Have you done this? I know I have done it many times: "Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real?"

Something happens, typically something related to a body - something physical which the body reports as happening. Then I observe it and judge - THIS IS REAL - something's happening, something's going wrong.

Then there is a whole cascade of reactions, starting with immediate fear. There are defenses, attempts to escape, attempts to find cures, attempts to explain the causes. All attempts are me trying to defend against the "reality" of the problem, which, because it IS real to me, cannot BE escaped.

And always no matter what I do, what I think, how I approach it, there is still the fear response to something that seems unchangeable, fixed, stuck, irreversible, and deadly.

This is always because at the "core", I've given REALITY to something that the body showed me. I've decided this is real, and have interpreted it as totally real. By making it real, I locked it in place, turned it into an inescapable sin, gave it permanence, and set it up as the truth.

Now it cannot be questioned, undone, changed, healed, or corrected. Knowing this produces inevitable unresolvable fear. If it is real, there is nothing I can do about it. And this always leads to a feeling of powerlessness, hopelessness, weakness, incapability, inadequacy and shame. As if the thing is just dangling there in front of my face taunting me and haunting me with its threats of inevitable suffering.

"NOT because it has the power to hurt, but just because YOU have denied it is but an illusion, AND MADE IT REAL."

"Its plan is to have you SEE ERROR CLEARLY FIRST, and THEN overlook it. But how CAN you overlook what you have made real? By seeing it clearly, you HAVE made it real, and CANNOT overlook it."

All of this begins the moment that I look at something and decide for myself, "this is real". This one act of reading reality into it, taking it seriously, forgetting to laugh, focusing on it like it's literally right there in front of my face as proof that it exists, is enough to cement it into my mind. As soon as it is locked in, nothing whatsoever can dislodge it and it looms over me like a constant threat.

The ego has counseled that I need to look clearly and closely at what is an error - an illusion of something going wrong - as if it is real, and examine it, and figure out what it is, and analyze it, and describe it, and find the cause of it. And that only by looking intensely at it as a real problem can I possibly find a solution to it. But this does not work because all it does it holds the problem in place.

The ONLY thing which can truly uproot and solve the problem, is the recognition that I am the one who decided it was real in the first place. I bought into the illusion. I fell for the temptation. I forgot to laugh at it. I thought it was serious. I gave it meaning. I decided what it was and why it meant. And only by this decision, based on inputs from the body senses, did I convince myself "this is really happening, holy shit, there is no escaping it."

I must then reverse this belief, this core key moment, realizing that since I gave it this reality, I can withdraw this power from it also. And I must do this is if I want to experience atonement and freedom.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

It means I have given my power away to an illusory world, have set it up to have power over me, and now I see it as causing me. And now I am starting to experience the consequences and effects that it implies. And only by taking its power away can I free myself from my self-made imprisonment.

This problem has no power, it is not real, it is not happening, it is not true, it does not exist, it is not there, it is already gone, it never happened, it is an illusion and is nothing.

And then I can laugh and be free from the clutches of this tiny anchoring black-hole of despair and deception. It is truly nothing and I has no power over me.

Ok so, some people think it's not that big of a deal whether you think ACIM is non-duality or not. But it can have significant mental health effects which are no joke.

Let's remember that ACIM is a course in mind training, it is affecting and uprooting your whole belief system and bringing into question all your values. It's making you think about who and what you are, your identity, you relationship to others and the world. If you're going to undertake this course it's going to seriously threaten your sense of self and your worldview and everything you believe. This is THERAPY, and you're messing with your MIND here.

If you believe for example the non-dual lie that "there is no one out there", you become sociopathic. You stop caring about people, you start treating people like they don't matter or don't exist, and you stop respecting people's free will. You become apathetic and depressed and lonely. That is not good.

If you believe that no-one really has a self and your self does not exist, you will enter self denial and self destruction. You'll reason that it's the ego false self that doesn't want to be undone, but this far too often gets lumped in with not having any kind of a self at all. The son of God gets thrown under the bus. This produces self repression and depression.

When you also believe that there are no others or no real brothers or no permanent individuals, it radically affects how you relate to "people". You stop respecting people's free will because apparently they don't have any. Your sense of relationships breaks down. The people in your family that you love are all suddenly regarded as mindless illusory robots. None of this is good for your mental health.

Believing that you are one with everyone and there is only one of you here, that you are everyone, also can lead to massive guilt. You will start taking on responsible for everything that's happening in the world as though you are the one who is choosing it and making it happen. And now you have to carry the burden of everyone else's suffering, which can produce massive guilt.

There is merit to opening up to oneness but not at the expense of the self. Jesus refers to a massive expansion of the self (e.g. in the holy instant) - an expansion, not an annihilation. When oneness is taken too far to mean "you don't exist at all" or "you were never created', we're now into the authority problem. We're denying God's fatherhood, we're rejecting being his creation, we're denying that anyone else was ever created, and we're basically attacking the sonship. None of that is healthy for the mind.

People will claim it's not a big deal what you believe, but if you believe something that is so against the truth and start following that and living like it and behaving based on it, your entire relationship to the world and other people is going to change. And not for the better. If you're believing that ACIM is telling you you don't exist, other people don't exist, you were never created, there is no holy spirit, jesus is a metaphor, and other such nonsense, and you're believing it, you're going to be far WORSE off.

Can you imagine how distorted your mind will become when you start trying to regard all of the other people in the world as 100% fake? That they don't even have real minds or spirit or anything beyond the body? It's as bad as the belief that God made the world of illusions. It's going to send your mind down a totally wrong path towards even more ego, under the guise of trying to reduce the ego. It's going to split the mind further and make your mental health even worse.

I've had more than one person come to me in a state of feeling like near suicide because of gross misunderstandings about the course. One person was using our oneness as justification for why everyone's suffering was all her fault and felt horrendously guilty and paralysed. Another saw that the death of their partner was somehow a part of the non-duality teaching and was having horrible grief that they couldn't reconcile and so began to blame God for making the partner go away, harming their relationship with God and their own self.

Many quite serious and quite harmful things can come about if you get your facts misaligned and start following a belief system that is fundamentally flawed. There are people doing this course who for example develop physical sicknesses as defences against the truth. Just as it describes in the book. We're not just playing with ideas here. This isn't about discussing and debating on facebook. People's actual lives and minds are being distorted and damaged and made to be more insane by incorrect beliefs about what it's teaching. Some people are quite seriously lost and distraught and feeling awful because of the non-duality lie.

I know I was. I bought into it and believed it. I believed, just as some prominent ACIM teachers taught, that I didn't really have a self and other people didn't really exist. All in the name of being more 'oneness'. And I felt depressed by this. And I was told that this was just the ego not wanting to be found to be non-existent. An attempt to justify it. But when I finally realised this is NOT what ACIM is teaching, I felt such incredible relief that I cried with joy at realising that I actually AM a child of God, permanently. And I never looked back.

We need to stop perpetuating bullshit lies about A Course in Miracles. It is not just a matter of being right or debating or having heated discussions or following what people think it means. It's having significant affects on people that believe and follow these models of reality. It's not helping anyone to tell them that they don't exist and that everyone they love doesn't exist and no-one is out there and there's no basis for miracles and no reason to help anyone and all you gotta do is selfishly accept atonement and get out of here.

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." W181

"In the holy instant, God is remembered, and the language of communication with ALL your brothers, is remembered WITH Him. " UrT15G8

"YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE." UrT7E2

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." UrT10B3

There was a situation in which something went wrong, but there wasn't any evidence whatsoever that the person involved caused it to happen. It seemed like there was no way they could've caused it. I noticed that as a result, I did not and could not project guilt onto that person. If I could find no grounds for believing that they were guilty somehow, I couldn't turn them into a scapegoat. I did not get angry at them at all.

I found that interesting, because it's not just that we automatically scapegoat someone when we perceive that they are the cause of a problem, we also DON'T scapegoat them when the "proof of sin" is missing.

Our ego reactions to stuff and whether or not we USE it for projection of guilt, seems to depend very much on what we perceive as happening and the fact that we BELIEVE what we see.

If there is evidence, externally, in terms of form, or bodies, or objects, or anything tangible that we can put our finger on, the ego can and will jump in and USE it for projection. It's almost like a trigger. The presence of this "sinful thing" in the environment is picked up on by the senses and the ego and it automatically reacts to it with an attack. BUT, if the stimuli is not there, it DOESN'T tend to do this.

This reveals just how much we can be so totally dependent upon what we're perceiving as "existing" or "happening" in the world. How much we're allowing the world and its states to DICTATE whether or not we are AFFECTED. That we can only seem to HAVE certain reactions when the world PRODUCES certain scenarios. And when it doesn't we don't seem to have these reactions.

Isn't it weird then that we not only get triggered and pushed into ego reactions when the external world SAYS WE SHOULD, we also fail to have any reaction at all when the world SAYS WE SHOULDN'T.

Solely because I could find no evidence "in the world" as to a certain person being the cause of sin, and was DEPENDING ON the world and LISTENING TO IT, therefore, I could not seem to get myself to be angry at them. There was nothing to latch onto. There was nothing to use. This doesn't mean, however, that I don't have an ego, or that my ego wouldn't scapegoat at the next opportunity. It's just that we seem to WAIT FOR the world to fuck up before we have a reaction to it, instead of being proactive.

This reveals how much we're at the EFFECT of the world, allowing it to tell us WHEN we should be upset, and WHEN we should be happy. It presents lulls in the storm and breaks in the conflict, during which we seem to NOT have reactions. Why don't we have reactions all the time? Why don't we constantly launch into massive fear responses? Because the hierarchy of illusions tells us it's NOT A BAD SITUATION. Just as much as the same hierarchy then goes on to tell us that such-and-such a situation IS worth being upset about and is very serious.

If for example a situation arises where something in the world seems terrible wrong, I WILL much more likely have a reaction. It may even induce a panic. And this reaction will be in proportion to the sense of severity or seriousness or importance or value of the problem. Bigger problems elicit a LOT more fear. Smaller problems elicit a lot LESS. The seeming LACK of problems produces an illusion of peace, in which I seem to think everything is going well. Until the next calamity, which the world certainly has in store in endless supply.

How do we get off this rollercoaster ride of always having reactions to the ups and downs of the world? Why CAN'T I scapegoat when there is no reason to, just as much as when there's a juicy opportunity to pounce on? Why when someone has clearly done nothing at all is it so hard to project guilt? And why when they seem to have done something awful is it so easy? Why do we RELY ON the world to INFORM US of what is true?

Recently quite a "serious thing" happened and I had a strong visceral reaction. In fact I pretty much went into an anxiety attack. This came out of nowhere, but it was in relation to "how serious" I thought the situation was. I bought into the hierarchy of illusions and had the appropriate amount of drama about it. Right on cue, just as the world says I should, and entirely reflective of what I believed to be the importance of the situation. It seemed unavoidable. It seemed AUTOMATIC and mindless. And there seemed to be nothing I could do to stop it once I'd bought into it.

But somehow there has to be a way to live that isn't DRIVEN by the world and its images, BASED ON its illusions and its forms, its happenings and its dangers. It has to be possible somehow to NOT BUY INTO the heirarchy and to not USE the world as a FORM OF TRUSTED PROOF about anything. Just because the world or the ego or the body says "this is really serious you should be very concerned", we have to find a way to NOT be "appropriately concerned". To not GET our truth FROM the world.

How about laughing at it instead? How about laughing in the face of death, or laughing when someone is hurt, or laughing when people are crying their eyes out? Like... how can we disconnect from the automatic chain-reaction of "world says you should feel this now"? Or rather, that my belief about what it MEANS and my judgement of what it IS, BASED ON ITS FORM, dictates what I believe is true and the consequences that will come from it.

It's me who has apparently decided what everything means, including good stuff, and including bad stuff. And all of these meanings should apparently be WRONG, ie a mistake. Because if there is really NO order of difficulty in miracles and the hierarchy of illusions is actually FLAT AND EQUAL, then it should make NO difference whatsoever what happens, it should not have ANY effect to change who I am or what I experience. Unless I am TRUSTING MY SENSES and basing my TRUTH on the world's current STATE.

That's where the real challenge comes in. Because now we're talking about practically IGNORING how situations look, IGNORING appearances, IGNORING meanings that I make up, IGNORING what the world would say is a very good or bad situation, IGNORING the body, IGNORING sickness, IGNORING terrible difficult tragic threatening dangers, and somehow transcending them so that peace and happiness become a CONSTANT. And getting my truth from ANOTHER WORLD.

How to get off the rollercoaster of death, that's the big question. How to not be affected by the world. How to not USE OR ALLOW the world or any events or happenings to influence me in ANY WAY, and to operate solely in a proactively DELIBERATE manner. How to be free of suffering forever, and how to never forget to laugh at the illusion of hell ever again. Nor GIVE MY POWER AWAY TO IT or allow it to have the power to TELL ME what I should be feeling.

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"The illusion of orders of difficulty is an obstacle the teacher of God must learn to pass by and leave behind."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"I will exist forever" is the antidote to fear.

If you question the fact that you have eternal life, and start to believe that you might come to an "end", that will induce fear. It's always the fear that your existence is under threat somehow.

All fears that seem to be caused by the world, such as someone threatening, or bad weather, or people driving badly, or threats of wars or whatever, it's all just more forms of the same idea. The idea that you might not be immortal and might not always exist, and that these things might have the power to end your life.

At first it might seem like fear is the effect or result of a belief that there is a power or cause outside of yourself threatening you. But actually it's a bit more subtle. It's not just a matter of them threatening you, because that could go one of two ways - you could go into fear or into laughter depending on whether you buy into it.

So it's not the fact that there are "threats" or "dangers" or whatever, it's a question of whether you yourself believe that you CAN BE in danger or BE threatened. And that always comes down to your personal responsibility of choosing whether to undermine your invulnerability or not.

The fact is that God gave you eternal life in your creation and you will never ever stop existing. This is a simple fact. It brings with it a sense of continuation, of extension. And that extension is love. And this is why love is the opposite of fear, and why love makes you feel safe.

If you will extend (love) forever then you are obviously safe because your extension has no end. If you withhold love you are holding back on your extension, thus holding back on the extension of your existence, which brings into question whether you will keep existing or not, which induces a feeling of fear or the believe that love is coming to an end.

Essentially this means that if you do not love, you will feel afraid, because you will feel like you're going to stop existing. And when you love, you will feel like you are invulnerable and will live forever. That's how it works. Extend love and you live forever. Stop extending love and you end your life, in fear, producing sickness and death.

Your never-ending existence is experienced as the extension of love. Ideas of endings are experienced as fear and death.

"Nothing real can be threatened."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

"You are immortal and you cannot die".

"The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

For a long time I have focused on "the secret of salvation". This is to do with realizing that you are the cause of everything you are experiencing. And therefore that you are responsible for all your own suffering. On the one hand it's humbling and on the other hand it's empowering, because if you can realize you're the one doing it you have the freedom to stop.

But l notice now that the secret of "how to be saved" applies in the case where you are not yet saved. It's helpful when you are in the suffering and need to get out of it. That's kind of the context of it, it's a tool you can use to recognize who is doing what to whom, so that you can stop doing it.

I have noticed also that with the secret of salvation, we are focusing a lot on taking responsibility. Which initially is seen as inciting guilt, and then moves into trying to be fully responsible for everything. But the further secret is, that if we try to take full responsibility ALONE, where "separate me" is fully responsible for everything, then we are still generating fearful outlooks, because depending on ourselves alone is a state of rejecting God.

So I've been locked into a stage for a while of trying to be fully responsible, but trying to take that responsibility in isolation, rather than GIVE that responsibility to the Holy Spirit. I feel that I personally am somewhat moving beyond this stage now and into more of the "I am saved" stage. By which I mean, I have recognized that it is my attempts to do anything "alone" that is the source of all suffering, because that's how I "be separate". And "I" can't be fully responsible without sharing that responsibility with God.

Whenever I try to be separate, I essentially am attacking myself, which makes errors, produces more ego fear, and induces suffering. This all comes about after I have judged and given meaning to things, using my own faculties for judging. Which means really, using my own past learning. This always leads to errors because it's lacking a lot of facts. And I keep being shown now just how wrong I can be when I don't know all the details.

So I'm now finding that if I admit to not knowing what anything means, and am willing to stop trying to judge anything I see, and instead seek out the Holy Spirit to join in his vision or interpretation, then this circumvents the whole process of going into error. Or rather, I guess I'm saying that if I seek the state of forgiveness sooner, then I don't go into judgement, and thus don't hurt myself. Which reminds me of this...

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. "

This is what I am atuning to now. Trying to become closer to the Holy Spirit and more identified with my real self, so that I do not go INTO judgement or MAKE errors. Because as soon as you make errors, you'll start believing you've got a whole mess on your hands that you need to fix, problems to solve, fears to address and self-inflicted suffering to be undone. ALL of that can be avoided if you don't make the errors in the first place!

It's far more effective at preventing a movement INTO fear, when I try to remain OUT of the battlefield. Being willing to not be the one to judge, or decide, or plan, or figure out, or deduce meaning, I stay well out of the entire "fight" that we have with the world. If I don't do this and I go into solo-mode, ego pilot mode, then I start to "make a world" that's riddled with separations and conflicts and unresolved problems and threats and dangers.

I have been finding of late therefore that I actually feel... and this is a word Jesus just threw in my mind.... INSULATED.... against dangers. That is to say, I feel like there was an entire version of "the world" which I thought was out there, which has been scraped off the surface of my mind and isn't there anymore. An entire layer of experience and suffering and a sense of threat and engagement and littleness and fear. It's just gone. It's like I have stepped out of an entire world and it has disappeared. At least to a degree, and now I look upon what's left through much calmer and less aggravated perspectives.

I see now therefore what Jesus means about how false perception makes you see a world that looks like hell, and how as you move into more abstract states of mind you lift off of the world entire layers of vulnerability, fear, struggle and suffering. Its like a whole veil has been lifted to some degree, so much that I have been feeling like I'm in a different world. Like I literally just stepped out of one planet and am on another one where a lot of the strife doesn't exist.

And I am thankful for that, because there is a noticeable contrast between how much safer and calmer and happier I feel now without the tremendous burden of being some kind of "soldier on the battlefield" fending off the hounds of hell. I am simply not making as many errors, generating as much fear, producing as much control, making up as many problems, or developing as many meanings for things. And in fact as I look at objects now they appear to be new and fresh and interesting.

It's weird but Jesus basically says that we are to adopt a perspective in which everything is given ONE meaning, from a whole viewpoint where "wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles", where we look upon a forgiven world without trying to understand it, having given up all our past learning and become willing to be empty, to just surrender and let go of trying to know or do or control everything. I'm taking my hands off the steering wheel and the car is finding a a smoother path.

"The holy instant is the Holy Spirit's most useful learning device for teaching you love's meaning. For its purpose is to SUSPEND JUDGMENT ENTIRELY. Judgment ALWAYS rests on the past, for PAST experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for WITHOUT it you do NOT understand anything. You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS. You are afraid of this, because you believe that, WITHOUT THE EGO, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that, without the ego, ALL WOULD BE LOVE."

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you."

It can be difficult letting people suffer. Although that said, suffering is an illusion. The thing is.... we have lessons to learn and this is a classroom. Merely having an attitude of "take the suffering away" could also remove form someone a "painful lesson" they might need to learn.

If you remove the challenges or the limitations or the form that the lesson has taken, the person might not rise to the occasion. They might not question certain strongly held beliefs, they might not have a breakthrough, they might not learn to see their life differently, they might not change their priorities. Not to say that people should suffer, because God does not will that anyone suffers, but we've placed ourselves in a difficult situation where we believe all kinds of stuff that's mistaken.

And so we need to learn, which means we need scenarios to learn in. So if we were to seek to just "have it easy" all the time and have no seeming stimulation for growth or awakening, we might just linger in a lack of progress for longer. You could say perhaps that since people consent to everything, those who are suffering perhaps have agreed to go through something because they'll in the long run benefit from it.

When the soul knows that the ultimate goal is awakening and reunion with God, they can be prepared to take on tremendous challenges to help them move toward that. A person having a particularly hard life may well be making a lot more progress spiritually than someone who has it easy.

Not that you can't be a "happy learner" who learns without severe suffering but, it seems to be often the case that when people are mistaken about the truth they tend to mis-create some pretty bad-seeming scenarios because they haven't learned, and now the scenario acts as a way to help them learn. Perhaps a repurposing of the suffering they've consented to. The ultimate goal of course is learning that you cannot suffer and choosing not to, which does mean there is a way out when the lesson is learned.

Not long ago I had a dream in which I had to go through an extraordinarily arduous obstacle course, riddled with difficult terrain and hurdles and dangers and all manner of suffering. As I got to the end and emerged into the open, exhausted and strung out and weak, a guide appeared and asked me "What would be so important that you'd be willing to go through all that, if it meant that you could achieve a goal?" The revelation that suddenly came to my awareness was that this was all designed to serve a very big long-term goal of returning to God. No matter what it takes to learn the curriculum.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

Boiling ACIM down to pure logic, we end up with this.

"Only the truth is true and nothing else is true."

) God's realm and creation are TRUE.

2) The world we made in dreaming is FALSE.

3) Forgiveness means becoming TRUE while inside of the FALSE in preparation for moving into the realm of the TRUE.

4) Eventually returning to the actual TRUE realm.

So forgiveness really just means aligning yourself with the true nature that you have IN heaven, while you're temporarily seeming to be outside of it. Becoming as heaven-like and aligned with reality as possible. As identified with Christ Spirit as possible. As under ONLY God's laws as much as possible. As expressive of God's loving nature as possible. All the while being still in this dream world which seems like imagined hell and death, SEEING from and with Truth, a perspective which opposes and invalidates the FALSE world.

And we take the Holy Spirit's hand who SYMBOLIZES the truth and we attempt to become in alignment with that symbolism, even at the body level symbolizing eternal life, so that we are as close to heaven as possible and ready for God to take us home.

You can also describe it this way.

1) The PREMISE of the Kingdom is God, immortal truth. The logical outcome of that premise is the creation/extension of eternal life as the Sonship etc.

2) The ego's idea of separation is a FALSE PREMISE, resulting in an entire seeming world which is entirely FALSE. It is opposite the Kingdom in every way.

3) Having made the false world and having CONFUSED IT with the truth, it is given all of truth's properties such as "reality" and "existence". It now seems to be real and exists. And now we experience the nightmare of hell.

4) Forgiveness ONLY means, bringing the PREMISE OF THE WORLD into question, and switching from the ego premise to God's premise. That is all. Nothing else.

5) To question the world's reality, to strip it of truth, to disbelieve it, to side "against" it, to deny it, to recognize it is FALSE and not true, to sort out how and why it is unlike God, and to realize it is NOTHING because an opposite to God cannot exist, IS FORGIVENESS.

We simply need to shift from the entire spectrum of ego reactions of "its a real world and bad things are really happening", to "the world is NOT REAL, it's a dream, and it is NOT happening." That is changing the premise of the separation. That is the only logical thing you can do and it's all that's needed.

When what seemed like real war, real attack, real suffering, real death, are put into a context of ITS A DREAM, not a reality, it completely reframes everything in a different context, and the ENTIRE THING is uprooted and stripped of its threats and dangers and sins. It has no further power to affect you because you recognize it is FALSE and unreal, NOT a real world, and NOT really happening. And be glad it is so.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

"There is no world."

Each thought system starts with a logical premise, which determines everything that comes from it, which are perfectly logical conclusions. This is true of both God’s creation and the EGO’s world, which are logical outcomes.

The separation from God followed NEAT, LOGICAL steps. The thought system of the ego is run by impeccable logic, just as God’s thought system is. The outcome of each system depends entirely on its logical premise. At the CORE of A Course in Miracle’s metaphysics is PURE LOGIC.

If you can understand the logical premise of each system, and if you can follow the progression of logical conclusions based on that premise - which is IMPECCABLE LOGICAL REASONING, you will correctly understand ALL of the metaphysics of the course. Where everything fits. The TRUTH about the entire separation from God, states of awareness, what is true and false, what is real or unreal, who created what, how the systems MUST function etc.

It is all TOTALLY LOGICAL. If you struggle with logical reasoning you may have difficulty SEEING the logic or following it.

This literally means, that states of mind, states of separation, the making of the body and the world, all of the mechanics of special relationships, sin and death, the nature of the physical universe and its laws, ALL OF IT, is a LOGICAL CONCLUSION. Correctly discerning what the logic IS, HOW it progressed, and WHY that makes SENSE, is the key to accessing the core metaphysics in the course. Once you do this, you can refer to this metaphysics as a cheat-sheet, a reference to TELL YOU, what ANY statement in the course MUST MEAN, where it fits, and what JESUS MEANS. GUARANTEED.

"T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a LOGICAL CONCLUSION; a valid STEP IN ORDERED THOUGHT. 3 The steps to chaos DO FOLLOW NEATLY from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the PROGRESSION of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one STEP is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The WHOLE DESCENT FROM HEAVEN LIES IN EACH ONE. 7 And WHERE YOUR THINKING STARTS, THERE MUST IT END."

"The ego's LOGIC is as IMPECCABLE as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"The Holy Spirit USES LOGIC as easily and as well AS DOES THE EGO, except that His CONCLUSIONS are not insane. 5 They take a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. 6 WE HAVE FOLLOWED MUCH OF THE EGO’S LOGIC, and have SEEN ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 7 And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming CLEARNESS seems to be clearly seen. 8 Let us now turn away from them, and follow the SIMPLE LOGIC BY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES the SIMPLE CONCLUSIONS that speak for truth, and only truth."

"The Kingdom is the RESULT OF PREMISES, JUST AS THIS WORLD IS. 2 You may have carried THE EGO’S REASONING TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION, which is total confusion about everything. 3 If you really saw this RESULT you could not want it. 4 The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. 5 You are willing to look at the ego's PREMISES, but not at THEIR LOGICAL OUTCOME. 6 Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? 7 YOUR CREATIONS ARE THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF HIS PREMISES. 8 His THINKING has established them for you. 9 They are exactly where they belong. 10 They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. 11 Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the PREMISES that will determine what you accept into your mind."

"Look calmly at the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. 2 To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of yours. 3 And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist."

"In one sense the ego's fear of God IS AT LEAST LOGICAL, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego."

But this is going to require that you come to accept and live from a very simple truth, which is somewhat 'secret' for most people: the secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself.

What this means and implies, is that every single thing that seems to happen here, is completely deliberately chosen by whoever is involved. Not only that, but whatever each person is experiencing, that person has to be deliberately creating that experience within themselves, "doing it to themselves". We are creators, not perceivers.

In this model, it is absolutely impossible to experience anything that you did not choose and ask for AND implement yourself.

Literally, nothing can happen to you against your will. You cannot be harmed. Nobody can change you. Nothing can affect you.

So if you're having some kind of emotional upset, it HAS to mean that you actually are generating that emotional upset yourself, regardless of what the situation is.

It also has to mean that there are absolutely no victims and that victimhood is absolutely impossible. Nobody can be a victim if everyone is 100% choosing what happens, and if nothing unchosen can happen.

You literally get exactly what you ask for, you get ONLY what you ask for, and you do not get anything else. Not that you even 'get' it, because in truth, you CREATE it.

You are 100% responsible.

This of course flies in the face of the ego which is a thought system based on the complete opposite to this reality, which suggests things happen outside your control, that you didn't ask for, life goes off the rails, bad things happen for no good reason, people get victimized, there is unfairness, there is mis-treatment that people don't want, there is undesired suffering, woe is me, and life just generally sucks. That's all ego perspectives based on irresponsibility and blame and shifting of WHO is making the decisions here.

So you may be wondering, how immortality is possible. Well it is only possible if you can accept that ABSOLUTELY NOTHING can happen without your say-so. "Nobody dies without their own consent", Jesus says. It seems a tall claim, but it is truth. Jesus says so and Jesus is the man ;-)

So what this means is, the idea of 'stuff happens that I can do nothing about' is a FICTION, not a fact. It means the idea of victimhood is actually an ILLUSION, not a reality. It means that the idea of being hurt against your will, or having sickness show up in your body without choosing it, or being incapable of doing anything about what happens, is all MADE UP LIES. It is very poor discernment, very poor judgement, unconsciousness, lack of awareness, inability to see the whole picture, dishonesty, and an unwillingness to accept the truth, that leads to this MYTH that things happen to people against their will.

It's not that you need to find a way to be invulnerable against things that happen randomly that you can't control. That's not invulnerability. It's not that you need to become protected from serious dangers through some kind of superhero shield, which is also not invulnerability. It's simply that all of the things that we all believe have this "power to hurt", DO NOT EXIST, and even the illusion of them existing is something we are PRETENDING is happening.

We are invulnerable because there is no ego. We are invulnerable because it is not possible to be hurt. We are invulnerable because victimhood is completely illusory. We are invulnerable because suffering is not reality. We are invulnerable because we are putting in place absolutely everything we are experiencing, and can STOP THAT, and thereby be free of who exactly IS the culprit.

Because this really boils down to, WHO is responsible for making shit happen. WHO is it that has this power to pull the strings and make stuff manifest and cause events and effects. When you believe incorrectly that it is other people, random events, nature, groups, animals, viruses, whatever fake causes, you are greatly MISTAKEN. And in that mistakenness you are actually using your POWER to create illusions of powerlessness, you are using your 100% choice to choose to make an illusion of not having a choice, you are using your total freedom to pretend to be imprisoned, you are using your invulnerability to pretend that you are vulnerable, and you are basically weaving ILLUSIONS that you are not THE ONE WHO IS DOING IT.

Game is up. It's you. We all know it. Admit it. Caught you red handed playing dead.

This is why the dead can be raised, because the person who appears as dead is PRETENDING TO BE DEAD. And they need to snap out of this illusion-making and come back to reality and demonstrate the truth that it is not possible to die.

Death is pretend, death is reversible.

That's how invulnerable you really are. But if you are not AWARE of your responsibility, if you have not OWNED your power, if you not become very honest about who does what to whom, and if you have not seen the secret activities of your mind where you attack yourself and pretend that you don't, which creates the myth that other people have power over you, then you will SEEM to suffer (even though you can't). That's how you disguise yourself in a costume of despair when all the while, underneath it, you are totally joyful.

Nice try.

"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven."

Here Jesus again outlines the simplicity of "forgiveness". He says that if you will overlook error - which means the entire illusory unreal dream world - then you will KEEP IT UNREAL. If you keep it unreal, you do not even enter INTO a state where you become confused about what it is, nor do you give reality to its content. If you do not MAKE it real, you won't have to "atone" to fix this error.

You must not turn the world's forms into realities, you must not give strength to its attacks, you must not give power to its lies, and you must not give truth to its sufferings. You overlook it and effectively ignore it and look beyond it to the face of Christ. To the light of truth where it really is.

If you KEEP THE WORLD UNREAL, then you do not go INTO false judgements or evaluations of what the world is. You simply recognize it as an illusion. An illusion, totally DEVOID of any sense of reality, seriousness, weight, validity, or truth, is no more powerful or threatening or causal than a thin veil of nothingness. But if you fail to stay IN THE STATE of forgiveness, you enter into judgement.

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

If you FAIL to stay forgiving, you go INTO the state of GIVING REALITY to the unreal world. You go into attack, into confusion, you confuse reality with unreality, you GIVE reality to the illusory world, and now the world SEEMS real.

All the things which happen in it which are utterly strange and unnatural, now APPEAR to be VERY REAL to you. And this makes them threatening and upsetting, dangerous and powerful, able to hurt you and destroy your peace. But it is only the sense of REALITY that gives it this apparent power.

Having MADE the world real, you will now believe that there ARE actually real problems, real attacks, real dangers, real impossible situations, real threats, real murders, real deaths and real sickness. And now you will be in suffering and hell having a nightmare because now a dream of death will have become REAL to you, threatening you at every turn and promising to destroy you. You cannot ESCAPE from this while you believe it is real.

So if you make the world real you will believe you now have to DO SOMETHING in order to fix the problem. But having bound reality to illusions, you will now think the source of the problem is the "real things" you see, and so to solve the problem you have to do something about those things. But this won't really work.

The only way to move back OUT of unforgiveness into forgiveness, is to TAKE BACK THE REALITY that you yourself gave TO the illusory world, SEPARATE THE WORLD FROM REALITY, give reality back to God, and recognize the false world is unreal again. Get your mind back into the "world is not real at all" mode, which overlooks it and doesn't GIVE it any power.

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

To "take back" the projections of REALITY that you gave to the unreal world, is to take back the POWER that you mis-placed and gave away to EMpower illusions against you. Dis-empowering illusions gives back power to God, and to your shared self. When the world has no power of its own, which it doesn't, the ego and the world and the body have NO POWER OVER YOU. This is a return to the STATE of forgiveness.

Ideally we should aim for a state in which we do not LEAVE forgiveness, or step OUT OF a state of power, so that we do not MAKE ERRORS. If we do not make errors, ie do not give reality to errors, then we will not have to do a purification or correction process to undo what we have done. But if we DO slip and fall into judgement, then a miracle is needed to RESTORE us to the state of forgiveness.

"Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made."

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

Forgiveness then is simply the recognition that only God's reality is real, only his truth is true, nothing in the world you made has any truth or reality, and therefore your entire attention is fixed upon The Kingdom.