When your body's eyes are looking at forms, which includes ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS, you are blind. Yet the body's eyes CAN ONLY EVER see physical forms.
REASON, sees past ALL FORMS, because it recognizes that all forms are FORMS OF ERROR, and reason recognizes they are an ERROR.
Reason, takes you toward understanding, which is BEYOND PHYSICAL MATTER.
Reason overlookes, forgives, physical matter, and gives you a vision of what matter was trying to OBSCURE, through its forms of error.
Reason does not BELIEVE physical matter. It does not believe what the body's eyes show you.
Since everything the body's eyes see is ALWAYS AN ILLUSION, the idea that NOTHING is something real (there is no world), overlooking what the body's eyes see allows you to SEE SENSE and awaken to the truth.
Unless you see past form - the physical planet - to the truth, you do not understand reality. Because in reality, there is no world.
As Jesus states CLEARLY:
"You can SEE reason. 5 This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. 6 Vision is sense (stuff that 'makes sense'), quite LITERALLY. 7 If it is not the body's sight, it must be understood." (understanding is only found by looking past the body).
"For reason SEES THROUGH ERRORS (errors are forms, physical matter), telling you WHAT YOU THOUGHT WAS REAL IS NOT. 4 Reason can see the difference between sin and mistakes, because it wants correction. 5 Therefore, it tells you what you thought was uncorrectable can be corrected, and thus it must have been an ERROR." (physical matter is a 'correctable error).
"Reason is not salvation in itself, but it makes way for peace and brings you to a state of mind in which salvation can be given you. 2 SIN IS A BLOCK (to awareness), set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who LOOKS ON IT without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 THE BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT AS SOLID (yes, your fricking EYES are LOOKING AT SIN) granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT (sees through physical matter), because it is an error. 6 The FORM (physical form) it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS from reason's eyes."
"If what the FORM CONCEALS is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. 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." ... "THESE EYES, MADE NOT TO SEE, WILL NEVER SEE." .... "Only mistakes have different FORMS (physical forms), and so THEY (physical forms) CAN DECEIVE."
"Reason will tell you that IF FORM IS NOT REALITY IT MUST BE AN ILLUSION (physical forms are illusions), and IS NOT THERE TO SEE (there is no world). 5 And if you see IF YOU SEE IT YOU MUST BE MISTAKEN, for YOU ARE SEEING **WHAT CANNOT BE REAL** AS IF IT WERE. 6 What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must PERCEIVE ILLUSIONS (physical matter) as truth. 7 Could it, then, recognize the truth?"
"Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see" (his holiness is beyond physical matter).
You may find it hard to accept the truth, because you do not believe it about yourself. You look within yourself to see if it applies there and find yourself wanting. Your self doubts and your limitations work against your attempts to believe it.
What I'm finding is it can be more effective to borrow some clout from God. The train of thought goes along the lines of, "Is this true of God?". I ask myself if God can have this thing, this false thing, this problem, this suffering, this sickness, whatever it is.
For some reason I seem to be much more convinced that God is perfect and immortal and incapable of any kind of suffering than I am. So I use that fact. I contrast it against his nature and ask myself if I can believe that God has this. And usually I cannot, usually it seems ridiculous to even suggest it, and this helps me to be unconvinced of it also.
The underlying process here is simply "being one with God" more and more. Sharing everything with God. If something is true of God it is true of me. If it is not true of God then it is not true of me either. I am part of God. If I have something, God has to have it also. If God has something, I have to have it also. No exceptions, because we are one.
So if you are finding it a struggle to convince yourself that certain things are not true of you, that you don't have sufferings or illnesses or fears or guilts or whatever, instead of "doing it all by yourself" or in relation to yourself, do it in relation to God. Include God in the equation and question. You may find it a lot more effective and easier to let things go when you can see the impossibility of God having anything wrong with him.
You might also consider that this kind of practice is not merely one of many tools, but is in fact the end goal. We are supposed to be increasing our oneness with God. We are supposed to be seeing ourselves as sharing everything with him, and being like him in every way, having been created in his perfect likeness. To be one with God and like God is to remember your own true nature! This is the goal of the course, reunion with God and Self.
"But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to UNITE with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness IS to recognize the Father."
"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."
"And every dream serves only to conceal the Self Which is God's only Son, the likeness of Himself, the Holy One Who still abides in Him forever, as He still abides in me."
"Shut off from your Self, Who remains aware of His likeness to His Creator, your Self seems to sleep, while the part of your mind that weaves illusions in its sleep appears to be awake."
"Here is your answer to the world, and God's as well. For here it is you join with Him, His likeness being yours in this alone."
"God created man in his own image and likeness" is correct in meaning, but the words are open to considerable misinterpretation. This is avoided, however, if "image" is understood to mean "thought," and "likeness" is taken as "of a like quality." God DID create the Son in His own Thought, and of a quality like to His own. There IS nothing else."
"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."
"YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit." Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."
The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.
Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.
While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.
Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.
Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:
"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."
(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)
"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."
(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)
"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."
(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)
"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."
(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)
"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."
(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)
"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."
(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)
The ego MADE the body and its eyes, in order to shut out reality, fixate on illusions, make illusory FORMS in an illusory world SEEM real, and shut out vision of your brother's holiness.
The eyes, WILL NEVER, be able to look at reality. Regardless of HOW you perceive or interpret what your body's eyes SHOW YOU of the world, the body CAN ONLY look at the physical LIES that physical objects WILL ALWAYS present, and which were MADE to deceive.
This is why we have to learn to forgive, ie OVERLOOK, ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS, if we are regain vision of Heaven. This is a powerful teaching in the course. It renders the physical world UNREAL.
Some people here are believing that you will hang out in your body and see WITH the body some kind of reality. That is TOTALLY false. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. The body WILL NEVER see reality. Bodies, and the world the body LOOKS AT, ARE COMPLETELY FALSE. They are illusions. Not reality. And not created by God.
"The PURPOSE OF THE WORLD you see IS TO OBSCURE your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. 3 It is the TEMPTATION TO ABANDON GOD and His Son BY TAKING ON A PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. 4 It is THIS THE BODY'S EYES LOOK UPON."
"Only the FORM OF ERROR attracts the ego. 2 Meaning it DOES NOT RECOGNIZE, and DOES NOT SEE if it is there or not. 3 EVERYTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE IS A MISTAKE, AN ERROR IN PERCEPTION, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give."
"NOTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE CAN BE ANYTHING BUT A FORM OF TEMPTATION, since this was THE PURPOSE OF THE BODY itself."
"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 (physical matter) 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."
"These eyes, MADE NOT TO SEE, **WILL NEVER SEE**. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but NOT TO SEE? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but NOT FOR SEEING. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and CANNOT GO BEYOND. 6 Watch how they STOP AT NOTHINGNESS, unable to go BEYOND THE FORM TO MEANING. 7 **NOTHING SO BLINDING AS PERCEPTION OF FORM** 8 For sight of form means UNDERSTANDING HAS BEEN OBSCURED."
"Sin is a BLOCK, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who LOOKS ON IT without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 The BODY'S EYES BEHOLD IT as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason SEES THROUGH IT easily, ***BECAUSE IT IS AN ERROR***. 6 The FORM it takes cannot conceal its EMPTINESS from reason's eyes."
"You can SEE REASON. 5 This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. 6 Vision is sense, quite literally. 7 If it is NOT the body's sight, it must be understood. 8 For it is plain, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. 9 It can be understood. 10 And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their separate ways."
"Let your awareness of your brother NOT BE BLOCKED BY YOUR PERCEPTION OF HIS SINS AND OF HIS BODY. 4 What is there in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body, which you believe can sin? 5 BEYOND HIS ERRORS (and body) is his holiness and your salvation."
What we do in secret, and separately from God, and thinking that it is not something God is aware of, and which we hope other people do not know about, and how we suffer in silence, and feel things that we don't want other people to know we feel, and think things that we don't want to admit to thinking, this is all us doing it in the 'darkness' of the ego.
Darkness is the absence of light (God) and there can only be a darkness if light is SHUT OUT, which you do by entering into some kind of private, secret world, where you do not 100% fully share things openly. Indeed, coming into the physical world is an attempt to enter into a secret, private world, where God's light is absent - a world of darkness and despair.
If you are not fully 'open', like the shutter on a camera, light cannot get all the way in. If the shutter is closed, you will have a picture of darkness. When you 'shut down', become closed, withdraw, hide, go into secret fantasy land, conceal, deny, resist, attack, or in any way enter into EGO, you are shutting out the light.
Things that you KEEP in the dark, remain seemingly unhealable because you are not allowing them to gain light exposure. Exposure to light shows them for what they are and dismisses them, effectively revealing that they only existed IN the dark and do not really exist IN the light at all.
Therefore, everything that you do in the dark, or in secret, or which you keep buried, or do not want to admit to, ONLY EXISTS so long as you KEEP it in the dark, because it is MADE FROM darkness itself. All illusions are made from darkness. They are not made from light.
So as you expose yourself to God/light/love, these dark things must be exposed to the light and seen IN the light, and since they are not made OF light they do not exist in the light, so when you look IN the light for them you will not find them, because they will have DISAPPEARED. Light shines away darkness because darkness is only the absence of light, not a real thing in itself. This is why shadows disappear when light illuminates the scene. This is why the darkness of night disappears when the sun comes up. Where does it go? It does not exist.
You can stay in the dark and keep your dark illusions and dark fantasies about how dark you are and how real the darkness is, OR, you can open up and expose yourself courageously to God, knowing that GOD DOES NOT ATTACK, and GOD LOVES YOU UNCONDITIONALLY, and ALLOW the light to heal you of this darkness. Love replaces darkness with itself, and you are NOT held accountable for being dark, because you are MADE OF LIGHT.
Darkness is illusion. Light is reality. In truth you are innocent and holy, but if you don't allow yourself to step into the light, you will believe you are sinful and guilty. Only in the dark, where you cannot even see properly, could you think you are sinful and guilty. Only in the light, where you can finally SEE, can you be ABLE to recognize that you are only pure and innocent.
"I cannot see in darkness but in light"
"I am not an illusion but a reality"
- ACIM
Although there are some parts of this world which seem appealing, welcoming, pleasant, enjoyable etc.... we need to always contrast.... do I want this, OR do I want God? Because God did not create this world and the home that He created for you is not the world that seems visible here. The visibility of this world was made to conceal the real world and to make you fixated on what is not real.
There are small, little, stupid things in this world which we seem to get upset about which is as if to say, this little tiny thing is more important to me than being with God. So if I'm pissed about someone moving my cheese or someone failing to send me the proper email or someone posted something offensive on facebook or someone stepped on my flower bed, I better be clear that the value I'm giving to these things is in opposition to the value of God. I want these things more than I want God. I think they are more important than being with God.
And when you look at that in that perspective - you're trading this huge amount of love from God for a tiny little speck of illusory rubbish that isn't even important, that really shows you how ridiculous our little world is.
So then next time I have a shit fit about an item being in the wrong place or someone went into the bathroom before me when I needed to pee or a bird crapped on my car window or someone stole my pen, I need to remember... do I want this more than God? Do I want to be right about this more than I want to be happy with God? Is this tiny little insignificant illusory object more important to me than God's love?
What are you worth? The tiny gifts that we give, purchased with "pieces of paper and metal discs" DEVALUE you and say, you are only worth this. And yet these gifts are given as though they raise your worth and establish the ceiling of your worth. You are worth far more than any gifts the world could ever give. You are worth more than any amount of money could ever afford. You are more important to God than these silly little toys and ego offerings that are made to be all sparkly and appealing as if you deserve such things. "You're worth it" marketing slogan is absolute bullshit. It really reads "you're not worth anything more that this chunk of metal with a few sparkly rocks in it".
You are worthy of GOOOOOOOOOOD. You are worthy of immense profound love and happiness. Nothing in this world can offer you even anything remotely close to that. And nothing in this world can reflect your VALUE. Modern society attempts to place tremendous value on objects and things and 'stuff' and to get people to believe that they need this stuff in order to be worthy, when in fact the entire system is training people to devalue themselves and equate themselves with a bunch of junk. You are so worthy to God, you will probably be shocked when you start to allow His value of you to be truly felt and to register.
"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? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."
"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne."
"Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?"
...AND ITS REVERSAL...
"God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."
"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."
"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more."
"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."
ACIM
My note: Note that Jesus specifically refers here to healing the physical BODY, and to his intention that we PRACTICE this in order to then evaluate how well we did based on how meaningless the body is afterwards, as well as making the body invulnerable to and not dependent upon the world.
Here's Jesus talking about how the physical world - the veil - seems to you to be SOLID, but is not. It's a thin veil of illusions, and it seems to become more solid to you if there is guilt in your mind. As guilt is lifted, so is the world's "solidity", it becomes transparent to you because you can see THROUGH its illusions, beyond the form of error, to the truth. "You can literally see sense."
"The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."
"You who believe you walk in sanity with feet on solid ground, and through a world where meaning can be found, consider this: These are the laws on which your "sanity" appears to rest. These are the principles which make the ground beneath your feet seem solid. "
"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union with your brother! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet within you is a Force that no illusions can resist."
"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would try to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes."
"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. "
"And so you stand, here in this holy place, before the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ. LET it be lifted! Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now."
"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real. The body seems to be more solid and more stable than the mind"
"This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion."
"The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him. "
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
One of the ways the ego deceives you is to make it seem like you are not yourself. It wants to suggest that something has changed about you, since God created you whole, and that you are now missing something.
The only way it can make it seem like you are missing something is to HIDE it or conceal it. It's not actually capable of getting rid of your real self, because God made you PERMANENT. There is no real way the ego can stop you from existing or take away your reality.
The ONLY trick the ego has is to pretend that there is something about you that is missing, by trying to BLOCK YOUR AWARENESS from being aware that it exists. It does this by applying distortions to your perception which seem to make it hard to SEE what is really right in front of you and obvious.
These blocks to the AWARENESS of God's presence are the only problem. They need to be removed, in order for you to become AWARE again that you DO still have everything that God gave you, you ARE still immortal, you HAVE NOT been changed and NOTHING is missing.
So what the ego does, is it covers you up a little bit, maybe with a lie or a deception or some darkness or a temptation or some other mechanism of illusion. It makes an illusion that makes it seem like something's gone wrong, something's happening, there's been a loss, or an emptiness, or a hole has been made in the Son of God, or something's been taken away, or whatever.
So this ego PRANKSTER tries to TRICK you into believing that it's actually TRUE that something about you is missing. It tries to get you to believe that it's true you've lost your love, or your power, or your strength, or your sanity, or your connection to God, or your peace, or your identity, or whatever. As soon as you believe it's lie and fall for its trick, you are now in a state of confusion.
Confused, and convinced that you actually HAVE lost some part of yourself, and that this part of yourself IS NOT where it should be - ie within you - where God placed it - what do you do now? Perceiving a lack, you feel a need, and that need automatically asks to be fulfilled because it's a magnetic belief in 'not having' which draws itself in the direction of 'getting' - ie re-acquiring.
So now you go off, distracted, looking everywhere you can possibly look, EXCEPT for where this missing thing IS, which is in you, because its' not really missing AT ALL it's just being covered up, and what results will you encounter? You'll look high and low and everywhere in-between, everywhere EXCEPT underneath the blanket that hides it. And it won't be there. And you will not find it, because it's not anywhere that you're looking.
This is how the ego has you "seek and do not find".
It's also how the ego has you "seek for salvation" (a solution to the problem of something having gone wrong), outside of yourself, in places where you will never find it, even though you have this big HOPE of finding it there. The ego would want you to keep DOING stuff to trying to REPLACE what you think you lost, even though it's not reall lost. And all this doing will entail 'trying' really hard to accomplish what you ultimately cannot accomplish. And the more effort you put into 'finding' what you think you do not have, the less it will work and the more frustrated you'll be.
So all you need really to do is to LOOK AT the ego's smokescreen, QUESTION the ego's bullshit deception that says you are lacking something, figure out that what it says you're lacking is just HIDDEN, look at what is hiding it and how it is functioning, STOP DOING IT - ie UN-DO the action of hiding it, and lo and behold.. abracadabra.... IT IS REVEALED TO YOU!
Eureka! You found it. It is already in you. It always was. It was never lost. It wasn't removed. It wasn't really damaged. Nothing really happened to it. This LOVE that you are, is still perfectly intact, perfectly whole, perfectly at peace, perfectly happy, perfectly powerful and immortal and innocent. It has never changed. And so as you remove this BLOCK to awareness, instead of trying to REPLACE what the block says is missing, you simply uncover the truth of what is, what always was and what always will be.
There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing lacking in you. There is nothing missing from you. You have not been hurt. You have not been damaged. You have not sinned. You are not guilty. AAAAAAALL this other stuff that says otherwise is just a COVER for your immaculate divine innocence and invulnerability. And all your worries about all this other bullshit is all because you think it's telling you the truth. None of it is true. The only truth is that you are STILL as God created you, even if you've been hiding it underneath layer upon layer of illusions.
It's going to be a wonderful day when you finally realize that you are still as God created you and nothing has happened.
I've seen how when I want to make something go away, I make myself sick.
We attempt to psychologically reject and push something away when we find it threatening, dangerous or undesirable, all of which is a perceptual error. This however immediately implements some form of sickness. Sickness is INDUCED by the attempt to separate from your BROTHER!
"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."
When we perceive a threat or danger, or someone is fear-mongering, or there is "bad news", or some obnoxious person is hanging around, or whatever... if we perceive it as having power to attack and we want it to stop, instead of making it stop or dis-believing in it, we put up defenses. We try to reject and separate ourselves from it. That's a bad move. It attacks our body. "If I defend myself I am attacked."
I gave myself a panic attack yesterday at a medical office when the staff started becoming serious about heart problems that aren't real. Try as I might I couldn't help but try to reject and resist, and thus induced sickness and almost fainted. Later during forgiveness I saw how I'd done that to myself, trying to make it go away, as the result of *perceiving* that there was a real threat or danger.
Previously also I recall a very talkative coworker kept hanging around at my desk trying to chat, and wouldn't go away. And then got into chatting with others nearby. And instead of standing up to tell them to leave I just tolerated and tried to be patient, but wanted them to go away. And this induced a sudden immediate headache. Trying to separate from your brother induces sickness.
I also once gave myself an ear infection in a matter of hours as a result of trying to make Holy Spirit go away, having perceived his lack of "boundaries" as a threat. I suffered for a few days before being able to re-approach him without fear and thus recognize what I'd done to myself, and upon recognizing I did not NEED the defense, all symptoms disappeared within a matter of hours.
Whenever we USE SEPARATION as a tool, which is an ego tool, to try to "deal with" perceived situations, our attempt to put up a defense and withdraw into ourselves cuts us off from life, blocks extension, fosters separation, produces sickness, and eventually death ("sickness is but a little death"). Our attempt to DENY GOD or our brothers (whom God is in) is the only cause of bodily death. This is why all death is suicide - we give our consent through our denial of God's will. IT IS NOT GOD's WILL THAT ANYONE DIE. A dream of death is not left THROUGh death, but through life - truth.
Sickness cannot happen at all when you do not have a belief in separation in any way. When your mind extends to your brothers mind sharing love, it undoes all sense of separation and your minds join. In this joining there is no split and no division and no attack, and nothing for sickness to latch onto. It therefore MUST heal, and as such death is surmounted. This is a miracle, it is resurrection.
"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.
Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."
Notice it says NOW IS THE *BODY* HEALED.
"You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." This is literal. Sickness becomes impossible when your mind is whole and healed.
Atonement makes sickness IMPOSSIBLE. This DOES MEAN BODY SICKNESS as well as mental illness.
"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."
So sickness IS A FORM OF GUILT, and if there is no guilt, there can be no sickness or death. Period.