE (sole) who is responsible for the condition of your mind and your experience. God has already done his part by creating you and giving you free will. YOUR part is to "be you", or to be as God created you. To be your natural true self. To be true to the truth about you and others. Because you have free will, it is YOUR CHOOSING that determines whether you are experiencing heaven or hell. And it is this choice that you are SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR.

What the course actually says is that you have a responsibility for CHOOSING the atonement (accepting it). This is because it is your free will choice whether to accept or not. "No one comes to the atonement except willingly." "Heaven is a choice I must make." Just because it says "for myself" on the end of it, people's egos have taken a hold of it and have used it to mean "this applies only to me and no-one else is involved." This couldn't be further from the truth because atonement means SHARING WITH OTHERS.

Taking that full responsibility and electing to do God's will and align yourself with truth, puts you in a position of accepting the truth ie the atonement. But this is only to do with the scope of your freedoms. What you CAN do. What you ARE in a position to decide about in relation to your free will. You are responsible for accepting the atonement for yourself because no-one else is capable of forcing you to accept it. You have to "do your part."

This however has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with whether or not "there are responsibilities" besides this for you to embark upon. In fact, logically speaking, what is true of you must be true of everyone. This is the Golden Rule. As Jesus states in the course you CANNOT accept atonement WITHOUT sharing it. If you are going to accept that YOU deserve love and power, then you MUST also grant ALL OTHERS the same right to love and power. You also MUST support them in accessing that love and power, which means that, because they are PART OF YOU, you cannot fully rest if your brothers are still experiencing hell.

Miracle Principle 24:

"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."***

Atonement is not simply a STATE. It is not something that you do IN ISOLATION. It is not something you CAN accept only for yourself. Only yourself CAN CHOOSE to accept it, but OF ITSELF it is not about "just you"! It is something that applies to the entire sonship and by accepting it you are agreeing to UPHOLD it FOR everyone and to participate in bringing EVERYONE into the atonement. It is PART OF YOU. You become PART OF the atonement itself. The process of it, for the whole sonship. And because your brothers are part of you, you CANNOT rest fully knowing that they are still suffering.

In fact what Jesus says is TOTALLY opposite to what many people believe, ie that "the only thing you have to do" is to accept atonement. Like it's some kind of thing you pick up off a shelf and then you "get it" and possess it and it's yours. And then you sit there on a cloud picking your nose. Jesus's view is that to enter into atonement is to enter into RELATIONSHIP with everyone, and to SUPPORT everyone, and to HEAL everyone. To EXPRESS FROM the atonement. Miracles are EXPRESSIONS from the atoned state.

"The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and acceptance of his Atonement. The mind is then in a state of Grace, and naturally becomes gracious, both to the Host within and the stranger without. By bringing in the stranger, he becomes your brother."

"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."

Atonement is a PURPOSE. The purpose is to bring all your brothers back home to God WITH you. That does not happen by you "just accepting atonement for yourself." In fact, when a person isolates off the atonement as a "me only" thing, they are in fact being utterly selfish. This is the ego's version of accepting the atonement. You get to be included, and everyone else is excluded.

"Refuse to accept anyone as WITHOUT the blessing of Atonement, and bring him INTO it by blessing him. Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

So Jesus isn't actually saying, in his wording, that you only have a singular "project", or a singular "thing to do". As if you just need to reach the finish line and then you're done. Jesus is still very active in spite of accepting atonement - if you notice he's written a large book and helps you to learn it. He is an active teacher. ANYONE accepting atonement MUST .... HAS TO.... IS REQUIRED TO... CANNOT AVOID.... DOES NOT WANT TO AVOID ..... helping others to find atonement for themselves. It is in fact a metaphysical and logical and mystic condition that your own peace of mind is NOT complete while others remain in darkness. You can't go home without them.

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return."

"only the whole Sonship is a worthy co-creator with God"

"YOUR salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship."

"To teach the WHOLE Sonship WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE ITS WHOLENESS and have learned that it IS One."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of." Jesus does not MEAN that you have only one job to do. He means that there is only one scope of free will that you can be responsible FOR, which is your own free will choice to accept atonement. This in NO WAY means that accepting it absolves you of ALL responsibilities, nor does it mean that you don't HAVE a duty - a responsibility - to help others with their atonement. It is in fact a privilege to do so, not a chore, or some crappy job you don't want.

This is not about spiritual laziness. It's not about you "getting what you want" and then forgetting about everyone else. You can't accept atonement WITHOUT accepting that you are eternally BOUND to everyone else and cannot be entirely at peace knowing that they are still suffering. Regardless of whether that suffering is ultimately real or not. The only thing you CAN be responsible for is your own free willed choice to accept the truth. But you are ALSO responsible for the whole sonship. Once you have accepted atonement and have BECOME TRULY RESPONSIBLE, you are now in a position to BE responsible, and you are now responsible FOR EVERYONE.

"You have a PART to play in the Atonement. But the plan of the Atonement IS beyond you"

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy." "The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself (you are responsible for MAKING THE CHOICE TO ACCEPT IT - this says nothing about what you DO IN THE ATONED STATE). Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition." ( you can't even be a FULL miracle worker until AFTER you accept atonement and THEN are in a position to DO ANYTHING ).

"The unforgiven HAVE no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility MUST be to take forgiveness for yourself."

"If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, ...."

"Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone?"

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

"Miracle Principle 8

Miracles are a form of healing. They supply a lack, and are performed by those who have more for those who have less."

"I told you you were now restored to your former role in the Plan of Atonement. But you must still ***choose freely to devote your heritage to the greater Restoration. As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete.*** Complete restoration of the Sonship is the only true goal of the miracle-minded."

"My part in the Atonement is not complete until YOU join it, and give it away. As you teach, so shall you learn. I will never leave you or forsake you, because to forsake you would be to forsake myself and God who created me. You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper. "

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.

Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and *************MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE************* to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

This means Listen to My Voice, Learn to undo the error, and DO something to correct it.

The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers."

I can't stress enough right now that God has ALREADY created you perfect in every way, there is NOTHING you need to do to make yourself "better" or improved or to become anything.

The path of "awakening" is NOT about adding something, producing something, searching for something, making something, or becoming something.

It is ONLY about becoming aware, AGAIN, that YOU ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING GIVEN YOU. There is nothing missing, nothing wrong with you, nothing broken, and no needs of any kind.

It is not about you trying to make yourself whole again. GOD has guaranteed your wholeness forever. It is ONLY about you being willing to recognize and accept that you are ALREADY WHOLE.

The wholeness, holiness, innocence, love, happiness, purity, joy, peace, it's all already in you, and it HAS NOT LEFT and it HAS NOT CHANGED and it IS NOT LOST.

Is is all still there as God created it RIGHT NOW, regardless of whether you are in denial of it, can't see it, are not aware of it, don't believe in it, don't want it, deny it, or fear it.

To awaken to it is merely to recognize IT IS THERE ALREADY. And enlightenment IS simply recognition of WHAT ALREADY IS! This takes no effort whatsoever other than to be willing to accept reality and truth as God created it. To admit you are Christ already, right now, and are just pretending not to be.

"I have already chosen what You will."

"then will I recognize salvation is already here, already given all my brothers and already mine as well."

"God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine"

"In You is every choice already made. In You has every conflict been resolved. In You is everything I hope to find already given me." "I merely choose to recognize what is already there. Salvation is a decision made already."

"And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already."

"The answer to this problem is already given me, if I will accept it."

"And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other is ALREADY given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen."

"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."

"What I ask have You already given me"

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

"For here the final question is ALREADY answered, and what you ask for, GIVEN."

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now."

"No one needs practice to gain what is already his."

"There is no sickness not already healed. No lack unsatisfied, no need unmet, within this golden treasury of Christ."

"True prayer must avoid the pitfall of asking to entreat. Ask rather to receive what is already given; to accept what is already there."

"ou do not PUT the Spirit in them by inspiring them, because that would be "magic," and therefore would not be real healing. But you DO recognize the Spirit that is ALREADY THERE, and thereby REAWAKEN IT." "He has forgiven you already, for such is His function, given Him by God. Now must you share His function"

"the Soul is already perfect, and therefore does not require correction."

"The Soul is already illuminated"

"Yet, if God gave an Answer, there MUST be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done."

"THIS recognition is wholly WITHOUT effort, because it is ALREADY true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God." "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."

"Revelation induces a state in which fear has ALREADY BEEN abolished."

"Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us."

"So do we clear the way for Him today by simply recognizing that His Will is done already, and that joy and peace belong to us as His eternal gifts."

"I have already been forgiven."

"With God's Word in their minds they come in benediction, not to heal the sick but to remind them of the remedy God has already given them."

"But, through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen ALREADY forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself."

"BECAUSE reality is changeless is a miracle already there to heal all things that change, and offer them to you to see in happy form, devoid of fear."

"He has never failed to answer this request, because it asks only for what He has already willed."

"Prepare you NOW for the undoing of what never was. If you already UNDERSTOOD the difference between truth and illusion, Atonement would HAVE no meaning."

"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real. Know, then, Who abides with you, merely by recognizing WHAT IS ALREADY THERE, and do not be satisfied with imaginary comforters, for the Comforter of God is in you."

"We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so."

"Essentially, a prayer for forgiveness is nothing more than a request that we may be able to recognize something we already have."

"Ask not to BE forgiven, for this has already been accomplished. Ask rather to LEARN how to forgive, and restore WHAT ALWAYS WAS to your unforgiving mind."

"According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, ONLY God's Purpose IS accomplishment, and it is ALREADY accomplished."

"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished"

"Glory be to God in the highest, and to you because He has so willed it. Ask and it shall be given you, because it has already been given. "

"Faith in the eternal is ALWAYS justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as itself."

"He would make a restitution though He is complete; a gift to you although He knows that you have everything already."

"What idol CAN be called upon to give the Son of God what he already HAS?"

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve."

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."

"Who can remain unsatisfied who asks for what he has already?"

"He has revealed it to me because I asked it of Him, and learned of what He had already given."

"There are many answers which you have already received, but have NOT YET HEARD."

"Who would "go" anywhere, if peace of mind is already complete?"

"But your minds are ALREADY continuous, and THEIR union need only be accepted, and the loneliness in Heaven is gone."

"We will but be making perfect TO you, what is ALREADY perfect IN you."

"For here is only healing, ALREADY complete and perfect. For here is God, and where HE is, only the perfect and complete CAN be."

"In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back."

"To remember is merely to restore to your mind WHAT IS ALREADY THERE. You do not make what you remember; you merely accept again what has BEEN made AND REJECTED."

"I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them."

"Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there."

Some people like to claim oneness with God, unity with God, the lack of boundaries with God, BEING God, being equal to God, etc.... but your relationship and function with God are NOT 100% the same in all cases. There are some important differences. And not understanding these differences will lead to various egoic conclusions such as that you are God and your oneness with Him makes you HIM. This is a mistake.

1) God created you, you did not create God. This is a cause-effect relationship. "I am forever an effect of God". This means God causes you and establishes you and shares his being/mind/will with you, but you do not DO THAT TO HIM. You do not turn around and cause God. Believing that you do is the authority problem and is what got you into this mess in the first place - you trying to be God.

2) God is greater than you. It is appropriate to have AWE for God, because He is the source of you. It is not appropriate to awe a brother, who is a true EQUAL. Because God is GREATER, "I and my Father are One" acknowledges not that you ARE God, but that you SHARE with God and RECEIVE from Him various qualities and attributes per His Will. God is ABOVE you and BEFORE you.

3) God is a FATHER, you are HIS SON. You are not His Father. Trying to be His father or to separate "father and son" is to separate cause and effect which leads to hell. You cannot father your father.

4) God is complete in and of Himself. The extending outward of His being is creation. "Nothing real can be increased except by sharing". God's inner "self" is complete, in and of itself. It is only the "going out" of His extending that is "blocked" in his communication channels when you put up resistance to receiving Him. His channels of extension become blocked "through you", and yet His own BEING is not blocked in any way, because He is complete in and of Himself. He does not lack completeness in his own right, and that means you are ADDITIONAL to Him. He, who is real, could only be increased, by SHARING HIMSELF WITH YOU, he created you by KNOWING you, and you are a real creation. He has ADDED YOU to existence. "God did not will to be alone". Nor did he will that YOU be alone, so he gave you brothers.

5) God created souls. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it". What this means is that God gave himself SO fully, so unconditionally, so lovingly, so letting go, so freeing, giving ALL of Himself, the WHOLE of Himself, that He literally has established ADDITIONAL WHOLE BEINGS. He gave His mind, his will, his being, to be shared by and extended by, the beings/souls that He created. His Sonship. This essentially establishes you, a soul, as an AUTONOMOUS BEING who has his own FREE WILL, his own mind, his own soul, his own being. This establishes you as a free-willed CO-CREATOR WITH GOD, who freely, willingly, creates and extends God's being in His likeness. "God does not coerce". You are not some helpless "effect only" that has no will of its own. You can EXTEND, you can CREATE. You are causal as well but you are not the cause of Him.

6) Because God gave you free will, as a co-creator, who WILLINGLY wills with God, this freedom essentially "sets you free from God" in a sense. Almost similar to the idea of being separate from Him, this TOTAL FREEDOM, allows you to be your own being with your own free will. Naturally, in your right mind, you only want to will WITH and LIKE and in accord with God's will, it being an expression of your nature which is like His. But when you are NOT in your right mind, you will against His will. It is because your will is FREE, that it can do this, WITHOUT AFFECTING God's Will, and WITHOUT dragging God INTO your fantasies of insanity. If it weren't for this FREEDOM, that God is "separate from" your dreaming, and does not lose sight of Himself when you block communication with Him. It is FREEDOM that has ensured HE remain FREE OF your "willing unlike God's will". God does not support or condone or believe in your dreams of death. If he was totally equal with you, he would dream them WITH you and you'd both never wake up.

7) God created the Sonship. The Sonship is the total of all the beings God created, all his many thoughts, all of his creations, all his children. He established the Sonship, YOU DID NOT. You do not have the ability or function to establish the sonship. Which is why when you TRY TO, you go into DENIAL, instead of accomplishing it. While God's function is to CREATE the Sonship, it is your function to EXTEND it ie add to it. YOUR creations are co-created extensions. "Children of your will", which are created by willing WITH God in accord with His will as CO CREATORS. Two creators.

8) God created the angels. You did not. "God's angels". He created them for protection.

9) God created the Holy Spirit. You did not. The Holy Spirit is recognized sometimes as being "in your mind" or "as your own right mind" etc... but he is also shared by ALL THE SONS OF GOD and so is transcendent of any one person's mind. He is an eternal creation OF GOD, that God created. You did not create the Holy Spirit and He was ADDED to your mind BY GOD. If you were to be equal with God in every way, YOU would be the Holy Spirit's father.

10) "God, who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS created separate beings, who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy." These separate beings are DISTINCT AUTONOMOUS FREE-WILLED BEINGS WITH THEIR OWN MINDS, who also SHARE or are plugged into the Christ Mind of the "one son", sharing with God. God, who encompasses all being, is not the same as you, who do NOT encompass the being of God. You are INSIDE God's being. And YOUR creations are inside YOUR being. It is like a hierarchy. And you are not at the top of that heirarchy. Believing you are is playing God, which is the authority problem.

So you see, these (and other reasons) explain WHY you are NOT CORRECT when you try to totally equate yourself with God. The idea of "oneness" can be very nebulous and you can attempt to use it to say, well, there's nowhere that God starts and I end, so I must be him. Or, I am part of God so I am God. Or, God is all there is so dreams are part of God too. Or It's all just mind. Or whatever. These all DENY the many dynamics and functional reasons why YOU ARE NOT GOD. You are PART OF HIM, you are not Him. You are not his creator or his cause or his father. There is a MAJOR DIFFERENCE in the POSITION you have in Heaven and the position He has.

So when you think, ok, we're all just one thing, or its all oneness, or my oneness with God means I am totally blurred into Him and we are one thing... NO YOU ARE NOT. Oneness does NOT MEAN what EGOS think it means, ie "one big nebulous blob". IT is not that. Oneness does NOT mean that. It actually means being OF LIKE KIND or the SAME NATURE.

Your oneness with God, your joined nature with God, your sharing with God, and your sharing with your brothers, does NOT establishes you AS GOD, nor does it establish you as your brother's creator. GOD IS HIS CREATOR, and your brother is a BROTHER. In Heaven. Per God's will. As another CHILD He created, independent of you.

And it is because of this independence that REVELATION is a communication from God TO ONE CHILD ONLY, symbolizing the original creative act of God creating you, in which "others" do not seem to participate and it is INTENSELY PERSONAL. And yet God wants you to take the content of the revelation TO YOUR BROTHERS.

God is a whole. God gave ALL of Himself to create you. God gave the WHOLE of himself. He created ANOTHER WHOLE. There are now two wholes, in heaven, in reality. TWO WHOLES. AT LEAST. And there are in fact many many many wholes. Every of the many creations of God are WHOLES. They lack nothing. Totally complete in and of themselves. The soul has been FULLY CREATED, as a WHOLE BEING. A REAL SON.

God put HIS LIGHT into YOU, and it is NOT OF YOU. You did not put the light there. God put HIS WILL into you. You did not put it there. God put HIS POWER into you. You did not put it there. Of yourself you are nothing. You are AS GOD CREATED YOU to be. You have been FULLY CREATED. You are one of many children of God. You are A SON OF GOD. And all the other sons are your permanent brothers.

"We are Creation, WE, THE SONS OF GOD."

"The Kingdom of God includes ALL HIS CHILDREN, AND THEIR CREATIONS."

The "One Son" is nothing but a synonym for "the sonship" which is a system of a very large number of children that God directly created as "God's children". It is God's Family. And you are a PART of that. And the sonship SHARES openly and lovingly in all relationships. And the unity they share, AS MANY, is the Christ Mind, which does not come between them and God. They are DIRECT CREATIONS OF GOD. Children. You are a CHILD OF GOD. Always will be. There's nothing you can do about it.

In ACIM there is a simple idea. You made the world in attempting to oppose God. The world embodies all evil and sin and death. It had the PURPOSE of proving that God's son is dead. Really this was a meaningless world in which there WAS no real purpose, since its purpose was to prove that there is no purpose.

"He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted."

"A journey without a purpose is still meaningless."

You then repurpose this world and temporarily view it from a more forgiving perspective. The PURPOSE now is to prove that the world has not done anything to God's son. And now when this purpose is accomplished, the world in fact HAS NO PURPOSE, and being without a purpose, it ends, because you have no more use for it.

The purpose of forgiveness is not to KEEP the world and love it forever, it is to render it NOTHING so that you no longer believe you need it. In forgiveness it is recognized AS nothing, and as serving no further function. Without a function it is purposeless and meaningless and is discarded. As such it disappears.

"For only then can guilt and sin be seen WITHOUT a purpose, and as meaningless. Thus is the real world's purpose gently brought into awareness, to REPLACE the goal of sin and guilt."

"Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"He brings the ending of the world with Him. It is His Call God's teachers answer, turning to Him in silence to receive His Word. The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"The final lesson which brings the ending of the world cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."

"The world will end in joy because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

"And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. It is not sick or old or hurt. It is but functionless, unneeded and cast off."

"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."

"Time remains only to let the last embrace of prayer rest on the earth an instant, as the world is shined away. This instant is the goal of all true healers, whom the Christ has taught to see His likeness and to teach like Him."

Which means, everything about God exists already, is complete already, is in perfect divine order, free of needs and problems, in divine health at all times, and absolutely always the same.

So when we're having a relationship with God, we might want to look at in which ways we're really treating God based on how God is, versus some idea of a 'changeable God'.

If God were changeable, you might be justified in, for example, asking Him to do something ... ie he hasn't done it already. Or, praying for something to be done which isn't his will. Or, believing that he doesn't have a desire to heal certain person due to sins. etc... various beliefs that arise out of the idea of a conditional, fickle God.

God has already accomplished everything because God already created. His creation is whole and complete already. He has already put into place everything that you really need, your ideal environment, the perfect conditions for your health, etc. He has also already established His laws and set up the 'mechanisms' by which you should live in alignment to His will.

So it's not so much a matter of, let's get God to bend to our conditions and do what we think hasn't been done yet. It's more like, let's accept what God has put in place and get into the role that He has chosen for us and act based on the laws he has already established and live in the way that He has already designed for us.

It's not that God is failing to give us a perfect life. But that's exactly what you're saying when you think that your life is a mess and isn't working out properly and needs correction. It's not because God has failed. God never fails. It's because we have resisted God's way, have resisted God's will, and want to have things be different. And it's also not that God isn't providing or giving or sharing, it's that we're not receiving. We're ignoring God and shutting out His help, it's not that He isn't helpful.

So it's like, we have this natural role, a 'function', which God has set in place, to be the Holy Son of God, and to be free of all illusions and all ego, and to live forever, carrying out His will and extending His kingdom. And if we're not doing that, it's because we have chosen not to, and therefore what can we expect but to meet with problems? The fact is, our ego self wants to have its own separate existence with its own rules and laws and power and do all this without God and expect it to go well. Life doesn't work smoothly without God.

So it's really a matter, what it comes down to, in the undoing of the authority problem (trying to have authority over God rather than accept and extend His authority), whether you are willing to BE what God has intended you to be, or whether you still want to be something else. Whether you want to be governed by laws of sickness and chaos and death, which you made, or whether you want to be under no laws but God's - the laws of eternal life.

When I have guilt in me, I am unaware. Guilt blocks my awareness. I can't even tell that I'm guilty. It's not like, I have full complete awareness and there is also guilt present. If I had full complete awareness there would be no guilt. When guilt is present, my awareness is diminished and I don't know what I'm doing or what I've done.

This is really why our sense of separation from God is riddled with guilt, there is an aspect to it of shock and horror and not realizing what we've done. We then seem to have some awareness of the results of what we've done and it seems like we must've made a terrible mistake, and therefore we are now horrified by ourselves and are afraid.

What's needed to escape this isn't so much to admit to guilt. Guilt can't be admitted to. There can't be a total admittance of truth at the same time as guilt existing. You can admit to being innocent, but you can only deny being guilty. And the only solution to being guilty is to reclaim innocence. Owning up to guilt, if you were to do it, would just hold the guilt against you and make you suffer. This is why we don't want to do it. Deep down we know we just made a mistake and that we didn't mean to.

"Forgive them father, for they know not what they do."

It's hard for me at times to admit to 'what I did' even if what I did was an accident, because that means owning the guilt. If it were possible to admit to something without being guilty, that would be easier. But nobody wants to own guilt. It is counter-productive. We should want to get back to innocence, as a true atonement, rather than say "I'm really guilty". Owning guilt doesn't atone for anything. To the ego it atones because the ego wants to find someone to blame and to keep the guilt, but to the Holy Spirit we are always innocent.

Is regret healthy? Is a guilty conscience helpful? Should we suffer in remorse? How long is enough time to be ashamed? How much suffering is enough to atone for a sin?

The ego wants us to own up to 'really doing stuff' because this makes the error real and doesn't forgive it. Holy Spirit asks us to be forgiving, to overlook error, and to demonstrate that it has had no effects. To demonstrate that we and the other person are innocent because nothing has really happened. The ego doesn't want this, because then it can't find anyone guilty. It takes practice.

Do you have the right to claim innocence and to choose to relieve yourself of all guilt and return to innocence with Holy Spirit? And what if someone else doesn't believe you deserve it yet?

We need to all remember that if we find someone else guilty it doesn't prove that they are guilty, it proves that WE are guilty. We can't find someone else guilty without us being involved, no matter how convinced we are. If the other person is truly the separate guilty party, then we should remain in perfect innocence. And if we remain in perfect innocence, we will see perfect innocence in the other person, so we won't be able to find them guilty. It's not possible to find someone guilty without including ourselves. That kind of puts a damper on the ego's parade. We MUST forgive otherwise we ourselves cannot be forgiven.

Holy Relationships occur when a person recognizes that the other does absolutely nothing to them, nether good nor bad, neither beneficial or harmful, neither special or hurtful.

In specialness, you believe the other DOES things to you, causes you to feel a certain way, pleases you, attracts you, helps you, loves you for you, etc. But along with that they will hurt you, offend you, annoy you, attack you and reject you.

It's always a package deal, because to be at the effect of another you MUST be in the victim mindset even if those effects are something you think you want. You will select someone as special who SEEMS to give you as much of what you want as possible, and as little of what you don't want, but the illusion is that they MUST give you both if you are to be at the effect of them.

If they can do anything to you at all, if you are to "receive" from them "against your will", so that you can be changed by them and affected by them, you are a victim, regardless of whether it seems like a positive desirable effect or a negative hurtful effect.

You do not want to be at the effect of others whatsoever. To do so means you are vulnerable and attackable and dependant and in the ego thought system.

You are meant to be invulnerable, completely causal, never affected by anything, and certainly not at the effect of someone else, no matter how special they seem to be.

If you are to relate to the person in a holy way, you must be whole and complete in yourself, not trying to have them complete you or make up for your lack or do stuff for or to you that you can't do yourself.

It's okay to be with someone and to have support and encouragement and to learn lessons together, etc, which can take a lot of time. That's why you come together, to learn how to love yourself (lol). But the unraveling of that specialness will be the lesson you need to learn, and it may be upsetting at first as the specialness comes into question.

One way or another, special relatioships can turn into holy relationships by the undoing of the "relationship" based in the ego, which is really NOT a relationship. You are not communicating or relating to someone, really, unless you are whole and coming from love. There is a fiction of communication and sharing but its based on mutual hallucinations and private worlds.

Real communication and real relationship and real sharing can only ever be based on love, because only love can be shared. An absence of love is an absence of sharing and is isolation. You can have a special relationship and believe that you are so profoundly affected by another person, yet in actual fact be completely isolated from them and not really genuinely joining with them at all.

To relate from holiness you need to relate to yourself with holiness, and to God with holiness. Then you can relate to the other's holiness and join with their mind. Joined minds are real relationships. Love is the only connection. This is why the Holy Spirit, who is love, is the "highest communication medium", being completely open to share and extend love.

ACIM uses the term "sons" referring to God's many directly-created REAL sons, 82 times. Here are some of the quotes which are so blatant in their statement that God has created MORE THAN ONE SON.

"*PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him. Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."

"*It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

"*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."

"*Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin. And we who are His Sons are like each other, and alike to 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 because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"*All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS."

"*Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons?"

"*We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"*Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION."

"*Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than YOU can establish God's. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know all Creation."

"*You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"*God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other."

"*Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete."

"*The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons."

"*When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy."

"* If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship."

"*If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

"*The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

This can seem extreme, and perhaps guilt inducing. But Jesus is saying that anything short of TOTAL love, is in some way murderous. Even a slight grievance, even a little annoyance, even a vague judgement. Anything short of complete and total love, has a murderous intent.

In heaven, the Golden Rule dictates that what is true of one is true of another. What is true of God is true of the Son. What is true of you is true of your brother. This means that if you believe something is true of them, it is also true of you.

What that leads to is a shared interest. You have to be loving towards everyone otherwise you will be unloving towards yourself. If you think they are evil or sinful, you are forced to believe in evil and sin, and this will apply to you as much as to them. So unless you want to hurt yourself, you have a vested interest in loving everyone all the time.

In the ego separation state, the ego pretends to violate the Golden Rule, which is God's law. It suggests, what is true of you can be DIFFERENT to what is true of another. That something can apply to you which does not apply to them, and vice versa. This leads to the idea that you can CAUSE towards them in a certain way, where you will ESCAPE the effects. Where the effects can apply to them, and not to you.

This sets up the entire ego thought system on a basis of inequality. And now the ego believes it's possible for you to attack without being hurt, to have someone else be wrong while you are right, for them to be sinful while you are innocent. And that means, you can now attack and murder and condemn and blame, without seeming to be included in the effects. In other words, that you can get away with murder. On this basis alone, the ENTIRE ego thought system is murderous.

So if there's any way in which we don't consider others to be completely equal, perfectly innocent like you, or they are in any way different, or you have anything less than a complete love towards them, you ARE being murderous. A slight annoyance with someone is murderous in that you're trying to attack them with accusation of sin, while rendering yourself innocent. You're trying to get rid of them. Even if its slight, even if it doesn't seem "that important". It is still murderous.

"You will become increasingly aware that a slight twinge of annoyance is nothing but a veil drawn over intense fury."

To not be murderous, you have to be more loving and kind. To be more loving and kind you have to be willing to be loving and kind toward yourself, so that you can extend this to others. And for that you need forgiveness. To be willing to be loving and kind to others you have to be unwilling to find them guilty or wrong or be annoyed with them or have anything less than total love for them. That's a big thing to ask, but it's what's required to get out of the ego thought system. When the golden rule is fully honored, you love your neighbor as yourself.

"It is impossible to overestimate your brother's worth."

"18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

Because we don't realize how much power we have lost by following the ego, we might not realize just how much power is available to us.

Returning to God doesn't just mean we remain some kind of disempowered, barely able to do anything being that's nice and calm and unassuming. We've been so used to living in limitation and lack, spiritually starving ourselves, and so used to blocking the extension of God, that we may not anticipate the wealth that is on offer.

This wealth will return to us as we reclaim the Kingdom, and resurrect to our True Identity.

It is the difference between going from death, to being alive. Going from suffering to happiness. Going from loss to abundance. Going from fear to profound natural confidence.

It's as though we've taken God's power and presence and have tried to squeeze it and wring it out and drain all of the life out of it. We've become spiritually dry and barren.

As you awaken, your willingness to do God's will and your openness to RECEIVE, is going to open the floodgates to the extension of LOVE to flow and radiate through you. Love is power.

Quite literally, the absence of love is an absence of life-giving force, an absence of freedom, an absence of manifestational potential, and a breaking of causal power.

We're been preventing ourselves from wielding miracles, limiting and stopping or creative capabilities, and have placed ourselves in a prison with shackles on. Having bound ourselves to the ego and the body, we have shut down our unlimited power, and now thing there is no greater power to reclaim.

Your ability to cause anything has been reduced down to almost nothing by being in the ego. So much separation has come between cause and effect, to suggest they are disconnected. It's like the power cable is unplugged.

Returning to awareness of God's love WILL reconnect you with power. The power of the mind and heart. Causality will be hooked back up with effects to bring about immediate manifestations of God's will.

This power to cause and produce instant effects, where cause and effect are one, is your completely natural birthright. It is God-given and shared with God.

The potential of what can be accomplished in this power, compared to the almost complete powerlessness rendered by the ego, is staggering.

As you approach God, it is like stepping into the sun. The light radiates, warmth returns, everything becomes dynamic and alive, and life resurrects the dead. God is life and the giver of life which, by comparison, shows just how little and weak the ego is.

As you step out to express God's love, fulfill God's will, and extend God's power, miracles will become effortless and unlimited. Your word will become infused with Spirit, such that you can speak to mountains and force them to move, literally.

By reclaiming and owning up to your natural Christ Power, you will go from cowering and fearing, to certainty, authority, and complete power over all illusions. They will be nothing to you, both in truth and in expression.

You will become like Jesus, or Moses, or many other miracle workers, who share God's impressive might and powerful creative will. Going from a lifeless life to one infused with the living God is going to be night and day.

Reviewig references to "universe", it is clear that not only did God create A universe, that universe is in fact the ONE SON which is the SONSHIP IN HEAVEN. It does not comprise space or time or the contents of the material world, which is a lower-order reality. It is all beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, beyond the earth and all galaxies. It is beyond even space and time.

Many on earth refer to the universe as the container of the galaxies. This is not accurate and is just an earth-bound scientific view. The universe per ACIM is heaven itself, beyond space and time, beyond all form, all planets, solar systems and galaxies. Even beyond spacetime itself, which is part of the belief in separation imposed UPON the universe. And the universe is nothing BUT the Son of God - the creation of heaven and it co-creations, sharing eternal life and having nothing whatsoever to do with planet Earth.

Associating "universe" with "heaven" or sonship is actually a much clearer distinction than the horrendous confusion about the term "world." The universe is heaven, in its original and unseparated condition. In the separation, we MADE space and time, in an attempt to be OUTSIDE the universe/heaven/sonship. This resulted in perception. True perception can reflect heaven's universe, but to be fully IN the universe you have to "leave" spacetime and return to your natural state in God. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.""

"My Self is ruler of the universe"

"My Self, Which rules the universe, is but Your Will in perfect union with my own"

"No one but is my brother. I am blessed with oneness with the universe and God, my Father, One Creator of the Whole that is my Self, forever One with me."

"There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. Can you exclude yourself from the Universe, or from God, Who IS the Universe?"

"The laws of the universe do not permit contradiction. What holds for God holds for you."

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."

"every heart throughout the universe forever sings as one"

"For, unless the universe were joined in YOU, it would be APART FROM God, and to be without Him IS to be without meaning."

"The light that joins you shines throughout the universe. "

"See in him God's creation. For in him his Father waits for your acknowledgment that He created YOU as part of Him. Without you, there would be a lack in God, a Heaven incomplete, a Son without a Father. There could be no universe, and no reality."

"for there is nothing in the universe unlike itself" "Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him."

"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"

"Given to HIM, the universe is yours."

"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."

"Your relationships are with the universe. And this universe, being of God, is far beyond the petty sum of all the separate bodies YOU perceive."

"Today's idea places you in charge of the universe, where you belong because of who you are."

"At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us." "The universe consists of nothing but the Son of God who calls upon his Father."

"Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-creator of the universe, and all you think you made will disappear."

"The universe within you stands with you together. And Heaven looks with love on what is joined in it, along with its Creator."

"Give him but what he has, remembering God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love, that both might share the universe with Him Who chose that love could never be divided and kept separate from what it IS and must forever be."

"You have the right to all the universe; to perfect peace, complete deliverance from ALL effects of sin, and to the life eternal, joyous, and complete in EVERY way, as God appointed for His holy Son."

You might think that you have some kind of 'right' to have whatever belief you want to have. But ultimately the only option you have is to either accept 'what is' or be opposed to it.

Most beliefs oppose the truth in one way or another. Some much moreso. The ego is in complete opposition to the truth, at its deepest levels.

So it's not really a matter of who is right or wrong, but moreso just a matter of how 'opposing' a person is being. How much they are trying to reject truth and reality.

If you can't accept reality, or what is, or real truth, or love, or God, then you are in opposition, no matter what form it takes.

The ONLY way that you can be happy and at peace, then, is to learn to ACCEPT THE TRUTH of what is, rather than oppose it.

You cannot be opposed to the truth and be at peace. You cannot be opposed to the truth and feel happy and fulfilled. You cannot be opposed to the truth and feel loved. Because the truth IS love.

A powerful lesson: ACIM 152 - nobody dies without their own consent... this blows absolutely all victimhood out of the water...

"152: **The power of decision is my own.**

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.

You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions? If you have the gift of everything, can loss be real? Can pain be part of peace, or grief of joy? Can fear and sickness enter in a mind where love and perfect holiness abide? Truth must be all-inclusive, if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposites and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely.

Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true, and nothing else is true."

ACIM: "Miracle Principle 7

Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

DICITIONARY: "the process of making something spiritually or ceremonially clean."

What is purification? It is the process of removing "impurities", so that you end up with something that is "pure" and has no impurities in it.

What is it we are purifying? Our minds. We are removing "impure thoughts", beliefs, values and attitudes, so that we can be pure. Or rather, aware of our purity in God.

What are examples of impurities? All of the ego stuff, including evil thoughts, attack thoughts, grievances, unforgiveness, blame, anger, murderousness, all forms of sickness and death, separation ideas, body identification, guilt, fear, a sense of sinfulness, unworthiness, etc.

Heaven is a state of perfect purity. Another word for purity is innocence. It's a state completely devoid of any kind of sin or evil. It's so pure, that there isn't even a tiny trace of desire to attack or hurt, there isn't the slightest hint of anger or resentment, and absolutely no sense of fear resulting from seeing others as attackers.

Heaven is SO pure, it is very likely far more pure than you can imagine. And in order to enter awareness of heaven, you have to purify yourself of all states and attitudes that are impure. This actually entails being willing to give up a whole bucketload of ego things, which you may not be currently totally happy about giving up.

You have to give up ALL anger. You have to give up ALL attacking. You have to give up ALL guilt. You have to give up ALL sin. You have to give up ALL temptation to see yourself as victimized. You have to give up ALL desire to hurt other people. You have to give up ALL guilt, shame, and sense of not being good enough. You have to give up ALL motives relating to trying to get stuff. You have to give up all specialness, all selfishness, and all trace of conditional love. You have to give up unhappiness, sickness, suffering and death. And you have to give up the entire ego thought system.

The end result of this relinquishment, is a state of PERFECT PURITY. It is a purity SO pure that it is utterly immaculate, undefiled, and completely holy. The degree of holiness is off the charts in the extreme. You cannot enter such a state with any trace of malice in your heart or any amount of unforgiveness. You have to have forgiven absolutely everyone and everything, and hold nothing against anyone, and see yourself as utterly absolutely sinless.

Only through the complete removal of the belief in sin can you achieve this, because it is the atonement. It is the recognition that there is no sin anywhere, not in you, and not in anyone or anything. It is a state of TOTAL SINLESSNESS. That doesn't mean like, sin is real and evil is real and you have to stop being that through repentance, but more like, the recognition that these things are NOT real and you CANNOT BE them. That sin does not exist for you. There is only total harmlessness, gentleness, softness and love.

The most holy and pure, the most innocent and harmless, the most gentle and clean, the most unwilling to hurt, the most beautiful and new, are those who have purified themselves of the ego, of temptation and of death. It is the purity of the angels. It is absolute allegiance to God. It is a complete and total surrender of all control and egotism and all false ideas of self. It is the complete letting go of all false goals and made-up laws and artificial identities, and any attempt to be other than God created you.

So ACIM is saying that in order to become miraculous, to access the miracle-minded state in which you can PERFORM MIRACLES, which is a very loving state of sinlessness and holiness, you have to FIRST purify yourself. Your mind has to be decluttered and washed out with the spirit and ALL ego in you has to be utterly removed. You have to be cleansed and spiritually renewed. Jesus refers to this in ACIM also as a "rebirth", like becoming new again, as if nothing had ever happened to turn you into an evil monster.

You purify through whatever process works for you. But let's also realize that forgiveness is really the state OF purity, of atonement and of true perception. We are trying to reach that state. Because "only christ forgives" and that means we need total acceptance and alignment and awareness of Christ, TOTAL, MAXIMAL LOVE, in order to be in a state of forgiveness. Anything we do towards that goal is our "practice" or "application" of course principles in which we are trying to move ourselves CLOSER to that state.

This is why ultimately our entire work with the course up to its end goal of resurrection, is really a process of PURIFICATION, which RESULTS IN a state of total forgiveness. In which you have completely forgiven yourself, ie, have recognized that there is absolutely zero ego or sin or death in you. Where your mind is completely open and clear and in the service of spirit. Where Christ can now move through you, and Jesus can perform miracles through your hands.

To purify, you do whatever works, provided it entails the successful progress of moving closer toward total purity. Closer towards God, who is utterly pure, sinless and innocent. You can't be having attitudes of ego, attack, anger, blame, guilt, shaming, destruction etc, if you are to be pure. You can't be a keyboard warrior on facebook. This is the part the ego in you does not like or want, because it means giving up the things the ego CHERISHES and wants. Its way of relating to others through murderous attitudes. It does not WANT purity or holiness, it wants to be evil and wrong and bad, vulnerable and unhappy and destructive.

You can use catharsis, letting go, surrendering, development of trust, opening your mind, trusting God, various modalities of healing, practicing performing miracles, tuning into the love and light in you, prayer, asking for help, receiving love and healing, inviting the Holy Spirit to operate on you (mind/body/emotions), affirmations, cancelling error, reprogramming yourself, convincing yourself, reminding yourself, doing workbook lessons.

You can purify by forgiving people, polishing up your relationships to make them holy and equal and sharing, learning to be more unconditionally loving, working with the angels, giving the day to the Holy Spirit, seeking out blocks to love and removing them, digging out old hurts and unforgivenesses, getting rid of secret sins and hidden hates in the light, handing stuff over to the Holy Spirit, receiving guidance, doing Christ's work etc.

Whatever works. However you purify, however it is you can get yourself into a state of PURITY, of innocence and holiness. A state where you no longer WANT to hurt yourself, or others. A state where you see your TOTAL SINLESSNESS, and therefore project sinlessness onto others and the world, seeing them as sinless, and therefore having no grounds for fear or blame. Purity gives you harmlessness, just as it also puts your mind into a supernatural state of being invulnerable and IMMORTAL.

The innocent are strong and powerful. They are protected by God. They cannot BE hurt and DO not hurt themselves. "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" etc. They feel safe and secure and protected and guided. They cannot be attacked and are above the battleground. Nothing can intrude upon them because of the strength of spirit. And they can bestow healing and miracles and life upon those who are not yet purified - those who believe they are the living dead.

Once purification is reached, in part or in whole, you will have access to miraculous power. You will have the innocence with which to love, and the light with which to see. You will have the purity of heart and the total angelic harmlessness and gentleness with which to heal others. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing." You will become a miracle worker, able to raise the dead and resurrect the impure.

You will be able to actually purify others for them. "It is the privilege of the forgiven (pure) to forgive (purify)." And now you are doing God's work, until you go home to heaven, to the state of total and utter purity and innocence forever.

When you dream at night, your mind is perfectly capable of creating entire environments in great detail. These dreams are not real, and so are projections of ego thoughts from the mind, but at the time they seem like real places. Your mind is able to create oceans, streets, buildings, people, all manner of creatures and locations.

It's even able to embed an extraordinary variety of subtle feelings into the scene or ways of experiencing what's happening, such that it seems to mean something very specific to you, or so that you get a certain impression from it.

Your mind can create people and experiences which are a perfectly symbolic representation of any idea or feeling or experience it cares to make. It has at its disposal an absolutely unlimited number of variations in both appearance and meaning and emotional content. If you can imagine it, your mind can invent it.

As your mind projects such environments, it can also sometimes project you as a character in the environment in a third-person manner, or sometimes you can also experience it from a first-person perspective. You can manifest any kind of body. The body can also be changed into any form and express any kind of disease or situation regardless of any rules or laws whatsoever.

In your dreaming, objects can be transformed into other objects. You can pass through objects, you can fly, you can control things with your mind, you can communicate telepathically, you can have encounters with any kind of being imaginable, and you can teleport instantly to any location. There is practically nothing that's impossible.

All of this happens inside your mind. All of this is your mind "dreaming", which correlates to Jesus's definition of "projecting". The mind is literally projecting a three-dimensional movie scene down to the finest detail, complete with storyline and all manner of events and interactions. As such, this projection "creates perception".

So as you're in the dreaming state, your mind is literally projecting everything you then "see". So if it projects a beach and an ocean on a sunny day, this projecting manifests those things in full and then you witness them or "perceive" them. The projecting comes first. The perceiving comes second.

Now, in the physical world, you're tempted not to believe this same mechanism applies. You believe certainly that you perceive, and that you perceive what seems to be a world out there complete with people and places and events, but you don't for a moment think it possible that your own mind is projecting it. But it is.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of projection and many have come to interpret this to mean that you project ONTO something which is already out there. This is the result of not believing or recognizing that your mind actually makes the world appear in its entirety, or that this world is in fact just another dream. Yet Jesus tells us:

"...What you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."

However, because we do not recognize or believe that this "physical world" is just another dream environment, that our mind is perfectly powerful enough to create in the finest detail, we think that it must be really "out there" objectively, or that it came to be there from some other powerful cause.

The result of this unawareness as to how it truly comes into being, is the belief that when ACIM talks about projection it's talking about what your mind projects ONTO this pre-existing world. People will then work with their "forgiveness process" to take these projections back and undo them.

There is some validity to that step because even inside of the dream itself, there is a whole other layer of "personal projection" whereby individuals add an extra layer of projection and denial to everything they see in the world. They project extra guilt and sin onto others and onto the environment. So to take back those projections is a very helpful step in owning up to who and what you are.

However, that's not the only form of projection taking place here in this dream. The dream ITSELF is a projection. You could say, your personal projections are coming from your own private mind, as one Son in the Sonship. But the collective Sonship or Christ mind is also projecting this entire world. That's who the dreamer really is.

You can take back all your personal projections and come to a place of clarity or awakening, becoming aware of this world with a clear perception of it. This means your perceiving has been clarified. This is an awakening to true perception. But this does not mean that you have undone PROJECTION. Projection comes before perception because projection makes it possible to perceive.

Once perception is purified and is clear, which will produce an experience of being awake WITHIN the dream, able to perceive the dream clearly, there is then another stage where the projecting OF the dream needs to now be undone. Removing projections onto the dream is the reversal of perception, which is where most ACIM students focus, but we have to realize that the projection that made the "stuff" we are perceiving clearly is also an activity of the mind which needs to be undone.

Undoing the projecting of the world itself - yes the physical world - is the second layer of awakening. It means realizing that you are still dreaming this world, you are still manifesting objects and people and environments, and you are still inside of a dream. You are still subject to every law that the dreaming puts in place, because those laws are established in the projecting of the world. You may be fully awakened to be able to see the dream clearly, but now the dreaming itself needs to stop.

When you are projecting personal stuff onto the world, it's like having a dream within a dream. You are already inside a dream (which you think is a real world) and now proceed to dream within it. Just like a daydream. Your projections at the personal level therefore place your unconscious crap outside of your conscious separate self. But it still exists within the world. Taking all of that back and fully undoing it won't undo the world itself, because the world itself is being projected on a much greater scale by a much bigger mind - the collective Christ Mind.

For you to see a car or a house or a person or a tree means that these forms have been projected by the Christ mind. The Christ mind is unlimited in its power to dream of forms. It has invented an entire universe, just like your little personal mind invents fictional places and characters at night - stories which are entirely believable and which you experience as though completely real.

Therefore, if you are still perceiving at all, if you are still having perception of the presence of objects, forms, people, buildings etc, then this must mean there is STILL projection happening from a larger level of mind. The reversal/healing of that collective projection is the undoing of this entire so-called "world".

This is the level at which the Course addresses when it says "There is no world, this is the central theme the Course would attempt to teach." It literally means that this physical world and everything in it is a dream, a projection, which DOES NOT REALLY EXIST AT ALL, just like how our nighttime dreams do not really exist at all.

Literally, all physical forms are ILLUSIONS, i.e. dreams. They are not there at all. There is no truth to them, no reality to them, they are absolutely completely fictional in every way. The mind is making them up. And when this is fully recognized by the whole Sonship, this entire physical universe will be recognized as having never existed - i.e. it does not exist now, and it never will exist, and there simply is no world here.

This is also why the Course tells us that "at no time does the body really exist." Many students love to keep the body and make it special and explain how the body does exist or how it can be seen in the present moment or used for a holy purpose or whatever. Ultimately, factually, in Jesus's words, it DOES NOT EXIST. It is an illusion at most. It cannot exist in Eternity and it does not really exist at all.

Now, you can see perhaps that in the ACIM community there is a tremendous amount of confusion because of these two kind of "levels" in the making of illusions. The level of the personal individual conscious self and its seeming scope of influence or illusions, and the level of the collective shared mind of Christ which IS responsible for dreaming this entire universe.

For the most part, most students are fixated on and can only really relate to the experience of being a separate self in a separate body, the projections that their personal self makes onto the allegedly pre-existing world, and so their undoing process usually entails taking back projections that are placed onto other people, or changing your mind "about the world" instead of attempting to change the world itself.

This has produced a huge division in the Course community between those who believe the Course is telling us to find a personal sense of peace "in" the world, in spite of the world, in spite of sickness, in spite of death, and those who believe that this ultimately falls short of the whole truth and that the entire world itself is not there. The result is an attempt to be at peace with sickness, to keep the body and deny it through some kind of transcendence, and still results in death. This distortion of the Course then produces two camps.

The first camp basically sees themselves as a little individual body self, who has their own personal stories and projections. They do not consider the world to literally not exist, and cannot conceive of how they might have power over it. What they end up doing is focusing on undoing their personal stories and projections "onto" the world, or "onto" others, as though this is all that the Course is asking them to do.

They will refuse to believe anything beyond the scope of this, and will justify it with various quotes from the Course. Now, the thing is, they are not wrong. The Course DOES teach that at the LEVEL of the personal level, you need to take back projections from others, find peace in spite of what's happening, come to see God "in" the world because God is in your mind, work on changing how you look at the world rather than trying to change the world, never attempting to take the spirituality of the Course to others because it seems like a private process, and just generally everything which fits nice and tidily into this "box" of how the individual separate self perceives an objective world.

There are plenty of parts of the Course which tell us seemingly straight-out that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that this is the truth and will use this interpretation to justify not doing anything outside of this definition. The thing is, A Course in Miracles actually has multiple "levels" of truth, and this is not a contradiction. There are truths which apply on a certain level.

In terms of the personal self, we do indeed need to stop projecting shit onto other people and change how we "perceive" the world, to reach true perception or to have corrected perception. However, this isn't the end of the story. The people who see the Course as saying this, which is easy to do given that this actually is part of the process of complete awakening, will try to fit EVERYTHING the Course says into this box. And this also includes miracles.

To these believers in personal awakening inside the dream, they tend to justify that other things the Course says must fit inside the box of correcting perception, in order for there to seem to be consistency and integrity. And you can sort of find slightly skewed interpretations of what these other parts of the Course say to make them seem to "fit" into that box. And this is what has happened with miracles.

Such people will then explain that a miracle has got something to do with perception shifting, correcting perception, the process of waking up to true perception or is just another way of saying "changing your mind" about the world. This is understandable given that they see the Course as one whole consistent unit and don't realize that it's being presented on multiple levels, or that there are multiple levels of sleeping.

The Son of God, Christ, is the source of the dream of death - the dream of this entire physical universe. And within Christ, within that dream, there is a fragmentation of identity into the Sonship, which comprises many individuals, and each individual has their own separate seeming "private world" of misperceptions. But what they are mis-perceiving is the dream which a HIGHER LEVEL has dreamed, thinking it is a given and is real and is outside the scope of their conscious awareness. Indeed it is outside the scope of their identity, because it's coming from a level of much greater unified identity as Christ - the ONE Mind.

Therefore to try to explain what miracles are or what Christ is, these individuals will try to fit all of the Course's references to miracles and Christ into the same box of "what applies to individual Sons". And that's a mistake. This gives rise then to a complete stripping down of what Christ is, a stripping away of the POWER that must be present to dream an entire universe and make it seem physically real, and a complete diminishing of any concept of "real miracles" which have the power to do anything - including healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, or whatever.

Trying to fit all of that inside a "I am a separate Son, one of many" kind of box, to have it make sense TO that one limited identity or scope of awareness, completely glosses over what miracles are or and what Christ's power is. People will then have an awakening up to the level of the maximum scope of their INDIVIDUAL consciousness, i.e. an awareness of being one of many Sons of God, and will refer to that as being Christ or aware of the Christ in others. IT IS NOT. Not in ACIM's definition.

Christ is a mind so vast and powerful that it can dream entire planets, can create a whole universe - or multiple universes. It can put in place an absolutely countless number of particles of matter to form buildings and people and environments which people believe is SO real that it must really be a real world. Seeing the holiness of an individual Son in other individual Sons is not the same as seeing the face of Christ. It is definitely a state of mind of profound unity and oneness, but there is an entire other level to awareness which is vastly beyond this.

To reach this other level of awareness requires a complete transcendence not only of the personal ego self or personality but also moving beyond being a separate Son. It means being THE WHOLE SONSHIP as One. In this, there can no longer be a personality, or a separate mind, or separate thoughts, or reliance on a body. It is a very advanced state.

Such an experience is way beyond the personal body self or what the body self is capable of doing. The Christ Self is vastly powerful, unlimited in the truest sense, and can literally do anything because He is able to dream this entire world. To Him, this world is recognized as not being real at all, being something He Himself is dreaming in its entirety. It does not exist without His dreaming and has no inherent reality of its own. If it were not for Christ dreaming the world, this entire physical universe would disappear instantly.

At this level, which is what forms the second "camp" in the ACIM community, it is recognized that there is an entire level of truth in the Course way bigger and more expanded than the parts which apply to the individual self. At this level, we're talking about a mind and an identity which is truly One, singular, as God's One Son. This mind, this Self, is beyond all Higher Selves and includes them all.

Such a Christ mind is responsible for dreaming this entire physical universe and for therefore putting in place absolutely all of the things, objects, people and events which appear to exist here. Such a mind is so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do. Such a mind is transcendent of all bodies and forms, transcendent of all of the laws of the physical universe, and can completely override absolutely anything in an instant. This mind is extremely creative, is totally at-cause, and is not at the effect of ANYTHING in this world whatsoever.

Such a mind is completely invulnerable, literally immortal, unlimited in its power, able to manifest objects - in fact planets and solar systems - out of nothing, and for such a mind miracles of healing and manifestation at a "human level" is practically nothing. THIS is the level of mind which Jesus demonstrated, and it is this level of mind which is responsible for SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES.

You could therefore say, that the level of the personal self-awakening is a level of "natural miracles", and the level of awakening as CHRIST is a level of "super-natural miracles". It is very common that those in the first camp tend not to believe in super-natural miracles because they do not see the parts of the Course relating to or teaching about the Christ-level of mind. Instead they see the watered down, nice tidy little keep-it-in-a-box relating to the individual self interpretation of what miracles are. In other words, miracles are just little changes in perception experienced by an individual. It's not true.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles LITERALLY are super-natural miracles, as evidenced by practically every single thing that the Course ever says about their nature. When correctly understood OUTSIDE of the box of the closed-minded and still "a part of the dream" personal self, everything Jesus teaches about miracles points to their supernatural power, the Power of God, the ability to LITERALLY move mountains, to heal the sick, to undo all forms of disease and suffering, to undo death itself and produce resurrection.

There can be no complete resurrection without this supernatural level of awakening, because death is only fully overcome at the level of the Christ mind, not at the level of the awakened individual Higher Self. There are an increasing number of people waking up IN the dream and staying in the dream who do not exhibit any signs of supernatural miracles whatsoever, because their mind is only just now at the beginning of opening up to the Christ mind.

You will find that all of these people still go through DEATH, because they have not escaped the dream of death and have not fully awoken FROM the dream of death. The absence of miracles, the nature of which Jesus demonstrated, which He has told us in many ways we are perfectly capable of, is the first sign you will see that shows that awakening to the Higher Self or highest individual self is still short of a complete awakening.

The Course will make so much more sense when understood to contain more than one level. This doesn't mean we're dividing up the Course into imaginary levels as such. There ARE different levels because there are stages in separation. Christ, the One Son, is a very different level in terms of scope and power and capability and awareness and identity, compared to the level of one individual "son" in the Sonship. Awakening to the Sonship is profound and an extraordinary experience of waking up from the even littler self - the ego false self. But going from the ego little self to being one of many Sons is not the same thing as being ALL Sons with a single mind, wielding the Power of God to produce real miracles.

A Course in Miracles therefore IS literally teaching us that miracles - supernatural miracles - are not only possible but something that we can become capable of IF we are willing to go all the way to awakening in the dream and then awakening FROM the dream. We might be aware of who the dreamer is, but until we decide to BE that dreamer and realize the sheer power that we have as that dreamer, we will still be subject to all the laws that the dream puts in place, seemingly powerless to stop them or change them. And as such we will not see miracles.

It should be clear then, that the only reason we seem unable to change objects, heal the sick, manifest matter out of thin air, feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves of bread, to walk on water or raise the dead etc, is only because there is a LARGER MIND which is dreaming this world who has FAR more power than our little personal mind, and it is that larger mind which has implemented the physical world and its laws.

It is that larger mind that is sustaining the physical world and its laws. So if you want to be able to override that dream, you need to become aware of and access that larger mind, from which you will be able to demonstrate truly supernatural miracles. This is why in the dream, we seem so powerless, so unable to change hardly anything, to barely even have a shred of telekinesis, to be incapable of stopping aging or death, and to hardly have any power whatsoever over sickness or suffering. It's because the larger mind is very powerfully "holding" all of those things in place.

If we want to be able to gain access to the power to undo death and sickness and so on, we need to wake up ALL the way to the Christ mind, to the DREAMER, to become total causality. In that mind, in that awareness, and with that Identity of Authority over all illusions, we WILL then have the ability to do absolutely literally anything in this world.

Recognize then that Jesus does speak at different "levels" in the Course and not just all at one level. When He speaks of very high-level Christ-level things, these things cannot be properly applied or understood at the level of individual self. Trying to do so will lead to all manner of misunderstandings and disempowerment of your full potential.

Being able to recognize which level Jesus is speaking at - which level of awareness and identity - helps you to know what applies to the scope or context that you're referring to, and also helps you to make much more sense out of what Jesus is teaching. Without that, trying to smash everything into one little box will severely fall short of what A Course in Miracles is teaching, not to mention producing a lot of confusion and conflict.

The Christ mind is projecting the physical universe. It is a dream. It is not real and it does not exist. The single-son mind is within this dream, as an individual character, and that individual has its own dreaming that it projects onto the dream. Dreams within dreams. When that son wakes up and stops projecting onto the dream, He has "awoken" to an awareness of being One among many sons, and at this level it is possible for other Sons to still be sleeping. But THERE IS MORE beyond this.

The single Son in the sonship must now go further to become aware of the collective Single Identity as God's Holy Son - as Christ - an identity which has so much scope and power that it is capable of unlimited miracles. It is at this level that Jesus refers to when He says just about everything He says about miracles. For example, "miracles should be happening all the time". I could go into this much more deeply but that's for another article.

Realize then there are at least 2 stages in awakening, two levels, and that Jesus speaks to each level in the Course at different times. There are actually at least 3 levels because level 1 is the ego false self identity, level 2 is the Higher Self (one son of God in the Sonship) and level 3 is the Christ Self (the whole Sonship/Christ consciousness). There is actually a little more:

Level 5: Heaven/Spirit

Level 4: Christ/christ universe (creates all of the levels below this)

Level 3: Higher Self/higher universe (where most awakened people actually are)

Level 2: Holy Spirit/spiritual universe/astral plane

Level 1: Ego-self/physical world

The first awakening level typically takes people to level 2 then 3. This is a level where miracles aren't happening very much, but the potential is there. Level 4/Christ is where the demonstrations of Jesus correlate - extraordinarily mild-blowing miracles. And then there is Heaven - the home of Spirit. When Jesus speaks of Spirit He always talks of how it is already in a state of grace forever and nothing has happened to it whatsoever. That's the level of pure reality. Home in Heaven.

It should be apparent then that it is very common for ACIM students to try to relate everything the Course says to the level of "my separate self", within the context of being a body separate from others, and within the scope of "my mind" as in their own little separate conscious self, whose perceptions and projections onto a completely separate world make up the entire focus of their grasp of awakening.

They will then believe that once they experience "waking up", they're done. But they're not done. Where are the miracles? Where is the demonstration that you are dreaming the world and have total power over all illusions and forms? Where is the proof that there is no death? Where is the real resurrection and signs that show that you are immortal?

And yet this undoing of distortions of perception at the individual level only brings us to an awakening that reveals the full scope of our SEPARATE self within the Sonship, it doesn't bring us to awareness of being Christ. There is a whole other level of awakening which is vast and extraordinarily powerful, a single shared identity for whom supernatural miracles are effortless and continual.

I will finish with this final quote which I enjoy, and which is speaking of the level of Christ:

"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."

Wake up! Then wake up some more!

While enjoying the innocence and sinlessness of becoming aware that I did not "really" sin, a person began to verbally attack me.

It had absolutely no effect.

I found it interesting to see the complete distinction between who I was and what they were doing to themselves, as though it was completely clear that it couldn't have been about me - because I was not sinful.

The attack did not register, not even slightly, and I did not need to defend myself in order to be invulnerable. It was simply clear that this was not about me at all.

Who would put up defenses if they knew that they couldn't possibly be sinful or guilty, and that no claims against them could ever really be about them?

There was no ego that needed defending - my self was not identified with sin and guilt.

This is why all that we need to do is learn to see the truth and to clearly discern the difference between true and false. When you can clearly see the truth, it is simply obvious that the ego is false, and that it has nothing to do with who you really are. Therefore you are already completely invulnerable without even having to do anything.

This is why nothing real can be threatened.

There was a definite time when it first occurred to me that I am not a body. I was sitting at a bus-stop waiting for the bus ride to or from college. I was probably 19 or so. I was there alone and was looking across a field at some traffic passing by, pondering perhaps symbolically from a detached perspective what all these people were doing in their lives. That's when it suddenly hit me, like, oh my God, I'm not a body!

It wasn't a complete awakening as such, I didn't suddenly relinquish every single way in which I think of others and myself as bodies, but just the idea of it was given birth, perhaps marking the beginning of a spiritual adventure in self exploration. It was like a first step through a doorway into a whole new way of relating to myself.

Jesus knew fully that he was not a body. He was capable of manifesting and dematerializing his body, and in fact was capable of re-manifesting different bodies depending on who he was with. That's what becomes possible when you are completely free of all confusion about what you are - that you or others are not a body at all. That's what it means to have mastery over it and freedom from it. It no longer limits you or defines your identity.

Recognizing your own immorality is important and key. But recognizing the immortality of your brothers is also vital.

If your brother is an immortal being, nothing can happen to him. He can't be attacked, he can't be destroyed, he can't have anything wrong with him.

Just like you, your brother's immortal soul is incorruptible, it cannot change or be changed, it is eternal and will live forever. It is not at the effect of anything, not even your brother can change his own self, nor even God. His nature is fixed forever.

What this then tells you is that, by being aware of this, there is no grounds for projecting guilt onto him, attacking him, believing there is something wrong with him, seeing him as a sinner, or trying to destroy him.

All the ego's murderousness arises from the belief in death, the belief that you are something that can die, and that your brother is something that can die. Why would you even attempt to attack him if you saw his perfect invincibility?

What basis would there be for insinuating that he is guilty of anything at all, if his innocence is eternal? If he is so free from attack and there is no attack in or upon him, because he is absolutely invulnerable and pure, then it would be impossible to find him guilty of anything.

Just as the forgiveness of yourself hinges upon the recognition of your own immortality, in which you cannot possibly have the slightest trace of death or malfunction or sin or attack in you, so too your brother exhibits the same safety and protection.

You cannot change your brother's reality. You cannot attack your brother's reality. You cannot hurt your brother, destroy your brother, make your brother unhappy, cause your brother to have a shorter existence, or change your brother in ANY way.

And since you cannot do that, you have not done that. And therefore the recognition of this is YOUR salvation, because you must be innocent if you have been utterly incapable of changing him. His perfect truth, his purity, his innocence and his immortality teach you that you also must be this way, just as yours reminds him of his own.

If you think your brother is in some way sick, or damaged, or guilty, or wrong, or defective, or malfunctioning, or temporary, or limited, or exclusive, or in any way something less than immortal, you are NOT SEEING HIM.

If you could see him and feast your eyes upon him you would see only a perfectly pure innocent being with not the slightest hint of mortality or curruption in him. And then it would be impossible to judge him as anything but perfect. It is because you choose to look upon illusions about him and NOT see him, that you judge him as sinful - or rather, judge your interpretation of him as sinful, because you do not recognize him.

The forgiveness of your brother is rooted deeply in simply recognizing his real nature. In seeing his truth, forgiveness is complete. Only in failing to recognize his nature do you enter into beliefs in death, in which a basis for judgement and a justification for attack arises. Without death to tarnish his immortality or yours, there is no attack and only love - no death and only life. "Your Brother's Sinlessness" UrT22C

"My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light." UrW335L1

"Before your brother's holiness the world is still, and peace descends on it in gentleness and blessing so complete, that not one trace of conflict still remains to haunt you in the darkness of the night." UrT24G1

"Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father." UrT24G2

"When you accept a brother's guiltlessness, you will SEE Atonement in him." UrT13I1

"Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness." UrW181L2

"If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin." UrT28E7

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE." UrT28H6

"Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him." UrT20I3

"Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his." UrT10H14

The aspects of the Earth that you don't like, the things you are not fond of, the stuff you say is bad and wrong, the people you think of as guilty and sinful, are these really a part of the world?

Actually this is a combination of two things. The earth with its contents, plus your attack thoughts and judgements. "You're wrong" is an attack. "They're guilty" is an attack. "That's cruel" is a judgement.

It requires even an upheaval of all your values because now we're saying that even the things most people would think of as [insert your label for evil here], is in fact not that. Not unless you make it be that with your labeling.

So now we're saying that you can take the basic "raw material" of the world and give it a totally different meaning. What if you were an alien who just came down to earth and had never seen it before, know nothing of the culture, had never met a human, and had no clue what anything meant?

Things which are considered wrong, bad, evil, heresy, in some cultures, is actively embraced in others. Generally speaking in the UK, people who exercise are often labelled as vain and self absorbed. In the USA exercise is embraced much more openly as acceptable and a part of being youthful. But this is all made up.

When I moved from the UK to the USA I had to go through a huge transformation and reconfiguration of what I thought was good or bad or right or wrong or valuable or valueless. There was a whole different focus on what was 'normal' and acceptable.

It's the same with the whole world in general. We've made up our social rules and our cultures and our belief systems and our evaluations of what everything is. We've made up all our values and our protests at things we don't think are right.

Love has to find a way to look upon even hell and torture and murder and war and sacrifice and abuse and sickness and death without for a moment accusing it of sin or guilt or making it wrong. That's not a popular thing to do amongst the insane, and it appears to BE insane to suggest you could think of horrors as not horrors.

The course is indeed asking us to recognize that pain is pain and suffering is suffering and so on, but at the same time to forgive them and love them away. To translate them into something higher.

I think we don't want to even consider this because the notion of all the bad stuff not being bad, seems insane. And all the stuff people consider normal or natural, is in fact unnatural. And all the standards are bullshit. And all the social rules are invented. And there's not even really a valid moral system. It all has to be thrown out.

Only the Holy Spirit's true judgement of the world can see it correctly and judge it accordingly.

"To learn this course requires willingness to question EVERY value that you hold. Not one can be kept hidden and obscure, but it will jeopardize your learning."

"It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind. One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. Can you understand this? No; it is meaningless to anyone here. Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about." "To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely."

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

There is a reason why you are immortal, by which I mean, completely invulnerable.

You have to understand what threat is, what danger is, what causes fear, and who is doing the attacking.

Believing that other people are capable of causing you to be hurt, is actually a mistaken perception and is not true.

It is actually you who attacks yourself, every time. Only you are capable of introducing 'separation' into your own mind, which is the root cause of all attack, all war, all sickness, all death.

Without that separation in your mind, that 'split', you literally return to wholeness, divine health, invulnerability and complete immortality.

And this is because the 'secret' is, that all forms of attack are self-attack, and all forms of suffering are self-induced. And it is actually impossible to suffer as a result of a cause outside of you, without you playing along and *pretending* that there can be harm.

The ultimate truth then is simply.... that in God's reality, where we live, there is ONLY immortality, there is ONLY invulnerability, and it's not even POSSIBLE to actually be hurt by something separate.

So while people may think, yeah, immortality is a stupid idea that is impossible and everyone dies.... well.... carry on choosing to die until you get it. Immortality is NATURAL. Mortality is unnatural.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT.

God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light."

In heaven, in God's mind, all of God is in all parts of God. Not just that his left hand is on one side and his right hand is on another, so to speak, but all parts of him are simultaneously in all places.... if we can speak of it in terms of space. This is God's omnipresence. Not just that He is everywhere, but ALL of Him is in EVERY location at once. In this sense, God is kind of a "blur".

Similarly, when God has a thought, this thought is alive. It is a living being. His thoughts produce souls. The thing is, since God is whole, absolute, and omnipresent, when He creates or has a thought, it produces something which is also WHOLE, complete, omnipresent. This leads to the interesting and mind-boggling situation, that there are now TWO WHOLE THINGS. God and His child.

"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."

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

His children are not partial children. They are not finite children. They are infinite, absolute, complete, whole, eternal, endless, unlimited beings. They are completely whole in and of themselves. Which means God, who is whole, and who is whole in every part of Himself, creates a part (a thought) which itself JUST AS WHOLE as God is. And now there are two wholes.

"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." (this is holographic - the whole in every part!)

Now, logically speaking, to the ego, this is impossible. It makes no sense whatsoever. How can there be two wholes? But heaven's nature has an attribute unlike spacetime which makes it completely possible. That attribute is the fact that everything OVERLAPS AND IS SHARED.

An analogy in spacetime would be that you literally occupy the same space as another person's body. That your atoms occupy the same space. They literally are right on top of each other, overlaid like two layers in one. This isn't possible in spacetime because it would cause atoms to explode, ie death would occur. But in heaven it's opposite - and life occurs.

God and his children are one, in that they are each a whole in and of themselves, and yet are so united that they SHARE and OVERLAP everything. One soul has all of God, full access, total unlimited complete "ownership" of everything God has. AND so does another soul. And another. And another. Each soul has everything.

In this world it's not possible to share anything because everything is finite. If I give you some pizza I can only give you half otherwise I'll have none for myself. But in heaven this doesn't happen. Both can have the whole pizza simultaneously. This is possible because they truly SHARE everything. They both simultaneously have full total access to everything. We both get the same full pizza. This unlimited sharing is oneness.

This same dynamic is actually what Jesus is referring to as "miraculous". This is the miraculous nature of the soul. It's able to have everything, while also sharing everything with others. And therefore there IS EVERYTHING LEFT for another soul to have everything.

Similarly when God creates you he does not "run out of" himself. Since God gives you everything, ego would say there is no God left over at the end. This is nonsense. God gives everything AND retains everything. He does not diminish by creating, he increases creation. This defies ego logic but is completely true and miraculous.

Actually it's not even possible TO create anything real, generally speaking, because if reality is already whole and infinite you cannot ADD to it. BUT, God HAS added to it, miraculously, not by "tacking on" extra being, but by SHARING HIMSELF. Making room, so to speak, within his own being, that he SHARES WITH His creations, so that no "extra room" is needed.

"Nothing real can be increased, EXCEPT by sharing."

This is only possible in a system where all the creations are sharing fully with each other, therefore overlapping fully, one with each other and cooperative. It doesn't require the cessation of individuality, only the cessation of conflict. Or more to the point, the absence of selfishness, which is the opposite of sharing.

All things that are real, are permanently miraculous. They are miraculous because they defy the strict boundaries, exclusions, boxes, limits and selfishness of the ego's thought system. In heaven it is not a problem for multiple individuals to have everything for themselves at the same time. This is impossible in this world. It was the selfishness and exclusion and attempt to NOT SHARE, that produced the entire ego thought system and all of space and time.

What that means is, in God's holographic thought system, every part of God, every individual being, is just as totally whole as God is, at the same time, without there being any issues of "no room" or "private ownership" or "hoarding" or selfishness. It's all totally shared. Shared so much that you are literally one with all your brothers. You are literally THEM, in a sense, because you SHARE everything with them. Yet you are still two, and are still brothers. There are many children of God who are all one.

What some people are calling a paradox, is actually MIRACULOUS. It's paradoxical to say many individual beings can co-exist and have everything at once. But miraculously they can. God is a miracle worker. "You are a miracle." "God's miracles." "Miracle are a universal blessing from God". God is ENTIRELY MIRACULOUS AT ALL TIMES. And being miraculous - having this nature - of shared minds, equality, oneness with others, is completely natural. It's how we're supposed to be all the time. It's why being a miracle worker is permanent.

This is also why miracles are not mere shifts in perception because the fact is that you are uncovering your PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS nature. Your soul is always miraculous. You are meant to be miraculous all the time, every day. This is why "miracles are natural, when they are not happening something has gone wrong" and "every day should be devoted to miracles." This is also why Jesus is STILL miraculous even after accepting atonement.

Miracles are not the healing EFFECTS that occur, or the shifts. They are a REMEDY, a cause of healing - a spark of life which resurrects. Healing or shifting is the effect. When you are done shifting, you are STILL miraculous. If shifts were miracles you would stop being miraculous when you reached the atonement. You don't. You are in the process of RETURNING TO being miraculous FOREVER, uncovering your miraculous nature, and resuming the nature of your soul. All beings of light are eternally miracles and eternally miraculous.

I was contemplating again any possible conceivable way that the physical world might somehow be part of heaven, or preserved, or keepable, or transformable. Like, if we all became very christly and "dreamed" it into some kind of much higher form, a forgiven world, a sparkling beautiful world full of life, could such a world be integrated into heaven and literally kept as an eternal thing? Could the mis-creation be converted into or replaced by a creation that lasts forever, such that Earth would essentially be "saved" to such an extent that it could qualify as a legitimate created part of the kingdom of God forever?

To this Jesus remarked, "No. Spacetime will end."

A key thing to realize is that the physical world, the planet, bodies etc, matter, atoms, it all DEPENDS entirely on separation. Space itself is the very idea that what is over here is not over there. That's a separation idea of exclusion. One atom is excluded from another. There might be a HINT of sharing but certainly not oneness.

Without separateness you can't have atoms and molecules or bodies or planets. You have to have a way that something is different over here than over there, forms lack other forms, what is found in one place is not found in another. That's the very idea of space itself. Without space, or spatial separation, physical matter is impossible. My car being separate from my house is impossible. My body being separate from other bodies is impossible. Without separation Earth is impossible.

When the spacetime world is forgiven, it no longer has a PURPOSE. Because the purpose of it originally was to attack God, and this purpose was exchanged for the purpose of forgiveness. Using the world to undo the NEED for the world. Using the body to undo the NEED for a body. And once perception has been perfected there is no longer any NEED for perception.

And so the body and perception and the world and space and time become PURPOSELESS, ie there is no need or USE for it, no further repurposing of it, and being completely pointless and unneeded it is simply forgotten and VANISHES COMPLETELY. Cast off and un-remembered, like a dream that passes and has no bearing on what really exists.

The world does not reach a state of becoming totally needed, totally wanted, totally valuable, totally eternal, or totally useful. Its usefulness is temporary because in and of itself it is meaningless. IT WILL END. And every single piece of content inside of the spacetime bubble will disappear, all matter, all bodies, along with space and time itself. And all that will remain is the heaven that existed BEFORE this whole illusion of a world emerged in our imaginations in the first place.

"The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

"So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer."

"Salvation is a promise, made by God, that you would find your way to Him at last. It cannot not be kept. It guarantees that time will have an end, and all the thoughts that have been born in time will end as well."

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF."

"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."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant"

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past EVERYTHING you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes."

OK.

This is going to have to be pretty long because this is a very difficult subject to explain, so bear with me. Some of you may be willing to accept what I'm going to say, some will not.

Oneness. What does it seem to mean? God is whole. God is complete. God is "all there is". God is everywhere, omnipresent, lacking nothing. God is the same everywhere. So... if this is true in terms of ego logic, it means the following:

God has no son. God is dreaming this world. God is a murderer. God created death. God makes people suffer. The separation happened inside God. God is mistaken. God is afraid. God is all people. God is experiencing "himself" through and as all people in the world. There is nothing other than God. We are God. Separation is real. God created this world. etc.

Absolutely none of that is true. That is the purest most logically accurate definition of what non-duality means to the ego. It is the most precise conclusion you can draw from how the EGO understands oneness or what it means to be "one". If oneness truly means "there is only one", the God is responsible for hell. And it is grossly mistaken.

If God is one, then God cannot even create anything because there is nowhere for the creation to occur and nothing to add which wasn't already there and so, literally, "there is only God". This is the conclusion many many Course folk have come to. It seems to in some ways make sense TO EGO THINKERS and those who use linear logic who think that such linear logic is capable of encompassing and understanding the nature of God.

God is not like this. And oneness does not mean "there is only God". And non-duality, as the opposite of duality, does not properly describe the holographic creative nature of God or reality. Non-duality is CLOSE to being correct, and is more correct than duality, but it is still a concept and it falls way short, as you will see. If there is non-duality there should be just "one thing". In that, there can be no Son of God at all, no creation, no love, no extension, no sharing, no sonship, and no holy relationship.

In fact, what's happened widespread in ACIM folk is various false conclusions which have established themselves as if written in stone "what the course says". And yet the consequences of these errors are quite horrific. To believe God is all there is is to equate God with ego and death. To claim that God is all there is also denies and murders every Son of God.

OK.

Now, let's talk about how God actually exists and thinks and creates and the nature of His creation. If the strictest definition of oneness or non duality is true, then God cannot even create anything. And in a sense, PARTS of the Course speak to this. E.g. "God is". And also, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". So anything real, like God, is permanent, fixed, unchanging, does not increase or decrease, and therefore there can be no creation whatsoever. Which means no son. UNLESS, this thing called "sharing" happens.

Recognize that God is love, and because of what love is, it automatically goes out and shares and extends. It shares because it has no reason to hold anything back. It is fundamentally a state of sharing, including, giving, and this radiation of love is another way of describing the act of creation.

God in and of Himself is whole, complete, lacking nothing, needing nothing, and is already permanent. Like a solid rock. Unchanging. That does not really sound like something that can create, does it? It seems very fixed. Like absolutely nothing is happening or possible. That's strictly what most definitions of "oneness" imply also. That nothing else is possible besides God existing. That's false.

God loves, and in that love, God radiates, extends, shares, creates, miraculously. Ego logic will NEVER account for "the miraculous", and God's creative ability is truly miraculous, which is why YOU ARE A MIRACLE. To the ego, God CANNOT create, and the act of His creating defies ALL EGO LOGIC and demonstrates that God is a miracle worker. Something happens in God which defies explanation and seems impossible yet happens. God SHARES AND CREATES something "other" than Himself, out of nowhere.

If you think of God like a light bulb, God is the fixed light bulb which does not move or change really, but the bulb radiates and SHINES light. The light goes outward and illuminates. That "shining", that light radiating, that is creation. The light radiating is not necessarily the same thing as God Himself. God is complete and whole already, but God SHARES Himself by shining light and radiating and extending, and that which extends outward is creation.

It is in this way that God created the world of Heaven. Here is how the Course describes it is a NATURAL division:

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God. That is why everything that He created is like Him. Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

So God in and of Himself is complete and whole, but He "projects outward" (extends) and that which is projected forms a "world" (heaven). This world is, in a sense, "divided from" God in a natural way, in that it comes FROM God and is God SHARING, but God as its SOURCE still remains in a sense, beyond it.

This is because God is the "first cause" and what God radiates is the "effect" of God. His Thought/Shining is the effect of Him as the "thinker". The effect of God is not capable of turning around and "causing God" in reverse, or of making God its effect. The creation (the Son/sonship) is being constantly sustained by, projected by God, forever, is coming FROM God, and therefore the Son is ONLY "as God created Him" and cannot change what He is. The Son has no real say in what He is at all, He merely gives thanks for having been created perfect.

God is cause, not effect. God cannot be affected. This causal extension or "creating of effect" in a way puts up a kind of "wall" or division you could say, just on a causality level, which in a sense, separates the creation from God's own Self, but only in the sense that the created Son cannot cause God back. But the Son CAN share love with Him.

This is not the same thing as the "separation" that we are accustomed to thinking of as what the ego does or relating to the "separation from God" which was a different matter. The "separation from God" happened when the Son, who is only effect and not capable of causing God, attempted to cause God. That means the Son tried to will against God's will or to undo what God has created, trying to replace it with something else. That was an act of impossible denial, which brought about the separation and the "fall of man".

That's an entirely different thing to the "natural division" between God and His Son. The division between God and Son is NATURAL in that this is How God intended it, that the Son is imbued with the SAME WILL TO CREATE, the same love, the same completeness, the same wholeness, AND SHARING the WHOLE OF GOD within itself, as well as sharing THE WHOLE OF CREATION within itself. All of God is in the Son, shared with the Son, and yet the Son is in some way also "divided" from God as a creation of God or thought of God.

In nonduality and oneness concepts there is no accounting for God thinking anything at all, yet alone creating a son. It completely glosses over the fact that God is LOVE, and love radiates and extends and creates. When people tell you what the definition of oneness is they become very clinical and ego-specific in describing God as a kind of "single blob". There is no love in that concept, nor does it appreciate the NATURE of Oneness, which is to share, extend everywhere, create, increase, and to experience JOY. Do you equate oneness with joy, or power, or love, or creativity, or miracles? As a logical device, no. But God is joyful and creative and all powerful and miraculous.

Now, it is possible for God to create AT LEAST One Son, and the Course references the "one son of God" in various places. And due to misunderstandings, many people have come to believe God only has one Son. So now there are two camps - a set of people believing that God is one therefore has no son or "I am God", and a camp of people accepting there is One Son (somehow) but not more. It relates to how much of the nature of God is grasped.

OK. So holograms. Did you know God thinks holographically? Do you know what a hologram is or why this is totally different to how the ego thinks? If you are thinking about God's creation or oneness without thinking about holograms, then you WILL come to false conclusions, such as that there are no divisions in heaven or God has only one Son or no son, because non-holographic logic CAN ONLY arrive at these conclusions. Ego logic is FAULTY and limited.

The essential idea of a hologram is that the whole is able to express in many "parts" and yet each part contains ALL of the whole. This makes NO SENSE to the ego, because it thinks in terms of separated space, where it is impossible for all of God to be in one part AND all of God to be in another part simultaneously. The ego will wager, "there is not enough God for God to be elsewhere, if God is fully here". And that's why the ego is BLIND to the nature of heaven. It does not account for SHARING.

Here's what the Course says about the holographic nature of God and the Sonship - note how ILLOGICAL and CONTRADICTORY these all sound, at first:

"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."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite."

"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."

So Jesus is saying two things, which seem to clash. 1) God created One Son. 2) God created many sons. The conclusion here, to THE EGO, is either, a) God only created one Son, or b) The "many" or "multitude" nature of the sonship tells us that it is OF THE EGO and is therefore not real. Are either of these conclusions true? NO! They are both mistakes, and reveal the limitations of the ego's thought system when it tires to understand the EGO DEFYING nature of God.

In a hologram, the whole is present in EVERY part. Now, if you think in terms you are familiar with in this world, like physical objects and space, you think ok, if I take 1 gallon of water and I pour it into a 1 gallon container, there is no water left to fill another container. Yes? This is ego thinking. And ego thinking gave rise to this ENTIRE universe, including all physical forms, and all laws of physics, to paint a picture that attempts to PROVE that God's NATURE is NOT the way things are. And we have used physical form as a way to understand the nature of existence. This is a major error. We are BLINDED by sight of form, because forms express the EGO IDEA of separation, limitation, "measuring" how much of something there is in a finite way, and then concluding that there is lack and limitation.

When ALL of God is poured into one creation, how much God is there left to pour into another? ALL OF HIM! He does not run out. He INCREASES BY SHARING. The ego cannot believe this. The multiplying of fish and bread to feed 5000 people is a good example of this principle. Giving ALL to something does not diminish it AT ALL, it merely increases by being given away.

God puts ALL of the whole of his nature into His creation, in EACH thought. And what He creates is FULL, complete, and whole, AND shares ALL of itself with God, and includes all of God, and all of any other creation God creates. So then God has another thought, creates another WHOLE, and then another WHOLE, and another. You should get the idea then, spatially, even in ego terms, that adding more wholes INCREASES the sum total - and this is How the Kingdom expands.

To the ego, it is impossible that God be fully in one location and yet fully in another. This is completely impossible in terms of a physical object. However, bi-location is a miracle because it demonstrates that we are not bound by space or by instances or amounts. The Course says that God has many thoughts, INFINITE IN NUMBER. That amounts to an INFINITE number of Sons of God. And each Son of God is WHOLE and complete and perfect in itself, has free will just like God, extends and creates just like God (you have your own creations in Heaven), and radiates love just like God. This means each son is not just some "partial person" or limited or unlike the rest, it means EVEY son is FULL, whole, complete, absolutely unlimited, and shares EVERYTHING with God in perfection. And so do all the rest.

That God does not diminish when sharing himself fully to create a WHOLE SON, means automatically that God can create MANY sons without any diminishing of Himself at all. And all of God is in every Son. AND every Son is within every Son. And the ENTIRE SONSHIP is within every Son. This is entirely NATURAL AND NORMAL in Heaven. Heaven therefore contains INFINITE "naturally divided" (causally divided) INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - which are souls or Sons of God - each one holy and perfect.

Ok.

So now we need to talk about why some people are confused in constantly saying that God has One Son or there is "only oneness" or the Sonship is an part of separation etc. It's because people are getting PART of the picture and not the whole picture, because EGO LOGIC is telling them to EXCLUDE some parts of the holographic nature of God. They can "see" that God's oneness makes sense, but this seems to imply there is no son or at least not more than one. They can't see HOW God can have created many sons OR how a "division" is natural. And so they just can't get their heads around the nature of God or how it's possible for there to be a sonship at all.

And if you will go looking, ACIM contains specific quotes which SEEM to support the ego's interpretations by focusing on only one PART of the holographic picture, using that as justification for why "the course said this". For example, "God has but one Son", or countless references to "God's Son". Well, this leads God people to conclude that the Course is saying God doesn't have more sons. It's a mistake. With no grasp of God's NATURE - which is holographic, it makes sense people will be in error. And then they will say well, since God has only one Son, the sonship is a lie, or I do not exist, or I am God, or I do not have a self, or there is no-one here, or whatever else.

These are NON-DUALITY concepts which FAIL to appreciate God's nature. And you can see how, if it is true that God has many sons, these kind of "beliefs" are HARMFUL. They basically DESTROY the sonship, DENY the Self, and render God impotent.

When I finally understood how God thinks holographically and realized that non-duality is bullshit and a limited EGO concept of God, I felt great RELIEF about the simple recognition that "GOD CREATED ME". Me, as an INDIVIDUAL. Not me as an EGO, that's different, but that I have a HOLY SELF, which is sharing with other holy selves, and all of us are PERMANENT and INTENDED by God to have free will. When I saw this, I cried tears of joy, and also release of sadness, which had built up from the non-duality teachers, who have MISLED countless students and spread LIES ABOUT HEAVEN, resulting in the belief that "I do not exist", which can only lead to despair and depression because it DENIES GOD'S CREATION.

A course in miracles is NOT non-duality at all. The principle of Oneness is NOT that there is "only one and nothing else". Oneness truly means, sharing, creation, unlimited extension, INFINITE wholes, and a heaven filled with SOULS that live forever in a state of perfection and wholeness, sharing everything they are with ALL OTHERS including God. Why do you think Jesus refers to you as a brother? It's not just a temporary thing. You will ALWAYS be equal to and a brother of Jesus, AND at the same time, one with Him, and literally sharing everything WITH Him, AND still having your own soul, and still having your own free will which happens to be the same in focus as God's.

So now we have a very different picture of Heaven, and it has NOTHING to do with Earth or this universe. "Heaven and Earth are opposite in EVERY way." Heaven is a PLACE in the sense that it EXISTS as God's creation and you can experience it and BE there in it/with it. There are many references in the course where Jesus says "in Heaven" and also referring to Heaven as a "world" and as something God created. And given that THIS world - earth, physical universe, DOES NOT EXIST BECAUSE THERE IS NO WORLD - where IS there to BE or live or exist other than Heaven? In that sense, it IS a place, far more a REAL place than planet earth. Earth is not a place at all.

Heaven is within the mind of God. "The kingdom of God is you" is another reference to you being The Son of God and one of may sons of God. You are part of and all of heaven. Something you can be INSIDE OF and BE, and where there are infinite souls and angels, plus the Holy Spirit, plus an entire sonship of equal souls, all equal with Jesus, all individually a Son of God, AND also every one of those souls is THE Son of God as well. And each soul continues to CREATE MORE. There is nothing unnatural about this at all. All PARTS of heaven are of ONE ORDER.

Per Jesus: "The world, in the original connotation of the term, 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. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order." (Here "man" is the same thing as soul or son of God, not humans.)

One final word then. Each Son of God, being a hologram of God, is whole and complete in and of itself, lacking nothing. And AT THE SAME TIME, is so OPEN and so SHARING, that it is wired into the ENTIRE CREATION of God. Picture it as your mind is so expanded that you are "one with" ie sharing in, the entire sonship. God therefore experiences ALL of his many thoughts, as ONE, while simultaneously allowing them to be many.

This is why there are many references to God having only one son. When it's speaking of this, it refers to how God experiences all Sons as though they are all the same and one, experienced simultaneously and so sharing that they do not seem "separate". Yet they are still divided. And then when the course speaks 250+ times about the many sons of God, this is not contradictory because God DOES have many sons AND one son.

God thinks holographically. All of God is in every son and all of every son is in every son. The whole sonship is in every son and every son in the sonship. You are the ONE SON of God, AND you are one of many. This is heavenly logic, not ego logic. When every individual PART of the sonship has returned to its true nature, all of the sonship as a whole communicates with God again.

The only other point to make I think is the difference between division and ego separation. In heaven you are divided from others and from God. But only in the sense that you are a loving family who shares everything together. Loving families are still individuals yet joined. The individuality does not go away. When walls are erected between family members, ie artificial separations are introduced, there is denial of the sharing, denial of the oneness, and denial of wholeness. This UNNATURAL DIVISION is the ego. This is what the course refers to as separation.

You have to get your head around the idea that you can be individual AND joined and that this is normal, natural and real. It is not your individual soul nature that makes you an ego. It is not that you are PART of a huge family of souls (sonship) that makes you an ego. What makes you an ego is that you withdraw your connection from God, withdraw your connection from the sonship, and become ISOLATED behind artificial imaginary walls of denial. It's got nothing to do with whether you are an individual or not.

Perhaps the most misunderstood thing about ACIM is the belief that ego means separate self, and therefore means individuality, and therefore having an individuality is ego. THIS IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!! Individuality is not the problem. Cutting your individuality off from sharing with the whole is the problem. Trying to be a "part" of the hologram that does NOT contain the whole. Trying to not be an effect of God. Trying to cause God and change Him and affect Him. Cutting yourself off from the sonship. Believing you are not equal to all brothers. Being special. THAT is the problem and that is what the ego is made of, not your individuality.

Individuality does not mean you are separate from God, it means you are one of God's Son's. YOU DO EXIST. Just not as an illusion of an isolated self who has no connection to others. What is death but the end of all connection and the bringing about of total separation from Life? Joining with Life does not make you disappear! It's not about "you're not really out there". It's more like, "you are MORE than you APPEAR to be." You are God's Son and one of many sons. You are one with God and with all others and you SHARE with them all, one in sharing, not in number.

ACIM is not non-duality. And ACIM is not about the ego's idea of what oneness means. ACIM is not teaching that God only has a single son "separate from" the many sons. Heaven is a cascade of creation and miracles and light and souls and beauty and sharing and union and freedom. This is why YOU are responsible for everything YOU CHOOSE. Choose again.

As far as I grasp it now, our task is to overlook and sort of "gloss over" the various separations of the physical world of form. To be in a state of mind - right mindedness - which is symbolic of the one mind of oneness - which is centred in wholeness and unconditionality, looking out upon the separated world and basically "ignoring" the separations. Not buying into appearances of form or differences or the ways that things seem to be separated off.

The mind in this state doesn't pay much attention to the form that anything takes because it's recognised as not meaning anything different to anything else. The mind here is looking toward Christ, and the physical is only seen sort of indirectly on the side.

Everything about the physical is immediately met with forgiveness, like a deflector shield, which bounces off all illusions and temptations and is dismissed as false and nothing and not important. This is sort of like transcending the illusion while keeping the illusion - still in a dream state (happy dream) but not buying into it. In the world but not of it.

A reflection of heaven is thus seen across the chaos, while the chaos is still there. Sort of like a symbolic state of oneness underlying the forms, but while still keeping the forms. Almost complete transcendence of the world. This is the real world state which doesn't 'contain' physical objects at the transcendental level, but the forgiven world still has them. The seeming formlessness of the real world seems to be lightly covered by the forms of the world, as though a second layer, but the real world isn't the same as the state of heaven.

This would be akin to the old model suggesting that everything in this world is real and yet is unified in a oneness at a deeper level. It's just that the forms are a dream and the underlying oneness is a DREAM of oneness. Then when we go beyond the real world, which is the symbol of forgiveness/face of christ, we enter into heaven proper. This completely takes you out of the world, out of the dream, beyond the real world entirely, and into God's Kingdom.

That's a movement totally out of dreaming and of spacetime and beyond the 'dream of oneness' into what would seem to be practically a whole other dimension - the great and shining circle of God's kingdom.

"This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it."

"Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it"

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

"You will first DREAM of peace, and THEN awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what, you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where ALL perception is. Knowledge needs NO correction. Yet the dreams of love lead UNTO knowledge."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."

In the Course, Jesus talks about zombies!!

He says, "let the dead bury the dead".

People in the world in bodies are pretty much the "living dead". Also...

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven, on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."

"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."

Being in a body at all, unless your mind is awake and you're about to get outta here, is a state of death. We might think that the physical world is "life", but it's really death. Or at the very least, it is stages of death and preparation for death.

Those whose mind is not with Heaven have chosen to believe in death to some degree, and therefore are identifying themselves as something which is made of death - the ego's idea of living.

This is why all objects and materials and plants and animals and humans and planets and stars all "die" in this universe, because they're already dying because they are FUNDEMANTALLY made of death (separation).

Physical birth IS actually the beginning of DEATH and is NOT the beginning of life. What changes is not alive and cannot be life at all.

So all those people out there, as bodies, and maybe "you" as a body also, are zombies. The living dead.

This is why RESURRECTION makes sense as a RETURN to life. The final resurrection is the complete exit from the "dream of death" (by TRUTH not death), but along the way as you are awakening to truth you are also COMING BACK TO LIFE.

This is why "raising the dead" is not just a matter of restoring life to what seems to be a corpse, which IS entirely possible, but it ALSO means the raising of all those who are in the process of dying, who are unconsciously dreaming, who identify themselves with "things that die", and who are not really fully alive.

Life is ONLY eternal life. Life is not partial living or partial death or fluctuations in-between. God is life and is the giver of life. Not physical forms, but life as Immortal Spirit. The Christ. Son of God. Your Real Self. That is living with God in the living Heaven. This world is not that, although it may come to REFLECT a vision of heaven prior to returning TO heaven.

Resurrection is the raising of the dead back to eternal life and the complete exiting of identification with or limitation by anything which is not of God - i.e. any kind of body. This applies to "dead bodies" as much as it applies to "living bodies", ALL of which are dead.

Life is forever.

If it were true that the dead could not be raised, this would HAVE to mean that those who have gone into unconsciousness and separation and denial and are therefore choosing death, could not be recovered. Those who have fallen asleep into a dream world could not be saved. And those who are the "living dead" walking around believing they are ACIM students could not possibly INCREASE their aliveness.

If it is true that you CAN resurrect, that you CAN awaken from this deadly dream, and that you CAN return to Life, then one way or another, death MUST be reversible. Each time you forgive and claim the atonement, you ARE returning to life and ARE RESURRECTING.

Either resurrection is possible and permanent, or death is possible and permanent. Either death has power over God's Son, or there is potential for God's Son to return to life.

Failing to believe that raising the dead is POSSIBLE, MUST be a belief that resurrection is IMPOSSIBLE. And if you do not believe in resurrection, you do not believe in forgiveness or the undoing of the ego. If you are an ACIM student, you SHOULD believe that raising the dead is entirely possible, otherwise there is no hope for you to return to God.

Only Eternal Life with God is reality.

On of the most life-changing things I've learned from ACIM, is simply realising this idea that we "scapegoat" in order to get rid of our own guilt. That we start out first attacking ourselves, making ourselves guilty, and then we project that guilt through seemingly justified anger onto other people. This whole "blame game" is of finger pointing and finding people to be sinful, trying to enforce people's guilt through anger and attack, so that we can get rid of our own guilt and come off innocent.

Most people in the world are blameful and believe that who they are angry at is the one who is wrong. When I first got this idea that "the person who is blaming is the one with the PROBLEM", it was a 180-degree paradigm shift. It was a revelation that it's not the person being blamed that has the problem, it's the person doing the blaming. Because for the most part it is easy to believe that anger is justified, and the person we're angry at must be the one who is wrong. But it's always the projecting person who has a problem.

If more people could adopt this, relationships would be 90% healthier. In a vast majority of special relationships in the world, even marriages, there is rampant scapegoating, anger and blame. People essentially have unhealed wounds, inner guilts, unforgiven sins etc, which are triggered off, which lead to an eruption of emotion and a hurling outward of it to try to pin it on someone else. When it gets really bad, it's just one reaction after another back and forth, keeping score and trying hard to make sure the other person is guilty.

To realize that we have to take responsibility for what we feel and experience is key. Instead of it being other people or the world who are responsible for what we're feeling, we have to take back that power and recognize WE are the ones doing it to ourselves. WE are the ones who are "to blame" for this suffering. It's the secret of salvation. If they aren't the ones with the problem, it must be me. And that takes honesty.

If I am upset, something is wrong with me, not anyone else. If I am getting angry at someone, something is wrong with me and not anyone else. The more angry I get, the more I am in denial that I have a problem. The more I am in denial, the more I split my mind, the more I reinforce separation, and the more I dissociate my mind from itself. The more dissociated I become the more I believe something "not me" is to blame, and become extremely convinced that I am NOT the one with the problem.

The key is that we have to forgive ourselves all the guilts that we've piled onto ourselves. All the self-accusation and self-hate and self-destruction. All the hidden sins and hates and unworthiness and all the rest of the ways we attack ourselves. Without that guilt, we have nothing to project, and no reason to project it.

I think one thing I feel quite good about is that after all these 20+ years of working on this with ACIM, I've managed to heal quite a lot of guilts and shames and hidden sins and hates and all that - to do with myself, that I don't very often scapegoat anymore. You can't scapegoat unless you need one, and if you aren't full of guilt it's harder to be triggered by stuff. I have become more benevolent and softer and more loving, kinder and more peaceful, and that's a good thing.

I see a lot of relationships where this simple thing hasn't been learned. The absolute default for the ego is to just go into rage mode whenever someone triggers off some guilt. Then there's defensiveness and anger and hurling abuse and separation. There a war of words, broken relationships, abuse and all the rest of it, all springing from wounded people getting their insecurities and unhealed stuff triggered off. And not taking responsibility for it.

It's tough at times to keep having to come back to this idea that, I'm the one who is responsible for this suffering. But it's a vital practice. If I'm upset, it is never for the reason I think. If I am angry and I think it is justified, anger is never justified. The cause and reason of the problem is in my mind, not out in the world or in anyone else. No-one is doing anything to me or causing me to be upset for any reason. It's all an inside job. If the world could learn this we'd have absolutely incredible relationships and the end of so much conflict.

If someone or something outside of you is the cause of you, you are powerless to stop it affecting you and are playing a victim role. Only if you are invulnerable to the world are you no longer affected by it. Its a transition from victimhood to the impossibility of being a victim, from vulnerability to invulnerability, from mortality to immortality, from effect to cause.

And that means recognising your immortality. It always comes back to you being an immortal being, nothing can happen against your will, so if you think someone's causing you to suffer, you're deceiving yourself. You have to get really honest and own up to what you are doing to yourself and admit you are mistaken, be willing to have humility and step back with the blame game. To totally own your causal power and how you are using it against yourself, is forgiveness. Coming from a position of not being in conflict and at war with yourself, so that you look out from that peace onto others.

Blaming someone splits your mind. The mind hallucinates that it's talking to another separate person in third-person speak like "you're doing this" while the person isn't even in front of them. The more angry we become the more we enforce separation and guilt. That's literal insanity, to project guilt in an attempt to get rid of it, while causing it to get worse.

Anger increases separation and splits the mind producing mental illness and ultimately physical illness. It's in all our best interests that we learn to own up to who and what we are, take responsibility for our own shit, and stop putting it onto everyone else.

Whenever we feel compelled to look outside ourselves for a cause or will or power to explain why something is happening, we're lost. If we can totally take full responsibility for what we are, such that we no longer accuse anyone of being the reason why we are what we are, we will be completely forgiving and kind and benevolent - to ourselves and others.

The whole of ACIM is simply geared toward this goal of complete undoing of the separation in the mind, the removal of all guilt, the end of all blame, and the complete reversal of all conflict. And without guilt there is no ego.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." W5

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." UrT30G1

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts." W281

"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" UrW195L5

"It can be but myself I crucify." W196

"Only the self-accused condemn." UrT31C

"You NEVER hate your brother for HIS "sins", but ONLY for your own. Whatever form his sins appear to take, the form obscures the fact that you believe it to be yours, and THEREFORE meriting a just attack." UrT31C

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further." UrT6C3

"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making HIM invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt." UrT11J6

In the atonement, it becomes the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.

In the atonement, you gain the authority to forgive the sins of others, and not just your own sins.

This literally means you are able to heal others instantly through your forgiveness, because forgiveness leads to an authority over illusions.

It's not just a technicality, like you accept the atonement and you're done. The atonement puts you in the hot seat. It gives you the power of God. It empowers you with commanding authority. And what you then say, goes.

Claiming the atonement for yourself will grant you the ability to give the atonement to others. And that means the undoing of all signs and symptoms of separation, including the reversal of death.

Raising of the dead would not be possible if it had to mean that the other person somehow had to do something on their own in order to resurrect. Yet Jesus raised the dead, and others have also. The dead cannot raise themselves.

This demonstrates to you the miraculous power that the atonement offers you. The power to overcome all illusions for yourself AND for others. And if it be God's will, you too can restore your brother to life.

He who shares the authority of God knows no limitations. Unlock the key to salvation and open the door to the atonement, and you will step through Heaven's gates. And from there, the atonement of yourself and of the whole world is complete in your eyes. And now have dominion over all suffering and death.

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.

There are two approaches to spiritual progress.

1) You start out with nothing and have to attain, build, accumulate, get, learn, grow, become, seek, do something, believe in, empower, achieve, turn into, so that you will be more than you are now. So that your ego and self image will expand, and so that you will become a superhero and the God of the world. Or...

2) You start out perfect and have everything, but then you deny it and hide it, and pretend you have nothing. What you then need to do is backtrack, return, reverse, undo, cancel, deny the denial, dis-believe, withdraw power from the illusion of emptiness, remove the blocks, so that you can recognize and re-awaken to what is already permanently true. That you are with God in heaven and always have been. You "need do nothing" but accept this is already true.

We are very accustomed to thinking in terms of the first approach, because the entire ego thought system has denied God even exists, has hidden your inheritance, has thrown away any notion of you being permanently perfect, and sets you out on a path of "seek and do not find" beginning in emptiness and nothingness. We think this is normal. And we then think that salvation, love, awareness, God, our self, is somewhere else, yet to be attained or earned. Achieved through punishment and suffering and at a cost.

This is the illusion of a spiritual path. Where our whole focus is on "I don't have it now", and therefore "I need to get it". It drives the ego's focus with a complete disconnect between giving and receiving, suggesting you have nothing so have nothing to give, so need to "get" before you can give. It suggests you are devoid of love and perfection, as an attack on your true nature, hiding you from yourself, and then encourages you to seek to become more spiritual. To hide from yourself by finding yourself in another, or in the body.

But there can really be no progress at all if all we do is maintain the belief that we are not ALREADY perfect, and keep trying to become something as if we don't have it already. The ego is plenty happy to encourage you to overdo on the course, commit to paths and books and ceremonies and teachers and groups and seminars and so on, to exalt salvation outside yourself and worship it like an idol. But all this does is it turns everything you have denied within yourself, into an externalized illusion, which you now worship as though it can save you from your emptiness.

The problem is that in this approach, we're not really addressing what has ACTUALLY happened to us. We didn't pop into existence out of nothingness, with no inheritance, with no real source, and starting out with nothing. We didn't just materialize in a state of total lack and need, from which we have to spend our whole lives trying to accumulate food and objects and toys and money and fake identities and shit, just to try to build up a sense of having something, to fill the emptiness with emptiness.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

We have to recognize instead that we HAD everything when we were created. We were created perfect and without needs or wants of any kind. We were created permanently, and cannot be changed in our perfection. We cannot lose what we are, we cannot stop being ourselves, and we cannot destroy what God has created.

The truth is that we in fact first denied and hid from our natural permanent immortal perfection, to PRETEND that we had nothing, so that we would seek outside ourselves to find ourselves where we don't exist. The whole story reveals that not only did we try to throw away heaven and God and our real family and identity, we actually did not even accomplish this in reality. We just fooled ourselves into believing that it was possible, and that we had done it. That sin was real. And in that we are mistaken.

So then the only way to REALLY make progress isn't so much in the forward acquisition of the world, the price of which is the loss of your soul. But to realize that our perfect pre-existing immortal safe self is ALREADY THERE, simply disguised and hidden BEHIND various "blocks to the awareness of love's presence". There's simply a pile of garbage in the way, full of fake lies and un-truths, which make it seem like it's not there, or that innocence has been lost and converted into guilt.

Our real task then isn't the ego's path of gathering stuff from outside of us to plug the holes, but to reverse our steps, backtrack, undo, let go, surrender the world, deny the denial of truth, accept the reality of God's truth, simply melt into and settle into what you already ARE, and RE-discover your real nature within. To go inside and find yourself, RIGHT NOW, in a state of immaculate perfection, undisturbed and unattacked, immortal and invulnerable, incapable of suffering or sickness or death, and utterly beyond the reach of this entire world.

It's so easy to become lost in this whole drive to go do be find add get, that we can forget we're supposed to really be RECOGNIZING that we are STILL as God created us, we haven't changed at all, nothing has happened to us, we REMAIN in heaven safely with God, we haven't really journeyed anywhere but into a detour of fear, and we are utterly beyond the reach of all dreams of death. We are constant and we are permanent and we can NEVER be hurt, threatened, endangered or destroyed. Nothing has EVER happened to us. We are utterly indestructible.

That's what waking up is about. A recognition of what has ALWAYS been true, and is still true, and will forever be true. You simply can't go anywhere, or do anything, or be anything other than God established you to be. And you have nothing that he did not give you, or which you did not create with Him. And there is nothing else. You are real and you cannot be threatened, and nothing unreal exists.

You are perfect NOW. And you need merely to relax into accepting that you are ALREADY holy, innocent and perfect. You have been all along, and everything else is a lie. We simply need to acknowledge and admit that we've been perfect all along, have never deviated or changed, and we are STILL exactly as perfect as God created us to be. Which means you have no need to seek for anything.

"Who could have done this but you? Recognize this gladly, for in this recognition lies the realization that your banishment is not of God, and therefore does not exist. You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so? You know, from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you think is real, as long as you are asleep. But the instant you waken, you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL. You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing."

"Whom God has joined CANNOT be separated, and God has joined all His Sons WITH HIMSELF. Can you be separated from your life and your being? The journey to God is merely the reawakening of the knowledge of where you are always, and what you are forever. It is a journey without distance, to a goal that has never changed."

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all. Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own. It is the only thing you bring with you from Him Who is your Source. It shines in you because it lights your home, and leads you back to where it came from and you are at home."

"Thanks be to you, the holy Son of God, for as you were created you contain all things within your Self. And you are still as God created you. Nor can you dim the light of your perfection. In your heart the Heart of God is laid. He holds you dear because you are Himself. All gratitude belongs to you because of what you are."

"We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together."

"Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home."

"We have forgiven one another now, and so we come at last to You again. Father, Your Son, who never left, returns to Heaven and his home. How glad are we to have our sanity restored to us, and to remember that we all are one."

"Today we will anticipate the time when dreams of sin and guilt are gone, and we have reached again the holy place we never left. Merely a tiny instant has elapsed between eternity and timelessness. So brief the interval there was no lapse in continuity, nor break in thoughts which are forever unified as one. Nothing has ever happened to disturb the peace of God the Father and the Son. This we accept as wholly true today."

"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."

"In prayer you have united with your Source, and understood that you have never left."

"You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world."

"In quiet listen to your Self today, and let Him tell you God has never left His Son, and you have never left your Self."

"Now try to reach the Son of God in you. This is the Self Which never sinned, nor made an image to replace reality. This is the Self Which never left Its home in God, to walk the world uncertainly. This is the Self Which knows no fear, nor could conceive of loss or suffering or death."

"Now into Your Hands we give again the spirit of Your Son who seemed to lose his way a little while but never left the safety of Your Love."

"And turn you to the stately calm within, where, in holy stillness, dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you."

"There is no need for help to enter Heaven for you never left. But there is need for help beyond yourself as you are circumscribed by false beliefs about your Identity, Which God alone established in reality."

"Then will we wait in silence, giving up all self-deceptions as we humbly ask our Self that He reveal Himself to us. And He Who never left will come again to our awareness, grateful to restore His home to God as it was meant to be."

"Beyond all idols is the Thought God holds of you. Completely unaffected by the turmoil and the terror of the world, the dreams of birth and death that here are dreamed, the myriad of forms that fear can take, quite undisturbed, the Thought God holds of you remains EXACTLY as It always was. Surrounded by a stillness so complete no sound of battle comes remotely near, It rests in certainty and perfect peace. Here is your ONE reality kept safe, completely unaware of all the world that worships idols, and that knows not God. 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."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he NEVER heard it not."

When God created you, He created you perfect. You were created whole, complete, absolutely divine and lacking nothing. He created you incapable of sin, capable only of extending love and joy.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for you to change what you are, what God created, your identity, your nature, or anything about you.

It is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE for you to BE anything other than the perfect divine soul that God intended for you to be.

God does not create you at one 'moment in time'. There is no time. God is ETERNALLY EXPRESSING YOU. You are constantly and permanently being radiated by God, and whatever God expresses is what you are, and you HAVE NO SAY in changing that.

You are the EFFECT OF GOD, The Son of God, and His Will has absolute power over your creation, your existence, and your nature. What you are is a reflection of His own perfection, and you CANNOT CHANGE IT. And you HAVE NOT changed it.

You ARE still as God created you. Your soul is STILL perfect. It has not changed, it has not sinned, it has not been damaged, it has not been lost, it is not unconscious, it is not asleep or deluded, it has no ego, and nothing can happen to it.

Regardless of what it looks like to you, right now, in time, your soul - your REAL SELF - ALREADY EXISTS IN PERFECTION. You have ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED being "perfectly spiritual". You have ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED being divine, holy, perfect. You are already beyond the atonement. You are ALREADY IN HEAVEN WITH GOD. Right now.

So if there is anything else going on in your mind, any other beliefs to the contrary, any suggestions that you are lacking or not there yet, any delusion that something has gone wrong or something is wrong with you, or that you need to "do something" to become better or more spiritual or more pure and holy, or that you are not forgiven yet, or you didn't atone yet.... ALL of that is ego bullshit lies.

ACCEPTING the atonement means accepting this fact. It means, accepting that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED, nothing changed, you did not go anywhere, you did not die or suffer, you did not sin or become guilty, you did not stop being with God, you are literally incapable of willing against God or yourself, and you are STILL exactly as God created you. You WILL ALWAYS BE as God created you, and there is literally NOTHING you can ever do to change that.

Even if it seems this is not true of you, and you are this ego identity who lacks and suffers and has a long way to go and all this crap... it's not true. The spiritual self that you are trying to become, IS ALREADY IN YOU. Your higher self, your holy self, your spirit, your soul, you real identity, your christ self, you as a son of God, your heavenly identity, is already here, already fully complete, already perfectly awake and aware, already absolutely cured and healed, already in perfect divine happiness and health, and ALREADY EXISTS.

Even if it seems you will become this holy self "in the future" or "you are not there yet", THAT is a lie. Your holy self is ALREADY HOLY. So while you are contemplating what you need to do to get back to God, you never left. Right now, this second, you are DONE. You are DONE with the entire spiritual path. And seemingly, at the same time, you SEEM to be not done with it. Your holy self can talk to you right now. Your holy self is, in a sense, your future self. But it is really your real PAST self, because it existed BEFORE TIME and did not stop existing.

I think this is really important to recognize because this can be very powerful in putting everything into its proper perspective. I've talked before about how you need to get some idea of TRUTH into your awareness in order to have a reference point, to compare things to, and to put things into their proper perspective. Remembering that you are ALREADY AS GOD CREATED YOU PERFECT, reflect on the nature of your soul, and acknowledge your EXISTING PERFECTION, this can really cut through the ego bullshit like nobody's business.

So like, there I am, feeling sorry for myself, feeling guilty, thinking I sinned, but wait... I am still as God created me, I am still perfectly innocent and with God, so how can it be true that I have done anything at all? How can it be true that I sinned or am guilty? What IS this guilt and sin but simply FALSE? It is a lie. I am not sinful or guilty, and I do not need to "become" innocent again because I already am. I already am perfectly holy, nothing has happened, and this other stuff must be ego illusions.

See the entire ego thought system, all of the separation from God, and everything to do with sin and death, is A LIE, and it's all an attempt to COVER UP WHAT IS ALREADY TRUE. And what is already true has already been established by God, is permanent, YOU cannot create or invent it or make it happen by yourself, all you can do is ACCEPT IT. And that means SURRENDERING every effort you have ever made to deny it, to try to make something else true, or to try to make it untrue.

When you stare the truth in the face like this, and you acknowledge, yes, I need do nothing because I AM STILL as God created me, it forces you to have to ADMIT, that everything else you've been believing is FALSE, it's a lie, you've basically just being trying to deny and not accept or allow this to be true, to try to claim that something else is true, but it's not. It's almost brutal in how the acknowledgement of this truth shows you that you LITERALLY CANNOT CHANGE THE TRUTH, you HAVE NOT CHANGED THE TRUTH, and YOU NEVER WILL.

There is absolutely ZERO ROOM for you to have any power to do that. And the entire separation from God is ALL about your belief that it is POSSIBLE to do that. That you could somehow bring about a sin, or make guilt real, or produce a real sickness, or create death, or will against God, or defile Heaven, or make God convinced that you are not worthy, or make yourself unworthy, or whatever else. It is ALL A LIE. You do not have that power at all. Not even a tiny bit. Either you accept God's truth and ADMIT you are ABSOLUTELY INCAPABLE of changing it, or you will be in denial.

The problem is not whether you are spiritual enough or not. The problem is that you ARE spiritual enough and you keep pretending not to be.

Remember this is not a course in love because the meaning of love cannot be taught. It's a course in UNDOING THE BLOCKS TO THE AWARENESS OF LOVE'S PRESENCE, because the love is ALREADY THERE and you are simply not aware that it is already there. You have denied that it's there. Blocks to love make it seem like WHAT IS TRUE, is not true, or that it has gone away, or love is lost, or you have stopped being as God created you. That's their purpose. To deny the truth. They do not CHANGE the truth, they merely cover it up to PRETEND that it is not true already. Death is a form of denial, an attempt to claim that you do not have eternal life ALREADY. YOU DO. YOU ARE ALREADY IMMORTAL. You can't NOT be immortal!

So as Jesus says, the course is not about establishing love, or making you more spiritual, or necessarily about waking up or having to do anything at all. It is about a RECOGNITION of the ENLIGHTENED SELF that YOU ALREADY ARE, RIGHT NOW, which is merely hiding behind walls and clouds of FAKE SHIT, which you tried to use to cover up the EXISTING TRUTH, which God has already PERMANENTLY established. The course is ONLY about undoing your beliefs that you aren't ALREADY IMMORTAL, or ALREADY INNOCENT, or ALREADY WITH GOD, or ALREADY A PERFECTLY DIVINE SOUL.

So let's say this. Right now, accept that you are still as God created you, a perfect soul. You are in heaven NOW. You are already DONE with any supposed "ego goal" of trying to GET THERE. You are already FINISHED with making yourself innocent. You are already COMPLETE in the establishing of your perfection in the eyes of God. God has not changed his mind about you. He still sees you as perfect because HE IS CONSTANTLY EXTENDING YOU as perfect. You did not create yourself, and therefore you have NO SAY in changing what God has created. You have NO ABILITY WHATSOEVER to overthrow God's will by undoing OR CHANGING his creation in any way, and YOU HAVE NOT. You're done already. Already perfect. Already complete. Already whole. Already happy. Already loved. Already innocent. Already safe. Already divine.

Everything else is what needs to be let go. All the beliefs about this not being true. All the attempts to make out that you are mortal or can suffer or be sick or die. It's bullshit. You who ARE IMMORTAL ALREADY cannot ever die or even suffer a tiny bit. You are permanent. All of this pretending that things have gone wrong, it has to go. All of this pretending that you can be dead, it has to go. All of this disbelief or rather, UNWILLINGNESS to accept, allow, welcome or acknowledge, THE TRUTH, which already is perfectly established, has to go. All of this desire to NOT ACCEPT the atonement - the truth - has to go. All reluctance, unwillingness, denial, rejection, choosing away from, unconsciousness, hiding, secret sins and hates, it all has to go. Because it is never true and cannot ever exist.

And in fact, this entire world, does not exist. It has not been created. It has not happened. If it's not part of heaven, it does not exist, is not real, and has not been created. The entire history of human civilization is a bullshit lie. This world holds NOTHING that you want. Your heart is with God, NOW. This world that we "made" was NOT really made, it is not even here, it does not exist at all, and NOTHING IS HAPPENING. Nor has anything happened. No-one has ever died, there has never been a real war, all sickness is bullshit, death is imaginary, YOU CAN'T STOP BEING IMMORTAL.

So we need to learn, basically, since enlightenment is a recognition and not a change, to recognize and acknowledge what ALREADY IS TRUE, what God has ALREADY ESTABLISHED, and give thanks for the fact that WE ARE ALREADY SAVED and are ALREADY IN HEAVEN, NOW. All the other ego pursuits, the spiritual path, processes, techniques... unless they UNDO and REMOVE the fake lies that the truth is not already true, it is ego. Unless it moves you INWARD back closer to WHAT YOU ALREADY ARE, it is ego. Unless it makes you aware that you are ALREADY PERFECT and therefore do not need to SEEK, it is ego. Unless it produces GRATITUDE for what God has already given, it is ego.

You are already done making yourself perfect. God accomplished that already. It's not your job. It's not what the course is for at all. The only purpose of the course is to help you to let go of what is FALSE, and merely ACKNOWLEDGE what is ALREADY TRUE. You're sitting in heaven right now, happy as heck, totally overjoyed and celebrating that nothing can ever go wrong, and completely in love with God. Everything else... bullshit.

Some quotes:

"God and the Souls He created are completely dependent on each other. The creation of the Soul has already been perfectly accomplished... He created them perfectly. He gave them His peace so they could not be shaken and would be unable to be deceived."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him. The next point, too, has already been made, but bears repetition here. The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever."

"Be vigilant only for God and His Kingdom. 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.The ego speaks against His creation and therefore does engender doubt."

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God."

"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."

CLAIM YOUR INHERITANCE! IT IS ALREADY YOURS!

What is more important?

To spend huge amounts of time studying and analyzing sickness to try to describe all the ways that it is behaving and all the possible causes and all the remedies that may or may not work, only to likely just apply a bandaid that barely conceals the damage and doesn't really improve the situation long-term...

or

To fricking heal the problem once and for all in its entirety right NOW?

How about being DONE with sickness instead of dwelling on it? How about an immediate healing miracle which SOLVES the problem without fuss of fanfare and without the need to constantly dwell on or tolerate or suffer from all the justifications for why this sickness has to remain?

God has the power to heal anything. And provision has been made for how we can accomplish this healing by working with Holy Spirit. And Holy Spirit can and will heal anything in an instant.

The ego loves for us to lament on how long a sickness has been around, for how long we've had to suffer with it, all the reasons why it can't be cured, all the explanation for what is happening, the laundry list of artificial causes, the big long story about how all of this suffering wasn't asked for in victimhood, all the depth and detail of medical history that everyone loves to dwell on etc.

The ego also loves the fact that the ego has made sure there are no real 'cures' in its world of suffering. The cure would be the undoing of the ego, the restoration of God's will and the complete healing and wholeness brought back into demonstration. The ego will not allude to or align with that. It will instead come up with ways to KEEP the suffering, maintain the sickness, not address the real problem, avoid cause (God), and patch it up with archaic, bizarre, blind 'medical treatments' which may or may not help, and often can have fatal side effects.

The ego would trade one sickness for another, it would have you accept a new problem as an alternative to the one you had, wagering that if you do so you will be better off. It has no cures. It has no hope for your continuation of life. It wants you dead.

God has another answer. God has miracles. God can heal. And God is not interested in any illusions that talk about how serious or difficult or long-lasting or incurable a sickness is. God simply heals, completely, now. God is permanent health. Divine health. And we are actually entitled to experience and demonstrate divine health 'in the body' in this world even if it's an ego illusory world. We CAN bring divine healing to our own body and that of others, here in this crazy dream, even if that is not the ultimate goal of awakening. God doesn't want us to suffer.

The only reason we have stupid contracts of suffering and 'scripts' in which we're supposed to learn certain lessons, is because we want to take our sweet time in suffering and going through experiences in order to slowly accept God. But God is available for complete acceptance right now. And God wants to heal completely right now. And God has made it possible, through the Holy Spirit, to heal all sickness right now, regardless of whether people are even anywhere remotely ready to wake up yet and regardless of whether they are riddled with sin.

God just wants to love. We're the ones who think we're supposed to suffer with valid reasons to do so. And we're quite capable of being extenders of God's healing power, even while we're in this strange world.

Isn't it time we stopped focusing on sickness and all the reasons for it and all the explanations of it and all the ways to attack it that don't really heal, and to instead spend at least as much time focusing on learning how to work with God to permanently erase this problem forever? What do you want? A life of torment or a life or joy and gratitude?

Doctors, dentists, hospitals, clinics, nurses, pharmacies, they're all substitutes for a disconnection from God and an unawareness of His divine intervention. We are severely out of touch with the Holy Spirit. We are severely disempowered. We need to get plugged back into the source of LIFE!

Heaven = "Logical AND" e.g.

"I have everything, AND so do you"

"God is made of love, AND so am I"

Ego World = "Logical Exclusive OR"

In ego, no two objects share anything. You can say something like:

(ObjectA but NOT ObjectB) OR (ObjectB but NOT ObjectA)

The ego combines negation "NOT" in order to exclude, and combines it with selection between two things "OR", which doesn't allow for "BOTH", producing an "exclusive OR" - a fundamental state of inequality and difference.

When one thing is one way, it MUST be different to another thing, therefore the other thing is not the same. e.g.

"An apple is not an orange"

"Its either an apple or an orange but not both"

"I have the apple, therefore you do not"

This entire universe and all the "laws" within it are based on this ego logic of "exclusion".

The entirety of Heaven is based on the simple logic of "inclusion", which is the logical "AND" operation.

ACIM asks us to learn to "think like God": "To think like God is to share His certainty of what you are. And to CREATE like Him is to share the perfect love He shares with YOU. To this the Holy Spirit leads you, that your joy may be complete because the Kingdom of God is whole."

Wholeness, and sharing, entail "AND". We BOTH have everything. Me AND you. When it stops being AND and goes into "either or but not both", you're going into ego.

It should be obvious that Heaven is all about "inclusiveness" and Earth/this universe we made is all about "exclusiveness". That is why "Heaven and Earth are opposites in every way."

God has created you as an infinite, immortal soul, who is perfectly complete and lacking nothing.

There is nothing that you need to add to yourself to improve yourself or to make yourself in any way better than God created.

You are lacking nothing at all. You are perfect.

God created you as a beautiful soul filled with love and joy and perfectly creative. Fully equipped to exist in Heaven and to extend love forever. You need nothing else.

When Jesus says "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else." he is talking about the fact that He is simply being ONLY the Self that God created. He has not added anything or taken anything away. He is being his normal, natural God-created self.

This perfect self is hiding underneath every idea of imperfection, lack, separation, limitation and death. God already has created you with perfection, to be perfect, forever. You are flawless.

And since you are created from creativity and from love, you are endowed with creativity and love. You are permanently miraculous. There is nothing that you cannot create with the power of the mind, in accordance with God's will, to increase the Kingdom.

Somewhere inside you, you know this. There is a place in which your soul is already within you, perfectly holy, undefiled, unchanged, unaffected, perfectly sane, happy and at peace. It's already there. God creates only permanent creations which cannot change.

Your soul is divine, forever. "Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

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

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

In order to awaken spiritually, we have to take total responsibility for everything we experience. This is based on the core truth that we are immortal beings, and being immortal means nothing outside of you is responsible or capable of causing you. You have total freedom and you hold the reins of destiny. You are only ever an effect of God, and nothing else.

This means that we cannot be attacked, hurt, destroyed, made sick, upset, suffer, be killed off, or altered in any way. Literally there is nothing in the entire universe which can do anything to us whatsoever.

"He looks on what he chooses to see. No more and no less. The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world."

Because of this, we have to learn to regard the whole world as being not responsible for anything we are experiencing. The world cannot have hurt us, it cannot have attacked, it cannot be guilty or sinful, and it certainly cannot end our eternal life.

In any way that we find ourselves believing that something in the world is responsible for how we feel, what we experience, what happens, or any notion of victimhood, we are lost in a state of irresponsibility. This means we are disowning our divine responsibility to be immortal and are pretending that it's someone else's job to own the power.

Being irresponsible means giving your power away to someone or something else other than yourself, so that you can play the role of being powerless, which means portraying yourself as a victim. The victim role includes all forms of belief in being attacked, hurt, damaged, made to be sick or dead, any upset, any emotional reaction, and any belief in being unworthy of absolute permanence.

Jesus is telling us that our true nature is to be a completely powerful, causal, purely creative being, who exercises the will and power of God to extend and create life. There is no room in this role for the slightest measure of powerlessness or victimhood. It is entirely a position of OUTPUT, of radiance shining outward, of extension without holding back. This outward expression is so strong, it is the strength of the spirit and it makes you utterly invulnerable. It shines outward with such power that nothing can enter to harm you.

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

In victimhood, or false perception, we reverse the cause and effect and believe we are at the effect of something external, that we are taking INPUT from the world. This is entirely backwards and false. It is a delusion to believe it, and it is nothing more than a state of insanity and irresponsibility. It means you are not owning your power, and instead are giving it away to the world to try to make yourself a victim. If the world can do anything to you at all, you can be destroyed against God's will, which is impossible.

"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."

Our true functioning is deliberate and powerful. You look out from a state of innocence and holiness, making absolutely no attack (sin) against the world, knowing that it is nothing but your dream, coming from your mind, and is exactly how you want it. Nothing happens without you choosing it to happen, nothing happens against your will, and everything you decide is completely intentional with guaranteed effects. You are the dreamer of the dream, and you cannot hold it accountable for what you have caused it to do.

"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."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

"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."

"My self is ruler of the universe." This is not a grandiose ego claim or a fantasy. You have power over the whole world, capable of surmounting, reversing and undoing death, of breaking all the laws of physics and defying its whole reality.

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it."

Consider for a moment the idea that the world is not responsible for anything you feel. It has done nothing to you. You are not frightened by spiders down the side of the furniture. You are not upset about elections. You are not grieving the loss of an external body. You are not damaged by food or weather. You are not upset about groups of judgemental people. Nothing whatsoever in the world has any power or causation over you whatsoever.

You cannot be hurt by anything in the world because you are not in the world. You are in heaven in God as immortal spirit. You are not a body. The world is your dream which you are putting there on purpose, and it does not exist without your wanting it. You are not upset for any reason that you think. No-one in the world has ever done anything to cause anything you are feeling or experiencing. Your upsets have nothing to do with anyone and solely to do with what you are doing to yourself. This is the secret of salvation.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

"It can be but myself that I crucify."

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

"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."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"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 soon as you begin to believe the world is the cause of you in any way, you are being a victim. You are disowning your power of decision and causation, are projecting it out and accusing something else of causing you. This requires a blocking of access to your power, which makes you feel powerless and weak and afraid as the world looms over you. But it is your own power looming over itself. You have to take back that power.

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

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering."

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave 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." "I am in danger nowhere in the world."

Ultimately our aim of reaching true perception and moving beyond the world entails a complete ownership of who and what we are, a complete identification as Christ, a total relinquishment of every form of victimhood, a total letting go of all attempts to suffer. This includes letting go of all notions of being upset by the world, attacked, threatened, in danger, made to be sick or unhappy, or made to die. This includes ceasing to believe in death and dying and destruction and murder.

The world is not responsible for ANYTHING you are experiencing. No-one is guilty. Nothing is to blame. You're doing this all to yourself and you can stop whenever you like. Whatever you're experiencing you have chosen and you want. Your prayers are constantly being answered and you are always receiving what your giving is asking for. You can end this game of death and victimhood at any time and go home to God. "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."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father. Nothing you can do can change Eternal Love. Forget your dreams of sin and guilt, and come with me instead to share the resurrection of God's Son. And bring with you all those whom He has sent to you to care for as I care for you."

"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."

If you do not choose to die you will never die, and if you do choose to die it will be fake. There is no death, the son of God is free.

"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."

If you sin or do something wrong, there is no way you're going to be completely free of it UNTIL you are willing to recognize the atonement principle.

You could've done something many years ago or even when you were a child, which you believed was a big mistake. Maybe you were punished for it. Maybe you felt guilty about it. Maybe you hurt someone or broke something or committed a crime.

What you will then do, as an act of TRYING to heal, is to explain to yourself in various ways "why it was ok". Maybe it was because the person did something to you in a past life. Maybe it was karma. Maybe it was just an accident. Maybe you didn't really mean it. Maybe you didn't know what you were doing because you were too young. Maybe you wouldn't do it again. Maybe you were young and naive. Whatever. These are justifications which do not HEAL you.

None of these will FREE YOU from having that event stuck in your mind, remaining not quite healed.

If you in any way believe that you ACTUALLY DID IT, then you stand accused of sin.

If you believe the events actually DID HAPPEN, then you stand accused of sin.

If you believe you did cause and produce REAL CONSEQUENCES IN REALITY, then you stand accused of sin.

That alone is enough to KEEP the sin real somewhere in your mind, leaving you always feeling guilty and always unable to truly LET IT GO no matter how hard you try.

The only thing which will SET YOU FREE is the truth. The truth is the atonement. The atonement, which is also an act of complete forgiveness, looks upon you and RECOGNIZES that what you THINK you did, was not happening in reality, it was entirely an illusion, nothing real has been threatened, and nothing unreal exists.

That means you have to undo all of your belief in fear that arose from the event (fear of being punished for it), all guilt from the event (guilty because you did it and don't deserve forgiveness), all sin from the event (that it happened at all and you did attack in reality)... AND THEN you will be WILLING and ABLE to ACCEPT that you actually DID NOT SIN. There is no real sin.

Acceptance of atonement is a state of mind where you actually can SEE and recognize illusions for what they are. You don't BELIEVE in them. You don't fall for their tricks. You know and what you thought you did, did not really occur in reality, nothing real has been hurt and your innocence therefore has not been REALLY challenged.

Until you can see that your innocence has not changed whatsoever in God's eyes, because whatever you "did" DID NOT HAPPEN in reality, but only in A DREAM, only then will you LET YOURSELF OFF THE HOOK and forgive yourself for what you THINK you did.

When you accept this, you will finally feel the RELIEF that you have been longing for all these years. You will finally be WILLING to let go, because you will be WILLING to ACCEPT that you DESERVE to be forgiven - since you did not really do anything. Being able to see this and accept it is extremely, profoundly freeing and healing. FINALLY you can let go of what you think you did wrong, because you did not really do it.

The atonement would seem to be complete nonsense to people who believe the world is real or that sins really happen or that people really get hurt or that consequences are real. It can make no sense to anyone who thinks that EVENTS are really happening in the world. Just the mere act of something occurring in this world IS SIN, if it is real. Even picking your nose inside a dream is an idea of sin. Even kissing someone on the cheek is an idea of sin. Anything you DO in a DREAM, where that dream is entirely an IDEA OF WHAT SIN IS LIKE (the body is an idea of sin made real and projected outward), is a sin.

The atonement LITERALLY means, that what you think you DID DO, whatever event you think occurred, it was only ever in a DREAM, not in reality. This entire world is a dream. This whole universe is a dream. It is not really happening in reality and it is NOT REALITY. So it is literally POSSIBLE to UNDO THE PAST ENTIRELY, which dream-believers will say is impossible, because NOTHING HAPPENED. It was not reality in which it happened, it did not happen to anything real, and nothing real came from it.

This whole physical universe hasn't happened.

To recognize this is the atonement. To finally realize, wait a minute, this is all just a huge dream we're having. It's not real. It's not happening at all. Nothing I thought happened in it was real. It was all fake. The sin was fake, the effects were fake, the deaths were fake, nothing was real. It was just a nightmare.

"Forgiveness... sees there was no sin, and in that view, are all your sins forgiven."

Finally then when you can accept atonement on an issue, it really does mean setting yourself FREE, the ONLY WAY to be free, and that is truly healing. You can be 100% free of your sin and guilt FOREVER. Thank God for that!

God, Who encompasses all being, created BEINGS (plural) who have everything INDIVIDUALLY, but who want to share it to increase THEIR (plural) joy.

Nothing real can be increased except by sharing. (this is very key, God HAD to share ie create in order to increase, because he was already complete, and it was HIS JOY to create).

That is why God created you (talking about you as ONE INDIVIDUAL). Divine Abstraction takes joy in sharing (notice that sharing means GIVING by creating). That is what creation means.

"How," "what" and "to whom" are IRRELEVANT, because real creation gives everything, since it can create only like itself. (God creates in his total likeness!)

Remember that in the Kingdom there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being the mind gives everything always."

This is from Chapter 4, the illusions of the ego: creation and communication.

It's a good day not to try to be anything. How about we spend time acknowledging what is already true.

It is so easy to get into the mindset of the ego which says something is missing or lacking and that you need to go 'do' something in order to fix it. We can spend most of our time 'trying' to find answers and seeking for salvation.

What ACIM is telling us is that all truth is already established by God, it is already present, you are already perfect, and everything else is a lie. So with that information at hand, what we should really be focussing on is removing the blocks that keep us from being aware of WHAT ALREADY IS, rather than looking at it as having to go 'add' stuff that seems to be missing.

The ego trick is to assume that when stuff is missing, it's because it is really not there, and therefore you need to look SOMEWHERE ELSE to find it. It's kind of like a case of hide-and-seek. The ego throws a blanket of illusions over your car keys so that when you go and you look at where you think you left them, instead of seeing the car keys there's this 'cloaking device' in the way which distorts your vision and prevents you from seeing what is there. So you think, hmm, my car keys are not where I left them they must be somewhere else. And off you go hunting for them, looking for them everywhere except where they are. The problem is not that the keys are actually missing, the problem is they they are in plain sight but they are hidden behind some blockages/deceptions.

Its the same with you. Everything that you already are, as created by God, is already perfect and whole and missing nothing, except that it is covered up by a cloaking device which disguises your perception from being able to SEE it. So that gives you the impression that it's not there, and that you are not spiritual enough yet, or not good enough, or not loveable enough, and that all this love isn't true of you, so then you go off looking for it somewhere else. Well guess what happens when you go looking for something somewhere else - everywhere else - except where the thing is, because it's just hidden? YOU DO NOT FIND IT.

So, let's stop looking for shit where it does not exist. Instead, focus on acknowledging the pre-existing presence of what IS here right now. Let's UNCOVER what is hidden and covered up by ego lies, and let's ACKNOWLEDGE and RECOGNIZE what is true already. If you like, think of it as taking an inventory of what is already true and good about you, and the love that you already are.

You are already perfectly whole and loveabe and beautiful and innocent and holy.

You are already safe and invulnerable and immortal and protected.

You have already made huge strides in healing and awakening.

You have already learned a great deal that UN-does the bullshit distractions of the ego, for which you should be commended.

You are ALREADY as God created you and STILL as God created you and have not deviated from that.

All that you are is already present here right now even if it seems to be outside your present awareness. You are already an ascended master, you're just not aware of it.

You already deserve God's unconditional, unwavering love, all the time, and there is absolutely no outstanding debt that you owe or thing you have to do to make up for something you didn't do, to deserve or invoke that love. It's already being given fully.

All things you think you ever did have already been overlooked, forgiven and undone. It's just a matter of YOU now playing catch up. Holy Spirit already sees you with perfect forgiveness and has already forgiven you COMPLETELY.

You already deserve unconditional love and you are already recognized as innocent. All sins and crimes have been absolved and there has been no consequence from any of them that you need to be worried about 'cleaning up' or 'atoning for'.

You are already intimately connected to and joined with God in fullness and totality. There is nothing stopping you from being with God and there is no lack of anything in you that God put in place. You are complete and whole and finished and lacking nothing at all.

God already created you perfect and your perfection is already solidly in place and cannot be changed by you or anyone.

Nothing can happen to you, nothing has happened to you, nothing will happen to you, because God created you immortal and permanent and unchangeable. Everything else you think has happened that you think is not resolved IS already resolved because it HAS NOT HAPPENED.

All of your problems are solved. You do not have any REAL problems. Your imaginary problems are keeping you from being aware that you have no problems. Let them go.

Underneath your belief that you need to go seeking for what's missing outside of you, is everything inside of you which is everything you need and you aren't coming up short or empty handed. You already have 100% abundant supply and God sustains you all all through the day even if you didn't realize it.

You ARE forgiven, already, in light of the fact, and the truth, that you have not ever done anything wrong, in reality, there have been no real consequences, and nobody has been harmed. Your nightmare that you have done something terribly wrong or deserve punishment is complete bullshit and totally untrue. God already loves you and always will.

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.

If you're angry at someone, test to see if it's possible that you are angry at them at the same time as loving yourself. Can you actually feel both self-love (genuine) and anger at the same time?

You cannot.

The reason you cannot is because what you do to others, you do to yourself.

While you're being angry towards the other person, YOU are suffering from that anger as well. You might be feeling righteous or justified, but you're not feeling love. And then you might say, well, when I'm not angry at this person for a short while, I can go back to loving ME because I'm innocent, but they're not. And then you flip-flop back and forth. And you think that you love yourself but the unhealed grievance STAYS with you and lurks in the background, undermining your own self-love.

The ego's trick is to make you believe you can have an attitude about someone else that does not apply to you. That there is a separation between the two of you, and therefore they can be wrong while you are right, or your anger is about them and not about yourself. Mistake.

You can't love yourself fully if you don't love others, and vice versa. You can't pick and choose. Either you share love for the benefit of everyone or you are attacking everyone, and in both cases that includes you.

So try it next time you're mad at someone or upset by someone... see if you can feel complete self-love at the same time. You won't be able to, because you're being unloving to yourself.

If it were true that we are all separate, then you would have to have the ability to love and hate at the same time. That is clearly impossible to any rational person.

We are all one.

It's important to realize that the Kingdom of God cannot be even remotely encroached upon. What you are in reality, it utterly BEYOND the reach of the ego and death and all forms of attack. Nothing illusory can even TOUCH what you are.

You live in a realm of light which is far beyond the world of Earth and beyond anywhere that any kind of illusion can exist. It is so protected and so intensely powerful that not a single speck of unreality can even approach it.

This is why you are safe in God. This is why you cannot be hurt. This is why your immortality is permanent. This is why you cannot be changed or redefined or affected by the world. This is why nothing in this world has any power over you. This is why you are invulnerable and cannot be attacked, made to be sick, or die.

You are not of this world. You are from and in another world. You are heaven's child, safe in the womb of God, utterly unexposed to hell, and completely distant from every little scrap of attack this world can muster.

It's not even a matter of two distinct worlds butting up against each other, of or them making contact, overlapping, sharing something, or the "outside surface" of heaven being accessible to the realm of the ego. They do NOT meet. And they do NOT communicate. And illusion cannot even get close to the children of God.

"The Thought of God created you. It left you not, nor have you ever been apart from It an instant. It belongs to you. By It you live. It is your Source of life, holding you one with It, and everything is one with you because It left you not. The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love. Eternity and Everlasting Life shine in your mind because the Thought of God has left you not, and still abides with you."

With this in mind, you can get a sense of the fact that this whole world is like a surface "layer" or coating covering over reality, like an old crust, which has broken away and is floating by itself. And you are deeper than this. Your are within and beyond and above.

You are not made of anything of this world. No part of the physical body is your self, or yours, nor does it make contact with what you are. Not one single physical object has ever touched your soul. Not one sexual act or hug or high-five or physical smile has ever in fact influenced your spirit in any way.

What you are cannot be changed, cannot be affected, cannot be hurt, cannot be attacked, cannot be damaged, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be blown around by the wind, cannot suffer in any way, cannot lose anything, cannot have anything taken from it, and cannot be encroached upon.

What you are is utterly safe from the world, beyond the world, above the world. So far beyond that the world doesn't even really know your real self exists. So high in heaven that you are more than a trillion light years from the slightest particle of matter. And so embedded in God's heart that you not one beam of real light can ever fail to shine on you and keep you safe.

The reality of the Kingdom is a SAFE PLACE TO BE. And nothing can hurt you there. It is your sacred space. It is perfectly protected forever by God Himself, and identifying with BEING THERE NOW you are safe from all danger. You cannot be hurt because you are immortal, and this God guarantees forever. "It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed."

"Rather teach your own perfect immunity, which IS the Truth in you, and KNOW that it cannot be assailed. Do not protect it yourselves, or you have believed that it IS assailable." "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."

"Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators, but your Soul and YOUR Creator will ALWAYS be. Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it. Amen."

"The Father keeps what HE created safe. YOU cannot touch it with the false ideas you made, BECAUSE it was created not by you. Let not your foolish fancies frighten you. What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

"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. The world about him shines with love, because God placed him in Himself where pain is not, and love surrounds him without end or flaw. Disturbance of his peace can never be. In perfect sanity he looks on love, for it is all about him, and within him."

"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." "Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet."

"NOTHING can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication."

"Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are."

"Against our united strength, the ego CANNOT prevail."

"The ego cannot teach you anything as long as your will is free, because you WILL NOT LISTEN TO IT. It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"The ego cannot prevail against a totality which includes God, and any totality MUST include God. Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"The ego cannot hear the Holy Spirit"

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED. The ego CANNOT prevail against this, because it is an explicit statement that the EGO never occurred."

"The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for ANYTHING, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them."

"The union of the Sonship IS its protection. The ego cannot prevail against the Kingdom BECAUSE it is united, and the ego fades away and is undone in the presence of the attraction of the parts of the Sonship which hear the call of the Holy Spirit to be as One."

"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. Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols CANNOT know this star is there."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

"You CANNOT join with anything EXCEPT reality. God's glory and His Son's BELONG to you in truth. They HAVE no opposite, and nothing else CAN you bestow upon yourselves."

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"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."

"No fear can touch the Host Who cradles God in the time of Christ. For the Host is as holy as the Perfect Innocence that He protects, and Whose Power protects HIM."

"The ego attacks and the Holy Spirit does not respond."

"Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it."

"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."

"There is a Light in you Which cannot die, Whose Presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"Your peace is with me, Father. I am safe."

"I am safe today because there is no will but God's."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection. The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions. The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return. It is the duty of the released to release their brothers."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son."

"Today we will again give thanks for our identity in God. Our home is safe, protection guaranteed in all we do, power and strength available to us in all our undertakings. We can fail in nothing. Everything we touch takes on a shining light which blesses and which heals. At one with God and with the universe, we go our way rejoicing, with the thought that God Himself goes everywhere with us.

"Today we will not doubt His Love for us, nor question His protection and His care."

"Your defenses will not work, but you are not in danger. You have no need of them. Recognize this and they will disappear. And only then will you accept your real protection."

"How simply and how easily does time slip by for the teacher of God who has accepted His protection!"

"God is your safety in every circumstance. His Voice speaks for Him in all situations and in every aspect of all situations, telling you exactly what to do to call upon His strength and His protection. There are no exceptions because God has no exceptions."

"Concentrate on the holiness which they imply about you; on the unfailing companionship which is yours; on the complete protection that surrounds you."

"The protection of God then dawns upon it, assuring it that it is perfectly safe forever."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."

"The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"God's Son is as safe as his Father, for the Son knows his Father's protection and CANNOT fear. His Father's love holds him in perfect peace, and needing nothing, he asks for nothing."

"When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable."

"And we will feel salvation cover us with soft protection, and with peace so deep that no illusion can disturb our minds, nor offer proof to us that it is real."

"Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind which nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God."

"Now he has learned that no one frightens him, and nothing can endanger him. He has no enemies, and he is safe from all external things."

"NOTHING can come BETWEEN what God has joined, and what the Holy Spirit sees as one."

"Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid."

"Have faith in only this one thing, and it will be sufficient; God wills you be in Heaven, and nothing can keep you FROM it, or IT from you."

"Nothing can disturb me. My will is God's."

"Try to believe, however briefly, that nothing can harm you in any way."

"Nothing can destroy your peace of mind because God goes with you wherever you go."

"Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will? Nothing can reach you from BEYOND it, because being in God, YOU encompass everything."

"When you ask the Holy Spirit for what would hurt you, He CANNOT answer, because NOTHING can hurt you and SO YOU ARE ASKING FOR NOTHING."

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"Communication here is perfectly direct and perfectly united. It is totally without strain, because nothing discordant EVER enters. That is why it IS the Kingdom of God. It belongs to Him and is therefore LIKE Him. That IS its reality, and nothing CAN assail it."

"Nothing can hurt you, unless you give it the power to do so."

"NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son"

"The truly helpful are invulnerable, because they are NOT protecting their egos, so that nothing CAN hurt them."

"You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him."

"NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure."

"In my defenselessness my safety lies."

"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."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"He is my home, wherein I live and move; the Spirit Which directs my actions, offers me Its Thoughts, and guarantees my safety from all pain."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering."

"Safety is the COMPLETE RELINQUISHMENT OF ATTACK. No compromise is possible in this."

"Here is your home, and here your safety is. Here is your peace, and here there is no fear. Here is salvation. Here is rest at last."

"It is an ark of safety, resting on God's promise, that His Son is safe forever in Himself. What gap can interpose itself between the safety of this shelter and its Source?"

"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?"

"For they can NOT attack, and they REJOICE that this is so, seeing their safety in this happy fact."

"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." "But you cannot be safe FROM truth, but only IN it. Reality is the ONLY safety."

"You will be free of the insane belief that to attack a brother saves yourself. And you will understand his safety is your own, and in his healing you are healed."

"Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself."

"The innocent see safety, and the pure see God within His Son, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."

"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. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected. "

"It is not danger that comes when defenses are laid down. It is safety. It is peace. It is joy. And it is God."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world?"

"How better could your OWN mistakes be brought to truth than by your willingness to bring the light of Heaven with you, as you walk BEYOND the world of darkness into light?"

"The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe."

"You will not remember change and shift in Heaven."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs."

"My Father placed me safe in Heaven, watching over me. "

"Those who offer peace to everyone have found a home in Heaven the world can NOT destroy."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin. And as he is in Heaven, so MUST he be eternally and everywhere."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE."

"Neither justice nor injustice exists in Heaven, for error is impossible and correction meaningless."

"For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation?"

"In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source."

"There is no change in Heaven, because THERE IS NO CHANGE IN GOD."

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough NOT to return to earth. For this relationship HAS Heaven's holiness."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality."

Recently I had a doctor telling me that death was going to be the only way forward. Dr Death, death's representative, told me that my wife had only a 1% chance of living and that I should end her life.

But what I've been finding again is that something presented by one person isn't actually specific to that person, but instead is symbolic of a larger issue. He was merely a spokesperson for the predictions of the world, based on the world's laws and its consequences.

I generalized the learning and realized that this is part of the whole system of spacetime. The whole system generally says that when things reach a certain state, there is no turning back. That certain things are irreversible, as the world sees it.

But what the world doesn't recognize or account for are forces beyond spacetime that can break the world's laws and accomplish the impossible. It's the world at large that says death is inevitable, that there is no way out, no hope, and no possibility of life.

At some point we have to confront this and decide whether to accept it. To listen to the voice for death and decide whether there is another voice more worthy of trust. A voice which speaks for life and healing and resurrection. We have to look at whether there is an a real alternative, offered from beyond the world. Only if there is an alternative of life and healing do we even have a choice of any kind at all. If death is the automatic outcome and the only possibility, then really we are not even in a position to choose.

The only real choice is between life and death. And then we have to trust the option of life and listen to it and do its work. If life is possible, then the world is a lie. If life is possible, then miracles are real and resurrection is inevitable.

I was faced with death telling me that life was impossible, and that this was the only reality. But this messenger of death was completely oblivious to a real alternative. He had no awareness of another world and gave no support in its favor. And so the choice became clear, whether to defy his very strong death-worship and turn away from death's inevitability.

Choosing to side against death and toward life has produced a great clarifying and commitment to working more closely with the Holy Spirit, increasing my faith in God, categorizing all worldly signals as false opinion and untruth, opening up to greater trust in higher powers, and being more whole-heartedly invested in resurrection as the only goal that makes sense.

Now I am much clearer that I truly support life and healing and the reversal of sickness and death. A support of setting people free from the imprisonment of death and of the world's dire outlook. And clearly this work has only just begun, and there is great need and much work to do.

Resurrection is not just an option, it's the only sane direction to take. So now I thank these mistaken people and these impossible scenarios for playing the role of providing a contrast, of speaking in support of death, so that I could more firmly commit to being a true supporter and restorer of life, for my own resurrection as well as that of others.

The Holy Spirit, symbol of life, has become profoundly clearer in my mind and functioning, siding with and trusting him more than ever before. And now as I see that the Holy Spirit's only goal is the COMPLETE RESURRECTION of everyone through healing, my mission and purpose has been clarified as well. I now share his goal and will work towards it, away from death and towards eternal life. And the miracles will now flow.

"Learn now, WITHOUT despair, there is no hope of answers in the world."

"Seek not another signpost in the world which seems to point to still another road. No longer look for hope where there is none."

"For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the PURPOSE of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp."

"For from this lowest point will learning lead to heights of happiness, in which you see the PURPOSE of the lesson shining clear, and perfectly within your learning grasp."

"The great ***RELEASE of power*** must begin with learning where it really HAS a use."

"The learning that the world can offer but ONE choice, no matter what its form may be, is the beginning of acceptance that there is a REAL alternative instead."

"There IS a choice which you have power to make, when you have seen the real alternatives."

"All roads that lead AWAY from what you are will lead you to confusion and despair."

"For God IS merciful, and did not let HIS Son abandon Him. For what He is be thankful, for in that is YOUR escape from madness and from death. Nowhere but where He is can YOU be found. There IS no path that does not lead to Him."

"The Holy Spirit is described throughout the course as giving us the answer to the separation and bringing the plan of the Atonement to us, establishing our particular part in it and showing us exactly what it is. He has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out this plan since he was the first to complete his own part perfectly. All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"He offers thanks to you as well as him for you arose with him when he began to save the world."

There are two distinct aspects to creation. One is God's own Self which is complete, the other is God's creation or the exending/projecting outward of God. This extension is referred to as Christ or the Sonship or Kingdom.

Now, we're told that it is the Son who is dreaming, not God. We're also told that God does not believe in or acknowledge the dream, otherwise God would have become insane and there'd be no God to go back to. How is this possible?

Technically speaking, if everything is one and there is only God, then God is responsible for the dreaming of the cocacola delivery truck which just drove past my window. And he is responsible for babies seeming to die. And he's responsible for war. Can God conceive of war, even in a dream?

There's a bit of a problem there, because the course says "never was love in the world", ie, God did not "enter into" the dream. Jesus is also quite clear that while the dream never truly happened in terms of reality, the IDEA of it happening did happen. Can God have an idea of being separate? Is he even capable of that? What would happen if he were capable of that? Who is going to get God OUT of the dreaming state and wake Him up, if God Himself is asleep?

This is why God created the Holy Spirit to "do his dirty work" so to speak. To awaken His son from sleep, cooperatively.

What this all boils down to is this. If God is not part of the dream or dreaming, there ABSOLUTELY MUST be some kind of "distinction" or "separation" between what is God and what is the Son. The Son's mistaken use of will does not affect the father. The son can't cause the father. So that means the Son effectively has free will. COMPLETELY FREE will. It means if the Son chooses to try to will against God, although it in truth impossible, He can still imagine it happening, without God's "approval" so to speak.

Jesus describes mind (of souls) as having two potential functions. One is creation - which uses mind as a medium to Create along the same lines as God, AND He uses the term "co-create" several times. The other is the POTENTIAL of mind to PROJECT, which means it actually has the freedom to ELECT whether or not it will will with God or not. He even says that the fallen angels are "free to establish their kingdom wherever they choose". ie God isn't going to force them to comply with His will anytime soon.

This is ALSO why, the curriculum is mandatory and REQUIRED, BUT... you can elect WHEN to take it. You can postpone it, ignore it, choose away from it, and decide not to learn it right now. How is that possible, if God's will is somehow forcing you to act a certain way or make certain choices? And how is it possible that "love does not enter where it is not welcome", meaning that if YOU elect to do so, you are able to make love not welcome?

Basically, long story short, God does not WILL that there be death, God does not will suffering, God does not will war or conflict, God does not even will any kind of dream. In fact God wills that you WAKE UP from dreaming, and that's why He created the Holy Spirit to facilitate that. And this is why you also have to give your WILLINGNESS - your little willingness - in order to CO-OPERATE with God's Will for you.

There absolutely definitely IS a distinction between the freedom of God's will, and the freedom of your own will. Will does not coerce or force you. While you are an effect of God, you are not his slave. You are not created to "have to" do anything you do not choose to do.

The ONLY WAY that God cannot be the one who dreams, is by having given you ABSOLUTELY TOTALLY FREE WILL. As in... practically the same thing as saying you are SEPARATE. Absolute complete freedom. If you did not have absolute total autonomous freedom to decide for yourself, dreaming would be impossible and if dreaming were happening God would die.

This is why A Course in Miracles is not well represented by thinking of it as a teaching of conceptual "oneness" ie singularity, or as a teaching of "non-duality". Non-duality completely ignores the FREEDOM with which God creates, and the total freedom He GIVES to his creations. As the course says itself

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer."

"The mind can be right or wrong, depending on the voice to which it listens. "

"Souls were given their own true authorship, and men preferred to remain anonymous when they chose to separate themselves FROM their Author."

"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."

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

As usual, the ego has a version of whatever the Holy Spirit has, seeking to replace it and obscure it.

It has its own version of healing, its own version of forgiveness, its own version of helpfulness, its own version of service, its own version of happiness, its own version of love, its own version of life.

If you are involved with the ego's version of any of these things, then you have lessons to learn and a clarity to attain.

The ego has a version of being helpful which involves destroying others through service.

The ego has a version of love which involves trying to take away from others what you want them to do for you.

The ego has a version of happiness which entails complete dependency on the random whim of chaos.

The ego has a version of healing based on attack and sacrifice and making sickness more real.

The ego has a version of service based on self-sacrifice and disownership of true responsibility.

In every way the ago has formed a new version of everything, even with its own version of God.

The ego's version of God is a parent who dictates and condemns and wills that you be dead. Fun.

Punishment is never called for. Ever. It is a sign of unforgiveness.

ALL mistakes are forgivable.

This doesn't mean you can use this to justify harm, because to *experience* innocence prevents you from being harmful. You don't therefore abstain from harm just because its intellectually correct, but because the innocent CANNOT sin.

All mistakes are forgivable. Punishment for mistakes is completely counter-productive. It is never warranted or justified, and leads only to adding abuse, which adds darkness to darkness, adds pain to pain, and reinforces a sense of being 'bad' which WILL express in future as more 'bad behavior'.

ONLY healing can be an appropriate response to mistakes. Mistakes and the ability to make them must be healed, with love, to be undone. Otherwise, regardless of the intentions to help, to coerce, to fix, to correct, or whatever, all of those intentions are flawed and all of them include reinforcing and making worse whatever the need for the mistake was.

Punishment harms, it doesn't heal. How can something harmful in any way bring about a more HEALED person? It has NO power to correct anything truly. It is a complete waste of time.

Love is the only response in all situations.

What if when you become healed, the whole world is transformed in some way and is a little lighter?

This may sound radical, but it does appear to be supported in the course in various ways.

Jesus speaks of how when you are healed, others cannot be omitted from your healing.

Jesus speaks of how if you change your mind the WHOLE world must change. This isn't because its ONLY your world, but because you are joined with everyone.

Jesus speaks of how if you join minds with another person and deny/reject their denial of health, they will become healed, and cannot stay sick unless you support their belief.

Jesus also says that you are your brother's keeper. Meaning that HIS condition is YOUR responsibility.

How is this possible? It seems it is only possible if somehow, you and other people are actually connected together and SHARE something. Some part of your self is their self and vice versa. Meaning that if something applies to you, it also applies to them.

In the biggest picture this is the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of others. And this rule is God's law which is always in effect everywhere on all levels at all times, even if we deny it.

Let's frame it this way. Let's say there is a kind of collective consciousness. There's this vast sea of being, in which there are concentrations of self, sufficiently organized as to be "individuals", yet intimately joined to the tapestry of everyone else's existence. Sort of like we're all one big joined entity with multiple heads. A bit like siamese twins.

This is actually a vague and not accurate enough description but just for analogy's sake... this would mean that if someone chooses to rise up, they tend to "drag" others up with them. If someone opens their mind to truth, there is sort of a ripple effect that propagates to ALL others.

What that must mean is, any work you to do heal or love yourself, MUST overflow and affect others.

Jesus similarly talks about how you are the light of the world.

Jesus also talks about how it only takes ONE teacher of God to save the world.

Jesus also talks about how the light into your mind can shine into another mind and enlighten it.

Given the fact that then that there is a SHARING component to all of us, there is some part of us that is ONE, joined, connected, it becomes not only impossible to do anything truly in isolation, but also anything you do DOES affect everyone else.

This would be reflected in statements like "There are no private thoughts" for example.

Now, this might sound radical. In fact it will. But this leads to the conclusion that its possible for you to HEAL ANOTHER PERSON, if you will apply an appropriate attitude. Certainly the person still has free will and can choose to resist, to stay anchored down in the darkness. But you can at the very least offer love.

Love has such healing power it can dislodge even the resistance to truth in another. As Jesus says, "the task of the miracle worker is to deny the denial of truth." And also that there is not really any point in miracles at all unless they are able to affect someone who NEEDS healing, and thus is in a state of resistance. Healing of the person would not be possible otherwise.

For this to be "ok", there must be some aspect of another person that IS LITERALLY YOU. Or that is so intimately shared with you as to be essentially your self. If you love someone "against their will", it can still overthrow their unloving nature and heal them, to the degree it can be accepted.

What's radical is, this means that the condition of the body of another person, is not entirely "up to them". You have an influence as well. For example "Forgiveness is not complete unless it has brought a healing to both your brother and yourself." "He is healed along with you." "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver" etc.

There is something about miracles that is based on sharing, and on returning to the state where you SHARE everything with others. That return to sharing is "joining". In a shared state, your brother's health is yours. In fact "YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health."

Jesus even says that when YOU heal your mind and body and it now represents and symbolizes the absence of attack, the presence of innocence and love etc, the state of YOUR healing AFFECTS your brother, exonerates him, lifts sin from his mind, heals him, and thus heals HIS body as well.

At the level of the ego and the physical world, the ego suggests that there is total separation between you and others due to bodies. And thus changes in you have NO effect on anyone. That your mind can change is perceptions of the world WITHOUT changing the world. This is not what Jesus says is possible, because its not true that there is absolute separation. Even the world's separation is slightly joined, as proven by quantum entanglement and the holographic universe theory etc. Even duality is not quite fully duality.

This means that we ARE all ALWAYS at least slightly joined. We are always part of the experience of others. And this reflects our status as co-creators. So if someone has a sickness, this means there IS something I can do about it, because their sickness is not ENTIRELY their own sickness. Moreso, sickness arises from the belief in separation BETWEEN brothers, and is a two-sided sword which attempts to accuse both.

The sense of separation that it is based on cannot be sustained if I choose to acknowledge that we are JOINED and SHARING. If I do not AGREE to the separation-based sickness, and do not uphold my end of keeping the division between us maintained, it cannot be there and the person must be healed.

If I float my mind to a high level of love and light, I also become far more powerful in my ability to "affect" others. Or rather, to extend and share my healed state and the healing agent of spirit WITH the other person, lifting them up also. This is how it becomes possible to raise the dead for example, to GIVE life to others that they seem to lack, because you have it. This is only possible if we truly are joined together in some way, whereby a person fundamentally has "access" to the being and mind of another.

Total unconditional absolute sharing is the natural state of the Kingdom of God, which all of His children (as brothers) share forever. It is completely natural and real. "One mind is all minds, one brother is all brothers, such is the truth." While I have a self, a soul, it is STILL true that I am "one with" all other brothers, and their souls are joined to mine in such intimacy that we literally are FUSED together in some way. And that fused sharing "network" between us is what Jesus calls the Christ Mind.

So truly, we are not separate people. We are in fact totally the opposite. And that means that we can't consider ourselves to be totally incapable of healing others. Whatever we do, however we focus, whatever we feel, it's going to influence everyone in the universe. This is how holographic reality works. Each individual is a whole in and of themselves but shares the whole with all the rest. I am you and you are me and we are brothers eternally.

It then isn't a question of whether you can heal another person or by what mechanism this happens. It's more a fact that you can't AVOID influencing them. You share everything. If you have a bad day you drag everyone down. If you have a good day you are the light of the world and lift everyone up. People are literally lightened and healed when you bring the light. "you ARE your brother's keeper."

This is perhaps why there the "great awakening" happening. It's because there are contributions from an increasing number of awakening individuals whose influence is more powerful than those who sleep. "Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength." And so the entire world is going through a spiritual transformation.

Each time that you have a loving thought, each time that you recognize joining and sharing, each time that you forgive, you are healing the entire sonship. Because every single child of God shares itself with you. You are part of a vast network of interconnected parts that depend on each other. You are responsible thus for your brother because what you choose either blesses or curses him, either heals him or compounds his sickness.

This ties further into holy relationships, in that when you are holy towards another, and they thus become more holy, the shared state of joined consenting minds transcends their individual contributions. The fact that there are two souls sharing everything is more powerful than any sense of "one in isolation". To be joined is to share and to share is to love and to love is to wield God's miraculous power.

You do have the authority, power, and ability, connections, and access, to heal other people if you so choose. Shining your light of love into their minds cannot help but offer healing. Your prayers of love can lift others up from despair. And through you the Holy Spirit can move mountains.

"HOW MANY TEACHERS OF GOD ARE NEEDED TO SAVE THE WORLD?

The answer to this question is - one.One wholly perfect teacher, whose learning is complete, suffices. This one, sanctified and redeemed, becomes the Self Who is the Son of God.He who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body.Therefore he is limitless.And being limitless, his thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever. His perception of himself is based upon God's Judgment, not his own.Thus does he share God's Will, and bring His thoughts to still deluded minds. He is forever one, because he is as God created him. He has accepted Christ, and he is saved."

---

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as one, for that is what they are."

Looking for God outside? He's inside you. In fact, you have to look inside first, find God there, then look out with God, in order to see God.

When I had an experience of God this wasn't clear to me. I saw God seemingly in everything external, in addition to my tremendous inner awareness of him, but then it faded. And then I sought to reconnect externally because that's where I'd seen him. But God wasn't first found outside and taken in, he was inside my mind and awareness and extended out. I found him inside because I went within and above, not because I sought outward. In fact all sickness is a form of external searching. Seeking out there for God will take you away from where he is.

God is in everything you see when awareness of love's presence is in your mind. Not because God is out there, but because you are shining his light from inside of you. You look first within and project out what is in you, then you see it. You can't find God "out there" in the world. There is no world out there. Everything external is artificial and unreal.

God being in everything you see does not mean the world is God. This is completely backwards. It means you're looking out from God. And thus you are giving God and extending God and therefore projecting God. He is in everything you see because he is in your mind, and not without that key ingredient. If God were not in your mind first, you would not see him in everything you see, at all.

During the time that I was close to God I felt a great radiance of joy and light shining out of me, particularly out of my face and eyes. It was so strong it was like beaming light at people. It was also so strong that I felt nothing could come into me from the outside, which felt very secure. As though everything was given from within.

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions." I felt I had no needs because I didn't lack anything within. Getting anything into me from the outside seemed completely alien and utterly pointless, including eating food for a while. It was like shoving lumps of nothing into a hole for no reason. I had to force myself to swallow. It seemed completely ridiculous to suggest that I lacked anything at all such that I needed to get anything from the world to make up for it.

When you're not seeing God outside you will start seeking externally to find him. This is because he seems externally absent. This is temptation and is a trick of the lack of love in you. It makes the world seem dark and lacking. And then you seek externally and do not find him. Because you try to find God first externally, and seek to get him, and take him into you from the outside in. This never works and makes you more deprived. It is idol worship, and special relationships. You cannot absorb God from any physical object, or get him on sale, or shove him down your throat, or make him give everything the ego wants to get.

To counteract the seeming absence of God in your sight you cannot try to look for God as if he's sitting out there on a rock. You have to look within, inside your mind, where you are connected at the inner altar, with your soul. That's where the unity with God is. You have to go there first. You have to plug into the light socket deep within. This is why Jesus repeatedly says in the course there is a place WITHIN you that is deeply at peace and filled with light.

Light bulbs don't shine by reaching out and grabbing ahold of light and taking it into themselves. They shine by plugging themselves into the power source and being in the light and then radiating it outwards. Only what you extend outward from within do you see or are aware of. So if you want to see love you have to find love within you first. If you want to see God in everything you see, in spite of everything you see, you have to find him in your mind, in your inner world.

If God appears to be outside, it is because he is inside, and there is no outside. If God does not appear to be outside, it's because you're lacking God on the inside. The lack of God outside has no bearing on causing God to go away or to make him appear. But whether you are in touch God on the inside makes all the difference. It is the only way to find God "outside" at all. Cause is INSIDE of you. God is cause. Effect is its extension or projection. Trying to find God (cause) by trying to love effects is backwards.

The course isn't really trying to get you to be one with the world, or to love it. It's trying to reunite you with God, within you, so that you can extend and create with him from the inside out. So that YOU are the love you keep trying to find in the world. What seems to be "external", including the body and planet, are not where God is. They were made from the idea of being outside of God's Kingdom in exile. They are the illusion of "not within you".

The world is just a picture of the lack of God ("a picture of the crucifixion of God's son"), a hallucination, a projected image of something being outside of or beyond your self, not contained within or included in what you are. And even though the course speaks of how the light of Christ is BEYOND the body and the world, as though on the OTHER side of its walls, as if you need to see THROUGH matter to see reality, it's really right here INSIDE you. It's here, and there. It's within you.

I used to think God was "out there" in the far distant reaches of the universe. Then I experienced him, and he was so intimately close he was literally under my skin and behind all my defenses against the world. God is here now, in your mind, in your soul. Inside of you. Underneath your defenses. Behind your walls. In the back of all your thoughts. Underneath your blocks. Beyond your denial. Deeper even than your own avoidance of inner self. Look for him without and you will be without him. But look for him within and the without will be filled with him.

What the course does do is push you to go deeper within. To get behind your clouds. To dig behind the darkness. To examine with deep honesty your innermost issues. To move beyond them into a complete alignment with your true self. To get under the blanket and snuggle up with God. To know that God goes with you, beside you, within you. To rest within. And to settle into his tranquil love. And all of this requires no movement away from his immediate presence, no seeking, and no loss.

I looked up at the night sky this evening and reached out to God a little, and Jesus corrected me, "he's not out there, he's inside." The path forward moves inward, which in truth seems to be backwards or the reversal of the world, that there may be an outward extension of what you find.

The body was made to put all your attention on what is external, its eyes looking always outward to seek for what is not there. This is why the inner vision of Christ is directed inward mentally, not outward. And only by going within can you see God again.

Here are Jesus's clear affirmations of this message... "Deep within you is everything that is perfect, ready to radiate through you and out into the whole world. It will cure all sorrow and pain and fear and loss because it will heal the mind that thought these things were real, and suffered out of its allegiance to these beliefs."

"As I share the peace of the world with my brothers, I begin to understand that this peace comes from deep within myself. The world I look upon has taken on the light of my forgiveness, and shines forgiveness back at me."

"Let this day be a day of stillness and of quiet listening. Your Father wills you hear His Word today. He calls to you from deep within your mind where He abides. Hear Him today." "Look deep within you, undismayed by all the little thoughts and foolish goals you pass as you ascend to meet the Christ in you. He will be there. And you can reach Him now."

"And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One." "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."

"Salvation flows from deep within the home you offered to my Father and to me. And we are there together, in the quiet communion in which the Father and the Son are joined."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God"

"The extension of the Holy Spirit's purpose, from YOUR relationship to others, to bring them gently IN, has already begun. This is the way in which He will bring means and goal in line. The peace He laid, deep within BOTH of you, will quietly extend to EVERY aspect of your lives, surrounding both of you with glowing happiness, and the calm awareness of COMPLETE protection."

"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."

"The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

"Knowledge comes from the altar within, and is timeless because it is certain."

"For perfect effectiveness, the chalice of the Atonement belongs at the center of the inner altar, where it undoes the Separation, and restores the wholeness of the Spirit."

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. For there the altar to the Son is set, and there his Father is remembered. Here are all illusions brought to truth and laid upon the altar. What is seen outside must lie beyond forgiveness, for it seems to be forever sinful. Where is hope while sin is seen as outside? What remedy can guilt expect? But seen within your mind, guilt and forgiveness for an instant lie together, side by side, upon one altar. There at last are sickness and its single remedy joined in one healing brightness. God has come to claim His Own. Forgiveness is complete."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"And what enables Him to SEE His purpose shine forth from every altar, now is yours as well as His."

"His innocence will light your way, offering you its guiding light and sure protection, and shining from the holy altar within him, where you laid the lilies of forgiveness."

"If you will recognize that ALL attack which you perceive, is in your own mind, and NOWHERE ELSE, you will at last have placed its source, and where it began it must end. For in this place also lies salvation. The altar of God, where Christ abideth, is there."

"But Christ has placed the Atonement on the altar FOR you. Bring your perceptions of the world to this altar, for it is the altar to truth. There you will see your vision changed, and there you will learn to see truly. "

"We clear a holy place within our minds before His altar, where His gifts of peace and joy are welcome, and to which we come to find what has been given us by Him."

"Forgiveness sweeps away distortions, and opens the hidden altar to the truth. Its lilies shine into the mind, and call it to return and look within, to find what it has vainly sought without. For here, and only here, is peace of mind restored, for this the dwelling-place of God Himself."

"At the altar of God, the holy perception of God's Son becomes so enlightened that light streams into it, and the Spirit of God's Son shines in the Mind of the Father, and becomes one with it."

"But the next step is to realize that a Temple is not a building at all. Its REAL holiness lies in the INNER altar, around which the building is built."

"It is not easy in the world to know what giving means, and how to give a gift that God and all creation will accept as shining outward from a thankful heart and inward to the altar of its God."

"God has not left His altar, though His worshippers placed other gods upon it. The temple still is holy, for the Presence that dwells within it IS Holiness."

"Only at the altar of God will you find peace, and this altar is in you, because God put it there. His Voice still calls you to return, and He will be heard, when you place no other gods before Him."

"If you would look within, you would see only the Atonement, shining in quiet and in peace, upon the altar to your Father. Do not be afraid to look within."

"Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar which abides forever deep within the Son of God."

"Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."

"This is the true communion of the Spirit Who sees the altar of God in everyone, and by bringing it to YOUR appreciation calls upon you to love God and His Creation."

"This is how having and being are ultimately reconciled, NOT in the Kingdom, but IN YOUR MINDS. The altar there is the ONLY reality. It is PERFECTLY clear in its thought, because it is a reflection of PERFECT Thought. It SEES only brothers because it sees ONLY in its own Light."

"But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine."

"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."

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth. This is the recognition that leads to the healing power of the miracle."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"

"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."

"As this peace expands, from deep inside yourselves, to embrace ALL the Sonship"

"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God. We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God's Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us."

Heaven has always been the same, has not changed, and will always be the same.

The way that heaven was before "we separated" (an illusion, not possible), is still going to be the same it is NOW and the same it will ALWAYS be.

When the separation is over, the earth, which is an illusion, and is impossible...

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

...stuff which seemed to be the "possible content" of a world of separation, WILL NOT be getting "access" to heaven, will not be joining with heaven, and will not be CHANGING heaven into some kind of "post separation" state that is DIFFERENT to how heaven was BEFORE separation.

Heaven is a constant state.

There is NO WAY that planet earth can be "integrated" into heaven, included in heaven, or turned into heaven, or translated into heaven, or seen as heaven, or in any way become "part of" heaven. Heaven CANNOT CHANGE.

Heaven is the same as it always was, always is, and always will be. There is no open-door policy for renegade worlds to find amnesty. Earth CANNOT be translated into heaven. No part of "the separation" can become part of heaven.

The separation HAS NOT HAPPENED. The separation is IMPOSSIBLE. You cannot BE separate from God in truth, you cannot actually make "real planets", you canot create a "real world" of form and populate it with "real bodies". None of this "making of planet earth" has actually happened!

It is not happening now. It did not occur! Separation is impossible.

People are concerned that who THEY ARE is going to be left behind and left out of heaven, when the universe disappears, and are frightened that THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN LEFT OUT. There are subconscious illusory fears and experiences of "rejection" from God playing out, whenever anyone tries to find a way to KEEP the Earth and rationalize HOW it is possible for it to become part of God’s creation.

God’s creation is already DONE. It is COMPLETE. There will be no seconds. There is no afterthought. Earth cannot become part of it on any terms. ILLUSIONS CANNOT ENTER HEAVEN and earth MUST be an illusion because separation CANNOT HAPPEN and HAS NOT HAPPENED. So the entire foundation of "the earth existing" is FALSE.

The world DOES NOT EXIST NOW, it DID NOT EXIST in the past, and IT WILL NOT EXIST in the future.

This is also reflected in Jesus’s statement that "at no time does the body exist". At no time does Earth exist either!

We are worried that who we ARE is going to be left out of heaven, forgotten by God, not included in the return home, and that what we ARE is tied to FORM and therefore when FORM is shown to have NEVER EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE, we think this means WE will not be able to enter heaven. But truth is, we are believing this ALREADY, because we already think we sinned for real, were already kicked out, and have already been rejected by love.

Truth is, if we stay identified with the ego, we will keep trying to find ways to prove that there IS a world and it will somehow become a part of heaven. WE DO NOT NEED THE WORLD. "The world holds nothing that I WANT". You do not NEED this wold at all, neither to keep its specialness nor to keep WHO YOU ARE. It has no meaning, no usefulness, no purpose, IT IS AN ILLUSION. You don’t want this!

Why in any way try to "defend the earth" or find some loophole or rationalization for how it will be kept and become part o heaven? GOD has already created your HOME - heaven - and it is PERFECT FOR YOU.

When you cross over the bridge to heaven, you will recognize that you GAVE UP NOTHING and GAINED EVERYTHING. The world, earth, IS NOTHING. Giving it up is NOT A LOSS. There are no grounds for keeping it. If you want to keep it, you have *ego attachments*, which are keeping you bound to an ILLUSION of something other than what God WILLS for you to have.

What God is offering is far greater, IS EVERYTHING, compared to the meager shit-farm that is planet earth. This World OFFERS YOU NOTHING. Nothing that you want. "A teacher of God will be more than willing TO GIVE UP ALL THE PLESAURES OF THE WORLD." Ie, give up the earth, because it no longer. SUBSTITUTES FOR LOVE. Pleasure is not love. Your TOYS of physicality are not love.

God has a wonderful reunion planned for you. When you finally let go of the world that NEVER EXISTED, recognizing that it is NOTHING because "there is no world", you will HAPPILY accept WHAT DOES EXIST - which is God’s creation for you, which is HEAVEN. What you will GAIN is absolutely huge compared to the fact that you will not LOSE anything worth having AT ALL, because earth is NOT WORTH HAVING.

Defenders of the planet have one thing to learn. THERE IS NO WORLD, and never was. There IS nothing to turn into heaven. All the content of heaven is *already complete* and nothing else will be added to it other than an extension of what it already is INSIDE it. Let go of planet earth. It is an impossible place. It is nothing more than an illusion. It is not God’s gift to you. You should have no desire to have it be kept in any way whatsoever. What God IS going to share with you is FAR BETTER than anything you could ever dream of.

"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."

If you are not in the Atonement and have not FULLY FORGIVEN, you will KEEP symptoms in your body which demonstrate and PROVE that you do not fully believe in your innocence. Those symptoms demonstrate to everyone that you do not REALLY, REALLY believe it. Because if you really really believed it, through the power of your belief in God's power, those symptoms MUST disappear.

There MUST be a complete and total healing, in order to prove to yourself AND others that atonement has occurred. You yourself will not believe that you have fully atoned, i.e. forgiven, if you are still struggling with symptoms afterwards. This means, if you have fully forgiven, YOUR BODY MUST DEMONSTRATE DIVINE HEALTH!!!

Miracles are therefore NECESSARY in order to make the forgiveness real on all levels and to convince you and everyone else that only innocence is truth!!

If you are forgiving and are not having miracles to demonstrate your innocence in the body as well, then you have not finished forgiving. If you are walking around with "effects" of attack on your body, you are proving to yourself and everyone else that you have not forgiven.

This might sound like a tall order, difficult to accomplish, or too extremely harsh. It also sounds unbelievable to the ego and quite ridiculous. It even seems "wrong", in that the body isn't real so why should it be healed? But the words are CLEAR. Jesus isn't lying to us. He is very adamant!

We are to demonstrate miracles to prove forgiveness is real, by demonstrating divine health in the body as PROOF that we REALLY BELIEVE that we are innocent and unharmed and undamaged.

You want some radical shit, this is it!

Can I ACTUALLY do anything to change this outcome/situation whatsoever?

If the answer is NO: surrender and accept what is.

If the answer is YES: surrender to Holy Spirit and let Him inspire you what action to take.

Either way surrender brings peace of mind. Letting go of control.

Is there actually anything you can really do to change [xyz problem] right now? And be honest about it. Usually the answer is no. If you can't change it, then why have any upset about it? Why fret or worry about it? Why even get into a STORY about it? Why even try to wrestle with it, resist it, fight it, be angry about it? None of that will change it, right? So it is actually FUTILE. Why bother spending your energy doing what is completely futile? Your energy is better spent in what is productive and constructive and possible.

Otherwise you are fighting with impossibility, and you will lose.

Surrender.

This is somewhat the basis of the AA idea "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the power to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

You need *discernment* in order to be able to tell if you can REALLY do anything at all to change matters. Discernment requires Holy Spirit's thought system, because you need to decide based on TRUE or FALSE, rather than right/wrong/good/bad/happy/sad etc. And thus you need a lot of HONESTY and willingness to admit the truth.

So discern. Is it true that you can change this? If not, then you might as well just surrender and accept it. There is much more peace to be had there. Then join with Holy Spirit for inspiration and guidance and proceed from there. Fighting an impossible fight is a complete waste of time.

I suppose this is also in line with what Eckhart Tolle suggested (and others) ... 'resist nothing' or as the Borg in Star Trek say, "resistance is futile".

Some related quotes about what the body cannot do and how it limits you. You can become free of the limitations, but ultimately not WITHOUT the body disappearing entirely. God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. "

"The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and hurt yourself. "

"As the ego would LIMIT your perception of your brothers to the body, so would the Holy spirit RELEASE your vision, and let you see the Great Rays shining from them, so unlimited that they reach to God. It is this shift in vision that is accomplished in the holy instant."

"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."

"No-one can BE beyond the limitless, because what has NO limits, must be everywhere. There are no beginnings and no endings in God, Whose Universe is Himself. "

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence."

"For what you think is sin is LIMITATION; and whom you try to limit to the body you hate because you fear. In your refusal to forgive him, you would condemn him"

"Who transcends the body has transcended limitation."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY."

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love outside? The body will not stay."

"The body is a dream."

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God. "

"Only bodies can be attacked."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE. For communication MUST be UNlimited in order to HAVE meaning, and DEPRIVED of meaning, it will NOT satisfy YOU completely. Yet it remains the ONLY means by which you CAN establish real relationships."

"As something is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate."

"Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is NOT real."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person"

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"The body can bring you neither peace nor turmoil; not pain nor joy. It is a means, and NOT an end."

"For holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"You see the flesh or recognize the Spirit. There is no compromise between the two. If one is real the other must be unreal."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone; and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it. The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is."

"We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from your awareness by the body's limitations."

"Forgiveness lets the body be perceived as what it is; a simple teaching aid to be laid by when learning is complete, but hardly changing him who learns at all. The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear?"

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept apart from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return. Here is the "mystery" of separation perceived in awe and held in reverence. What God would have NOT be, is here kept "safe" from Him. "

"Yet would I offer you my BODY, you whom I love, KNOWING its littleness? "

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself. Its purpose is to strive."

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth."

"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin, while you believe that it can get you what you want. While you believe that it can give you pleasure, you will ALSO believe that it can bring you pain. To think you could be satisfied and happy with so little, IS to hurt yourself. And to LIMIT the happiness that you would have, CALLS upon pain to fill your meager store, and make your lives complete. This IS completion, as the ego sees it."

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. "

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there. "

"As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms."

"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 SEE."

"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."

"The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of meaning. The ego cannot ask the Holy Spirit for anything, because there is COMPLETE COMMUNICATION FAILURE between them. But you can ask everything of the Holy Spirit, because your requests are real, being of your will."

"It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.

Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"The body's eyes were made not to see." "They cannot see" "They will never see."

"The real world still is but a dream." - section 7 of Chapter 29, section 4 of ACIM.

In the Course, sometimes Jesus uses some terms which SEEM to imply something He did not mean to imply. When he referred to the "real world", He did NOT mean the world is real. And by world here, I'm talking about the physical universe, because every reference to "world" in the Course is referring to the physical universe (the dream of death).

So Jesus referred to the world, seen correctly with "true perception", ie perception without any errors - still perceiving WITHIN the dream, within space and time, but without any delusions ... as the "real world". It is "real" as in, seen WITH TRUTH, the truth OF it is seen correctly. The truth OF it is that it is NOT REAL. The truth of it, is that it is FALSE and untrue. When this is RECOGNIZED with true perception, you are seeing the "real version" of the world. In other words, real as in, what it actually is (unreal) compared to what you thought it was (illusions appearing real).

He uses this terminology because He's comparing it to when you have false perception, where you see this physical world with eyes of hate and judgement, and do not recognize it for what it is. In false perception you see a world of vengeance. You see hate IN the world. When you compare that false view OF the world, with a CORRECT view OF the world, the correct view is seeing "the truth" ABOUT the world... which shows you, in correct recognition, that this world is FALSE and NOT REAL.

The world is still an illusion. A false perception OF an illusion makes it seem real to you, and then you do not recognize it is an illusion, and you think it is the truth. That mistaken perception of the world needs to be corrected in order to see the FORGIVEN WORLD. When the world is seen through forgiving eyes - eyes of truth - those eyes do not see hate and guilt and fear IN the world. It simply sees what is "there", which is... an illusory world. It SEES and recognizes that there is a FALSE WORLD appearing in perception. You might well see God "in it", or see God "about it", or overlook the world to see Christ beyond it. But the world ITSELF is recognized as NOT REAL. The "real world" is actually the NOT REAL WORLD.

Once the world is recognized as not real, ie you are finally able to SEE what this thing IS for what it actually is - a false illusion pretending to be a world - then the purpose of perception and of the world is complete, and THEN YOU WAKE UP FROM THE DREAM, the world disappears, and there is only you with God. NOW you are in reality.

Jesus's use of the term "real world" in the Course has been very confusing for many students, because so many of us rely on the exact specific words Jesus uses and we don't really take it all in proper context of the bigger picture. This creates contradictions. If Jesus really meant the "real world" was actually REALITY, this would go against 99% of the rest of the Course. He ONLY uses this term to describe a correct perception of an UNREAL world - see the "reality" or "truth" of the world, which shows you that it is not really there. It's not a real world at all.

Jesus actually does this also in some other places in the course where he uses a terminology that SEEMS contradictory or seems to suggest something He did not intend. To discern this you need quite a bit of experience grasping the metaphysics. For example He said in one place that something can be "perfectly real within time but not in eternity." That can seem to imply that something inside of time - even though the course teaches that time is an illusion - is "real". If you interpret it that way, you will now come to a vast array of further confused conclusions. Jesus is not saying that anything in time is real at all. He is only saying that eternity is real and anything in time is an ILLUSION of reality, and seeing it correctly is seeing the "reality of it" - the truth that it is an illusion, just as above.

The "real world" is not real. There is no real world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. This is the thought which anyone with an ego DOES NOT WANT. The fact is that when you get to True Perception, you WILL and MUST recognize that this thing you've been calling a real world, is JUST an illusion. Nothing more or less. It has no reality to it, no truth to it, it is recognized and registers with you as completely FALSE. You see THROUGH it, with forgiving eyes. You do not buy its illusions, you do not believe in it, you do not think it is really happening. And then it disappears as God scoops you up and you wind up back in REALITY. A reality in which THE WORLD DOES NOT EXIST. Or in a word, "Heaven". Only heaven is real.

"THE WORLD YOU SEE DOES NOT EXIST" (the world you see with your physical eyes does not exist).

"Forgiving dreams have little need to last. They are not made to separate the mind from what it thinks. They do not seek to prove the dream is being dreamed by someone else. And in these dreams a melody is heard that everyone remembers, though he has not heard it since before all time began. Forgiveness, once complete, brings timelessness so close the song of Heaven can be heard, not with the ears, but with the holiness that never left the altar that abides forever deep within the Son of God. And when he hears this song again, he knows he never heard it not. And where is time, when dreams of judgment have been put away?" - ACIM

The ego makes a problem seem real, gets intense about it, magnifies it, and then tries to do something about it.

The ego can put on a mask of being a 'problem solver' or 'fixer' or 'doer' or 'seeker', claiming that it is innocently trying to solve the problem.

But the ego has made the problem in the first place. And for it to then turn around and claim to be working on solving it, is a complete farce.

The ego cannot, and does not really want to, solve the problems it has created. But it loves to SEEM like it is doing so.

It loves to think it not only has the purpose and innocent function of being the fixer and solver and savior in the situation, but that it actually is capable of finding the perfect answer, which is always elusive.

As the ego works on its solution to a problem, it really compounds the problem. So this is the ego's version of healing. The ego seeks to heal the problems it has made real.

It wants them to go away, while secretly sustaining and reinforcing them. And therefore the ego's form of healing is in fact an ATTACK, which damages and makes the problem worse.

The ego's mantra is that salvation can be achieved through attack.

Responding to an illusory problem that doesn't even really exist and can't be happening in God's Kingdom, means you are deceived and deluded.

True Forgiveness is needed.

Where do you find a sense of certainty? A sense of something you can trust? A sense of actuality or correctness? Where do you find a truth, that is so acceptable and so full and complete that you have no doubt?

I find that as I try to find answers in, and with, the ego, i.e. with my own mind and faculties, I cannot come up with a satisfying answer. I instead come up with a multitude of possible answers, all of which are different and none of which really give me a sense of .... yes, this is IT, I found it!. .. Or at least, if I think I found it, then later I'll realize it doesn't quite fit. So none of the answers work. None of them.

In fact, the more that I get into 'I need to figure this out', or 'maybe it's this - maybe it's that', .. the more I try and effort to investigate and find "the truth" in this way, the worse the situation seems to become. Confusion increases. I move away from a sense of certainty, peace, truth or acceptability. I move towards increasing UN-certainty.

Key insight: Trying to figure out and explain what's happening using my own separate ego mind/intelligence creates MORE confusion! I'm barking up the wrong tree!

So I dig and dig and get clever about what 'might' be "the answer", only to sense that this answer is flawed in some way, it doesn't quite explain things, and I just can't get a feeling of 'absolute certainty' around it. It seems like it *might be* true, it's *possibly* a description, it's *could be* what's happening etc... but never a sense of .... "this is".

And you know what, the more I try to do this the worse it gets and the more confused I become and the less I have peace.

So, the lesson here is, clearly... I have made the problem real, and now I am reacting to it by trying to explain or justify or intellectualize 'why' it is happening... rather than IF it is happening. And that means, I'm using the ego, I'm trusting my own self instead of God, I'm looking for answers in the ego world outside of me, I'm trying to find ego proof of the truth, and basically am constantly coming up empty handed.

It can become... exasperating, trying to find the truth where the truth IS NOT. The secret truth is: EVERY ego answer is NOT TRUE! The ego does not and cannot KNOW truth AT ALL!!! All it can do is speculate and guess and wonder and deduce and pretend it has the prowess to figure this all out on its own. And it will never be able to find the truth. The ego cannot wake up to reality!

So the question becomes, where I am going to get my sense of certainty from? Where is the real truth? Where is a truth or an answer or whatever that I can really believe .... yes... this is exactly IT. And I can tell you, it's very possible to come up with numerous ego explanations or rationalizations that all say... yes... this is exactly it, that this is an exact match to the situation and it really seems to be 'this'... only to find loopholes, inconsistencies, doubts, and then some 'other' possibility comes along. This is all because I'm searching within the realm of relativity, partiality, differences, a lack of wholeness and a world of lies.

So where will I find THE answer? What is THE answer? Where will I get that sense of... certainty, peace, joy, and KNOWING, that comes from the 'real truth'.... something I can really get behind and know, this IS it.

What is the real truth? God IS it, of course! God is WHERE the truth is. God is the certainty I seek. God is the answer that I can actually TRUST.... to trust that it will be consistent and unwavering and complete. There is no sense of consistent truth like that in the ego's world. No matter what the ego's explanations or meanings are, NONE of them are the whole truth. And none of them bring the feeling of... ahhhhh yes... that God brings.

But then, you have to realize this... God isn't an explainer, as such. God doesn't spend time diagnosing, or figuring out, or doing any of those activities that the ego mind does in attempting to find out what it thinks is happening. In fact, God doesn't even deal in the realm of 'maybe'. God HAS the answer already, whereas the ego is SEPARATE from the answer so has to go SEEK for it!

"Seek and do not find!" - ACIM

And the harder you seek the truth, the further you get from the TRUTH! Doh!!! I've been looking in the wrong place this whole time :-D

So ... God has really no interest in spending time trying to discern what illusions are doing or what to do about them to 'fix' unreal problems. God doesn't make problems real then OBSESS over trying to solve them, not realizing that believing they are a problem IS the problem.

So as I go to God, I see that God's 'way' is different from the ego's 'way'. God's way is more to do with.... a constant, direct, immediate correction and healing, which solves the problem, instead of all of the dwelling on basically 'keeping' the problem that the ego loves to indulge in while disguised as a problem solver. Hah.

So again... this is about learning to trust He who KNOWS, versus being lost in he who 'thinks' he knows.

And perhaps it's not until we can really let go of all efforts to 'explain real illusions', that we will turn to God in surrender and trust and allow Him, instead, to bring healing to the situation FOR us.

Thank you God.

In the Authority problem, there is a great reversal of roles, and a confusing of levels.

Jesus refers to this as being the source of sickness ("all sickness comes from confusing the levels").

He also says that miracles realign the 'levels of perception' into their proper order. Miracle principle 30:

"By recognizing spirit, miracles adjust the levels of perception and show them in proper alignment." - ACIM

What this means is, awareness is supposed to begin in God and extend outward, and any 'perception' you have is supposed to flow outward from God. Like, there is a level of perception higher than the physical level, and then there is a lower level of perception to which you are most accustomed. They are supposed to flow in the order/sequence of higher-flowing-to-lower. The light within illuminating perception.

When you have an authority problem, it means that down here in lala land you have turned around 180 degrees and now instead of facing outward extending God's love from within, you are effectively 'out of your mind', looking back toward God with the suggestion that there is nothing 'backing you up'. Your perception then seems to run against God's extension and collides with it head on. Mis-creation! You start to see yourself as the source of everything, with God as your opponent opposite you, to which you are now opposed, and as such you develop a sense of being an authority opposed to God.

It also means that when I have an authority problem, an ego problem, I will not be willing to lay down my ego and allow myself to be owned by God, I will not allow myself to extend God, I will not allow myself to love, I will not allow myself to let God be the authority, I will not allow myself to receive from God, I will not allow myself to follow God's guidance, I will not allow myself to listen to God, and I will not allow myself to surrender. Instead I stand against God in everything I do and try to go off and control everything all by myself.

This is the fundamental action of the ego, being opposed to God. This is why we think we have an authority that we do NOT have. And it is this false sense of authority that builds up as what you're familiar with - that sense of an 'inflated ego', or a sense of self that is righteous, or a sense of you being important in ego ways, or a sense of entitlement, or a sense of having power that you do not really possess, etc... all false idol worship and forms of ego trying to be in charge, in control, in power, ruler of the universe.

WE HAVE TO LEARN TO DROP AND REVERSE THIS ATTITUDE.

This is what I am learning now. The orders of perception are working against each other, and I have level confusion, and I am in sickness, precisely because I am functioning WITHOUT GOD. I am opposed to God and I need to surrender my 'trying to be God' position, turn back around 180 degrees so that I am flowing WITH God and extending WITH God, and I need to therefore ADMIT TO AND RECOGNIZE !!!!!!. .. that GOD is the one who is the authority here.

This is quite a powerful turning point. It means letting down all of those opposing ego attitudes in myself, learning to put them aside and to recognize that they interfere with God, learning that all love and POWER flows FROM God, that God is the one who is in charge, and becoming WILLING to ALLOW this to be true. It's really part of accepting the truth of the atonement - the truth that God is the primary authority. We can join him in it and SHARE in it, but we can't take it over and use it against Him or ourselves or others.

This is a complete flip, really, to the ego. My little ego is all hell-bent on being God, being a savior, fixing everyone, being a hero, being responsible for and carrying the weight of the world, and trying to be some kind of spiritualized exalted ego. This is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of the 'natural' "divine order". The divine order has me properly positioned as God's SON, extending His love, sharing in His creation, flowing His love, sharing His miracles. And that means, JOINING God in His kingdom, in awareness of His spirit, and facing the same direction as Him, flowing WITH His will, recognizing that His will and my will are One (that's an ACIM theme too), and that I can now share in God's truth and power and healing.

I cannot be a powerful healer, super spiritual hero, mega savior, ultra do-it-yourselfer conqueror. I T D O E S N O T W O R K ! :-) Try fixing something which absolutely cannot be fixed by you and you'll soon encounter just how flawed your fix-it power-over-everything attitude is.

The only way that works is turning around and getting aligned to, open to, accepting of, flowing with, and being with God's will and God's love. That's where miracles flow from. But it means you have to stop trying to do this all by yourself. You have to admit you cannot do ANYTHING by yourself. And it's true. And that means a) surrendering, b) admitting God is in charge not you, c) this opens the doorway to the RELIEF of FINALLY connecting with God and being willing to LET GOD WORK THROUGH YOU. Yay.

Here come the miracles.

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

Actually think about why this makes sense. God is infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, He exists in a totally expanded abstract state in which He is everywhere. Totally spread out to infinity. He is not localized anywhere. There is no way that God can be "only" in one location, and not another.

The idea of a body, is the idea in SPACE and TIME to being spatially and temporarily separated out from the whole. It's the idea of limitation, confinement, imprisonment. "The body is a device for separation". The body was made to represent the idea that you are NOT everywhere, and therefore your mind is trapped in your brain. That you are "located" inside the body, not outside the body.

God, however, who is everywhere, cannot be squeezed down and inserted into the insides of a body, in exclusion of being also outside of the body. He cannot separate off a part of himself and put it "into" a body separately from being outside the body or in all other bodies also. Being everywhere means NOT being in any specific location to the exclusion of any others. Nor does that mean he is in all bodies. He cannot be in ANY bodies.

"God cannot enter a body"

Similarly, you who are trying to be One with God, to experience God, to express God, so long as you confine yourself to a body, limit your awareness to only the body's senses, regard yourself as being "in" or "having" a specific body, or in any way are not experiencing yourself as being infinite, unlimited, larger than the universe, all-expansive, all-encompassing and omnipresent, you are NOT experiencing the fullness of what you are.

And the fact is that God is not going to ever narrow himself down and put himself into a body. He remains in an expanded, abstract state at all times. The only way for you to MEET him and to be in total communion with Him, is to expand your self, expand your awareness, to go beyond the size of the universe, to infinity, to such an extent that you become just as ever-present and transcendent of space, place, location, or time, that you exist EVERYWHERE with Him.

That is the only way that you can be One with God. That is the only way that you can commune with Him, join with Him, be IN him, and experience Heaven. You literally cannot do that by being in ANY WAY limited, in any way less than WHOLE, in any way smaller than the entire magnitude of infinite creation. You are vast, unlimited, and only complete when you are EVERYWHERE. Not confined to your little body, not confined to only one body, not confined to ANY bodies. Larger than the planet. Larger than the solar system. Larger than the galaxy. Aware of EVERYWHERE simultaneously. That is who you are.

So I hear some people saying, believing, thinking, interpreting, that they are having experiences of being one with God in a body, being awake in a body, experiencing the fullness of God in a body. They are mistaken. It is literally impossible to have a FULL complete total experience of God while maintaining the body. Because the body is localization. It is limitation. You cannot keep localization and be infinite and unlimited. You cannot be finite and specific and located in space or time and be simultaneously infinitely abstract.

"The body cannot stay without illusions." "The body cannot remain." "To be WITHOUT a body is to be in your natural state." "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist." "You are not a body." "The body is a limit."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

You can approach God, you can get closer to God, you can feel the warmth of the light, you can radiate love and joy into the world as though joined with God, but you cannot FULLY, TOTALLY, COMPLETELY immerse yourself in God while maintaining isolation, localization, temporal separation in one moment of time. To be eternal is transcendent of time and space. It means you not only exist EVERYWHERE you also exist EVERYWHEN. You exist in and beyond all moments of time. It makes you a time traveler, transcendent of the temporal order, not merely "I'm in 2019".

Do you really how VAST you are? Do you realize how VAST God is? How totally utterly unlimited? Then look at the body, look at how it IS a limitation, and that having one, using one, seeing one, or believing one exists at all, is causing you to NOT BE WITH GOD.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"God did not create the body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there."

You HAVE TO LEAVE THE BODY to be with God. You have to leave the body entirely, permanently, never again to need a body EVER. You have to overcome reincarnation. You have to overcome death. You have to overcome the NEED to be in a body AT ALL, if you want to be with God. You cannot KEEP the body and maintain that kind of abstract infinite knowledge. "You cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." You cannot STAY HERE in this fictional world, and be totally joined with God. You can perceive him perhaps, you can see him perhaps, you can love with him perhaps, but you cannot be ONE with Him in a body.

Is Jesus in a body? Nope. I rest my case.

You can't believe that other people are guilty or bad or wrong or sinful without believing that it applies to you somehow.

You can't be someone who is separate from the effects of your own attack.

You can't judge someone, believing that your judgement of them is not a judgement of yourself.

To believe that someone else is very wrong and this does not include you, is insanity.

Try hating someone while at the same time experiencing full and complete love for yourself. Try it. You will fail.

Try being outraged and angry at someone while fully experiencing the joy and peace of your true self. Impossible.

Try blaming someone for being wrong or guilty or sinful or a criminal and simultaneously experience a sense of serenity and happiness and love within yourself. You will not be able to.

The fact is, your attack on them attacks YOU. You cannot believe in sin without being sinful. You cannot believe in guilt without being guilty. You cannot believe in fear without being afraid. You cannot believe in punishment without being punished. And you cannot believe in death without being dead.

To deny this is insane. What applies to you applies everywhere. It is the ego which claims something can apply to you which doesn't apply to someone else, or vice versa. You can't have two sets of rules that come into effect whenever it pleases you or makes you out to be better off. That's dishonest to say the least.

This world only exists within the space-time belief. Space time IS a belief, and it is a false belief. All beliefs will end. Earth cannot exist without space or time. Spacetime is what holds it apart from itself and animates it. When there is no space - as in infinite reality/heaven, and there is no time, as in eternity, there can be no Earth! Unless you prefer your planet to be like a bowl of cosmic soup. ;-) Anything based on spacetime (such as planets, starts, etc) DOES NOT EXIST.

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"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. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

"Healing was an ability which was lent to man after the Separation, before which it was completely unnecessary. Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary. However, as long as time persists, healing remains among the stronger human protections. This is because healing always rests on charity, and charity is a way of perceiving the true perfection of another, even if he cannot perceive it himself."

"You may wonder how you, who are still bound to judgment, can be asked to do that which requires no judgement of your own. The answer is very simple. The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you. That is the reason that the miracle gives EQUAL blessing to ALL who share in it, and that is also why EVERYONE shares in it. The power of God IS limitless. And, being always maximal, it offers EVERYTHING to EVERY call from ANYONE. There is no order here. A call for help is GIVEN help. The only judgment involved at all is in the Holy Spirit's one division into two categories; one of love, and the other, the call for love."

- ACIM

Here (urtext) Jesus is talking about how God is the origin of miracles and how God's POWER is unlimited, how the power of God produces miracles through you and how they extend to everyone not just yourself. "A call for help is GIVEN help".

Again this has nothing to do with a so-called "shift in perception", because the power of God acts above and beyond our own limitations, and beyond perception entirely. Miracles, sourced in and BY God, transcend perception entirely and cannot have anything to do with perceptual changes or small corrections of thought.

In a previous section Jesus also speaks of how a miracle is evidence that an entirely other 'world' is being brought to this one, as evidenced by the complete lack of respect for the order of difficulty or ego hierarchies.

"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."

Here's a little statement which correlates to the idea that your body is not really a continuation from the past, nor does it have its own ongoing "state". It is a NOW-MOMENT-PROJECTION from the mind, and the mind is currently projecting NOW a fresh image NOW of the body, in whatever condition it wants it to appear in NOW. If the body *appears* to "carry over" conditions that seemed to be established in the past it is because the MIND is NOW re-projecting a similar image to the image it projected previously, NOT because the body itself has a "causal past" that makes its current condition predetermined.

The spacetime continuum is an illusion. And this also matches with the fact that in this 2019 moment right now, the mind is projecting this universe, and making it APPEAR to be a picture of a very old universe, even complete with all the details necessary to suggest that its current condition is the causal "result" of a distant past big bang, and yet every single speck of this world is a NOW MOMENT PROJECTION from the mind, designed to make it APPEAR as though this world has been taking a very long time to reach its current condition. The universe is no more than a nanosecond old.

This is reflected in night time dreams also, whereby when you go to sleep, you dream, you imagine an environment, and it seems the environment is very established and would've taken countless millions of years of evolution to arrive at its current condition, and yet it has NO HISTORY, having only just been dreamed at a moment's notice. Even if it seems to have a huge back-story or a sense of time having passed, the entire thing is being made up RIGHT NOW to LOOK AS IF it's very old and as if there is evidence of the processes that it must have undergone to reach this current condition. There is no past! It's all a present-moment projection. You are dreaming this all up right now!

Here's the common fact for most of us right now. We VALUE something about this world and do not want to leave it. That's why we're here. That's why we SEE it.

We have a long list of reasons to STAY. We therefore do not actually RECOGNIZE what the world is, or its nature. Instead, we have blinded ourselves and have convinced ourselves that it is something is it NOT. We have overlaid upon it meanings that seem to give credit where it is not due, give value where it is unworthy, and even idolizes aspects of it in a state of worship.

If we did truly recognize what the world IS, we would not want it. In fact, this is why we need to be willing to take a good hard look at its nature without flinching or denial. This is part of sorting out what is true and what is false. We need to learn that we DO NOT WANT anything in the world. Not because we hate it, but because it simple is so false and unnatural and actually offers nothing at all, and therefore there IS nothing there to have.

We only want the world because we have decided to value something about it, and have therefor GIVEN it value. What if the world is completely and utterly valueless, worthless, meaningless, pointless, futile, ridiculous and unbelievable? What if it can add absolutely nothing whatsoever to God's creation?

What if in and of itself it is so utterly devoid of meaning that it isn't even really anything at all? And what if all it has to offer are choiceless roads which ALL leads to death? Would you want it if you recognize it as a slaughterhouse?

UrM14A4 "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."

If we are not willing to recognize the world's true nature, which is part of true (accurate) perception, distinguishing clearly that it is NOT the incredible amazing thing that we thought it was, then we will also NOT be willing to leave it. Who would want to leave a castle that they cherish and value and adore and think of as their home? Who would want to leave a place they think is valuable and worthy and loyal and true?

"Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world," UrW128L2

This tells you that you have to learn to NOT VALUE ANYTHING in the world. And this actually doesn't require you to attack or hate the world in any way, all it requires is for you to RECOGNIZE it. Because in truth, in actual fact, it HAS no value because it is really nothing. The truth that there is not even really a world here has to dawn upon your mind by recognizing its NOTHINGNESS.

If you are willing to really push your mind to recognize the worlds total valuelessness, the worthelssness of the body, and the complete unimportance of everything here, it will simultaneously give ample justification and motivation for seeking out ANOTHER world. There MUST be a better way. There MUST be a world devoid of pain. There MUST be a higher reality and a greater truth than the complete failure that the world has to offer.

So long as you do not clearly see the world's worthless nothingness, you will not WANT to go back to heaven. So long as you do not recognize its insanity, you will think it's not so bad. So long as you think pleasure is not pain, and you can do things here without a cost, you will carry on doing them. So long as you think you are gaining something real and valuable here, you will sacrifice your soul and lose sight of reality.

It doesn't require for you to attack or condemn or accuse the world in order to find the clarity that you DO NOT WANT IT. You didn't want it when you made it. It was projected out of your mind because you did not want what was in your mind.

UrT11D10 "You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. 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."

T11G3 "YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD."

T12G2 "You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

If you value the world you are giving it a value it does not have. And if you value it you will anchor yourself to it. And by valuing it you will see it. And it will become your reality. Yet if you recognize it as unwanted, undesirable, valueless, worthless and nothing, then you will naturally be in a position to want something else. You will want the Kingdom because you will value it and recognize its inherent worth. It is worth having because it is real and true and meaningful.

UrT9E8 "In your open mind are YOUR creations, in perfect communication, born of perfect understanding. Could you but accept one of them, you would not want ANYTHING the world has to offer. Everything else would be totally meaningless. God's meaning is incomplete without you, and you are incomplete without your creations."

UrT12G3 "The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

UrT12G14 "My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me, in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to TAKE AWAY. And we will spread it, like a veil of light, across the world's sad face, in which we hide our brothers FROM the world, and it from them."

"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."

God exists everywhere. God fully exists in all locations simultaneously. All of God is in all locations. God is omnipresent. Because God is always everywhere, always is eternity, and in reality everything is constantly the same.

Spacetime is an ego belief. It was manufactured to oppose reality and attack it. Space attacks God's omnipresence. It claims that nothing is present in more than one location, the whole of everything isn't present in any location, nothing is fully present anywhere, everything is present nowhere, and therefore everywhere is nowhere. It is the idea that NOTHING IS EVERYWHERE. It is totally opposite to God's nature.

Time is also an attack on God's nature. Where eternity proves that everything is always the same, time is the attempt to prove that nothing is EVER the same. It suggests what existed before, no longer exists, there has been death of Heaven, and something has replaced it. Every instant of time testifies to this. It is the idea that God is not always the same, has changed, and has been affected. Time is rooted in sin and death.

Spacetime was made in order to attack God and attempt to kill his Son. It's a depiction of an idea, really just a belief, that God is nowhere. It paints a picture of crucifixion in which God's son is depicted as being nowhere, not whole, ie dead.

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

This world applies to the ENTIRE content of spacetime, not just Earth. It refers to this entire universe, all planets and stars and galaxies. All bodies, all "life forms", which are really death forms, because it is a dream of death and made to oppose eternal life.

Everything within spacetime, including Earth, were made as an attack on God's nature. "The laws of this world go against your nature." This is why Earth is a dream world, not a real world. It is the world you made and the world you see. It is an illusion. "The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what he creates must be eternal as himself."

I once thought that unconditional love meant that I would unconditionally love one person. That is, that I would love them a lot. I thought that this 'big love' was an unconditional love, until I found out that I sometimes failed to love when certain conditions occurred. So I wasn't really being unconditional.

At the same time, this really wasn't unconditional love anyway, because it was applying mainly to only one person. Unconditional love does not just apply to one person. To be unconditional, it has to be impartial and it must apply the same to everyone, all the time.

In God, we are asked to unconditionally love everyone the SAME all of the time with no exceptions. That seems like a really tall order.

Can you unconditionally love, fully love, equally love, every single person including all the people that you had beliefs of blame or anger or annoyance or a grudge about? And not just the people in your close circles, but even complete strangers? That's what unconditional love means.

It takes a lot to admit that you are not unconditionally loving, and that you probably have practiced conditional love all your life. It takes some honesty to admit you do not love other people, maybe you don't love your neighbors or someone at work or certain groups in society. At least admitting that you don't can start to give way to you being open to learning why you don't, and correcting that.

Ultimately, YOU won't be fully and completely and unconditionally loved, or experience unconditional love, if you are not willing to both receive it AND give it.

When you love unconditionally, you represent God.

God DOES love you unconditionally, and that's pretty special ;-)

A slight omission from the Course...

From the urtext beginning:

"It is crucial to say first that A Course In Miracles is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. 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.

You will see miracles thru your hands thru me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today.")"

The same introduction in the FIP version:

"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."

Do you notice the complete removal of the text:

"You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today""

????????????!!

MIRACLES THROUGH YOUR HANDS THROUGH ME!!

Why was this removed? You think someone had an issue with the idea that we are asked to lay hands on people and perform miracles on a daily basis?

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened."

Notice here that Jesus talks about how God has his own "completeness", which is not in any way affected by our choice to separate. His own being, his real identity, is unaffected.

However, his "going out", his extending, his loving, his radiating, his creating, is BLOCKED, when the sons of God do not communicate with Him fully. This is because the sons have their own freedom. God's inner completeness is "separate from" the individual souls.

His creating, his radiating, goes out FROM his inner completeness, to create souls, but his own completeness is not changed by this act. Therefore the sons "are not God" as such. You are not merely the effect of God, or "God's radiance". You are more than that. God has ADDED TO existence in creating you as a distinct entity, "outside of" his own completeness. (really inside, but).

So there is a difference between what God IS - his completeness - his inner being - contrasted against his radiance, extension or creation, which goes out FROM Him to create his children, heaven, angels, holy spirit etc. God is thus complete within himself regardless of what his creation gets up to, which is why he does not participate in the separation, nor get dragged into it by his creations.

The key here is that God is free, and God creates beings who are free.

When we think of having lost someone, we might think of it in terms of ... they have gone away. And therefore I have lost them.

But I've been seeing that what really happens is ... we come to believe that we personally, ourselves, have lost something FROM ourselves. Some part or portion of our own self has become lost.

We can only really see ourselves as being in a "state" of loss if we actually believe that something has been taken away from ourselves. And this isn't just figuratively speaking, it literally goes to the depth of identity and says - some part of ME is missing.

If a person goes away and they are sort of technically lost or gone or absent, it shouldn't really mean anything in terms of whether or not you as a person are whole and complete. But if there is some ego or special relationship or body identification involved, or some kind of attachment, then when the person leaves you feel that YOU personally are losing something.

It's then not really about the other person going away, it's about actually believing somehow that WHAT YOU ARE has been diminished, what you have or what is yours or whatever, something has been taken from YOUR SELF and now you are not whole. Now you are less, lacking, in need, deprived, as if its not just a matter of someone having left - but actually a matter of something being ripped out of you like a portion of YOUR SELF has died. And now you really are grieving the loss of yourself.

So then we get into a state of experiencing loss and grief which seems to be about this other person missing, but it's really deep down a sense of YOU having died. Some part of you seems to be gone. Some part of you is lacking that is supposed to be there, they somehow became associated with the form of someone else you thought was separate.

Because ... if you were whole, how could you experience any sense of loss or lack or deprivation? If you are whole, you wouldn't be able to claim even that anything has been taken from you, that you're lacking, that you are in need, that you want something you do not have, etc. It's only by sort of taking the loss personally that you then go on to feel that you are actually at a loss - that something that "was yours" is "not there".

I am finding for myself that if I focus more on the Godly fact that God has given me everything and therefore I lack nothing, it becomes harder to claim or believe that I am at a loss. Or that loss is even possible. If I am as God created me then I must still be whole, I must be lacking nothing, in need of nothing, and can't in that wholeness justify or explain or rationalise that I have lost anything. Then what used to seem like, being hit with a sledgehammer and having something huge ripped away unfairly, softens into a mistaken perception of myself.

Indeed in that recognition of wholeness there is also a recognition of oneness, a oneness which binds you permanently to that other person who seemed to be gone, and proves to you that they have NOT gone, because they are literally YOU and are permanently a part of your self in oneness. PLUS you can still access them by being one with them in your mind. So you cannot ever lose them, provided you acknowledge the wholeness that you share.

Once you go into separation, ego, loss, the belief that "you lack", only then does it seem plausible to say that something is missing, something has been taken way (from who or what?), or something has died. And then it literally really becomes a belief that YOU have died, or some part of your own self has been lost. That you're no longer "whole" without some other separated-off person.

So I think we (speaking for myself) interpret losses of "other things" as actually loses as parts of our own self, due to the fact that we are all one. If we are one, and I "lose you", or you seem to be gone from reality, then part of my own self has been destroyed. And the belief in that is what causes the sense of loss - that some part of ME - as the whole - has been taken and is not there. It's not just about some other person, it's about seeing their absence as proof that somehow I AM LESS. And that's an ego thing.

It then boils down to whether or not you can accept that you are in and of yourself whole and complete and lacking nothing, missing nothing, deprived of nothing, and receiving love from God. As the course says, only you can deprive yourself of anything. So if you do NOT deprive yourself, how can you be in a state of lack? And if you do not deprive yourself, you do not deprive yourself of your brother either, and cannot buy into or believe they are "dead" or missing from your existence. Or from your SELF.

To be in loss and grief is really a state of believing that you are deprived, and that means you are depriving yourself. Only illusions can seem to be absent and what dies is not what the person really is anyway. Grief then means you are not recognizing that there is nothing wrong with you, that you are not lacking, that you are not in need, and that you have everything forever. That's self denial, at its root, even if on the surface it may point a finger and pretend to be about someone else. If you would remain in a state of wholeness and love, how could you experience loss at all?

We don't really ever lose anyone because we are all one forever. But believing in the loss of another must mean we believe in the loss of ourselves, per the golden rule. And it's really ourselves that needs to be put back together and remember our wholeness, so that we can end the sense of having lost anything at all. Real loss is impossible, when the truth is recognized.

"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"

"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."

What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.

You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.

BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.

In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.

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

Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.

The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.

Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.

Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."

The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.

The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.

To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.

This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.

In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.

Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.

You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.

"There is no death, the son of god is free."

REALITY: The entire unlimited expanse of God, and the interior contents of God which he hosts within his being. Everything within it is eternal, permanent, changeless, deathless and unlimited. It can only be KNOWN directly. This does NOT include ANYTHING that is lacking these immortal attributes. Anything impermanent, temporary, changing, attackable, mortal, is not a part of reality and is essentially impossible.

ILLUSION: The seeming OPPOSITE to reality. It is unreal, a dream of mortality, a fiction, untrue, false, a state of denial, and something you made up. Everything within this illusion is false and unreal. This includes all the forms of error, all sin, all sickness and death, all bodies, all planets and galaxies, all physical objects, all of perception - true and false alike, even the real world and the forgiven world.

FALSE PERCEPTION: A view that you have ABOUT something which is an illusion. Any illusion (body, planet, whatever) is NOT recognized for what it actually is. It is thought to be something IT IS NOT. It is a lie about a lie. A double negative. It's the belief that an illusion IS REAL, that false things ARE TRUE, and that the physical world IS GOD. This is what it means to be completely deceived and insane and in a state of sin.

TRUE PERCEPTION: A view that you have ABOUT something which is an illusion, but which entails RECOGNIZING the illusion for what it actually IS, and NOT for what it appears to be. It is illusions seen without deception. It is ACCURATE perception. It is a straight-on honest recognition that an illusory thing is a dream, and is not reality. It OVERLOOKS the illusion by seeing THROUGH its lies, is not deceived by it, and sees BEYOND IT to the light of reality.

THE FORGIVEN WORLD: This is the world of false perception, which is the world of sin, which includes bodies and flesh and bones and planets and galaxies and stars, but viewed from true perception. It is forgiven because ITS LIES are overlooked, its temptations do not work, and its DECEPTION is recognized as something false. It is a complete recognition that the world you made in false perception IS false, and that it IS an illusion, and IS NOT REALITY. This is seen with a LOVING perception, but nevertheless includes the awareness that earth is fundamentally unreal. "A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies."

THE REAL WORLD: The use of true perception sees PAST or through the forgiven world, OVERLOOKS it (does not see it), and sees beyond it and beyond the body. It looks upon the face of christ in heaven, and so is the use of perception to peer OUTSIDE of the illusory realm. It is therefore an ILLUSION ABOUT HEAVEN, and an image of heaven. It is symbolic of reality, but is not reality itself. It reflects heaven's nature but is once removed. And even the perception of the real world is a dream that will end.

ATONEMENT: Is the same thing as true perception and forgiveness. Atonement, true perception, forgiveness, salvation, etc are all the same thing. They are a SYMBOLIC state which represents heaven's laws and nature. It POINTS TO heaven and asks that you accept heaven's truth. Only heaven's truth is true, and NOTHING ELSE is true. Earth is false and is not true. It is vigilance for the kingdom, that ONLY GOD'S REALITY IS REAL.

HEAVEN: Another term for God's Kingdom or his one son/creation/sonship. It's the collection of souls that God established within his being IN reality. Thus they have all the attributes OF reality, including permanence and immortality. It is the reality that you find yourself waking up into, when you wake up FROM the illusory world of space and time. "Only heaven remains." "Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made (earth)."

EARTH: The false world you made in separating from and opposing reality. It is hosted within spacetime, which is a false belief. Earth depends entirely on both space and time for its three-dimensionality, its keeping its atoms from colliding with each other, and its seeming growth and decay. It is not reality because it has no permanence of any kind. "The time will come when all things visible will have an end." "As the world spins into the nothingness from which it came." Earth seen AS earth is false perception. Earth seen AS the forgiven world, is a recognition of its unreality. Either way earth is opposite to reality.

SPACE: The idea of the total opposite to God's omnipresent reality. God is everywhere and all of him is everywhere. Space was devised as an attack on God, to be opposite to this idea. It is the idea that nothing is whole, the whole is not anywhere, nowhere is whole, nothing is everywhere and everything is nowhere. It is the idea that God who is everything does not exist. And all energy, matter, quantum fields and whatever, depends on it entirely to seem to exist. It is an illusion, and once it goes, the whole physical universe goes with it.

TIME: The idea of a total opposite to God's eternal nature. Eternity tells you that everything always remains the same forever. That you have eternal permanence and can never be changed or decay or be sick or die. That you are always you. Time is the opposite of this. It's the notion that you are not what you were previously, what you used to be is lost, and what you are now is going to be changing into something else. It's the idea of the complete destruction of eternity and that everything must die. It is an attack on God's reality and when time ends everything that grows and changes will be gone forever.

WORLD: This one has some controversy but basically, a world is just some realm or existence, be it a real existence or an imaginary one. The real "world" which God created is his Kingdom of heaven which is the sonship, and nothing else. The world WE made is the illusory world of space and time which houses planets and galaxies and is completely OPPOSITE in its nature to God's world. There are only two worlds. There are not three worlds. There are only true because there are only two logic states - reality and unreality. God's true world is the only truly created world. Our made-up world is a temporary illusory world which God could never even conceive of creating.

"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".

Time, in human form, is different to Time for God. For God, there is only "always". For us, it seems there are states where some things have happened, and some have not happened yet.

Because of this, we are confused about who needs to do what, when, in order for miracles to occur. We think that because we're in "time", where a problem currently exists, and we are not yet at the "time" where it isgone, that this applies to God too.

Then we will go to God, thinking that God is also bound by time, and ask Him ... hey God, can you please do xyz? This is completely assuming that, because of time, He has in some way not already completely done everything. We think He's waiting, or holding back, or hasn't yet decided, or has not acted, or isn't sharing the miracle yet. We petition asking for something to be done about the problem. But this is a mistake.

For God, there is no time, and he isn't going "through time" with us. There is no before or after. There is no state in which some things are true and some other state in which other things are true. There is no change for God. There is no progression from not having to having, or from sickness to health, or from lack to abundance.

For God, there is only "always true". This is the perspective of eternity.

WE need to therefore get ourselves aligned with God's perspective, in order to accept, understand, and extend what God has already done. For us, in time, it seems weird to do this because it's like asking for something to happen which already happened. It seems like it did not happen yet, but in God's world everything is already complete.

Since God has already fully given, from His perspective, "it is done". It's us who have to wrangle with "time". The willingness to accept that God's Will is done already, even when it APPEARS in time that it has not happened yet, requires FAITH. Trust, that regardless of how the entire world of matter is showing up *currently*, God's miracle will express itself. It is this willingness of faith and trust that BRINGS the manifestation of God's will.

To receive is therefore a key element in miracles, not so much in "performing" miracles but as in "receiving" them. God is already miraculous 100% of the time. We need to learn to invite the reception and expression of these miracles through the removal of the BLOCKS to them, through forgiveness.

I think a lot of people have a belief that they are 'supposed' to suffer.

When an opportunity for healing is presented, unconditionally, with no strings attached, we actually recoil a bit in suspicion that we're not 'supposed' to be free of the suffering.

We believe the sickness is honorable, truthful, justified and deserved, and we defend it, and would even feel guilty for throwing all that away in favor of instant healing. How dare you heal someone when they're in the middle of good bit of suffering?! They were really getting into it ;-)

It seems 'too easy' that God would just come along and take away any degree of sickness instantly, as if, that's not allowed. Or it's breaking some kind of rules. Or some kind of 'agreement' that we all seem to have about how the common level of 'mutual suffering' is agreed upon and normal.

How dare you step out of the ego and be healed with no repercussions, throwing all guilt aside and claiming innocence. Blasphemy!

I noticed this in my path where I felt like some kind of 'rightness' in taking the very-longwinded suffering route through forgiveness, like, I was not supposed to skip any steps, was not supposed to just 'jump to innocence'.

I had to go 'through' and handle and spend time with all this guilt and fear like, it was not 'correct' (with the Course) to move on from it quickly without having 'properly suffered' first.

The ego says, you must ATONE on its terms, first, before you are 'allowed' to move on. You must atone by suffering and sacrifice and punishment, in hell. If you haven't suffered enough, it's wrong to seek healing.

Even if I were able to access healing quickly, some part of me believed I was meant to suffer for a long time and make sure to thoroughly look at every fault, and really beat it to death, just to make sure that I am really really really prepared to then start to heal it.

Silly nonsense. How can guilt and suffering be justified?

What about healing right now, full and complete, as an unconditional gift of love from God? Do we deserve it? Do we want it? Why don't we want it? Why do we believe we are supposed to suffer, right to suffer, meant to suffer, doing a service to God by suffering, carrying out God's will by suffering, going along with society by suffering, being aligned to truth by suffering, and being honest by suffering?

lol, you have to laugh.

Miracles are available right now.

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.

Let's continue...

I am not afraid, but confident.

I am not confused, but clear.

I am not lost, but found.

I am not false, but true.

I am not alone, but unified.

I am not separate, but one.

I am not lacking, but complete.

I am not guilty, but sinless.

I am not sinful, but innocent.

I am not in pain, but in health.

I am not deceived, but assured.

I am not deprived, but grateful.

I am not dead, but eternal.

I am not hopeless, but joyful.

I am not angry, but peaceful.

I am not worried, but reassured.

I am not forgetful, but aware.

I am not unconscious, but knowing.

I am not pressured, but free.

I am not tense, but relaxed.

I am not upset, but calm.

I am not hateful, but forgiving.

I am not hurt, but healed.

I am not harmful, but a blessing.

I am not ego, but Christ.

I am not a body, but immortal spirit.

I am not blameful, but welcoming.

I am not a liar, but truthful.

I am not pretentious, but honest.

I am not vengeful, but gifted.

I am not forgotten, but known.

I am not rejected, but loved.

I am not abandoned, but supported.

I am not evil, but pure.

I am not a dream, but God's Creation.

I am not a fantasy, but genuine.

I am not suffering, but a blessing.

I am not undone, but immortal.

I am not grieving, but reunited.

I am not lonely, but helped.

I am not sorrowful, but relieved.

I am not stressful, but blissful.

I am not in danger, but safe.

I am not hopeless, but saved.

I am not condemned, but forgiven.

I am not unloveable, but loving.

I am not unhappy, but joyous.

I am not depressed, but liberated.

I am not diminished, but enlightened.

I am not starving, but nourished.

I am not limited, but abundant.

I am not harsh, but gentle.

I am not cold, but heartfelt.

I am not fallen, but ascended.

I am not extinct, but omnipresent.

I am not troubled, but sane.

I am not a sinner, but a savior.

I am not ugly, but beautiful.

I am not without, but within.

I am not a reject, but chosen.

I am not meaningless, but meaningful.

Add one of your own...

"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. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

and

"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.

You may believe that this position is extreme, and too inclusive to be true. Yet can truth have exceptions?"

and

"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

"No-one can die unless he chooses death."

"No-one dies without their own consent."

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

and

"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 power of decision is my own." OWN IT!

"But to the Holy Spirit, the goal is life, which HAS no end."

The Holy Spirit's goal is eternal life and immortality. That means everything he is doing is working towards the complete resurrection of the entire sonship back to their original state of perfection. This also includes the return to a state of total wholeness, innocence, happiness and health. It is the complete undoing of ALL sickness, ALL suffering, and ALL death.

Whereas all the world's roads point toward death, and the ego tries to steer everything toward destruction, the Holy Spirit steers everything towards immortality. A Course in Miracle is a course in immortality, because it's a way to move you back towards God who is life.

If you can imagine, what if everyone in the world became healed? What if everyone was a healer? What if all the sicknesses started to disappear and everyone's bodies returned to total heath? What if people stopped dying and there was no further war or attack or murder or damage? What if the entire population of the planet resounded in laughter and joy and love as one happy family?

That ultimately is the goal, or a step toward the goal, because the Holy Spirit is tasked with nothing LESS than the TOTAL resurrection of everyone. His goal is to restore everyone to eternal life and health. His goal runs completely opposite to all the goals and paths of the world, all the likely outcomes, all consequences and effects, all prognosis and diagnosis.

What's happening here in the atonement is nothing short of the absolute global resurrection of every single person. If you think that Jesus managing to surmount death was astounding, and indeed it is, since he returned to immortality and eternal life, imagine what that's going to be like when the entire population does the same?

No more sickness, no more death, no more suffering, no more unhappiness, no more corruption, no more hospitals, no more separation, no more world. Everyone lifted up and resurrected and restored and renewed through miracles. Everyone healed and whole and happy and healthy. Everyone united in a single chorus of celebration and joy and gratitude.

"The offer of Atonement is universal. It is equally applicable to all individuals in all circumstances. And in it is the power to heal all individuals of all forms of sickness. Not to believe this is to be unfair to God, and thus unfaithful to Him."

"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."

"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God."

"It MUST be true the miracle can heal ALL forms of sickness, or it CANNOT HEAL."

"No miracle can ever be denied to those who know that they are one with God. No thought of theirs but has the power to heal all forms of suffering in anyone in times gone by and times as yet to come as easily as in the ones who walk beside them now."

"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."

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return. The miracle calls to him to return, because it blesses and honors him even though he may be absent in spirit." "Yet would His justice not be satisfied until it is received by everyone."

"Healing must be for everyone BECAUSE he does not merit an attack of any kind."

"And everyone is EQUALLY entitled to His gift of healing and deliverance and peace."

"No-one can lose, and everyone MUST benefit. Each miracle is an example of what justice can accomplish, when it is offered to everyone alike."

"What is God's BELONGS to everyone, and IS his due."

"And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world."

"God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide."

"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son. Joy is its unifying attribute, with no-one left outside, to suffer guilt alone. The power of God draws everyone to its safe embrace of love and union."

"Your special relationship will be a means for UNDOING guilt in everyone blessed through your holy relationship. It will be a happy dream, and one which you will SHARE with all who come within your sight."

"He uses everyone who calls on Him, as means for the salvation of everyone. And He will waken everyone through you, who offered your relationship to Him."

"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone. "

"The Holy Spirit knows your part in the redemption, and who are seeking you, and where to find them."

"Salvation's song will echo through the world with every choice they make. For we are one in purpose, and the end of hell is near. In joyous welcome is my hand outstretched to every brother who would join with me in reaching past temptation, and who looks with fixed determination toward the light that shines beyond in perfect constancy. Give me my own, for they belong to You. And can You fail in what is but Your Will? I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus from a world redeemed from hell, and giving thanks to You."

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"Accept Atonement and you are healed. Atonement is the Word of God. Accept His Word and what remains to make sickness possible? Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished. To forgive is to heal. The teacher of God has taken accepting the Atonement for himself as his only function. What is there then he cannot heal? What miracle can be withheld from him?"

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."

"Every decision is made for the whole Sonship, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"To the ego, THE EGO IS GOD."

"The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

"The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it "sees" the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its enemies who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them."

"If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible." ... "According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT."

"A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice."

"Therefore, you have used the world to COVER YOUR LOVE, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the CLOSER you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion." Jesus is clear about this. The ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE TO GOD. The idea that God is separate. That is, a seeming autonomous, separate entity, which stands alone, which rules its own kingdom, which is self sufficient and depends on nothing outside of itself, which has its own power, which does not need God for anything, and wants to be as completely distant from God's nature as possible. It wants to share nothing and have everything for itself selfishly. It wants to be the only thing that exists.

"Sin is the "grand illusion" underlying ALL the ego's grandiosity. For BY it, God HIMSELF is changed, and rendered incomplete."

"Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven."

"For the ego's destructive urge is so intense, that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it."

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."

"The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships."

"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."

"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."

"Possession for its OWN sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself."

The ego is like the anti-God. Just as it is also referred to as the anti-Christ. It is the illusion of a separate self, a little isolated cut-off self, disconnected and alone, imprisoned in a body, unrelated to anyone else, not communicating with God whatsoever, suspicious of everyone, having no trust of anyone, and completely backwards in all its perceptions.

"The ego's opposite in every way,--in origin, effect and consequence--we call a miracle."

"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God."

"Peace is the ego's greatest enemy, because according to ITS interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival."

"Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is COMPLETELY savage, and COMPLETELY insane."

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

"LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, NOT God's."

"BECAUSE the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

It sees God as everything the ego really is, believe itself to not be the ego at all. The ego actually believes it is sane. It regards its insanity as sanity, it regards its hell as heaven, it regards death as life, and punishment as atonement. It has everything completely backwards and upside-down. It sees God as evil and vengeful and sinful and attacking. It sees heaven as hell and holiness as blasphemy and innocence as guilt. Everything that is true is sees as false, and all that is false is regards as true. It is the complete anti-thesis to everything real.

"To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL."

"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT?"

"In a sense, the special relationship was the EGO's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's Answer to the separation. For, although the ego did not understand WHAT had been created, it WAS aware of threat."

"Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body."

"They provide STRIKING examples, both of the ego's INABILITY to tolerate reality, and your willingness to CHANGE reality on its behalf."

"Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL."

Each of us has this ego thing in our mind somewhere, and it has to be turfed out and catharted and undone. It is the central core of what keeps us in hell, and is the origin of all our guilt. It believes that everything sinless is sinful, that all of heaven is guilty, and that the Son of God is murderous. It tells every lie imaginable. It is twisted and dark and delusional and insane.

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. "

DENIAL

The truth is true.

You do not want the truth.

You have denied the truth.

You use denial to make the truth seem like it's not true.

You think that what you denied is made false by the denial.

You don't want it to be true.

You want something else to be true.

You believe something else is true, so that the truth is not true.

If you want the truth, you will have to stop being in denial.

You do not want to look at what you have denied.

Denying the truth keeps it away from you.

Denying the truth stops it being true.

You think that what you denied is not the truth.

You think your denial is justified because the truth is not true.

You do not want what is not true.

You think your truth is the only truth.

You think your denial is a fact, and not an opinion.

ACCEPTANCE/FORGIVENESS

You will have to be willing to question what you think is true.

What you think is true is not true.

Your truth that you treasure is a lie.

You haven't recognised how it is lying.

You haven't realised why it's not true.

You've convinced yourself that something false is true.

You will have to be willing to consider you are mistaken.

You will have to look at what you've denied.

You don't want to look at it because you think it's your enemy.

You don't want to give your enemy any credit.

But the truth only seems false because you keep denying it.

You will have to become willing to reconsider what the truth is.

You will have to forgive it and give it more credit.

You will have to become able to see and recognize its truth.

You will have to be willing to let go of what you thought was true.

You will have to change what you want.

You will have to want the truth to be true, to stop denying it.

You will have to side with it, against what is false.

Thus your whole thought system will have to undergo a complete reversal.

What you once thought was your enemy becomes your friend.

What you once thought was untrue becomes the truth.

What you once thought was true becomes a lie.

You recognize that only the truth is true, and only the false is false.

You have accepted atonement.

"The final judgement 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 ultimate purpose of the body is to ***render itself unnecessary.*** Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation."

"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."

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it ***only as a teaching device for bringing you home.***"

"God created (Holy Spirit made) time so that man could use it creatively, and convince himself of his own ability to create. Time is a teaching device, and ***a means to an end. It will cease when it is no longer useful*** for facilitating learning."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist." "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. The Atonement IS the final lesson."

Simply, everything you made, the world, all bodies, perception, time, under the USE of the Holy Spirit, has the ONLY PURPOSE of being used to BRING YOU HOME, rendering all of these things eventually TOTALLY UNNECESSARY. The ONLY purpose of the world is to END THE WORLD. The only purpose of the body is to NOT NEED BODIES. The only purpose of perception is to OVERCOME PERCEPTION ENTIRELY. The only purpose of time is to NOT NEED TIME. The only purpose of SPACETIME is to use it for the curriculum to bring you home so that the SPACE-TIME BELIEF CAN END.

Once the purpose of these things is reached, per the Holy Spirit's use of them, THEY HAVE NO MORE USE, and simply are let go, vanish, disappear, end. They disappear into the NOTHINGNESS from which they came.

I really like this term - "sinlessness". It feels good. It feels the way "there is no sin" feels when I say it. That my sinlessness is guaranteed by God, is right up with there "I am still as God created me." It specifies not only what I AM, it also specifies what I am NOT. I am not sinful, because I am sinless. I am free from the sinfulness that I am not.

Sinlessness is more than merely the absence of sin, as well. It is the presence of immortality. It is strength and innocence. It is invulnerability and fearlessness. Where there is sinlessness there is no reason to be afraid. If your brother is sinless, he is not threatening you. If the world is sinless, it is doing nothing to you. Sinlessness is safety. Sinlessness is your purity as Christ!

Sinlessness is also the end result of forgiveness. When forgiveness is completely, you are in sinlessness. When you have forgiven your brother, you recognize and can see his sinlessness. The sinlessness in him is your own. It is the light of Christ. It is the guaranteed purity of God, which was given you in your permanent creation. You are sinless because God created you sinless forever.

The juicy quotes...

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal. The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you."

"Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought; you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself. Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you. Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there."

"If a situation arises which seems to be disturbing, quickly dispel the illusion of fear by repeating these thoughts again. Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently:

"Light and joy and peace abide in you. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.""

"Brother, come and let me look on you. Your loveliness reflects my own. Your sinlessness is mine. You stand forgiven, and I stand with you."

"If you but knew how much your Father yearns to have you recognize your sinlessness, you would not let His Voice appeal in vain, nor turn away from His replacement for the fearful images and dreams you made. "

"True light is strength, and strength is sinlessness. If you remain as God created you, you must be strong, and light must be in you. He Who ensured your sinlessness must be the guarantee of strength and light as well. You are as God created you. Darkness cannot obscure the glory of the Son of God. You stand in light, strong in the sinlessness in which you were created, and in which you will remain throughout eternity."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."

"The state of sinlessness is merely this: The WHOLE desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than he is."

"And so you walk toward Heaven or toward hell, but NOT alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be, when you perceive it! And how great will be YOUR joy when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you."

"Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, SHARED with the Holy Spirit, and at one with Him on what salvation IS."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. The Holy Spirit GUARANTEES that what"God has willed and given shall be yours."

"My sinlessness protects me from all harm."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me. What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

""You who created me in sinlessness are not mistaken about what I am. I was mistaken when I thought I sinned, but I accept Atonement for myself. Father, my dream is ended now. Amen.""

"I choose to see my brother's sinlessness."

"I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see, and only this. My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light."

""What could restore Your memory to me except to see my brother's sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me and like myself. In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well.""

"I can attack but my own sinlessness, and it is only that which keeps me safe."

""Father, Your Son is holy. I am he on whom You smile in love and tenderness so deep and dear and still the universe smiles back on You, and shares Your holiness. How pure, how safe, how sacred, then, are we, abiding in Your smile, with all Your love bestowed upon us, living one with You, in brotherhood and Fatherhood complete; in sinlessness so perfect that the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.""

"Let us not, then, attack our sinlessness. For it contains the Word of God to us, and in its kind reflection we are saved."

"Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond."

"Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent."

"We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within."

"And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain."

"The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness."

"Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His."

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that. It does not battle with the Son of God. It does not hurt him, nor attack his peace. It has not changed creation, nor reduced eternal sinlessness to sin and love to hate."

"I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me, and with perfect certainty assure myself, "God wills that I be saved from this," and merely watch them disappear. I need but keep in mind my Father's Will for me is only happiness, to find that only happiness has come to me. And I need but remember that His Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His arms. I am the Son He loves. And I am saved because God in His mercy wills it so."

"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You."

"Behold his sinlessness and be you healed"

"Father, today I would let all things be as You created them, and give Your Sons the honor due their sinlessness; the love of brother to his brother and his friend. Through this I am redeemed."

"I will forgive all things today, that I

May learn how to accept the truth in me,

And come to recognize my sinlessness."

"In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness, and with this thought we gladly say 'Amen'."

"And with this choice I see my sinlessness, my everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and my way secure and clear."

"Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not. Through this I come to You. Judgment will bind my eyes and make me blind. Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here, reminds me You have given me a way to find Your peace again." "Surrounding me is perfect safety. Can I be afraid, when Your eternal promise goes with me? Surrounding me is perfect sinlessness. What can I fear, when You created me in holiness as perfect as Your own?"

"In quiet may forgiveness wipe away my dreams of separation and of sin. 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."

"Today I would behold my brother sinless. This Your Will for me, for thus will I behold my sinlessness."

"I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness which God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one Eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well."

"Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. For we who are Your holy Son, are sinless."

"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."

"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness. The song of Heaven sounds around the world, as it is lifted up and brought to truth."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. What further sight is needed? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love behind all forms, beyond all purposes."

"Their patients can but be seen as the bringers of forgiveness, for it is they who come to demonstrate their sinlessness to eyes that still believe that sin is there to look upon. Yet will the proof of sinlessness, seen in the patient and accepted in the therapist, offer the mind of both a covenant in which they meet and join and are as one."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom. Now it is no longer a contradiction in terms. Rather it is a statement of the unity of Christ and a recognition of His sinlessness. And now it has become holy, for it acknowledges the Son of God as he was created."

"Now, without needs of any kind, and clad forever in the pure sinlessness which is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer can again become what it was meant to be."

"Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness."

"What he has done now must God's Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison's key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father's Love."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His own."

"Now prayer is lifted from the world of things, of bodies, and of gods of every kind, and you can rest in holiness at last. Humility has taught you how to understand your glory as God's Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin. A dream has veiled the face of Christ from you. Now can you look upon His sinlessness."

"He will hear his sinlessness proclaimed around and around the world, setting it free as God's final judgment on him is received. This is the judgment in which salvation lies. This is the judgment that will set him free. This is the judgment in which all things are freed with him."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created. Now He can speak the Word of God to listening ears, and bring Christ's vision to eyes that see. Now is He free to teach all minds the truth of what they are, so they will gladly be returned to Him. And now is guilt forgiven, overlooked completely in His sight and in God's Word."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"Do you not see the OPPOSITE of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? INNOCENCE IS STRENGTH, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear. And fear of any kind is weakness."

"It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him." "In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"Your special function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose sinlessness He shares. HIS understanding will be YOURS. And so the Holy Spirit's Special Function has been fulfilled. God's Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness, and NOT his sin. "

"To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them."

"Your home is built upon your brother's health; upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made INSTEAD has shaken the Foundation of his home."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"And as we see the sinlessness in him come shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God, we will behold in him the Face of Christ, and understand that it is but our own."

"Give me your blessing, holy Son of God,

I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,

And see my perfect sinlessness in you."

"Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness."

"You still are holy with the Holiness which fathered you in perfect sinlessness, and still surrounds you in the arms of peace. Dream now of healing. Then arise and lay all dreaming down forever. You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world."

"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed."

"Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it. It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict, and keeps his sinlessness forever safe."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask only, "Do I REALLY wish to see him sinless?" And, as you ask, forget not that HIS sinlessness is YOUR escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon IS sinless. No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation. And what he sees he did NOT make, for it was GIVEN him to see, as was the vision which made his seeing possible."

"The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM."

"What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness?"

"No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness."

"Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness."

"Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness."

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.

Faith (trust in God) reaches outside of the illusory world and connects to a Source of miracles you may as yet not see or fully understand. But your willingness and openness to even conceive of it, coupled with even a vague belief that it holds truth and reality, is sufficient to establish a psychological "connection" to a higher mind.

Believing there is a possibility beyond the physical laws, or a potential or freedom that transcends appearances, is the same thing as believing a Higher Power and disbelieving that the ego's laws have complete power over what happens.

Even if you can't see God or Jesus, or you are not even sure if they really exist, if you have even a little willingness - which is all the Course asks us to have - this is an invitation to the Holy Spirit. It's not just a little willingness to be mistaken, but a willingness to be open to a source of healing and truth which is more true than how things currently appear.

This works both in the areas of healing your illusory mistaken perceptions, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to correct your mind, but also in the grander area of the entire illusion, in which your willingness invites Holy Spirit to perform demonstrations of miracles through you for others.

Your mind has the ability to open itself to connect to a Source of miracles even if the majority of the mind is still in the dark. If there is enough of a "leap of faith", this will create a pipeline across which the Power of God can flow. You are able to them become a conduit for the Holy Spirit to work through you, in spite of you having a large body of delusions of your own that need to as yet be corrected.

Reaching outside the illusory world to join with God is all that it takes. Some measure of belief in the real truth. Many people just don't as yet realize that it is as easy as this, and so don't act in the role of extender of God's love through miracle working. You may not realize that you really only need to have some faith/trust and believe in the truth in order to now be a vessel for Holy Spirit to flow through.

A vast majority of miracles performed in the world today are performed by students of whatever spiritual system, students who are still "in process" of awakening and who are still learning about the truth. They do not need to be completely purified in order for such miracles to work through them, if they have willingess to allow Holy Spirit to "use them" and work with them.

Some trust in God is all it takes, a little willingness to accept that God's truth is true.

"A major step in the Atonement plan is to undo error at ALL levels. Illness, which is really "not Right Mindedness", is the result of level confusion in the sense that it always entails the misbelief that what is amiss in one level can adversely affect another."

"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind."

"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."

"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. ... To use a medium of communication as a medium of attack is an obvious confusion in purpose. To communicate is to join and to attack is to separate. How can you do both simultaneously WITH THE SAME THING, and NOT suffer?"

"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."

"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."

"All sickness comes from a confusion of the levels."

"Sickness is but another form of guilt."

"Do not allow yourselves to suffer from the results of what is not true. Free your minds from the belief that this is possible. In its complete impossibility, and your full awareness of its complete impossibility, lies your only hope for release."

"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."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"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."

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose that the mind would use it FOR."

"The ego SEPARATES through the body. The Holy Spirit reaches THROUGH it to others. You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine. This interpretation of the body will change your mind entirely about its value. Of itself it has NONE. If you use it for attack it is harmful to you. But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you. If you use the body for this, and ONLY for this, you CANNOT use it for attack. In the service of uniting, it becomes a beautiful lesson in communion, which has value until communion IS. "

"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."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it. ... "You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do not see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness is an attack, which SEEMS to be justified by its RESULTS. For, by withholding faith, you see only what IS unworthy of it, and cannot look BEYOND the barrier to what is joined with you."

"Sickness is but another name for sin. Healing is but another Name for God. The miracle is thus a call to Him."

"Thus are you JOINED in sickness, to preserve the little gap unhealed, where sickness is kept carefully protected, cherished, and upheld by firm belief, lest God should come to bridge the little gap that leads to Him."

"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. "

"Sickness is isolation. For it seems to keep one self apart from all the rest, to suffer what the others do not feel. It gives the body final power to make the separation real and keep the mind in solitary prison, split apart and held in pieces by a solid wall of sickened flesh which it can not surmount."

"Whatever the sickness, there is but one remedy. You will be made whole as you MAKE whole, for to perceive in sickness the appeal for health, is to recognize in hatred the call for love."

"What you behold as sickness and as pain, as weakness and as suffering and loss, is but temptation to perceive yourself defenseless and in hell. Yield not to this, and you will see all pain in every form wherever it occurs but disappear as mists before the sun."

"Only the wholly insane could look on death and suffering, sickness and despair, and see it thus. What guilt has wrought is ugly, fearful, and very dangerous. See no illusion of truth and beauty there."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers. The form in which they are accepted is irrelevant. No form of misery, in reason's eyes, can be confused with joy."

"Any form of mental illness can truthfully be described as an expression of viciousness. We said before that those who are afraid are apt to be vicious. If we were willing to forgive other people's misperceptions of us, they could not possibly affect us at all."

"Pain, illness, loss, age and death seem to threaten me. All my hopes and wishes and plans appear to be at the mercy of a world I cannot control. Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"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."

"For example, do not say, 'God did not create illness', but, 'God did not create cancer,' or heart attacks, or whatever may arouse fear in you. ... This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking.These things are part of the world you see. Some of them are shared illusions, and others are part of your personal hell. It does not matter.What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"The gap IS little. Yet it holds the seeds of pestilence and every form of ill, because it is a WISH to keep apart, and NOT to join. And thus it seems to give a CAUSE to sickness which is NOT its cause. The PURPOSE of the gap is all the cause that sickness has. For it was made to keep you separated in a body which you see as if it were the CAUSE of pain. The cause of pain is separation, NOT the body, which is only its 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. 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."

"Pain is the thought of evil taking form, and working havoc in your holy mind. Pain is the ransom you have gladly paid not to be free. In pain is God denied the Son He loves. In pain does fear appear to triumph over love, and time replace eternity and Heaven. And the world becomes a cruel and a bitter place, where sorrow rules and little joys give way before the onslaught of the savage pain that waits to end all joy in misery."

"Pain demonstrates the body must be real. It is a loud, obscuring voice, whose shrieks would silence what the Holy Spirit says, and keep His words from your awareness. Pain compels attention, drawing it away from Him, and focusing upon itself. Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL. What shares a common purpose IS the same. This is the law of purpose, which unites all those who share in it within itself. Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has. "

"Sin shifts from pain to pleasure, and again to pain. For EITHER witness is the same, and carries but one message, "You are here, WITHIN this body, and you CAN be hurt. You can have pleasure, too, but ONLY at the cost of pain."

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form? It witnesses to God the Father's hatred of His Son; the sinfulness He sees in him, and His insane desire for revenge and death. Can such projections be attested to? Can they be anything but wholly false?"

"Pain is but witness to the Son's mistakes in what he thinks he is. It is a dream of fierce retaliation for a crime that could not be committed; for attack on what is wholly unassailable. It is a nightmare of abandonment by an Eternal Love Which could not leave the Son whom It created out of love."

"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."

"Of one thing you were sure; of all the many causes you perceived as bringing pain and suffering to you, your guilt was NOT among them. Nor did you, in ANY way, REQUEST them for yourself. This is how ALL illusions come about. The one who makes them does NOT see himself as making them, and their reality does NOT depend on him. Whatever cause they have is something quite APART from him, and what he sees is SEPARATE from his 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. 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. "

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. "

"Delay will hurt you now MORE THAN BEFORE, ONLY because you realize it IS delay, and that escape from pain IS REALLY POSSIBLE. Find hope and comfort, rather than despair, in this. You could no longer find even the ILLUSION of love in ANY special relationship here."

"This makes it an end and not a means in your interpretation, and this ALWAYS means YOU STILL FIND SIN ATTRACTIVE. No-one accepts Atonement for himself who still accepts sin as his goal. You have thus not met your one responsibility. Atonement is not welcomed by those who PREFER pain and destruction."

"You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE."

"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."

"I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness. Yet, in these dark and heavy garments, are those who seek illusions covered, and hidden from the joy of truth. Truth is the opposite of illusions, because it offers joy."

"No risk is possible throughout the day except to put your trust in magic, for it is only this that leads to pain. There is no will but God's."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything. It cannot purchase anything at all. It offers nothing, and does not exist. And everything you think it offers you is lacking in existence like itself. You have been slave to nothing. Be you free today to join the happy Will of God."

"To the ego, the body IS TO ATTACK WITH Equating YOU with the body, it teaches that YOU are to attack with, because THIS IS WHAT IT BELIEVES. The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function. "

"These are not laws, but madness. 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."

"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. But consider what this means to YOU. UNLESS you are sick you cannot keep the gods you made, for only in sickness could you possibly WANT them."

The happy truth behind every seeming disasterous illusion in this world, is that nothing has gone wrong at all and we are still with God.

The happy truth is also that it is actually possible to be immortal, as spirit, and to even manifest a seemingly incorruptible body if you so choose. Doing so is nothing compared to your real power.

All things that could ever go wrong to hurt you, come from you, and are a choice, and therefore not choosing them renders you invulnerable. If you do not see this clearly it's because you believe the *illusion* that people don't do things to themselves.

Nothing happens to anyone without not only their consent but without them actually literally orchestrating and doing it to themselves. So this myth of vulnerability, that you can be affected, or that death can come along and attack you without having the power to stop it, is a complete lie that has been perpetuated for millennia.

The happy truth is that all the things that you're concerned about, are not true. And nothing is really wrong. And nobody is really getting hurt. Of course that flies in the face of what *appears* to be happening, because that's us falling for the illusion that people aren't choosing.

If we could recognize and see the choices everyone is making and expose the entire back-story of how everyone has deliberately chosen every single thing they have ever experienced, we would not be able to believe for a second that something can happen to us against our will. And our belief in death would be totally blown out of the water.

It's only because the truth seems to be hidden, i.e. your are unaware of it, that it seems plausible that things are happening to you that you did not ask for. And this also means that once you are aware, you will no longer make yourself suffer and die, and lo-and-behold will find that nothing beyond you has the power to make you die either.

As such you are completely protected, perfectly safe, only love is real, and really this is all just a big joke. The Son of God is playing with illusions and toying with death as part of His little fantasy story-telling adventure, and one day we will wake up to experience this truth and know that nothing ever really happened to anyone.

And then we'll remember to laugh

ou seek forgiveness because you believe you are guilty.

Yet while you believe you are guilty you cannot BE forgiven.

It's not that God isn't willing to forgive you. God always sees you as innocent.

It's that you are not willing to let go of believing you're guilty. You are unwilling to receive love.

In order to RECEIVE forgiveness, you have to be willing to drop the guilt and ACCEPT that you are innocent. And since God is not the one finding you guilty, it is YOU that must forgive YOURSELF by accepting HIS view of you.

If you truly are asking for forgiveness and you REALLY want to be forgiven, then you have to accept the conditions of forgiveness, which is that you are absolved of guilt because you are wholly innocent and free.

So at some point, your motivation for seeking forgiveness should transition from "I'm guilty, please forgive me" to "I'm not guilty and I have not done anything wrong".

This is, essentially, the transition from the traditional form of forgiveness, which says I did something bad and should be pardoned - but are still essentially guilty of having done it, to the TRUE form of forgiveness which says .... you ARE innocent, because you HAVE NOT done anything.

How can you be innocent if, in some way, you are guilty of doing something? If in any way 'you did it', you are guilty. This is the ego's law. Things happening in the world = guilty. Doesn't matter what it is. If it happened, it is part of the belief that SIN has happened - original sin - separation from God. This idea of 'it happened' means you are sinful, therefore guilty, therefore not innocent at all.

So being 'let off' from guilt in spite of the fact that you did something, only HALF forgives you. It says, well, we know you still did it, we're still going to hate you in the background and never truly let go of this grievance, BUT we'll forgive you ... for now. You're still guilty.

So what will it take to go from conditional forgiveness to unconditional forgiveness? From partial forgiveness to whole forgiveness? From partial innocence to COMPLETE innocence?

To be innocent, it must be IMPOSSIBLE that you ever did anything at all. Innocence means you are INCAPABLE OF SIN. How does someone who is truly innocent ever have even the ABILITY to do anything sinful? It's impossible. It's not part of their nature. So innocence MUST go hand in hand with ... the atonement, the TRUE atonement (not compensation) .... that NOTHING HAPPENED.

This is what the Course is teaching us. We are always innocent. Nothing has happened. All is forgiven AND 'forgotten' because nothing has happened.

If you make problems real, your prayer is "I want this problem", and so it is given you. Your prayer is answered. Even if in words it seems your prayer is "I do not want this problem", your actual prayer is that you do.

When your prayer is sincerely not focusing on "I have this real problem" and is instead truly acknowledging the perfection of God, God's perfection will be what you are asking for, and God's perfection will be what you are given.

This is what the whole "Song of Prayer" pamphlet for ACIM is about. It's telling us to sing a higher song. To express the basic prayer "this is what's true for me", which is more of an expression of affirmation or acknowledgement, than it is a question. And that's because there are no real questions, only assertions.

So whatever you are asserting, that is what you are expressing as what you want and believe in, and that is what you will get.

So if you assert and acknowledge the truth of God and the presence of divine health and perfection and happiness, that is what God will happily share with you, and will move mountains that you would have it to extend to others.

God does not fail to "answer prayers". It is YOU who decides what you will give to yourself. God is ALWAYS providing the fullest love, and when your prayer is actually saying "I don't really want love" God is honoring that, to honor your free will.

This is the true meaning of "God helps those who help themselves." - you must be willing to be PART OF the atonement, to be the GIVER of the miracle that you would receive, to position yourself seeing things with God's eyes, not through the ego's eyes. To acknowledge and be grateful for the abundance of God's blessing. If you are not willing to participate in the extending of love, how can you receive it?

God is always fully giving. Fully giving is creation. It is sharing. It is how God created souls and made each of them complete and full in and of themselves, endowed with completely free will, because they are given fully as expressions of unconditional love and freedom.

If prayers seem broken or not heard, you are not asking for what you think you are asking for, and so you are in fact receiving more of what you are actually asking for, and thinking it is not what you asked for. Ego must be let go and out of the way in order to "accurately" pray and have your receiving line up with your expressing.

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"Your inheritance can neither be bought NOR sold. There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"Yet perfect security and complete fulfillment are my inheritance. I have tried to give my inheritance away in exchange for the world I see. But God has kept my inheritance safe for me."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

"Their Father gave the SAME inheritance to both. Who would have more OR less is not aware that he has everything."

Here's the facts.

God already gave you everything. He shared all of creation with you. You share with every brother. Everyone shares the total abundance of Heaven together. It is yours permanently because that is God's will.

You cannot make it go away. You cannot defile it or break it or diminish it. Nothing you do can make you unworthy of it. It is already yours because it IS YOU. It's built into what you are. You are an aspect of Heaven itself. You are the gift of God.

The only other option you have is to GO INTO DENIAL and pretend that you do not HAVE the inheritance that God has provided. This denial does not actually undo the inheritance, nor does it destroy it or make it undone. All it does is COVER IT UP with blocks to awareness.

Since you cannot change God's will, all you can do is block awareness that it is permanently true. You do this through denial which makes you unconscious. You attempt to shut out of awareness the unavoidable reality of your inheritance, believing that if you just hide your head in the sand like an ostrich you won't be "aware" that the truth is still true, and therefore "that means it's not there." This is self-deception at its finest.

All that is required therefore is the removal of the blocks to the awareness of love's presence. The love is still there. The inheritance is still there, and God kept it for you permanently. You don't get to cancel it, but you can hide from it. All you need to do therefore is remove the blocks to awareness, which is nothing more than DENIAL and a LACK OF ACCEPTANCE, which lifts away these barriers in your mind and increases what you are AWARE OF.

And in so doing you reveal to yourself what is ALREADY THERE and what is ALREADY YOURS. This is how you ALLOW yourself to reclaim your natural inheritance from God, which is always yours forever.

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

To me this has always meant that once you have accepted forgiveness for yourself, you now have the POWER to CAUSE others to be forgiven also, healing them and setting them free. That you can REMOVE THEIR GUILT.

It is not enough to just believe that "you have forgiven them", in that YOU now feel better, and THEY are unchanged. This is NOT a complete forgiveness. You must extend the healing to your brother also because "when I am healed I am not healed alone."

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

Sin is a pivot point. If you believe it is true and real, you must proceed to guilt. And guilt will force punishment through sickness, suffering and death.

If you believe sin is not real or true, you will proceed to innocence, a state of forgiveness in which it is recognized there is no sin. And in this state, there is no guilt, and sickness and death are impossible.

Therefore once you accept your OWN innocence, by recognizing you DID NOT SIN, and therefore are not guilty, and do not need to CAUSE yourself to suffer (secret of salvation)... you now can bestow the UNDOING OF GUILT in another. Just as Jesus had the power to "pardon the sins" of others and thus heal them.

Forgiveness then is the movement away from making sin real, towards making sin unreal. Which means it's a movement away from GUILT, towards INNOCENCE.

So to forgive another... which really should mean, to forgive them FOR them, so that you HEAL THEM for them, it must entail that you UNDO THEIR GUILT, by recognizing their innocence.

Holding firm to their innocence and guiltlessness, the fact they DID NOT SIN, shines a healing light into their mind and shines away their guilt. It reinforces their innocence and undoes their supposed sin. And as the "reality" of sin melts, so too does the guilt, and all the sickness, suffering and death.

The dead are raised, through the recognition of the total unreality of sin and guilt. Recognizing the innate innocence of your brother allows you to RESTORE his mind to innocence and thereby UNDO and REVERSE death.

"I was not mistaken. Your minds WILL elect to join with mine, and together we are invincible. You two will yet come together in my name and your sanity will be restored. ***I raised the dead*** by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

To prove that your mind is restored to sanity and to its truly immortal nature, you must also be willing to prove physically that you are invulnerable. This demonstration of invulnerability requires great confidence, in that even when others attempt to harm you, the consequences of their attack disappears and is undone. You become "bullet proof" and incapable of being hurt by anyone.

You are literally being asked to show your brother, to prove to him visually, that on ALL levels, you have not been hurt by him. This includes and demands the healing of the body, so that it does not transmit a double contradictory message. The body must not be allowed to testify that HE DID attack you or your body, otherwise it continues to PROVE that he is a sinner.

This requires the use of miracles to override all external sources of attack, undoing all consequences of sin, and maintaining the body in perfect condition. Only by reversing or preventing any effects of attack by another, can you truly demonstrate to him that he HAS NOT attacked you OR your body. And only by showing him the complete ABSENCE of evidence to support his belief that he sinned, can you exonerate him and teach him his innocence.

Your body then becomes a SYMBOL of your own innocence, because it now represents your harmlessness and immortality. And by pointing TO your innocence, it also testifies to HIS. It cannot testify to his innocence if it retains ANY trace of harm or damage, which means that until forgiveness has brought a PHYSICAL healing to your body, it is not real or complete. And until it has transmitted healing TO your brother as well, through physical demonstration, forgiveness is not complete.

When you brother attempts to look upon your body which he believes he DID successfully attack, and does NOT see any proof of attack there, because it has been healed and undone by miracles, it becomes impossible for him to CONFIRM his own sinfulness. And in the demonstrated PHYSICAL PROOF that he did not do anything, the body testifies with a power greater than a thousand tongues, and beyond words or claims, that HE MUST NOT have attacked you. And therefore your body's unharmed condition shows him that he MUST still be innocent, and in its harmlessness induces HEALING in him, because his belief in sin is proven false.

This also extends to you demonstrating that your brother has not hurt you psychologically, and is not responsible for your suffering. Which ties into the secret of salvation that "you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts" and "you did it to yourself." When someone appears to upset you, you are deceiving yourself and are using him as a scapegoat for your self-attack.

What you're supposed to do is assert that NO ONE CAN HURT YOU. Which is a position is great confidence and assertion. Whereby even if someone tries to hurt you, you act as if they have had NO EFFECT on you. Which means you do not hold anything against them.

To forgive therefore means to hold no sense of sin or guilt against anyone, REGARDLESS of what they do or attempt to do. Even if they accuse you or try to hurt you, you stand in the face of their onslaught unharmed and unwavering, like a rock in the river. You do not USE it to hurt YOURSELF, and so do not demonstrate that you can BE attacked. You show your brother, both mentally and physically, that he HAS NOT done anything to you, and you do not make him responsible for your condition, feelings, or physical state. You act as if you are invulnerable, and in fact are. You show him, "you can't do anything to me, not even physically."

If you think ACIM is not teaching you that you HAVE to heal the body in order NOT to accuse others of sin, then think again. The body MUST reflect the healed mind, and until it does, you HAVE NOT healed the mind. Sickness and pain cannot be kept, if you are to PROVE that you are healed and that you have power OVER it. Death and sickness must be UNDONE in order to demonstrate that you are the resurrection and the life.

This doesn't mean you ARE a body OR that the body is immortal, which it cannot be. But the body DOES symbolize your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Its sickness is part of your effort to PROJECT SIN, and you cannot allow it to show up as a picture of crucifixion or proof of attack, if you are truly forgiving.

The pertinent quotes...

"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."

"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."

"Health is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief. No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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 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 which are responsible for the body's condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

"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."

"His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed"

"With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

"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."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

Again it's quite simple. God and his kingdom are absolute reality and truth. Just "what is." The entire "separation from God" is just you denying this and becoming delusional that something else is true and real. This puts you out of touch with reality, and you start to hallucinate a false world. Your mind goes insane and can't tell what is true or real anymore.

The situation you're in physically, is that you seem to be in a world. But the psychological problem is that you are not even in touch with what this world is either. You do not see it correctly because you are to filled with denial.

The ego state of mind is full of distortions, denials, deceptions, lies, wishful thinking, fantasies, unwillingness to see, false beliefs, filters, judgements, meanings, opinions, and all manner of unreality. A kind of private inner world, like someone walking around in a daze, in a constant state of daydreaming.

Our attempt to deny God's truth and reality, also puts us out of touch with the "truth and reality" of THIS world. The desire not to see God's creation, causes us to also "not see" this world clearly. Our denial of eternal life, also causes us to not see heaven's reflection in this world.

What we're then needing to is to get in touch with reality and accept that reality. To become able to see truthfully and to see what is actually true. To recognize what everything is, without all the denial and distortion and lies about it. Jesus calls this "reality contact", as well as "true perception", and seeing the "real world." We might rephrase "real world" as "the world as it actually is."

We first become able to accurately perceive this world. This requires the undoing of all the ego devices, the unwillingness, the denial and distortion, the self-deception, the lies we keep telling ourselves. This requires a whole lot of radical self-honesty.

Honesty is really the same thing as "admitting the truth", which means also to "allow access" to the truth. To let the truth in. If we cannot accept the truth then we are not accepting atonement and are not having true perception. When we are reluctant to accept a situation, we dislike a situation, we want things to be different, we wish they were the way they used to be etc, that's all various forms of not accepting reality. It's always to do with not accepting a FACT.

The main issue here is denial. If all we did was undo denial and become more honest, we'd be finished. But we don't like to ever admit to being in denial, because denial is what keeps things away from us. It's a defense, it's what we use for ego protection and to keep our lies safe. To admit that you are in denial is to admit that there is something that is true that you do NOT WANT. And that means that to stop being in denial you'll have to becoming more WILLING, and open to ACCEPTANCE, that the thing you've been denying is actually true.

We basically just keep looking away from reality. We keep hiding our sight, unwilling to see what's really here. We keep avoiding, deceiving ourselves and distracting ourselves. We keep going off into the past and into the future. We are not present with what actually exists now, even on this illusory physical level yet alone the level of God's reality. We don't want to accept what is true, and this denial of truth was the beginning of the whole separation and the making of the ego.

So it's very helpful for us to pause and reflect on how we might be in denial, what we are denying, why we are denying it, and to become willing to stop being in denial. It means though having to swallow a "hard truth", something that you perhaps have been avoiding. Or even frightened of. Or something that seems that, if you were to face it, you would be horrified.

But it is the avoidance of truth that makes you horrified, and the horror comes from resistance - the lack of acceptance, not allowing the truth to be true. It has no effect on you when it washes over you and is allowed to be what it is. We have to accept this world first, even though it's an illusion, before we can accept God's kingdom. That doesn't mean accepting that it is ultimate reality, it just means letting it be what it is without fighting it.

All suffering, all despair, all loss, all unhappiness, all stress and fear, all threat and danger, all loss of peace, comes solely from the unwillingness to accept what is true. Your only choice is between denial or acceptance, and you will find hell or heaven as a result.

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."

"Make the world real unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it BELONGS to you. Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not LOST their vision, but merely sleep."

"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals misperception, and healing is indeed a miracle, in view of how man perceives himself."

"YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE."

"You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, HAVE walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that SEEMED to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your GOAL was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God can NOT destroy Himself. The light is IN you. Darkness can COVER it, but CANNOT put it out."

"The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son."

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

"All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are BARGAINS with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

"The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

"If you can accept the ONE GENERALIZATION NOW, there will be no need to learn from many smaller lessons."

Effectively what the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you is ONE LESSON. This one lesson is to learn how to "teach only love", because you are only love. It's to have a single response of love in all situations, to use love's miraculous power to heal all sickness and to solve all problems. To recognize no orders of difficulty or hierarchies of illusion, to see all forms of suffering as the same effect having the same ONE cause. One problem with one solution to rule them all.

Over time, in the application of what may seem like more specific lessons, ultimately what you are LEARNING is really to simply be as God created you. To be loving. To be singular, or ONE. One in character and substance and nature and identity and attitude and response. One single way of always consistently being the same, in complete disregard for any illusions of forms or differences. Completely ignoring orders of magnitude or difficulty or importance or seriousness or size or duration or any other property.

As we gradually "polish" our minds from seeming to be fragmented, with different responses for different people, different relationships with different individuals, different reactions to different objects, different meanings for different things, we gradually GENERALIZE the learning and move into a much more ABSTRACT state of mind. A much more singular state of mind, whole and one and unified and undivided and free from conflicts. Being so one, this state of mind - miracle mindedness, houses the power of love and truth and sees all things from a single perspective.

This is the ONE LESSON which the Holy Spirit is teaching, behind all the lessons in the workbook, behind all the text material and all thoughts and life lessons/trials, behind all relationships and dramas, the simple movement away from complexity and multiplicities of action, towards simple unification, integration, wholeness and oneness. This lays the groundwork for one-mindedness, which is a state of complete abstract purity and wholeness, in which the entirety of everything acts as one with no conflict or difference or adjustment to conditions.

Unconditional love is completely ignorance of conditions. It ignores the form of problems, the shapes of bodies, the types of sickness, the reasons for their supposed causation, the worldly powers, the forces of nature, the laws of physics, the many rules and regulations. It doesn't even care to need to know how something came about, to analyze it or diagnose it or figure out the complicated pathways of cause and effect. It simply APPLIES ITSELF singularly by giving itself and sharing itself, to increase itself and to supply the lack - the lack of love, the lack of unification, or seeming unwholeness, which is the basis for all suffering.

Learn this ONE LESSON, and you are done with the curriculum forever. See past the illusion of separations, which gives rise to countless numbers of bits and pieces. Look to the one vision to show you the one true reality. And you will rise above the fragmented battlefield into the wholeness of light.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF." "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."

"My one lesson, which I must teach as I learned, is that no perception which is out of accord with the judgment of the Holy Spirit CAN be justified." "That is why you must teach only ONE lesson. If you are to be conflict free yourselves, you must learn ONLY from the Holy Spirit, and teach ONLY by Him."

"We said before that the message of the Crucifixion was teach ONLY love, for that is what you ARE. This is the ONE lesson which is perfectly unified, because it is the only lesson which IS one. And only BY teaching it can YOU learn it."

"As the teacher of God advances in his training, he learns one lesson with increasing thoroughness. He does not make his own decisions; he asks his Teacher for His answer, and it is this he follows as his guide for action. This becomes easier and easier, as the teacher of God learns to give up his own judgment."

"But the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies it to ALL individuals in ALL situations. Being conflict free, He maximizes ALL efforts and ALL results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal."

"Thus is YOUR healing everything the world requires, that it may be healed. It needs ONE lesson that has perfectly been learned."

"As you perceive more and more common elements in ALL situations, the transfer of your training, under the Holy Spirit's guidance increases and becomes generalized. Gradually, you learn to apply it to everyone and everything, for its applicability IS universal. When this has been accomplished, perception and knowledge have become so similar that they share the unification of the Laws of God. What is One cannot be perceived as separate, and the denial of the separation IS the reinstatement of knowledge."

"The purpose is to train the mind to generalize the lessons, so that you will understand that each of them is as applicable to one situation as it is to another."

"the impairment of the ability to generalize is a crucial learning failure" "Place cause and effect in their true sequence in one respect, and the learning will generalize and transform the world."

"The specificity of the ego's thinking, then, results in a spurious kind of generalization, which is really not abstract at all. It will respond in certain specific ways to all stimuli which it perceives as related. In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else."

"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 GENERALIZATION 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 have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"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."

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

As you perform miracles, you might have some sense that they may not be fully applied or that they might not work. This is because you are still of the belief that there is a separate will out there capable of working against yours.

But that separate will is just a portion of your own will that is working against yourself because you still believe that the 'cause' is outside of you. The secret tosalvation is that you but do things to yourself, and there is no enemy or external cause.

As you perform miracles, it may seem there is an enemy standing in the way, being defiant, tempting you with illusions of difficulty or seriousness. These are all lies. They are not really there.

There is nothing stopping miracles from being fully applied, directly, to correct and change and heal. Nothing can stand in their way.

It is not that you need to learn how to ask the world to be healed, or how to put in a proper 'request'. This isn't about making requests. You're not asking the dream to heal. You're telling it to BE a certain way. You command it.

And really, you do not command 'it'. There isn't really anything there TO command. Rather, you are bypassing it, overlooking it with complete forgiveness, and are simply re-writing it directly.

In authority, if you decide with God to re-paint a part of the world, you will directly apply that to the world and it will be transformed. You won't be saying to the world, oh, maybe if you like you can change for me. You will be FORCING it to change by direct will.

The will of God is not partial. It is not conditional. It doesn't just 'maybe' happen. It isn't weak. It doesn't just apply sometimes and fail other times. The will of God is permanent. It is already accomplished. Miracles are already accomplished. The re-writing of the illusion into a happier dream is already accomplished.

What could stand in the way of the authority of the Son of God but his own fantasies that something exists to stand in the way?

100% extension of Creation, outward, with power. There is nothing else to oppose it.

There is no ego. There is no hell. There is no evil.

To accept the Atonement is to accept that God's truth is the truth. It also means accepting that nothing else is true.

Jesus demonstrates this when He speaks of His own state of Atonement:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you."

We would be perfectly willing to accept God's truth, IF we did not believe that something else is true. We have been listening to another "voice", the voice of the ego (untruth) rather than the Voice of God (truth).

If we believe the ego has some truth to it, it means we agree with it. We will defend it, protect it, want to keep it, and will shield it from God. We'll use it as justification for "why" we believe we cannot accept God's truth as true. This literally makes us perceive that God's truth is NOT true.

This is the meaning of "He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." We are busy justifying WHY we cannot accept atonement/forgiveness, in order to keep and protect the ego that we believe is sacred and true and worthy of us.

No-one in their right mind would want to accept something they believe is not the truth. No-one would want anything to do with something they regard as "false". The ego attributes all qualities of falseness to God, including perceiving Him as evil, as a threat, as an attacker, and as willing that we be dead. That's quite a lot of false belief to "reverse" - thought reversal - if we are to become genuinely WILLING to want to be with God.

An unwillingness to accept God's truth comes solely from a willingness to accept the ego's truth. Another way the Course puts this is in terms of faith. We have "faith" in the ego, we have come to TRUST it, we think it is helping us, protecting us, defending us, acting in our best interests, and is "working" for us. We think we WANT what it is offering. This is because we do not RECOGNIZE the ways that the ego is deceptive, a lie, a form of attack, self defeating, suicidal and fixated on death.

When we believe the ego is the truth, we literally become "blind" to the truth, and incapable of discerning that God's truth is true. We see falseness IN it, because there is falseness in our perception. We see reflected in God our own "evil" content, thinking it is his.

For example, whenever we misperceive the truth through the ego, we see it as attacking us, we put up a defense, which implements blocks to life, which produces sickness and death. This production of sickness is an attempt to "save our life" by protecting us from life. This is obviously insane. The ego's efforts to "help" us is actually an attempt to deceive us, to trick us into hurting ourselves "in the name of" helping ourselves. In other words, the ego's advice produces the opposite result from what it promises.

While we believe the ego has truth to it, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. In fact we'll not be able. We can't ACCEPT it, to really deeply abide in it and feel it and welcome it and want it and admit its truth and ALLOW IT to love us. That's because we have allegiance to the ego and "want" what it is offering instead. AND YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH! You have to choose. This valuing of the ego's offering produces DOUBT. Being in two minds, or even entirely in ego, will make us very uncertain about whether the truth even IS true, and whether we even DO want it.

Failure to discern what IS true, and what IS false, forms the basis of this confusion, which makes us unwilling and unable to accept it. No-one wants to accept what they think will destroy them. It's just that, believing the ego we will believe GOD is the one who is going to destroy us, and the ego is our savior. It simply "makes sense" to us not to accept God's version of events, because His truth does not "make sense" when the ego perceives it.

If we believe there is really death, really punishment, really fear, really victimhood, really guilt, really sin, really separation, really sickness, really suffering, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. The atonement says the exact opposite is true. This means we WILL have to become willing to RECOGNIZE all of these illusions for what they ARE, how we are using them to support the ego, and how they are not TRUE or real.

So we are going to have to systematically let go of all belief that there is such a thing as real sickness, real death, real sin, real guilt, real fear, real suffering, real victims, etc. To do this, we will have to be a LITTLE WILLING to believe that the ego beliefs do NOT contain truth, they in fact are FALSE, and something else is MORE TRUE. If any of this ego stuff - illusions appearing to be real - is within our perception, i.e. within our attitude or beliefs about ourselves, it has to GO, BEFORE we will genuinely, deeply, feel WILLING and READY to accept the truth of God.

Each time that we are attempting to perform a "forgiveness", i.e. we're upset and suffering in some way and we want to get back to the truth, to apply the Course principles and heal ourselves, it's going to have to entail the UNDOING OF FALSE BELIEFS. i.e. the undoing of listening to the ego's interpretation, stopping listening to its voice, stopping believing its bullshit is true, discerning HOW and WHY it is not true, and RECOGNIZING the illusions - i.e. the lies - that you are perpetuating. This can take tremendous radical HONESTY. Honesty admits the truth - allows the truth to enter.

Applying forgiveness SHOULD also therefore mean, that you start with wherever you're at, with whatever you are experiencing now, and you need to transition from there ALL THE WAY TO THE ATONEMENT. If you do not go all the way, if you stop short and keep some beliefs, you will not "complete" the forgiveness because you're not getting to the point where you FULLY ACCEPT the truth and FULLY LET GO of the ego.

While over time you generally will move gradually towards truth, on the whole, you actually can take yourself ALL the way to the atonement at any time, on a SPECIFIC topic. For example if you have issues with a parent or a coworker or something, some belief that is getting triggered... to FULLY forgive that issue, or at least a big chunk of it, you need to look at the beliefs involved and undo them, ALL the way until you get to "sin did not happen in reality, there is no sin at all, therefore I'm still innocent".

Taking back a projection, for example, is only a FIRST STEP in forgiving. It only means then that you recognize some measure of responsibility, that it's actually "about you" and not "about" another person. That's a vital step, and taking of responsibility is essential to any application of forgiveness. But that's not the end of the story.

The problem is, even if you can recognize it's not about other people, you may still believe you are afraid, you are guilty, and you are sinful. These beliefs have to be uncovered as well. Part of the problem is, there are various stages of separation: sin > guilt > fear > punishment > death and each stage entails a shitload of DENIAL. That denial makes content in your mind UNCONSCIOUS. That means you don't even REALIZE that you have this stuff in your mind somewhere, buried, behind a wall of illusions.

So if all you do is take back a projection and then sit with it and don't really realize how you have unconscious guilt lurking in your mind, which your state of victimhood was made to cover up and distract away from, you may not even get to the stage of becoming AWARE of that guilt, to undo it. And even if you get to where you are undoing the guilt, you may not even be aware - there is such a things as UNCONSCIOUS SIN. That has to be undone as well. Only when all of these layers of DENIAL in the mind are undone, ONLY then will you find yourself actually WILLING and able and ready to wholeheartedly ACCEPT that the Atonement is true. That is the point where forgiveness is COMPLETE.

You can do this on any given topic. It doesn't have to just be the overall whole issue of separation. Every time you forgive all the way to the atonement you receive a miracle, and then can offer it. Every time you make a genuine effort to becoming WILLING to accept the truth - your innocence, that literally nothing happened in reality - your mind gets healed one more giant leap towards God. As much as you can accept at the time. This will have PROFOUND healing effects on your perception.

There was a woman that I couldn't stand, a social worker, who had poor sense of boundaries and was always overstepping her role. I had fear about seeing her, anger about her behavior and various other upsets. I thought she was the problem. Later I became willing to see how I was actually seeing some unhealed stuff about ANOTHER person, in this person. I applied forgiveness through various steps and went all the way to atonement on this issue about that person. This was a strong healing.

Later, when I saw this woman again, my entire perception of her was so different. She seemed like a completely different person, as though I'd never seen her before. I had no reaction to her and saw no "sin" in her. She didn't seem to bother me and I knew that I'd been accusing her of something that I thought someone else was guilty of, but which *I* was guilty of. The interesting thing is, when you lift off of other people your own sin, it doesn't necessarily make that person disappear. Instead, you see them more clearly for what is there, and what is theirs. It's interesting then how their OWN call for love suddenly becomes obvious, distinct from anything going on in yourself.

Anyway. I have many other examples where when I've gone all the way to really thoroughly undoing false beliefs and accepting God's truth, it's healed my mind in a major way and really cleared up my perception. It has allowed me to see "truth" where once I saw a distortion. Or rather, to see correctly and accurately where I once only saw what I wanted to see.

If you have been forgiving in some way but not going ALL the way to atonement, I recommend giving it a try. Even if it's on just one small topic. Forgiveness is only complete when you recognize there literally has not been a "real sin" in reality, that whatever it was only took place in a dream, and therefore has had no real effects.

Atonement DOES cure everything. There was an accident that happened years ago where I hurt someone. It produced tremendous guilt. A lot of things happened because of it including a major depression, ostracision from society and various other nightmares. I healed a lot of it over the years and rationalized in various ways why it was ok or not ok or whatever. But I could never QUITE really let go of it. That is, until I went to the atonement with it.

Going to the atonement on this, I FINALLY got to the point of realizing that what I thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN in reality. It only happened as part of a dream. All of my other healing efforts had been to somehow justify "what happened" or to explain "why" it was ok. That never healed me fully. I had to undo the belief it happened AT ALL. When I finally could accept and SEE and RECOGNIZE that it is TRUE, and makes sense, that I REALLY DID NOT DO ANYTHING, and nothing real can be threatened, I could actually willingly ACCEPT that God's truth is true. I could ACCEPT how God sees me. I could ACCEPT that I must still be innocent. And then there were tears of joy at FINALLY being able to LET GO of this "sin" and RECEIVE GOD's LOVE!

Only atonement can be said to cure. Miracles express from the atonement.

Space suggests, something exists over here which does not exist over there. Everything in space is not whole, and is not the whole, and does not exist everywhere. Therefore it doesn't fully exist anywhere. Space is in fact the idea that nothing (illusion of something false) exists and everything (God) does not exist. It's the idea of God's absence, opposite to reality in every way.

Time suggests, something which existed just now, no longer exists. Nothing exists forever, everything is always changing, nothing is reliable or constant or permanent, and everything ends. It is the idea of death. It the idea that nothing last forever and therefore reality is in constant flux and HAS no reality. It is the opposite to eternity and the notion that Heaven, God, and the Son of God, have all stopped existing as they were and have been changed into something else. In time, nothing exists at all times, and everything (God) never exists at any single moment at all. It's the idea of not existing.

Some people seem to have great difficulty understanding why this makes sense and why this is true. Or rather, have trouble accepting it.

The reason being, there is great special value placed on all things that exist in space and time. The world, the universe, animals, trees, sunsets, mountain ranges, oceans, favorite coffee houses, buildings, cars, etc. None of these things exist outside of space or time, and none of them can exist without space or time.

If space were to end, it would become impossible for anything to exist in a specific location. Nothing could remain separated off as an object. There could be no individual trees, no planets, no stars. And if time were to end, nothing could move, change, grow, or die. Physical planets cannot be maintained without space and time. The solar system cannot move without space and time. And the human body is totally dependent on spacetime to exist and seem to live.

Without spacetime, there is no world, there is no solar system, no stars, no galaxies, no bodies. They cannot have a form of any kind without spacetime. It's not merely a matter of these things continuing to exist but being joined together by some kind of oneness. That's blatant confusion and a denial of the facts. Even the form of the atoms and particles making up the objects cannot continue existing at all without spacetime. All the atoms would disperse into everywhereness. All the molecules would disappear.

This is the central message in ACIM, that "there is no world". It's a dream, a fictional fantasy place, made of illusions, a denial of reality, a complete opposite to reality, and an attack up on reality. Space attacks Omnipresence. Time attacks eternity. They are completely diametrically opposed and nothing alike. This world is nothing like heaven. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

There is no spacetime.

There is a divine order to your creation.

God is the primary source and creator. Without him nothing exists, not even you.

God created you. Just to be clear, that means everything that you are, everything that you have, everything you are capable of, came solely from God.

You did not receive any attributes from the environment, from food, from upbringing, from self-taught ideas. Nothing.

You have absolutely only what God decided that you have.

Your joy, your love, your life, your power, your creativity, your expression, your freedom, your peace, your unity, your sharing, your relationship, your being, was all given to you by God.

You did not put it there. You did not create it. You did not invent it. You have no ability to change it. You cannot control it. You cannot make it go away. It is rock-solid permanent and utterly beyond you.

Here is the second facet of this interesting scenario.

Since you only have what God wills that you have, and are only what he wills that you be, you have nothing else and can be nothing else.

And this means that you cannot obtain any other qualities, characteristics, abilities, skills, talents, natures, conditions, or anything else that did not come from God.

"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."

You essentially were created with a full plate. Fully complete. Lacking nothing. Completely perfect in all ways. So finished and so fully divine, that you were not created in a position of having to go out and hunt or find or assemble or build or do anything at all to become whole.

You therefore cannot add to yourself. Just as you cannot remove from yourself. What you are is a permanent light in heaven sustained by the thought of God forever. Fixed and absolute. Unchanging, unwavering, eternal.

This means that any belief you have that you have added to yourself, redefined yourself, invented yourself, have something not of God, have something you gave yourself, something you found on your own, something you are capable of that is "new", something you've changed about yourself, etc... these MUST all be illusions.

As you move into the separation idea, into ego, it is these "alterations", "adjustments", that you begin to believe in. It is accompanied by a sense of lack, or being incomplete from the outset. That somehow God did not give you *everything* already, and so there is something to add or find or collect or establish. Some progress to make.

And this will include the belief that you have something of your own, which God did NOT give you, which you think is yours and that you can have. You cannot truly have anything that God did not give you, however. So when you believe that you have something not of God, you have nothing. And when you reject what God has given you, you have nothing.

God gave you all of his love, mind, will, power, joy, peace, beauty, freedom, life, etc. When you believe that you have something that did not come from God, you are rejecting what He gave you, which is your natural inheritance. As host to God, you inherit all of God. If you throw it away, you have nothing. And there is nothing else.

So now if you think you have power, but it's not God's power, you are mistaken. You cannot have any power at all if you do not have God's power. Yet, if you accept what God has given you, you have all power. The power is yours, but it is not sourced by you. The power you have IS God himself, in you, since you host him.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

What you are, is more like a host or medium or relay-station or conduit or channel or re-expresser of God. You literally have nothing OTHER than what God has given and put into you. It is yours, truly, because it is fully given to you. And yet, at the same time, it is not an exclusive property of yours, nor did you make it, nor can you remove it.

Ego is the idea that you are or have something not of God. Something exclusive, special, unique, isolated, which is not shared with God. And typically not shared with anyone else. It's a possessive, selfish attitude. An attempt to hoard a piece of heaven for yourself alone. And this makes you alone. It's what makes you a "separated one".

If you try to own, grasp, possess, grab or steal away something shared, in an attempt to put a label on it and say it is yours ONLY, you lose it. Attachment is loss. Possession is emptiness. Try to own a piece of God and you lose everything. But share in it, and it is fully yours and fully everyone's.

Jesus says:

"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."

The problem then is only that you think you have something OTHER than or in addition to what God gave. And this must entail the belief that you DO NOT have what God gave. And its the belief in lacking what God gave, which causes you to be compelled to replace it with something else. Which will never work. You can only have what God gave you and the rest must be let go.

"I am still as God created me" also means "I am not what I made of myself."

You who are host to God, inherit everything real from God. And this is whole and complete and perfect. All of Him is in you forever. What seems to be "your" anything, is simultaneously HIS. "God is my strength". Your strength, which truly is yours, IS GOD. God, in you, is the sense of strength that you feel. It's literally like it is YOUR strength, to use, but it is ALSO His.

It's a very interesting relationship. God causes you. You are his effect. God being cause forces you to be also a cause. Now you are a co-creator. Not just a creator but a collaborator, because you can only create WITH him, using HIS power, which is shared with you.

It's like God has fully given all of himself to you, in your creation, establishing you as completely "having" everything, as if were fully yours, and yet at the same time, all that you have, is STILL HIS, and is still shared with him. That is your oneness. You are united with Him. You are a team.

You have nothing of your own. Yet you have everything, because God gave it to you. It's kind of like if it were "on loan". You have the use of it, but it's not yours exclusively. It still belongs to God. You're kind of renting it, permanently. And so you enjoy the benefit of it forever, but it's still technically His.

Thus you have the power of God in you. You are strong. You are immortal. Because God is in you. Because you are His extension. And you are free, yet you are joined. You are nothing without Him, but can share everything with Him. Either you share or you have nothing. But never can you have it all just for yourself. Nor do you source anything without Him.

When I think of it, it makes me think of the angels. They operate in service to God. They go where they are directed. They do what he wills them to do, in agreement with Him. They fulfill a function. They are joyfully glad to be what they are. They have no desire to improve themselves, nor do they need to. They give thanks to God for what they are in celebration and worship. And everyone's happy.

There may be a few I missed but this is most of the references to SOULS in A Course in Miracles. Souls are God's Children, they are permanent creations of light, and there are MANY of them.

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls, before the intrusion of fire and ice made this impossible."

"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."

"The Miracle unites Souls directly with each other."

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."

"By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God."

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement."

"The miracle restores the Soul to its fullness. By atoning for lack, it establishes perfect protection."

"The strength of the Soul leaves no room for intrusions."

"The forgiven are filled with the Soul, and their Soul forgives in return."

"The soul is in a state of grace forever. Man's reality is ONLY his soul. Therefore, man is in a state of Grace forever."

"The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"The Soul is therefore unalterable because it is ALREADY perfect, but the mind can elect the level it chooses to serve. The only limit which is put on its choice is that it CANNOT serve two masters."

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

"The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished."

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

"Most of the abilities man now possesses are only shadows of his real strengths. The Soul knows, loves, and creates. These are its unequivocal functions."

"Perception did not exist until the Separation had introduced degrees, aspects and intervals. The Soul has no levels, and ALL conflict arises from the concept of levels."

"The Soul does not need healing, but the mind DOES."

"Any attempt to endow the ego with the attributes of the Soul, is merely confused thinking."

"The mind returns itself to its proper function only when it WILLS TO KNOW. This places it in the Soul's service, where perception is meaningless. The superconscious is the level of the mind which wills to do this."

"The mind DID divide itself when it willed to create its own levels AND the ability to perceive them. But it could NOT entirely separate itself from the Soul, because it is FROM the Soul that it derives its whole power to create."

"Even in miscreating, will is affirming its source, or it would merely cease to be. This is impossible, because it IS part of the Soul, which God created, and which is therefore eternal."

"But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge."

"God and the Souls He created remain in surety, and therefore KNOW that no miscreation exists."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Strong wills can do this NOW. And you WILL find rest for your Souls. God knows you only in peace, and this IS your reality."

"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."

"Your Soul does not need salvation, but your mind needs to learn what salvation IS. You are not saved FROM anything, but you ARE saved FOR glory"

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love. And since what He created IS part of Him, you are denying Him His place in His own altar."

"The peace of YOUR Soul lies in its limitlessness."

"Limit the peace you share, and your own Soul MUST be unknown to you."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him."

"We have repeatedly emphasized the fact that one level of the mind is not understandable to another. So it is with the ego and the soul, and with time and eternity. "

"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."

"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks. It can thus perform the function of RE-INTERPRETING what the ego makes, not by destruction, but by understanding."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy."

"In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul."

"Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, - with love, protection, and great charity."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless."

"The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all."

"While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

"The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterward, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it."

"The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored."

"Attack is ALWAYS made on a stranger. You are MAKING him a stranger by misperceiving him, so that you CANNOT know him. It is BECAUSE you have made him into a stranger that you are afraid of him. PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him."

"To be fatigued is to be DIS-spirited, but to be inspired is to be IN the spirit. To be egocentric IS to be dispirited. But to be self-centered in the RIGHT sense is to be inspired, or in the Soul. The truly inspired are enlightened, and cannot abide in darkness."

"He can speak from his Soul or from his ego, precisely as he chooses. If he speaks from his Soul, he has chosen to "be still and know that am God."

"Your real worth IS your divine authorship, and your Soul is its acknowledgement. I cannot guide your egos EXCEPT as you associate them with your Souls."

"Chesterton wrote an excellent description of Cervantes and his perception of his "unheroic hero," a view of man which the ego tolerates all too frequently, but the Soul NEVER countenances."

"The ego may will them because the ego IS both lean and foolish. But the Soul CANNOT embark on them because it is forever UNwilling to depart from its Foundation. The journey to the cross should be the LAST foolish journey for every mind."

"The soul's true functions are knowing, loving, and creating."

"Note again that the functions of the Soul were not referred to as abilities."

"The clear-cut implications of relativity, which properly inheres in this statement, DEMONSTRATE that abilities are not functions of the Soul. The Soul's functions are NOT relative. They are ABSOLUTE. They are OF God and BY God, and therefore God-like."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"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."

"Remember that the Soul knows no difference between being and having. The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God. To Him, getting is meaningless, and giving is all."

"Having everything, the Soul HOLDS everything by GIVING it, thus creating as the Father created."

"Can the Creations of God Himself take joy in what is not real? And what is real except the Creations of God and those which are created like His? Your creations love you as your Soul loves your Father FOR THE GIFT OF CREATION. There IS no other gift that is eternal, and therefore THERE IS NO OTHER GIFT THAT IS TRUE."

"In every case you have thought wrongly about some Soul that God created, and are perceiving images your ego makes in a darkened glass."

"It is possible even in this world to hear ONLY that voice and no other. It takes effort and great willingness to learn. It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" This means that if he listens to the wrong voice, he has LOST SIGHT of his Soul. He CANNOT lose it, but he CAN not know it. It is therefore LOST TO HIM, until he chooses right."

"In contrast, the Soul reacts in the same way to everything it knows is true, and does not respond at all to anything else. Nor does it make any attempt to ESTABLISH what is true. It knows that what is true is everything that God created. It is in complete and direct communication with every aspect of Creation, because it is in complete and direct communication with its Creator."

"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."

When your mind is filled with love, it projects a perfectly healed body, free of pain, symptoms of sickness, suffering, damage of any kind. And it especially does not produce death. This healthy body is a symbol in the dream, pointing towards innocence and representing a sign that attack has not occurred. It teaches anyone who looks upon it that they must be innocent, because the absence of harm of any kind in this body image proves their sins have not produced effects. This weakens your brother's belief in his own sinfulness and facilitates healing.

"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."

When your mind is not filled with love, you are unloving towards yourself and towards your brother simultaneously. This attack is an attempt to create a gap of separation that comes between you. The body itself represents this gap and symbolizes the attack. It is the wall that you use to try to demonstrate that you are separate, as a separation device.

Having used the body for attack, the body itself now depicts your attitude towards yourself and others, which is a sick attitude of attack, thus showing up as what the world terms sickness, symptoms, damage and physical suffering. This body image now symbolizes death, and it does not point towards or represent innocence and life any more. It instead points away from it and accuses your brother of having produced effects in you, proving to him that he must be a sinner. This strengthens his belief that he is a sinner and imprisons him further, rather than healing him. It is an attack.

"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."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

"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."

"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 god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

In order to thereby exonerate both your brother and yourself, and to prove and demonstrate with absolute conviction that forgiveness has truly occurred, in which there is no sin and therefore no effects of attack, the effects themselves must be removed from the body. The body HAS TO BE HEALED. It must be restored to a condition that it was in prior to the attack, and it must only teach and symbolize life and innocence.

If it is kept with conditions of sickness or damage or broken malfunctioning parts, the body remains an accuser. And because the body is proving and teaching and symbolizing sin and attack, it proves that your mind is not TRULY forgiving your brother and yourself. If you were to truly be healed, on the mental level, your body would be healed also.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"A broken body is PROOF the mind has NOT been healed."

The fact is that if sickness or damage remain in the body "after forgiveness", the mind DID NOT complete the forgiveness. The forgiveness MUST bring healing to the body image also, so that it can symbolize and teach and depict a representation of, and point towards, innocence, harmlessness, healing and wholeness. If the body stays damaged, it continues to teach your brother of his sinfulness and does not heal him, and therefore proves that you also are not healed.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing 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."

"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 final result of forgiveness MUST BE that not only is your brother's mind healed, AND his body is healed of anything you did to him, but also that your mind is healed, AND your body is healed of anything you did to it. Until that occurs, forgiveness has not been completed and the mind is still sick.

"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."

"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."

If you do not PROVE that your BELIEVE that health and wholeness and healing and life and harmlessnes are the ONLY TRUTH, and you fail to DEMONSTRATE it with your body, by healing the body of all signs and symptoms of sickness, all disease, all damage, then your belief is UNATTESTED and WITHOUT CONVICTION. You have not put your money where your mouth is and you are lying, because the only way for the body to BE in a state of sickness if for you to MAINTAIN ATTACK, without which the body could not stay sick. The body MUST be healed in order for your mind's healing to be complete, because they are intimately related.

"Health (physical health) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief."

When the body is healed and is no longer sick, it now COMPELS BELIEF in another that they must be innocent. It has a healing, teaching power. It is a demonstration of miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

The signs of accusation and blame are the physical symptoms. They will be taken away by the Holy Spirit, if you will let him. So that he can restore the body to the picture that HE WANTS IT TO SHOW, to teach the healing that HE wants to use it to teach. The picture of innocence. The picture of immortality.

"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."

This is what you must USE the body for, within this dream, WHILE you have one, before you disappear off to awareness of Heaven. When you are a teacher of God, fulfilling a function of "awareness of dreaming", and using the body only for communication (which is healing), the body must be healed and it must not show any sign of damage or attack or effects or consequences of sin or guilt in any way. To do so is an attempt to teach two things at once: 1) healing is true, 2) attack is true. And through such a demonstration no-one can learn anything because it is contradictory. The body is now showing a different PROOF than the person is CLAIMING.

"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus is black and white about this. Either you heal TOTALLY on ALL LEVELS - mind, emotions, body, OR the healing is not complete.

Sick bodies and dead bodies are not part of the aim of A Course in Miracles and are not something that Teachers of God are supposed to teach or demonstrate to others, or themselves. You are only to demonstrate symbols of LIFE and immortality through the body, so that it can become a sign of life and a witness and testimony to healing and harmlessness. Sickness and death of the body are a failure to accomplish this, and a dream of death cannot be left by death only by truth, which is first approached through mental and physical health. The happy dream must entail a healed body as well as a healed mind, not merely a state of mental "transcendence" of sickness that keeps the body sick and continues to teach death.

"Only the mind and body need atonement."

"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."

Summarized in this classic statement - the CENTRAL LESSON, from the manual for teachers:

"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. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is.He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

And this classic from "sickness is a defense against the truth":

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

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

God does not, cannot, will not, has not, and never could, create anything that is even capable of death. God is eternal, permanent, unchanging, unflinching, constant, always, perfect in every way and utterly incapable of degradation, decay, destruction, disease, or death.

If something even has the POSSIBILITY of seeming to do any of these things, it cannot possible have come from God. That much should be obvious. A divine being who can only create in his own image and likeness could never even conceive of creating suffering, sickness, pain, misery, torture, war, murder and suicide.

God could not possibly have created seasons in which entire populations of seeming lifeforms are wiped out through temperature changes. God could not possibly have created stunning vistas and sunsets only to later have them destroyed by an atomic bomb. God could never in any way conceive of creating an environment for his beloved children which entails any form of suffering, conflict or terror whatsoever.

For God to create such a place God would have to be cruel. God would have to have a mean streak. Some kind of aspect of his own nature which, when creating in his likeness, produces more of the same. God Himself would have to be diseased, suffering, dead and destructive, in order to create anything that exhibits these tendencies.

It is utter complete total bullshit nonsense to suggest that God created this world. This is a cruel, vicious, unfair, cold, lifeless world, houses in a dream of death, framed by sickness and set off against a background of suffering. It is absolutely not in any way related to God's nature or God's will. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality, truth, love, perfection, happiness or holiness. The world is a total illusion that has no reality, is not possible, and cannot exist. Because if God cannot participate in what exists, it cannot exist, because God is the creator.

Again, this is why there is no world. A world of bullshit cannot come from a God of love. And it doesn't have anything what so fucking ever to do with perception. It does not matter whether you are looking at this world with utter contempt, or whether you are looking at it with love. The world's character, features, makeup, dependency on spacetime, separateness, fluctuations, changing images and so on are all evidence of being NOT LIKE GOD. It doesn't matter if you view it with the most holy pure perception possible, it STILL cannot exist because it is still not like God. Looking at bullshit correctly doesn't turn it into the truth.

One thing that’s really becoming super clear for me lately, is that this world depicts things which are absolutely impossible. It’s enough of an idea that its a dream, which sometimes suggests it’s at least a something, that the stuff happening in it is somehow actually possible. But when you think about it and reason it out, this world shows things happening which CANNOT be happening. It depicts the IMPOSSIBLE.

For example in reality, I’m truth, we are immortal and can never die. But here you have a world, which depicts that things can die. It’s hard to find words to describe just how extremely impossible that is. Or to describe what the nature of this world IS - some kind of a fiction, a lie perhaps. An untruth. It represents something that absolutely can never happen in reality, is completely and utterly false, and is nothing like heaven.

How is it possible, even, that we are confronted with what appears to be a world, which shows impossible things happening, which testifies that sin is real, which presents death as if its natural, and shows suffering as commonplace. None of that is POSSIBLE in reality. In God’s Kingdom there is not even a possibility of suffering, or sickness, or sin, or death. It’s not even POSSIBLE.

So this world is showing us stuff which is TOTALLY, TOTALLY false. I don’t know if I can even put into words how utterly opposite to true this must be. How is it even possible that we’re even seeming to have an experience of a world in which impossible things seem to happen? What kind of a sick, twisted joke is this? It’s so "wrong".

Nothing real can be threatened because reality is permanent and constant and endless. You cannot attack anything real in any way because it is immortal. And yet the world constantly depicts attack, damage, harm, injury, suffering, vulnerability, unsafety and destruction. These depictions CANNOT BE REAL. They are SUCH A LIE. Incredibly, absolutely false. What is immortal can never die. It is death itself that MUST be impossible.

It cannot both be true that heaven is immortal and real, and earth is mortal and real. Eternal life cannot have an opposite. Love is all encompassing and has no opposite. Reality is permanent and has no opposite. You can’t have it be that immortality is true and death is also true. It HAS to be one or the other. And if death is not true, then death is UTTER BULLSHIT. And every single shred of this illusion of a world of death MUST be a COMPLETE LIE. It is A FALSE WORLD. It is not God’s creation and is nothing like it.

How can you believe such a world when it is lying to your face? How can you believe it even EXISTS?

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

In this world, nothing gets done unless you put in some effort. And that's a chore, meaning that making stuff requires work. This isn't really natural to us - we are creators. We should be able to cause things to happen just by will alone, by mind power.

But we made the world as a result of being unwilling, which means it's not a world of will, it's a world that seems unwilling to do anything. So you have to then force it.

When bits of trash fall on the ground, they will stay there forever, unless someone does something to pick them up. If you want to "create" something here, which really means making something, there is now a craft to it, which requires skill and effort because all the objects are different.

At first, the thing you want to make doesn't exist at all, you have a blank slate, an empty canvas, a nothingness. You have no idea what it will be like, but you have to start somewhere. This is daunting, to take nothingness and make it into something.

The process of making is a process of translating higher-level abstract mind-stuff into form, which is an act of materialising, or at least sculpting and forming and reshaping and assembling and building from parts and pieces and materials.

To make anything, you have to take it from an idea to an implementation. But at first, you will have no idea how to do that. You will have to push, and force, and try to wrangle stuff to get it to become a bit more finite, more concrete, to nail things down, commit to decision, to move things forward and see it "take shape" as it turns into form.

That can be difficult because it means trying to take an empty nothingness and somehow "make" something out of it, which means having to put limits in place, define things, make lots of decisions, design and plan, and gradually refine it.

You start with a basic template perhaps, a vague idea, and you start somewhere and put some pieces roughly in place, but it's not finished and you have a lot to figure out. You don't even as yet know how it's going to end up, because you don't as yet understand how to even move forward with it.

So in order to push it forward you have to do some work on it, because if you don't it will just sit there, lifeless and doing nothing, because you're really make it out of death. And even if you do a bit of the work, it's not finished, it will just stop whenever you stop, because it has no real life of its own. It can't become anything until you force it to.

So then making becomes an act of forcing and applying effort and energy and attacking the thing to overpower it and coerce it into taking on a certain form, as an accumulation of actions. And gradually as you apply this effort you reshape the thing and refine it and it starts to turn into something.

Eventually with enough time and effort you can get through the seeming brick wall of nothingness, through all the uncertainty and difficult lack of definition, and pin things down. It's a process of taking something in the mind and trying to make it physical. You have to physically go through the motions, apply the tools, click the buttons, do all the little annoying steps, in order to get to the end result. Sometimes this can be painstaking.

This is a translation process, and it takes time. And unless you keep hammering away at it, it won't happen. Again and again you have to keep gong back to it to do more to it, to keep building, to keep growing it, to keep moving it forward toward the goal, otherwise it just sits there lifeless and incomplete. And no-one's going to do it for you or come along and rescue you, unless maybe you pay them.

And then once you complete the thing you're making, when you think it's good enough, and done, maybe you're happy with it, and maybe you recognize it's ended up a bit shit anyway. Because the things we make in form and from materials in spacetime are all very limited and strange and not really like the level of mind where anything is possible. Have you seen people's DIY disasters?

You have to make do and tolerate limits and put up with imperfections, to accept choices for one color and not another, to go with some option that partially works and know that the other options had something you're missing. What you end up with is a strange collection of stuff that is very limited and unwhole and imperfect, but it'll have to do, because that's as good as physicality gets. You're forced to have to "conform" to form, which means accepting limits and separations and exclusions.

This is all unnatural for the mind and soul, because it means trying to work within the confines of a very awkward system of limits, in which every little part of the thing you're trying to make has to be undertaken personally and with effort and force, to sculpt it and mold it and make it be something. That takes a lot of time and patience and commitment.

You can easily be put off when the next step is unclear, when you don't have the experience, when you don't know how it's going to look or what's going to work. When you have to figure things out as you go along, and the whole thing seems like you're just winging it, making it up as you go.

And then when you get to the end you don't even know if what you made is really the most ideal or best it could be, because you didn't have the foresight to be able to produce perfection. And what you then made is quirky and odd and maybe partly does the job. They you'll probably have to go back over it and fix stuff and polish it up, to do more work on it based on hindsight.

Making is certainly a strange process. But without making, nothing in this world gets done. The world just stays much the same way as it is. Your "life" stays stagnant, your home remains undecorated, your projects remain unfinished and you end up stuck in a rut. If you want things to be different in form, you have to take action. Physical action and effort. You have to try.

Compare that to heaven where to create you simply will what you want to exist and there it is, perfect and whole and complete, instantly effortless, with no time or space involved, no forcing or constant refinements, just simply direct perfect results every time, and joyfully so. How very different that is to getting anything to happen in spacetime through labor.

This is why life is a bit of a chore, and why sometimes people just can't be bothered to do the work. It's tiresome, unless you can find some way to enjoy the process itself, enjoy the craft, or feel some sense of accomplishment or purpose to why you're doing all that work. Maybe if it's of service to others you can feel better about it. Life here is hard work, in general, because the world is difficult in general. But maybe it can be repurposed and seen in a better way.

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. 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."

I feel more relaxed and peaceful, which I think is a result of looking at the world's system of failure, unrelenting attack and constant problems.

There was always an effort to resist the world going wrong, a constant tension of trying to stop bad things happening, an expectation that things should be going well all the time, and a desire for nothing to ever turn sour.

These were all forms of denial and wishful thinking. An ignorance about the system of the world and how it functions. It was rooted in a mixed belief that the world was even capable of sustaining anything. That it should, that the norm of life should be that the world "works well", and that problems are occasional annoying exceptions.

If you look at the fact that the world is utterly bullshit and hell-bent on inevitable destruction, that all its roads lead to death, that it disappoints at every turn, and it is literally incapable of being free of problems and difficulties, you actually get more of a sense of its "true nature". Instead of the fanciful denial that attempts to insulate us from it.

We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make the world more tolerable. We build fancy homes and cities to try to shut out and ignore the weather. We try to farm foods more carefully to avoid contamination. We're told to do healthy things and exercise so as to avoid health concerns. We're told to make money so that we don't starve to death.

And so the drive of "civilized society" is really a REACTION to the fact that the world is raw and wild and cruel and unrelenting in its onslaught of carnage. We've become quite good at making it more "comfortable" and "safe", to a degree, in an effort to make hell more palatable, trying to tame its wicked ways. To form an oasis in the desert where we can be insulated from its "nature" and distanced from its ravages. Even though NONE of this prevents the destruction of all these things.

If we drop all that and just recognize the way the world is, and not just the planet but also the whole fundamental fabric of spacetime, then we can see that it was made to function a certain way. It cannot do what it was not designed to do. Its nature has to remain opposite to heaven otherwise it will cease to exist. It must BE different and separate otherwise it cannot appear to exist at all.

So it has to maintain this system of destruction at all times. If we let go of expecting it to be otherwise, and undo this denial that tries to constantly fight against it, or has an expectation that it's supposed to turn out well at the physical level, then when its nature just "does what it does", we won't be so upset. And we won't have to keep resisting it all the time, or fearing it.

The fear really comes from the "hope" or wishful thinking that it's not going to do what it always does. That it's not going to attack or destroy or make things difficult. And then when it does we're seemingly in shock and upset because our expectation has been destroyed. Without the blindness of believing the world can function like heaven, or that it can operate peacefully, or that it will ever be devoid of its devouring deadly nature, we can actually be more at peace about it.

In sense this a form of acceptance. Not accepting that the world is real and true, since only atonement should be accepted and only heaven should be validated. But an acceptance that the world, as it is, is just the way it is, and it cannot help its nature. A recognition that it's just always going to fuck up and destroy everything, because that's the only way it can function. And then in recognition of this we can actually laugh at it and not be so disturbed or surprised or shocked when everything goes to hell again.

This isn't the same as "expecting the worst", because you can get yourself into a belief that this world is real and it always is just negative and depressing, and therefore there is no hope or alternative. But you can expect the worst in the sense of realizing that the world can't be anything BUT the worst, due to its attacking nature, and can separate your relationship with it into a space of laughing at its hilariously flawed ways. We are, after all meant to learn to laugh at the mad idea that has produced this world.

As I sit here I'm looking out the window - not a perfect window but a dirtied stained window - upon an environment in which the leaves on the trees are all dead. The grass is browned and half-dead as a result of the snow that covered it. The weather is cold and unrelentless. The brickwork on the buildings is uneven. The light of sun is blocked and producing shadows of darkness. Roof tiles are missing. Rocks are weathered and decayed. Electrical power boxes are slightly mis-aligned and a strange ugly color. And the somewhat mutilated fir trees are struggling to stay alive.

But is this unexpected for a world where all things must die because time is change and change is death? No. This is the only way it can be. It is hilariously faulty. Ridiculously tragic, and quite a mess. The world is really kind of like a giant trashcan filled with broken pieces and old rotten shite.

Can it be otherwise? It cannot. It can never be otherwise. The dust of dead civilizations will always be blown by the winds of hate in this world. And recognizing this is its nature can actually set you free. Free from the horrible suffering that results from believing it could be any other way. And free from the constant efforts to put some extra lipstick and bandaids on the corpse, trying in vain to turn a tired old world into a new one. In a sense, let the dead bury the dead, and let death be, that there may be life in the mind.

We are to forgive the world, yes. To do this we have to want another world. We have to tune into another reality. Beyond space and time, a world of light and eternal life. A world where the laws of God do not permit suffering, difficulty, problems or death. And then we bring that wholistic perspective with us as we shine its light upon the broken world and see it from a loving perspective. We don't have to condemn the world in order to see that it is inherently broken. We can forgive it for being the way it is, only because it IS broken. And in forgiveness we can laugh it away.

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone." "The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The world will end in joy because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

The only thing that we need to really do is to surrender to the will of God. To accept it. To accept the truth. This is the same thing as accepting the atonement.

Here's the fact of it all.

God's will is the truth. You can try to deny it, but you cannot change it.

You have immortality and perfection already because God created you immortal and perfect. This is why you need do nothing. You are already complete. You already have eternal life. There is nothing left to do. You cannot add anything to this or take anything away.

So anything else you are doing, any other attitude you have, it's really a form of DENIAL. Denial is the opposite of acceptance. Either you are willing to put aside and drop and let go of EVERY STORY that you've built to defend against the truth (which has made you sick), or you will continue to have fake experiences of suffering.

You can't change God's will. God has not changed his mind about you. It's rock solid, set in stone forever. More permanent than sin. More unchangeable than death.

So..... what is it we are doing? We're saying, oh, I'm not worthy of love, or... I've got some "reason" why I am not the way God created me... or, something's wrong with me, or I want things to be different to God's creation, or I don't want God's love I want something else, or... I think I can make something better, or I prefer my dream of death, or whatever... all these other "alternatives" which pretend to be desirable, wanted, chosen, possible, plausible, a replacement for the only truth.

All of it is false, all of it is a lie, all of it is denial and none of it works.

Only the truth is true. Only God's truth is true. There is absolutely ZERO room for negotiation. God's will cannot be opposed. You cannot create an alternative to heaven. There is nothing you want more than to share God. Nothing else can make you happier. There is no other source of love or life.

What are you going to do? Keep trying to find salvation somewhere else? Keep trying to accept something less satisfying? Keep looking for love in all the places that it does not exist?

At some point we have to simply SURRENDER and GIVE UP this futile search and ACCEPT that, all along, God's Will has been the only will.

This is what the prodigal son story is about.... finally surrendering and ADMITTING YOU ARE MISTAKEN and then giving up your futile attempts ... returning to God and ALLOWING HIM to be as He is. To be your truth. To let go of every other authority problem.

To those who say the course is not about surrender, because it never mentions surrender.... it is ENTIRELY about surrender. Letting go of the ego, giving up the fight, accepting the truth. It's all surrendering of what is not true, and accepting what is.

Can you just be honest and admit the truth that God does love you and you are loved and you are immortal already?

In ACIM chapter 27 "The Healing of the Dream", section about "fear of healing", Jesus describes forgiveness as REQUIRING physical healing in order to PROVE that forgiveness has been accomplished.

Jesus is LITERALLY saying that if there is really a true forgiveness of someone injuring you, any symptoms in your body MUST be healed in order to make the forgiveness real and to prove that there has truly been a forgiveness. If you retain the symptoms but claim the other person is pardoned, it is NOT a full forgiveness. It indicates you do not FULLY believe that it is forgiven. Forgiveness might well be happening in the mind, but it MUST reflect in the body also! Forgiveness without a miracle is incomplete! Forgiveness that keeps symptoms and retains real sickness is NOT complete forgiveness!!!!!

Quotes below:

"Yet no one can forgive a sin that he believes is real."

"To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox that reason cannot see."

"And by giving it, you grant your brother mercy but retain the proof he is not really innocent."

"The sick remain accusers."

"For no one in whom true forgiveness rests can suffer. "

"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."

"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. "

"You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are not real. How else could he be guiltless?"

"And how could his innocence be justified unless his sins have no effect to warrant guilt?"

Jesus apparently isn't just asking us to achieve forgiveness in our minds, but to also demonstrate the truth by removing all sickness from the body.

"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 of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him."

If we're doing forgiveness processes that don't result in FULL forgiveness, and which don't produce a miraculous undoing of ALL SYMPTOMS and side effects, then you have NOT fully achieved forgiveness!!!!!!!!! You can't just be in a state of "still being sick" and believing that you're done forgiving. We need to take it all the way! 100% undoing!!!!!!

"World: a natural grand division."

"The world, as defined above, WAS made as a natural grand division, or projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him." (world here refers to heaven not earth)

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all." (earth vs heaven)

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing." (heaven)

"Heaven is the home of perfect purity. And God created it for YOU." (heaven)

"because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects." (heaven vs earth)

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." (heaven vs earth)

There are many other quotes speaking to this. Heaven is a 'world' that God created through the projecting out of his being and thoughts. It is a world of eternal life. It is not planet Earth. It is the only "real" world, where you can actually fully live and be free.

The Earth, and the physical universe, were MADE by you, in your decision to attempt to side with ego and believe in separation. It is artificial, an illusion, made of death and fear, and does not really exist. It is opposite to Heaven in EVERY way. If you could comprehend the nature of Heaven, it would be obvious how this world is TOTALLY unlike Heaven.

When the illusion of the physical world is recognized, it will disappear. And all that remains will be Heaven. And that "place" will be where you live forever and have lived forever. You will be "in Heaven". That state of Heaven is NOT experienceable on Earth or while in a body, not even in true perception. Nor is it the "real world" or forgiven world. It is BEYOND THIS UNIVERSE.

Layers of separation from God, and the ego's continued use of denial and making things unconscious, resulted in a huge wall of unconsciousness and unawareness standing in-between the physical universe and higher levels. This is the main reason why you have near-total amnesia when you incarnate into a body. Massive-scale denial "separates" this universe from the higher planes and Heaven. Earth is not Heaven. It never will be, and the best you can do here is to see Heaven's reflection, hinting at what is beyond.

"Exclude ANY part of the Kingdom FROM yourself, and you are NOT whole." Bodies suggest that you are exclusively isolated and separate from other bodies. That you are "only you", and "not them". This is the complete opposite of what is true and real.

In reality, your mind is supposed to include everyone as a part of yourself, you are supposed to be the entire whole of the Kingdom, and even host all of God within yourself.

This means that as you look at one person, you are literally looking at the entire kingdom of heaven and all beings within that one being. Each of us contains each other, and contains the whole.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

We need therefore to expand our sense of identity away from "I am only me", separated off and alone, to "I include everyone as part of myself." That WE are US. A shared union in which we each literally are one with everyone all at once.

Everyone is me. Everyone is you. The whole of God's creation exists in you, and also in me. All of the whole is in every part of the whole, and every part is the whole. This is the holographic structure of God's mind.

"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."

Mind naturally is designed to include everything and share everything. It is designed to be everywhere always. When mind identifies with a body is profoundly narrows itself and imprisons itself to a tiny speck in spacetime. This is incredible unnatural. It makes you think that you are separated off and alone in a body, walled in and kept away from others.

But in truth your mind is supposed to expand to include all others and to regard the interests of others as your own. They are part of you. What is good for them is good for you. Your healing heals them. Your awakening awakens them. We are all in this together.

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

As we shift from body identity to spirit identity, we are shifting from isolation to inclusion, from loneliness to togetherness, from believing that a person does not contain other people to recognizing that everyone is in each person. The whole of God is in every part of God. "The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

You are not just you. You are you and me and everyone. What is mine is everyone's. Everything is shared including our selves.

I find very often that if I am not constantly "rebuking" everything the world seems to portray, I will fall into temptation and buy into problems. Then I'll have reactions based on ego and form and bodies and appearances, and will suffer, wondering how to get out of it.

The fact is that we're presented with a false word, right in our faces, 24/7, every single day. The body continuously reports on it as if it's real and makes it seem real. Every single sensory input is a lie to the mind, suggesting that something untrue is true, something impossible is possible, and something that can never happen in reality is happening.

It may seem completely casual, living our everyday lives, interacting with objects, doing household tasks, looking at things and commenting on them, seeing bodies, etc... as though this is totally normal and natural. We can just "live an ego life", a body life, functioning the same way we always have. Immersed in space and time and physicality. Interacting with the world as if it's just another day, things are just ticking over as they always do, as is this is totally normal.

But as we start trying to wake up to reality, we start to find that the world is absolutely opposite to reality. And now we're tasked with trying to peel ourselves away from absolutely everything the world throws at us. Every appearance is false, every body sickness is a lie, every picture of death is unnatural, every problem isn't really there. If we don't counteract these inputs, they become overwhelming and we just sink down into them like it's what everyone does.

It seems then that we have to constantly fight against illusions. Every second. The kind of life we live without even thinking about it, as if it's normal, is riddled with deception. If we drop our guard and just go through the motions acting like everything in the world is how things are supposed to be, within seconds we'll find ourselves thinking and speaking and acting based on what the body says is real. And now we're lost all over again. And every morning we wake up immersed back into the same dungeon of deception and darkness.

It sure as heck seems that if we aren't CONSTANTLY asserting God's truth, constantly denying what is not of God, constantly stating and affirming that body states are not fact, constantly PUSHING and broadcasting God's truth and light all the time, repelling sin and hell, then we will just once again fall for the next subtle trap. The next little everyday seemingly insignificant scrap of an illusory world which is just as deceptive and distorting as all the rest.

The impression I'm getting lately then is that we have to eventually get to a state where we are "professing christ" all the time. And I mean like, being on our guard at all times. In a sense, praying a higher prayer all the time. Giving off happier more loving vibes all the time. Teaching only love, all the time. Refusing to accept anything we see in the world, all the time. And that means being really heavily centered in God's truth and laws and mindset and just constantly vigilant for staying in that mindset as much as possible, even when the world is sandblasting you in the face with visual lies.

Jesus says in the course that atonement is our natural profession. That we should PROFESS christ. Which means to express, emit, teach, radiate, give christ at all times. To counteract and fly in the face of the world. To be coming from God at all times. To be healers at all times, in the world but not of it at all times. Under no worldly laws but God's at all times.

Because, quite frankly, what I've found is that if I DON'T attempt to do that, I will just sink right back down into ego land, body sensations, false perceptions, reactions to bodies and sicknesses appearing real. At every turn, someone's sick body is attempting to testify to them having been changed and corrupted against God's will. And it is our task to NOT believe that, to assert and SEE and claim the truth of the person that they are still as God created them. Which is in complete defiance of what their body looks like, staring you in the face with its fake suffering and temptation.

The degree of temptation is just so totally off the charts. It seems that if we don't rise above it and stay above it and continually REPEL it every minute of the day, we're just going to keep falling back into it. Maybe over time we can talk ourselves into such a state of conviction that we can more effortlessly remain in the light and the truth and not have to make such an effort of it. But meanwhile it seems like a constant fight, a constantly struggle, to get out of hell and get back into a more heavenly state. Day after day after day of the world trying to pull us back down.

"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."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness."

If we are to INSTANTLY meet every perception with forgiveness, that means we have to CONSTANTLY be in a state of forgiveness every single second. We have to be on our toes. We have to be totally ready and right minded at all times. As in keeping our mind right-side up at all times and sane in order to be ready to perform miracles.

"Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do. You must be READY to listen WILLING to learn and ABLE to do"

To stay OUT of deception and temptation and distraction is difficult. Everything the world believes is not true. Everything physical matter shows is false. We have to pierce the veil and push past the body and connect with the divine. To have "reality contact".

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."

It really seems to me that in order to be a consistent miracle worker we have to be practically from another world, a temporary visitor here, come to help and heal and uplift, siding entirely with God, falling for no temptation, buying into nothing the world suggests. As if we were briefed before we came, that the world was going to try to eat us alive, and that we had to stay on our toes and not for a second believe a single bit of it. To float above the battlefield constantly lest we fall off the wagon again and again and again. To clarify just how extremely difficult it can be, Jesus even says that the most advanced teachers still succumb to temptation at times.

The world can seem insurmountable in its immensity, its diversity of illusions, its deceptions. Gradually the mind HAS to be trained away from believing any of it. Has to learn to see through and past illusory things. Has to learn NOT to believe in what the body reports. And that takes time to reinforce the mind's attitude over and over and over and over again with affirmations and restatements and reframing.

"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world."

Every day, every hour, every minute, every second, we have to be watchful for buying into the world. Over and over again we will keep slipping back down the slippery slope to hell, and have to keep pulling ourselves back out of the muck again and again and again until we can learn to fly enough that we stay out of it for good.

1) God created heaven which is perfect. You are in heaven as an immortal being, along with your brothers.

2) You believe you're not in heaven, and made a second world with the idea of opposing everything.

3) The second world is the physical world. Everything about it is false and opposite to God's nature. Not one single thing in it is true or real.

4) As part of the physical world, you also made a body. It's a separation device made to deceive you. It separates you off from God and your brothers and makes suffering seem possible.

5) The body agrees with the physical world's nature entirely, making it seem real. The body cannot see anything else and it cannot see reality at all. Everything it sees is an illusion.

6) Your mind seems to be in a body. Your mind seems to use the body's senses to sense the world you made. The body reports that it is real and happening. Everything in the world presents proof of sin and death and the body says it's really there.

7) If your mind believes what the body is telling it, it will be deceived. The body lies to it, because the world is a lie. So mind has to learn that everything in the world is unreal and untrue, being not of God. This can seem VERY difficult.

There is a curious property of all things God, in that it doesn't need to do anything. But, IF there are illusions present, something seems to happen. If there is only light, then it seems the light just shines. But if there is darkness, the light does something "to" the darkness - it shines it away.

Forgiveness - it generally sees there is no sin and there is nothing to forgive. However, IF there were some illusions present, moving into forgiveness actually seems to "do" something, in that the illusions disappear.

Gratitude - it generally is grateful only for what exists, in God, but if something does not exist and you are grateful for it, it brings it about.

Miracles - generally speaking there is no real need for miracles given that there is no real separation and everything in Heaven is miraculous. But if there is some ego condition showing up or some sickness or death or whatever, miracles undo it, reverse it, and restore life.

I need to nothing - yes, I do nothing because nothing has happened and nothing has gone wrong. However, if it seems that something IS happening or going wrong, the truth in this statement brings about the cessation of what was happening or going wrong, restoring us to a state where there is no need to do anything.

So it's interesting that, on the one hand, in truth, God does not have anything to forgive, love does not need to work any miracles because there is no reality to illusions, everything that exists we are grateful for, and we don't need to do anything because everything is complete already. But once the illusions of separation show up, all of these things take on a new "role" as it were. They are corrective. They bring truth and undo illusions. They reverse sin. They heal sickness. And they raise the dead back to life in resurrection.

So yes it's true there is technically seemingly "no point" performing miracles because this world doesn't exist, but IF this world seems to be showing up, there IS temporarily a purpose for miracles.

And yes it's true there is nothing to forgive so why bother doing any forgiveness either? Well, that's fine so long as truly nothing else is showing up, but if some illusions or ego forms are showing up to block forgiveness, then forgiveness suddenly seems to have a purpose and a function.

Forgiveness, miracles, etc may seem like unnecessary illusions, and there was not a "need" for healing before the separation, nor was there a need for the atonement. But after the separation a "need" (albeit illusory) did arise, and so there became a seeming NEED to heal, to forgive, and to perform miracles. And they will continue to be needed unto this whole separation is undone.

Everything that has supposedly happened following 'separation from God' is happening ENTIRELY within your own mind. Entirely.

In fact, it has not left your mind. AND, it has not gone outside of your mind. AND, it has not affected God's mind. Not one bit.

All of your war with yourself is an INTERNAL CONFLICT by you, against yourself, for no good reason.

You do not have any enemies outside of you that you have not hired to do your dirty work against yourself, for you. Blaming them for carrying out your instructions is deceitful.

When you sinned, it was an attempt to get rid of yourself. It had NO EFFECT ON GOD. Period. God cannot be affected by stupid illusions of separation. Your sin DID NOT WORK, and HAS NOT HAPPENED, and has had NO CONSEQUENCES.

Except for... the ones that you think are happening INSIDE YOU, which you put there, because YOU wanted to believe in sin. You are the one who wanted to believe in sin, it wasn't God. God did not JOIN you in your belief in sin, or your belief in your sinfulness, or your belief that 'real consequences' have come from your sinfulness. God doesn't believe it.

So there you are, explaining how you are a sinner, believing that it's because your sin affected God or was an attempt to destroy God, which is a giant fantasy going on in your mind, when in fact your belief in sin has NO POWER to do anything to God whatsoever.

Your attempt to PROJECT SIN ONTO GOD, is a major mistake. Because it is impossible. God is not sinful and does not sin and cannot sin. Trying to project sin onto him is your attempt to justify and explain why YOUR SIN has actually happened and why YOUR SIN calls for guilt.

IF, and only if, your sin actually did affect God, you WOULD have call for being guilty and you would have call for fearing punishment. And that may be what you believe. But it is grossly mistaken. Because your sin did NOT affect God. Not even a tiny amount. Isn't that a relief to know?

Your attempt to project sin onto God, to visualize God as a sinner or as evil, to pin blame for or justification for the sin onto him, and to then blame him for so-called 'separating from you', is a complete bullshit lie. Absolute bullshit riddled with bullshit covered in bullshit with a topping of bullshit. 100% lie.

The only problem you have right now is that you believe YOU sinned for which YOU are guilty meaning YOU need to be afraid of YOUR punishment. You are doing this all to yourself. God isn't doing it. God isn't dealing out judgements. God isn't handing down lightning bolts. God isn't condemning you or sending you to hell. God isn't punishing you.

And nor is anyone else.

It's just you, as the Son of God, having a war with yourself, inside yourself, pretending that it's got to do with someone else, or that you are not the one doing it.

Own up? Forgive yourself? You haven't done anything to anyone.

Quotes from A Course in Miracles.

"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."

"Would God let this be real, if He did not will to be alone Himself? And if your will is His, it CANNOT be true of you, BECAUSE it is not true of Him. Oh my children, if you knew what God wills for you, your joy would be complete!"

"For your Father IS your Creator, and you ARE like Him. The Children of Light cannot abide in darkness, for darkness is NOT in them."

"Man should thank God for what he really is. The Children of God are very holy. The miracle honors their holiness."

"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. He recognizes them perfectly. When they do not recognize each other, they do not recognize Him."

"The goal of love is but your right, and it belongs to you DESPITE your preference. YOU STILL WILL WHAT GOD WILLS, and no nightmare can defeat a Child of God in his purpose. For your purpose was given you by God, and you must accomplish it, BECAUSE it is His Will."

"Little children, would you offer THIS to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you ARE offering it to Him."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"Projection as undertaken by God was very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal."

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened."

"When no perception stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own, the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The reflections that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time, but bring eternity nearer or farther."

"All illusions that you believe about yourself obey NO laws. They seem to dance a little while, according to the rules you set for them. But then they fall, and cannot rise again. They are but toys, my children. Do not grieve for them."

"Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released."

It needs war in order to exist, because the ego is a state of conflict.

On the one hand, it would intensify the sense of trying to get rid of a perceived enemy completely, but on the other hand, if it were to actually have "no enemies" the entire ego thought system would disappear.

The ego is in need of "unresolvable war", which stems from a state of separation which can never be resolved.

It needs a split mind and it needs the mind to be against itself. It will encourage an increase in the split, which means an increase in how much two sets of enemies seem to be at war with each other, but at the same time this separation between them acts to keep them apart.

They become like vicious animals barking at each other from behind a fence.

The ego doesn't want to use war in order to destroy its enemies. It is its own enemy, and its war is taking place within itself, by itself, to itself. But it does want "constant war without end", which requires that in some way, it wants to NOT destroy its enemies.

War without end does NOT mean it wants the total 100% destruction of the opposition, it means it wants to PRETEND that it does, only to hold back just enough to maintain the separation and keep the war going. It would even allow concessions to its enemies in secret to allow them to gain an upper hand at times, in order to preserve the split mind.

For the ego to attempt to destroy its enemies at the same time as keeping them, is testament to how IMPOSSIBLE the ego is and how INSANE it is. It is trying to achieve two completely opposite goals at once. That is because the ego is a belief in an opposite to love - the possibility of real love and real death existing simultaneously.

While the ego fixates on death, and death seems to be an end, it is but a way to continue illusions and is quickly followed up with birth. If the ego really wanted death to be "the end" there would be no births.

The ego simply wants to always be in a state of conflict, a tug of war, where it is complete confused about what it wants, where it believes that two completely opposite goals are coexisting and achievable, and wants to keep its enemies as much as it wants to get rid of them, meaning, it wants to keep SUFFERING for as long as possible.

This is also why in special relationships, where there is special hate and special love, where you attempt to steal love from the other and destroy them because of what they have which you lack, and yet you want them to keep that special something so you can idol worship them. Impossible opposing goals.

This is why the world is just spinning its wheels. A little death here, a little birth there, and generally lots of suffering, tension and conflict all the time. Perpetual war without end, a war not too severe as to wipe out the ego entirely, but just enough to make it seem like this is what the ego wants. It's no wonder this world is insane and disappears up its own arse.

The truth of the reality of God's Kingdom is the true nature of your soul. Every property, quality and characteristic of what you are, is given by God. God creates only like himself, and God is immortal.

The result is that you have inherited God's nature and are like God. You have every property and characteristic that God has. This includes immortality, eternal life, permanence, invulnerability, perfection, holiness, innocence, peace, joy, love, happiness, safety, certainty, knowing, power and unlimited existence.

Because this is true of who and what you are, if you are to return to enjoying these qualities, you simply need to open up to accepting that this is the truth of you. The truth of you is BEYOND the ego, beyond space and time, beyond the separation, and was established by God before there ever was a problem to solve.

Forgiveness then, is a REFLECTION of your natural condition in heaven, in which you are as true to your true nature as possible, while being in this dream world. It is a state of mind in which you are accepting what is really true, about you, about others, about God, and about the world. It is clarity, recognition, sanity and accuracy.

"Misperception is a BLOCK to knowledge, while ACCURATE perception is a stepping-stone TOWARDS it."

"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception."

Accurate perception is also referred to as TRUE perception. And true perception is ALSO referred to as forgiveness, atonement, the miracle, right mindedness, miracle mindedness, salvation, forgiveness, sanity, recognition, the real world, the face of Christ and Christ vision. These are all the same thing - the same state of mind.

"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves."This one state of mind, of a corrected mind, which is still dreaming and perceiving but is ALIGNED with the truth within the Kingdom, REFLECTING your true nature as a reflection of heaven on earth, is the state of forgiveness. It simply means that you are being as close to how you are in heaven, just short of being there in person.

Forgiveness then, is really a symbol, because it is a means to an end and a tool for awakening. It really DERIVES its meaning from the reality of the Kingdom that it is BASED ON. It symbolizes or represents, mirrors or reflects, the truth of your reality. It is not an end or thing in itself, FORGIVENESS IS SYMBOLIC!

"Forgiveness is a symbol, too, but as the symbol of His Will alone it cannot be divided."

"Forgiving dreams remind you that you live in safety, and have NOT attacked yourself."

"Forgiving dreams are kind to everyone who figures in the dream. And so they bring the dreamer full release from dreams of fear."

"Only forgiving dreams can enter here, for time is almost over. And the forms which enter in the dreams are now perceived as brothers, not in judgment, but in love."

Since forgiveness, atonement, salvation, true perception etc is a SYMBOL, a REFLECTION or once-removed representation of the truth of God, you have to look to what it POINTS TO or represents in order to understand what its qualities must be. Because it derives its qualities FROM the knowledge that it is based on. The question is then, what does forgiveness SYMBOLIZE?"True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth."

So if you look to heaven, look to the qualities of God, to how creation happens, to what souls are like, to the real truth and nature and composition of reality, you will find the BLUEPRINT that forgiving dreams are BASED ON. And this will tell you what forgiveness is and what its qualities should be.

Forgiveness, if based on REALITY, as a reflection of your true nature, should be a state of mind in which you are acknowledging and accepting how you are in heaven. This includes holy relationships which reflect the real relationships in heaven. And it includes the recognition of your immortality, invulnerability, perfection, sinlessness, the incapability of being sick or dying, the assertion of eternal life, and the presence of love.

To be forgiving, is to be heaven-like. It entails complete vigilance for the Kingdom, which means full faith and trust in what is actually true IN the Kingdom, in proper denial of the lies presented by illusions.

Forgiveness should bring with it:

Acknowledgement of your immortality and invulnerability

Love, peace, joy, happiness

Strength and power and the absence of suffering

The end of the victim role and any sense of being affected

Sanity, clarity, accurate perception and right mindedness

Miraculous power to break the laws of space and time

Assertion of life capable of raising the dead and healing the sick

Security, calm, peace-of-mind, certainty, trust and protection

A sense of permanence and the impossibility of death

Knowing that the world has no ability to change you in any way

The absence of pain, suffering, damage or malfunction in the body

Wholeness, innocence, integration, single-mindedness, unified-will

Extension and expression of God's nature

Being plugged into, directed by and healed by spirit

Thinking like God and aligned with God's will

Alignment with the Holy Spirit's thought system

Gratitude and joy that you are still as God created you

Recognition that nothing has ever gone wrong

The complete denial of attack or sin in all its forms

The list goes on. If there is a quality that is true in heaven, then forgiveness should be based on that quality also.

Your brother is innocent not merely because he is not the one who attacked you, but because in heaven you cannot BE attacked. Your suffering is self-made because only you can seem to attack yourself by your free will. And nothing happens without your consent, not even death. Everyone is innocent because you are immortal and cannot be attacked. Forgiveness derives all of its meaning from your heavenly nature.

Forgiveness is the REFLECTION OF HEAVEN. And being a reflection, it gets all of its meaning FROM heaven itself.

"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."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it."

"We see the light, and in it we see Heaven's reflection lie across the world."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT.

And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it."

"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM."

"Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world.

The image of holiness that shines in YOUR mind is NOT obscure, and will NOT change. Its meaning, to those who look upon it, is not obscure, for everyone perceives it AS THE SAME. All bring their DIFFERENT problems to its healing light, but ALL their problems are met ONLY with healing there."

"The test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve."

What you use the world FOR, what PURPOSE you give it, what it MEANS to you, and the GOAL that you ascribe to it, determines everything about WHY it is there and HOW you see it.

If you give the world a purpose of death, you steer towards false perception and murder and hell. If you give the world a purpose of resurrection, you steer towards true perception and heaven. And which purpose you choose determines how you interpret what you see.

The world isn't just sitting there as a WHAT. It's sitting there as a WHY. The world was made FOR A REASON. It was chosen specifically and deliberately. Its making was intentional and on purpose. It was made to serve a GOAL and to accomplish that goal. It's not just a "thing", it's a DEVICE.

"The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it, but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home."

It's not enough to ask "what the world is". Science can study the WHAT as long as it likes, but it's not asking the right question. You can't just look at the nature of the world through analysis of WHAT, to discover the REASON WHY it exists at all. For that, you have to ask WHY it's there at all, what it means, and what purpose it is serving. Then it becomes obvious WHY it is the way it is.

We're also taught in ACIM that everything is deliberate, because there is free will. Anything that happens MUST have your consent. Nothing happens WITHOUT your choosing it. You choose everything ON PURPOSE. You are completely deliberate, intentional, and responsible. Nothing happens at all unless it serves a purpose. And everything must have a purpose.

"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."

"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."

The world did not exist before the separation from God. It was made ON PURPOSE, to serve a goal. The goal was to deny God, to make separation real, to murder God's son, to make possible what is impossible, to bring about death, and to rule a kingdom in which God was absent. That is the original PURPOSE of this world. That is WHY it seems to be here. That is why the "what it is" is the way it is, and why it functions the way it does, and HOW it accomplishes this goal.

Make no mistake here. The world isn't just sitting there happily churning over all innocent and sweet. While the world is actually nothing, we give it belief and try to MAKE it serve the purpose of hell. We made it by rebelling against God, throwing away our inheritance, not WANTING to communicate with God, and by wanting to re-create ourselves in our own images. That's how spacetime came to be made as an opposite to omnipresence and eternity. That's that's why "the world was made as an attack on God."

So if we're just examining what the world is, we're not really looking at the rather extraordinary fact that it is in fact "the hell you made" for the purpose of fighting against heaven and trying to overthrow God's reality. That's WHY it's here. That's WHAT it is FOR. Or at least, that was what it WAS for, in the past, when we made it with our egos. The world functions the way it does simply because that's how its function SERVES the PURPOSE of destruction.

What ACIM is then telling us is that, since the world itself is nothing, and acts like a TOOL, to serve a certain purpose, with a certain USE, we can choose instead to RE-PURPOSE it. To give it a NEW GOAL. A new purpose which can serve a higher goal. We can take what we made, which was originally a weapon for destruction, and turn it into a way to UNDO the weapon. We can take hell, and convert it into a reflection of heaven, so that it will disappear in light. And we can USE it to bring ourselves and others back to God through holy relationship.

"For here, the GOAL of the relationship is abruptly shifted to the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it was."

"For, once the unholy relationship has ACCEPTED the goal of holiness, it can never again be what it was."

This means giving the world a different PURPOSE from the one we originally gave it. And that means it has to have a different GOAL than the one of murder and death that we originally gave it. So now, whatever state of mind you're in, whatever attitude you have, you have to ask yourself what you are USING IT FOR, or what purpose or goal you are trying to accomplish. Are you using it for attack to bring about the goal of death, or are you USING it for resurrection and healing and the goal of atonement, to restore the sonship and bring us back to God?

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor USE it for destruction.

Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE (goal) to peace, but let You USE it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming (of the higher goal)."

Let's be clear, that the power of the mind and the law of cause and effect determines that nothing can happen without your will, and anything that happens MUST be something you want. And by wanting it you WANT it to SERVE a purpose for you. To fullfill a FUNCTION. And a function is a way of operating that leads to the accomplishment of a goal. Our true function is to create life, and our false function is to destroy. Even YOU have a function that serves the creator of that function, because your function is to serve God for HIS purpose of sharing creation.

""Let me not use this to hide my function from me."

"I would use this as an opportunity to fulfill my function." "Let me not use this to justify a function God did not give to me."

Even all forms of sickness are there to SERVE a function, for a PURPOSE. This is why "sickness is a defense against the truth". It serves the PURPOSE of protecting you from the truth and hiding from it in darkness, by blocking the light/life, which implements forms of death. So long as a person has a USE FOR the sickness, serving a purpose, BENEFITING from it, wanting it, NEEDING it, choosing it, the sickness remains. And sickness is always ONLY there because of the PURPOSE it is serviing for the person. All sickness is intentional and deliberate and providing a function to achieve a GOAL.

"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."

"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."

"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously."

"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. How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth?"

So as ACIM rightly states, we should always ask, WHAT IS IT FOR? What am I using this FOR? What is the goal I am trying to achieve? What is the purpose of this? Am I using this for an ego purpose, and if so, how can I switch to a higher purpose? What was my original purpose in CHOOSING this, for what NEED, to achieve what GOAL? Why do I still believe I need it? Maybe I'm mistaken about my REASON FOR THIS and can choose otherwise?

How can I use this to FACILITATE the coming of peace, or the fulfillment of a higher function? How can I USE the world which I made in hate, to demonstrate the truth and awaken my brothers? What renewed spiritual PURPOSE can I give TO the world, to USE it in such a way, that it brings about the undoing of the world and the restoration of holy relationship and health and happiness? How can I USE the world for the GOAL OF GOD, in which everything in the world is seen with forgiveness so that it only serves the purpose of awakening and atonement?

When the Holy Spirit's PURPOSE for the world is accomplished, when the atonement is complete, the world no longer needs to SERVE this new purpose. And WITHOUT A PURPOSE, it simply now disappears into nothing.

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary"

"And, like all the things you made, it can be used to serve ANOTHER purpose, and to be means for something ELSE. It can be used to heal, and NOT to hurt, if you so wish."

"Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

"What purpose could it serve? What is it for?"

"In any situation in which YOU are uncertain, the FIRST thing to consider, very simply, is, "What do I want to come of this? What is it FOR?""

"What purpose has an idol, then? What is it FOR?"

"The purpose of the world you see is to obscure your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it."

"Let us forget the purpose of the world the past has given it."

"For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

"If I so choose, I can depart this world entirely. It is not death which makes this possible, but it is change of mind about the purpose of the world."

"When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

"The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"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. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function both be reconciled at last, and seen as one."

"Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one."

"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."

ACIM says "anger is never justified". This is big news for anyone who is used to feeling justified in being angry about anything.

There is a culture in this world is believing it is 'normal' and 'healthy' to be angry. When various 'bad things' happen, it seems very commonplace to react with anger. You might even be outraged. It may appear to you that you're completely right to feel that way.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Anger may acknowledge what you perceive has happened unfairly, but it betrays the fact your perception is faulty and in need of correction.

It is so widely accepted (by everyone's egos) that anger is a normal, justified reaction, that to say it is anything but justified seems like complete nonsense.

What if we were to say, anger is a state of insanity? What if anger is a mindless attempt to blame someone else for your own self condemnation? What if anger is deception? What if anger has a secret agenda of shoveling your own giult onto other people whenever anything conveniently goes wrong or looks like it could be used to justify being angry at yourself?

When anger is justified, the world is at war. There is no side you can take in anger to be at peace. And then your life will be filled with things which you get angry about. Every angry reaction is another instance of you believing that whatever happened is justified in happening, in spite of the fact that you're attempting to use it to explain why it shouldn't have happened.

It is extremely common to react in anger. It seems so commonplace and so 'normal' that most people accept it as some kind of 'normal psychology' or a 'healthy anger' or a healthy way to process what is wrong with the world. This is far from truth. It's a myth perpetuated by a very deeply ingrained ego thought system which runs through every society on the planet.

The only way anger is justified is IF .... IF.... this world is real. IF what happens is real. IF someone is really hurt. IF someone has actually proved that we are separate from God. IF we actually are not responsible for what happens to us. IF everyone else is guilty except ourselves. Only then would anger be justified. But that doesn't mean it is sane.

We have to lift all of humanity out of the bogmire of unconscious reactions based in the ego, reactions of anger which really are reactions of agreement and victimhood. We need to be more honest with ourselves and own up to and heal the real reason for our anger - that we are angry at ourselves for leaving God. Until this is faced, it will seem like 'normal culture' to get angry and upset about everything in the world.

"Anger is never justified" - ACIM - Anger is never justified because there is never any REASON to be angry because there IS ONLY LOVE.

This section of the course is fairly explicit about how God created many sons. It also uses the term "one with him", which does not in any way undo the fact that there are many sons, showing that "one with" does not mean "there is only one".

As I type this, Jesus is clarifying for me that oneness means "joined". Multiple individuals who are joined. Notice also at the end of this section it says God’s holiness is *PART* of us. That means some part of us IS God Himself, and some part of us is a distinct creation with its own free will. Being JOINED to God therefore does not mean we are ONLY God. God has CREATED sons!

Are a mother and her baby, "joined" by an umbilical cord, "one" self? Birth is after all a SYMBOL of creation, followed by a SYMBOL of separation.

"Creation is the sum of all God’s Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself. There was no time when all that It created was not there. Nor will there be a time when anything that It created suffers any pain.

Forever and forever are God’s Thoughts exactly as They were and as They are, unchanged through time and after time is done. God’s Thoughts are given all the power that Their own Creator has. For He would add to Love by Its extension. Thus His Son shares in creation, and must therefore share in power to create. What God has willed be forever one will still be one when time is over; and will not be changed throughout the course of time, remaining as it was before the thought of time began.

Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God.

We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God’s memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator. Let our function be only to let this memory return, only to let God’s Will be done on earth, only to be restored to sanity, and to be but as God created us.

Our Father calls to us. We hear His Voice, and we forgive creation in the Name of its Creator, Holiness Itself, Whose holiness His own creation shares; Whose holiness is still a part of us."

"The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world.In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

The "purpose of the world" originally was to manifest war and tears.

When the purpose upon which it is built, the foundation of it, the reason for it, the cause of it, is uprooted and transformed into a purpose of love.... this actually dismantles the world. Because the world is MADE OF war and death and misery. The world was made as a DEFENSE MECHANISM against reality. When it is no longer seen as a place of war and death and misery, as in the forgiven world, and the mind no longer WANTS to defend itself against reality, "that" world can no longer be maintained. When all souls have seen the forgiven world, it no longer has that PURPOSE. Which is why Jesus says that you'll barely have time to delight at seeing the forgiven world because upon seeing it it no longer has a purpose and you're ready to be scooped up by God.

That doesn't mean it's been given a new purpose like - let's all keep it and love it forever. Instead, the END of its purpose heralds its disappearance. Just as Jesus says that once perception is perfected, perception ITSELF is no longer needed. Perception, and this world, and the body, are nothing but teaching/learning devices. Once the Holy Spirit's purpose of using them to accomplish learning is finished, they no longer even have THAT purpose, and without a purpose the world is nothing. It is over. It has no USE. And so the mind simply drops it and it disappears into nothing.

This is the same mechanism as described in "sickness is a defense against the truth" in which when the PURPOSE of a sickness is recognized, and the mind no longer sees a NEED for that purpose (ie I don't NEED a defense because the truth is not attacking me), it simply recognizes the sickness as pointless and unnecessary and it simply vanishes. Sickness without a purpose cannot stay. Just as the world without a purpose cannot stay.

The world is or was a device for separation, just as is the body. When it is no longer used FOR separation, it no longer is NEEDED, and it no longer is protecting the mind from God. And as such it is cast off. Gone. "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

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.

There are various ways that you do this. Every one of them is a form of denial, is an illusion, and is not true at all.

You can do it by attempting to demonstrate that you can be attacked. You do this by trying to attack yourself or your body, bringing about states of "sickness" which symbolize separation or which try to show that you are not immortal in some way.

You also do it be projecting ownership of everything onto someone not yourself, giving away all of your power, being irresponsible, being two-faced, lying, hating, attacking others to prove that attack has real effects, or by trying to make out that you are someone other than yourself.

You also do it by inventing an illusion of death, which tries to demonstrate that what you are can be destroyed. It cannot, but you try anyway. And when you try, even if you seem to destroy the body, it still does not destroy who you are because you cannot stop being immortal spirit.

Nothing you can do can change what God has created to last forever. He sustains your immortal spirit in an eternal, timeless act of extension. Everything that you are, is an expression of what He is - everlasting love. Your Life is your immortality. Life sustains you indefinitely and without limit. You are in a constant state of perfect health and cannot be harmed or changed or influenced in any way whatsoever.

But you still try to. This entire world and all of the bodies in it and all of the events and sicknesses, disease, war, suffering, conflict, it is all an attempt to prove that it is possible to be other than God created you. It's an attempt to prove you can die, you can suffer, you can be upset, you can be limited, you can fail to perform miracles, you can be at the effect of the will of another, you can be victimized, you can fail to have any ability whatsoever to influence the environment, and that you have no power over anything.

You've done a great job of being upset, and believing that you are upset for a good reason, that it is justified, and that you should be unhappy. The reason you are unhappy is unjustified. You've also done a great job of creating reasons and justifications for why you are unhappy, none of which are valid. You've also created a long list of grievances which all seem unresolved, because you think that they actually are important, not to mention all the important things that you think you have to do today, none of which matter.

You are immortal spirit. You are already complete. You are already as God created you. There is nothing you can add to what God created. There is nothing that has been taken away. You've already received what God has given, and it has been full and abundant and total. You are lacking nothing. There is no lack of love in you. God has not changed his mind about you. And you are still as God created you. You're done! So what the fuck is all this other bullshit? lol

"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less." Unless perception, at every level, involves selectivity, it is incapable of organization. In all types of perception, there is a continual process of accepting and rejecting, of organizing and reorganizing, and of shifting and changing focus. Evaluation is an essential aspect of perception, because a judgment MUST be made for selection. "Lack of lack" is a concept which is meaningless to a perceiver, because the ability to perceive at all RESTS ON lack."

"What happens to perceptions if there ARE no judgments, and there is nothing BUT perfect equality? Perception is automatically useless. Truth can only be KNOWN."

"Only perception involves partial awareness. Knowledge transcends ALL of the laws which govern perception. Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing."

"In electing the ability to perceive instead of the will to know, man placed himself in a position where he could resemble his Father ONLY by perceiving miraculously. But he lost the knowledge that he HIMSELF is a miracle."

"Unless perception rests on some knowing basis, it is so unstable that it doesn't mean anything. Knowing is not open to interpretation, because its meaning is its own. It is possible to interpret meaning, but this is always open to error because it involves the perception of meaning. "

"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."

"Perception is fundamentally unstable."

"The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike."

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love."

"Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge."

"The miracle is a way of PERCEIVING, not a way of knowing. It is the right answer to a question, but you do not ask questions at all when you know."

"Since perceptions CHANGE, their dependence on time is obvious. They are subject to transitory states, and this implies variability by definition."

"The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

"Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form."

"Knowledge preceded both perception and time, and will also ultimately replace (or correct for) them."

"For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"Perception, at its loftiest, is NEVER complete. Even the perception of the Holy Spirit, as perfect as perception CAN be, is without meaning in Heaven."

"But no perception, however holy, will last FOREVER."

"God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning."

"Perception rests on choosing; knowledge does not."

To put it simply, the nature of the mind is completely opposite to the nature of the body. Mind is of God, bodies are illusions. Mind functions naturally in a state of sharing, union, extension and oneness, driven by God's laws. Bodies function according to unnatural ego laws of separation, as separation devices, designed to imprison mind and completely oppose the mind's natural functioning. This is also why the notion that the mind is "part of the brain" is preposterous.

"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."

"The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you. To be of ***one mind is meaningful***, but to be of one body is meaningless. By the laws of mind, then, the body IS meaningless."

"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."

"The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it."

"For sin HAS changed creation from an Idea of God to an IDEAL the EGO wants; a world IT rules, made up of bodies, mindless, and capable of COMPLETE corruption and decay."

To attempt to APPLY a body TO a mind, imprisons the mind. Confusing mind and body, to suggest the body is the mind, or that you have no mind at all, leads to the mind identifying with the body. This makes the mind run completely opposite to its nature, and induces all suffering and sickness.

To again put it simply, if the mind in any way associates itself with the body, or allows or uses the body to define itself, the mind becomes sick and attacks the body. Bodies are prisons, and minds are freedom. Bodies are exclusive, and minds are inclusive. Bodies separate, minds join. They function totally differently, so trying to make the mind function LIKE the body, arrests the mind's natural function and induces illness.

"Thus is the JOINING of mind and body an INESCAPABLE belief of those who value sin. And so is sacrifice INVARIABLY a means for limitation."

"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 (tying it to the body's nature) 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."

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate."

"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."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

Extension, sharing, union, oneness, equality, transcendence, miraculousness, is the mind's natural function. Mind needs to function according to mind's laws in order to be healthy. But bodies are fundamentally opposite, as separation devices.

If the mind identifies with "being a body", or functioning by physical laws, or obeying physical limitations, the mind becomes sick. It's like something that's supposed to be completely free and open, being shoved inside a completely closed box. Mind and body are not compatible.

"Spirit makes use of mind as means to find Its Self-expression. And the mind that serves the Spirit is at peace and filled with joy. Its power comes from Spirit, and it is fulfilling happily its function here. Yet mind can also see itself divorced from Spirit, and perceive itself within a body it confuses with itself. Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"Yet mind apart from Spirit cannot think. It has denied its Source of strength, and sees itself as helpless, limited and weak. Dissociated from its function now, it thinks it is alone and separate, attacked by armies massed against itself, and hiding in the body's frail support."

"You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt."

"the underlying fallacy is more likely to be the confusion of mind and brain"

The situation we find ourselves in is therefore very strange. We seem to be isolated and alone inside a body, trapped, as if separated off from other minds, physically unable to truly share or join. Even in intercourse we can't actually get inside of another person's mind, or experience them as ourselves, or really share anything with them.

Everything seems to happen to us alone, and not another. Everything seems to apply to me and not you. Even the form of our bodies suggest we are different, separate, special, and exclusive. That we are separated off by time and space. As if I can have little private thoughts inside a little private world that has no effect on anyone or anything outside of me.

This is not how mind needs to function to be healthy. This is totally opposite to its natural functioning. Mind needs to SHARE, to join, to be one-with, to unify, which is true communication and extension. Mind needs to be open and transcendental beyond limitations and walls and boundaries. Mind spreads out and can have the vision to see beyond physical limits and distances. Mind can be everywhere at once.

So somehow we have to find a way to transcend the body's anchoring, imprisoning, limiting factors, and restore the mind to functioning how it functions in heaven.

"Or would I teach that bodies cannot keep us apart?"

"What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"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 PERSON conceives of himself as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body. ONLY if he perceives as a MIND can he overcome this."

"While you believe that YOUR reality, OR YOUR BROTHER's, is bounded by a body, you will believe in sin. While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious. For the belief that bodies LIMIT the mind leads to a perception of the world in which the PROOF of separation seems to be everywhere."

"Sins are beliefs which you impose between your brother and yourself. They limit you to time and place, and give a little space to you; ANOTHER little space to him. This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

"The belief you are a body calls for correction, being a mistake."

"Remember that all sense of weakness is associated with the belief you are a body, a belief that is mistaken and deserves no faith."

"If you are sin you ARE a body, for the mind acts not."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"And so the illusion of a brother as a body is quite in keeping with the purpose of unholiness."

"To hold a grievance is to see yourself as a body."

"For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed."

"And while you see your brother as a body,APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you."

"He Who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees Himself as a body, or even as in a body. Therefore He is limitless. And being limitless, His Thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever."

Such defenses are put in place on purpose. They are chosen. They have a purpose, to fulfill a perceived need. They have a function - a task that they are to perform in order to achieve a goal.

The goal of sickness is to defend you or protect you or counter-attack against something you have perceived which seems to threaten your existence. Isn't it strange that a retaliation against a perceived threat damages you?

Sickness is not just some thing that happens. It is a device, a deliberate mechanism or tool that you use for a specific purpose. Like a bandaid, you use it to help your little wounds to heal. Or a screwdriver, you use it to help screw screws into wood. Sickness helps you to be protected against what you perceive as an attack.

Sickness implements separation. It pushes away the attacker and creates a gap or distance between you, so that you feel a sense of perceived safety. You want to put distance between you and the threat. Or put up a really solid wall that blocks them. These blocks are blocks to awareness.

The result is what expresses as a materialization of physical form in a distorted configuration, which is what we usually refer to as "sickness", illness or disease. The mind is literally warping the body to try to turn it into a defense mechanism.

The ONLY purpose of sickness is to defend you. This is the only reason why you want it. And it is the reason why you really have an actual desire to keep it. If you were to remove the defense, and if the attacker is still present without having changed at all, then you will be in danger.

You will also go to great lengths to build an entire fictional story around the symptoms of sickness explaining and justifying why the sickness ITSELF is the problem that you want to get rid of, in order to DENY that you really want to KEEP it, because to truly get rid of it would expose you to your enemy. We will make a lot of noise about the unfairness of the sickness and about how we did not ask for it, in order to HIDE the fact that we did ask for it on purpose and we are the ones who put it in place. To admit that would threaten to undo it, which goes against the entire point of us creating the sickness in the first place.

You do not want to remove your defense because of this. It is creating an illusion of safety and protection, further covered-up by layer upon layer of denial and displacement of what the real problem is. Unfortunately, all defenses are attacks and your own defenses are attacking you as much as the other. Construct a razor-wire fence and you better be careful not to touch it!

The only purpose of that defense is to block a threat. You must look at what it is that you believe is a threat. Typically it is anything which your ego perception mis-perceives as the opposite or undoing of itself. Your sense of identity is at stake. Any suggestion of "truth" which implies that the ego does not exist, will threaten "you" when you are identified as the ego.

Your false beliefs are your artificial identity which you believe are the truth. You want to protect that truth as though your life depends on it. You see its opposite as false, evil, and an attack. So long as you remain loyal to those misperceptions you will defend them, even if doing so requires you to implement defenses which attack you as much as anyone else. All defenses are double-eged swords and you cannot escape their toxicity and potency.

What must be truly undone before you will be willing to let down your defenses, is to learn to accept the truth as it is and not as it appears to be when seen through the ego. This will have to mean that your sense of identity is mistaken and must be set free. It must shift from "I am this ego thing" to "I am holy and innocent". Forgiveness must happen of yourself, and healing must take place in terms of how you see yourself or who or what you regard yourself as.

You need to find a willingness to be open to being mistaken about who you thought you were, and what you thought was true, so that you can allow the truth to save you from this illusion. The truth will show you a new identity and reveal the truth about you. This will reveal how the ego is in fact the thing which is false, and that it is not who you are.

If you can accept the truth as helpful and welcome instead of as a threat to your existence, you will see no NEED to defend yourself against it. You will not see attack in it, having not attacked. You will see no justification for trying to prevent it or reject it. You will accept it and allow it to be in you. You will invite it in and it will be your Identity.

At this point you will be WILLING to accept that your device of defense and separation is no longer needed. It's function is irrelevant. The sickness was ONLY serving your purpose of trying to protect your "self". You no longer need this protection because who and what you are is not being threatened by the truth but is in agreement with it. The truth is your friend. You can now let down your defenses.

This means, you will now admit that the sickness only came into being because you put it there, wanted it, needed it, and it was helping you - or so you thought. You have now been corrected and you now RECOGNIZE that this sickness was just something you used to believe in and no longer do. It is now false. It is not the truth. It is not something you need. You have not purpose for it and you admit that it is just a way of attacking yourself more. You don't want it anymore and don't have any attachment to it.

Illusions recognized as such MUST disappear. All of the symptoms and consequences of that so-called "sickness" must disappear. "He will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him" - meaning that your willingness now to admit the truth (allow Holy Spirit access) can and will supernaturally UNDO and make disappear all forms and signs and symptoms and content of sickness. All of the expressions - consequences - of deciding poorly will be undone. Your lack of support or need for the sickness will let it go and it will just vanish.

Properly recognized as completely false, unhelpful, unneeded, unwelcome, pointless, futile, purposeless, meaningless, and utterly useless, the sickness will be recognized as having no reality or truth or validity and this will make it disappear. Literally. All symptoms will go if this is truly deeply accepted.

The sickness was nothing more than a temporary protective device which you wanted and needed. If you don't need it, you WILL drop it. If your will is genuine and you've become really really honest with yourself, that sickness will be undone. And sickness is nothing more than a belief that separation is the answer to God, or that separation can save you from the truth. Undoing sickness heals your mind.

Once the sickness - as mental illness - as belief in separation - AND as symptoms of defense - is gone, THEN you will be at peace. Not before. No-one can be at peace when they are at war with themselves or with the truth. No-one can be at peace who believes sickness is real and must just be accepted. No-one can be at peace who is using death as a defense against the wrath of God. True peace can and must be experienced as complete and total perfect "health" in mind and all the expressions of mind.

If you truly do not believe in separation from the truth, you will have no defenses and you will not exhibit symptoms of sickness. You will walk your walk and not just talk your talk. And you will demonstrate therefore, by example, living example, that you are immortal and invulnerable because you do not believe in separation or sickness and they are not real. You will thus teach others that sickness is not the truth and the truth needs no defense. If signs of sickness remain, you are teaching the exact opposite because, in all honesty, you have not completely undone your belief in separation.

Sickness must go. Disease must be healed. Death must be undone. Resurrection is the only truth. If you are sick you are attacking yourself, everyone else, and God. A guiltless mind cannot suffer, and a guiltless mind exhibits no symptoms of sickness or damage. A broken body is a sign that the mind has not been healed. Complete healing is not only possible but necessary. You must teach that nothing has happened to you and you can't do that intellectually. You must show it and act like it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am as God created me".

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

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

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

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

The ego always has an ulterior motive, a secret agenda, and a hidden plan that it would hide from you while it lies to your face.

Or rather, while you lie to yourself.

When the ego says you are afraid, it makes out that you're not choosing to be afraid, and that someone else is the cause. This isn't true. Secretly it wants to be afraid so that it can scapegoat someone and displace its own guilt onto others.

When the ego says you are guilty, it makes out that someone else has found you guilty and that there's nothing you can do about it. This isn't true. Secretly this belief in guilt is a choice that you're doing to yourself, you're the one who decided to be guilty, and you are doing so that you might keep your plan to be a separate individual.

When the ego says you have sinned, it tries to claim that this is because of something you really did, but this isn't true. Secretly you know that you cannot sin and did not do anything wrong, but are making out that you did, because you want to be sinful, so that you can continue your plan to be separate from God. Even if being sinful seems like a horrible experience, this horrible experience is 'worth it' if it means you can inch closer to death.

Death is your ultimate goal because it's through deaths doorway that you imagine you can finally escape from God's wrath and be born into a new reality where you are completely independent of God and have no need for Him. You hold this in your sights at all times, regardless of what seems to be happening or why, secretly planning on death every step of the way. Even if it means seeming to have to suffer sinfulness, or guilt, or fear, or punishment. Because there is always this secret ego agenda of self-destruction.

These secrets are all a part of denial, which is your attempt to deny that you are deliberately trying to die, or that you deliberately want to be a separate identity. You use denial to disown the choice you keep making for death, and to pretend that you're inching along toward it against your will, and driven by forces outside your control. To suggest you are not doing this to yourself is denial, and you layer denial upon denial upon denial to try to bring about a complete suppression of yourself, so that you can pretend to be someone else.

All along the way, we maintain and keep these special secrets. They are the secret truth that we are really doing this all to ourselves. It's the secret that we don't want to be revealed, because if we were to own up to it and be responsible, the illusions we're making which create the appearance that we're unwillingly being dragged to the grave, would be totally blown. We wouldn't be able to believe our own self-deception if we were to admit that we were the one choosing every single part of this.

And so sin, and guilt, and fear, and punishment, and suffering, and death, are all things we're choosing on purpose, because we see death as the way to achieve independence from God. It's what we've wanted all along, and we constantly pretend that we DON'T want it, SO THAT we can have it. Choosing to appear to have no choice, is a choice to have no choice, which is a choice to choose to die. Choosing to be afraid, choosing to be guilty, choosing to suffer, but claiming and making the illusion that this is absolutely nothing to do with what we want. Bullshit.

Secrets and lies, secrets and lies. How about some honest owning up to being powerful, immortal, invulnerable and not a victim?

Pretty simple huh.

The ego persona wants to seek because seeking means, you do not already have. Seeking takes you away from what you have.

So let's say, you have a home to live in. You know that you HAVE it. It's yours. You don't need to find a home. You've got one.

You go out the front door and leave the home, exclaiming, "I don't have anywhere to live!".

You've rejected the home that you already have, and so now you seem to be homeless.

So now you have to go off SOMEWHERE ELSE, seeking, to try to find the very same home that's right behind you, which you are sure is not there.

But you can see, plainly, that this is nuts. You do not need to go and find a home, you already have one. But you've shut it out of your awareness and turned your back on it.

You could quite easily lift this 'block to awareness' from your mind and remember, oh wait, I actually do have a home to live in already! And this would cause you to STOP SEEKING.

Instead of seeking, you would ACCEPT what is already yours. Then you'd embrace your home again and be at peace, knowing you already have everything you need.

So really, the whole problem is a) the block to the AWARENESS of the pre-existing PRESENCE of everything you need (God/True Self), and b) you then go off on those 'seeking' activity trying to find it ELSEWHERE. And the problem is, it does not exist elsewhere. It's not outside of you, separate from you, or separate from the place where it already is - where God put it, where God is, within.

So because your pre-existing home, which is already yours, only exists where it is, and if you turn your back on it and go off seeking for a home anywhere but where it is, you WILL NOT FIND IT.

"Seek and do not find" - the ego's motto.

You literally are looking for what you already have, believing that you do not already have it, in every place that is SEPARATE from where it already is, hoping to find it there. And that means, it absolutely IS NOT THERE, and that you absolutely will FAIL to find it.

So the ego is very much into seeking. But seeking only comes about after you've put a block on your awareness. Some kind of sense of separation or shutting out or rejection of, what already is in you - God - your True Self - love etc.

That means, if you lift the block to awareness from your mind, you will become AWARE that the car keys are already in your pocket, i.e. you already have everything you need. You have NO needs. Because God has ALREADY given you everything you could possibly need.

So this has to mean, becoming open to ACCEPT that God has already a) given you absolutely all of Himself, b) you do not need anything other than total dependence on God, c) you have no lack and no needs, d) you share God's power and can manifest anything you could possible want or need instantly, e) you will live forever in perfect peace and satisfaction.

You already have a natural inheritance of unconditional love, absolute abundance, total safety and complete peace. It's already been shared with you by God. You just are in the business of not accepting, allowing, admitting, or seemingly wanting it. You've shut it out. So all you need to do, is open up to receiving, allowing, accepting and knowing it again. Reclaim your inheritance!

God is already here with you now!

"The simple and the obvious are NOT apparent to those who would make palaces and royal robes of nothing, believing they are kings with golden crowns BECAUSE of them."

Last night what came to awareness is the nature of the ego. It was shown to me as a picture of a selfish king.

The king was riding on a golden jewel-laden platform, lounging casually while being attended to by guards and servants. Eating luxuriously, wearing elaborate robes made of the finest materials, complete with jewels and gold and a crown.

He thought highly of himself, of his own self importance. He saw himself as above everyone, and because of this he really did not care to even mingle with those lesser than himself. He was distanced and cut off from the larger population, and didn't really care for anyone at all besides himself.

He wanted to live an opulent, wealthy, care-free life, waited-on and pampered and adored and worshipped as a lord. Skimming along the surface of society barely involved in anything or helping anyone, wanting nothing to do with the unclean peasants nor to barely give a single thing to anyone.

He wanted to live in his big castle with his special toys and his expensive furnishings. To be told how great he is, to sit on his portable throne and be escorted according to his shallow wishes. It seemed he had everything he wanted, having gained the whole world, sitting at the apex of the pyramid on top of a mountain of riches, and yet bereft of any real relationships with anyone.

Living out his days in the illusion of perfection and the fantasy of having everything there is worth having. Of owning and ruling over the whole kingdom, a kingdom that he had no real interest in other than to be ruler of it and exalted by it. And for all this selfishness and seeming success and wealth and grandiosity, he lived as if on a tiny island all alone and had nothing of any real value.

His life was empty and narrow and shallow and greedy. He got everything he wanted and no-one could oppose his tyranny. And so he thought himself to be of the utmost specialness, important above all others, and the greatest of all rulers. Caring not for anything he ruled over nor for the lives of others. He was fat from the feasting and lazy in his lifestyle. And he wanted nothing but to keep the lesser-kind away from himself.

He lived like a king, but he had no soul. He thought everyone wanted what he had, and that therefore everyone envied him, and therefore that he was entitled and better than all of them. And not once did he think of anyone besides himself. His castle was a prison, to keep him and his riches protected from thieves and beggars and the hungry, to keep them out and to keep him in. For he wanted only to have everything for himself.

"Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom, a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing, but who would still die to DEFEND it?" "In your tiny kingdom you have so little!"

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul."

"What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"

I've been recently experimenting with various forms of acceptance. I'm moving into more acceptance and letting go of more denial. This seems to be the 'new frontier' in my spiritual path.

One of these forms is in opening up to receiving God, receiving love, receiving healing. I've done this a few times now. The first time was the most powerful but each time I 'receive God' I feel that love comes in.

The thing is, when this love comes in it immediately receives a reaction from my ego, which is really kind of clueless as to what to do about this. It has no real response to it other than confusion, and clearly the power of God is SOOOOO much bigger than anything the ego can do, it renders the ego like dust on the surface of the ocean. It can't do anything about it. And so it will say/experience something like...."how could God love me?"

And by this I mean, it's actually thinking of it as though God loving me is some kind of an UNWANTED thing. Like an attack. How dare God love me?! How could he 'do this to me'?.

This is the part of me that believes God can't be love. It's the part that believes I can't be love. It is in disbelief. Its a part of me that believes God's unconditional love is impossible and doesn't exist. And its the part of me that is so confused and backwards about what God is that it thinks God's love is actually some disgusting thing that it does not want anything to do with.

And so for this part of me - this ego - to have an encounter with or be exposed to this offering of real love, it's like.. it's healing. It's transformative. It's not comfortable at all, it's kind of shocking. And actually it entails quite a lot of fear. I am very resistant to actually saying the full sentence "receive God", even though it's only 2 words. I can FEEL and know what it will mean if I allow God in. God is huge. God is powerful. His love is immense. Can I allow it?

Yet gradually I'm becoming more willing to accept, to receive, to allow. Slow steps. Baby steps. But having some willingness to surrender is the key.

Letting love in. It seems radical. Just receiving God and permitting Him to be in me. It shouldn't be such a big 'thing' but the ego has shut God out for so long. I suppose this relates to letting God take up residence at the 'altar' which the Course talks about as having been defiled by our ego separation idea.

Letting yourself be loved. To a degree that you never thought was possible, that you never thought you ever would deserve. It goes deep. Very deep. But I can also feel it giving me a kind of strength, a kind of certainty, and a kind of healing. Relief. Relief from the darkness of being separate.

My ego self is very shocked by what God is doing, by the unconditionality and complete lack of 'cost' in God's offering. It does not understand the sheer freedom with which the Gift is being offered. It is suspicious of it and resistant to accepting it. It can't comprehend why I could possibly be worthy of such unconditionality, as if there is a secret motive involved. Yet as I continue to be willing to let God in, love is taking up residence, and the ego can't do anything to stop it.

"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."

More...

I am not mortal but immortal.

I am not sick but healthy.

I am not dying but eternal.

I am not afraid but confident.

I am not a victim but empowered.

I am not guilty but innocent.

I am not sinful but holy.

I am not lost but united.

I am not alone but one.

I am not forgotten but remembered.

I am not upset but peaceful.

I am not unhappy but joyful.

I am not attacked but safe.

I am not hopeless but grateful.

I am not deprived but abundant.

I am not lacking but receiving.

I am not hurt but invulnerable.

I am not suffering but relieved.

I am not affected but causal.

I am not stuck but miraculous.

I am not imprisoned but free.

I am not angry but calm.

I am not condemned but forgiven.

I am not dark but light.

I am not separate but whole.

I am not an ego but as God created me.

I am not confused but clear.

I am not diseased but healed.

I am not broken but complete.

I am not isolated but expansive.

I am not asleep but awake.

I am not unconscious but aware.

I am not deadly but harmless.

I am not murderous but welcoming.

I am not a victimizer but truly helpful.

I am not misguided but directed.

I am not ugly but beautiful.

I am not depressed but happy.

I am not unwilling but willing.

I am not resistant but open.

I am not ill but well.

I am not damned but saved.

I am not in exile but in heaven.

I am not a body but spirit.

I am not a dream but God's creation.

I am not fictional but authentic.

I am not divided but undivided.

I am not adrift but purposeful.

I am not threatened but permanent.

I am not rejected but loved.

I am not abandoned but embraced.

I am not in hell but in God.

I am not offended but humored.

I am not suspicious but trusting.

I am not vicious but gentle.

I am not ashamed but appreciative.

I am not envious but fulfilled.

I am not idolizing but within.

I am not heroic but saved.

I am not horrified but passer-by.

I am not judging but forgiving.

I am not hateful but generous.

I am not resentful but thankful.

I am not in danger but protected.

I am not disgusting but acceptable.

I am not beyond help but supported.

I am not embarrassed but understood.

I am not grieving but reunited.

I am not controlled but powerful.

I am not terrified but strong.

I am not worried but filled with faith.

I am not dead but eternal life.

I am not lonely but home with God.

I am not sad but overjoyed.

I am not insane but sane.

I am not delusional but honest.

I am not empty but inspired.

I am not insecure but secure.

I am not anxious but reassured.

I am not cold but warm.

I am not tense but relaxed.

I am not disturbed but quiet.

I am not stressed but at ease.

I am not serious but playful.

I am not harsh but kind.

I am not weak but supernatural.

I am not in time but in eternity.

I am not separate but with God.

To believe God created Earth or that Earth is worth keeping, is clearly in contradiction to what the course says about the earth, frequently contrasting it as being the OPPOSITE of heaven and not something worthy of the Son of God. The world seen with forgiving eyes might well be "lovely", but it’s still not heaven.

Here is how the Course speaks of the "Earth"... (with my emphasis and minor comments)...

"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 (does not mean heaven=earth, it means you have the power to create here). 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 thoughts unite in glory as the Son of God"

"His little life on EARTH was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the HELL YOU MADE (earth) to God."

"My mind will always be like yours, because we were created as equals. It was only my decision that gave me all power in HEAVEN AND EARTH (separate places). My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision."

"God has one Son, and He is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him IN HEAVEN AND ON EARTH (separate places)."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is NO PARALLEL in your experience of the world (earth) to help you understand it. There is NOTHING ON EARTH with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt apart from Him resembles it ever so faintly."

"It is our function to remember Him (God) ON EARTH as it is given us to be His own completion IN REALITY (not on earth). So let us not forget our goal is shared. For it is that remembrance which contains the memory of God, and points the way to Him and TO THE HEAVEN (pointed to away from the Earth) of His peace"

"Father, IN HEAVEN it is different, for there, there are no needs. But HERE ON EARTH (which is not heaven) the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"Who can share a dream? And what can an illusion offer me? (references to earth) Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts BEYOND the worth of ANYTHING ON EARTH. Let my forgiven brothers fill my store with HEAVEN’S treasures, WHICH ALONE ARE REAL (earth’s treasure are dreams and illusions). Thus is the law of love fulfilled. And thus Your Son arises and returns to You (reference to ascension!)."

"Let all God’s holy Thoughts surround me, and be still with me while HEAVEN’s Son is born. Let EARTHLY sounds be quiet, and the sights to which I am accustomed DISAPPEAR."

"(speaking of true perception/real world...)EARTH is being born again in new perception. Night has gone, and we have come together in the light. From here we give salvation to the world, for it is here salvation was received. The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world (earth) that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God’s Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, ETERNITY HAS SHINED AWAY THE WORLD (illusion of earth), and only HEAVEN now exists at all."

"(talking about Holy Spirit) His Words will work. His Words will save. His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this EARTH (cus otherwise it sucks). His Words are born in God, and come to you with HEAVEN’S love upon them. Those who hear His Words have heard the song of HEAVEN, for these are the words which all merge as one at last"

"Your foot has reached the lawns that welcome you to HEAVEN’s GATE; the quiet place of peace where you await with certainty the final step of God (to take you home to heaven). How far are we progressing now from EARTH (something you do not want!)! How close are we approaching to our goal! How short the journey still to be pursued!"

""I will forgive and this will DISAPPEAR." To every apprehension, every care, every form of suffering repeat these selfsame words. And then you hold the key that opens HEAVEN’s GATE, and brings the Love of God the Father down to EARTH at last (extending Holy Spirit temporarily), to raise it up to HEAVEN. God will take this final step Himself. Do not deny the little steps He asks you take to Him."

"Forgiveness represents your function here (on earth). It is not God’s creation, for it is the means by which untruth can be undone. And who would pardon HEAVEN (opposite to earth where forgiveness is needed)? Yet on EARTH you need the means to let illusion go. Creation merely waits for your RETURN (to heaven) to be acknowledged, not to be complete. Creation cannot even be conceived of in the WORLD (definitely talking about earth here). It has no meaning here (earth is meaningless). Forgiveness is the closest it (heaven) can come to EARTH. For being HEAVEN-BORNE, it has no form at all. (Earth, place of forms, is not heaven)"

"All power is given you in EARTH and HEAVEN (two distinct places apparently). There is nothing that you cannot do."

"Repeat the Name of God and call upon your Self, Whose Name is His. Repeat His Name and all the tiny, nameless things on EARTH slip into right perspective. Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."

"There is one major difference in the role of HEAVEN’s messengers which sets them off from those the world (earth) appoints. The messages which they deliver are intended first for them. And it is only as they can accept them for themselves that they become able to bring them further, and to give them everywhere that they were meant to be. Like EARTHLY messengers (but only like, not the same as), they did not write the messages they bear, but they become their first receivers in the truest sense, receiving to prepare themselves to give."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of HEAVEN’s CHILDREN and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game UPON THIS EARTH And then we GO (to heaven) to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"HEAVEN remains your ONE ALTERNATIVE to THIS STRANGE WORLD YOU MADE and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with HEAVEN as the glad effect of one, and EARTH THE OTHER’S SORRY OUTCOME WHICH IS HEAVEN’s OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."

"You are indeed essential to God’s plan. Just as your light increases every light that shines IN HEAVEN so your joy ON EARTH calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you (in heaven) in God’s plan"

"How could there be a meeting place at all where EARTH AND HEAVEN can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist? (Clearly they cannot both exist) The mind that sees illusions (earth) thinks them real. They have existence in that they are thoughts. And yet they are not real because the mind that thinks these thoughts is separate from God."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down UPON THE EARTH after HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him. The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is ETERNAL and has never changed. He was "called down upon the EARTH" in the sense that it was now possible to accept Him and to hear His Voice. His is the Voice for God, and has therefore taken form. This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

"There IS no change in immortality, and HEAVEN knows it not. Yet here on EARTH (place that changes), it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things"

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into HEAVEN, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes HOME. The incomplete is made complete again, and HEAVEN’s joy has been increased because what is its own has been restored to it."

....

I pulled the quotes from a searchable urtext version. There are MANY MORE references to being "in heaven" versus "on earth", making it clear and obvious they are both distinct and OPPOSITE, and that only heaven is real, only heaven is what you want, and only heaven is befitting the Son of God.

God did not create the earth. This world is not our home. There is no life outside of heaven! The world - earth - holds nothing that we want. There is no world (earth). A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world (earth) (beacuse Heaven is FAR BETTER!) :-) Heaven is EVERYTHING, Earth is NOTHING.

When we talk of duality, non-duality, pure-non-duality, we're talking concepts.

Duality means polar opposites (good/bad, right/wring, up/down etc)

Non-duality usually means both opposites are one thing. This also usually means the opposites still exist, ie the world is real, but it's all one thing. Close to a Buddhist teaching for example.

Pure-non-duality typically means the world doesn't exist at all, ie neither opposites exists. Instead, it's contrasted against "God". ie, only God exists.

While the Course DOES teach "there is no world", there is a problem with saying it's pure-non-duality.

If we're being really, really pure about it, if it's logically true that only God exists, it is impossible for God to create, impossible for God to have a son or to create heaven, its impossible for there to be a sonship, there could not even have been a dream of death, and if there were a dream of death God would now have to be the one dreaming it.

That also means, if there is only God, that God is dreaming of death, God is dying, God is stuck in a body, God is "learning" (ie lacking), God is not whole, and God is an illusion.

That's a pretty big problem.

That's what pure nonduality really indicates if you are being REALLY pure about it.

At times Jesus does say things in the course which could imply otherwise but you have to be careful to discern what level he's talking at. When he says, "God is, and then we cease to speak".... he's not saying, God is... and there is nothing else... he's saying WE as individual creations cease to speak and we become one with - sharing with - the allness of God, but still retaining our individual free will.

It's useful up to a point to say, there is no world, only God exists. But if that's the scope of your grasp of the logic, then you're falling short. It puts God in a box, all by himself. And in that box, there is no creation, there is no expression or extension, there is no son.

Pure-non-duality means God does not even have one son, yet alone many. That's a problem. Without a son God is the one dreaming and dying, which is ridiculous. Without a son, God is a sinner and a separator, which is ridiculous. Without a son, God has no effects, therefore he is not causal, therefore he is not permanent, therefore he does not exist. That's a completely logical conclusion that you should come to if you really purely believe in pure-non-duality. What started out seeming to say only God exists, MUST mean God does not exist at all.

In order for God to have in any way at all a "son" or a "creation", something which is technically not 100% equated with Himself, it has to be possible that what God is does not stay inside a nice theoretical box. For God to create, and for God to cause an effect, and produce even one son, there has to be what the course calls a "natural grand division."

A "world", as ACIM defines it, is a natural grand division, or a projection outward, from God. God is complete in and of himself, but when he extends Himself to create, He creates something which is - in a sense - "outside of His own completeness" - an "addition" to what exists. Reality is increased by creating/sharing. ie It's talking about heaven/creation. It is "divided" from God in a natural way, which is normal and healthy. It all hinges around cause-effect.

God is cause. God produces effects. Effects of God are creations, which are expressions/extensions. The course says, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing." God has to share, meaning, there is some room here, or some freedom. It also says, that God gave his sons (plural) free will, which was necessary in order to allow them to create freely. The aim was that naturally the sons would create more love and joy and the kingdom would expand. It's only when sons mis-create that they go into separation dreams.

Since God is causing the Son, and the Son is an effect, and the Son is not causing God, there is a "natural" division in terms of roles or functions between God and His Sonship. It is natural. "Separation", in course terms, is an un-natural division. Division between God and Sonship is natural. It does not mean the same thing as separation. It does not mean there are walls up between each son or between sons and God. It means there are many individual free-willed souls each sharing fully and freely and openly with each other and with God.

Getting off topic slightly. But you can see that in order to allow for God to be alive, to be creative, to express and extend, to share, what God is MUST be more than a self-contained box. There is nothing "outside" of Him as such but souls still have free will within the scope of God, and share God. You can't really technically call this "pure non duality", because there isn't a duality but there ARE MANY SONS, and many creations, and many thoughts of God, and the sonship has many parts. There are more than 250 statements in the course pertaining to God directly creating multiple sons.

A multiplicity of sons is hardly in keeping with the idea of pure non-duality. It's not the same thing. It's not a state of "there is only God". It's a state of "there is god and god's creations." It's not a singularity. It's not a concept or a theoretical box. It's alive. It's creative. It's expressive. It's more than ego logic can describe or understand.

This is why the course is really not pure-non-duality. In a general broad sense, yes, it is, up to the point where you really take a look at heaven and God and creation and the sonship, and find out that there are in fact many parts to it. It's not just one big "blob". And each soul IS endowed with free will. Will is free when it chooses to extend freedom and love. It becomes blocked when we will against God's will and therefore will against our own will. That's what victimhood is all about - attacking ourselves with our own will. It's also the secret to salvation.

If you want ACIM to be pure-non-duality, you're not looking closely enough at the facts. God and Son are not one single thing pretending to be two. God does not dream. God has not separated from Himself. We are the ones who are responsible for dreaming of impossibilities.

There is one other big problem with trying to fit the course into a pure-non-duality model. The fact that in pure-non-duality there are no individuals and no individual free will. In pure-non-duality there are no souls. There is no permanent "self" distinct in some way from others, or naturally divided. That means, the pure-non-dual teachers constantly tell you that you do not have a self, or that you are not an individual. It is BULL SHIT. God created many sons and gave all of them free individual will.

Quote: "In the creation, God projected His creative ability from Himself to the Souls He created, and He also imbued them with the same loving will to create. The Soul has not only been fully created but has also been created perfect." - ACIM

Quote: "The world (heaven), in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations). The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom). Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order." - ACIM

You DO have a soul. You ARE an "free individual". You may not have an EGO. Having a separating ego is not the same thing as being a free-willed soul. Ego means putting up walls and unnatural divisions between you and others. Absence of walls does not destroy your independent freedom, it simply allows you to share fully and freely with others. To be one with them, without losing your own soul.

The peddlers of pure-non-duality peddle "you do not exist" paradigm, which leads many course people to believe they are supposed to deny themselves. It in fact produces censorship of the soul and leads you to believe you are supposed to be getting rid of yourself. It actually results in a belief that the soul is supposed to DIE ie not exist. That to be in God, you cannot be a self in any way. That to be awake, you must not have any sense of existing individually.

Also if there are no souls and no individual freedoms, then you are literally responsible for the shitty choices that everyone else makes, they are literally you, and you are just as dead as the person who just died. It's ridiculous. It IS true that you share a oneness but you simultaneously have independence. This is possible in a holographic model of heaven in which the all is in every part, ie God is in every soul, and yet each soul is distinct and whole and complete in and of itself. This produces a state of simultaneous sharing with the whole AND independence. This is not in any way a pure-non-duality teaching.

The separation from God is otherwise described as dissociation, or as I like to spell it - dis-association.

We were associated with our soul, as God created it, in heaven's reality. We believed it was our self, our identity.

The separation from God was an act of trying to dis-identify from the soul, or to deny reality, ie no longer "associate with" spirit.

This dis-association, trying not to be what we are, produced a counter-attempt to associate WITH ... something that we are not.

As such, when all forms arose from projection, our minds attempted to associate WITH forms, of any kind. To associate with anything not of God, anything outside of heaven, anything which would keep you away from associating with your real self.

So then you attempt to associate with, bind with, identify with, be as, or become one with, anything other than what you really are.

This sort of ... holding on process, of associating with false things - the holding on itself, the identifying, the sense or belief that the thing is your self ... is what we call THE EGO.

It's a mind which had previously identified and associated with spirit, which is temporarily stretching itself to try to reject spirit and bind to something not of God, something other than what is true.

So as mind tries to believe you are something you're not, it forms a "sense of self" as though "you are" things opposite to God. And that sense of self we might call ego.

It's a misplaced artificial false sense of self, a collection of parts and pieces, a disjointed incomplete and unstable attempt to be one with a wide range of unreal stuff.

You can identify with thoughts, emotion, mind, body, the world, objects, relationships, other people, events, roles you play, victimhood, war, etc. Anything at all so long as it's not what you really are.

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. 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."

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently. It is the distorted product of the misapplication of the laws of God by distorted minds which are misusing their own power."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son."

"Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. "

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be. "

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"Attack is thus the way in which your identification is lost, because, when you attack, you MUST have forgotten what you are."

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."

When I read in the course that anger is an attempt to make someone guilty, I didn't at first relate to it. I had to stop and look at what happens, what I'm doing, when I get angry toward someone.

And that didn't typically happen all that often, but when it did I noticed it was true, what I was basically doing was trying to reinforce "how guilty" someone was. I was trying to MAKE them be guilty.

In anger there's this attempt to amplify the "guiltiness" of someone. And it's not even really tied to what they appeared to do or the severity of it. We could just be going to town raging at them way beyond what anything calls for. Probably convinced that whatever "sin" they committed is the REASON WHY the anger is justified.

But then the second insight is that in order to make someone BECOME guilty, we actually have to put guilt ONTO them. A guilt that they do not have initially. Where does that guilt come from? We actually provide it ourselves, and hurl it towards them through projection.

So then we see that anger is really "what it feels like" when you are hurling guilt. The whole intensity of it, the enforcement of it, the sense of righteousness, the pushing and forcing, it's all designed to "hurl" and "transmit" guilt onto the person.

But then this also gives rise to a third insight, that if we are hurling guilt at people, and it's not their guilt, then we must be reaching inside of ourselves and finding some guilt there, in order to have something to hurl. So that means... drumroll... we're really the ones that we think are guilty.

In addition this means that the "reasons why" we claim we're being justified in anger are false - it's not because of what someone else did, we're angry because of what we believe WE did. We are accusing them of our own sin and guilt, so that we can try to make ourselves feel better and deflect attention away from the darkness within. This is why anger is never justified and you are never upset for the reason you think.

So if we're the guilty ones, it basically means we're angry at ourselves and have attacked ourselves first. And if we hadn't done this, if we hadn't manufactured a whole stockpile of guilt, we'd have nothing to hurl at other people. We wouldn't be able to FIND other people to be guilty of anything.

This then leads to the fourth insight, that if we were to undo all of our guilt within ourselves, we would never have to even lift a finger to try to find others innocent. We'd automatically be innocent within, and would look out from this innocence upon others and find them innocent also. We'd never be angry, never project blame, and would just be happy all the time.

"I am never upset for the reason I think." UrW5

"ALL anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the ego has, and, as long as you identify WITH it, guilt will remain ATTRACTIVE to you." UrT15H10

"Anger is NEVER justified. Attack has NO foundation. It is here escape from fear begins, and will be made complete. Here is the real world given in exchange for dreams of terror. For it is on this forgiveness rests, AND IS BUT NATURAL." URT10G1

Forgiveness is nothing more than seeing correctly.

It means recognizing that illusions ARE illusions, and not falling for them.

It means overlooking illusions and seeing past them, rather that taking them at their appearance and thinking they are real.

This extends all the way to the illusion of death, which is where the Son of God in all HIs divine freedom and power creates the ILLUSION that He has absolutely no freedom or choice left, or that things can happen to Him against His will.

This is of course impossible, so it is an illusion, bit it APPEARS on the surface to be an unwanted death, happening to someone who didn't seem to ask for it. But the Son of God is faking it.

If and when you can recognize and see that this is in fact an illusion of death, not a real death, then you are now over-looking and not falling for the trick. Believing it's real is a complete mistake.

You will only believe illusions are real when you forget to forgive, which puts you into so-called "judgement", which is really to do with attacking appearances and making them out to be the truth.

Illusions are not the truth. Death is not truth. But as soon as you are convinced that it's real you've become blinded, you've been tempted and you've succumbed to the deception. You didn't notice that it was the Son of God, infinite and immoral, who was pretending He can die.

And so because you didn't look past the ILLUSION of death, to see its Author, which would reveal to you plain as day - this is absolutely pretend - so you enter into the illusion yourself and go unconscious.

All you need realize then is that all you need to do to 'wake up' is to see correctly, ie have your perception corrected, so that you are not falling into the lie, are not believing the trap, and didn't go along with the story. It means fixing your vision on the truth, on what is really going on here, not buying into any form of victimhood or suffering or accidental events, and staying very certain that the immortal Son of God cannot be harmed. Death cannot be real. And nothing is really happening.

To overcome an illusion, ie "forgive", you must learn to see past the deception that you've fallen for, remember the truth, and stop taking it seriously. It's like some old trick that someone keeps playing on you and finally you figure out that someone is behind it and it's not just some random bizarre thing going on, his cover is blown and the illusion is broken, and now you can no longer fall for it. That's all it is, just learning to recognize and see the truth and stop being deceived by appearances.

All false appearances are your interpretation of the 'illusion of separation' as though it is not an illusion. Behind this misinterpretation there is still an illusion being created by the Son of God, but it has no power to convince you it's real unless you choose to play along with it. Then it's just something you can't believe anymore and you know is false. As such you escape death, because death is just part of believing that illusions are the truth.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, 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."

God has unlimited presence and enjoys complete freedom.

God is creative.

God creates in his own likeness.

Therefore God creates things like himself, which are also free. If God has a son, His son MUST have permanent freedom. This "freedom to be free" is a "natural division". It is not separation.

In order for God to give his creative ability to His creation, which he shares with His creation fully, he HAS to give His creation freedom.

That freedom automatically means, his creation is FREE to will on its own.

That freedom also automatically means, the creation’s freedom is never REVOKED by God, nor is it possible for that freedom to be lost. God guarantees it because God’s creative expression which creates the son is CONTINUOUS and permanent.

Therefore the creation (son) has permanent freedom.

This makes it impossible for the son to "become God".

If the Son were to become God in the literal sense of "oneness" as it’s usually understood, it would ALSO mean the son can ACTUALLY develop the authority problem in reality. That he can replace God with HIMSELF.

This is never possible because God has permanence and permanent freedom, and so does the son.

The son’s permanent freedom, free will, will never be undone by God. It makes it impossible for the son to become "uncreated". For him to be literally "one" with God, as in, there is only God, would UNCREATE Him. This is impossible.

The son(s) of God we’re FREELY GIVEN. And freedom was given TO them. And they are free. In this sense only, they are "free of God", so to speak. But in their freedom and joy, they subsequently SHARE everything they are, lovingly, with God.

Oneness then does not mean one big mushy blob of a single identity and no parts. A Course in Miracles is not non-duality or pure non-duality. God DID CREATE many sons each with free will. His freedom is his Gift, from God, and to his own creations.

There is nothing unnatural about many "free" beings being free together, but sharing a love so deep and full that it seems almost as if they are "one". Sharing can be extremely maximal, to the point where only the "free will" itself seems to stand between them. The soul. And souls are permanent.

The son only figuratively disappears into the father because he cannot stop being free. Yet the unity between Father and Son is so great, essentially nothing can come between them other than the honoring of that freedom. Freedom does not mean separation. Especially given the Son lovingly wills to share his love and joy as fully as possible with the father and with all other creations.

The people who are touting "oneness" and non-duality as the core truth of ACIM, are not acknowledging that God - the infinite - has FREEDOM. And because it is infinite, there are no limits, meaning it is natural for infinity to "expand" permanently and unlimitedly, which is "Creation". And infinity must also mean sharing beacuse sharing means unlimited giving and unlimited receiving. And therefore God is both creative and free and creates freedom.

When something dies, it fails. The body fails. Organs fails. Tissues fail. It depicts failure on a physical level. The final failure of the body is what we call death. It is when everything fails. Total failure is death.

Which means that if you go toward death of the body, you are going towards failure. Which means you are failing to accomplish something. And accomplishing death is really an act of doing nothing whatsoever. Which means there is something to SUCCEED at, which is NOT death, which you are supposed to be succeeding at.

So to die is to fail at the thing you are supposed to succeed at. And the thing you are supposed to succeed at is the surmounting of death, the overcoming of death, the total cancellation of death, and the demonstration of eternal life symbolically through the body.

ACIM does not end in death, it ends only in resurrection. In the resurrection our curriculum ends. Nowhere else does it end. It does not end in failure. Therefore it does not end when you attain death. Attaining death is achieving nothing worth anything. Only by achieving LIFE are you a living example of the resurrection and the life.

"Swear not to die you holy son of God. You've made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"A dream of death cannot be left by death but by truth."

"What is the resurrection?":

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being THE ASSERTION OF LIFE. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. **LIFE** IS NOW RECOGNIZED AS SALVATION, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"Here the curriculum ends. From here on, no directions are needed. Vision is wholly corrected and all mistakes undone. Attack is meaningless and peace has come. The goal of the curriculum has been achieved. Thoughts turn to Heaven and away from hell. All longings are satisfied, for what remains unanswered or incomplete? The last illusion spreads across the world, forgiving all things and replacing all attack. The whole reversal is accomplished. Nothing is left to contradict the Word of God. There is no opposition to the truth. And now the truth can come at last."

In the assertion of LIFE, all death is snuffed out. The attraction to death is ended. The desire for death is cancelled. The end of death has arrived, and it is blotted out by a decision to LIVE. The will to live represents the willingness to regain the total freedom of the will, which means the complete embracing of eternal life in God. Only through LIFE can this course be completed. Death is never an accomplishment of anything useful. Only through a realignment with your IMMORTALITY can to finally return home to the LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT, where everything lives forever. Heaven's doorway is made of life, and you must be alive to enter.

"Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."

This statement suggests that in fact someone named "Adam", in heaven, was the first to come up with the tiny mad idea. Notice that it says that ADAMS SIN could have touched NONE of you, ie no other brother besides this one individual. And that this one individual seemed to be the first who left paradise. And it was only our own belief in the same idea that made us join him. So we can seemingly attribute the invention of the tiny mad idea to Adam, just as is similarly written in the bible in relation to Adam eating of the tree of the knowledge of life and death etc. Adam was the first to enter the "original sin".

Even though the bible's account of this story may be slightly too literal and augmented, nevertheless ACIM does seem to indicate there was a "garden of eden" (heaven), there was a kind of misuse of knowledge leading to the realm of fragmentation and hierarchies of illusion (tree with branches and leaves), the symbol of eating of its fruit (temptation to believe the mad idea), temptation by the serpent/devil (ego belief etc), expulsion from heaven (the son left God and blamed it on God abandoning him even though he did it to himself), the "fall of man" (the separation) etc. It's all there in the course. It was just somewhat mis-described in the bible, but based on the same facts.

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one. "

"This section is inserted here because it deals with a more fundamental misuse of knowledge, referred to in the Bible as the cause of the Fall (or Separation)."

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer.""Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them. "

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception. "

In A Course in Miracles there are hundreds of references to FREEDOM scattered throughout. Freedom is also contrasted against its opposite, which is imprisonment, enslavement, being bound to the ego, to the body, to darkness, suffering and death. The whole course is geared towards you reclaiming your freedom, and giving freedom to others. Through your miracles you are setting others free, and releasing them from the chains of imprisonment you held them in before.

"I am not a body I am free."

"Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear."

"I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want."

"It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom."

"I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.

I know that you will be released, UNLESS I WANT TO

USE YOU TO IMPRISON MYSELF."

"But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE."

"For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it." "When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."

"They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus."

The idea of freedom really goes back to your creation as a free-willed being by God. God has absolute freedom, being free from all limitation. God is unlimited. He who is unlimited can only give complete freedom, because he knows not of imprisonment. God does not create by imprisoning, he creates by giving freedom. All his children are not only free, they are fully free. It is because they are completely free ... in a sense, free from God .... though still sharing freely with him, that they are established as truly cooperative co-creators in heaven.

"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."

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His."

Any attempt you make to imprison another, to attack, to judge, to condemn, to blame, to project, to hurt, to destroy, to make guilty, to accuse of sin, to be victimized by, to victimize, to narrow to a body, to induce suffering of any kind, is actually an attempt to take away the freedom of others, AND to deny your own freedom. You cannot be a victim or suffer in ANY way if you acknowledge your total freedom. But in order to gain your own freedom, you MUST acknowledge that everyone else is also free from YOU, and you from them. You are not bound BY your brothers, any more than they are bound by you.

Dwell for a moment on the feeling of "keeping to yourself", in the sense that you ALLOW everyone to be free FROM YOU. Acknowledge that everyone is completely free. You are free from their tyranny over you. They are free from your tyranny over them. Let go of all manipulation, expectation, wanting others to be a certain way, or resisting their choices. Withdraw all your efforts to control and coerce, to blame and accuse. Let go of everyone. Let the whole world be itself. Settle back into your own inner freedom. You are free from enemies, free from attack, free from the choices of others, free from the body, and free from the world.

The course is in fact leading entirely to your TOTAL FREEDOM. Claiming your freedom is the restoration of your birth right. You cannot however claim your total freedom if you are imprisoning others, because the attempt to do so is an attempt to reinforce the idea that freedom doesn't exist. And thus you imprison yourself. It is said that your brother can set you free, or is the key to your salvation. By GIVING him total freedom, you give it to yourself. By recognizing he IS FREE, you recognize YOU are free. Try it.

Atonement is all about claiming freedom for yourself and the whole sonship. It is an act of setting everyone free from imprisonment. It releases you and everyone from slavery, bondage, body identification, death identification, and from all forms of suffering. You cannot BE affected by forces outside of you. The world cannot make you imprisoned or take your freedom away. No-one can deny your freedom for you. Not even God can decide whether you are free or not. He established you as free forever, and only you can deny your OWN freedom by denying it to the whole sonship.

When you acknowledge that you are COMPLETELY FREE FROM EVERYTHING, you settle back into your soul, you lift your hands away from the territory and lives of others and you set everyone free. In so doing you BECOME free yourself. You can feel it inside you, an acknowledgement of your own freedom, and it makes you feel happy and safe. You are safe from all attack because you are claiming your freedom. You are even save from suffering and death and from all the forces in the world. Nothing can imprison you or act against your will, but your will itself. When you stop imprisoning, you stop imprisoning yourself.

Below is an extensive collection of quotes from ACIM on the topic of freedom.

"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free."

"And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will."

"No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found."

"But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"Only in dreams is there a time when he appears to be in prison, and awaits a future freedom if it be at all. Yet in reality his dreams are gone, with truth established in their place. And now is freedom his already. Should I wait in chains which have been severed for release, when God is offering me freedom now?"

"I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to look to find it. Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me. Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."

"How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in God alone."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."

"We sound the call of freedom 'round the world with this idea."

"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom."

"In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well. Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body."

"For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."

"Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance."

"For as we offer freedom it is given us. And we would not remain as prisoners, while You hold out our freedom unto us."

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back."

"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom"

"That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom"

"The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God."

"Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy."

"Father, I thank You for today, and for the freedom I am certain it will bring. This day is holy, for today Your Son will be redeemed. His suffering is done."

"Thanks for today, my Father. I was born into this world but to achieve this day, and what it holds in joy and freedom for Your holy Son, and for the world he made, which is released along with him today."

"Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world."

"Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any laws idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God. He is not bound except by his beliefs. Yet what he is is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom."

"But those who are FOR freedom, even if they are misguided in HOW they defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which IS true."

"And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own."

"Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God."

"Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS."

"And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"Forgiveness, truly given, is the only way in which your hope of freedom lies."

"Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom."

"The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace."

"For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand."

"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true."

"In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him."

"This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is."

"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father."

"Only the function God has given me

can offer freedom. Only this I seek,

and only this will I accept as mine."

"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice."

"It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me."

"Can I lay limits on the Son of God, whose Father willed that he be limitless, and like Himself in freedom and in love?"

"So will YOU learn the freedom that I taught, by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you RAISE to freedom, and bar my way to YOU."

"So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own."

"Today's idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom."

"And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them."

"All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom FOR you."

"Accept this key to freedom, from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, YOU do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness."

"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."

"His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER."

"You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it."

"Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom, for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's attraction."

"How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value MORE than this? For here is YOUR salvation and YOUR freedom. And it MUST be complete, if YOU would recognize it."

"But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me."

"The mind that is made willing to accept God's gifts has been restored to Spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own."

"Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave."

"Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge."

"Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you."

"Thus do we lift the chains which bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals."

"Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.

"He would only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom."

"The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered you through the grace of God."

"It contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve."

"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."

"LOVE IS FREEDOM. To look for it by placing yourself in BONDAGE, is to SEPARATE yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you BE released."

"The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the REAL lure in the special relationship. You do NOT recognize that this IS its REAL appeal, for the ego has taught you that FREEDOM lies in it."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

Let me accept the strength God offers me

And see no value in this world, that I

May find my freedom and deliverance."

"It is impossible to see two worlds.

I seek my freedom and deliverance,

And this is not a part of what I want."

"And think how holy HE must be, when in him sleeps your OWN salvation, with HIS freedom joined."

"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home."

"It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for BY his freedom will you gain your own."

"He HAS no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him."

"But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom."

"The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."

"In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom."

"Practice GIVING this blessed instant of freedom to all who are ENSLAVED by time, and thus make time their friend FOR them."

"Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."

"Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God." "Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now. Deny him not. His Father's Love for him belongs to you."

"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."

"It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved."

"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace."

"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real."

"But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself."

"The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."

"For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form?"

"You have denied HIS freedom, and by so doing, you have denied the witness unto YOURS. You could as easily have FREED him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him TO it. And in HIS freedom would have been your OWN."

"Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation."

"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU."

"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone."

"You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these."

"In the name of MY freedom, I WILL your release,

Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.

So will the year begin in joy and freedom."

"For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace."

"Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom."

"A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last." "Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world"

"Where COULD his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free ALREADY? And who could bind him but HIMSELF, if he DENY his freedom?"

"Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS."

"Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies."

"Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different."

"Today escape from madness. You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace."

"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse."

"Give joyously to one another the freedom and the strength to lead you there. And come before each other's holy altar, where the strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads you home."

"His is the Voice of God, and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth."

"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear."

"Whom you forgive is GIVEN power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto YOU."

"Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit, for BOTH of you. And be you free together, as you offer TO the Holy Spirit this SAME gift, and, giving it, receive it OF Him, in RETURN for what you gave."

"Offer each other freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."

"Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety."

"It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son."

"There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom."

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

"Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them."

"Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."

"And what they see upholds their freedom FROM imprisonment and death." "Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's Saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and RELEASE from suffering to everyone who NEEDS a miracle to save him."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." "We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own."

"Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace."

"Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it."

"We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom."

"What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your Savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours."

"Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are."

"It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you"

"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. 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."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom. "

"The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt."

"Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless."

"You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your Father loves you."

"The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood."

"I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world, for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom."

"He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you." "Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."

"Your special relationships will remain, NOT as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."

"The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it."

"For faith can keep the Son of God in chains, as long as he believes he IS in chains. And, when he is RELEASED from them, it will be simply because he no longer BELIEVES in them, WITHDRAWING faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom INSTEAD."

"Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it."

"He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his."

"My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way."

"Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire."

"Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the word "atone" really means "undo."

"In this phase of learning, working miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you."

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS."

"To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you HAVE accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you OFFER the gift of freedom from the past, which you have RECEIVED." "Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here."

"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."

"Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds."

"For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was NEVER absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice."

"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."

"And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him."

"The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES."

"You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear."

"Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by HIS Being."

"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."

"Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free."

"Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower."

"In the service of the "Right Mind", the denial of ERROR frees the mind and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY free, it CANNOT miscreate, because it recognizes ONLY TRUTH.

If you were completely certain and confident in who you are, you would have a sense of invulnerability.

If someone were to come along and say something potentially hurtful, you, in your complete certainty and confidence, would be clear enough on where you stand with yourself to know that it is not true of you. You would in fact be unmoved, unchanged, unaffected, and you would maintain a sense of inner peace. In fact you would probably laugh at how ridiculous the claim was.

If this is truth, then what is it that really is happening when someone seems to 'hurt' our feelings? How can we actually become hurt, if we are in a place of invulnerability? To become hurt, some part of us has to take seriously what the person said, has to believe that in some way there is some truth to it. We then recoil in horror and shock as if hurt 'by' the person.

But what we are really hurt by is our own wavering on what the truth is about ourselves. If we did not have any uncertainty about our own self, we would not experience their words as hurtful. Instead we'd discern that that person actually has something going on with themselves, they don't believe in themselves or they think poorly of themselves, and they're trying to project it onto you.

So this is what it boils down to, and this is going to be a major stretch for many people to accept.... You cannot be hurt unless you are in agreement with the other person. You also cannot be hurt unless you believe there is some truth to what they say, even if you do not like what they say. You also cannot be hurt unless you believe that their hurtful words actually have some grounds, or footing, or 'power', and the only way they can do that is if you are upset by the prospect that they're actually telling the truth.

What we do not want to admit, and what is very difficult to overcome (but not impossible), is that we ourselves are our own attacker, and we ourselves fail to be true enough to ourselves, and we ourselves abandoned ourselves to lies about ourselves, beliefs in unworthiness, beliefs in lack and so on, which are an attack on our own selves by our own selves. And we like to bury these beliefs underneath a facade. And then when someone comes along and seems to provoke us with their words, what happens?

Well what really happens, if we're honest, is that something rises up inside of ourselves that feels like hurt and pain, and it just so happens that it seem like this arising of pain happened right after the person said something. And so we come to conclude, that this means, they are the one who put the hurt into us. But this is not true. If we're really honest, this is not what happens. Instead, what happens is, our own pain, our own self-attack, our own lack of certainty about what is true about ourselves, comes up within, triggered off by the person's actions. It's our own hurt that we feel. And, hard as this is to admit, it is our own self-attack which underlies our feeling of being hurt.

What this means is, that we can only actually be upset by someone's 'attack' IF we agree, on some level, deep down, that there is some amount of truth in what the person said. And that means, that in some way, we must have come to believe something negative about our own self, entirely on our own, completely separate from that person. And as horrifying as this seems to be, it's actually true that we're upset and 'hurt by' someone because, deep down, we agree with what they said about us. That's extremely hard to admit to. It takes tremendous honesty to look at this and to admit to it.

But the truth is, if we were not so readily quick to abandon ourselves, if we were not so down on ourselves already, if we were not so upset about who we think we are, if we did not believe things about ourselves which are false which are hurtful, we would actually live in a state of *invulnerability*, happiness, peace and certainty. We would live in a state of not being deceived when someone says something upsetting. We would live in a state of discernment about what the real truth is about ourselves, so certain of it that we wouldn't be even slightly moved to upset when someone says something negative about us. We would instead clearly discern that this is simply not true - without any upset about that fact - and that instead it is the other person who is hurting and who needs love and healing. They are acting out of their own hurt and are actually asking us to heal and love them.

Now, this is quite an advanced position to hold, and I'm not saying it's easy. It's not common at all. Very few people reach such a state of psychological strength, certainty, and knowing as to what the real truth is about their, their ultimate worth, their livability etc. Most of us are riddled with dark, negative beliefs about ourselves, which thoroughly undermine our own feeling about ourselves. When people come along and provoke or attack us, what's really happening is we're being RE-minded of what we already think of ourselves. And that's why we're upset. We're upset because we think it's true. We're upset that the person pointed it out, as if they are rubbing it in.

If we are honest, and if we are responsible, and if we are mature, then we will have to admit that it does not help to blame the other person or to believe that they have the power to hurt us. Nobody has the power to hurt you. You actually can become completely invulnerable, and this is how you should be in your natural state. When you are not in a state of invulnerability, something has gone wrong with your own attitude about yourself. You've become your own worst enemy. And if someone comes along and points that out, you're much more likely now to claim that your hurt is their fault. It's not. Your hurt is YOUR fault. It's what you've done to yourself.

Now I do recognize this is going to maybe push some buttons in people, which actually completely demonstrates my point, but it's not at all my intention to upset or hurt anyone with this information. If you are ready to listen and if this is helpful to you, I'm glad, but if you feel upset by the mere suggestion that your pain has been caused by yourself and not other people - you might for example be the victim of serious abuse or trauma - then please disregard and move on. It's not my intention to upset anyone but I know in this sensitive group this is probably going to happen. So I apologize in advance.

But for anyone else, if you will let yourself feel into this and be open minded and willing to be very honest, I think this will ring true and you'll realize that this ultimately means, you cannot be victimized unless you condone and agree to and choose it yourself, and that then you actually are the one who does it to yourself. This is an advanced spiritual teaching and I hope some will be willing to listen to the possibility of this. It is all of our natural birthright to be completely invulnerable to all forms of suffering, to be incapable of being upset, and to experience complete and permanent peace at all times as a result.

I am not yet honestly able to practice this myself 100% of the time, or even most of the time, but I am working on it and it's my goal, to become completely invulnerable. If I am completely honest, this is what is assured for me, and for anyone willing to take full and total responsibility for what they are experiencing.

All it does when we blame other people for hurting us is it gives our power away. We need to take that power back and be more empowered by the truth about us, rather than disempowered by lies. But we can't do that while we think other people are the cause of our upset. We have the power to hurt ourselves, and nobody else does. And that also means we have the power to decide not to hurt ourselves, and to live in perfect invulnerability at all times.

Peace.

The physical world of bodies and planet Earth, was made by projecting the idea of sin and separation and death out of the egoic mindset of being separate from God. All objects are part of a system (world) of conflict and separateness, symbolising the denial of God.

Everything that can and does transpire in this world of separateness, symbolises sin. It was made by projecting the idea of sin out of the egoic thought system in the mind. And so everything about it represents an attack on God's nature, to oppose it and deny it.

"The world you made (spacetime, physicality) 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." UrT11D10

"He (God) 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. UrW131L7

"For this world (spacetime, physicality) IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3

We went into a thought system of ego, of separation and death. And from this thought system we made what we call the universe - spacetime and all things physical. These were made as symbols of the death of God, the crucifixion of his son, and the total opposition to heaven's laws.

"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." UrW230W32

"This world IS a picture 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." UrT11J4

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all?" UrW250W41

"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. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on." UrT20G11

So what we have now in front of our faces, is a backwards world, an impossible world, a world which is like a physical representation of the idea of sin and separation. Everything in it is separate. Matter itself is selfishness. Every body is cut off and cannot join with anyone or anything. All particles are isolated and alone.

In this world on the PHYSICAL level, every single thing that takes place does so in a system 100% dedicated to ego ideals of separation, attack, suffering, murder and death. Effectively it is like a physicalised version of false perception.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error" UrW240W31

There is nothing that can happen which does not in some way symbolise egotism. If you eat food you are depriving someone else. If you breathe in you are killing microbes. Your body's immune system murders viruses and bacterias. Trees compete with each other for resources. Beasts tear each other apart. Walls imprison. Disease and sickness ravage everything. The entire system destroys itself in entropy and decay and ends in death.

Just as there are no roadways in the world which lead to eternal life, physically, there are also no movements of objects, arrangements of objects, activities of objects, which can escape the idea of sin. To have a body is to testify to sin.

"And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." UrM28A3

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. " UrT10H4

This essentially means that in PHYSICAL terms, there is NOTHING you can do that doesn't in some way, at the physical level, symbolise ego, attack, murder and death. Whether it be the way that objects collide and are incompatible, or the obvious fact of lack and scarcity, or the way one object affects another. All of the so-called "laws of physics" are laws of punishment and death.

So the essential fact becomes, you cannot PHYSICALLY escape from sin. There is sin in every game you play, every competition, every conversation, every show you watch, every thing you eat, every breath, every movement of your body. Because it's all part of the system of sin moving around, shifting and changing in an unnatural way, against the nature of God.

You could then say that everything you do here is a sin. However, that would be a judgement. And we need to now separate out what is PHYSICAL, and what is PSYCHOLOGICAL. Because the mind's attitude about, or use of, the world, is key to whether or not you see the world AS real sin, or AS forgiven. And let's remember that forgiveness is for looking AT A SIN-BASED world in a forgiving way, it is NOT directed at reality.

The world can't help but physically function on rules of separation. That's what it was made from, and initially made for. But you can change how you look at it.

If you look at the backwards world from a backward thought system of egotism, you will agree with the physical world as truth, and will regard it as "actually sinful". Everything that occurs will seem to be proof of this. Every death, every attack, every deprivation, all proving as soon as you open your eyes again that this is a world of destruction and not creation.

If you look at the same world in a forwards mindset, a thought system of the Holy Spirit, which IS TOTALLY OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY to the way that the world physically functions, then the strange twisted functioning of the world is not seen as "a real sin." Instead it is FORGIVEN.

"Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it." UrT25D5

Forgiveness here does not mean that you are seeing something that is fundamentally true and real in a correct way. It means that you are OVERLOOKING the ways that IS NOT fundamentally true and correct. You are flying against the grain and taking a direction totally opposite to what the world suggests.

Real forgiveness recognises that the world is utterly backwards, utterly insane, physically symbolic of murder, is absolutely unlike the nature of God, and is not reality. It meets insanity with sanity, unreality with truth, and darkness with light.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. 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. And of these two but one is real." UrM9A6

The forgiving mind, receives messages VIA THE BODY, via the physical sight and senses, FROM the "outside world" - the physical planet of bodies, spacetime and Earth, and correctly classifies ALL of what it is being shown as UNREAL.

The healed mind can USE the body to SEE the physical realm, but recognises that nothing at the physical level is true. All of its nature is backwards. All of its objects are forms of separation. All of its dynamics and physics are rooted in separateness and attack and death. All of its laws are laws of punishment and scarcity. And the healed mind does not BELIEVE what it sees there.

We then need to adopt a quite strange position, while we're still in this world. It's a position in which the world's physical nature, the things you can physically do, no matter what it is, continue to run TOTALLY OPPOSITE to reality, to the Kingdom of God, to heaven's nature, and to sanity. Everything that can happen physically by physical laws is absolutely false, unreal, untrue and insane.

But at the same time, we're looking upon this stuff with forgiveness. Which means that we don't regard the physical stuff as ACTUALLY anything. Because it is nothing. We don't say, okay this person committed an ACTUAL REAL SIN by murdering someone - it took place in a dream that isn't real, and nothing real has been threatened. There is an appearance of a sin happening but it is just a mistake. It is an illusion of sin.

We lift away from the world the condemnation and attack, the egoic attitudes, the egoic uses of the world, and replace it with a more loving purpose. This doesn't IN ANY WAY result in the absolute reversal of all physical laws, it doesn't stop goats falling off clifftops, it doesn't prevent car crashes or undo all sickness - except perhaps in times of miracles. But it does INTERPRET the utter backwardness and strangeness of the world from a much lighter, higher, less serious mindset of laughter and disbelief.

Essentially this means you have to learn to laugh at death and destruction. You have to adopt a mindset which flies entirely against the whole nature of the world, the typical direction of society, and every value the world holds. You have to be in the world but not of it.

Whatever happens physically IS A PHYSICAL-LIE ..... an idea of sin and death PHYSICAL-LIEZED. It CAN only function one way. It cannot be redeemed without the absolute CANCELLATION of the entire system, at the physical level. But you CAN change how you look at it, relate to it, and regard it, within your mind, psychologically. You can be internally aligned with God, while being completely out of sync with the external physical uni-perverse.

What this does mean though is that on the PHYSICAL level, everything your body seems to DO, will STILL seem to symbolise sin and death, no matter what you choose. It will still be a separate body, testifying to the presence of prisons separating sons of God. You won't be able to DO anything physical that isn't still symbolically a form of the idea of sin. But on the MIND level you can be in a state of innocence and harmlessness and unity. This is also because mind/spirit and body are always total opposites.

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real." UrW96L4

Life can become quite weird then. Because your physical body is still going to operate within a system of separation, limitation, conflict, war, lack, danger and so on, but at the same time your USE OF it mentally must become totally opposite. So for a time, it may seem like a "happy fiction", or "laughing at death", or "not taking bodies seriously", or "dis-identifying from form", or "not believing the unbelievable".

At the end of the day, when we have remembered to laugh at the ridiculousness of space and time, of Earth and bodies and human life, we will have no further use for it. And without a re-purposed purpose, the world will disappear without a trace.

"It cannot be too strongly emphasized that this course aims at a complete reversal of thought." UrM25A4

"A miracle is a reversal of the physical order" UrT1B10

"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world." UrT24G5

"The holy relationship is a phenomenal teaching accomplishment. In all its aspects, as it begins, develops, and becomes accomplished, it represents the REVERSAL of the unholy relationship." UrT17F2

"One sin perfectly forgiven by one teacher of God can make salvation complete. Can you understand this? No; it is meaningless to anyone here. Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." UrM15A3 "The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." UrM29A2

"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. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION." URT16F3

"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 which 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." UrW240W31

We need to learn to stop treating fear like it's just some kind of natural phenomenon, or a normal response, or some aspect of a biological flight-or-fight mechanism, or something that protects us from danger, or any of the other bullshit explanations for fear.

We actually need to question what fear is doing and why it is doing it, and where it's really coming from. It's all too easy to simply "be afraid", to experience the fear, without any kind of questioning of whether the fear is natural or needed or well founded.

Fear is the opposite of love. You can't be loving when you're afraid. Which would you rather be, loving or afraid? Which one is a more truth-filled experience?

It's one thing to become afraid and to think, well, I'm afraid "because of" a big long random list of outside influences that you think cause the fear. And to then be locked inside that perception with no apparent way out of it, since you believe that you are not the one who is choosing the fear at all.

But we can't do that. We have to bring fear into question, because fear is actually untruth. It is always a lie. There is never any good reason to be afraid. Fear is never justified. And fear is always a deceptive ego mechanism for making your situation worse.

We have to look at our "fearing" and take some responsibility for generating this condition. We have to be willing to admit that we are the ones who have actually created fear. We keep making it. We keep putting it in our experience. We keep choosing it. And we keep using it ON PURPOSE to play the part of victim so that we can get some side-benefits.

Fear allows us to disown responsibility. It allows us to seemingly shield ourselves from guilt. It lets us pretend that someone else is at fault. It allows us to label others as enemies and project guilt onto them. It lets us hide from God. It lets us have a separate identity that God did not create. And it allows us to pursue our 'dream' of being an individual. These are quite significant reasons for fear that we need to look at and own up to if we're to live a life without fear.

Is it possible to live with no fear? To be 100% fearless? Not like, some idiot that is over-confident and reckless and putting on a show of bravado while being secretly insecure... but the complete absence of all fear, and therefore, only the presence of unconditional love at all times? A love that is so certain and so secure that within it there can be no reason for fear? And no desire to choose it. Of course it is possible, as Jesus has demonstrated.

So don't think fear is just some natural biological or human thing. It's not. It's a state of mental illness. It is insanity. And it is a game that we keep playing with ourselves to pretend we're not who we are. There are some very sneaky reasons for having fear, and none of them are honest or truthful.

So when Jesus says "be not afraid", he isn't just saying, don't freak out when I appear out of nowhere, He's saying, stop choosing fear and recognize that love is the only reality. He's not telling us to be brave in the face of danger, he's telling us there IS no danger. And that any efforts we're making to go into fear without questioning it, are really a deception on our part. We don' need to be afraid because only love is real.

The world's idea of the most ideal relationship is where you find the chosen one and give them all your love. But you don't give that same love to anyone else. The chosen one gets exclusive access, special rights, permissions and trust. But this exclusivity means that the love is conditional, and is switched off around other people. The two of you will likely side with each other against everyone else.

While the ego and the body and the world might suggest that this is the only natural way to relate, as if everyone is supposed to be paired up with one person, it is actually highly unnatural. If you follow this kind of relationship dynamic to its extreme conclusion, it would mean that the person you love is the person you most imprison, and you live in a prison with them in order to keep everyone else away from you. They become a safe haven in the storm, and everyone else is left outside.

Unconditional love is a kind of love that doesn't change based on who you are with or where you are or what you're doing. It gives all of the love to all of the people all of the time. It doesn't pick favourites, nor does it hold back the love only to give it to those who have met your standards, or you like them, or they have something in common, or they aren't seemingly against you. Love just loves always in one single response to everything. This is total holy relationship, which is inclusive not exclusive.

Trying to love only one person or only a small group of people is quite a confined and ego-driven form of love. It's an attempt to narrow love down and only hand it out to the most special winners of the human contest. And if you can only trust that one person you will have mistrust of just about everyone. What would Jesus do? Would Jesus hold off on loving someone because they aren't apparently his closet companion?

Special love is imprisoned love, conditional love, and limited love. Special love is actually an attempt to cover up all the special hate you have for everyone by selecting the most ideal and agreeable person that you seem have the least hate for.

"The special love relationship is an attempt to limit the destructive EFFECTS of hate, by finding a haven in the storm of guilt."

"The special love relationship is NOT perceived as of value IN ITSELF, but as a place of safety, from which hatred is split off, and KEPT APART. The special love partner is acceptable ONLY as long as he serves this purpose."

"the special love relationship is an attempt TO BRING LOVE INTO SEPARATION."

"The special love relationship is the ego's chief weapon for keeping you from Heaven."

"To believe that SPECIAL relationships, with SPECIAL love, can offer you salvation, IS the belief that separation is salvation."

"Beyond the poor attraction of the special love relationship, and ALWAYS obscured by it, is the powerful attraction of the Father for His Son. There is no OTHER love that can satisfy you, because there IS no other love. This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED. Being complete, it asks nothing. Being wholly pure, everyone joined in it HAS everything. This is NOT the basis for ANY love relationship in which the ego enters. For EVERY relationship on which the ego embarks IS special. The ego establishes relationships ONLY to GET something. And it would keep the giver BOUND TO ITSELF, through guilt."

I am guilty, I will only be able to see guilt in other people. I will not be able to tell if they are *really* guilty because I am seeing through a filter of guilt, like a stained glass window, which only lets in certain colors of light.

If I take the filter off my mind and stop being guilty myself, recognizing my innocence, I will ONLY be able to see innocence everywhere. I won't be able to see guilt in anyone because I do not see guilt in myself.

God is innocent and God is in my mind and if God is in my mind then I will see God in everything - innocence in everything - because God is in my mind.

If God is not in my mind, because I'm shutting out the awareness of God with guilt, then I will see guilt everywhere because guilt is in my mind.

Therefore, your mind is not CAPABLE of separating itself from what it perceives. If the mind contains guilt you WILL see guilt, guaranteed, whether there is any out there or not. If the mind contains innocence, you will ONLY see innocence no matter what is out there or what other people are doing.

So you see, it's kind of like, never is it possible to take a 'peek' behind the curtain to figure out if someone else is actually guilty or not. You don't have a faculty that is capable of doing that.

You can't sort of put your own innocence on hold, retain it, and simultaneously look at someone else to see if there is guilt in them. You can't have both innocence and guilt in your awareness at the same time.

So there really is no way of knowing, if other people are innocent or guilty. There's absolutely no way to tell. You can only see what's inside you.

If you're guilty or you're having a shitty day, you will see shit in everyone. Everyone will be filled with turds. If you're having a good day, you will see goodness in everyone regardless of what they seem to be doing.

You do not have the ABILITY to separately perceive the true nature of another person, separate from your own nature. To believe that you have this ability is EGO.

The ego is all about separation, and therefore is all about something applying to one PART of existence that does not apply to another part. That is a complete illusion and a lie, because even while it is pretending that some rules can apply to one person and not another, the rules STILL apply equally to both. And this is why when you think you are hurting someone not yourself, you really are hurting yourself.

I cannot tell if anyone is guilty or not. All I can do is choose whether to believe in guilt or innocence. And whatever I believe in will apply to me, AND to everyone else. And I will SEE what I have believed in, in myself AND in everyone else.

So really I can't tell is so-and-so is guilty. The only thing I can do is choose innocence for myself and therefore recognize the innocence is equally in them, regardless. Or I can choose to join in guilt and be guilty along with them. And then I will believe and perceive that we're both guilty, even if they are not.

Either way, I have no way to discern the there is some kind of 'truth' that they are guilty. I cannot have that illusion of objectivity or detachment. I can deceive myself to think I can, but it doesn't really work.

As you do unto others you do unto yourself. They are you. If you treat them as innocent you are treating yourself as innocent. If you treat them as guilty you're treating you as guilty. There are no loopholes.

Recently I've seen how it is detrimental to spend a lot of time trying to diagnose problems or to even understand what is happening. But this was mainly in the realm of what's happening with other people. Now I've come up with a problem closer to home ... my thumb hurts.

So now this same lesson seems to be in my body. I noticed that I kept doing the same thing - trying to figure out why it hurts, what's wrong with it, what could've happened, etc. These are all ego reactions. And I even sort of thought to myself, it's probably not exactly helpful for me to have thoughts of "what's wrong with it" so often. I felt worried about it, afraid it might be arthritis or repetative strain or something. Surely those thoughts are attack thoughts.

It's a bit easier to detach from these reactions of ego trying to diagnose and figure out when it's about other people, but when it's in your own body and it Involves pain, it's harder.

Nevertheless. This is obviously a LESSON in which I am to learn NOT how to diagnose and figure out what is going on, but instead, to learn how to HEAL IT.

This is really a shift between responses. The response of the ego will always be to use my mind and intellect to try to understand, figure out, diagnose, assess, and explain, 'why' this is happening. Obviously that does absolutely nothing to heal it, and all it really does it assumes and accepts that 'it is really happening', which is the anti-atonement. Explaining why something has gone wrong does absolutely nothing to undo it.

The alternative response is that of God/Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit doesn't respond with diagnosis. He doesn't need to figure out what it is. He isn't deceived by illusions. He doesn't have to pick it apart and try to piece together a picture or history of what led up to this. He doesn't need to dig into thoughts to 'try' to discover, and possibly not discover, what the cause is. He already knows everything. He is already completely certain of the truth. And he has absolute ability to heal ANYTHING, right now, already, ready to go. And so His, and therefore my, response to this thumb, should be, to simply HEAL IT NOW with love, and to think only loving things about it.

Spirit is ready right now to heal. Spirit is completely certain and aware of the truth right now. Spirit already knows everything it needs to know about illusions to undo and correct them right now. And Spirit has complete willingness to heal it right now, without delay. God is permanently in a state of health and radiation of health so it is God's will that I be fully healthy. I command this thumb be healed right now in Jesus's name and all pain to leave and thumb be made completely whole right now. Holy Spirit I invite you into my thumb. Clear this mistake and undo all of the consequences of my wrong decision whatever that may be, correct my mind and remove these symptoms. NOW.

What I heard just now... Is "trust". Trusting Holy Spirit to heal and correct, rather than trusting the ego to explain and diagnose what it thinks is happening. So it's like, do I turn to the earth doctor who seems all educated and knowledgeable about specific things, or do I surrender and trust Holy Spirit to not only know how to heal it but to actually allow him TO heal it.

I trust you Holy Spirit. I open to receive your love and healing right now. Come.

If you're open-minded to the idea that heaven is a place you can go, which is not the Earth, the retelling of a profound near death experiences will be clarifying and validating for you.

After leaving the body, we travel to a kind of summer land, a beautiful "other side" dimension (which is not Earth), complete with beautiful landscapes and people etc ... likely what we might call the astral plane or "lower heaven". Then we move on to a direct encounter with God in his higher dimension of heaven.

For me this is roughly the "structure" that I believe "exists", ie Earth and spacetime are a much denser lower-order realm, above is the astral "spirit world" dimension where people typically hang out between lifetimes etc, and then beyond that is heaven proper where we are one with God.

A Course in Miracles does lend itself to these ideas because as it states in Song of Prayer:

"If there has been true healing, this can be the form in which death comes when it is time to rest a while from labor gladly done and gladly ended. Now we go in peace to freer air and gentler climate" This "gentler climate" is the astral spirit world - still a dream perhaps but a higher dream and more beautiful than this lower denser world we call Earth. I do SOMETIMES wonder if "the real world" spoken of in ACIM might be perhaps in some way a reference to that "summer land", another dimension beyond this one yet short of heaven.

One possible clue is when Jesus speaks of rivers which never waste away - which have been spoken of in various near-death experiences.

"when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and WATCHED them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need PERSUADE you to accept the gift of vision? And AFTER vision, who is there who COULD refuse what MUST come after?"

I guess we'll find out. For sure I am firm in the belief that this physical level of human bodies and bullshit is not and never could be God's Kingdom. Beyond this world there is at least another entire dimension, if not many. When you hear people speaking of actually experiencing it, we can no longer remain closed-minded or regard the spacetime of the "physical universe" to be real, or our true home in God. Ultimately, it is nothing.

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world (Earth/Spacetime) is NOT your home"

"The (physical) body can be made a home like this BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home (when you leave it behind) where God abides (in heaven)."

When I am reminded of things like this, which sometimes are thought to be outside of "acim teachings", but nevertheless hinted at by them, I feel more in touch with my own inner truth. I recall that there are indeed other dimensions, life beyond the physical, and a heaven that is not of this world.

"Your Kingdom is not of this world (Earth/Spacetime) because it was given you from BEYOND this world (Heaven)."

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world (Earth/Spacetime) does not exist because what they behold (Heaven) must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."

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.

Years ago I had no clue what "atonement" meant, other than being able to quote the Course as saying "nothing happened". This was more or less meaningless to me.

I went about my efforts at "forgiveness" and made some headway but it wasn't until recently that I started to realize just how important the Atonement is.

If you were to do nothing else other than to accept the Atonement, that would be all you need to do. It encapsulates all of forgiveness within it. It shares the same mind of Holy Spirit that forgiveness shares.

Previously I was not really "accepting" that nothing had happened. I tried to tell myself "this hasn't really happened", but it would seem fake and not believable. It didn't even seem especially important or powerful or capable of helping very much - just one more handy phrase to throw at the illusion of being attacked by the world to try to make it go away.

But the atonement IS the cure. It IS salvation. It IS the state of mind in which all has been forgiven and undone. It IS a reflection of your true nature and your innocence. In it ,your innocence is guaranteed and expressed. It is the light which shines away all darkness. It is the beacon of truth and the source of extending miracles as an expression of love.

I could not accept it before because I didn't really know what role it was supposed to play other than some intellectual fact about how none of this happened. I just couldn't accept that nothing had happened. Too much was tied up in illusions seeming to be real. I was too much in belief that I was dealing with a real world with real problems. Even after "doing a forgiveness" I would not be accepting the atonement, not really actually convinced of it or able to genuinely ACCEPT that it was true. And to experience it.

But we must get ourselves into the Atonement if we are to be free of the ego, free of illusions, and free of death. It's not an optional thing. It's MAJOR. It's the doorway home.

The secret to salvation, or the key to salvation, is said to be that "you are doing this to yourself". That concept is like a key that opens the door, because it reveals to you a way to access the Atonement. But it is itself not the Atonement. As an analogy, it is the key, which helps us to access the Atonement, but the Atonement itself is what lies on the other side of the door that the key opens.

Until we can get our mind to the place where we BELIEVE that fear is not real, guilt is not real, sin is not real, separation is not real, and REMEMBER that in God's view we are still completely innocent and MUST be forgiven and lovable/worthy of God, only then are we able to actually ACCEPT, and agree with, and align ourselves with, what the Atonement claims is true.

Only then can we even see, accept, or experience, that all the illusions we thought had really happened did not really happen (due to their unreality), and that therefore we ARE still as God created us. We have to take forgiveness all the way to this truth in order to complete the process and gain access TO a state of forgiveness, in which we and others are seen as FORGIVEN, having done nothing at all. Literally. That literally nothing happened in reality.

Then we will be WILLING to accept and receive God's love again, and share and extend it to others as miracles.

In order to be invulnerable and not a victim of the world I see, it is necessary to recognize that no-one ever does anything to me.

Part of this recognition must also entail recognizing that, therefore, I never do anything to anyone else.

Therefore if I want to experience life in which nothing happens to me against my will, I must also be willing to not attempt to force my will onto other people.

If I am trying to control or manipulate or stop or fix someone then I'm not allowing them total freedom. They must be acknowledged as being completely free to choose whatever they want, and that it is absolutely none of my business.

Only in granting such a full freedom to someone, can I also access the fact that, therefore, I too have the freedom to choose absolutely whatever I want, and that my own choice is absolutely none of anyone else's business.

Not being victimized by the world goes hand in hand with not being a victimizer of the world.

It is not possible to be a victim without being a victimizer.

It is not possible to be a victimizer without being a victim.

Any attempt I make to see someone else as a victim of myself, which means, I am not allowing them total free will, am not acknowledging their free will, and am trying to influence their free will, not only causes me to see them as a victim but also to see myself as one.

I will attempt to control their will in an attempt to manage my perception of being victimized by them, to try to "stop them" victimizing/causing me, even though this reaction is purely based on my own mis-perception that they are victimizing me (because I am victimizing myself) in the first place.

It is not possible to affect the free will of another without it affecting my own will. As I see them I will see myself. My attempt to victimize them will victimize myself. And I will have then done this to myself.

When I can accept the total freedom of another and let them have their total freedom and not try to control them at all, I will simultaneously stop trying to control myself. I will acknowledge my own freedom. I have a vested interest in allowing others to be as they choose, regardless of their choice, since it acknowledges my own freedom unconditionally.

This marks the end of victimization. It marks the end of being a victim.

A victim is someone who tries to control others.

A victimizer is someone who believes other control them.

They're both the same thing.

Victims and victimization is impossible when there is a complete recognition of the freedom of will that we all equally enjoy, our God given natural right to freely create and choose and extend. God gave free will to all his creations to necessarily endow them with the ability to create as freely as Himself. The ego is every attempt to deny this and oppose it.

All victimization and victimhood will end completely in this acceptance of the mutual freedom of all brothers including me and you. There can be no victims or victimizers when the free will of all concerned is fully recognized. The secret to salvation is that we are only doing this to ourselves. We are our own worst enemy, and our own savior.

I am not a victim of the world I see because I am not victimizing the world I see. I am not a victim of the world I see because I am not victimizing myself.

The world is difficult to deal with, because it is completely opposite to reality.

"And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

"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 was made that problems could not be escaped.""In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

It would be challenging enough if this world were just a LITTLE bit unlike reality. You could maybe deal with it better if it at least resembled it in some obvious way. But physical form was designed to COMPLETELY deceive you.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So instead what you are faced with, every day that you wake up, is a picture of a world which demonstrates utter impossibilities, complete violation of God's laws, constant threats to the existence of what was previously immortal, visual proof everywhere you look that death is real and attack is possible, and just a constant barrage of problems and things going wrong.

How anyone can deal with this on any level is incredible.

Fortunately sometimes "life" seems to throw you some bones and maybe there is a temporary reprieve in the suffering, or you can hole up in your house to create a false sense of security, or maybe just avoid all the bad stuff as much as possible. But this doesn't really make it go away or stop happening.

Then ACIM is saying to us, that not only is this entire world designed to represent an impossible, blasphemous opposite to God's nature, it is also your job to somehow laugh in the face of it. To overlook all its faults and inherent murderousness. To find a way to look at it such that, outright horrendous attack and evil are actually "not that". That somehow you're supposed to even recognize that your body's senses are lying to you, that there is not even one speck of the world that is doing anything other than tempt you into hell.

To say it's not easy to rise above it, is an understatement. Threats of death are happening all the time. And if it doesn't seem to be going to hell for you, it's going to hell for someone else. And then you're temporarily thankful that you're not the one getting it this time in a world of punishment.

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. "

Can we just, take a moment to acknowledge, how HARD it is for all of us, to try to rise above a world which is so vehemently anti-christ and anti-life? This is no easy feat. The truth may be simple but it is by far not simple at all to fly in the face of everything an entire world tells you is true. We're all doing the best we can and sometimes it can be very difficult.

Somehow there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a hope that we have to keep holding onto, a promise of redemption and salvation. A trust that is developed in the Holy Help. And a victory over death. We keep striving forward because we are so deeply attracted to God and want to be Home. And ultimately that is what will pull us back to heaven's reality, regardless of how much the world tries to pull us down. We who MADE it to pull us down, need merely recognize we no longer want to do that, and we are free.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.".

1) You decide you don't want to be with God. You can't get rid of God because he is PERMANENT, so you try to *deny* that He exists.

2) To try to rationalize why you are not with God, and why you shouldn't be, you need 'supporters' for your case against yourself. So you hire others to come along and do stuff to you, so that you can be a victim.

3) The people come along and do the stuff you contracted them to do, to you, FOR you, except that now you do a SWITCHAROO!

4) You again use denial - to deny that you asked them to victimize you. You say, I didn't ask you to do that, you're acting against my will. This allows you to see yourself as a victim, rather than a willing participant, you can now blame the person, and experience yourself as a victim.

5) This lets you JUSTIFY that you have every right to be in a victim state, every right to be worthless and unloveable, every right to be angry at this so-called "injustice", because of what this person did (even though you told them to!)

6) You use this end result as PROOF that you are not what God wants and that you must therefore be separate from God. If you are unloveable and God is loving, your unlovability demonstrates that God is inept at loving and has failed to love. And this failure to love has been proven through the victimization. Of course this has no effect on whether God DOES love you or not, it's just denial.

So then there you are, believing you are unworthy, unloved, unwanted, not listened to, hated, reviled, forgotten, left alone, lost, abandoned, separate, isolated, imprisoned, believing that you've been wronged and that it's everyone else's fault, when YOU PUT YOURSELF THERE ON PURPOSE. Why should anyone feel sorry for your plight of victimhood when YOU CHOSE IT?

Secretly we all are doing this. We're all USING other people to come into our lives, under contracts that we signed before we came here, to play the role of victimizer FOR us, so that we can pretend we never asked them to, so that we can be a victim.

Ultimately this proves we are not like God and we are out of reach of God's love, having become unloveable and unworthy of love.

This is also how we choose to die. Denial of God is a choice to be NOT LIFE which is death. Denial doesn't get rid of God, because God is permanent. But denial *pretends* that God is not there. And so death also is a pretense that Life has ended and God is not there.

But it IS only pretend. Denial that you exist is not the same as not existing. Death as we know it is just denial, not truth. You cannot make yourself not exist because you are permanent as well. Dying is putting on a pretty good 'show' or performance, complete with props and attackers and people to blame it on and causes to blame it on, all which you ASKED FOR.

This is all part of your secret, undisclosed, hidden DEATH WISH which is none other than your fundamental effort to deny God's (and your) existence and prove that what's permanent can be ended in death. It should be obvious that trying to prove that permanence is impermanent is completely ridiculous and impossible.

So instead of doing these switcharoos and instead of choosing death - which is just denial and not reality - how about admitting that you simply are trying to deny that God exists and it doesn't work. God DOES exist. You CAN'T deny it, even though you try. And your denial doesn't do anything to change the facts. All of your resistance, and your choice for death, is an attempt to simply DENY that God exists. That's what this entire world is about. Why not give that up and just go Home and be happy?

As always, you can choose again, and you can choose not to die by choosing to ACCEPT that Life (God) is permanent.

There are a number of words Jesus uses in a very different way to how we use them. He literally redefines and teaches us a new meaning of these words. This is because we've taught ourselves incorrectly what something IS, and have mis-identified things. In ACIM His use of terms gives them a whole different meaning.

Some examples:

Life. You think it means bodies that "are alive". He means, that which has eternal life in Heaven and extends forever, which never perishes and cannot die.

Death. You think it means death of the body. He means, anything even slightly less than 100% perfect life. Even a slight grievance. Even a slight sickness. The entire dream world and everything in it.

Murder. You think it means some person in the extreme attacking another. It really means the dynamic of a separation between cause and effect in which you perceive something applies to you that doesn't apply to someone else, allowing you to escape the consequences of what you cause. The entire ego thought system is murderous. "What is not love (100% love) is murder."

Insanity. Any state of mind which is not total wholeness and holiness. A split mind. A mind which believes illusions are real. A mind which sees itself as separated from its creator. All states of dreaming. Happy dreams, unhappy dreams. All states of perception. Seeing yourself as a body. Believing in death.

Sickness. You think it means just body sickness like having a disease. Jesus means a sick mind which produces a sick body, all states of mental unhealth, death, forms of physical sickness, illness, fear, unforgiveness, guilt, body-identification, belief in sin, level confusion, magic, etc.

Fear. You think it's some feeling you have when you are scared and that the rest of the time you are not afraid. Jesus says the entire world is made of fear which is the opposite of love, all states of sickness including death are fear of awakening, and fear includes every state of the ego thought system.

Sin. You think it means something you did. Jesus redefines it as something you think you did which you didn't do in reality. Sin is the authority problem. It's reversal of cause and effect, opposing God's will, which has produced an entire world of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." In sin, the death wish is formed, making death inevitable, unless you undo sin.

Love. You think of special love, an emotion of love, private love, exclusive love. Parental love. Small amounts of love. Jesus says all expression of real love are maximal - maximum total unconditional whole-minded full-hearted unlimited universe-sized love.

Forgiveness. You think it means pardon. Or you think it is a process. Jesus states it is a constant state of mind in which you recognize there is nothing left to forgive because you have not condemned yourself. All forgiveness is self forgiveness, yet you are one with others. Forgiveness is the atonement.

Ego. You think ego is just some little bit of egotism or selfishness. Jesus redefines ego as the separation idea and an entire thought system which has manifested as a physical universe, complete with dream bodies and war and death.

Perception. You think perception is you being inside your body peering out through your eyes seeing stuff in a certain way. Yet Jesus says the world is perception, physical objects are mental images, the whole world is your perception within your universe-sized mind, and it's not so much to do with how you see something that's out there. Perception is a result, not a cause. Projection makes what you see.

There's many more things which we do not recognize as being what they are. And so it may be easy to mis-read what Jesus means by certain words. We have to unlearn all of our previous definitions for things and broaden the scope of them. Jesus is accurate and truthful in HIS understanding of what things ARE, he knows what is fear and what is death and what is life, in the most accurate of ways. Our definitions are limited and basic and incorrect. Dictionary definitions are also flawed. This is part of what makes learning ACIM challenging, he's using familiar words in unfamiliar ways.

There isn't really anything that you need to do about the ego. It's really a matter of recognition. You simply don't as yet recognize it for what it IS, and you think it is something else.

Recognition requires you to have a full picture, all the information, nothing hidden, nothing missing. And in this light of the whole truth, everything is put into its proper perspective.

In this perspective, which is sanity and true perception, there is simply a factual awareness of what the ego IS. With no delusions about it. The fact that it is a lie, and there is no ego. That the ego is false and unreal and doesn't really exist.

In recognition, it simply becomes apparent that the ego never really was there at all. And now you can see the sense in this. It's the idea of nothing, which for a while seemed to be something else wh

ile you were confused and failing to recognize illusions for what they are.

So it's like, when you get into the recognition state of mind, the ego is properly framed, and everything is in its right place, and what is false is obviously false, and what is true is obviously true, and it takes no effort whatsoever to make it be that way. Because the ego just IS false and it never can be true.

You don't have to make the ego be false, you don't have to do anything to change its meaning. It simply already is false. And so all you end up doing is just noticing its nature and dismissing it because it obviously is absurdly impossible.

It doesn't require you to fight with it, change it, attack it, try to make it into something else, or to do anything to it at all. You simply need to get a good clear look at it. And in that clarity it is shown to be only what it is, nothing more and nothing less.

And that is the recognition of sanity, which is enlightenment. The simply recognizing of what is really true, and what is actually false. The final sorting out of whether or not the world exists. What is is made of. Whether it's even possible that it's happening. And whether you are deceived to want something it seems to offer in madness.

Until you get to a place of complete simple "accurate perception", as Jesus calls is, looking straight and honestly and not being deceived or distorted or confused or distracted or lost or insane, you'll probably be unsure about the world, and the body, and the ego.

They'll seem to have properties they don't have. They'll seem real, happening, true, existing. They'll seem to be a real threat and danger. They'll seem to be alive. They'll seem a whole bunch of things that they are not, because you do not recognize them for what they are. You are deceived by them.

And recognition brings with it the clarity of simply "knowing" or being in alignment with knowing what it IS and what it ISN'T. Because true perception is simple accurate seeing or reality-vision. Truthful perception. Honest perception. And that is all that you need in order to be sane. Plus the willingness to accept it.

To admit and accept the truth, which is to accept the atonement, is simply to recognize what is true and what is false with no confusion between them. The spiritual path entails the sorting out of which is which, the undoing of that confusion, and getting everything straightened out in your mind.

Once you get a final look at the truth about this world, the body, the ego and death, you will never take it seriously ever again. You'll remember to laugh at its utter ridiculousness. You'll recognize its impossibility. And you'll not even give it a second glance as you return home to God.

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"I will forgive and this will disappear."

"A world forgiven cannot last."

"Enlightenment is but a recognition and not a change at all."

"Only the truth is true and nothing else is true."

There are many ACIM myths circulating and one of them is an improper idea of what the Holy Spirit is. Some people will say "he is just your right mind". This isn't accurate enough and can be misleading, greatly diminishing the Holy Spirit's function and power.

When you were created by God, you were created complete and lacking nothing. You are a whole being, a son of God, extended from wholeness. At this point, the Holy Spirit did not exist, and was not needed.

It was only in the separation from God, which was the "fall of man" or the attempt to BELIEVE that separation was possible, which has happened. .... that God created the Holy Spirit. God ADDED the Holy Spirit to the mind in order to protect the connection between all parts of mind, and to guarantee the healing of the belief in separation. He is "God's Voice" calling you to return to sanity.

So the Holy Spirit is actually ADDITIONAL. This means that originally there wasn't a holy trinity, there was in effect a holy duality. But when the Holy Spirit was ADDED to creation, as an eternal and permanent being, with a mind and with creative power, the holy duality became a holy trinity.

The Holy Spirit is to be thought of as in addition to you. Something extra. This is why the course tells you that he is actually your "appointed friend". He is in parallel to you, another alongside you, a helper, a supporter, a healer, a teacher, a comforter, and the answer to the question of separation.

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for 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. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to TAKE AWAY."

Since the dynamics of heaven are holographic, in which there is a shared oneness, you can say for example that each son of God shares everything with all the others. They are brothers to each other as individuals but they still are one with and united with each other, as though part of each other.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit was ADDED as another created being to be shared with, to be one with, and to be part of you. But when you say he is part of you, you must be careful not to be thinking in separating terms. This doesn't mean he is ONLY a part of you, or exclusive to your mind, or just another name for some pre-existing part of your mind.

The Holy Spirit is shared with all minds and is like an extra layer of mind added on top of the christ mind. Being united in oneness with you, he does share everything with you, which in the holographic sense means you share the same wholeness that he shares with God. Which makes him literally part of you - as the collective sonship/kingdom, but he is STILL a distinct created individual entity.

ACIM actually tells us that the holy spirit is a co-creator with God, is an eternal creation, will always exist even after the atonement, implies that he has his own creations, is a very firm third entity in the trinity of God-Sonship-HolySpirit, and that there ARE "three" components to that. To deny this is to deny that the TRINITY is real.

The Holy Spirit is not your higher self. He is not just some piece of your mind that remained sane while the rest of it went nuts. He is actually a third party. He is an entity, an actual spirit being. He has eternal life. He has mind and thought. He can create as well as heal. He is a living being. And he was given to creation as part of creation to keep all the seemingly separated parts of mind connected and to act as a savior and healer of the mind's insanity.

Your higher self is your soul, which is a son of God, which God created originally. Your higher self is your ONLY real self, and it's what and who you are. The Holy Spirit having been added to creation has become part of you, just as God is part of you and your brothers are part of you and your creations are part of you. That doesn't mean he's some kind of little compartment that's in your mind that was always there since the start. He is secondary and additional to your mind. Him being "part you" doesn't mean he is "just a part of you". He spans beyond you and includes others as well.

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

Here for example there is a suggestion that the Holy Spirit is "nothing more than" the christ mind, as if to say that he is a synonym for christ. But that is not an appropriate interpretation because christ is the second part of the trinity, and the Holy Spirit is actually a distinct third part. He symbolizes God and he symbolizes christ, having a somewhat symbolic function, but that doesn't mean he isn't a fully created being in his own right.

As it says, the Holy Spirit came into being along with the separation (tiny mad idea) as God's answer to that idea, his guarantee of its undoing. He should rightly be thought of as your friend and helper because he literally is an additional being that God added to creation.

When we say the Holy Spirit is some kind of "synonym" for "my right mind", we're stripping him of all his life and his eternal nature, his power and his creative ability. We're trying to then exclude him from existing as a standalone third party, and are trying to REDUCE him to being "just" some little part of our mind that remembers God. He isn't "your memory of God", but he does remember/know God FOR you until you can remember and know God for yourself.

The attempt to think of him as "only my right mind" or "my true self" is really an attempt to limit what he is and pretend he doesn't exist. This was part of the teaching of certain individuals who did not like the idea of the Holy Spirit actually existing. It's something you should be wary of because the Holy Spirit is there for you, is there to help you and heal you and guide you, to teach you and decide for you, to give you the eyes of christ, and to resurrect you from death. To say he is just some part of your own mind is self-centered as if you can "save yourself". Which is a usurping of his function.

He must be acknowledged as something that God did in fact deliberately create and ADD as a response, as a purposeful act of creation, and one which is eternal. You tried to take something away from God and God ADDED even more than you took away by creating the Holy Spirit. He is MORE THAN just you. He is also partly God. He also has functions that you do not have. He is due proper acknowledgement and recognition as a truly fully created being in his own right.

It is once again "separatist thinking", based on exclusive either/or logic, that leads people to conclude the Holy Spirit is EITHER part of me own self or EXCLUDED from me. And since the course says he is part of you, people then think that he is EXCLUSIVELY part of you and does not exist beyond you. That is the fallacy of this kind of thinking. In truth the Holy Spirit is you AND is others AND is God. He is more than just you and more than just a part of you. He is the third entity in the trinity of God's creation and always will be.

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD's."

"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with both."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

When you are in the ego, you will experience various symptoms. You will:

* Feel afraid, confused, indecisive, uncertain, doubtful.

* Be in a state of questioning, trying to find answers.

* Believing there are multiple possible truths, explanations, diagnoses and possibilities outside of you in the world.

* Trying to find "the correct" possibility from all the possibilities, as if to do so will bring salvation and an answer.

* Feel like something in the world might actually be true, and therefore you are afraid, and can't quite trust the truth.

I often find myself in this state. Once I'm in this state, hallmarked by fear and questioning, I will BELIEVE that I am trying really hard to find an answer. BUT, I will be looking in all the wrong places, looking with the ego, using my separate "abilities" such as the intellect or past experiences, and I will just be going around and around frantic to find "the answer".

I will think that if I look hard enough I will find out what the truth is. But it's going to be one of many possible truths, which is confusing in its own right. So then I think that if I can just "figure out" on my own, know on my own, which one of them is the "real answer", then I will find it and can then get salvation. It never works, because the ego's rule is "seek and do not find", which means to seek passionately, to question everything, to reject all real answers, and to just stay in a state of fear.

When I get like this, there IS no truth out there. There IS no answer that I will find, from an "objective world", which will be "the" truth. But I will be perceiving not only that there IS an objective world, which is real, but that it therefore MUST contain the truth. If the world is real, it automatically has truth in it, so I just need to figure out where it is. Trouble is that NEVER works, because the world is NOT really real, it does NOT really contain any truth, and nothing I figure out about it will undo the FEAR.

Fear is produced BECAUSE I've made the world real. "I am upset because I see something which is not there", i.e. I've made an illusion real, am deluded, and MUST now experience fear because it seems like something UNTRUE has taken on a life of its own. Who wouldn't be afraid if imaginary monsters suddenly seemed real?

In this state of egotism, victimhood, fear, confusion and questioning, I am NOT really making any headway towards salvation. I'm not really getting closer to the answer. I'm actually doing the opposite. It is because I have moved AWAY from the answer, that I am even feeling this experience of "questioning" at all. The experience of questioning is really a state of being answerless, lacking in all certainty, knowing nothing, failing to be at peace, a complete loss of clarity, total victimhood, and is terrifying.

When I get like this, Jesus often now prompts me with a single wise word: "decide".

At first, I do not know what what this means or why the heck it is even relevant in the situation. If I'm stuck in the middle of trying to understand HOW or WHY "something has happened", or how or why "something really is this way", it seems to make no sense as to why deciding something would help, or what the decision even is.

But what I gradually come around to is this. The state that I'm in, as a state of victimhood and ego, is only happening BECAUSE I'm believing that stuff can happen to me against my will, that I have no choice, that I have to put up with whatever this external truth is, and that I need to find out what that "external law" is so that I can do something about it. It's not a decisive state at all. It's a loss of decisiveness. A loss of confidence. A loss of clarity and certainty. In other words, it is FEAR.

To get out of fear, and to get out of the entire game of "what if its this" "what if its that"..... which is all entirely terrifying, you have to SHIFT your perspective to something entirely different. A whole different model for what things are and how stuff happens. You've got to get out of victimhood into EMPOWERMENT. That means:

1) Owning up to you being totally responsible for everything

2) Reclaiming your power, in that whatever you choose will happen, nothing will happen unless you choose it, and therefore whatever you choose WILL BE your experience

3) Realize then that you do not need to defend yourself against illusory threats, because NOTHING IS HAPPENING TO YOU against your will

4) You are decisive, confident, powerful, certain and creative. You can CHOOSE AGAIN. And that means

5) You can choose to align yourself with God's truth, and to make a statement of what the truth IS, instead of attempting to "find out" what the truth is. Thus

6) If you choose NOT to create enemies, fears, disasters, problems, sickness, death, monsters, etc... THEY WILL NOT EXIST and will not be able to do anything to you.

*YOU* HAVE THAT POWER! You get what you ask for! There is no such thing as stuff happening that you did not ask for and do not want!!!!

BE THE TRUTH!

If you think that you will become free of a belief if you can figure out why stuff "really happens", or why someone "really does something", or "why evil is evil" or "why people are sick" etc.... you will not only fail to find a peaceful answer, you will also CREATE THOSE THINGS. This is why in your MASTERY of yourself, you have to come to realize that nothing can happen to you against your will, and that the only thing you've really been doing wrong is believing that something can be true WITHOUT YOU CHOOSING IT.

So when Jesus says decide, he means, flip into a state of confidence and DECIDE whether you believe the ego's truth or God's truth. Which one of these realities will you ALIGN yourself with. Which one of these two truths is going to be TRUE for you and are you going to believe in?

See, you think you have a choice beyond the ego and God. You think there is a third choice. You think that somehow there is 1) God, 2) Ego, 3) Your selective ability to pick and choose what the truth is. You do not have that ability really. You ONLY have the ability to decide which thought system you will BE a part of. If you choose to be part of the ego's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about the ego is REAL for you. If you choose to be part of God's thought system, you will choose to believe that everything about GOD is REAL for you. And believing one, you will disbelieve in the other. And that IS your protection!

So recognize this. Fear that the ego is true, MUST disappear, IF you choose to believe in God's truth, BECAUSE they are opposite and mutually exclusive. They cannot coexist. If you want to be safe from evil, CHOOSE GOD, SO THAT *YOU* do not create your own evil. YOU are the one who empowers it. YOU are the one who give reality to it. YOU are the one who makes yourself vulnerable by trying to become at peace or saved from a "real threat".

If the ego's world of threats and dangers is real for you, there is NO WAY that you will ever find peace. You simply cannot find salvation, truth, a peaceful answer, a resolution, a cure, a magical description, a satisfactory diagnosis, or any kind of convincing TRUTH if you are CHOOSING to believe the ego is real. Because even if you think that you are in a state of questioning and NOT having a choice, you actually ARE choosing the ego. You are never not choosing.

Choose the ego and you'll believe you have no choice and that you don't want to choose what the ego is offering.

Choose God and you will believe you are free to choose but you only want to choose God after all.

So get out of your ego's attempt to intellectually discover the truth in the world, or explain sickness, or figure out why evil happens, or why someone did something. There is NO TRUTH there. Choose instead to reclaim your POWER OF DECISION, get out of the victimy complete lack of confidence, become decisive, be determined you will MAKE A DECISION about what you believe, and MAKE IT!

I CHOOSE THAT GOD'S TRUTH IS TRUE AND NOTHING ELSE IS TRUE!

THAT is your immortal protection against all illusions, all evil, all suffering, and all death. Going back into fear to "check" if evil is gone simply will make more evil. Going back into fear to "prove" that something is true, will just invalidate the truth again. This is why you must TRUST in God's truth, SURRENDER your belief that the ego's world is real, and become fully committed to the REALITY that God has already decided FOR you.

Choosing for yourself, versus accepting God's decision. That's all.

Moving out of victimhood towards empowerment requires a radical shift in perspective. The victim mindset always involves a sense of separation from others. In this mode, your mind assigns certain things to them, and not to you. They're the one that's guilty, they're the attacker, they're the one doing something wrong. But in order to get out of this, we have to realise that everything "about" this situation is YOU doing it TO YOU.

That means that even when you think of someone like "that person is being evil", that is not actually a separate thought about a separate person. That is your mind attacking itself. Your mind splits off and invents a character to represent the other role, projects that character onto the other person, imagines that character being sinful and attacking, and then believes that the guilt belongs to them and not you. But this is YOUR mind forming a split personality, identifying with one part and not another, being at war with itself, and attacking itself from the outside in a kind of indirect way.

It is NOT TRUE that you can use your mind to just think casually about anyone and anything, with no effect on you. Even if you think you are describing what someone "is like", even if it seems based on their physical appearance, their behavior, or anything else that you think belongs to them, it requires you to still judge and attack in order to assign these labels to them. And when you do that, it's really your mind attacking itself. You cannot just sit there on a kind of fence having objective observations of condemnation and pretend that you're not hurting yourself by doing so.

It's kind of like a misuse of the equipment, like you don't know how to use your mind. You think that your mind is capable of operating in a mode where you can remain separate from others and cast judgements at them, label them, describe them, evaluate them. As if these perceptions have no effect. But what you don't realise is this is a totally incorrect way to use the mind. Mind cannot have these thoughts, labels, judgements, even if they map accurately to someone in form, without them being a form of attack. If I say "you did something wrong", I am literally telling myself that I'm wrong, I am split minded, have a case of dissociation, and am pretending to be a victim.

The major shift of believing that the problem is separate from you "out there", to recognizing that "you are doing it to yourself", requires a complete ownership of your thoughts, your judgements, your attitude. It's a total responsibility. It's a recognition that anything you perceive you have projected, because projection makes perception. Any labels you give to things are not neutral, they are a way that your mind is setting up an enemy within and as itself, to attack itself. It's your mind using the world vicariously to imagine that the world is doing something to you, when in fact this visualising is your mind doing something to itself.

So basically we have to go from believing that the stuff out there is not inside us, to realising that "ideas leave not their source". That any idea you have "about" anyone is about yourself. That you are included in everything. That you never escape any consequences, you are never separate from any judgement you make, what you do to others you are doing to yourself, and you are still bound by God's law of the golden rule. It's a shift away from a mind which is in two halves with two wills and two characters, to a mind which is single and whole and undivided against itself.

"T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 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. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

**** This is a very important part of the Course. ****

Jesus is telling is clearly here that the physical world of FORM, all objects, all matter, the physical universe, the world, are NOTHING, it is the way that we experience a 'wall of sin' which stands between us and God, and we are quite literally incapable of seeing God while we use the body's eyes to see.

It is also telling us that the physical universe is not reality. Perception of 'form', which means, physical materials, objects, people's bodies, the planet, etc... if you are seeing that, you are seeing an illusion.

This is very hard for many people to accept even intellectually yet alone to experience this truth. "There is no world" fits right in here.

So it's one thing to wake up to the point of still seeing the physical world and yet somehow 'seeing God in it' because God is in your mind. Okay, that's a step closer. BUT... that's not going all the way.

Jesus is telling us from a CHRIST perspective, that we have to become able to recognize that ALL FORMS ARE ILLUSIONS and that there is a REALITY that is beyond form, formless, in which you not only live your real life with God but you also are completely infinite and unlimited.

It's not enough just to find a different way of perceiving form. It's not enough to learn to not judge form. It's not enough to overlook your personal judgements or mental distortions or guilty attitudes about the world or yourself. That is not the end of the story.

We are asked to really go ALL THE WAY.... to go beyond form entirely. To go all the way to IMMORTAL SPIRIT. To transcend all forms and all physical matter and all of space and time. To go all the way to the complete and total and permanent awareness of the ONE REALITY. That reality is completely abstract and has NO FORMS IN IT. None. No objects. No bodies. No physical universe. No planets.

So that means, it's important to learn at some stage how even the body's senses are misleading you, how you are deceived by the appearance of differences and objects, how the physical world is actually set up to BLOCK you from God, and how the world PHYSICALLY STOPS YOU from being with God by completely deceiving your awareness.

You need a vision which transcends form. A vision which sees Christ. And that doesn't just mean seeing Christ in your brother or seeing Christ in the body-self of your brother. It means seeing past ALL FORM to the Christ and ONLY SEEING THAT.

Not just to see and be aware of God, but to see and be aware of NOTHING ELSE as well.

As Jesus says, "There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you." - ACIM

Pure heaven.

This is a conclusion I've come to over time, and I'll explain why it makes sense to me.

God is whole. Everything God does is whole. When God creates he fully creates. What he creates is fully created and is whole.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

God is a creator and has many thoughts. Each of those many thoughts are also whole thoughts, and thoughts of wholeness. Each of those thoughts contains the other thoughts, because there is one wholeness shared by all of them - that's oneness.

"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."

God has created many children, each of which therefore must be whole, and they all share the whole of God.

Now, in terms of relationship, God can ONLY relate fully. With each of those thoughts or created beings, God must have a full-on complete relationship. It is a whole relationship, in which God shares the whole of Himself. And all of Himself is received by his creations.

If you take a definition of "personal", to mean that you get the fullest most undivided attention, where someone totally commits to you and gives to you without any lack or limitation, ie you're getting "fully personal service", then God IS giving fully personal service. He is giving you ALL of the attention and service possible for anyone to ever receive. The best personal service you ever had.

God gives his full total whole attention and being to one child. That child receives the whole of God. God does not lack or limit or hold back anything he is sharing with that one child. The relationship they have is totally whole. Therefore as far as that child is concerned, God is being fully attentive, fully relating, fully present, fully focused and fully giving to them.

That is the MAXIMUM amount of personal service possible in any scenario. It's not even possible for God to be MORE personal, because he is meeting ALL of the needs of that child. He is giving them absolutely everything. There is no definition of getting fully personal attention from God than this.

The truth also is that EACH of the children of God are being given the FULL attention of God. God is wholly fully giving all of himself to child A, and to child B, and to child C. This is where God's abilities transcend ordinary states of spatial relationship, limitations, compartments and categories.

God is omnipresent. This not only means that God is everywhere but it also means that all of God is in every part of God fully, simultaneously, and without restriction or limit. God is actually capable of giving FULL attention to any given part, while also giving FULL attention to any other part.

All the parts of God, all of his creations, therefore individually experience a full, whole, completely, total, unlimited relationship with their creator. EACH of them experiences God as fully and wholly relating with them personally. Not that God is distracted with other children, or only has a short amount of time to spare.

God is entirely 100% personally attending to each child individually. Every child of God has God's full attention at all times, in a maximally personal relationship. And every child of God is receiving all of God at all times, without there being conflict, because they all share God's omnipresent transcendental nature.

This means that God is fully personal in relationship with each child. But God is also fully giving the same fullness to each child. This means there is no difference between what God is giving to one child, or what God is giving to another child. God is giving the same total wholeness to child A, and child B, and child C. They are all treated equally and fully.

Therefore, this means that God is truly being "impersonal", in the sense that none of his children are receiving SPECIAL FAVOR, and every one of them is receiving the fullness of his attention. Each child has a fully total personal whole relationship with ALL of God. While from God's perspective, he is having this full total relationship with EACH child simultaneously, and fully, without limit.

God therefore is impersonal because every single creation is related to in the SAME way, with the same wholeness and fullness and love. Nothing is given to one which is not given to another. EACH child of God has the WHOLE of God. Every child of God has EVERYTHING. All the children of God share ALL of God, and the same one whole is shared by them all. That is their oneness in holographic relationship with the whole, as whole parts.

This means, in conclusion, that God is fully entirely personal in relationship with EACH of his creations, and yet simultaneously is fully entirely personal in relationship to EVERY creation, and is therefore ALSO fully impersonal. Impersonal does not mean remote and distant and cold. It means not differentiating between any two persons, and not giving something different to one and not another.

Being impersonal is inclusive, but many people think that being personal is exclusive. And this is why many people think God cannot be personal. It is also why many people think God is COMPLETELY impersonal, without ANY "personal" (ie not fully attentive) relationship at all, which portrays God as some kind of remote uncaring generalized abstract blob that has no real personal relationship with ANYONE. That is not what God is like.

Similarly, because in the world of form and ego, people recognize that ego is selfish and exclusive, many of us also think that being personal is an ego thing. That it means exclusive, or something applies to one person and not another, or someone gets special treatment, or that someone is lacking something that another has. That is an earthly definition of "personal", based on separation, and rooted in the ego thought system. It is NOT the proper definition of personal as it applies to God.

God gives all of himself to every child, in a fully personal relationship, while also giving all of himself to the whole of creation at once, transcending earthly limits and seeming to do the impossible - being wholly in relationship with multiple beings at the same time without the slightest indication of loss or limitation or sacrifice or compromise or being distracted or special.

This is why I firmly believe God to be BOTH impersonal and personal. Fully personal, indeed MORE personal than any kind of ego-based specialness idea of personal, MORE personal than even a single person receiving something exclusively that others lack. MORE personal than the ego's definition of personal, which is a definition of lack and limitation and selfishness and hoarding. God is MORE personal than what most people think would be a maximal amount of "personal".

It is also why God is fully impersonal, in the MOST spiritual way. Impersonal not in a cold detached remote way, but in terms of absolute equality and fairness, totally treating every single person in the same way, relating with the same ONE unconditional love towards EVERYONE at the same time, and giving everything TO everyone simultaneously. This is far beyond the ego's definition of impersonal relationship, and is the guarantee that God fully personally relates to EACH AND EVERY child of God in exactly the same absolute way.

You can see these facts reflected in many statements from A Course in Miracles. For example Jesus speaks about revelations, which are communications FROM GOD, to an INDIVIDUAL soul, in which the soul experiences a HIGHLY PERSONAL relationship with God, which doesn't even entail the inclusion of others. This relationship moment reflects the original form of communication between God and ONE child, which continues to be a reflection of the PERSONAL aspect of God's relationship with EACH child.

God knows YOU personally, and fully. You have a full total whole relationship with God, personally. But at the same time, God has personal full relationships with your brothers. And his treatment of the whole Kingdom as one is his impersonal consistency and honesty with every creation. This is why I believe God to be A PERSON (or, an "impersonal fully-personal person"), why the Holy Spirit is A PERSON, why the children of God are PERSONS, and why being a person/being is completely natural. We all share everything with everyone.

"Revelation is intensely personal"

"He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it."

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind."

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

When I was trying to understand the true nature of oneness as given in ACIM, Jesus kept substituting the word "sharing". I didn't at first understand why that would be the same thing, but now I do.

We're told first of all that...

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it."

If you think on this, you'll realize why. God is infinite and unlimited. He is everywhere. He is the first cause and the first and only whole. He is the whole of everything. There is nowhere else unoccupied to put anything new. God cannot create anything unlike himself that we might call "different". And everything that exists already exists forever.

On those terms, it should be IMPOSSIBLE for God to create anything anywhere. He is already the "one whole". He is already perfect and complete. Nothing can be added to that, or can it?

There is a clause, you see, which Jesus gives - "EXCEPT by sharing it."

IF God were to SHARE himself, this bypasses the initial rules of reality and of wholeness, and allows an "increase" to occur. God can ADD something, provided that it obeys the rules of sharing, and doesn't violate any of the previously mention rules about everything existing already.

To be shared, something has to inherit ALL of what exists already. It cannot have anything new or anything unlike what already exists. What exists has to be entirely inherited as its own and as itself. What it has, it has to receive from God. It has to receive ALL of God. AND it has to give everything it has received.

In effect, God is capable of "adding sharers" within himself. These sharers MUST have a nature like his own of being fully wiling to SHARE everything they have and are.

They have FULL access to everything, at the same time as God does. How is THAT possible? You might think that if a created being has everything, this deprives God of everything. Or that only one of them can have everything at a given time. As if a son and a father are in competition. But in reality it is possible for this son to simultaneously have what the father has, and without limits, provided they SHARE IT WITH HIM.

Another way of describing this sharing is OVERLAP. The two of them are literally sharing the same space. They both have access to the same ONE WHOLE. Yet there are two of them. God has extended himself, giving all of himself fully, because that's the only way he can give. He gives ALL to FULLY create a son. And this son, IS a second being. BUT, this son can only exist so long as it SHARES all of God, sharing the SAME WHOLE at the same time.

This sharing between the two of them, is what oneness means. Oneness means direct simultaneous FULL access to the same one whole. This sharing does not allow the son of God to be "separate", in the sense of EXCLUSIVE, because any kind of exclusion is not an idea of sharing. The son is not excluded from God. The son is INCLUDED WITHIN God. He can exist BECAUSE God can share, and he can only exist SO LONG AS sharing is possible.

"real creation gives everything since it can only create like itself."

"In the state of being, the mind gives everything always."

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

If God can share himself once, ADDING a son within his own being, which shares and HOSTS him and has everything that God has, and shares the SAME ONENESS with him, there is no reason why God cannot share himself again and again and again. In fact God is unlimited in how much he can share. He can share himself INFINITELY.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

What has happened then is that God has created many "separate beings" who ARE many fully whole creations, whole and complete in and of themselves, but only because they ALSO SHARE THE ONE WHOLE. There IS one whole - which you could call oneness - but that whole IS SHARING, and HAS SHARED itself, producing many. We could almost say there are "many wholes", but each of these wholes shares the ONE whole.

This is precisely and exactly the definition of the holographic principle. In a true hologram, there are parts, and each of the parts contains THE WHOLE, and therefore IS fully whole in its own right - fully existing. But at the same time, there is only ONE ultimate whole, which each of the whole parts share and contain (host), and this produces a holographic relationship.

Holgorams SHARE a single whole with the same one whole, and yet are many. That is reality's nature. Because God is a creator and HAS created many wholes, who share the same whole. Each whole is a son of God - a soul, a member of the ONE SON, and thus the whole of the sonship - which is the whole kingdom. This is the truth in ACIM. That God has many sons who are simultaneously one because they are FULLY shared.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. "

This IS fundamentally different to the idea of "separate selves". A separate self is a part of the whole which DOES NOT SHARE with the rest of the whole. A separated off part. A part which does not want to share, and is therefore selfish. A part which was whole but decided to disconnect itself from wholeness. A part which now sees itself as only partly whole, partly existing, and APART from everything. This selfish self does not want to share because it is the idea of the OPPOSITE of sharing - the opposite of reality. That is what we call an ego.

God does therefore have separate sons, many creations, many minds, but at the same time they MUST share ALL of God, sharing the same one whole, which is why they are ONE. They are one AND many, just as in a hologram the many whole-containing parts are each THE same whole, even though they are many parts. This is a transcendental idea which ignores the rules of spatial separation.

These "separate sons" are not separate in the EGO sense because they are not separated by a lack of sharing. They are not SELFISH separate beings. They are SHARING separate beings. That is the ONLY difference between the nature of the Kingdom and the separation from God. In the separation all that happened was that individual SHARING beings who shared everything with each other and with God, became selfish, and tried NOT to share, thus "separating themselves off" - seemingly fragmenting away - from the holgoraphic shared union of the sonship.

Ending the separation, therefore, is actually a return to SHARING. "Atonement is a lesson in sharing." To resume relationship and communication is to return to a state in which EACH OF US SHARES EVERYTHING at the same time. Where we OVERLAP with each other. Where we return to being ONE WITH each other, sharing ONE identity as Christ, while still being many beings. It is the end of SELFISHNESS, not the end of SELF.

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

This is why the movement away from selfish egotism towards holy union and sharing, is a movement towards resumimg being a MEMBER of the sonship. It is also an EXPANSION of identity, because now a part of God which tried to see itself as NOT WHOLE, by denying the parts of itself it SHARES with others, now has to reintegrate OTHERS into itself and SHARE with them in oneness and equality. The sense of identity has to expand to INCLUDE OTHERS within itself, WITHOUT destroying the fact that God has many sons.

A return to your SOUL is a return to the sonship. "The sonship is your soul." The WHOLE sonship is your soul, while your soul is also YOUR soul. You are a part of God and all of God. You are a part of the sonship and all of the sonship. You are a part of the kingdom and all of the kingdom. You are part of heaven and all of heaven. That is the SHARED nature of reality. That is ONENESS in A Course in Miracles. It is not the end of yourself, but a return to BEING ONE WITH the father and with your brothers, SHARING everything with them forever.

"You who are host to God, are also host to THEM."

"I trust my brothers who are one with me."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self." "I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers, and my Self."

This is a world based on limitation, relativity, differences and lack.

What one thing has, another thing does not.

This is what makes everything different. Apples lack the color of oranges. Bananas lack the shape of apples. You can eat an apple but you can't eat your car, etc.

This is a fundamental built-in law - giving and receiving are not one, and what you give you lose. And so what you have, is lacking, and to gain something is to lose something else.

This unfortunately means that nothing in the world is whole, there are no perfect choices, anything you choose will only give you a partial solution, and every single thiing you choose will be lacking something.

You are very familiar with this. You think of whether to choose A or B. A seems to appeal with its particular attributes, but then again, B has something that A doesn't. But then again, if you pick B, it lacks the things that A has.

After a while of driving yourself mad trying to make a choice, trying to make the right choice, you can't help but get a nagging feeling that if you choose either of them it won't be a complete answer. It won't really totally solve things. It won't be perfect.

So you think to choose A, but then you recognize that B has something going for it. But then, you can't choose B, because it has something missing. And then you think, well, shit, I just can't choose, because both options are not ideal, neither of them is perfect, none of them give me the wholeless I'm looking for, and I can't be satisfied with either of them.

So then you throw up your arms in frustration at the stupidly impossible situation and decide to be done with this whole stupid choosing business, and just compromise and settle and make do and put up with and tolerate, because dis-satisfaction and imperfection are all that's really on offer.

And then you regret your decision because not only did you only have totally incomplete lacking options to choose from, you've now settled for something you don't totally want, and can't get behind, and now you don't want any of them.

This is the malady of human life, and it's not your fault and its not particular to you. It's the same for everyone, because it's built into the system. The entire system of spacetime, of relativity, is a systtem of partiality, because it lacks the wholeness of God. It's a system of impossibilities, contradictions, lacks, scarcities, imperfections, flaws, limits, inadequacies, and frustrating nonsense.

You think you can solve a problem here, but every problem solved produces another problem. You can reduce the overall problematicness of something, but to do it you have to add something else, which brings its own problems with it. The duck tape you fixed that broken whatever with, is now subject to decay and over time it's going to fail. Solutions are problems, and there is no escape.

There is no wholeness to be had in the world. The world cannot ever give you perfection. There is no perfect answer. There is no real lasting solution. There is no correct path to take. There is no completely right choice. The best you can hope for in such a ridiculous sytem is to make do and shut up and put up with shit.

But at least if you recognize that its the system itself that has this limitation, then you can drop your expectation that it SHOULD be able to offer you perfection, and then you can at least stop fighting with it or being utterly disappointed by every single thing you ever go for. Accept it's all shit and play with the turds and recognize it was all meant to be shit right from the start. Then you can laugh about it.

"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."

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."

I used to be really pretty vague about what the Atonement was or how it was really accessed or applied. People would say, "claim the atonement" or "accept the atonement". Forgiveness processes would say, do these steps, then "accept the atonement". The accepting of the atonement was never really explained and just seemed like some 'thing' that requires you to do some 'thing' to make it happen, and ... well, what the fuck is it?

I see now that the atonement literally means "nothing happened", in that, QUITE LITERALLY, this entire universe has not happened. All of history has not happened. The planets have not happened. Bodies, people, lives, events, NONE OF IT IS TRUE.

It's pretty extreme. It's pretty radical.

It HAS to mean that separation, sin, guilt, fear, punishment, suffering, sickness, loss, death, bodies, worlds, events, ALL have to be UNREAL, in order for the atonement to be the truth.

When I was attempting forgive, within the context of being in this "real world", where real-seeming people would be real-seeming assholes, and I would have to real-seemingly "DO" a real process to "undo" my belief that they were guilty etc... taking back projections and all that, claiming responsibility etc... the fact was that claiming responsibility for having been the cause of something REAL was still upsetting. Not a final solution.

It is CLEAR now, that the Atonement literally means this:

1) God does not believe whatsoever that you have sinned.

2) Your innocence is permanent.

3) Separation has not happened even slightly.

4) There has NOT been a physical universe created to symbolize the separation.

5) Sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death are not reality.

6) Bodies, matter, worlds, the universe, and everything that seems to happen in and to it, is not reality.

7) You cannot do anything wrong because there is no real place where anything wrong can REALLY happen.

8) You have NEVER really sinned.

9) Anything you thought you did, was an illusion. Sorry.

10) Your innocence is permanent and GUARANTEED.

This means to accept the atonement, you're going to have to literally question how and why you believe this "world" is reality. In your forgiveness, you need to get to where you are not just owning up to sins, but where you're owning up to having NOT sinned. You're not going to really convince yourself fully that you haven't sinned if you believe still that sin is real. You'll be saying it, but not really believe it. And you'll stop there.

The only way to do that is to recognize it was NOT actually a sin, because it was only an ILLUSION OF SIN happening. And that's because this whole world is an illusion and not real. To accept that everything you've been working to forgive DID NOT EVEN OCCUR, that's the atonement.

So if you can wind up after your forgiveness at THAT place, with THAT perspective, that NOTHING HAPPENED, and to realize WHY nothing happened (because it was illusion not reality), and to truly believe that this whole world is an illusion, THAT is accepting the atonement. That is what Jesus did. And Jesus now IS the atonement. He IS the demonstration that this universe does not really exist, and only GOD'S TRUTH is true.

Nothing happened because sin is not real because the world is not real.

From "What is forgiveness:"

"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 that view are all your sins forgiven. " - ACIM

How is it possible for what someone does to have NOT OCCURRED? Like, 100% has not occurred? Because it's not REALITY! If your forgiveness process does not recognize that the world is not real, it is not a complete forgiveness and you are failing to accept the atonement. To accept it is to understand, know, experience, and recognize as TRUE, 100%, that nothing has gone wrong but in an ILLUSION of it going wrong, which isn't real, so there's nothing to worry about! Then you can celebrate real freedom from the INSANE belief that the physical universe is reality.

Whatever you are perceiving, whatever you are believing, you ALWAYS believe that you are experiencing the truth.

If you are feeling guilty, you believe this is the truth. If you are projecting guilt, you believe that its true that the other person is guilty. If someone else seems to do something to you and you perceive it this way, you believe this is the truth. Always you are locked into an idea of the truth, regardless of whether this truth is ACTUALLY true.

You can even believe that death is real. You can believe that death is salvation. You can believe that attack is salvation. You can actually walk around believing that it is "totally true" that death means life and there is no God. You can be convinced this is the truth. It doesn't matter that you're grossly mistaken. One thing holds consistent - no matter whether you side with Holy Spirit or ego, SOMETHING is always the truth for you.

Now, whatever your grasp of truth is, this is manipulated by your beliefs. Beliefs are "truth modifiers". You use them to redefine the truth and to make something else be the truth that isn't. This is the ego's tool to convert the MEANING of God into something that God does not mean. It changes the meaning of the truth, the meaning of your identity, the meaning of what and who you are. You use belief to convert yourself into a sinner who deserves to die.

Ok now, given that you always believe you're experiencing the whole truth, this can lead you to not suspect that your grasp of the truth might be faulty. You believe you are complete right now, whole right now, aware of everything right now, that you know everything right now, that you are aware of the entire content of yourself right now, and that this is completely true. EVEN THOUGH... this is not true at all for most of us.

We are always convinced by truth, and we are allegiant to it and protective of it.We will defend it up and down. We will not want to question it. The ego's purpose for questioning truth is to replace it with something even less true that it still thinks is the truth. It does NOT want you changing the truth back toward the REAL truth. So it becomes very easy to mangle and distort the truth and to be caught up in thinking it is REALITY and to be totally convinced that you are RIGHT about it, but to still be very mistaken.

And given you can be really convinced about this, that really forms a strong barrier against even suspecting something is mistaken or that you might be wrong. Why would you even think to need to correct something if you are sure it's already perfect? Why would you even suspect that there is a happier way to exist when you already believe that your SUFFERING is happiness? Why would you want to live forever when you already believe that death is your ultimate salvation and that you will die no matter what, dam it?

You can be lost in the truth. Lost in what the truth seems to be. This is why it's like a hallucination.... you're seeing something that's not even really there and you think its real and you're scared and upset by it as if it's totally real, and yet it's just some silly illusion. You can run away from imaginary monsters and cower under a bush. You can be frightened by what seems like real political nightmares. You can be troubled by what looks to be a genuine threat of terrorism. And yet... this is all still just a dream. It's not TRUE.

Snapping out of a state of 'fixation' on an hallucination, snapping out of a strong conviction that someone else really is wrong, snapping out of believing the story, snapping out of reacting to the world that APPEARS to be real.... it's not easy. But it's what we need to do. We need to wake up.

It's okay. ... you are safe... in heaven.... with God... right now.... and nothing has gone wrong.... and God still loves you.

I don't just mean in some abstract way or as a concept. Actual love. Huge love. If you would experience God, it would feel like profound, heartfelt, meaningful, deep, real, relateable love, that feels so true and so genuine that nothing compares to it.

And God is in you and with you. And you are in that love and you are that love.

Here is our ONLY problem.

We've tried to deny that this love is there. We've tried to deny that this love is what you ARE.

Right now, unless you are like super awake to reality, you have no idea the profound immensity of unconditional love that is the experience of God. You've never felt anything like it ever in your entire life and cannot even imagine how powerful it is. It's hidden. It's covered up behind layers and layers of shit in your mind.

The shit in your mind is like a giant toilet filled with backed-up shit that's all swirling around and obstructing the awareness that everything is love. That love is present. You need to FLUSH. The shit is the ego. You've taken a huge shit all over yourself and you need to flush it.

The problem also is, that these so-called 'covers' in your mind, the blocks to awareness, make it SEEM LIKE they actually are capable of shutting out the light. This in itself is completely insane. It's like saying, darkness can make light go away. Like, somehow when darkness is present, it can act as a blanket and shut out the light and stop it from shining. Its completely ridiculous but this is exactly how we experience being on the OTHER SIDE of these blocks to awareness.

It's like being on THIS side of clouds... when its cloudy, it seems to block the sun, on this side of the clouds, even though on the other side of the clouds the sun is completely free to shine. When there is a seeming dark obstacle BETWEEN us and the light, it seems to block the light from the perspective of being IN the darkness looking for the light. If we were to be IN the light, looking at the darkness, we would DISPEL IT. We would recognize it does not exist because light shines away the darkness.

So really we've got all these blocks in our mind that are pretending to make it seem like light has GONE, it's left, God is dead, there's no value in God or any reason to want God. But it's not true, that's the illusion of it. God is NOT dead. The light has NOT been extinguished by the ego. The truth has not stopped. Who you really are has not been affected or changed. You are still as God created you and God still loves you completely.

So when the blocks are there, we think love is gone and all hope of finding it again is lost so we go off on a lonely journey trying to find it but hopelessly knowing that we never will. And we'll look everywhere for this salvation, in everything, and it's not there. And then eventually we'll realize, all the things that say you'll find the light in them, are not true. And that's a step toward going within. And then you'll have to look within and find all these things that are blocking the light. And gradually you'll question their motives also and learn they also are not true.

And then lo and behold the final joyous discovery... underneath all these layers of SHIT that you've gotten rid of and flushed... all the clearing out, all the letting go and surrendering of false hopes and ridiculous beliefs in fake needs, all the sense of lack and loss, underneath it is is STILL the intensely bright shining loving light of God, absolutely unchanged, absolutely unaffected by all your travels, and still loving you 100% unconditionally without requirements or needs.

ITS STILL THERE!

YOU'RE STILL THERE!

You are still the you that God created. You need but UNCOVER this in yourself. You don't need to ADD to yourself, or improve on yourself, or make yourself more of yourself. You're already complete, just in denial and hiding. Stop denying who you are. Stop denying God's presence. Accept the truth and be.

This segment spells it out plain and clear. YOU are 100% responsible for EVERYTHING you experience, you CHOOSE everything that happens, and nothing happens to you against your free will.

"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.

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."

This is also further reflected here:

"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. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me.

You are the Self Whom You created Son, creating like Yourself and one with You. My Self, Which rules the universe, is but Your Will in perfect union with my own, Which can but offer glad assent to Yours, that It may be extended to Itself."

And also reflected here:

"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.

My holy brothers, think of this awhile; the world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. It merely represents your thoughts. And it will change entirely as you elect to change your mind, and choose the joy of God as what you really want. Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever. And would you deny a little corner of your mind its own inheritance, and keep it as a hospital for pain, a sickly place where living things must come at last to die?

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 will. Your idle wishes represent its pains. Your strange desires bring it evil dreams. Your thoughts of death envelop it in fear, while in your kind forgiveness does it live."

Look at all these clear statements by Jesus testifying that you can either be IN HEAVEN, or ON EARTH. They are TWO WORLDS, two places, two locations if you will. You can be IN heaven, or ON earth. When you are on earth, you are not in heaven. The two worlds do not overlap. One is real, one is illusion.

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

"It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heavens peace."

"earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. "

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. "

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing."

"God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"In Heaven as on earth this is forever true."

"It does not matter if you think you are in earth or Heaven. What your Father wills for you can never change."

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits."

"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."

"Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven."

"In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected."

"So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. "

"Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven."

"It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"Everyone on earth has formed special relationships, and, although this is not so in Heaven, the Holy Spirit knows how to bring a touch of Heaven to them here."

"For there is nothing in Heaven OR earth that it resembles, and so, however much you seek for its reality, you CANNOT find it, because it is NOT real."

"The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"As long as a single slave remains to walk the earth, your release is not complete."

"And who would pardon Heaven? Yet on earth you need the means to let illusion go."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. "

"On earth, it is your ONLY function, and you must learn that it is ALL YOU WANT TO LEARN."

"Before you make ANY decisions for yourself, remember that YOU HAVE DECIDED AGAINST YOUR FUNCTION IN HEAVEN, and consider carefully whether you WANT to make decisions here."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give."

"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."

I think I made a major mistake when starting out with the course. It was fuelled by a rather "negative" view of the world, which was part mine, and part that of certain teachers I listened to. In that view, I thought that references to a meaningless world, were references to a the world being inherently bleak and dark and depressing. I also combined various aspects of ego and false perception with the world, binding them together, and then sought to get rid of the whole thing.

This was based largely on teachings by well-meaning people that the world has no redeeming qualities, that it is inherently somewhat negative and pointless, and that the only thing to do is leave it behind. While there is some basis for this, in that the world is nothing, it kind of skipped over the forgiven world/real world and didn't put enough attention on how to reinterpret or repurpose it. And it definitely didn't make much mention of doing anything to improve or heal or save it.

This was an incorrect framing of the world, because I realize now that the world itself has NO meaning, not a negative meaning. Its meaningless is simply a lack of ANY meaning, positive OR negative, and is not inherently anything. And my egoic association of the world with my ego's negativity didn't allow me to "separate out" the world from my projections onto it.

But the course isn't asking us to condemn the world and run away from it. It's asking us to realize the world is nothing at all, but that we've projected false meanings onto it. And when these false meanings are lifted off from it, the world resumes being meaningless. Not negative, or positive. And then we are free to project positive meaning onto it, in which we now see the reflection of God.

This obviously makes far more sense, interpreting the world as a neutral mirror with no meaning of its own. It also changes my focus, from one where I just wanted to escape from "the negative world" and throw it in the trash, to where I can now look at the very same world - its guts, recognizing it as nothing, but project love onto it. That's a profoundly different relationship to it, properly regarding it as nothing but a mirror with no meaning of its own, rather than as bound to ideas of hell.

It changes quite a lot of my perspectives about the course and what it's saying. It also relieves pressure and resistance and negative connotations to things which didn't seem to fit. I can accept then that I can see this world through forgiving eyes because of itself it is nothing. And it also makes it easier to accept that it can be used differently, and can reflect heaven. Obviously keeping it around long enough to allow it to do that can't entail attacking it with misinterpretations of the course.

Eventually when seen as the nothingness it is, with the reflection of God seen upon it, its re-purposing is complete and it is no longer needed as a device to bring us home. We can now wave farewell to the forgiven world and thank it for its temporary usefulness, as we watch it disappear and give way to the gates of heaven.

The key part I think is that a lot of people have completely missed the somewhat subtle teaching in the course that the world ITSELF has no meaning. That it was a projection out, from an idea of nothingness, BEFORE we projected onto it. The whole "projection makes perception" thing came later.

And the world doesn't have to be objectively real or a creation of God for it to act like a neutral mirror and still be a world of illusions. This two-layered projection is completely missed by a lot of people. And some interpret the world as having to be God's creation in order for the "project onto" part to make sense. Which is yet another mistake. So many of us are so confused about this whole thing. But I'm glad now it's becoming ever clearer.

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.

This section from "the healing of the dream", Chapter 27, is radical, awesome and mind bending all at once.

It speaks of how forgiveness, which you apply, should not simply forgive, but must also heal YOUR BODY, in order to demonstrate to your brother that HE is forgiven also. That unless forgiveness does this, forgiveness is not COMPLETE.

Some may think this is ridiculous, incorrect, or meaningless. Why show your brother a healed imaginary body? Why bother to heal the body at all? Yet Jesus is VERY clear, that until our forgiveness produces healing of BOTH YOU AND YOUR BROTHER, through a miracle, it is not done.

He goes even further to say that PROVING through DEMONSTRATION that your body is HEALTHY, by healing it along with your mind, speaks far more powerfully to your brother’s sinlessness than anything else you could do.

This is why Jesus also says elsewhere, "the mind AND BODY need atonement", "the mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle DEMONSTRATES this", and "A guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it HEALS THE BODY."

Open your mind. Take a deep breathe. This speaks to the real power of miracle working even at the PHYSICAL level.

"Forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to your brother and yourself. You must attest his sins have no effect on you to demonstrate they are 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 that cannot be undone and overlooked entirely. In their undoing lies the proof that they are merely errors. Let yourself be healed that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother and yourself.

5 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 of his innocence. It is this testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness proved to him.

6 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. 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. Yet it is given you to show him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

7 How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother and yourself. Your healing saves him pain as well as you, and you are healed because you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys; that healing sees no specialness at all. It does not come from pity but from love. And love would prove all suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish with no effects. 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."

An idea that keeps coming back to me lately is that everything that's happening in the world is absolutely chosen, deliberate and intentional. It's the idea that we're all powerful creators, powerful choosers, and we simply keep on making poor decisions. We keep making, i.e. creating, mistakes.

I keep seeing this idea of everything flowing outward from us, of everything coming from us, and absolutely nothing happening to us from the outside. Only the stuff that we broadcast gets projected out there. So it's all us, 100%... whatever we dream up we manifest, and we put out there in the dream.

In this idea there is absolutely nothing happening in the opposite direction. There is nothing flowing inward from outside. There's nothing happening to anyone. There's nobody doing anything to anyone. There's only stuff coming out from you. So you are the source of everything. You shine like a light, you radiate reality, you extend your self.

So in this idea, it's not at all got anything to do with bad stuff happening to anyone or people being victims or stuff seeming unfair or random chaos or bad luck or anything like that. There's only people choosing, choosing, choosing, choosing, choosing all the time. Broadcasting, extending, projecting, shining, outward outward outward. That's all that's going on behind the illusion of appearances.

It's all coming from a high place and going out. And there is no going in. But the thing is we keep choosing mistakes. We keep literally 'making' mistakes. We keep making situations which look like examples of not choosing. We keep making situations where it seems like we're victimized. We keep making situations where it's set up to look like stuff is happening that we're not choosing, even though we're choosing that too. We're pretty clever at choosing, that we can even choose what seems like complete opposite of having a choice. We can put on a really great show and everyone will fall for it, thinking that we really didn't choose this. Fooled you though.

All is choice.

So really it's just that we keep pushing ourselves off the horse. We keep tipping the bike over. We keep crashing the car. We keep steering badly. We keep making these choices for having no choice. We keep deciding to seem to not be deciding. And we keep wanting to not want stuff. But at all times, absolutely all times, we are still in touch with that freedom of choice.

AND we can choose again at any time. AND we can become so pure and clear in our choosing that we stop choosing mistakes and only choose things which reflect the totality of our freedom and choice. We choose choosing. We align with alignment. We stay on the bike and stop inventing stories about how someone else made us swerve and hit a fence. It's all coming from us.

This is the divine 'play', if you will. The big story. The cover-up. The performance, which the Son of God is playing at over and over. Experimenting with death, even though He can't die. Toying with destruction, even though He is always creative. Pretending to not be Himself. Avoiding having His cover blown. But eventually He'll give up the toys and simply return to a state where He doesn't make these mistaken choices on His own, and simply admits that this is all a big farce. That it's not really real, and that it's always been just an illusion that stuff happened against His will. It's not really true, is it.

It's not REALLY possible to choose to be void of choice. Its not really possible to die. It's not really possible to have other people choose for you. It's not really possible for other people to be responsible for what you experience. It's not really possible to have stuff happen to you. That's what we need to own up to and admit to. The power of our choice. The absolute unshakeable FREEDOM that we always have and always will.

So what are we going to choose today? Are we going to choose the illusion of having no choice? Are we going choose to seem like we have no say, that we're powerless? Or are we going to choose to admit to eternal life, to God's Will, and to absolute divine immortality? Because that's the truth of what we are, behind these ego facades of victimhood and stuff happening on its own.

Can you feel the sheer POWER of being the chooser of everything? And guess what happens when you admit to choosing everything? You choose EVERYTHINGNESS - i.e. God.

Choose again.

To us folk who are not used to miracles, or are not used to the power that we share with God, or the potential freedom of Christ, or the endless possibilities of immortality .... which is most of the planet including me, lol .... we consider miracles to be... "miraculous". Perhaps we are inspired by Jesus's work as documented in the bible and elsewhere. Perhaps we are in awe.

But the thing is, miracles only seem to be miraculous to those who are further removed from miracle-mindedness. And truly, miracles are actually completely NATURAL, and are supposed to be happening all the time. They are in fact supposed to be a normal mode of functioning, in which you have absolute power over all illusions and are subject to no limitations whatsoever, able to bring into manifestation anything you might desire in alignment with God's will.

So it's really a matter of perspective. We are just not 'used' to miracles, so they seem outstanding or awesome or .. miraculous... when in fact they are simply the natural, God-given inheritance that we all deserve and should be functioning in 24/7. Commonplace works of God.

Note that it's important to beware, of thinking that when the Course talks about miracles as. .. not a big fanfare.. it's not because miracles are NOT impressive or important or capable of overcoming all ego limitations, but because they do so ALL THE TIME and we're supposed to be functioning in a constant mode of miracle-working, such that it is second nature at the same time as being 'extra-ordinary'. Another word for this is, super-natural.

Here are some miracle principles from ACIM which back this up:

2. "Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source." - i.e. they don't matter as such because they're not 'special', they supposed to be normal and a given.

3 "Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love." - Notice they occur NATURALLY, which means they are not really unusual and are supposed to be your normal mode of operation.

4. "Miracles are habits and should be involuntary." - Again miracles are something you can do all the time having learned the 'how' and are practically like just habitual, natural activities, rather than something out of the ordinary.

6. "Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong." - Again miracles are completely natural and indeed effortless and easy for those who are miracle minded. It is normal for the miracle-minded to perform miracles constantly. When this is NOT happening, something has gone wrong, and you can see that the profound ABSENCE of miracles in our lives indicates a LOT has gone wrong.

7. "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." - Miracles aren't for the few, or the special, or the one in a million. They're supposed to be commonly available and achievable by ANYONE. Everyone has a right to miracles.

10. "The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose." - I feel the point here is that if you were doing miracles all the time, to bring healing, correction, unlimited supply, abundance, etc... it would be pretty pointless to suggest that they are 'special'. To make miracles special requires that miracles are NOT always happening, such that when they happen it is out of the ordinary and something to shock and awe. When we are truly always miraculous, using miracles in this way actually works AGAINST miracles and suggests they are special and limited when in fact they are completely unlimited in their availability. See also principle 31 "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe."

15. "Each day should be devoted to miracles." Each and every day. Miracles. Every day of the year. Every year. Forever.

21. "Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others." - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness, natural as in, how things are supposed to be, as determined by God's will for us.

So you can see, our natural inheritance is to be capable of performing miracles, every day, anywhere that they are needed or helpful. 'Miraculousness' is a state of being plugged into God's unlimited power source, his unlimited abundance, and able to bring that forth into any form at will, including the complete healing of sickness, reversal of death, manifestation of objects, being able to walk on water (if you so choose, might be fun), etc.

Once we are 'used' to our miraculousness and have accepted our natural state of being, unlimited and immortal, we would not think of miracles as 'miracles', but merely as, completely natural and a no-brainer. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

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.

In heaven, we are powerful creative beings and co-creators with God. The proper use of our creative power is constructive and cooperative and aligned with God's will. We create only perfection, beauty, happiness and eternal life.

"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."

"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."

God gave us freedom to create, but that freedom includes the potential ability to TRY to use freedom to imprison freedom, to create something without extending God, to will that we be unwilling, and to deny reality.

This mis-use of creative power that essentially runs against the very nature of creative power itself, produces what's called a "mis-creation". It results in nightmarish hallucinations of impossible things happening, a world without God, a place of suffering and mortality. These "creations" are the result of mis-guided, insane, contradictory, amateurish and childish uses of creative power.

"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."

"The creation of the Soul itself has already been perfectly accomplished, but the creation BY Souls has not."

The stuff we mis-create (make), which includes spacetime and Earth and bodies and death, is like a lower and more primitive form of expression. It's really an attempt to create a dead-end, or a world which cannot co-create and cannot live forever.

We use our infinite power to create an uncreative world that we do not want. We're still being essentially creative, but we're creating stuff that isn't ultimately real or true or alive. The "content" that we come up with isn't aligned with God's nature. Like we've "devolved" somewhat and everything we create is lacking in some way (lack of love=sin - a world of sin).

"Miscreation is still a genuine creative act in terms of the underlying IMPULSE, but NOT in terms of the CONTENT of the creation."

"The instinct for creation is NOT obliterated in miscreation. That is why it is always invested with reality."

"You are much too tolerant of Mind-wandering, thus passively condoning its miscreation."

"While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."

"Both the Separation and the fear were MISCREATIONS of the mind, which have to be undone."

So essentially mind has one of two "modes", it can either create constructively in line with God and love, or it can mis-create which produces fearful things which seem to lack perfection and do not last.

If we completely leave out any sense of judgement about miscreation being wrong, or a sin, or something to be guilty for, or to attack the miscreation or condemn it in any way, we would see that it is simply a mistake. It is just a mis-use of the mind by someone that doesn't recognize the futility and self-deception and pointlessness and confusion that is inherent in trying to create the uncreateful.

We could look upon such miscreations, such as Earth, without any judgement. We could think of it as like the creation of a child that has not learned or perfected or mastered its abilities yet. It makes things which are broken, primitive, don't work, contradict themselves, are full of limits, are ugly, designed to malfunction and to fall short.

And then we could consider what God's attitude would be as a loving parent. God would not condemn or hate or judge harshly what had been mis-created by the child. He would recognize the shortcomings, the mistakes, the limitations of what had been made, but would see it as at least a "good first effort" by his children, with potential for improvement. And he would encourage them to continue perfecting the use of their creative power.

"It is curious that the perfect must now be perfected. In fact, it is impossible. But you must remember that when you put yourselves in an impossible situation, you believed that the impossible WAS possible."

If we think of the world therefore as "somewhat bad, not all that bad, a good try" ... recognizing it for what it is and is not, realizing the mistakes inherent in its making, we can be what we call "forgiving" toward it.

Forgiveness could be described as a loving attitude that you have towards something unloving. A less limited viewpoint towards the limited. A more inclusive mindset towards something made to exclude. A less judgemental or attacking perspective on something which was made as an attempted attack on God.

Instead of the world being seen as a horrible hellscape, or as a half-empty cup, we can see the half-full cup and at least give the son of God credit for "trying" (lol). Even if that trying involved some failing. We can let the world be the limited broken thing that it is, while being mindful to "do better in future". To master our creative power and to create greater higher works of art that are more aligned with God and more in-keeping with sanity and harmony with eternal life.

God doesn't condemn or judge our mis-created world. But he would rather that we return to co-creatorship in heaven with him to create only the eternal and the loving.

"God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

It sounds like maybe we have a guilty conscience for what we think we've made, doesn't it? A guilt over an attack on God, a guilt about having mis-created, a hatred of what we mis-created, a sense of shame and fear that the hideous thing we made is lurching at us and trying to kill us, even though we are its maker. It's like we made a terrible mistake (a supposed sin) by mis-creating, and it induced guilt, and now we're living with the fallout of believing God would hate us for it.

Jesus also warns us that if we somehow regard the world as a sin, something to be hated, even destroyed, then we're actually denying the fact that we have very powerful minds that can create entire worlds. We need to acknowledge what we HAVE "created", even if it was in a spirit of fear and murder (unmiraculous creation), as being a not-entirely-evil "first attempt" that at least demonstrates the sheer power we DO have to create, even if WHAT we created falls short in so many ways.

"...it is not necessary to protect the mind by denying the un-mindful (physical). There is little doubt that the mind can miscreate. If one denies this unfortunate aspect of its power, one is also denying the power itself.)"

Earth and its surroundings, spacetime, is simply something we've mis-created in a mis-use of our divine power, in a form which is unlike what God would create, and of a nature which tends to attack itself. It is seemingly partly creative and partly destructive, partly good and partly evil, partly light and partly dark. It's an expression of the belief that an opposite to God is possible, even if such a belief is mistaken.

What we created (made, dreamed, hallucinated) is not real and cannot last. But for what it is, it at least shows that we do have infinite power and we did come up with something. And we keep mis-creating horrible nightmares as we go along. It's just that we need to create higher, better, and more loving creations. We need a higher prayer, a higher song, a better way, a more beautiful content.

Meanwhile, in our forgiveness of what we did mis-create, we must find a way to acknowledge and respect its maker. Even if we did "a shit job of it", it at least reveals some of our qualities, here and there. There are aspects to the world which are symbolic of light things, as well as dark things.

There are some forms of beauty, forgiveness is an earthly form of love, bodies can be repurposed to serve the mind, and perhaps the decrepit shit-heap that we came up with isn't entirely devoid of traces of the son of God's perfection. Even in subtle ways perhaps there is a trace of beauty, of order, of health, of cooperation, of peace, and of love, intermingled with the mis-created forms.

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection."

We made a chaotic universe, complete with every imaginable form of limitation and difficulty and problem and struggle. A world whose nature and laws are not the perfect unity and harmony of heaven, and which indeed attempts to be as opposite and lacking as possible.

But we still must look on the brighter side and find the proper higher interpretation of it. The way God would look upon the rudimentary and somewhat laughable deformities made by an inexperienced child. The world is what it is, complete with all its faults and partial symbols of heaven. And it will end, because it mis-created as an idea of limiting existence and life.

In heaven perfection is even greater, even more broad, even more natural and ever-present. It is the absolutely perfectly divine expression of a perfect creator. And it is your true home in which you co-create absolute perfection and beauty with God.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace."

When we are playing the role of victim, of being at the effect of anything, we are out of touch with the power of decision. We think that stuff is happening against our will. Then we enter into a problem-solving mode, where we ask, "how am I going to deal with this?"

In the victimhood we feel trapped and disempowered, as if we have no choice. We seem forced to deal with whatever is happening, as though it is happening all on its own. We seem to be left with no option but to deal with it, and then we start trying to find ways to make it go away, or to mitigate it and find the least painful way out.

The thing we're then missing is that we actually chose whatever is happening, we are making it happen, and we can choose again. We have a power of decision and we are the rulers of the universe. We do not have things happen to us. We are immortal beings. We act deliberately and intentionally and everything that occurs is consciously chosen.

If we do not like what we are getting, we must have made a wrong decision because we are not at peace. We have to recognize we made that decision and we want to choose otherwise because we want to be happy. So this means owning our power and owning our choice and owning what we have already chosen, so that we can choose something else.

We then have to step into the position of decisiveness, which is fearlessness, in which we exclaim that we have the power to choose and we decide what WILL happen. Instead of dealing with cleaning up problems or trying to fix issues or trying to find ways to build defences against these horrible things that are threatening us, we simply elect to stop making such bullshit and we powerfully choose something else.

I must have chosen whatever is happening, because nothing can happen against my will or without my consent. If I do not like it or feel like it is looming over me or happening without my consent or as if it is random or chaotic or just came out of nowhere, them I am very mistaken and am not being responsible. Spiritual responsibility requires owning the power of God and using it to make a better choice.

Instead of playing with options or trying to mitigate problems, we instead decide what we do want, we completely ignore the problem, we don't bother getting into problem management or problem solving or defences, and instead we simply flip the entire mental conversation to a new path. I choose this, instead of that, and this will be my future, and this is what I want, and I elect that this happen as I have requested. And so it is.

We no longer are in the business of putting up with things, tolerating, making do, putting out fires, diminishing, avoiding, fixing things up, or trying to prevent a bigger disaster. We are now in the business of choosing what we want, and only this can happen, and nothing else can happen. We are not at the effect of the world or anything in it. We are choosers and creators and wielders of God's power.

"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."

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences."

"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."

Oneness does NOT mean you do not have a self or free will.

ACIM quotes:

God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. (T-4.VII.5:1)

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. (T-6.II.8:1-2)

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite. (W-pII.11.1:1)

God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. (T-3.III.7:9-10)

In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. (T-2.I.1:2)

The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:7)

What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

When the Atonement has been completed [and we are back in Heaven], all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. (T-1.V.3:1)

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. (T-5.I.5:5,7)

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (T-5.II.1:2)

God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. (T-9.VI.3:5)

It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. (W-pI.161.4:1 8)

When you are told what is natural, 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. (T-16.II.3:2-3)

Gradually over time Jesus has been trying to teach me about freedom.

He would say, "you are free". I would be trying to decide whether to do something or not, whether I'm allowed to, whether it's the right thing, etc. I anticipated He would find me guilty for wanting to do something, and tell me not to. But instead, He would do the exact opposite and say "you are free", absolving me of all guilt.

He would even seemingly ENCOURAGE and SUPPORT me in whatever it was that I had chosen to do. And then I found myself wondering, why the heck would He even do that? Well, it's because He has COMPLETE respect for our individual free will. Obviously he would warn me against anything "harmful" or truly a poor choice but within reason, he supports whatever I choose.

And then he would keep saying, "you are free". And I couldn't get it. It didn't seem to make sense. This freedom seemed to live in a sea of "ties" and "chains" and reasons why I should or should not or what would other people think.

The thing is, after a while I start to get this impression that, it's great that I am FREE and that He is acknowledging my freedom so unconditionally, and Holy Spirit does the same. He never outright tries to force me or stop me in any unloving way, although sometimes nudges me strongly if I'm significantly going into ego.

But it's kind of like, because I am ALLOWED to choose anything.... it makes me aware that, in fact, just because I CAN choose anything, does not necessarily mean this is a rule for guidance, or for deciding WHAT to do. If Jesus would tell you, hey, you can do ANYTHING you choose, what would you choose? Would you choose to keep doing things which may not necessarily be taking you closer to God?

Neither God nor Jesus nor the Holy Spirit intrude upon your God-given freedom. They would, let's say, "like" for you to choose to be happy, to choose to do God's will or to live according to God's "intended" way of being. But there is no coercion. At all. And so we are to come to God WILLINGLY, only, not through force or because of some kind of pressure.

So the question then becomes, even though I am FREE, and I do not HAVE to be with God or do His will, what DECISION will I make? Do you actually CHOOOOOOOOSE to accept God's gifts and to live the way He has designed for me, or do I want to try to choose something else?

This is a decision we ALL have to make. "Heaven is a choice I must make". We actually DO have the freedom to do anything, but when it comes down to it, EVEN WHEN you have this freedom and you can CONTINUE delaying as long as you like, don't you start to get this feeling, at some point, that you simply.... want to go home? That you're tired of the things you have chosen and want a better way? Or that you're "ready" to let go of ego pursuits and "give up all the pleasures of the world" and open up to receiving everything God has given, in exchange for nothing?

This is a choice we each have to make on our own, when we are good and ready. It takes WILLINGNESS. And at the very least, it takes a LITTLE willingness, but ultimately a TOTAL free-willed willingness, a desire, a CHOICE, a DECISION, to WANT to be with God and to live the life He would have us live. A life of happiness and joy and eternal life and creation and love. A life of celebration and peace.

You are responsible for your own free-willed choice. But you are also responsible for the consequences of that choice. No-one else is responsible for your choice. And you are not responsible for anyone else's choice. We have to ALLOW others to be completely free to choose ANYTHING, if we are to also atune to our own freedom to choose ANYTHING, otherwise we will choose nothing in place of God, believing that we don't have the TOTAL FREEDOM necessary to TOTALLY CHOOSE EVERYTHING.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The keys here are you need to include:

1. Complete ownership for having created this

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

3. Gratitude for having created exactly what you wanted

4. Openness and welcome that is heartfelt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go for it.

If you are immortal, nothing can victimize you.

In order to see yourself as victimized, you have to pretend to be mortal.

To be mortal, you have to attack your own immortality.

Having attacked your immortality you will perceive yourself as vulnerable and weak.

In weakness you will believe that you are vulnerable to attack and have been attacked.

And having been attacked, and having denied that you set this up yourself, you will accuse someone else of doing it.

Then you will be lost in projection believing you are being affected by the world and the people in it.

But the secret of salvation simply reminds you that your own attack thoughts - death thoughts - are attacking your own invulnerability.

And therefore what you have done to position yourself as mortal, as a victim, is entirely your own doing from the inside out, and what appears to be done from the outside in is absolutely nothing.

You have simply tried to pretend you can die, and then you've blamed it on the world. You're even willing to make the body suffer and die if it means accusing everyone else of sin.

This is all a disguise and a game of death that you play to pretend you can be a weak helpless victim.

In truth you cannot be weak or helpless or a victim. You are immortal and permanent and unchangeable and have the power of God in you.

You can never be a victim unless you victimize yourself. And what God created can never be hurt.

"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."

"Turning the other cheek does NOT mean that you should submit to violence without protest. 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."

"Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"They were not created to enable you to HURT yourselves through them. They were created to CREATE with you."

"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."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son."

"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."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"Now do we live, for now we cannot die."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"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. "

I see now that giving love is giving life. It uplifts and heals, restores and purifies. It's almost like putting someone up on a pedestal, not to worship them but to acknowledge their perfection and lovability as one of God's children. A child of God that God loves.

If someone is an enemy, your task is to heal them. It is to love them, to express toward them the perfection and beauty and holiness that they are, and which they deserve. Even if they themselves do not believe it.

Giving this love to them and reinforcing God's truth about them, is the same thing as forgiving them, and as performing a miracle. It's like they are damaged and your job is to repair the damage. To patch it up. To cure it and heal it and restore the wholeness.

I used to think of forgiveness more in terms of what I am doing within, how I am seeing, what I believe, what I'm projecting, trying to take it all back within. But now I'm seeing that forgiveness is also an outward expression of love. As the light within is uncovered, it radiates outward. You shine a light which dispels the darkness.

If you have an enemy and you are at war with them, you may not want to love them. You may want to keep them imprisoned in a box or kept separate. You may want to exclude them from love and only let the good people receive the love. But clearly as you learn to love and resurrect even one person, it becomes apparent that you really should be doing this for everyone, all the time.

I think a lot of ACIM focus in on the processes we individually perform for ourselves, the attempt to find peace, to be healed, to lighten up, to receive love etc. But a huge part of it is also in the giving, because giving and receiving are one.

You in fact HAVE to extend (give) love in order to receive it. It's the only way it can work. If you don't give the love, you will lose out on the love. Which means if you don't love your enemy, you are depriving yourself of love.

To give light and life to everyone is very simple. I can well imagine the likes of Jesus walking around just being very loving, very uplifting, very encouraging and healing, shining into people, lifting them up, raising their spirits, strengthening them and reinforcing their health and wholeness. Just being a loving person and loving people. Resurrecting them with love.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life."

"The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone."

"Believe in the resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and it has been accomplished IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time and no exceptions."

"Hold him not back with thorns and nails, when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to Resurrection."

"Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death."

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness."

"The resurrection of the world awaits YOUR healing and YOUR happiness, that you may DEMONSTRATE the healing of the world."

"And you will see within today's idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and of death to thoughts of liberation and of life."

"My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness. "

"This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the LIFE."

There are a number of aspects to 'being spiritual' that you do not have to TRY to be. And 'trying' actually works against you.

For example, being present. You can try to be in the 'now' all you want but you will continually be pulled back out of it by your unhealed guilt. So you need to heal that guilt and then you will naturally find yourself in the present without effort. Otherwise you'll be one of these people that is just constantly trying to be present all the time and its a great big effort. You can't be present while you're still attached to an unhealed past.

Another example, you do not have to work at being 'more loving'. To be more loving reinforces the idea that you are not loving enough. You don't need to do that. There's a reason why you think you're not loving/loveable enough and its again got to do with unhealed baggage and faulty perspective. Those are blocks to the *awareness* of love's presence, and those blocks need to be healed and undone.

One the shit is undone, then you are naturally left with an awareness of the presence of love - because IT IS ALREADY THERE. It's not something YOU have to put there, or create, because God has already put it there. And also, realize that just because you are not aware of love does not mean it has gone away, it's just covered up. You are already enough love, even if its hidden from you. So stop trying to be loving and let it be.

Similarly there is not much point trying to be spiritual. That doesn't mean of course you don't have a goal of becoming more aware of your pre-existing spiritual nature, it just means you need more acknowledgment of the spirit that you already are, rather than trying to 'spiritualize' yourself - trying to 'make spiritual'.

Trying to make spiritual is what leads to the spiritual ego, because it reinforces the idea that you are not spiritual. If you're not spiritual, you feel compelled to have to add more spirit. You don't need any more spirit. You ARE spirit. You just need to work on becoming aware of your pre-existing spirit. There's plenty of it already. Don't become more spiritual, because it also makes you un-spiritual, in denial of your existing nature. There's a difference.

This is why the Course doesn't try to teach the meaning of love, but only how to remove the obstacles that make you believe it is not here, or that you are not it. These are all MISTAKES, because a) you are already 100% love, b) you are already 100% spiritual, and c) you are already 100% perfect in God. So you don't need to 'be perfected' or 'become'. You only need to cease the crap that blocks and prevents you from ACKNOWLEDGING what you really are already.

This is all very different than 'adding more' to yourself, or 'attaining' or 'building up' or 'becoming more'. All of those are driven by the ego's idea that you came into existence from some kind of EMPTY VOID, in which you are completely at a loss for love - God having left you in the dirt - so now you have nothing, so now you have to be super-compelled to go seeking for it (where you won't find it). You seek everywhere other than to acknowledge that it was always where God put it, because separation from it has NOT happened. Separation from YOURSELF has not happened, and you are love already. Perfect love. So you have to question the emptiness, it's an ego construct to try to deny that you're already and still as God created you.

So stop the fucking effort of trying to become a better person or better behavior or more spiritual or more loving bla bla bla... you don't need to. And you won't. The more you try to do that the more you will come up empty handed AND create a bunch of bullshit reinforcement in your mind that you're still not good enough. And then you'll be a perfectionist that never is good enough, because you're not willing to UN-DO the false belief that there's not enough love in you already. The idea that you're not already perfectly okay with God is a complete pile of crap.

You're already enough. And you're already you. And God already loves you.

"The truth is true and nothing else is true"

Here's the facts.

1) God established what is true, forever. It is permanent and cannot be changed by anyone.

2) You have only two options.

a) Accept that it is true and be glad that the truth is loving.

b) Reject the truth and pretend it is not true and suffer.

You have no other choice. Acceptance or denial.

Acceptance aligns you with Life. Denial aligns you with death.

When we reject the truth and go into denial, we simply are not willing to admit that we cannot change the truth. We start believing that we can change it, and that we have. That's the idea of sin and it puts us into ego thinking. It's also the authority problem because now we believe we can change God.

This is a very uncomfortable truth for the ego. It literally means up there on the hill there is a shining light which shines forever, and either you can go there and be part of the light or you can hide away in a cave and pretend it's not there. But nothing you can do can stop it shining.

This means you are POWERLESS OVER GOD. You are powerless over truth. And you are powerless to change reality. "Nothing real can be threatened."

To admit this takes great willingness to surrender all egotism, all opinions, all other viewpoints, all independent efforts to decide what the truth IS, and entails a total letting go of the protest against reality. That means giving up fighting with the truth. It means stopping this insane effort to DENY that it is true and to try to make it go away.

To hide from it and to block it out of awareness produces a state of "un-consciousness" or un-awareness, also known as death. Death is the denial of the truth, the denial of life, and represents an unwillingness to admit or demonstrate that you are immortal.

We have to come out of our dark hiding place and into the light but we will only do that by dropping the ego and being VERY VERY HONEST with ourselves, radically honest, in admitting that WE CANNOT CHANGE THE FACTS. We cannot change the truth. We cannot change what God established. We cannot change what God created us to be. And therefore we MUST still be as God created us to be.

This is why the curriculum ends in the Atonement, which entails TOTAL ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH. The key word there is "acceptance". It means the total surrendering of all denial, the absolute complete letting go of the authority problem, relinquishing all attempts to DENY that the truth is true, and being FULLY willing to simply ALLOW God to be God.

It's almost a moment where you'll say, okay God, I give up, I surrender, you win. Except God isn't a dictator or tyrant. His will for you is perfect happiness. And that means that by surrendering to His will and His truth and His power you SHARE in it and enjoy perfect happiness, eternal life, and peace forever.

We simply do not have the option to ESTABLISH what the truth is. It is already established by God, it is permanent, it never changes, and nothing of the ego can modify it. Either we are squirming all over the place trying to avoid admitting to it, or we are coming to it quietly and gently and accepting it with holiness and willingness. And God welcomes us home.

"Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true. This you have heard before, but may not yet accept both parts of it. Without the first the second has no meaning, but without the second is the first no longer true. Truth cannot have an opposite. This can not be too often said and thought about. For if what is not true is true as well as what is true, then part of truth is false, and truth has lost its meaning. Nothing but the truth is true, and what is false is false.

This is the simplest of distinctions, yet the most obscure. But not because it is a difficult distinction to perceive. It is concealed behind a vast array of choices which do not appear to be entirely your own. And thus the truth appears to have some aspects that belie consistency, but do not seem to be but contradictions introduced by you."

... "Now do we join in glad acknowledgment that lies are false and only truth is true."

God created you perfect. It's a done deal. You're already complete. You cannot add to yourself or take away. You can't be changed. You are permanently as God created you. He didn't leave anything out or fail to share anything or leave you less than completed. You can't be perfected or improved upon. You're already absolutely divine.

So the one lie is, anything that tells you otherwise. Anything of the ego that suggests, you need to do this or that, go here or there, learn this or that, attain this or that, become this or that. It's much more a case of, sinking into and accepting, owning up to, admitting to, become re-awakened to, what is ALREADY THERE underneath all this bullshit that we've dumped on top to PRETEND we are not immortal.

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

But in truth you are unhurtable, invulnerable, immortal. So all this time spent trying to prove otherwise, is futile. It doesn't change anything, because it's literally impossible to change your soul. All we can do is deny it and pretend it's not divine.

So we have this divine self in us, as us. It's all we can really be. And so what is all this other stuff? All the seeking, the searching, the figuring out, the unraveling, all this work and effort, all the effort of striving to belief, trying to convince ourselves, isn't absolutely all of it completely pointless? The truth about what we are can only be accepted or denied, not changed.

It seems then ultimately the entire thing about awakening to our divine holy self is simply that we stop doing everything ELSE that is taking us AWAY from it. If we would stop weighing ourselves down we'd float right up to the surface. If we'd stop attacking ourselves we'd be perfect already. If we'd stop resisting the truth we'd just melt into being ourselves. If we'd get rid of all this ego stuff, which is the attempt to be something we're not, we'd simply return to being what we really are already.

It seems counter intuitive because it's more like retracing your steps and going backwards, going within, returning to, rather than building something new. The whole effort to "become" is an ego effort to DEFINE what you are. Or moreso to redefine it. Which is always a lie because you can't be changed.

So every opinion about ourselves can't be true, unless it aligns with our nature as God created us. "I am still as God created me" states this perfectly. Simply, nothing has happened to you, nothing has changed you, and this whole dream has been an excursion into nothing. We simply need to accept that WE ALREADY ARE perfect in God and stop trying to prove otherwise.

This is why the Atonement is simply a matter of ACCEPTING what is already true about you, and nothing else.

""I am as God created me."

This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world. From time to time we will repeat it, as we reach another stage in learning. It will mean far more to you as you advance. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God.

Here is the Word by which the Son became His Father's happiness, His Love, and His completion. Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.

Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth."

tl;dr ... but it's a forgivable mistake.

Heaven is an environment of spirit, of sharing and openness, of oneness and love. It permits the shared overlapping presence of many created beings. All of spirit PERMEATES each other and PASSES THROUGH each other.

Remember that "nothing real can be threatened." Heaven does not permit any part of the environment to act against any other part. It does not put up boundaries, there are no walls to keep things out or in.

Everything has access to everything at all times. There are no prisons, nothing to imprison, and nothing to attack the prison. There are no objects that are solid, with surfaces that collide, or which can attack or damage other objects.

In heaven, there is nothing acting against the freedom of will. There is nothing to oppose the will of God. There is no way to will against anyone. This produces an environment where there are no COLLISIONS between things, there are no hard surfaces that keep things out, there are no separate wills or forces which can act upon objects and cause them to change or move against their will.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of SIN. It's the idea that will can be used against will, that you can attack and affect something without be affected, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, that something can be hurt with no power to stop it. It's an idea of destruction and damage, of sickness and death.

This idea alone produced what we call SPACE TIME, a whole second order of "reality" rooted in the idea that one part can be separate from another, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, and real irreversible effects can be produced. Where one thing can act upon another thing against its will and change it forever.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

SPACE TIME is an environment, a system of thought in mind, completely dependent on the idea of sin. The idea of attack. That one thing can act against another. That there can be a war, a conflict, and a COLLISION. It is a world of attack on the will of God.

"The world (spacetime) was made as an attack on God."

This is why we have here physical matter, with objects which can act upon other objects without their consent. A rock can fall down a mountain and slam into a tree. The tree didn't ask for this. The tree is changed irreversibly. This is sin. Physical sin. One thing acting upon another without its consent.

It requires that there be solid surfaces. There has to be a resistance that is strong enough to REPEL something. This is why physical matter has atomic forces. The repulsion, a form of unwillingness, PUSHES AGAINST other things. It allows two objects to push against each other, thus affecting each other, moving each other, changing each other. Without solidity, sin is impossible. Without OPPOSING FORCES (wills) solid matter cannot exist and cannot have any properties.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For without a body sin is impossible."

A body, a solid material physical object, be it human or animal or a mountain or a planet, is required in order to have sin. There has to be a separation, to keep the things apart. This takes the form of materials which seem to have mass and solidity. These two "separate" things can now act upon each other independently, not sharing a will, not sharing a mind, not sharing interests. They are in CONFLICT with each other constantly.

Conflict and war and murder and attack and sin are BUILT IN TO SPACE TIME. It is its fundamental nature. The entirety of spacetime is an hallucinated image, a PICTURE, of what it would look like if heaven (God's Son) were attacked against its will, complete with forces acting upon each other and opposing each other and conflicting and damaging and destroying.

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

One thing acting upon another thing against its will. That's the root of all of spacetime, the tiny mad idea, the violation of God's will, the attempt to oppose reality. The mere idea of FORCING something to happen TO something OTHER than (separate from) oneself. The idea of sin, of murder, and of death.

Because now if you can use power to cause/will a change in something else, and it changes, and the change is IRREVERSIBLE, that is the idea of sin. If I throw a brick through a glass window and the glass is broken and the brick is chipped, these are effectively PERMANENT changes. The broken window is now THE PROOF OF SIN, and testifies that someone DID throw a brick through the window. So long as the window remains broken, the proof is still there. And the window will never be the same again.

The ability to DAMAGE, to destroy, to attack, to rot and decay, to change anything at all, is the idea of sin. It's sort of like, we've tried to suggest that heaven can be attacked, hurt, changed, destroyed, and mangled into some new form. The entirety of spacetime is testifying to this at all times without end. Even when the objects are not touching. Even when they do. Even when the planets are far apart from each other. They are still at war.

It is an entire system of war, conflict, attack and death. The important thing to realize is that WITHOUT the idea that will can act against will, ALL of this is impossible. You cannot have WALLS, you cannot have OBJECTS, you cannot have BODIES, you cannot have PLANETS, you cannot have attack or murder or destruction, you cannot have MATTER, without the idea of sin.

Heaven is a system of total access. Spacetime is a system of denied access. Heaven is a system of everything being shared. Spacetime is a system of nothing being shared. Heaven is a system of nothing being separate or kept apart of unable to merge or overlap. Spacetime is a system where everything is kept apart and nothing ever joins or shares. They are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to each other in nature.

This also means that you CANNOT take Earth, bodies, space or time, INTO heaven, and keep it. They are absolutely incompatible. One denies the other. Sin is a "lack of love". You cannot take a lack of love INTO love and have it still BE a lack of love. Nothing about its LACK nature can be maintained if there is love. Just as light shines away darkness and REPLACES the darkness. You cannot take the darkness into the light and have it still retain its dark properties.

Earth, human bodies, space and time, are all ideas of sin and darkness and a lack of love. They will NEVER be that which they deny. They cannot be integrated into heaven because they ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE and DEPEND ON a LACK of heaven for their nature. As soon as you introduce the oneness, sharing, lack of walls, lack of hard surfaces, lack of collisions, lack of spatial separations, that is true of heaven's nature, there is nothing left to SUPPORT matter existing at all in ANY way. Earth DISSOLVES in the light and CEASES to exist. It is made of separateness.

You will not be able to "walk on the surface of the earth" in heaven's reality under heaven's laws. There are NO surfaces. There is NO gravity. There is no COLLISION between feet and ground. There is no SEPARATENESS to keep you from sinking into the planet. There is no POSSIBILITY of Earth or bodies whatsoever there.

What you CAN do, is you can adopt heaven's laws and viewpoint and look up the world of sin with forgiveness. It forgives the world BECAUSE of the world's limitations. It recognizes that the world (spacetime/earth) is not REAL sin, it is an ILLUSION of sin. And that really it is just A MISTAKE. Earth is a mistake. Spacetime is a mistake. It is FALSE. Not attacked, not condemned, simply nothing.

This is a key point which people need to really deeply realize. Spacetime is totally opposite to heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in EVERY way." There are no collideable solid material objects in heaven's reality. The world, earth, space and time, all bodies, must eventually be LET GO AND FORGOTTEN. Because they are nothing. And they cannot exist WITHOUT sin and death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"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. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

"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."

"From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings"

"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED."

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"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."

In this passage from "creation and communication", Jesus talks about how God created us as individual beings and minds. There are more than *35* references to multiple sons/minds/creations/individuals in this section alone. These mentions are not metaphors or concepts. Heaven actually DOES contain multiple minds, and each mind is responsible for choosing freely to do God’s will. This is why heave and "non-duality" or "oneness" concepts are a poor fit for the Reality of Creation.

"This communication IS the will of God. Creation and communication are synonymous. God CREATED EVERY MIND by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. Since only BEINGS of a like order can truly communicate. His CREATIONS naturally communicate with Him and communicate like Him. This communication is perfectly abstract, in that its quality is universal in application, and not subject to ANY judgment, ANY exception, or ANY alteration. God made YOU BY this and FOR this. The mind (of a soul) can distort its functions, but it cannot endow itself with those it was not given. That is why the mind cannot totally lose the ability to communicate, even though it may refuse to utilize it on behalf of being. Existence as well as being rests on communication."

"Existence is SPECIFIC in how, what, and with whom communication is worth undertaking. Being is completely without these distinctions. It is a state in which the mind IS in communication with everything that is real, including its OWN SOUL. To whatever extent YOU permit this state to be curtailed, YOU are limiting YOUR sense of your OWN reality, which becomes total only by recognizing ALL reality in the glorious context of its real relationship to YOU. This IS YOUR reality. Do no desecrate it or recoil from it. It is YOUR real home, YOUR real temple, and YOUR REAL SELF."

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, NEVERTHELESS CREATED SEPARATE BEINGS WHO HAVE EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY, but who want to share it to increase THEIR joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created YOU. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS. How, what, and to whom are irrelevant, because real creation gives everything since it can only create like itself. Remember that in being, there is no difference between having and being, as there is in existence. In the state of being, the mind gives everything always."

"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows it in his own Being and ITS EXPERIENCE OF HS SON’S EXPERIENCE. The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when HIS CHANNELS are closed, and He IS lonely when the MINDS HE CREATED do not communicate fully with Him."

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind. Even revelation is not enough, because it is communication FROM God. But it is not enough until it is shared. God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He DOES want revelation brought to OTHERS. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is INTENSELY PERSONAL TO THE MIND WHICH RECEIVES IT. But it can still be returned BY THAT MIND through its attitudes TO OTHER MINDS which the knowledge from the revelation brings.

God is praised whenever ANY MIND learns to be wholly helpful. This is impossible without being wholly harmless, because the two beliefs cannot coexist. The truly helpful (many) are invulnerable, because THEY are NOT protecting THEIR EGOS (individual egos), so that nothing CAN hurt THEM. Their helpfulness IS their praise of God, and He will return their praise of Him, because they are like Him and can rejoice TOGETHER. God goes out to THEM and through THEM, and there is great joy throughout the Kingdom. EVERY MIND THAT IS CHANGED adds to this joy with ITS OWN INDIVIDUAL WILLINGNESS to share in it.

The truly helpful are God’s MIRACLE WORKERS (many), whom I direct until we are ALL UNITED in the joy of the kingdom. I will direct YOU to wherever YOU can be truly helpful, and to WHOEVER can follow my guidance through YOU.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer."

Whenever you are presented with a choice in this world, you'll find it always entails an impossible situation. It's not "you" that is making choices difficult, it is the nature of the world.

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

Option A will offer something which seems to be mostly what you want, but it will lack something.

Option B may have what the other lacks, and offer something it doesn't have.

But in all cases, you will never find two choices which offer exactly everything. Or even one.

This fundamentally makes for an impossible situation, in which you are torn. You cannot feel a sense of total certainty regardless of which one you choose.

If you choose A, you know you'll be missing out on something. If you choose B, you know you'll be missing out on something.

The thing is, with our egos, we actually believe that there is a "perfect choice" in this world. That its possible to find the exact perfect something, be it an item you're buying, or a person to relate with, or a place to hang out, or a tv show to watch, or whatever.

But there is nothing perfect in this world. This world is based on separation, which requires that nothing be whole, nothing be perfect, and everything be only partially anything.

Often then you'll find that if you are seeking the perfect choice, you will feel flrustrated, uncertain, doubtful, mis-trusting, not sure whether to go with this or that.

Option A seems to tantilize you with its offferings, but you know it's flawed. And option B seems to offer something of its own. Even if you have both, they still would lack something. But you can't decide, because neither of them seems to "do it all".

Sometimes, depending on if you lower your standards, or are open to compromise, or don't mind some shortcomings, or can live with the absence of certain features etc, you'll allow yourself to use this adjustment of attitude as a way to "settle" for one of the options. And you might talk yourself into that being satisfactory. Even though you know deep down it is less than ideal.

This in a way seems to give you a sense of less stress or more sanity, but it's only an illusion. Settling for the fact that the situation is an impossible choice, and then trying to justify why its okay that it's impossible, and settling for a compromise, is not really attaining perfection. So you make do.

And so once again, the world comes up short, and it offers you less than what you want, and it can never please you fully, never totally satisfy you, and is always disappointing.

"All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."

Looking at this clearly, you can recognize that any choice to be made between illusions, will always be fundamentally impossible, incomplete and less than ideal. If you seek for the ideal you will be disappointed and lost and frustrated and disillusioned.

If you can accept that the world is fundamentally flawed and you cannot have everything here, accepting the fact that every option is less than whole, less than total life, and thus an idea of death, maybe you can choose on a more practical basis and just go with the devil you know, or the lesser of two evils.

There is no perfect choice in the world because the world was made in an effort to reject perfection and to offer no real choice. It is an assertion that you have no choice, that death is inevitable, and there is no alternative.

But there is a real choice. There is a perfect choice. That is, to choose NOT this world, and to instead choose the TRUE perfection of the Kingdom. God's world is the only world that offers you a total lack of compromise, total satisfaction, complete wholeness and perfect completion. There is no lack or frustration or impossibility or pointlessness in its offering.

To choose God again is to make a choice FOR perfection, which is a perfect choice. And it is the only choice that is perfect, when made. All other choosing is imperfect and unholy. And only a choice for holiness can bring you what you want.

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that this world has nothing to give."

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?