The Son of God is causal and creative.

The Son of God paints brand new pictures on a blank canvas.

The Son of God does not paint pictures on top of old pictures.

The Son of God does not ask old pictures to comply in getting out of the way so that He can paint new pictures.

The Son of God doesn't wait for old pictures to listen to His powerful brush-strokes and to then decide on their own to form a new picture.

The Son of God knows that there really are no old pictures and there really only ever is a blank canvas.

The Son of God directly paints to the blank canvas every time, bypassing all old images, ignoring their stories.

The Son of God enforces the paint to be laid on the canvas, and needs no cooperation from whatever was there before.

The Son of God doesn't listen to the pictures that are before Him, he simply paints anew, obliterating the old.

The Son of God is not obstructed. There is nothing standing in His way.

The Son of God has no enemy or opponent or force of resistance working against Himself, because He has reclaimed all of His own power.

The Son of God knows that any force of resistance was always His own power working in conflict with His own will.

The Son of God dances merrily, painting here and there new realities and new worlds, care-free and absolutely.

The Son of God is free.

You are the Son of God. Pick up your brushes and paint!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The line about miracles not being spectacles comes from miracle principle #10 or #11 depending on where you look.

The full context is this:

"10. The use of miracles as spectacles to INDUCE belief is wrong; or, better, is a misunderstanding of their purpose. They are really used FOR and BY believers."

or

"10. A miracle is a reversal of the physical order because it brings more love to the giver and the receiver.

(A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle.)

11. The use of miracles as a spectacle to induce belief is wrong. They are really used for and by believers."

So really Jesus is talking about the fact that receipt of a miracle requires belief to be present in the person who is receiving the miracle. Jesus is teaching about how the recipient has to want and be ready to accept a miracle without fear, otherwise they cannot be healed. "The fearful are not healed and cannot heal".

So if we are using a miracle to try to "cause" someone to believe, this isn't really going to work and the miracle isn't going to work, because the person has to believe in some way in the first place, already. Without a willingness to receive and accept it, the giver can't give it.

This is really the only way in which Jesus cautioned against spectacles. The focus isn't even on the miracles being spectacular. Whole topic of the miracle principle is talking about how both giver and receiver have to have belief, and so trying to make the miracle "produce" belief by like "putting on a show", misunderstands what miracles ARE and how they work. Which means that IT IS NOT POSSIBLE to use miracles as spectacles. They DO NOT WORK when the person doesn't believe already ie has a willingness to claim the miracle for themselves.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with telling you not to perform miracles, or for your miracles to not be spectacular, or for them to be hemmed in by size or scale or intensity or effects, or to be limited in any way, or for one to be more difficult or to fit into the hierarchy of illusions in a different way.

He is merely telling us that the way miracles WORK entails cooperation, not coercion. And that is all.

He also comments "A miracle is misunderstood when it is regarded as a spectacle." - in other words, it is only when a miracle is REGARDED AS a spectacle, that it is being MISUNDERSTOOD. Which means, referring to miracles AS SPECTACLES IS A MISUNDERSTANDING. It does not mean miracles aren't spectacular or big or literally moving mountains, it means they are being INTERPRETED incorrectly. This interpretation is once-removed from the miracle itself, and it is the interpretation of "spectacle" that is BLIND to the fact that both parties must have been consenting.

Go tell Moses to stop parting the red sea. He wasn't doing it to show off.

God is omnipresent. What this means is, the entirety of His being is fully present in every part of His being.

If you could conceive of God as taking up "space", then this means that in one particular location, the WHOLE entirety of God is fully present. And yet, simultaneously, in another location, the WHOLE entirety of God is present. This should give you a sense of how God is SHARING or is "stretched out" between these two locations, as though he completely DEFIES all sense of spatial limitations.

And when God is fully and completely present in one location, this does not detract from His presence in another location. He is able to be everywhere simultaneously and fully. This UTTERLY defies the entire ego's way of thinking and its world of separation, in which nothing can share with anything, an object cannot be in two places at once, and everything shows you a picture of there being some things in one place that are not in another.

For God to be able to be fully in multiple locations at once, defies absolutely all ego laws. God simply is UTTERLY UNLIMITED by any concept or law or structural or spatial construct. Jesus says that ALL of Him is in EVERY PART, fully and equally. And this is why every PART has been expressed as a SOUL, which is an entire WHOLE within itself because God expresses His wholeness in every part of Himself and creates WHOLE BEINGS.

The closest I can come to conceiving of God's nature is some kind of absolutely massive network of connections that share every part of Himself everywhere. Every part of God is EVERYWHERE. In God there IS no space or time. He is instantaneous omni-present and fully present in every speck of existence.

Similarly, God utterly transcends absolutely every limitation or difficulty or restriction or space-time concept that you can ever come up with. He quite literally, is INFINITE and UNLIMITED in every way. This is absolutely ego defying. Totally law-breaking and COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to this world.

This world was made as an attempt to shut out God by presenting a picture of what God is NOT LIKE, a world where nothing is shared, nothing is in multiple locations, there is no omnipresence, every location lacks something or has compromised with others, there is severe finite limitation placed on everything etc. This is totally unlike God.

In our development of trust, we ARE to learn to start TRUSTING and putting FAITH IN God's totally unlimited nature, in defiance of this world's totally LIMITING framework. We are to learn to OVERLOOK the limitations of matter and form, to NOT BELIEVE the sight of form, because "nothing is so blinding as sight of form". Form literally was made by the ego to create an artificial, unnatural "nature" that operates and looks NOTHING like God's nature. We have to learn to NOT BELIEVE IT, look past it, and recognize the sheer POSSIBILITY AND FREEDOM present in God.

This freedom breaks absolutely every law of this universe, because this entire universe is in OPPOSITION to God's nature. And so God's nature completely DEFIES every conceivable limitation. That means we have to learn, literally, to put our FAITH and trust in a God who can DO ANYTHING, a God who IGNORES orders of difficulty, a God who is completely FREE of all limitations and problems, and a God for whom NOTHING is impossible.

That means shifting our allegiance away from the ego, not just in our mind and perception but also in terms of what we think we are "stuck with" or what is "assumed" or "cannot be changed" or " is a given" in this world, including the so-called inevitability and irreversability of death, which is nothing more than one more ego statement that "This has the power to prevent God's will, and kill His Son, and He can do nothing about it." That is the ego's motto, and we've fallen for it.

Now it is time for a new thought system. A new way of looking at the world, and a new POWER to place our trust in. This is the foundation of all MIRACLE WORKING, which IS SUPERNATURAL, which defies and breaks all ego laws and proves that NOTHING CAN RESIST GOD'S POWER, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, and therefore show that this world is EASILY changed because it is merely an illusion.

If we are to be miracle workers, we can't be sitting on a fence looking happily upon a dying world. Our task is to demonstrate that to God anything is possible, and therefore that is NOTHING that cannot be healed or reversed, and even death - the consequences of sin, all torment and sickness and disaster and world-wide or even universe-wide problems CAN be reversed. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do", not even the most radically extraordinary things you could ever imagine being possible.

The limitations of this world are a total lie. We are to demonstrate this fact by performing miracles which place total faith in GOD'S COMPLETELY UNLIMITED NATURE. If we trust that HE CAN DO ANYTHING, then we too can do anything in cooperation with His Will.

"I could not atone for MYSELF ALONE. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show YOUR BROTHER anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. NO MIND (implying there are many) holds anything but Him (therefore he created many minds)."

"Miracles make MINDS one in God. They depend on cooperation because the SONSHIP is the SUM OF ALL THAT GOD CREATED. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"God speaks for you in answering your question with these words: I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and ALL THE MINDS WHICH GOD CREATED ONE WITH ME"

"ONE CHILD OF GOD (implying there are many) is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach ANOTHER (there are many!). One Teacher is in ALL YOUR MINDS, and He teaches the same lesson TO ALL. He always teaches you (one such mind) the inestimable worth of EVERY SON OF GOD, teaching it with infinite patience born of the infinite love for which he speaks."

"The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return which God blessed THE MINDS OF HIS SEPARATED SONS. This is the vocation of the mind."

"Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this INTO THE MINDS WHICH YOU CREATED AND WHICH YOU LOVE. Amen."

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I don't know about you guys-n-gals but it sounds to me very clearly that there are MULTIPLE SONS and MULTIPLE MINDS. And that the presence of multiple minds is completely natural and normal because God CREATED THEM. Therefore EACH ONE has its "own mind". Each mind may well be "one" or in harmony with other minds, but there are still many minds, and each still has its own potential to choose whether to do God's will or not.

This is why some parts of the Course refer on ONE LEVEL to the ONE SON OF GOD, and on another level to the MANY INDIVIDUAL SONS (or souls).

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References to BROTHERS who are one with God:

"You are afraid of God because you fear your BROTHER. This BROTHER who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger."

"Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only BROTHER to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a BROTHER he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."

"To know your BROTHER is to know God."

"Miracles unite you directly with your BROTHER."

"One moment of real recognition makes everyone your BROTHER."

"Any BROTHER with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate."

"Don't deny yourself the message of relief that every BROTHER offers you now."

"It is not up to you to change your BROTHER, but merely to accept him as he is."

"In your BROTHER is the light. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you."

"The miracle enables you to see your BROTHER without his past, and so perceive him as born again."

"Your BROTHER does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for the miracle to occur."

"What you acknowledge in your BROTHER you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen."

"The miracle acknowledges everyone as your BROTHER and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God."

"Because the miracle worker has heard God's Voice, he strengthens It in a sick BROTHER by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share." (again confirmation that your brother can refuse healing even if you are healed)

"Where there is love, your BROTHER must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are." (similarly again, you give love to those who lack it)

"How willing are you to forgive your BROTHER? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form."

"Trials are but lessons you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one. In every difficulty Christ calls to you and gently says, My BROTHER, choose again."

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your BROTHER when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. There are no strangers in God's creation."

"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 the will of God."

"Not one does Christ forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you. But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his BROTHER is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come."

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It seems to me what the One Son of God, as Christ, is considered a BROTHER to the MANY SONS, who were also created (souls?) as extensions of him/god, ... and that at times the course refers to them on an equal footing because they are made of God-stuff equally, even though Christ appears to be a "larger" identity than the individual sons. But Christ+the individual sons make up "the sonship". So the sonship is not just the individual sons, it also includes the one son, and all are considered equal brothers in that sonship.

For many, ACIM is about self help and doing the lessons and trying to get back to a simplified idea of God/reality. But the scenario of what is happening in this world, why we're here, and what we're returning to, is part of a big picture "story" that I don't really see talked about a whole lot. At least not in fully encompassing terms.

Basically we existed as eternal beings in heaven, God's sons, and he had also created the angels etc... and everything was groovy, and then this separation thing happened, there was "war in heaven", a split, and the descent into "hell" through the making of hierarchies of illusions, levels, dimensions, worlds etc... and we ended up with this physical universe.

And now God has created the Holy Spirit and is sending his angels to guide and support and educate us, to help us to come back home to our heavenly home. Which means... drumroll.. this entire world is like a DEVICE which heaven is using as a mechanism for bringing home all of the lost souls who attempted to war against God. And the whole purpose of this world is for the lessons and learning - the curriculum, which has been set up by God, by which we might learn the truth and return willingly to cooperation with God's will, freely.

When people for example have near-death experiences they go and encounter these situations, where they are having life reviews and meeting with God and talking to spiritual beings and all this stuff, and then being sent back and "its not your time" and so on... script to be fulfilled, lessons to learn etc.... and so you get this overall picture that this world is not just some random world that we're trying to wake up from, and we're not just trying to wake up to an nice sanitary idea of "reality" or "oneness" or "non-duality".

There's way more to this story. And there's an entire foundation for "the fall of man" and how we got into this mess, and realizing that this world IS the mess we made of reality, and how we now need to clean up the mess and go home. And that means that despite all the theories that various people have, despite all the religious beliefs, despite all the concepts of why we are here, the scientific models, bla bla bla, agnostics, atheists, whatever, basically underneath everything it's TRUE that we all descended from heaven, fell in the "tiny mad idea" which really was a huge monstrous idea, are now having go through a special curriculum for salvation, and eventually will be ready to return to God's Kingdom.

So all this sort of Christian-religious stuff about heaven, making hell, believing in sin, suffering, death, illusions, trying to be separate from God, authority problem trying to oppose his will, angels helping us, there being scripts and curriculums, life lessons that are orchestrated before birth, all this stuff, it's all actually quite correct. It's all part of this huge PLAN, the atonement plan. And all because of what went on in heaven, the fall of man, the descent into hell, and the subsequent need for the atonement to correct us and restore us to awareness of love's presence.

But I think we get really out of touch with this a lot in the course community, drifting off into these intellectual models of what the course is about, vague ideas of oneness/reality, somewhat clinical God-less models, and a whole bunch of skepticism about anything not "explicitly" mentioned in the course text. We get rather narrow and start to see things through a kind of "ACIM filter", through which we filter OUT stuff that doesn't seem like it's mentioned in course lingo etc. But if you look all this stuff is in there. It lines up quite significantly with what the bible says albeit that a lot of the bible stuff is somewhat distorted. But it has the basics down.

We are part of a giant classroom, in which the atonement plan/curriculum is playing out. And this is precisely the same atonement plan that is to do with our incarnations, our themes and scripts for our lives, our lessons that we agree to, the mighty companions and angels that help us, spirit guides, the astral plane and other dimensions, and the fact that no matter what anyone in the world believes they are ALL part of this same scenario. We're all in the boat of "wanted to be separate from God" and "made worlds to live in apart form God" and are all in various ways trying to find our way back because that's what God wants.

For some it's more accepted than others. For others they don't even think any of this is true, and fixate on various other explanations for why we exist. For many ACIM is just some nice little tiny behind-closed-doors self-study "course" with very little to do with this huge big story of how we got here.

But we can't change the facts. We're living the curriculum that God established to correct the separation. This world isn't just some scientific experiment. It's not some virtual reality. It's not just a random chaotic environment. It's a school - repurposed from the hell we made, designed to lead *everyone* of *every kind* of civilization back towards the reality of heaven, our true home. There's no way to avoid this fact. We can deny it and believe other things but this is the underlying "framework" that encapsulates this whole world.

God is using this world as a device to bring us back to God. The whole thing. It's one giant school for learning, to lead us back to awareness of love - back to God, back to the Kingdom that we fell from - where we are safe in God, dreaming of exile. This world is the exile. Going home to God is the goal for everyone, regardless of how much they accept it or are aware of it. This is why Jesus calls it "the universal curriculum". Everyone is part of the plan. There are no exceptions. Even people not "doing ACIM". Even the atheists and scientists. Everyone is part of this. "The great awakening".

You have made a secret agreement with all your victimizers and attackers.

1) Their half of the bargain entails they must appear to be responsible for all the guilt you do not want to own in yourself, which you thought was true of you. They must carry the burden of it and be condemned by it, by you. You get to blame it all on them and to displace it away from yourself, rendering you seemingly innocent and them guilty. You get to claim they are the cause of all problems and that you did nothing at all.

2) Your half of the bargain entails you must allow them to attack and victimize you, in direct relation to how much guilt they are carrying for you. The more guilt you put onto them, the more you will experience them as an enemy, and the more you hate them the more they will hate you. You give them a permit to punish you, in exchange for their service.

3) You will suffer because of them, and you will not want it, and you will be terrified of it, and you will create tremendous drama about how you did not ask for it due to your newfound 'innocence', BUT deep down you KNOW that you gave them every permission to do this to you, and as such you AGREE with it (oh the horror!).

4) You secretly PREFER that they victimize you compared to having to carry the responsibility of the GUILT that was yours to begin with. You think its a bargain, because you experience yourself as 'innocent' while experiencing them as 'guilty'. It's just unfortunate that, in this innocence, you also MUST be an 'innocent victim'. That is the price you have to pay.

This whole agreement is set up to defend you against your own guilt. You hire everyone who provides this service for you and does this to you, and you are grateful that it creates an illusion of innocence for you. You would rather tolerate this than to actually obtain REAL innocence, which you DO NOT BELIEVE IN, because you DO believe it is true that you are sinful and guilty and deserve to die.

Nothing heavy.

You do, however, have a clause in the contract. You are permitted to break the agreement. However, breaking the agreement has TERMS. The terms are:

1) You must take back the guilt that you projected onto them and find them innocent. You must stop blaming them or scapegoating them or accusing them in ANY way of being the cause of ANYTHING you are experiencing.

2) You must ADMIT that you were the one who wanted this agreement, you are the one who agreed to it, and you were the one who ACCEPTED the consequences, even if you did not like how it felt.

3) You must be willing to take back all of the guilt, which undoes your own perception of yourself as innocent (and that alone is terrifying), and which places responsibility for ALL of it back in your own lap. You may not want this. And if you stay in this perception for long you will suffer. That suffering is why you wanted to make the agreement in the first place.

4) You must admit that you were only ever a WILLING victim, a willing participant, that you wanted every single attack, and were willing to LAY DOWN AND DIE if it would mean you are seen as innocent again. Nobody dies without their own consent.

5) You must admit that, now, because these people are NO LONGER in the contract with you, that they are wholly innocent, and this means they ARE NOT victimizing you and you HAVE NOT BEEN victimized by them. All blame for any past experiences must be lifted from them and you must be willing to see them as forgiven. You MUST also be willing to THANK them for their cooperation, service, perfect role-play, and for carrying out your contract to perfection, recognizing they did ONLY what you wanted them to and they did it well.

Having taken full responsibility for arranging this agreement, you are holding the guilt, but you have an exit option. The option states you are permitted to either re-enter the victimhood agreement with more people, and continue seeking for artificial innocence, OR, you can seek for real innocence, by appealing to an AUTHORITY ON TRUTH, such as the Holy Spirit. You have to be willing to go before Him, take your guilt with you, expose it TO Him, allow Him to be aware of all of it WITH you, look upon it from HIS perspective (in the light), and be willing to be SHOWN the truth about it. You must agree to accept His verdict, whether it is that you are innocent or guilty (and btw it will always be that you are truly innocent).

If you take the exit option, you must be willing to surrender the guilt that you placed on yourself and own up to the deeper truth that you are TRULY INNOCENT, HAVE DONE THING WRONG, and you must accept God's love again. Too much to ask? Choose again? You could always choose to be a victim some more.