"Perhaps there is a fear of failure and shame associated with a sense of inadequacy."

"As long as you perceive the body as your reality, so long will you perceive yourself as lonely and deprived. And so long will you also perceive yourself as a victim of sacrifice, justified in sacrificing others."

If there is some way that you are found, or find yourself to be, not equal, it will induce a sense of inadequacy. This is based on a perceive lack of value or worth. And this in turn will induce a feeling of shame and unworthiness.

Whatever is considered the ideal, or the optimum or best way to be, if you do not "measure up", or you are evaluated to be less than or lacking, this inadequacy will present shameful feelings. As if you are lacking something.

Ultimately if you look at the body, the body was made on purpose to limit you, confine you, define you as very restricted, with only a small handful of abilities. It can only move so fast, perform so good, look so attractive, etc. If you identify with a body, you fundamentally identify with being inadequate. Which produces automatic shame.

So anyone who has identified with a body is automatically grandfathered in to feeling a sense of shame and unworthiness. Because no body, no matter how great it seems to be, is free of limitations. And every body was made from the idea of imperfection and is inehrently inadequate.

It doesn't therefore matter how beautiful you make it look, how much muscle you build, how tall and hansom it is, how fair and lovely, it can never fully represent your perfection. It can never be "good enough". So if you think of it as your self, and you take personally anything about it, you are doomed to find yourself not good enough.No-one who believes they are a body can be satisfied with their "self image". Even those who believe their body is god-like and fantastic, must at some level suspect their flawed and limited nature. Any amount of body identification is going to condemn you as less than whole and less than perfect.

Sometimes also the things that bodies do, or the we use them for, fall far short of perfection. And that means that almost everything we do with them is prone to result in a judgement of inadequacy. It doesn't even matter if you try to be proud of it or pleased with it or amazed by its greatness, these are all forms of denial of the inherent limitation and lack that the body represents.

There is also a fear of failure that automatically must be present for anyone who considers themselves a body. Since it is recognized how limited you are, that you do not know how to do something, or be guaranteed to do it perfectly, it presents an inherent recognition that it WILL fail to some degree. And this induces fear. So the inadequate and the shameful are afraid of failure, knowing that they ARE a failure, having identified with failure.

The only way to transcend inadequacy and be fully released from shame, is to embrace your REAL perfection, which is your spirit. To be spirit identified is to overcome all limitation and thus all inability, insufficiency and incapability. There can be no grounds for shame in owning up to being immortal and divine.

"This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable. ""Being unable to love, the ego would be totally inadequate in Love's presence, for it could not respond at all. You would HAVE to abandon its guidance, for it would be quite apparent that it had not taught you the response pattern you NEED."

"But the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy."

"God is the strength in which I trust. Now try to slip past all concerns related to your own sense of inadequacy."

If there is fear in you, and if you are projecting it outward, you will project it onto specific things. This is because fear is divisive and not whole, so it attaches to PARTS OF the environment. And in particular it can project onto a specific body.

When fear is projected, another's body is seen in a very isolating way. Fear distorts perception heavily and anchors you into the physical. It then seems that only the physical exists, only the physical rules apply, only physical causation is real, and there is no escape from anything.

By making your brother's body his "reality", focusing on its condition or form or appearance, projecting fear onto it, you turn it into an enemy. You give it power over you. Your whole awareness sinks into the ego and you can find no way out.

As the body is given reality, which is very easy to do when you are afraid, your whole focus shuts out the mind and awareness of any higher truth. And now you feel like you are completely imprisoned and held captive by this "sinful body" you see. Like you are locked in and completely at its effect. Anything it does, or doesn't do, now seems to completely affect you against your will, as if you have no ability to stop it or do anything about it. If the person has a sickness or problem and cannot fix it, or isn't trying to, you will now feel like they are imposing limits on you and forcing you to suffer.

Seeing yourself as a victim of this dynamic, already deep in fear with nowhere to turn, everything now seems like a closed system. Having bound your brother to his body, imprisoning him, you see yourself as imprisoned. And now your brother's body seems to be attacking you. This incites reactions of even more fear, which turns into anger and rage, justified due to what he seems to be doing to you.

It will now feel like there is nothing you can do to be free, as if your mind is somehow locked onto their body state, as if you have merged with it and are kind of one with their body. You will feel exposed to it and completely vulnerable to it, as if you have opened up a conduit or bridge, a cord that has bound you to it. Its every move seems to dictate your suffering, and you cannot seem to be free unless the other person changes. And now you will demand they change, rather than look at the fact you are projecting fear.

This really is the ego's version of "forgiveness to destroy" taken to the extreme. The projection of fear blinds you to stepping back or looking into your mind, seeing yourself as doing anything to yourself. It warps your perception and turns it inside out. Cause and effect are backwards and you see yourself as completely victimized. The more you go into it the more you lose sight of the fact that you have any power or are choosing any of this.

Your whole sense of peace then seems to completely "depend" on the other person. If their body has any issue at all, you'll blow it out of proportion and see it as a threat and a danger. And how dare they not resolve it for your benefit. The only way out of this is to stop projecting fear, look at the fear within you, heal it and return to love.

True forgiveness is needed, and you must be clear that fear really is an attempt to attack. "The fearful are apt to be vicious." Viciousness comes out when you are afraid. And by attacking, you will see another as attacking you. And having attacked them by seeing them as only a body, you will see their body as attacking you. Just even by sitting there in its condition, it is experienced as a threat, because you have threatened it, having threatened yourself.

Fear is really part of your self-attack, resulting from guilt, resulting from a belief in sin. Your own sinlessness is the key to salvation and to removing the basis for fear. There is nothing to fear because only love is real.

"It seems to be the body we feel limits our freedom, makes us suffer and at last puts out our life. Yet bodies are but symbols of a concrete form of fear."

"But fear attaches to specifics, being false."

"Bodies attack, but minds do not." "This is the reason bodies easily become fear's symbols."

"The body is the target for attack, for no one thinks he hates a mind."

"When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death. Fear is insatiable, consuming everything its eyes behold; seeing itself in everything; compelled to turn upon itself and to destroy."

"Who sees a brother as a body sees him as fear's symbol. And he will attack because what he beholds is his own fear external to himself, poised to attack, and howling to unite with him again. Mistake not the intensity of rage projected fear must spawn. It shrieks in wrath, and claws the air in frantic hope it can reach to its maker and devour him."

Notice here that Jesus says that you CAN use meditation as a way to go ALL the way to atonement. Without a holy relationship. But that a holy relationship is perhaps "more efficient" because it provides a learning environment in which both can benefit quickly.

"Nor is a lifetime of contemplation, and long periods of meditation aimed at DETACHMENT from the body necessary. ***All such attempts will ultimately succeed***, because of their purpose. But the ***means*** are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them LOOK TO THE FUTURE for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy.

Your way will be different. ***NOT in purpose***, but in means. ***A HOLY RELATIONSHIP IS A MEANS*** OF SAVING TIME. One instant spent TOGETHER restores the universe to BOTH of you."

So a holy relationship is a way to SAVE TIME, compared to other pathways to God, but it is not the only way, or a required way. You can get there solely through meditation/contemplation as well. You can get there in a cave, or you can get there in a crowd. It doesn't matter.

PURPOSE is what's important. "because of their purpose" ..... if meditation is used for the PURPOSE of reaching God then it will succeed. If a special relationship is used for a PURPOSE of reaching God (ie a holy relationship) it will succeed. If the WORLD or the BODY are used for a purpose of reaching God, they will succeed.

It's always about the repurposing of what the ego made, which covers not just relationships but also the world and the body and perception and time and space and illusions. The whole thing is a MEANS for getting you home. And all such approaches CAN work.

A Holy Relationship can save time because it can be kind of a crash course, an intensive, a cooperative mirroring scenario in which two people are striving for the same purpose/intention, and so can help each other and support each other. That can work more effectively than "going it alone". But going it alone also can work.

Everyone's path is different and a holy relationship is not REQUIRED as such. But IF you are having relationships (special ones), converting them into holy relationships will be beneficial for achieving the goal. And they are nothing more than a MEANS to an end, not an end in themselves.

Jesus also talks about how some people realize the truth on their death bed, alone. Some realize it through many other paths. Some realize it through doing the lessons and the course. All of it is valid. Every repurposing of ANY aspect of the world is a way to go home. Any re-use or reinterpretation of ANY aspect of "life" here is a way to go home, because it moves you closer to true perception. Relationships with our brothers etc is just one part of that, one example of that.

It may be true that in the atonement plan, some individuals have chosen/agreed to meet due to having the potential for a holy relationship. And it may be that many "pairs" (or more) may come together in the final stages of awakening to wake up together. Which is a beautiful thing. But not an exclusive thing, or a mandated thing. Anyone, no matter their relationships, can always return to God.

The requirements for ascension is only your sole responsibility to accept atonement for yourself. How you GET THERE, is up to you. Whether through relationship transformations or teaching or writing or meditation or strange yogic practices or religion or whatever. Many will get there without ever running into the term "holy relationship" or having a clue what one is. The curriculums are individualized.

Using your relationships as a hotbed for awakening and practicing forgiveness is always a good thing. But ultimately forgiveness is the forgiveness of THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, not just select people, or objects, or pets, or certain bodies, etc. Your entire perspective on this realm has to be transformed. Your entire relationship to the planet, to the galaxy, has to change. Your relationship to time and space has to change. Your mind has to become whole and the entire world has to become "the forgiven world" to you. That is beyond the scope of just your relationships with other people, although they are INCLUDED in it.

Whatever way works for you, whatever is in your curriculum, whatever path you've chosen or lessons you've agreed to undertake, and whatever form that happens in, be it through your intimate relationships or strangers or not even involving other people at all, it's all good and it's all moving you closer to God. Because the only thing stopping you from going home is your willingness to do so. And nothing can hold you in the dream against your will. There is no requirement for entry to heaven other than to get your mind straightened out so that you can accept the Kingdom without reservation.

If you'll take a look, willingly, for a while, you'll notice that everything in the world goes wrong sooner or later.

The food goes moldy. The leaves die off. The cars break down. The tv stops working. The shoes develop a hole. The carpet gathers dirt. The river drowns someone. The volcanos explode. The lightning strikes a cow. Suns go supernova etc.

Do you notice a trend? If you look for long enough without denial?

Are you expecting these things not to happen?

What part of life is it that gets our hopes up that these things won't occur? Have we become clever at building an illusory sense of safety, a little oasis in the desert, a barricade against death?

Jesus says the main purpose of special relationships is to draw a little circle around a portion of hell to keep attack out and create an illusion of safety within. Why do we do that? Some kind of denial that the food is going to go moldy, the house windows are going to break, the trains are going to rust, the babies are going to die?

We find ourselves in this hellish world we made which, if you sit and look at it, you can see it "dying" all the time. If you take off the rose tinted glasses, the hopes and dreams, the wishful thinking, the defenses, the attempts to protect yourself from its onslaught, just sit and watch it. Everything dies here sooner or later.

That isn't pleasant. It's not pretty. It's built into the system.

We can be quite heavily in denial of this. In fact there's a whole lot of motivation and activity in the world geared towards brushing this fact under the carpet. The denial of it, while you go pursue successful careers and happy families and build your houses on ground that will, eventually, swallow them up.

I'm not trying to be morbid here, or negative. I'm not passing any judgement. Just look at it. This is what the world is like. Do we want to stay in denial of this? Do we want to keep pretending it's not how it is, and keep running away from death? Not that we should run towards it either, but we have to be willing to recognize what this world's nature is without flinching.

Jesus says "The world is false perception". He also says "without the idea of death there is no world." He also says "The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen." and "Only the body makes the world seem real."

What this tells you is that this world, which is always in a state of death and dying and decay, is fundamentally ONLY existing in a state of FALSE perception. And when you move toward true perception, opening the spiritual eye, and seeing with Christ Vision, you are looking using a non-body apparatus, a non-false apparatus, a true perception, which looks past this world entirely and looks to reality. And in that reality this world doesn't exist, because you can only see it when your mind is in error. Because it's an hallucination.

The world was made to be the opposite of life. It's a dream of death. It's not a dream of life. It sometimes appears to contain illusions of life, spring, birth, renewal, regeneration, growth and so on. But these are all illusions. Flowers all die in the end, that's a fact. There is no life form anywhere that lives forever. Everything is always transitioning from spurts of what appear to be life, towards death. That's what the world does. It's built in, fundamental to its nature.

Do you think you can make this world stop doing that? By all means you can override this behavior through miracles, because the power of the mind trumps false perception and can easily change illusions. But nevertheless the world will still keep dying, destroying, eating and consuming everything else. It denies even its own existence and is against itself. The world is suicidal. This whole universe is.

The ego has a massive effort to try to save the world. It's a farce. The effort is to suggest that a world which is fundamentally made of death can be made to live. That death can be avoided, even though all its efforts to avoid death attract it and make it real. The world only contains a seeming mixture and the living and dying because we introduced an "opposite to life" into our minds and now try to live in a contradictory world where both life and death happen. And now we've made both life and death into an illusion.

Even as you awaken towards true perception, people will still continue to experience body death and sickness. There will still be wars. In case you didn't notice, doing the workbook does not cause the workbook to disappear. Nor does it change much what's on the news. Pandemics have happened in the lifetime of ACIM students. Because they do, because they're part of this world's functioning. This world has a function of failure and that does not change.

The effort to make this world change or to turn it into a physical form appearance of heaven, is impossible. It's an attempt to spiritualize an illusion and turn a illusion into something real and sacred and worth keeping. If you could do that you'd be stuck in hell forever with no reason to go home. You can't make an equivalent as attractive as God's creation. As Jesus says:

"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. "

There are no roads, in hell, that lead out of hell. Darkness cannot become light while keeping the darkness. Ego cannot turn itself into holiness. Death cannot be alive. And non-existence cannot take on an existence. It's a closed system.

Life isn't here. Life is in heaven. If you want to be where life is, you go to where life is. You don't try to polish up a turd and turn it into something special. Your home and your natural environment are in the Kingdom with God, where you were designed to be. You cannot be comfortable in another world that's alien to you. This world is an alien world and the people on it are all aliens.

Can we let it be what it is, recognize its shortcoming, and turn away from it to the light, knowing that "this world holds nothing that I want"? Can we recognize its offerings of idols, pleasures, toys, temptations, treasures, as nothing but scraps of hell that we do not really want? And can we recognize as Jesus says that you CANNOT really WANT the world? Not really. It's fundamentally lacking.

We are to forgive the world, and shine a light of truth upon it, and recognize it for what it is WITHOUT the judgement that "sin is real" or "its really hell". But this merely lifts away from it any confusion about what it is. We then recognize it is simply false and nothing and not your home. A world of illusions. Not really sinful, not really anything. But not your home. You can love it, unconditionally, but you can't be in love with it if you want to be with God.

The world is dying. It was already dead when we made it.

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

Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You 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."

Heaven is possible. Earth is impossible. This is a simple enough fact. But maybe you don't realize just to what extent the things of Earth are impossible. For it is here in "this world" that things which CANNOT OCCUR in heaven, seem to occur constantly. Things which cannot be true, appear to be always true. Events which cannot occur, seem to occur. Impossible consequences seem easy to cause.

For example, nothing real can be threatened or die. In this world, however, it is easy to threaten anything and destroy it. This is in fact technically impossible. Nothing in heaven can die because it has immortality. So what is this seeming appearance that something can be easily attacked and destroyed? It's can't BE HAPPENING. Everything about it must be a lie. Right down to the very atoms that are forming the murder weapon, and the subatomic forces that are allowing the body to be damaged. IT CAN'T BE!

When you really look at it, it is shocking. Everything that SEEMS POSSIBLE in this world IS IMPOSSIBLE in reality. Destruction of any kind of not possible. Sin is not possible. Death is not possible. Attack is not possible. Sickness is not possible. Damage is not possible. Fear and guilt are not possible. Murder is not possible. Space and time are not possible. The laws of physics are not possible. Consumption and decay are not possible. Change is not possible. Just look around you, all the things which seem COMMON and ever-present and constantly proving their possibility here, CANNOT BE. This world can't be here.

If a body is attacked, and it lays on the ground in a pool of blood, with flesh wounds and damage, this is impossible. This is what we call the "proof of sin". So long as it is there AT ALL, in this form, it is testifying that SIN IS REAL. That attack DID happen with real consequences. And its evidence is easy for anyone to look upon, and not deny. For if the body is damaged and dying on the ground, something IMPOSSIBLE is happening.

Do you realize the extent of this? It means that this whole world and all its workings and EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS, all events, all causes and effects, all states of matter, all forms of growth and decay, everything in this universe, IS A LIE. It CANNOT happen in reality.

" it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere."

Two planets colliding and blowing each other up, utterly impossible. Bodies consuming each other, utterly impossible. Sickness and suffering and pain, COMPLETELY impossible. All that is required here is to be aware of God's truth. Look at what is true in God and his reality. And then COMPARE it to this world. And recognize they are NOT the same. In fact Earth opposes heaven completely and totally. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way."

Then you have to ask yourself, how can it be POSSIBLE, that this world is in ANY WAY like God or God's creation, given that it demonstrates things that are NOT POSSIBLE in God or to or for God? EITHER heaven's reality is true, OR this world is true. Either the Kingdom is real, or Earth is real. They CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. Either death can happen, or it cannot. And death is RAMPANT on this planet, so can this planet be true? Not it cannot.

"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world. "

When you understand what heaven is like, it becomes starkly obvious that this world comprises the EXACT OPPOSITE, and is constantly trying to demonstrate that what CANNOT HAPPEN is happening. That there is real pain and suffering and destruction. These things cannot even exist. If you are seeing them, you MUST be hallucinating a fantasy world. And no amount of forgiveness or changed perception will alter the fact that while bodies CAN still change and suffer and die, UNREALITY is there. Because the world you made is false.

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

"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."

"Pain is impossible. There is no grief with any cause at all and suffering of any kind is nothing but a dream."

"grief and pain must be impossible"

"That is why attack WITHIN the Kingdom is impossible."

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

"because the ego wishes for the impossible"

"In illusions the impossible is easily accomplished, but only at the cost of making illusions true."

"For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen."

"Sin is impossible, and on this fact forgiveness rests upon a certain base more solid than the shadow world we see."

"Harm is impossible for God's teachers."

"Gentleness means that fear is now impossible"

"Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible."

"It IS impossible to see your brother sinless, and yet to look upon him as a body."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible."

"HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS. It would indeed be impossible to BE in the world with this knowledge. For the mind that knows this unequivocally, knows also that it dwells in eternity, and utilizes no perception at all."

"It is impossible to conceive of light and darkness, or, everything and nothing, as joint possibilities."

"UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"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."

"Attack is neither safe nor dangerous. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE."

"which makes ALL fear impossible"

"Loss of ANY kind is impossible."

"Being faced with an impossible learning situation, REGARDLESS of why it is impossible, is the most depressing thing in the world."

"What is more difficult to grasp is the lack of order of magnitude, which stamps the miracle as something that MUST come from elsewhere, NOT from here. From the world's viewpoint, this is quite impossible."

"For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"terror is impossible"

"If the body could be sick Atonement would be impossible."

"But if destruction ITSELF is impossible, then ANYTHING that is destructible cannot be real."

"Actually, a meaningless world is impossible."

"Injury is impossible. And yet illusion makes illusion."

"Hear not its madness, and believe not the impossible is true. Forget not that the ego has DEDICATED the body to the goal of sin, and places in it ALL its faith that this can be accomplished."

"To God, unknowing is impossible. It is therefore not a point of view at all, but merely a belief in something that does not exist."

"Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven."

"Without illusions conflict is impossible."

"The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist."

"It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions."

"The sight of innocence makes punishment impossible, and justice sure."

"The impossible can happen ONLY in fantasy."

"War is impossible unless belief in VICTORY is cherished."

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"If you wish to be the author of reality, which is totally impossible anyway, then you will insist on holding on to judgment.

"rejection is impossible."

"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. " "He offered us all a final demonstration that it is impossible to kill God's Son; nor can his life in any way be changed by sin and evil, malice, fear or death."

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. "the special love relationship would thus ACCOMPLISH THE IMPOSSIBLE." "It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true."

"It is impossible that one can gain because another loses."

"Perception is impossible WITHOUT a belief in "more" and "less."

"Partial KNOWLEDGE is impossible."

"Where there is death is peace impossible."

"The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible."

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened."

"The learning situation in which you place yourself IS impossible, and IN this situation, you clearly require a special teacher, and a special curriculum."

"For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible, and there would be no hope except illusions."

"Impossible indeed; but every mind which looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone. But never in One God."

"How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. "

"And sin MUST be impossible"

"In this world, it is impossible to create."