Last night I used the below process, but in a different way. I did it VERY slowly. I re-stated each phrase several times over and really let it sink in before moving on to the next one. I actually found this to be quite powerful.

For example, in saying that I decided wrongly.. when I really dwell on that I come to realize that I actually DECIDED and I get in touch with that sense of responsibility and decision-making at having been the one who not only put in place this upset, but actually chose it myself.

There is tremendous power in getting in touch with your power of decision. Your decision making is not just a neutral act, it has power to it. It is causal. And I've also started to dabble in the idea of... .instead of just reacting to stuff and going along with it, instead, stopping and DECIDING... "I am" or "I am not" .... and feeling a kind of instantaneous change simply by making a firm decision.

I also inquired about the last sentence... letting Him decide for God for me. Jesus clarified that this really means allowing Holy Spirit to 'favor' or 'choose FOR rather than AGAINST' God, on my behalf. Allowing Him to favor God and to then accept His viewpoint. In this way, "for God" really means "towards God" or "in agreement with God". That made more sense to me.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace.

I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

It's also quite important to keep in mind the statement Jesus makes just prior to this prayer:

"But let me first remind you of something I told you myself. Whenever you are not wholly joyous, it is because you have reacted with a lack of love to some Soul which God created. Perceiving this as sin, you become defensive because you EXPECT ATTACK. The decision to react in that way, however, was YOURS, and can therefore be undone. It CANNOT be undone by repentance in the usual sense, because this implies guilt. If you allow yourself to feel guilty, you will reinforce the error, rather than allowing it to be undone FOR you.

Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE.

Be very firm with yourselves in this, and keep yourselves fully aware of the fact that the UNDOING process, which does NOT come from you, is nevertheless WITHIN you because God placed it there. YOUR part is merely to return your thinking to the point at which the error was made, and give it over to the Atonement in peace. Say to yourselves the following, as sincerely as you can, remembering that the Holy Spirit will respond fully to your slightest invitation:"

Let's review this prayer from ACIM in a new light.

"1. I must have decided wrongly, because I am not at peace.

2. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

3. I want to decide otherwise, because I want to be at peace.

4. I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.

5. I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

so...

1) I first admit I'm upset because I projected guilt, so I'm victimized and I'm suffering and afraid and not at peace. I signed a stupid contract with someone so that they would take my guilt and, in exchange, I would be persecuted.

2) I have to recognize I made a decision (contract) with the person myself and projected my own guilt myself. Thus I must admit that this person be seen as innocent and they were just helping me to hide my guilt.

3) I want to decide otherwise because I want to not be a victim any more and I am willing to be responsible for my guilt. So I take my guilt back from the person. I want out of the contract and I want real healing.

4) I do not have to feel guilty. I can go to Holy Spirit and offer up my guilt and be willing to be OPEN to accepting His verdict. If He says so, I am innocent, and I must accept that if He says so - this is what it means to allow Him to decide FOR ME whether I'm innocent or not. So I don't HAVE to be guilty and I don't have to (and should not attempt to) decide for myself. And also...

"Holy spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I will let Him."

- Holy Spirit will UNDO ALL CONSEQUENCES. That means He is capable of removing all guilt, all sin, all suffering, all fear, all sickness, all hate and anger, all shame, all darkness in any form whatsoever. Anything that I made as a result of choosing sin and guilt He CAN undo FOR ME. I don't have to even do anything.

- "If I will let Him", means, I have to have as much willingness as possible to be OPEN to the possibility that I am innocent, to fully ACCEPT Holy Spirit's judgement (that I am innocent), to LET GO OF all guilt and every consequence that came from choosing sin, and then to LET HIM go to work IN ME to undo all of these manifestations and forms of consequence. And that includes all sickness and side effects, IF I will let Him.

5. I can trigger off this willingness by allowing Holy Spirit to decide for me... i.e. I can go before Him and say, here's my guilt etc, please decide for me whether I am really guilty or not. And that means I have to be very open minded and neutral in offering this, knowing that I am not being unfairly judged, and to be willing to ACCEPT whatever Holy Spirit's verdict is. This is like a last, final offering to Him. If He says I am guilty, I must hang my head in shame and head off into the wilderness by myself. If he says I am innocent, I MUST agree to let go of all of the guilt and all of the consequences that my sinful decision made for me.

I am letting Holy Spirit decide for God for me, which now really means, I want God/HS to choose the meaning of what I am and the truth about me and whether or not I am innocent or guilty. I will let Him decide my fate. And He WILL decide FOR me, in my favor, that I am innocent.

If I can be willing to really accept this Atonement, to accept His decision, THEN... willingness permitting, I CAN ask Him to forgive and heal me and He CAN come into me and heal me. He CAN correct all of the consequences, literally. He can fix every fuckup that resulted from this mess. And he can raise the dead (me) back to life.

Personally I have been learning to experience this more - this last part, allowing Holy Spirit to come into me and actually "do stuff". This is quite wacky sometimes. If you've seen videos of some supernatural-oriented Christian churches where they bring forth Holy Spirit and people start shaking and they get all hot or cold or tingly or body parts start to heal or they grow a new eyeball or whatever.... (it happens!) .... That kind of shit can happen for you. This is what the Course is saying. "Holy Spirit will undo ALL THE CONSEQUENCES If I will let Him." I need to learn to be very willing to let Him, so that I can be helped by his divine POWER, which is a healing agent, which can correct me on all levels including emotional and physical.

This isn't just a Course in nice gentle little evaporating of thought. This is a course in fricking MIRACLES!

Over time with ACIM you may come to realize that you're making everything up as you go along. What things mean when stuff happens isn't actually a part of what happens. There is a judgement happening which comes in between you and the events.

You could also call it a projection or a decision, an intention or an attitude. An expression or a wish. There is this entire layer or filtering and choosing and deciding what to MAKE OF things which happens in between you and all external happenings.

In the past you might have thought that all these interpretations and experiences and the meaning of things was locked into what happens. As if the form of the situation dictates what you feel, the people involved decide your experience, and the consequences dictate what is true.

But there actually isn't any inherent meaning in the world, or the body, or in anything that happens here. Everyone has totally and utterly made up the entire thing as they've gone along. At some point in time someone has decided to give certain things certain meanings and labels. Totally arbitrary and out of the blue.

We've all inherited a lot of these labels from society etc. But what you have to realize is you're actually deciding what to MAKE OF things all the time. You have to ask yourself, is this thing really what you think it is, or are YOU determining that it is that? Are you the one GIVING it this meaning? Does it only seem to be "this bad thing" because YOU have said that it is? And what if it isn't?

As you start to explore the fact that you give everything all the meaning it has for you, that you project your decisions about what you want to see, that you decide often wrongly what to make of situations, and you are the one who judges that you should be in fear, you may realize that you're doing all this to yourself. Your "attacking thoughts" make the world seem attacking, but it isn't.

"I have given everything I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) all the meaning that it has for me."

"I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts."

Now the secret of salvation says you're doing it to yourself which makes you think of an inward direction, as if you are attacking yourself from the outside in. But what you actually do is you, from the inside out, reach inside and decide what you want, what you believe, what you want to see and experience, what meanings you think are true, and THEN you project them out onto or as the world. And then you perceive it. And as you perceive it you take it as total fact.

What that means is that it is your judging, labeling, deciding, projecting, expressing, intending, your attitude, your viewpoint, your desires, your completely arbitrary choice of what you want to MAKE OF the world, that you then put ONTO it and decide is real. As such you do everything "to" the world, so to speak, and the side-effect is that you then experience exactly what you decided it was going to cause you to experience. You experience what you make of it. So then indirectly you are doing it to yourself.

As you realize that all your engagement with the world has been forced through a filter which is in you, in which you direct what to make of the world before you see things in it, you might also then realize that you can choose something else. You could conceivably choose to believe or make of the world something other than what you had been making of it. And why not? Why not just arbitrarily decide to see good in it?

Certainly if you are not at peace, you have made a wrong decision. But what this means is that you have chosen to PROJECT a decision ie a judgement about the world ONTO the world, choosing WHAT you want to make of it, and this has resulted in a loss of peace through the feedback loop of perception. Therefore, you are not at peace because you made a wrong decision ... about what you wanted to see in it.

You may not have realized yet that you actually have the freedom and control and power TO decide what you want to see in the world, and you don't HAVE to just adopt the automatic unconscious inherited interpretations of things that everyone buys into. You need to realize that the world really is totally meaningless and has no inherent meaning. Nothing that happens really means what people have decided it means. Even death is not really death.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

We've taken certain physical states and have given them labels. We've decided that a body laying motionless is death and bodies moving around are life. This is NOT the truth. They are both just different forms of the same images with NO meaning. The whole world is mistaken in even thinking that a motionless body MEANS death. It is no more alive OR dead because bodies are equally illusions in all states. So YOU in your mind decide that one of the states is bad and awful and tragic and the other is not.

We might think there's a whole host of meanings and definitions for things in the world as if they are just accepted by everyone, but ALL of these have to be questioned. They have in fact all been GIVEN TO the world by you.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

So now as you refine and heal your mind, and practice forgiveness and responsibility, it becomes more clear that you're making up all the meanings that things seem to have, and you are reacting to the very meanings you give to them. You MAKE OF situations what you would have them be. You COULD potentially make of a situation something far more light, than the dooming tragedy that you're making it out TO be. In other words, there IS another way of looking at this.

"In dreams, YOU arrange everything. People BECOME what you would have them be, and what they do YOU order."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it."

So this is where we have to recognize that we have the power of decision to choose, we always choose what meaning we give to everything, we're not in a position to choose or judge accurately because we don't have all the facts, we should open up to the Holy Spirit's judgement or interpretation and stop hurting ourselves with faulty evaluations.

We can potentially just as easily DECIDE, that someone is going to do well, as we can decide that they are going to do poorly. We might think ok if the situation looks like it's bad, then I will decide to agree that it's bad, and will suffer. But does it have to be seen as bad or wrong or going south? You COULD just as easily decide to believe that it's going to go well. You COULD adopt a brighter outlook. There is nothing stopping you.

It may seem at first that this is like playing with insanity or just throwing out all morality or values or sense of what things are, like some kind of LIE that you're telling yourself, some kind of thing that you're "making up". As if you're being totally fictional or in "in denial" about what's "really happening", pretending things are not bad. And indeed forgiveness IS "a happy fiction". You are MAKING a different interpretation of the world, one where you decide to see it right instead of wrong and not use it for attack.

This reveals that probably you have been floating around in a completely untethered free-roaming state, washed around by the crashing waves, believing that the world has decided for you what situations mean while all along just flitting back and forth between made-up meanings. You have been undecided and fickle and unstable and changing your mind and just all over the place with inconsistency.

Most likely you have adopted a general "attitude" or "mood" about life, maybe it's filled with bitterness, maybe it's very judgmental, maybe you attack a lot, maybe you have become pessimistic, maybe you hate people, maybe you just have "learned" that everything sucks. Or maybe you have TAUGHT YOURSELF that it does. Maybe you haven't realized that you decided every single thing you perceived in it, and COULD have changed your mind to seek a better way.

"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

Jesus simply is saying that the world doesn't mean anything at all, we are constantly making up meanings and PRETENDING that they are inherent to the situation or the forms you see, and we can EASILY just elect to believe something else. There are brighter happier outlooks that are possible, there are miraculous loving viewpoints that you could just as easily adopt. There is a higher happier healthier outlook you could have.

And again this goes back to your thoughts, because everything you think is praying for, asking for, and producing, the very thing you want to experience. It's GIVING the meanings that you have decided things have. The key is realizing YOU are in the driver's seat making all these decisions, usually deciding on your own, and it's you that's made up all the dire meanings that you see in things. You can instead adopt the holy spirit's meanings and see with his vision instead. By letting him decide FOR ME what everything is and means, from a very lofty perspective, I can experience the world in a much happier way.

I am never upset for the reason I think.

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.

I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

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

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

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

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

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

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

This means that your mind is CONSTANTLY CAUSING STUFF TO HAPPEN, AT ALL TIMES, WITHOUT STOPPING.

And that means, regardless of whether you think you have the power to make things happen or not, whether you are very powerful or totally powerless, YOU ARE ALWAYS CAUSING IT WHATEVER STATE YOU ARE IN.

Therefore even if you are in suffering and sickness you MUST BE MAKING IT HAPPEN.

Even if you are dying you MUST BE CHOOSING IT.

Even if you are unhappy because you think someone did something and that you're "held" in this unhappy suffering due to forces outside your control, IT IS NOT TRUE, YOU ARE CHOOSING TO SUFFER.

Your mind never stops causing. It never sleeps. It is always ON. It is always creating or projecting. YOU ARE PERMANENTLY CAUSAL.

Therefore if you can realize this, it means literally that NO MATTER what seems to be happening or what seems to have caused it, YOU CAUSED IT - this is the secret to salvation - and therefore YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR MIND AND CAUSE SOMETHING ELSE. Therefore NOTHING happens outside of your decision, so WHATEVER you are experiencing YOU DID CHOOSE IT!

This is precisely reflected here:

"Decisions CANNOT be difficult. This is obvious if you realize that you must ALREADY have made a decision NOT to be wholly joyous if that is what you feel. Therefore, the first step in the undoing is to recognize that YOU ACTIVELY DECIDED WRONGLY, BUT CAN AS ACTIVELY DECIDE OTHERWISE."

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace.

I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise.

I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace."

This is all about you being 100% FULLY RESPONSIBLE for having DECIDED - CHOSEN - to experience what you are experiencing. If you are afraid, unhappy, sad, grieving, sick, dying, in pain, confused, mentally ill, whatever it is, YOU HAVE CHOSEN IT. You HAVE decided to experience it, and you have ASKED FOR IT. And you have received as you have asked and it has been given you.

This is what the Song of Prayer pamphlet is talking about - that you are ALWAYS ASKING and your prayer is always being answered, and therefore whatever you are receiving YOU DID ASK FOR, and therefore if you want something else you need to "raise your prayer" to a higher happier level - a happier request.

Whenever you think that something is happening that you did not ask for, or that you have no power to stop or change something, or that you are stuck with suffering, or that there is no way to change situations, YOU ARE WRONG. You are mistaken and you are UNCONSCIOUS of the part of your mind that is CHOOSING IT. Therefore you HAVE made a wrong decision. You have to totally own it. And you have to admit that YOU decided it yourself. And then you can also start to realize that you WANT to decide something else, and that IF YOU DO, you WILL EXPERIENCE SOMETHING ELSE, because your decision making has POWER.

This means, in no uncertain terms, that you are NEVER A VICTIM. Victimhood is completely impossible. It is a lie. People who are in a victim state are STILL DOING IT TO THEMSELVES, they just are not aware of it. They are STILL CHOOSING IT AND WANTING IT. Even if it looks like they have absolutely no clue why it's happening to them against their will. They are NOT VICTIMS. They are deliberate choosers who are unconscious of their decision making and who have decided to HURT THEMSELVES.

Jesus affirms that "you cannot be hurt UNLESS YOU HURT YOURSELF" and similarly "those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves." He also confirms that "no-one dies without their own consent" because you HAVE TO CHOOSE DEATH in order for it to happen.

This is THE CENTRAL TEACHING of A Course in Miracles, that you have absolute unlimited POWER, EVERYTHING that happens you have chosen, NOTHING happens without your consent, and therefore you ALWAYS are receiving what you are asking for. Therefore if you do not like what you are receiving, CHOOSE AGAIN.

"At least I can decide I do not like what I feel now. " "I want another way to look at this." "Perhaps there is another way to look at this, what can I lose by asking?"

This is Jesus's black and white, absolutely no-exceptions teaching. There is NO SUCH THING as a victim. There is NO SUCH THING as an accident. There is NO SUCH THING as dying against your will. There is NO SUCH THING as "becoming sick" without having decided to be sick. There is NO SUCH THING as unwanted suffering. And there is NO SUCH THING as losing the power of your mind to CAUSE.

"This is a course in CAUSE, not effect". That's what this means. Jesus is trying to get us to see that we ONLY CAUSE. We are NOT AT THE EFFECT OF ANYTHING WHATSOEVER! This is the secret to salvation - that you are just doing this all to yourself. There is NO OTHER WILL. There is no alien will. There are no enemies. There are no external forces. Nothing has power over you. Nothing in the world has the power to make you ill or sick or weak or afraid. Nothing can happen to you against your will.

Therefore if stuff is happening that you seem not to have chosen or do not want, it is ONLY because you DID CHOOSE IT but you are unconscious of that choice. That's why you need to remove the blocks to awareness so that you can BECOME A CONSCIOUS DECISION MAKER. Then you will NOT CHOOSE TO HURT YOURSELF! And this is why it leads to salvation, because literally there IS NO CAUSE OF YOU other than God, and you CANNOT BE CAUSED by anything or anyone else in existence. Therefore if YOU STOP CAUSING YOURSELF HARM, you will be permanently invulnerable! IMMORTAL!!!!

We are simply unconscious day-dreaming lazy choosers who have forgotten our own power and are victims of ourselves and nothing else. This is all we have to own up to and correct. To reclaim our INHERITANCE and our right to freely choose. To claim our freedom from fake stories of external un-asked for victimhood, and to erase ALL trace of believing that there is ANY POWER OVER YOU from anything other than yourself. Not even God goes against your will. Not even Jesus goes against your will.

Your power, shared with God, in holiness, is unlimited. "God is unlimited, there is nothing He cannot do." "There is nothing my holiness cannot do." "There is nothing He (holy spirit) cannot do." UNLIMITED, UNOPPOSED WILL POWER. There is NO ROOM in that for any kind of "it happened because I didn't choose it." or "it was an accident" or "didn't intend it" or "didn't ask for it."

There are no real victims. This is Jesus's message. We are only experiencing the consequences of our OWN DECISIONS. "Heaven is a choice I must make." If you so choose, nothing can go against your will. Your will is as powerful as Jesus's will. It is ALL CHOICE.

To the ego, being powerful means recognizing that there are significant powers outside of you which you have to FIGHT WITH in an attempt to dominate and "over-power" them against their free will. It sees power as a way to FORCE things to happen aggressively. This kind of power is DISEMPOWERING to all involved.

To God, and in the truth of ourselves, REAL POWER means the recognition that THERE IS NO OPPOSITION. There is no OTHER POWER. There is no enemy (thus all are innocent). There is no alien will. There is no hand of oppression or "cause of death" that can come along and choose FOR you when you will suffer and die. Death is always chosen. And so if you do not choose it, you will not die. That's the responsibility you have to own up to.

YOU HAVE THIS POWER NOW. IT IS OPERATING NOW. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN OPERATING. IT ALWAYS WILL BE. It's just a matter of what you are USING IT to do. And if you are using it to hurt yourself, that's a mistaken decision. "Holy Spirit will undo the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him. I choose to let Him by allowing Him to choose for (in favor of) God for me."

You are only ever afraid of yourself. You are your own worst enemy. You are your only victim. You but victimize yourself. You have no opponent. There is no cause outside of you.

You are FREE TO CHOOSE! Choose again. Only by having the POWER TO CHOOSE EVERYTHING do you have the power to choose HEAVEN!

Whatever you're upset about, it's not about anyone else, NO MATTER how much it seems to be someone else's fault.

Where is the upset located? Is your upset inside someone else's body? No, it's inside your body.

All of your feelings are inside your own body. All of your thoughts are inside of yourself as well. All of your beliefs and judgements and opinions and viewpoints are all inside of you.

Ideas leave not their source.

The way you feel, these are your feelings. They're not someone else's feelings.

Part of your upset entails an energetic link between you and another person in which you experience your upset feelings as though they are 'connected to' the other person. Or in other words, your belief that your are upset "because of them" links your emotional reactions to the other person as though the two of you are joined together by it.

But if you can remember and own your own feelings - these feelings you're having are YOUR feelings, nobody else's. This is how YOU feel. You are the one having these feelings. These aren't anyone else's feelings. You are the one who is feeling upset. This is isn't outside your body and it's not in another person.

If you can get to that point and say that with any amount of conviction, you might be surprised that suddenly the seeming energetic 'link' or 'vulnerability' that you felt in relation to the other person, suddenly disappears. Much of the feeling that you had wrapped up in the perception of 'this is what they did to me', disappears also. You detach.

Your detachment allows you to come back to yourself. And then you can admit to yourself, and own for yourself, that how you are feeling, how you are reacting, what you are experiencing, is all YOURS. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. There are NO CAUSES outside of you that have created this feeling or reaction or upset. That person didn't put it there. That person didn't make you feel this way.

YOU CHOSE to feel this way. These are your feelings, not theirs. These are your reactions, not theirs. These feelings are inside your own self and are a part of your own experience. That means they are under your 'control'. Or at the very least, under your ownership. They sure do not belong to anyone else. And if nobody else has created them in you, and you are detached from the other person knowing they did not cause these feelings, then you have to realize that you quite literally decided to have these feelings.

You chose to experience these feelings. You decided to have this reaction. You decided to create this energetic emotional response within yourself, when you thought you were stimulated by that other person. They didn't cause the reaction, they just acted as a neutral reflection. And in that reflection you saw something that brought up some feelings inside yourself that had NOTHING to do with the other person. They didn't make you feel this way, YOU decided to feel this way ABOUT what they appeared to do. So you chose your reaction and your experience and everything you feel.

You will find quite often that if you will claim ownership and responsibility for all of your own experience, in this way, is not only drops and disarms the ego perception of your experience being 'caused by' someone outside of you, it also correctly identifies that YOU are in a position of responsibility, meaning you are NOT A VICTIM, and therefore you are FREE of a sense of victimhood and all perceptions relating to it. This sets you free as well. And you will find if you do this - take back your power and reclaim ownership of responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing - you will often find these feelings suddenly transmute all by themselves and just dissolve and deflate and disappear into nothing. And in their place, is often a tremendous laughter.

Being unlocked from seeing yourself as victimized or caused by others is the key here. If you take full responsibility for everything then nobody can have allegedly been responsible FOR something happening to you. And when you believe others are responsible for stuff happening to you, for or against you, you basically are being irresponsible for your own life and are CLAIMING that someone else is responsible FOR YOUR LIFE, for you.

Nobody else is responsible for your life. Nobody else is responsible for owning your true identity. Nobody else is responsible for the feelings, reactions, emotions and expressions that you are experiencing. Nobody. There is nobody to shovel your 'Self' off onto. Nobody to claim they are supposed to be living your life FOR you, or waking you up FOR you, or changing to what you prefer FOR you. This is YOUR life, not theirs, that you are living. YOU are meant to be fully and completely and squarely in the clear awareness and ownership of WHO YOU ARE, in full responsibility and identification with and operating out of your True Self.

You are invulnerable when you stop believing in victimhood.

Bodies always express limitation. All bodies are limited. The very fact that a body has a perimeter or surface where it stops, it a limitation. The fact that it has a certain size and shape and color and style, is a limitation. It does not share some of the attributes of other bodies, which is a further limitation.

If bodies goes into states that we call sickness, these really are not a special category - they are just more limitations, or different limitations. Even if the body goes towards a death state, this again is just another arbitrary configuration of physical parts that look a certain way.

Physical sickness and death are only considered to be those things because we make comparisons and slap labels on them. We decided to call it death when a body takes on a configuration of certain functions ceasing and certain decay setting in. This is made up. We decided to call it sickness when certain parts are malfunctioning or damaged, but again this is a made-up category.

All body states are limitations, and there is no real difference between what appear to be what we call healthy states versus more deathly states. Even a seemingly healthy body is still a picture of limitation, which is inherently an idea of being "less than immortal", of attacking the unlimited, and is therefore an idea of death. At best it can appear to be what we decided to call "life", or at worst death.

No matter what the condition or configuration of the body is, it isn't an accurate depiction of who or what you are. In fact nothing about the body is really what you look like in reality. Not even peering into the eyes. The body is a surface shell covering up the mind, designed to be different and unalike and deceptive and a disguise. At best is it a lie, and at its worst an attempt to murder you.

The states of the body do not represent your souls perfection. Your soul is always in a state of absolute immortality and invulnerability, incorruptibility and health. Even if the mind has mangled the body in attempting to pretend to be a body, in attempting to pretend the body as the son of God has been attacked, the soul is unchanged. The body in all its states is a lie because we made it to be a separation device and a way to deceive ourselves. Deception devices don't EVER represent the truth, except perhaps symbolically when they are "more whole."

If you look to the body and are convinced that it is a person, and therefore that something is wrong with the person, you have fallen into the trap. If you regard the body as a person, you have been deceived. The body is made to cover people up and hide their reality, to oppose their unlimited nature. The body is not natural at any time.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning." UrT23C20

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life." UrM21A5

"Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die." UrT23D6

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." UrT6F8

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something. This is why perception involves an exchange, or a translation, which knowledge does NOT need. The interpretive function of perception, (actually, a distorted form of creation), then permitted man to interpret the body as HIMSELF, which, although depressing, was a way out of the conflict he induced." UrT3F17

"The hope of specialness makes it seem possible God made the body as the prison-house which keeps His Son from Him. For it DEMANDS a special place God cannot enter, and a hiding-place where none is welcome but your tiny self." UrT24C13

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on." UrT20G11

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?" UrT18I1

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present." UrT18H3

"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality." UrW96L4

I am gradually learning that there is POWER in making decisions. And I don't just mean some kind of self-help "make more decisions to be productive" kind of thing. I mean, literally it has a supernatural kind of power to it. It's tied into miracle working. It accesses and wields the power of the mind to CAUSE.

Everything in the course points towards becoming more decisive, empowered, certain, clear about what you do or do not want, being responsible for choice, ending victimhood, realizing that nothing can happen to you against your will, and reclaiming the ability to CHOOSE. And in that choosing, you actually CAUSE stuff. And what you do not choose, you do not cause.

Here is what "My self is ruler of the universe" says from Lesson 253:

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

It is also very clear that being in fear is being in indecision. Fearfulness is an attempt NOT to choose, just as "death is an attempt to make no decisions at all." The opposite of that is to make ALL decisions or to be aware that you choose everything that happens to you. ie nothing happens to you, it happens FROM you.

This is the secret to salvation - that you are doing this to yourself. And the secret to salvation, and forgiveness, and atonement, and miracle working, all recognize that you have a POWER in you to choose. And whatever you DECIDE, you CAUSE TO HAPPEN.

Let's put it this way. YOU ARE ALWAYS CHOOSING.

Everything is a choice. "Heaven is a decision I must make". "No one dies without their own consent."

The problem is that we do not believe we are always choosing. When we say things like "such and such is going to happen to me" as though we are not choosing it, we are actually choosing it. When we lay down and just accept that we're in for stormy weather, we are actually choosing it. "I have no neutral thoughts" - because you are always using thought to choose what you will experience.

The whole thing about perception and projection stems from the fact that you perceive what you CHOOSE to perceive, having put it there yourself through your decision.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am not at peace" - the entire prayer and the text prior to it clarifies that if you are not experiencing joy *YOU* MUST have DECIDED NOT TO. And we are supposed to own up to 100% responsibility for that. And to then reclaim that power of decision, and CHOOSE AGAIN. But if we don't recognize that we are always choosing or have the power TO choose, and that choosing MAKES STUFF HAPPEN, then we will just remain in a state of half-baked victimhood and uncertainty and things just seeming to happen on their own.

Since we've been immersed in fear and uncertainty and victimhood for so long, it has become "normal" to us. We've become used to it. We don't realize that we HAVE a choice in every situation and that the things we are experiencing are precisely what we ASKED FOR. We do not realize that we are, as the song of prayer says, ALWAYS PRAYING and thus always asking AND always being answered in accordance with what it is we are asking for. And if we are asking for suffering, we will make suffering. And if we are asking for joy, we will receive joy.

It's all too easy to be lost in states of fearful-mindedness where it does not seem like you have any say in the matter. That you have no power, are not choosing, stuff is happening outside of your decision, things happen that you do not want, you don't seem to be able to do anything about it, and then you start to believe that you don't even HAVE any kind of "power". Like, if you even DID make a decision, you think that the making of the decision ITSELF - the making up of your mind - has no power to CAUSE anything to occur. But this is not true.

"The mind is very powerful, it is always creating and lever loses its creative ability." The whole thing about rendering the faculties of decision ineffective in an attempt to block the mind's power speaks to this. We do not want to admit that THOUGHT HAS POWER. And in fact, "who would have imagined that thought and belief could combine in a power surge strong enough to literally move mountains." This comes about through DECISIVENESS, certainty, confidence, wholeness, strength, truth, love. The qualities of a healed mind is a POWERFUL mind which chooses and is AWARE that it chooses, and that in making choices CAUSES stuff to occur. Miraculously. Powerfully.

I am still struggling with this myself because all too often I am in the egoic sleeping state of not realizing that I CAN CHOOSE something else. But I've also been finding that when I DO make a decision, it immediately DISPELLS fear. Just last night I was cleaning the bathroom and using chemicals and was getting a bit nauseated from the fumes, and after becoming anxious about it for a few minutes I DECIDED with a firm "I am...." decision... "I am not threatened, I am safe". Instantly a whole cloud of fearful energy around me vanished.

Also not long ago I was seeing signs of a sickness showing up and I got mad about it. I REFUSED that it would be allowed to happen. Jesus said "decide". I decided FIRMLY that THIS WILL SIMPLY NOT HAPPEN. Then I walked away. Next day there was no sign of it. And I had no fear or doubt or second-guessing or wondering about it because of the certainty with which I decided. The firmness or assertiveness and power of making a clear decision.

There is more to this than simply choosing which direction to go on a path. It's not some weak little change of plans. When you become decisive and fearless and certain "I am not doubtful but certain, I am not afraid but all powerful", you become quite POWERFUL and that power actually can CAUSE. It can cause stuff to happen. It can cause stuff to not happen. Just as "my self is ruler of the universe" says. Nothing can come to you unbidden by yourself. You choose it all! No-one dies without their own consent. Nothing happens to you that you do not choose. The world contains no causes, nothing can bring oppression or make you ill or weak or afraid.

We are constantly CHOOSING. We need to step into this power, into this state of "consciously choosing". Being decisive. DECIDING. I had another example just recently where I had some heartburn and was worried about it. Out of the blue, while talking to Holy Spirit, I DECIDED "I am healed." I have no idea where it came from. Instantly Holy Spirit went to work doing some kind of miracle in my body and the heartburn was healed.

Jesus also says that when the PURPOSE of any sickness is recognized as being NOT NEEDED (no defense needed) there is no sickness that will not disappear and be healed instantly. That such healing is automatic. That simply by DECIDING to accept truth without fear and being WILLING to let go of suffering, it can simply vanish. This is the power of our mind. Getting in touch with your WILLINGNESS puts you in touch with the Power of God's Will!

We don't realize how powerful our minds are. We don't recognize it because we're been hanging out in the ego land for too long, drifting from one victimy reaction to the next. Just allowing stuff to happen, going along with it, passively aggressing against ourselves, just laying down and "letting" stuff occur - through our own unconscious choices. It's not that we are not MAKING choices all the time, it's that these choices are being made from an UNCONSCIOUS DEATH WISH and it's causing all kinds of havoc. We need to become AWARE of our decision making moments, our moments of decisiveness and choosing. We can choose what we experience!

I find this choosing to be powerful especially in relation to some kind of statement about myself, termed as "I am..." or "I am not". You don't have to just let stuff carry on "by itself". That's an illusion. Nothing happens "on its own". There isn't any kind of alien will or external causality. You ARE already making everything happen that you experience, you are just doing it outside of awareness. This is part of why we must remove blocks to awareness so that we can stop unconsciously making bad choices that hurt ourselves.

There is power in decision. It is the antithesis of fear and death. YOU CAN CHOOSE NOT TO DIE. And in fact, if you do die, you still chose it. "No-one dies without their own consent." It's just a matter of whether or not you get in touch with that CHOOSING and you USE that power of decision to choose otherwise. You want to choose otherwise because you want to be at peace. You can CHOOSE that. Death is a decision that you make, just as "heaven is a decision I must make." And when you choose Heaven, death becomes IMPOSSIBLE because it cannot happen WITHOUT your consent. If you do not choose it, you are free from it forever.

There is a whole workbook lesson on this as well, Lesson 152 - "The power of decision is my own." Lesson 152. Here's how it starts:

"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no-one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is.

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

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

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.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

Physical sight is blinded by perception of form. It looks only at the forms of error. It regards form as all that exists. The physical sight is blindness, because it cannot see everywhere, and is easily obscured be meaningless objects.

Form doesn't mean anything. But mind then takes the form and decides that certain forms mean certain things. We make up meanings and project them onto the forms. Now there is a hierarchy of illusions, varying degrees of difficulty, and the form of life seems to mean something different to the form of death.

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

The form of death is not really death, and the form of life is not really life. We decided that death and decay "means" death and decay, and that living forms are "more alive". Who told you this? The myths of the world told you this. People made this up.

The form of death is not really death at all. It's just one configuration of materials. A kind of state. One possible way that form can appear. And when the same form appears more animated or fresh or vital, or capable of giving rise to more forms, then we say it means life. But these forms are neither alive or dead.

"In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning."

We give all forms all the meaning they have. We decide that a broken object means there's something wrong. We decide that a rotten corpse means something is beyond the hope of living. We look at the form of things and use the form to substitute for meaning, as if the form something takes MEANS something.

But all forms are illusions, and death is not death, and life is not life. They are all just equal images, appearances and illusions. All easily changed into other forms by the power of the mind.

"The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."

When no artificial meaning is given to the forms of the world, and the world's inherent meaninglessness is recognized, we end up with a level playing field. And now miracles can operate, disregarding any orders of difficulty or "reasons why" you can or cannot change one thing into another.

And now the seemingly dead bodies can be resurrected to "the living", to symbolize eternal life. And forms of sickness can be undone, to testify to innocence. And now water turns into wine and bread and fish multiply and who cares about the so-called law of gravity.