You have been told to bring the darkness to the light, and guilt to holiness. And you have also been told that error must be corrected at its source. Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart, to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
This is the LITTLE part of you, you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but YOU have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it up, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who DOES surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the Eternal Light.
How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.
Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages. Yet God can bring you there, if you are willing to follow the Holy Spirit through seeming terror, trusting Him not to abandon you, and LEAVE you there. For it is not HIS purpose to frighten you, but only YOURS. YOU are severely tempted to abandon HIM at the outside ring of fear. But HE would lead you safely through, and FAR beyond.
The circle of fear lies just below the level the body sees, and SEEMS to be the whole foundation on which the world is based. Here are all the illusions, all the twisted thoughts, all the insane attacks, the fury, vengeance, and betrayal that were made to keep the guilt in place, so that the world could RISE from it, and keep IT hidden. Its SHADOW rises to the surface, enough to hold its most external manifestations in darkness, and to bring despair and loneliness to it, and keep it joyless. But its INTENSITY is veiled by its heavy coverings, and kept APART from what was made to keep it hidden.
The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light.
This heavy-seeming barrier, this artificial floor that looks like rock, is like a bank of low, dark clouds that seem to be a solid wall before the sun. Its impenetrable appearance is WHOLLY an illusion. It gives way softly to the mountain tops that rise above it, and has no power at all to hold back anyone willing to climb above it, to see the sun. It is not strong enough to stop a button's fall, nor hold a feather. Nothing can rest upon it, for it is but an ILLUSION of a foundation. Try but to touch it, and it disappears; attempt to grasp it, and your hands hold nothing.
Yet in this cloud bank it is easy to see a whole world rising. A solid mountain range, a lake, a city, all arise in your imagination, and FROM the clouds, the messengers of your perception return to you, assuring you that it is all THERE. Figures stand out and move about, actions seem real, and forms appear and shift from loveliness to the grotesque. And back and forth they go, as long as you would play the game of children's "make believe." Yet, however long you play it, and regardless of how much imagination you bring to it, you do NOT confuse it with the world below, nor seek to make it real.
So should it be with the dark clouds of guilt, no more impenetrable and no more substantial. You will NOT bruise yourself against them, in traveling through. Let your Guide TEACH you their UNsubstantial nature, as He leads you PAST them. For BENEATH them is a world of light, whereon they cast no shadows. Their shadows lie upon the world BEYOND them, still FURTHER from the light. But from them TO the light, their shadows CANNOT fall. This world of light, this circle of brightness, is the real world, where guilt meets with forgiveness. Here, the world OUTSIDE is seen anew, WITHOUT the shadow of guilt upon it.
Here are YOU forgiven, for here you have forgiven everyone. Here is the new perception, where everything is bright and shining with innocence, washed in the waters of forgiveness, and cleansed of every evil thought you laid upon it. Here there is no attack upon the Son of God, and YOU are welcome. Here is your innocence, waiting to clothe you and protect you, and make you ready for the final step in the journey inward. Here are the dark and heavy garments of guilt laid by, and gently replaced by purity and joy.
Yet even forgiveness is not the end. Forgiveness DOES make lovely, but it does NOT create. It IS the source of healing, but it is the MESSENGER of love, and not its Source. Here you are led, that God Himself can take the final step unhindered. For here does nothing INTERFERE with love, letting it be Itself. A step BEYOND this holy place of forgiveness. A step still further inward, but one you CANNOT take, transports you to something COMPLETELY different. Here is the Source of light; nothing perceived, forgiven, nor transformed. But merely KNOWN.
Jesus describes the process of becoming sick...
"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."
What happens is, we're in a deluded mindset (ego) and are misperceiving and misinterpreting reality. Then we are exposed to the truth, but in our thought system what is actually true is perceived as "false", because we see truth in what is false and vice versa. That's part of our delusion.
So instead of seeing the truth for how it really is, we see it as an enemy. In particular the ego sees the Holy Spirit as an enemy, just as the ego sees the miracle as an enemy.
By misperceiving the truth, i.e. filtering it and reinterpreting it and coming to a conclusion that it has properties of "falseness", in our twisted thought system this means it is an enemy, or it's evil, or its attacking what we are, or is against us in some way.
The "natural reaction" to this PERCEPTION (albeit a mistaken one), which is totally understandable, is to DEFEND YOURSELF. You tend to want to get away from what you believe is false, and draw yourself towards that which is true for you. Whether or not your idea of truth is back to front or not is a different matter.
So your natural reaction to your OWN misperception of the truth, is to defend yourself, because you see attack IN it, which you have projected onto it. You therefore believe you are seeing an enemy, and you want to escape.
You want to get away from that which you see as false, because it is evil, riddled with darkness, vicious and sure to threaten you. In the interest of preserving your sense of SAFETY, and in effort to DEFEND THE TRUTH (at least, your delusional truth), and in the interests of maintaining your sense of INNOCENCE (albeit mis-identified), you use your creative powers to put up a DEFENSE.
This defense is something you do with your mind. It is resistance. It is denial. It is an attempt to disassociate yourself from the truth, to put distance between you, to emphasize the separation between you and it, and therefore effectively SHUT YOURSELF OFF FROM LIFE. Truth is life, i.e. God, so as you defend yourself against God, you produce the opposite of life - a movement towards death. All forms of sickness are partial deaths. There is not really such a thing as sickness, only life or death - and death is an illusion.
Therefore you believe that you've actually done the right thing, that you've defended yourself, that you've upheld the truth, that you've maintained innocence, and that you've blocked out some vicious murderous God who wants you dead. You really believe that you've actually made a wise move and that you are BETTER OFF being rid of, or having escaped, the terrible monster that you MIS-INTERPRETED the truth as.
As you continue with such delusions, you can drive yourself to death, believing fully that you are all the while defending the truth, upholding innocence, protecting reality, and thwarting the 'real menace' of God. People commit suicide every day. Every person who dies is choosing to die in order to escape from God. Death is a choice for self-murder, to escape Life, because Life has now been wrongly perceived as DEATH. Life and death have been flipped, their roles and meanings inverted, and you are now convinced that dying is actually a choice for life - that it is your SALVATION, and that it will bring you PEACE! Hah.
So you can see how deluded we can be, that the truth contains horrors we do not want. But the fact is, the truth is a blank mirror, in which we see a REFLECTION of all of our own delusional beliefs. When it looks frightening, it is ONLY because it does not support, uphold, or even acknowledge, the egoic belief system and all that it believes in. Thus when we are ego-identified, we believe we are defending ourselves from a separate enemy, but we're actually running away from our own SHADOW.
This is why we need to forgive God, i.e. undo our delusion that illusions are real, or that there is a truth other than God's truth. It is also why we need to have "a little willingness" to be mistaken - that our sense of truth may not be the real truth, and become open to accepting God's truth as our truth - sharing truth with Him. This opens the way for healing miracles. But even moreso, it is the RESURRECTION of the Son of GOd.
The sick are merely delusional and self-deceived in what the truth really is, believing that the opposite is true. They do not realize they are choosing against the truth, and that by doing so it produces sickness. And then sickness seems to come about almost accidentally through mis-creation. Before you know it, you're sick and suffering and heading for death. But this can ALWAYS be corrected, and you can ALWAYS choose again.
Correction is needed, and that is all.
Holy Spirit is the answer. He is here to help awaken you from the ILLUSION that death is real, that death will protect you from death, and that God is evil.
God is love. Love is all there is. Love is what you are.
A tree ... well.... at first a seed, is planted, and there is husk and germ, and then there is sprout, and now leaves, and a stem, and then a trunk with bark, and then flowers are emerging with petals and pollen, and now the emergence of apples with sweetness, and then there is a seed forming in the apple, and the apple falls to the ground, and now there is a seed again which could become a new tree, and on it goes.
So the question then is, what is this thing? Is it a seed? Well, temporarily, but it turns into something else. Is it a tree? Well not entirely, it was a seed at one point. Is it an apple? For a while, but it used to be bark and petals. So what is this thing? What is this so-called organism that just keeps on changing?
Really the whole cycle of what we call life is a temporary mix of things shifting and changing, as though to say, it has no permanent truth. It is never always something, it's always turning into something else. It shifts and changes, and so says it is one thing one moment and another the next. Another word for that is a lie, or untruth. A physical lie.
There is really no absolute truth of this shapeshifting "lifeform", it's one thing one minute and then you come back some days later and it's become something else. It is partly something, but not wholly anything. Bits of parts sprouting here, other parts sprouting there, at first buds and leaves, then flowers and fruits, who knows what it even is.
This is the transient cyclic undependable uncertain (fear) constantly shifting deceptive dishonest delusional system of the physical world. It has no fixed truth, and it presents one thing as true one moment and changes it's "mind" the next. It has no permanent identity, no absolute anything, nothing dependable, nothing reliable, you can't even trust it.
Such a world symbolises the ego thought system, full of illusions, deceptions, lies, shiftings and changes, nothing ever truly dependable or reliable. Always uncertain, an entire system of fear, always uncertain as to what it is or will be, impossible to depend on, undecided in its insanity, committed to nothing, incapable of being. And as physical objects it has become PHYSICAL FEAR. A physical lie, shifting before your eyes. And who knows what it is or was or ever will be next.
The world is a physical version of insanity. A mind solidified into concrete and walls. All its workings the laws of madness. Its entire system one of total uncertainty and deception. An illusion of a world, driven by insanity and rooted in lies. Not one single part of it is eternal or true.
"The world is the symbol of fear."
""A meaningless world engenders fear."
The totally insane engenders fear because it is completely undependable, and offers no grounds for trust. Nothing in madness is dependable. It holds out no safety and no hope. But such a world is not real. I have given it the illusion of reality, and have suffered from my belief in it. Now I choose to withdraw this belief, and place my trust in reality. In choosing this, I will escape all the effects of the world of fear because I am acknowledging that it does not exist."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
Either God or the ego is insane. If you will examine the evidence ON BOTH SIDES fairly, you will realize that this MUST be true. Neither God nor the ego proposes a partial thought system. Each is internally consistent, but they are diametrically opposed in all respects, so that partial allegiance is impossible. But remember that their results are as different as their foundations, and their fundamentally irreconcilable natures CANNOT be resolved by YOUR vacillations. Nothing alive is fatherless, for life is creation. Therefore, your decision is always an answer to the question, "Who is my father?" And you WILL be faithful to the father you choose.
Yet what would you say to someone who REALLY believed this question involves conflict? If YOU made the ego, how can the ego have made YOU? The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM. The ego, then, is nothing more than a delusional system in which YOU MADE YOUR OWN FATHER. Make no mistake about this. It sounds insane when it is stated with perfect honesty, but the ego never looks upon what it does with perfect honesty. Yet that IS its insane premise, which is carefully hidden in the dark cornerstone of its thought system. And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand.
Both sides of every war are run by the ego. The war is symptomatic of the ego attacking itself. War is self attack.
When you believe that one side of the war is the good guys and one side is the bad guys, YOU have fallen for the ILLUSION.
BOTH sides of every war are played ultimately by the SAME side. There is only ONE side which has divided against ITSELF, and is attacking itself in both directions. This is the ego mind, the split mind, pretending to be TWO, when in fact it is one. The human race is attacking itself.
When we are deceived by all of these ILLUSIONS that someone did not ask for something, someone is a victim, someone is unfairly treated, someone is sick against their will, someone is suffering unfairly, etc... if we believe these things, that the person did not in any way choose or want this, WE TOO have fallen for the same illusion they fell for. And now we are supporting and adding to their illusion, and have kept them imprisoned.
We need to learn that the world is FULL of illusions of Party A appearing to be separate form Party B. In every way that this expresses, it ALWAYS looks as though one group of people is separate from another group of people. Ie that there are two distinct identities, or parties, or teams, or groups, or agendas, or whatever. Always two separate camps. And the appearance of two separate camps is the EGO. That's what the ego split mind looks like - a mind with multiple personalities, where those personalities are at war with each other.
We need to learn not to fall for these illusions. They are NOT the truth. It is NOT true that victims are victims. It is NOT the truth that things happen to people against their will. It is NOT true that death isn't chosen. It is NOT true that people do not want to be sick. It is NOT true that those who are afraid are being caused to be scared by someone or something outside of them. It is NOT true that people suffer against their will. These are ILLUSIONS, lies, disguises, covering up what the person is secretly really doing to themselves.
When we then believe and fall for these illusions, we are not seeing correctly, and we ourselves have become insane. And now we are entering into FALSE EMPATHY with others by joining with them in this delusional thought system, supporting their CLAIM that they do not want this, or that it happened without their choosing it. By entering into this with them we support and empower them to STAY the way they are, thus keeping them imprisoned. We cannot set them free until we are willing to FORGIVE, which means to overlook the ILLUSION that what they're presenting to us is the truth.
People who are victims will fervently express the belief and conviction that they did not want this to happen. People who are sick will passionately proclaim how this suffering is unfair and unwanted and they did not ask for it, and that they want to do everything to get rid of it (while doing nothing to really cure it). People who are in fear, are actually attackers who believe in disempowerment and weakness and attack others by seeing them as guilty and sinful. Do not believe appearances!
You have to learn, if you're to be a miracle worker, to OVERLOOK all of these illusions because they are all LIES. They are untruth, and dishonesty, and irresponsibility. Do not get into pity and sympathy and false empathy about how people are suffering against their will. They are attempting to bring you into a delusional thought system. They are attacking you with their DEMONSTRATION that they believe in attack and defense and war and conflict and fear and suffering.
Do not believe in sickness. Sickness is not REAL. Do not believe in death. Death is not REAL. Wake up! Be the light of the world and demonstrate a different truth. Demonstrate that the secret to salvation is that we're doing all of this to ourselves, and that owning that is being responsible and honest. Demonstrate miracles, that no matter what has happened, it can be undone, because there IS no real sin, and all of the effects of an ILLUSION of sin must be reversible.
The world is full of lies and liars. Be careful of listening to other people's "obstacles to peace". Beware of the way that other people make sin real and attack you by reinforcing their own belief that you should be afraid of "real bad things happening". These would not come from a sane mind or a mind that is aware of God, and aware of Reality. Discern the difference between illusions and reality. In truth nothing has gone wrong, no-one has suffered against their will, there is no death and there is no world.
Time to wake up!
"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"
"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."
What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.
You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.
BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.
In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.
"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."
Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.
The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.
Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.
Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."
The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.
The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.
To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.
This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.
In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.
Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.
You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.
"There is no death, the son of god is free."
And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."
Let's just be clear about something here. God creates or extends reality. Everything real is within God's being. Everything real comes from His Will. Ok. The entire "realm" of God is within Himself, and all of it is real and deliberately created BY HIM.
SO.....
If we claim, God created planet Earth, God created bodies, THEN... we have to also say this:
Earth, bodies, dog shit, death, war, terror, sickness, suffering, starvation, explosions, supernova, ice ages, being eaten alive, piles of puke and diarrhea, cannibalism, murder, destruction, rape and incest, etc... ALL OF IT.... MUST, be part of God, per God's will. If it is God's CREATION, there is no loopholes, no exceptions, no OTHER makers of this stuff. It is all God's. And it's all real. And you cannot escape any of it.
If whatever God creates is within HIS OWN BEING, and is part of HIS OWN SELF, per HIS OWN WILL, then absolutely EVERYTHING within his being must be in accord with His Will, CREATED BY HIM, without exception. And therefore everything "created" MUST reflect God's nature, intention, attitude.
This should be pretty obvious. The ENTIRE CONTENT of whatever "world" He creates must be 100% HIS DOING and entirely WHAT HE WANTED.
So this now means, every single thing in this world, good or bad, right or wrong, happy or sad, is HIS DOING. And this leaves NO ROOM for other wills to have other doings. There are no other causes. This makes God the AUTHOR of all hatred, pain, torture and decay. All suffering is HIS FAULT. HIS WILL.
God causes floods. God causes famines. God causes stars to explode destroying solar systems. God causes black holes to suck up galaxies and civilizations. God causes murder and attack and death. ALL OF IT MUST be part of God's mind and will, IF GOD CREATED THIS WORLD.
And if you can understand why this is entirely correct, you should also realize that if God WERE to do this, to have DONE this, God WOULD BE EXTREMELY CRUEL.
As the opening statement says, if God created BODIES, which includes all forms of bodies not just human, including planetary bodies, IF GOD created them, DEATH IS REAL. Because these bodies DO DIE. Flowers die. People die. Planets die. Galaxies die. IF God created these things, DEATH IS REALITY. And if death is reality, then you CANNOT UNDO IT, you cannot overcome it, you are guaranteed to die forever. And that means there is NO SUCH THING as eternal life. So you better be counting the days until your "inevitable death."
The idea that God made the world is the idea that GOD IS THE EGO!!!!
And that means, quite simply.... GOD WANTS YOU DEAD. That it is GOD'S WILL THAT YOU DIE.
So now, we're in a bit of a predicament, because unless you want this to be TRUE of God, you CANNOT be claiming that God made the world. It literally CANNOT BE POSSIBLE that God had ANYTHING to do with the making of any of this shit, if God is to be loving. It is absolutely ridiculous to suggest, God WANTED there to be suffering, sickness and death.
Now, some people, who are insane and in denial, and cannot accept this fact, try to find another way to look at this situation, so that they can do two things: 1) KEEP the world and keep believing God created it, 2) Explain it in such a way that it is NOT terrible, bad, ugly and murderous. And so what do they do?
They come up with this bullshit idea that if you will simply change your mind ABOUT it, you'll suddenly realize that MURDER AND DEATH are totally LOVELY. That it is NATURAL for animals to eat each other alive. That there is SUPPOSED to be seasons in which things are born, suffer, and die. That if we will just skew our perception enough, supposedly "truly", then we'll see it as GOD INTENDED, as though to say, the things which SEEM like death and cruelty, ARE NOT ACTUALLY that.
And so what does that mean? It means God is totally nuts. Because now God does CRUEL THINGS, on purpose, under the BELIEF that THEY ARE NOT. It makes God out to be an absolute idiot. It justifies murder. It justifies death. It tries to adjust to the world to MAKE IT OK. It sees true perception as a device for changing the MEANING of a meaningless world, to GIVE it meaning, so that it seems meaningful. It's an attempt to find a way to look at this world such that EVEN THE HELL of it SEEMS LOVELY AND ACCEPTABLE.
That, is totally nuts. But that is what some people are doing with ACIM.
This world cannot be God's will. God HAS TO BE CRUEL to produce ANY of this, regardless of how you perceive it, regardless of how you think it was conceived, regardless of how you think God views it. God could not construct EVEN THE POSSIBILITY for suffering. God could not come up with even a scenario where you MIGHT even die. Yet alone to accuse God of MAKING DEATH. And to then try to explain it away by saying it''s not death, really, it's actually totally natural part of life. BULL SHIT.
I want you to consider this deeply. Think about it. God HAS to be TOTALLY FUCKING CRUEL in order to make a world like this. Which,may I remind you...
"Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
And therefore, Because God IS NOT CRUEL AT ALL, He CANNOT have made it.
Nor does it STOP BEING cruel just because you try to LOVE IT. Just because you forgive it, look past it, or truly perceive it, this does not change what it is. A true perception of a world of death doesn't turn it into a world of life. Who can look on death and believe IT IS NOT THAT? No amount of forgiveness has ever stopped animals from eating each other alive, babies from dying at birth, planets colliding, or black holes swallowing whole entire civilizations.
THIS WORLD, is NOT God's creation.
THIS WORLD, is the world WE made when we were delusional and trying to DENY God's world. This is written all over the course. A delusional system of those driven made by guilt. A place where God could enter not. An attack on God. A picture of the crucifixion fo God's son. Make no mistake it is NOTHING LIKE God's creation, and crediting it to him is a MASSIVE disservice. God in his perfection could not come up with the shite that happens in this world. And all of the shit that happens would HAVE TO BE BECAUSE OF HIM if he created it.
God does not create hell, suffering, death, decay, destruction, sickness, meaninglessness, suicide, insanity or hatred. Look around you. This is not reality.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world.God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself."
"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."
If you want to SEE REALITY, you have to DENY THIS WORLD. There are two worlds. One you made, one God created. In God's world there are no bodies, no day and night, no stores, no stupid stuff you don't need, no sickness, no death, no muder or attack, no suffering, no time, no loss, no dog shit, and especially no bad weather that kills people. If you want to SEE IT, to see the world GOD ACTUALLY created, you have to STOP LOOKING AT THIS PLANET. Sight of it is COSTING YOU the ability to SEE CHRIST where HE IS, in God's Kingdom, BEYOND THIS WORLD.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.
This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth), and do not want. The only effort you need make, ***to give this world away in glad exchange*** for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
Heaven is not like this, folks. God can do a lot better.
We may not realize it, but from birth onward most of us came to believe that we are our body. That literally, this physical object with arms and legs is our own self. There's my toes, there's my fingers, there's my face, there's "me". Parents talked about "you" this way. You talked about you this way, asking yourself, what am I?
And we look upon this strange thing in the mirror and cannot quite fathom what it is why or how we came to be this strangely shaped creature of extraordinary complexity, the likes of which we have no idea how it functions.
What we have to realize is that this is the false starting point, and this is the state of imprisonment. Believing we are a body is completely a mistake. A total error in perception. And in fact the body was made with and in order to produce false perception.
The body's eyes cannot see, the ears cannot hear, all its senses are back to front and it reports on illusions as if they're real. The body is a lie machine. And yet there we are starting out by believing every word it says, everything it does, everything it seems to tell us, even to the extent of believing it is our own self. And we are CLOSE to it that we think everything it experiences WE are experiencing directly.
So invested is this belief that we are a body, that we have taken something which is utterly not a body whatsoever and have tried to smush it together and bind it and join it and strap them together into one lump, to call it myself. We may not realize, there is a YOU, and then there is a BODY, and the two are not the same
In fact, the you that you really are is SO UNLIKE the body in every single way that if you were to catch sight of it you'd be astonished that you ever thought you could be a lump of flesh and bones. But since the body itself was made to block awareness of this, to act as a temptation device and a way to deceive ourselves, we're quite lost in it.
"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."
We did a VERY good job of deceiving ourselves. To such an extent that almost all conscious recognition of not being a body is blotted out by the body. And so as we attempt to become more spiritual or to reawaken, we're going to run up against a very basic fact.
The body is NOT who you are at all, but you heavily believe IT IS YOU. And on the basis of believing it is you, and backed up by everyone else believing their body is their self also, you have spent years upon years of reinforcing this "uniting" of self and body, regarding it as yourself, talking about it as if it's your self, worshipping it, cleaning it, feeding it, sexing it, using it in various ways, all under the seemingly clever guise that this is YOU doing this stuff, it's YOU looking in the mirror, and it's YOU that's gorgeous today.
When you look at society, look at the news, look at how people talk about bodies. Almost every reference to a person is ACTUALLY a reference to their body. "Joe did this"... well no, joe's body did. Joe is not a body. This is pretty serious, how far reaching this is. We've gone really really far into this distortion. Every single way that we confuse ourselves with "our own body" - and by the way you don't really HAVE a body as a spirit - is a mistaken false perception of ourselves. It's delusional. It's like saying you are your jeans and t-shirt and shoes.
We've become lost in our bodies. Tangled up in form. Confused about who and what we are. Deceived by appearances. Tempted to regard this object in the mirror as though it is our self and to then preen it and decorate it and worship it and feel bad about it all based on the belief that it is you. This is the big problem that needs correction. This is body identification - whereby the Son of God is trying to prove he is NOT a spirit, NOT a mind, and ONLY a body. It's the complete opposite of awakening.
So if we're on a spiritual path to God, then we're going to have realize, that any progress towards that goal will have to entail learning that YOU ARE NOT A BODY. In fact, you're not even remotely a body, nor do you really have one. You are immortal spirit. "You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."
By confusing your IDENTITY with the human body and thinking of it as "my self", you are confused, and confusion is fear. And this is also level confusion. And it is also sickness. And it is a way to defend against the truth. And it's a choice to suffer. It's a form of self attack, and an attack on others, to regard yourself as physical.
To emphasize the qualities, characteristics, gender, sexual persuasion, desirable or undesirable features, shape, size, color, ethic origin, hairstyle, musculature, skinniness, sexiness, attractiveness, ugliness, or any other attribute of the body as being something that determines or says ANYTHING about YOU, is delusional. It is confusion about who and what you are.
But we are addicted to using the body like some kind of idol worship figure that we hold in very high regard (or low) as a statement of "what I am like". Yet nothing about the body applies to you at all. We can get lost in how proud we are to be a woman or a man or gay or straight or white or black or pretty much anything else. NONE of it is true of you! You are made of light. You are a spirit being. You have immortality. Your body is an entire LAYER of illusions covering over your real self. It's just a picture that you show to the world to pretend you are not yourself.
"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it"
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."
"The body is the idea of who you are not."
"For what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."
"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA?"
"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself."
"The ego regards the body as its home, and DOES try to satisfy itself through the body."
"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."
"Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible."
"A PERSON conceives of himself as separate, largely because he perceives OF himself as bounded by a body."
"The body IS separate, and therefore CANNOT be part of you."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from Self, as all illusions do."
This means that all the ways that we believe and act as if we ARE the body, as though its prowess rubs off on us, as though we get credit or discredit for how the body looks, as though anything about it AT ALL says anything about you AT ALL, has to be undone. We have to be willing to let go of all the ways we have confused ourselves WITH it, so that we can come to the recognition that we are DISTINCT from it, and that it is NOT ourselves.
In a sense, we have to "separate out" what is REALLY YOU, your real self, and what is an illusion. "The body is a dream", so it is an illusion. IF you are confusing it with your sense of self, you are losing sight of your real self. Not being clear about WHAT you are - immortal spirit - you are unclear about what is real and what is an illusion. You cannot BE a body if you are to be real.
This means that your ENTIRE sense of identity - self - what you are - has to SHIFT away from the body, TOWARDS SPIRIT. To become spirit-identified. That is the goal. To let go of the body entirely. To be completely clear it is not you, and you do not need it, because it is not part of who and what you are. God did not create it, so it is not really part of your real self., and does not exist in reality or heaven.
The proper use of denial is to not BELIEVE that the body is real, and to therefore deny its existence, recognizing it is not yourself or anything real. The improper use of denial is to BELIEVE the body is real, while trying to deny it exists, which is actually a double denial. To believe bodies exists is a denial of your spirit. To then sacrifice the body is denial on top of denial. We have to carefully dismantle our belief that the body is real in the first place, shift our sense of identity back to its natural God-given state, and then accept the atonement truth that we are still THE SPIRIT that God created, NOT a body whatsoever.
Upon realizing you are spirit, clearly, and with no delusion about being a body, you may for a while be using the body. But now the body is merely a TOOL. Similar to how a carpenter would use a hammer to construct a chair, he would not for a moment become delusional and believe that he IS the hammer. It's just a device, an instrument, a piece of machinery. You can operate it and make it do stuff but at no time do you believe it is YOUR SELF.
And having recognized that your entire fulfillment comes from remembering who you ARE, you would no longer seek to use the body to GET anything, to "pleasure you", or to enter into illusions of joining at a physical level - knowing it is not possible, or necessary. "Minds need not bodies to communicate."
Full-on spirit-identification, christ-identification, son of God identification, sets you free from death, from the world, and from all bodies forever. You are not a body, you are free, because you are still as God created you. And those who know themselves are not confused about whether they are a walking flesh prison or not. Shifting to spirit means shifting away from EVERY sense of identity associated with the body form. Race, gender, sex, age, genetics, ancestry, shape, color, features, all of it.
You are only what God created. You are a shining star in heaven's womb. How could you be anything but God's divine creation.
YOU MADE UP THIS WORLD. IT DOES NOT EXIST. WILL YOU DENY IT?
"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."
"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts."
"Your mind has the power to create planets."
"My self is ruler of the universe."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it."
"You cannot behold the world and know God."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."
"There is no world apart from what you wish."
"The world you see is what you have put there to see."
"The world you see does not exist."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."
"If this were the real world God would be cruel."
"Perception selects and makes the world you see."
"The world you see is nothing to do with reality."
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"Salvation is no more than the idea that this world is not your home."
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."
"There is no world! This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach."
"On confusion this world has been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon."
"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world."
"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself."
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel."
Here is today's bombshell of truth.
The entire physical universe is a game, designed by the ego, which is impossible to win. Anyone who plays the game will die. Period.
The game has only one rule. If you believe in the game and try to play it, you will die. There is no way to play it and win.
If you think that you can play the game in some kind of special way, using some kind of special abilities or skills or knowledge or workarounds or talents or aptitude or cleverness or creativity or whatever, you will become delusional, and you will die.
If you think you can play the game in a certain way by taking sides with certain apparent powers, by teaming up with those who seem to be winning, by avoiding certain obstacles or traps, by being at war with enemies and getting rid of them, by being very very careful not to have anything bad happen to you, or any other strategy whatsoever, ALL of those strategies WILL NOT WORK, and you will die.
If you think you can outsmart the game and section off a small part of the environment to protect and defend you, or that having certain behaviors will ensure your safety, or that wearing certain clothes or embarking on certain activities will change your chances, you are delusional, and you will die.
The instruction manual for the ego's game of "life and death", which has a subheading "actually, its just death", reads: "all players will die." That's it. At least it doesn't take 5 hours to learn like some games.
The ego's primary game is a game of separation. It is a game of emphasizing differences. It is a game of attempting to separate out one thing from another in as intense and believable a way as possible. It does not care whatsoever what the qualities of each part are, so long as they seem separate.
The game's primary function is temptation. It is designed to tempt you to believe that the appearance of difference or separation between things is real. If you fall for it, you fall for the trap, and you will die. If you look at two parts of the environment and you find yourself siding with or against either of them, not recognizing that they are BOTH PART OF THE SAME GAME, you will fail, and you will die. The instant you feel sorry for some part, or are against another part, or put one part on a pedestal, or buy into any kind of SPECIALNESS, you will die.
The devious, diabolical fact of the game is, anyone who falls for the illusion of difference and separation WILL SUFFER AND DIE, because they have been tricked into making themselves LESS THAN WHOLE, and therefore have diminished who and what they are, and this is DEATH.
So within the ego's game, it does not matter AT ALL, in any state of war and conflict, who wins or loses, who is right or wrong, good or bad, innocent or guilty, or any of it. If you buy into the belief that the good/innocent/righteous people are correct and the bad/wrong/guilty people are not, YOU FELL FOR IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER AND YOU WILL DIE.
The ego itself is the puppet master which disguises itself in the costume and form of every single thing which shows up in the game. It is secretly the identity behind every individual, every form, every event which happens, and every illusion of difference. It will play both sides against each other, playing itself against itself. It will take the role of savior and fixer and helper and carer and lover JUST SO THAT it can be victimized by someone else, SO THAT you will buy into the illusion that the other person was the sinner and not this one. AND THEN YOU WILL DIE, because you failed the test.
Illusions of better/worse, right/wrong, good/bad, more spiritual/less spiritual, more ego/less ego, are TRAPS. Illusions of people who seem innocent but who are still vulnerable, are traps. Illusions of people suffering and being sick against their will are traps. Illusions of bad things happening are traps. Illusions of unwanted terrible weather events are traps. Illusions of acts of nature, God's wrath, war, disagreement of all kinds, marital tension, sexual tension, hate, violence, condemnation, judgementalism, taking sides in a sports match, liking someone more than another, loving someone more than another, IS A TRAP, AND YOU WILL DIE.
This entire world, everything you see in the world, all people, all objects, all places, all events, all circumstances, all situations, all stories, are all DOOMED to condemn you to death IF you buy into them whatsoever.
No-one wins here. No-one actually pulls off a win, which would be a win against God. No-one achieves the FICTION of getting away with murder, being able to do something to someone else without receiving the effects, being able to have someone else make you die against your will, or suffering without choosing it. There are no winners in any argument or war. To believe in the war itself IS LOSS. To believe in enemies at all MAKES YOU WEAK. To side with the little victims MAKES YOU SUFFER. You cannot escape the game this way. You cannot just shift yourself into one safe-seeming corner of life where you cower and hope that all the bad shit doesn't come your way.
There is only one way to escape the game, one way to overcome its rules, and only one way to play it correctly to your advantage. The ONLY advantage is NOT TO PLAY IT AT ALL. This is what you have to learn. You have to see all illusions for what they are, tools for separation. This includes all "life forms" (death forms) in this world. They are all forms of separation, forms of error, forms of sin. They are not holy. That they appear at all, and that you believe you really see them, is your choice to die.
This entire world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. There is NO PART OF IT which is not an attempt to kill you. Every trap will present itself and you will fall for all of them until you learn to overlook them all and attain Atonement/forgiveness. The world is not escaped by death, or by winning, or by making your best effort to avoid death, or by trying to bend the rules, or by thinking you're so great that you can go outside the lines and succeed on your own terms. YOU WILL FAIL, GUARANTEED, and you will die. The world - the entire ego's game - is only escaped by TRUTH.
Only truth will set you free. Only truth will show you the ego's game in plain sight, with all its diabolical devious designs and all of its traps and purposes and attempts to tempt you into it. Only the truth will allow you to see in the true light, the true nature of the temptation. Only the truth will keep you protected and safe. Only the truth will guide you out of the dream of death. Only the truth will allow you to live forever.
Grandeur is of God, and ONLY of Him. Therefore, it is in you. Whenever you become aware of it, however dimly, you abandon the ego automatically, because in the presence of the grandeur of God, the meaninglessness of the ego becomes perfectly apparent. Though it does not understand this, the ego believes that its "enemy" has struck, and attempts to offer gifts to induce you to return to its protection. SELF-inflation is the only offering it can make. The grandiosity of the ego is its alternative to the grandeur of God. Which will you choose?
Grandiosity is ALWAYS a cover for despair. It is without hope, because it is not real. It is an attempt to COUNTERACT your littleness, based on the belief THAT THE LITTLENESS IS REAL. WITHOUT this belief, the grandiosity is meaningless, and you could not possibly WANT it. The essence of grandiosity is competitiveness, because it ALWAYS involves ATTACK. It is a delusional attempt to OUTDO, but NOT to UNdo. We said before that the ego vacillates between suspiciousness and viciousness. It remains suspicious as long as you DESPAIR of yourself. It shifts to viciousness whenever you will not tolerate self-debasement, and seek relief. Then it offers you the delusion of ATTACK as a solution.
The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it does not know the difference between miracle-impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own. We once said that the ego IS aware of threat, but does NOT make distinctions between two ENTIRELY different kinds of threat to its existence. Its own PROFOUND sense of vulnerability renders it incapable of judgment, EXCEPT in terms of attack. When it experiences threat, its ONLY decision is whether to attack NOW, or withdraw to attack later. If you ACCEPT its offer of grandiosity, it will attack immediately. If you do not, it will wait.
The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it. Grandeur is totally WITHOUT illusion, and because it is real, it is compellingly convincing. But the conviction of reality will not REMAIN with you, UNLESS YOU DO NOT ALLOW THE EGO TO ATTACK IT.
The ego will make every effort to recover, and mobilize its energies AGAINST your release. It will tell you that you are insane, and argue that grandeur CANNOT be a real part of you, because of the littleness in which IT believes. But your grandeur is NOT delusional, BECAUSE YOU DID NOT MAKE IT. YOU have made grandiosity, and are afraid of it, because it is a form of ATTACK. But your grandeur is of God, who created it out of His love. From your grandeur you can only bless, because your grandeur is your ABUNDANCE. By blessing you hold it in your minds, protecting it from illusions, and keeping yourself in the Mind of God.
Remember always that you cannot be anywhere EXCEPT in the Mind of God. When you FORGET this, you WILL despair, and you WILL attack. The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it. But if you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you CANNOT despair, and therefore you CANNOT want the ego. Your grandeur is God's ANSWER to the ego, because it is true. Littleness and grandeur cannot co-exist, nor is it possible for them to alternate in your awareness. Littleness and grandiosity can and MUST, since both are untrue, and therefore on the same level. Being the level of shift, it is experienced as shifting, and extremes are its essential characteristic.
But truth and littleness are DENIALS of each other, and grandeur IS truth. Truth does not vacillate; it is ALWAYS true. When grandeur slips away from you, YOU HAVE REPLACED IT WITH SOMETHING YOU HAVE MADE. Perhaps it is the belief in littleness; perhaps it is the belief in grandiosity. But it MUST be insane, because it is NOT TRUE. Your grandeur will NEVER deceive you, but your illusions ALWAYS will. Illusions ARE deceptions.
You CANNOT triumph, but you ARE exalted. And in your exalted state, you seek others like you, and rejoice with them. It is easy to distinguish grandeur from grandiosity, simply because love is returned, but pride is not. Pride will not produce miracles, and therefore will deprive you of the true witnesses to your reality. Truth is not obscure nor hidden, but its obviousness to YOU lies in the joy you bring to its witnesses, WHO SHOW IT TO YOU. They attest to your grandeur, but they cannot attest to pride because pride is not shared.
God WANTS you to behold what He created, because it is HIS joy. Can your grandeur be arrogant, when God HIMSELF witnesses to it? And what can be real that has NO witnesses? What good can come of it? And if no good can come of it, the Holy Spirit cannot use it. What He cannot TRANSFORM to the Will of God does not exist at all. Grandiosity is delusional because it is used to REPLACE your grandeur. Yet what God has created cannot BE replaced.
God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it. You are altogether irreplaceable in the Mind of God. No one else can fill your part of it, and while you leave your part of it empty, your eternal place merely waits for your return. God, through His Voice, reminds you of it, and God Himself keeps your extensions safe within it. But YOU do not know them, until you return TO them.
You CANNOT replace the Kingdom, and you cannot replace yourself. God, Who KNOWS your value, would not have it so, and so it is NOT so. Your value is in GOD's Mind, and therefore NOT in yours alone. To accept yourself as He created you CANNOT be arrogant, because it is the DENIAL of arrogance. To accept your littleness IS arrogant, because it means that you believe that YOUR evaluation of yourself is TRUER THAN GOD's. But if truth is indivisible, then YOUR evaluation of yourself MUST BE GOD's.
You did not ESTABLISH your value, and it needs no defense. NOTHING can attack it, or prevail over it. It does not vary. It merely IS. Ask the Holy Spirit WHAT it is, and He will tell you. But do not be afraid of His Answer, for it comes from God. It IS an exalted answer, because of its Source. But the Source is true, and so is its answer. Listen and do not question what you hear, for God does not deceive. He would have you replace the ego's belief in littleness with His own exalted answer to the question of your being, so that you can cease to question it, and KNOW it for what it IS.
Everything real is of God, within God. God has no opposite because God is infinite, everywhere, always. It is not possible to leave God. There is nowhere that God is not. Anywhere "else", which must be unreal, does not exist.
"Ego", is nothing but a concept. It's an idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God. Since God is absolute existence, the idea of an ego is "total non existence". Literally, this conceptual idea of total opposition to God DOES NOT EXIST. Non-existence has no existence at all.
The ego is also the idea that you can totally LEAVE God, be OUTSIDE of God, totally separate from and cut off from God, in an entirely separate realm of "existence", in which God is 100% absolutely absent and there is NO LIFE. It's the idea that you can and have left God entirely, have successfully separated from reality, and are now NOWHERE, not existing, having no life, in total oblivion.
This notion, this idea, of total opposition to and separate from God, IS the idea of the ego. But IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Non-existence HAS no existence whatsoever. It is not possible to go there, exist there, be there or live there. We have not done this. Not even in our dreaming. It's a "goal", a "wish", but it is wishful thinking to believe you can accomplish it. God has no exit.
It is literally impossible to be outside of God's being. It is therefore literally impossible to be "inside" or "in" ego. In fact, the idea of ego is the idea of nothing. "The ego" has never lived, it has no life, no mind, no will, no power, no force, no opinion, absolutely nothing. It DOES NOT exist. It is literally NON-EXISTENCE. So all it can ever be to us is a CONCEPTUAL IDEA.
The "tiny mad idea" is the idea that IMPOSSIBLE NON-EXISTENCE actually exists. It is INSANE to believe this. You CAN believe impossible lies if you choose to, but this does not make them REAL, and believing it you MUST BE MISTAKEN.
You could not EVER even in the greatest delusion produce a state of non-existence. You could not separate yourself off from God's being. You could not leave God's reality. You could not produce a state opposite to God that HAS existence. You could not place yourself in a location that you can call "non-existence". Non-existence does not exist. Ever.
But what you DID DO, is you ATTEMPTED to APPROACH this state. You attempted to TRY to leave God. You tried to imagine that you COULD leave God completely, and that you had. And given that this was literally impossible, you WERE very confused, delusional, deceived and mistaken. You HAVE NOT DONE what you think you have done. ("There is no sin.")
It's kind of like, you are inside God still, but you imagine God has "outer walls". And then you imagine that you can push against these walls causing them to stretch. You think that if you push hard enough you will cause the walls to thin out. And that perhaps even in the greatest opposition to life imaginable, you'll be able to actually BREAK THROUGH .... to non-existence. That you'll literally be able to LEAVE God forever. To enter into some state where He DOES NOT exist.
The good news is, you WILL NEVER accomplish this, because all you could possibly do is enter NON-EXISTENCE which DOES NOT exist, so you CANNOT GO THERE. The ego is the idea of that place, that non-existence hell of nothingness, emptiness, lack of God, darkness, absence of light, lifelessness, death. It's a CONCEPTUAL REALM that does not exist. But you have used this concept of an "idea" of "what's it like to totally leave God forever", as a way to TRY TO DO SO.
It should be obvious this attempt is utterly pointless and futile. It cannot succeed. You are guaranteed to never not exist. All that you've "done", is ATTEMPT to leave God. You've pushed up against fictional boundaries, you've stretched the envelope, you've tried to blot God out of you mind so that you THINK you are not still inside of Him, and you've tried to make his outer walls as thin as possible. You reason that if you can ALMOST break through God's perimeter, He will become so thin that you will be able to OVERLOOK Him. And that then you'll be able to see PAST God, TO that non-existent realm. And this is what gives rise to FALSE PERCEPTION.
False perception is the attempt to overlook God in order to NOT SEE God, and instead to ignore and see PAST God TO that non-existent ego realm. And you will then start to IMAGINE that you CAN SEE a realm that doesn't exist. That you CAN SEE things which are IMPOSSIBLE and NOT THERE. And as Jesus clearly and correctly identifies this, this MUST be form a of hallucination. Because you CANNOT SEE what is NOT THERE, but believing you can and are MUST be delusional and hallucinatory.
You CANNOT REALLY SEE non-existence, but you keep trying to. And so you hallucinate A WORLD believing you are SEEING one. There IS NO WORLD, because there is NO OPPOSITE to GOD. The world, the illusory world you made, including Earth, is the insane system of thought produced by those driven mad by guilt. By people who believe they CAN SEE GOD's OPPOSITE. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." Earth is an hallucination by the insane, believing they are or have escaped God.
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."
The making of this hallucinated world was an attempt to leave God and to produce a state where GOD IS ABSENT. A world OUTSIDE the Kingdom, a world of NON-EXISTENCE, non-life, non-love, non-reality.
"Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born"
Yet even in this so-called "separate world", it STILL is not outside of God. We DID NOT produce a state of total non-existence. Even this world has a limited degree of seeming reality. It is not "totally not here". And so in this world, which is, let's say, hovering on the outer border between God and non-existence, still within God (a dream of exile within God), the idea of physical death is the FINAL attempt to TOTALLY LEAVE GOD. It's how we try to put as much distance between ourselves and God as possible. To be as opposite to LIFE as possible.
We reason that, in death, we finally can LEAVE the realm where God exists a little. As if we think death is a doorway into the NON-EXISTENT realm of the ego. As if even the fake illusions of life and almost-death of this world, are still not "unlike God enough", and ONLY death can seal the deal and take us TOTALLY into that ego state. To cross over into the realm of non-existence. And as such, when we produce death, we are trying our hardest to LEAVE GOD and be NOTHING LIKE HIM. Death is a total unwillingness to live, to exist, to have anything of God, and to make His Son NOT EXIST. The attempt to do this is of course murderous and suicidal.
EVEN WHEN the body dies, unfortunately we STILL do not succeed in reaching the non-existent ego realm. The Son of God's spirit cannot be affected or killed, so we HAVE TO then carry on and reincarnate. Death FAILS to take us outside of God. Death FAILS to end life. Death is not the end of life, it is merely DENIAL of the fact that you CANNOT DIE because you CANNOT LEAVE THE LIFE OF GOD. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
So think of this world, Earth, as merely A FAILED ATTEMPT to leave God. A failed attempt to completely separate from existence. A failed attempt to die. It does not accomplish what it claims. It cannot succeed in destroying God or His Son. Death is pointless and futile. You might as well just acknowledge you are alive in God and live forever.
"Swear not to die you Holy Son of God, you have made a bargain that you cannot keep."
In this world, "separation from God" or the LEAVING of God, producing a state of NEAR death, near non-existence, is REVERSIBLE, because it is not total. It is not total non-existence or total ego. If it were "absolute separation", it could not be undone. The fact that it CANNOT BE separation proves it is limited in its capacity to accomplish anything. And this is why death can be reversed and resurrection is possible, even physically, because death is NOT TOTAL.
This world does not work. It is a failed attempt. Death is failure. It doesn't do what it claims to do. It will NOT complete the separation or take you outside God. You might as well stop trying to die and just live. You HAVE eternal life, you just keep rejecting it. Denying it. You're an eternal immortal being pretending to suffer and die as if that were ever possible. Pretending you are limited and mortal and affected and sick and suffering. It is futile. It will not bring about an escape from God. And sickness's only purpose is to TRY TO escape from God.
"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."
"Sickness is a defense against the truth."
"All forms of sickness even unto death (including physial death), are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."
You cannot leave God. You have not left Home. You DREAM that you are outside the Kingdom. You imagine you have placed yourself BEYOND God's walls. You THINK you have succeeded in entering a non-existent lifeless realm where God does not exist. You have not. You are just sleeping and pretending to be exiled.
"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
The ego DOES NOT EXIST. It's nothing but the CONCEPT of NON-EXISTENCE. It is another word for nothingness, impossibility, absolute void, godlessness, emptiness and absence. It HAS no existence at all. All our dramas are entirely a fictional attempt to BRING IT ABOUT, to get closer to it, to attach to it, to believe YOU ARE IT. This CANNOT BE. You can't do it.
BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN OR HAVE IS DELUSIONAL. It produces hallucinations of worlds that don't exist. Stuff that is NOT THERE, that you only seem to perceive because of your BELIEF in it. Your DESIRE to DREAM OF unrealities and fictional fairtytales. It is WISHFUL THINKING. And "there is no world apart from what you wish." You're not in non-existence, you're IN GOD, PRETENDING NOT TO BE. THERE IS NO WORLD.
Post-atonement awakening reawakens your mind to realize that THERE IS NO EGO, there is no non-existent world, you never DID leave God, you COULDN'T die, nothing has really happened, and ONLY the Kingdom of God exists. It is the end of DENIAL, the end of resistance, and the end of suffering.
"Ego" is nothing, literally. Your ATTEMPT to give "it" power does not give it power. You can't empower nothing. Ego does not exist. All you do is convince yourself that you are willing against yourself and that you are using your power against itself. You merely become divided against yourself and disassociated. All your efforts to be NOT LIKE God seem to manifest "the ego's characteristics", is an attempt to BE LIKE the ego. The non-existent ego. You never BECOME it.
It's just you being confused about what you are and where you are. You are safe in God at all times.
"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."
"You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God."
"denial of Life perceives its opposite"
"your salvation lies in teaching exactly the opposite of everything the ego believes"
"You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you."
"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to reality."
"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"
"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."
Take an analogy of a room. When the light is switched on in the room the room is lit. There is no significant "darkness". Maybe there are also windows open with the sunlight streaming in. It's a very bright room.
If you turn off the lights and cover the windows, what happens? The only thing that happen is the light is not permitted to enter. It SEEMS, then, as if the room "is dark", right?
If you were to recognize this is only an absence of light, you'd know that it's not so much that "darkness has entered the room", but rather simply that there is an absence of light or lack of light. The APPEARANCE of "darkness" is ONLY what "lack of light" looks like. A "hole" in the light.
What the EGO does, is it mistakes the ILLUSION of light's absence, for being something in its own right. Like, there really is a "darkness". Really is an evil. Really is a power or force that can CAUSE light to be absent, can attack light, can defend against light, and can force light to be dispelled. That "darkness shines away the light". This is "the belief that darkness that can hide." It's the belief, the mistaken belief, that the illusion of light's absence ISN'T an illusion, but rather is an opposing force, a "something", a real darkness, which exists in and of itself, and can stay by its own will and MAKE things dark.
This however is disproven when, for example, you switch the light back on again and open up the windows, the light pours in, the "lack" of light is "supplied", and what happens to the darkness? Does the darkness have ANY power to prevent the room from being "lit"? Does the darkness have a will with which it can DO anything? Can it protest against the light and say "i'm not going to be illuminated" and thus hold an area of the room in darkness in defiance of the light? No. It has no power, no will, no real presence, nothing, unless you yourself try to give it that. It in fact completely vanishes because it is LITERALLY NOTHING other than an illusion. There IS no darkness really.
Mistaking the absence of light for "real darkness" is delusional. It's a belief that illusions are real. That the illusion of "there is darkness" is true, rather than, "it's just light's absence." There is a huge difference there. Believing in real darkness versus RECOGNIZING that it is ONLY light's absence is the difference between sanity and insanity. And ultimately if you recognize that only light is true, then there is NO DARKNESS at all, and thus NO LACK OF LIGHT.
Now here's the thing. When we resisted God's will and became defensive and resistant to truth, trying to stop light from extending, trying to oppose reality, it resulted in this ILLUSION of a state where there seemed to be a LACK, or an absence of light and love. ie we tried to deny light/truth/God. It WAS only an illusion of light's absence because light cannot really be affected. BUT, some souls believed in the lack as if it was the truth, as if there really WAS a darkness, as if evil REALLY existed as a THING, as if darkness could CAUSE light to be hidden or could cause anything. That darkness could cause God's light to diminish, as an attack on light. This is the idea of sin.
This resulted in, a state where there is the illusion that "light is absent or lacking".... nothing but an illusion, easily dispelled, easily SHONE AWAY by the light of truth if the light were permitted to come. But it was the UNWILLINGNESS of the "separated ones" to ALLOW light to enter, in rejection of love ("love does not enter where it is not welcome"), that "held" light at bay and maintained the illusion of darkness. This is what "keeps them in the dark" so to speak because they are actively "pushing light away". It's because they imbue "darkness" with their own unwillingness or "will to reject the will of light", that they GIVE darkness this seeming "reality" or "power" to seem to fight against the light and keep love at bay. Thus they maintain that things "made of darkness" actually exist, even though they don't.
When they do that, and they did that, it produced an entire ILLUSORY WORLD, nothing but an appearance of light's absence, and not A REAL DARKNESS, but it was a world they believed in, one where they believed darkness really DOES exist, is CAUSAL, can have power OVER light, and can force God to be attacked. That belief in darkness, and that "lack of light and love", SHOWS UP AS .... an entire WORLD. In other words, the world is merely the ILLUSORY APPEARANCE of there SEEMING to be a "block to light". And this is also why Jesus says "the world is false perception" because it ONLY EXISTS WITHIN your delusional state of "darkened mind" and DOES NOT exist when your mind is lit by truth. But the world, itself, is actually entirely MADE OF, nothing more than, "the illusion of light's absence". It is made of denial. It is made of a protest against the light. "The world you made is an illusion of a world, God did not create it". So long as light is "absent", the world shows up. When the light is present, the world disappears.
So long as separated souls are willing against God they uphold and maintain the world. "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." Whenever souls have finally decided to stop willing against God, and to stop trying to give the world an illusory power to be "real darkness", no-one will thus believe that there REALLY IS A WORLD, because they simply no longer are deceived by the ILLUSION of light's absence. They will first recognize the world is NOTHING other than the illusion that there is a lack of light, and then go on to realize there IS ONLY light, thus NO WORLD.
They stop believing in sin and evil. They believe only in love and accept only God's truth and light. And this results in, no-one remaining to MAINTAIN a world, a world which is made of light's absence ie sin, guilt, fear, attack, death.... and that is when "eternity will shine away the world". And this is also where Jesus talks about nothing being left to keep a separated world in place. Space and time end because no-one believes in them, and the entirety of "stuff made of darkness" vanishes. Without anyone WILLING TO KEEP IT, the LIGHT will be ALLOWED to shine fully and totally. And this will shine away the world, the entire universe in fact, all the stars and planets will disappear in light. That's what it means. That's how the world ends. It is merely recognized as no longer seeming to exist at all. The darkness simply disappears as if it never existed at all, because it didn't.
Because in truth, the world, THIS PLANET, all planets, the sun, the stars, the galaxies, all of it, all of SPACE and TIME, every place and location, everything 3D, are all NOTHING MORE THAN "light's absence", an ILLUSION that light can be absent, and an illusion that it's NOT the absence of light but actually the presence of a "something". "The world of darkness" will be shone away, because... drumroll. ... THERE IS NO WORLD. It's like saying the world is the darkness in the room, and so long as there is no light the room remains dark and so the world exists AS the darkness. But as soon as the light shines, where is the darkness? What will or power does it have to REMAIN? IT has NONE AT ALL. It is nothing. It simply vanishes because it WAS nothing more than the "lack of light" or the illusion that love is absence.
The world as an illusion of lights absence thus first transitions from appearing to be real (false perception), to being recognized as not real (true perception), what seemed to be "an evil world" is transitioned to a world very close to the light because it's recognized as merely "light's absence". You love it to shine it away. Your light dispels it. Being the light of the world ends the world by revealing there is no world. And thus the world, the appearance of a world, merely disappears into nothing, just as the darkness in the room just disappears as if it never existed. All that REMAINS is heaven which is reality - the living world of light.
This is why there is no world. It is NOTHING. Believing it is a "something" is delusional. It's no different than believing that darkness enters a room and causes the light to be dispelled. The darkness does not exist at all. Once miracles supply a lack and the whole universe is infused with light, it disappears. "A forgiven world cannot last." "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." The picture of crucifixion ends. The world of sin vanishes. It doesn't have a "something" that is KEPT or REMAINS. It is the absence of something. It doesn't have a "core reality" that transitions through and makes it past the disappearance of darkness. It WAS the darkness. It simply ceases to exist. Light shines the world away. It is gone. There is no world, there never was. Only heaven is real.
Love recognizes perfect equality in all children of God. The Golden Rule states that what applies to you applies to all other creations and the entire sonship without exception.
When you believe that something applies to you which does not apply to someone else, you are being murderous.
When this happens, there has been a separation idea introduced in-between cause and effect. God the Father is cause, you are His effect. To separate from God you drive a wedge between the two.
This now means that you believe you can cause something without being at the effect of what you cause. That you can GIVE, without RECEIVING, which is a principle of sacrifice. And that in turn means, you can do something to someone else, and escape the consequences.
This immediately places you in a position of seeming to be able to "get away with murder", because if you can do something to someone or have something be true of them and not of you, you can attack them and cause them harm without seeming to hurt yourself (which is delusional.)
This is why anything short of love is attempted murder. It's an attempt to say, hey brother, we are different, and you are this thing that I am not, and so it's possible for you to suffer without me suffering, and it's possible for me to attack you without me receiving the same attack.
In this view, giving a receiving are no longer equal and what is true of me is no longer true for you, and so I can make something apply to you without it applying to me, and thus get away with it.
Even the slightest hint that the Golden Rule does not apply, or that there are different rules of values for each child of God, introduces a fundamentally murderous thought system, which is murderous at its very core. This is why anything which is not eternal life, is death, and there is no life outside of Heaven.
It IS a black and white, literal teaching. The ego is fundamentally a murderous thought system. Any lack of equality is an attack. Any imbalance or specialness or special favor or chaotic lack of identicality is an attack on the entire sonship.
God creates only perfectly identical mirror-image beings who are in His own image and likeness in every way. None of them lacks anything, nothing is missing. "God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy." When such beings attempt to not share, and to not increase joy, and to not be perfectly identical, they enter into lack, which produces perceived attack, which is a state of attempted murder.
Jesus is very clear about this. "What is not love is murder." If it's not perfect unconditional divine holy love, the person is being murderous. And that means even a slight grievance is murderous. Even a casual judgement. Even a single attack thought. Even an irritation or slight annoyance. It may seem to show up as "degrees" of murderousness but it's still ALL murderous.
Consider for a moment, a definition of yourself, in which YOU CANNOT CHANGE. You are absolutely changeless. You exist always the same, fixed, absolute, certain, permanent. Something that never alters, adjusts, transforms. Something incapable of becoming anything, losing anything, having anything taken away from it, or added. Just the same, always and forever, always existing, always being, always you. Same old you since you were created.
Then with this is idea it being IMPOSSIBLE to experience change, consider the contrast this produces to all the forms of suffering in the world. Someone doing something to you, being affected, upset, made to feel this way or that, moved by the wind, affected by the environment, threatened by the politicians and the warmongers, altered by sickness, pushed around by health concerns etc. All of it... all forms of CHANGE. All things which say "I can change you and you will change whether you like it or not."
What are you and where do you stand and how are you able to play any of these games if YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE? If you cannot be changed by anything, you are invulnerable, immortal, eternal. Always perfect, always strong, always beyond the reach of every kind of influence, every force, every attack, every threat to your nature. You cannot change, you have never changed. You remain as God created you and always will be the same. So can you believe you have been changed, caused, forced, yet again, to become something you can never be?
"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4
"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence? You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it." UrT13C8
"You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact." UrT6C6
"In the longer practice period, we will think about your reality and its wholly unchanged and unchangeable nature." UrW67L2
"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created." UrM19A2
"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever." UrW190L6
"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response." UrW152L5
"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure." UrT30D8
"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." UrT5G11
"I am not weak, but strong.
I am not helpless, but all powerful.
I am not limited, but unlimited.
I am not doubtful, but certain.
I am not an illusion, but a reality.
I cannot see in darkness, but in light."
More...
I am not mortal but immortal.
I am not sick but healthy.
I am not dying but eternal.
I am not afraid but confident.
I am not a victim but empowered.
I am not guilty but innocent.
I am not sinful but holy.
I am not lost but united.
I am not alone but one.
I am not forgotten but remembered.
I am not upset but peaceful.
I am not unhappy but joyful.
I am not attacked but safe.
I am not hopeless but grateful.
I am not deprived but abundant.
I am not lacking but receiving.
I am not hurt but invulnerable.
I am not suffering but relieved.
I am not affected but causal.
I am not stuck but miraculous.
I am not imprisoned but free.
I am not angry but calm.
I am not condemned but forgiven.
I am not dark but light.
I am not separate but whole.
I am not an ego but as God created me.
I am not confused but clear.
I am not diseased but healed.
I am not broken but complete.
I am not isolated but expansive.
I am not asleep but awake.
I am not unconscious but aware.
I am not deadly but harmless.
I am not murderous but welcoming.
I am not a victimizer but truly helpful.
I am not misguided but directed.
I am not ugly but beautiful.
I am not depressed but happy.
I am not unwilling but willing.
I am not resistant but open.
I am not ill but well.
I am not damned but saved.
I am not in exile but in heaven.
I am not a body but spirit.
I am not a dream but God's creation.
I am not fictional but authentic.
I am not divided but undivided.
I am not adrift but purposeful.
I am not threatened but permanent.
I am not rejected but loved.
I am not abandoned but embraced.
I am not in hell but in God.
I am not offended but humored.
I am not suspicious but trusting.
I am not vicious but gentle.
I am not ashamed but appreciative.
I am not envious but fulfilled.
I am not idolizing but within.
I am not heroic but saved.
I am not horrified but passer-by.
I am not judging but forgiving.
I am not hateful but generous.
I am not resentful but thankful.
I am not in danger but protected.
I am not disgusting but acceptable.
I am not beyond help but supported.
I am not embarrassed but understood.
I am not grieving but reunited.
I am not controlled but powerful.
I am not terrified but strong.
I am not worried but filled with faith.
I am not dead but eternal life.
I am not lonely but home with God.
I am not sad but overjoyed.
I am not insane but sane.
I am not delusional but honest.
I am not empty but inspired.
I am not insecure but secure.
I am not anxious but reassured.
I am not cold but warm.
I am not tense but relaxed.
I am not disturbed but quiet.
I am not stressed but at ease.
I am not serious but playful.
I am not harsh but kind.
I am not weak but supernatural.
I am not in time but in eternity.
I am not separate but with God.
ACIM should've started out with a really explicit statement like "planet earth does not exist, human bodies do not exist, and space and time do not exist." You know, for all those stubborn and delusional folk who continually cling to them and insist that they do. Oh wait...
"Yet it can be but an illusion, because time does not exist "
"The body does not really exist"
"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"A no time does the body really exist."
"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."
"Let us today behold earth disappear" "There is no world."
"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. "
"and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom."
"the sorry gifts of earth are joyously relinquished"
"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven."
"Yet he whom I forgive will give me gifts beyond the worth of anything on earth."
"Time remains only to let the last embrace of prayer rest on the earth an instant, as the world is shined away. This instant is the goal of all true healers"
"The little things of earth have disappeared."
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." ... "The time will come when all things visible will have an end."
"There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."
"The things of earth are left behind, all unremembered."
"How could there be a meeting place at all where earth and Heaven can be reconciled within a mind where both of them exist?"
"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so."
"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God."
"earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way"
"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one."
"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."
"Today's idea is true because the world does not exist."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"
"The real world is the second part of the hallucination time and death are real, and have existence which can be perceived. This terrible illusion was denied in but the time it took for God to give His Answer to illusion for ALL time and EVERY circumstance."
"T-18.IX.3. From the WORLD OF BODIES, MADE BY INSANITY, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind that made it. 2 And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. 3 For YOU sent forth these messengers to bring this back to you. 4 Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. 5 There are no messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is not the body that could speak of this. 6 Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it; its tongue cannot relay its messages."
"The world *IS* the DELUSIONAL THOUGHT SYSTEM of those DRIVEN MAD by guilt."
T-14.I.2."THIS IS AN INSANE WORLD, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. 7 There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and YOUR DREAM is sacred to you. 8 That is why God placed the Holy Spirit in you, where you placed the dream."
"W-pI.139.7. Nothing the world believes is true. 2 It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are. 3 And they will come again UNTIL the time Atonement is accepted, and they learn it is impossible to doubt yourself, and not to be aware of what you are."
W-pI.53.1. "WHAT IS PRODUCING THIS WORLD IS INSANE, and so is what it produces. 4 Reality is not insane"
W-pI.135.2. "A sense of threat is an acknowledgment of an inherent weakness; a belief that there is danger which has power to call on you to make appropriate defense. 3 THE WORLD IS BASED ON THIS INSANE BELIEF. 4 And all its structures, all its thoughts and doubts, its penalties and heavy armaments, its legal definitions and its codes, its ethics and its leaders and its gods, all serve but to preserve its sense of threat. 5 For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart."
"W-pII.3.2. The world was MADE AS AN ATTACK on God. 2 It symbolizes fear. 3 And what is fear except love's absence? 4 Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. 5 Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. 6 But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. 7 Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."
"W-pI.49.4. Listen in deep silence. 2 Be very still and open your mind. 3 Go past all the raucous shrieks and SICK IMAGININGS that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God. 4 Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF THIS INSANE WORLD. 5 ***You do not live here***. 6 We are trying to reach YOUR REAL HOME. 7 We are trying to reach the **PLACE** where you are truly welcome. 8 We are trying to reach God."
"T-18.I.8. Let them all go, dancing in the wind, dipping and turning till they disappear from sight, far, far outside of you. 2 And turn you to the stately calm within, where in holy stillness dwells the living God you never left, and Who never left you. 3 The Holy Spirit takes you gently by the hand, and retraces with you your MAD JOURNEY outside yourself, leading you gently back to the truth and safety within. 4 He brings all your INSANE PROJECTIONS and the WILD SUBSTITUTIONS that you have placed OUTSIDE YOU to the truth. 5 Thus He reverses the course of INSANITY and restores you to reason."
When your idea of TRUTH is aligned with what God's truth is, you will resurrect. When your idea of TRUTH is aligned with the ego's idea of what truth is (death, opposite of life), it induces death.
Whatever your idea of truth is, you identify with it, think it is your self, will protect it, defend it, want it, believe in it, have faith in it, see it as real and love it above all else. It doesn't matter whether it is actually true or not in the bigger picture.
It's good when your idea of truth matches God's truth because this actually brings you closer to life and to health and happiness.
But when your idea of truth is mistaken and you believe something is true which is not, you will STILL defend it to the death, and take sides against life. This will result in you becoming sick and disconnected from life, and eventually to die.
This happens because you are choosing death (the belief that what is false is true) but are believing you are choosing life, because you are confused about what is true and what is false. The ego always tells you that if you choose its thought system you are choosing the truth. But when you actually listen to it and choose it, you are choosing to believe lies. And this will tempt you away from God and towards death. You will then experience unexpected consequences and suffering, because the ego's advice does not work and results in the opposite of what it claims.
When you are insane and delusional like this, believing that something is true that isn't, you will be heavily in denial and unwilling to accept the real truth. You will become unaware that you are hurting yourself and making yourself suffer with your defense of lies. You'll think you are saving your life by defending yourself against God's truth, which you now perceive as false and opposite and an enemy.
If you want to experience life and not death, you must choose to align your idea of TRUTH with God's truth, in recognition that only the truth is true. It is your choice which voice you listen to. Either you choose life by choosing to believe God's truth, or you choose death by choosing to believe ego's truth. Either way it is CHOSEN.
"No one dies without their own consent." "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." Secret of salvation - you're doing this to yourself. There are no limits on mind other than that it cannot serve two masters - you must choose, whether you place your faith in death, or whether to place your faith in life. Faith in God is believing God and trusting God and accepting God's will. This literally resurrects you from the dead (fake death) and restores you to awareness of your immortality. Not even death can prevail against a Son of God who has commended his spirit into God's hands.
There can't be three different truths. They would all be conflicting. Only one of them can be the real truth.
Whatever the truth is, you do not get to decide what it is. It is what it is, and it has been established by God.
It doesn't matter how certain you are of what the truth might be, or what you've learned, or who you are, or how much evidence you've accumulated. It doesn't matter how much time you've spent analyzing what you think the truth is.
There is only one truth.
You don't get to decide what it is. Ever. You have no power to change it. No power to make it be different. No power to overthrow it. It doesn't matter how much denial you are in or how certain you are that something else is true.
Only the real truth is true.
So what this means is, you do not get to have an opinion. You do not get to have your own personal viewpoint or personal opinion or belief or collection of concepts which define what the truth is. You actually do not get to define what the truth is at all.
On your spiritual quest, you may believe that you have discovered something more true than what you used to believe, but you may still be off by quite a lot. These are stepping stones of discovery, as you gradually sort out what is really true and what is not.
The truth has to be consistent and it has to account for everything. Gradually over time if you are very open minded and honest you will come to an awareness of the entire truth, as it is, without your interference or your opinion.
But at no time do you get to make something be true, or make-believe it is true, or make something become reality. If it is true and real, it is true and real forever, and it is permanent, and nothing can change it.
So really, the truth is not found by your making it up, or dreaming it, or being the one who figures it out, or through analysis, or expertise and learning. It is only something that you can ACCEPT. It is only something you can SURRENDER to. It is only something you can become aware OF.
You have no say in determining the truth. Your attempts to do so are purely denial. They are delusional. They are part of your belief that you are God. It is the authority problem.
You can't change God's mind about you. God always knows what the truth is. God always knows that you are 100% innocent and cannot really separate from Him. God knows your dream of death isn't really happening at all and holds no truth whatsoever.
Your opinion counts for nothing. Your beliefs do not change reality. Nothing you can do can stop God from being unconditionally loving. You have never had power over His Will. Your own will can do nothing real outside of alignment with His Will, otherwise you are just in wishful thinking.
Only the truth is true. Only God's truth is true. And your only possibility is to set aside all of your attempts to make something else true and simply accept what God has already made real.
Surrender your egocentric viewpoint. Your opinion is meaningless. God's truth is the only truth and you can only accept or deny it.
There are two worlds before your eyes.
1) An illusory world
2) Your belief that the illusory world is reality.
You are meant to correct your misperception of the ILLUSORY world, by undoing your belief that it is REAL.
That's what it means when the Course says "seek not to change the world, but seek to change your mind about the world."
It does not mean, change your mind about a REAL world. It means, your idea that the world even IS real, IS your misperception of the illusion, and that in TRUTH, this world is ONLY an illusion, not a reality.
Seeking to change your mind about the world, to fix your perceptual errors, should NOT lead to a state where you are still seeing the world as "real" but with some kind of "peace" happening.
If you deeply and fully have removed the insanity from your mind, have undone your perceptual errors, and are no longer mistaken, you MUST be in a state of mind that recognizes the world is NOT REAL. You MUST be seeing that it is in fact an illusion, through and through.
Many people are very deluded in their comprehension of what the Course means by this, and therefore develop this attitude that the world is objectively real and you should therefore just change how you look at it. That you should "look at the real world from a peaceful perspective".
That leads to tremendous POWERLESSNESS, whereby you think that you only need to fix your misperception of a REAL world, so that you will see a REAL world correctly. NO!
THE WORLD IS NOT REAL!!!!!!!!!!!
If you do that, and your goal is to see this "real world" in a perfect way, you will HAVE to at some point become stuck. At some point, your belief in its "reality" is going to put a ceiling on how much awakening you can have, because if you were to go further, you would have to question whether the world is real or not. And since you believe IT IS real, that means you can ONLY fix your interpretations of stuff happening outside your control, and basically will WELCOME DEATH with open arms as though - you know... it's a part of life, meant to happen, inevitable, etc. Then you will "die in peace". COME ON!!!!
The world is an illusion. All sin is an illusion. All death is an illusion. All bodies are illusions. The entire world AND the entire universe is an illusion! This is not REALITY that you're in. It's a delusional hallucination. At most it is an illusion, but you've been trying to make more of it... to "make it real". If forgiveness is the undoing of "making the problem real", then that should tell you, that forgiveness leads to the awareness that IT IS NOT REAL.
The only way you can claim the atonement for yourself or anyone, is if you are prepared to be aware that this entire world is an ILLUSION. You must be willing to accept this or you CANNOT wake up from it.
If the world is real, you cannot be innocent, you cannot be sinless, you cannot be guiltless, and you cannot be free from fear. AND, you cannot be forgiven. The only way you are innocent, and the only way you can claim the atonement, is if this is all just an illusion. Reality is elsewhere! This is just a dream.
The truth is, there is no real sin. Sin, the idea that you can attack something real, is literally impossible. Reality cannot BE attacked because it is permanent. Therefore sin is 100% impossible.
The question then is, what is this "sin" thing? It must be a fake sin, some kind of artificial sin. It can't be a real one. But in this world there for sure seem to be "sins" happening.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "To the ego the body is to attack with". "The body is the idea of sin made flesh" etc
Even when there seems to be a sin taking place, let's say someone is murdering another person, the truth is that this cannot be a real sin. Real sin doesn't exist. So what is it?
It has to be some kind of illusion of sin, like a fake sin. It has to be a kind of camouflage or disguise. Something which SEEMS to be one thing but is actually something else.
Sin, being untrue and false, has to be a lie. It cannot be a true something because sinlessness is true. Innocence is permanent, per the will of God that you be forever innocent. So whatever sin is, it must be a lie. It's some kind of pretend sin.
Recognizing this is forgiveness because it means you're not taking the appearance of sin at face value and believing it's really what it seems to be. It means you're seeing beyond its ILLUSION of sin, and are recognizing that it IS NOT really sin. It's something else.
The illusion of sin, is just kind of an assertion, a lie, a story being told, a portrayal of a seeming attack, which is impossible, upon something which is unreal, as if it were real. That it is even seeming to happen is a lie. That the events seem to be taking place is a lie. They aren't actually happening.
Sin is therefore an assertion of evil, or an attempt to "make possible" something that is not possible. It's an attempt to assert that something real can be destroyed. This was the whole purpose of the world we made.
"Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin."
"Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth."
"It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin."
This world, the world of sin, was made as a lie, to depict something untrue (that God's son is crucified), and that attacking God (or reality/truth) is possible.
"The world is a PICTURE OF the crucifixion of God's Son."
"The world was made as an attack on God."
But it's no more really an attack on God, than it is an actual crucifixion of God's son. It's an illusion of this. It's a NON attack, appearing as an attack. It's a NON-crucifixion, seeming to look like a crucifixion.
This is why sin is an ILLUSION. And this is why illusions are DECEPTIVE. And if you believe the appearance of the illusion without realizing HOW it is deceiving you, you are being TEMPTED by it and fall for that temptation. And then all you SEE is the surface appearance, like seeing a puzzle that you can't solve.
Falling for temptation is buying into sin as though it is real and possible. It is the belief in real sin and therefore real evil and death.
Even what APPEARS to be a physical murder, with the seeming "proof of sin" staring you in the face, CANNOT BE that. To take that at face vale is to fall for temptation. To just "buy it" based on how it appears, is delusional. Believing it is the temptation to believe in sin and thus be sinful yourself.
Nothing real can BE murdered. So how can the murdered thing even BE real in the first place, if it SEEMS to have been murdered? And how can there even seem to be a depiction of murder, when real murder (the destruction of reality) is IMPOSSIBLE?
Whatever the situation SEEMS to be, whatever it looks like, if you look only to its physical appearance, you are "blinded by perception of form". The form, the shape, the evidence, the colors, the smells, the proof, all tell your body senses a LIE, that actual real sin has taken place. And it seems undeniable, if you believe it.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The body's eyes see ONLY form."
"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not."But a a dead body cannot be true. And a sick body cannot make any sense. And illusions of suffering cannot be real suffering.
"A sick body makes no sense."
Even suffering which you supposedly inflict upon yourself, cannot ACTUALLY be real suffering. In fact, even suffering is actually impossible. Nothing real can ever suffer.
"There is no pain in God, and therefore none in me."
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."
"You are immortal and you cannot die."
So what does it mean if I SEEM to be suffering? It can only mean that I SEEM to be temporarily experiencing an ILLUSION of suffering, which seems LIKE suffering, or a PICTURE OF sickness, but IS NOT THAT. It can't really be that. It has to be something else, pretending to be suffering. Even unhappiness is fake unhappiness, covering up your happiness.
So what this tells you is that ALL illusions, incuding sickness, death, pain, unhappines, any kind of suffering at all, MUST NOT BE what they appear to be. And in fact that means there are TWO possible interpretations of the thing. Because you can either be DECEIVED BY an illusion or not.
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
The false interpretation - "false perception" - looks at an illusion and falls for temptation to believe it is verbatim first-hand reality and therefore true. This is completely delusional and a total failure to be aware of the big picture. This is naive and irresponsible "spiritual blindness."
The true interpretation - "true perception" - looks at the same illusion and SEES THROUGH ("to forgive is to overlook") the LIE, does not fall for the temptation, sees DEEPER and BEYOND the surface appearance, and does not STOP its vision at the physical form.True perception or "accurate perception" is what we use in SANITY, to correctly evaluate "what this thing is". And a correct evaluation of anything that looks like a sin, is that IT IS NOT REALLY THAT. It CANNOT BE what it appears to be. It cannot be AT ALL.
A correct evaluation of any illusion is that you can see the "workings" of its DECEPTION, and you are not deceived by it. You can RECOGNIZE how and why it SEEMS to present a picture of sin and death and suffering, but is in fact simultaneously SOMETHING ELSE. This means recognizing that it is FALSE and UNREAL and UNTRUE.
What it IS, is NOT a reality, but a fiction. What it IS, is a lie. An audiovisual lie. Like an hallucination. A mistake in perception and understanding.
All illusions are two-faced because the ego is two-faced. It is never just what it appears to be on the surface. Murder is not "actual" murder, or "just murder". It is a deceitful lie about something happening which CANNOT possibly happen in reality, IS NOT happening now, and CANNOT BE what it appears to be.
"There is no death, the Son of God is free."
A dead body CANNOT BE a real dead body. It can only be a LIE of a dead body, appearing like a dead body, AS IF dead bodies were possible, when they're not. Bodies don't even exist yet alone dead ones. All death is fake.
So sin, everything physical ("the granite block of sin"), is an ILLUSION which APPEARS to be something - an entire world, but is not REALLY that. The whole physical world, Earth, the sun, the stars and galaxies, it is all a deception. The world is a lie.
"The body is what you made in attempting to deceive yourself."
"There is no world."
"There is no sin."
It's all an attempt to dream up what "real sin" MIGHT be like, IF it were possible, and to try to make it SEEM not only possible but completely real. To make sin believable. But sin is unbelievable, and not believable, to one who sees through its bullshit.
This world is not really a world. This body is not really a body. Sin is not really sin and guilt is not really guilt. Sickness is not really sickness. Death is not really death. Nothing in this world is what it seems, because this world is an ILUSION of a world and NOT REALLY A WORLD.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not created it, for what He creates must be eternal as himself. And the time will come when everything you see will have an end."
"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."
The body is nothing. It's not something. It's not this or that or these states or conditions. It's not really well or sick. It's not alive or dead. It's actually nothing at all. It doesn't have a meaning or its own purpose. It doesn't have mind or will or causality or power. It doesn't really do anything. It's literally not really there.
When we believe that the body IS something, that it has reality, or has a mind or will, or causes things, or is doing something on its own, or has its own power, this is actually a distortion of the body. It's an attempt to force the body to comply with made up delusional rules and to be something it cannot be. This actually attacks the body and makes it sick. The mind is not accepting that the body is nothing, so instead it's really DENYING what the body is (ie nothing), which is a rejection of it, thus an attack.
To get the body to be healthy, the body has to be recognized as absolutely nothing. This is really forgiveness. The recognition of what is true. If the body is given any credit it does not have, in an attempt to defend it or keep it alive or make it be something, this actually destroys it. When its nothingness is recognized this actually takes all attack away and the body is restored to health. Trying to make the body out to be a real body, or a something body, or a working body, or a living body etc, actually brings about death.
The body is not supposed to be loved, OR hated. You're not supposed to have any real relation to it at all, because it's not there. It's not supposed to be given ANY meaning, either positive or negative. You don't hear this much in ACIM circles or spiritual disciplines. The idea that the body is actually nothing, neutral in a sense, and not biased positively OR negatively.
Jesus refers to the body in the course as not being able to BE sick. That's because it is NOTHING. It isn't a something, so it can't have properties of any kind. It's like an empty image of a body. It's the lack of the presence of spirit, shall we say.
It's the absence of God like a shadow on a wall. Its nothingness means it of itself cannot really be sick or healthy. But the mind that believes the body is real MAKES the body appear to be in sickened forms. Believing in bodies attacks them because it's an attempt to make them be something they're not.
We might think that spirituality is about only being positive, or only denying the negative. But Jesus isn't saying the world or body are fundamentally negative. He's saying they are NOTHINGNESS, pretending to be something. And that's very different from being negative. Their nothingness has to be recognized which means ALL attributes, positive OR negative, have to be taken away. That's why the body cannot be really endowed with attributes of Christ OR the ego. It is nothing at all.
"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be MORE than this lies the idea of sickness."
"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. And it CAN fail to be what you demanded it to be."
"As something, is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate"
"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."
"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."
"For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE. And BOTH must be undone, for purposes of truth."
To empathize does NOT mean to JOIN IN SUFFERING, for this is what you must REFUSE to understand. This is the EGO's interpretation of empathy, and is ALWAYS used to form a special relationship, in which SUFFERING is shared. The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.
The clearest proof that empathy, as the ego uses it, is DESTRUCTIVE, lies in the fact that it is applied ONLY to certain types of problems, and in certain people. These it SELECTS OUT and JOINS WITH. And it NEVER joins, except to strengthen itself. Having identified with what it THINKS it understands, it sees ITSELF, and would INCREASE itself by sharing what is LIKE itself. Make no mistake about this maneuver; the ego always EMPATHIZES TO WEAKEN. And to weaken is ALWAYS to attack.
You do NOT know what empathizing means. But of this you may be sure; if you will merely sit quietly by, and let the Holy Spirit relate THROUGH you, you will EMPATHIZE WITH STRENGTH, and both of you will gain in strength, and NOT in weakness. Your part is only to remember this; you do not want anything that YOU value to come of the relationship. You will neither to hurt it, NOR TO HEAL IT in your own way. You do NOT know what healing IS. All you have learned of empathy IS FROM THE PAST. And there is NOTHING from the past that you would share, for there is nothing there that YOU WOULD KEEP.
Do NOT use empathy to MAKE THE PAST REAL, and so perpetuate it. Step gently aside, and let the healing be done FOR you. Keep but one thought in mind, and do not lose sight of it, however tempted you may be to judge the situation, and DETERMINE your response BY judging it. Focus your mind only on this:
"I am not alone, and I would not intrude the past upon my Guest.
I have invited Him, and He is here.
I need do nothing except NOT TO INTERFERE."
Lately for me what has become starkly evident and true of everyone, is the rather dark and twisted truth that everyone is self-destructive. Everyone is trying to die. Everyone is condemning themselves for a sin that never really happened, and the wages of sin is self-inflicted death. Everyone is being unfair to themselves, mis-representing themselves, attacking themselves and hurting themselves.
"...A dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die."
"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
EVERYONE!
It's a suicidal planet. I wouldn't go so far as to say that everyone has the same degree of "deep self-hatred", but it is certainly rampant. The guilt that people have over the separation has driven them insane. We've collaborated on making an insane and stupid world where suffering seems normal and punishment is atonement.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Sin is belief attack can be projected OUTSIDE the mind where the belief arose. Here is the firm conviction that ideas CAN leave their source made real and meaningful. And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."
Let's just say it again. The whole world is MAD. And this is not merely an allegation or a speculation. It is EXTENSIVE. "This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."
"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt"
Even in biblical terms, if I recall, we're sort of told that each of us on earth has become a "sinner" ie believing in sin, and that we need to "repent" ie find our innocence again.
So what I see now is the fact that we've got a huge population of people who believe they have separated from God. The course calls us "the separated ones." We believe we've accomplished separation by attacking God, or that which is in truth not attackable. And because it is not possible, yet we believe it, we are insane, because now we believe something impossible is true. And this all began with an insane idea.
"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless."
"In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
We as immortal beings, accused ourselves of a sin we could never commit, made ourselves horrendously guilty for it, attacked ourselves, punished ourselves, entered an insane dreaming state in which we dream of being mortal, made up every form of suffering and sickness, and try to kill ourselves off to prove we are right. MADNESS!!!
Fortunately our entire state of insanity is entirely temporary, entirely unfounded, entirely untrue, and entirely correctable, without the slightest punishment called for. We are all just very mistaken people, who believe absolute bullshit lies that we've taught ourselves, and we need correction. We need help from outside of the hell we made to help us wake up to reality and recognize what is true.
"My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever."
"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY. You therefore saw yourself AS IF you were WITHOUT it. By making another Kingdom WHICH YOU VALUED, you did NOT keep the Kingdom of God alone in your minds, and thus placed part of your mind OUTSIDE of it. What you have made has thus DIVIDED YOUR WILL and given you a sick mind that MUST be healed. Your vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it."
The course speaks from a perspective of Oneness. That means quite literally that you and all other people are ONE person - one mind, one being. It means you SHARE a mind with everyone else. It should be immediately obvious how much that runs contrary to how most people perceive reality.
It doesn't mean you are a little bit joined and a little bit separate. It doesn't mean you can be sort of One but still retain a sense of separate self. It means you are 100%, totally, absolutely, unconditionally, completely the same as, completely equal with, and completely AS ONE with all other people.
In that view, there is actually a whole different ballgame being played which is vastly different to the ballgame of 'duality', which springs up in the ego and makes you perceive others as 'not you'. The only way for you to see yourself as 'separate me' is to distinguish that other people have differences that you do not have, and therefore which prove your inequality, and demonstrate you are not of One mind. It is a huge cover-up.
So in Oneness, the way that you look at a relationship between two people is very different to how you look at relationships with the ego. In Oneness, because you are One, joined, and sharing everything with the WHOLE sonship (not just one individual), everything that you seem to 'do' to other people, or how you view them or perceive them, applies to them, and to everyone else, and to yourself, all at once. There is then no escaping or being able to say, well, I can treat this part of the sonship one way, and I can treat this other part another way, and I can treat myself entirely a third way. In Oneness, everything is shared, there are no private thoughts, and we all access and express the same mind and Identity (Christ 'consciousness').
Another aspect of the Oneness of the Sonship is that, since everything always applies to everyone equally, anything you do applies to everyone and so you can only either separate from everyone simultaneously, or join with everyone simultaneously. If you could visualize that as a vertical ladder, or 'moving vertically' as some people say, to make true progress in awakening you must uncover the sonship's Oneness in 'layers'. So its like you take a blanket off of the entire sonship at once, to reveal a great degree of Oneness that applies to everyone. Or if you choose the ego and you cover things up, you cover up the entire sonship at once with that same blanket. Whatever you apply to one brother applies to all, including yourself.
Now, just because you start applying ACIM or a mindset of Onenss it doesn't mean your mind is fully committed to it right away. It is very conditioned in the ego's 'mind' and a way of perceiving that is very dualistic. Duality basically attempts to fragment the sonship by dividing it up into many parts. Then it says that different rules and values apply to different parts, and that not all parts are the same. This is an attack on Oneness. But we are very steeped in dualistic mindsets and ways of perceiving each other that are very separation-based. Most of the systems in the world are all founded on this idea of separate individuals (as per physical body boundaries). Acting in a body, as a body, leads us to develop a host of distortions and attitudes and perceptual models which are delusional and very blind to Oneness.
So as you start to 'expose' yourself to Oneness, or a thought system of non-duality like with Holy Spirit/ACIM, you gradually start to chisel away at those ways of perceiving and they gradually get 'corrected'. The mind is, effectively, 'healed', because it's belief in separation is a form of suffering. Duality is suffering. So the mind's perception has to be healed so that the way of perceiving dualisti ally can be transformed into a way of perceiving holistically - ie to perceive with Oneness and to see only Oneness.
That takes time. A lot of time. It's a big transformational process. It takes a lot of work and effort and willingness and healing to 'correct' all of the false perceptions and distorted ways of thinking that duality (ego) has assumed are totally normal for a long long time. So usually waking up to Oneness doesn't happen over night. But gradually, slowly, you start to SEE things more from a perspective of Oneness, and with that comes the ability to see things how Jesus sees them - and you realize that ACIM was written FROM a viewpoint of pure and perfect Oneness. Being able to see that makes everything just fall into place and make perfect sense, whereas seeing it through a filter of duality is ... very confusing.
Anyway... Rambling on a bit.. Oneness... as I do unto others I LITERALLY am doing unto myself. As I see others I see myself. I can't wake up and have a happy jolly experience unless I'm willing to allow that experience to include seeing everyone else WITH happiness and joy, and to recognize MYSELF in them. Or more to the point, recognizing that I don't HAVE a self of 'my own' because everyone SHARES IT.
Yet the ideal outcome is rarely achieved. But psychotherapy begins with the realization that healing is of the mind, and in psychotherapy those have come together who believe this. It may be they will not get much further, for no-one learns beyond his own readiness. Yet levels of readiness change, and when therapist or patient has reached the next one, there will be a relationship held out to them that meets the changing need. Perhaps they will come together again and advance in the same relationship, making it holier. Or perhaps each of them will enter into another commitment. Be assured of this; each will progress. Retrogression is temporary. The overall direction is one of progress toward the truth.
Psychotherapy itself cannot be creative. This is one of the errors which the ego fosters; that it is capable of true change, and therefore of true creativity. When we speak of "the saving illusion" or "the final dream," this is not what we mean, but here is the ego's last defense. "Resistance" is its way of looking at things; its interpretation of "progress" and "growth." These interpretations will be wrong of necessity, because they are delusional. The "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth.
Resistance as defined here can be characteristic of a therapist as well as of a patient. Either way, it sets a limit on psychotherapy because it restricts its aims. Nor can the Holy Spirit fight against the intrusions of the ego on the therapeutic process. But He will wait, and His patience is infinite. His goal is wholly undivided always. Whatever resolutions patient and therapist reach in connection with their own divergent goals, they cannot become completely reconciled as one until they join with His. Only then is all conflict over, for only then can there be certainty.
Ideally, psychotherapy is a series of holy encounters in which brothers meet to bless each other and to receive the peace of God. And this will one day come to pass for every "patient" on the face of this earth, for who except a patient could possibly have come here? The therapist is only a somewhat more specialized Teacher of God. He learns through teaching, and the more advanced he is the more he teaches and the more he learns. But whatever stage he is in, there are patients who need him just that way. They cannot take more than he can give for now. Yet they both will find sanity at last.
"What seems to be the opposite of (eternal) life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."
The above paragraph describes the ONLY thing that happens in the separation. The mind seems to go to sleep a while. The mind dreams of a world that doesn't really exist but seems to. Events seem to happen in it. But these events are nowhere, and the changes have no reality. The mind then wakes up, and this world it was dreaming of ceases to exist. Quite simply, at that point, the "world" which was dreamed, does not exist at all. This is what it means to say, "there is no world."
So what He's telling us simply is, you are in Heaven, dreaming of exile. You are in reality, which is God's world, DREAMING OF BEING IN ANOTHER WORLD. A second world, which your mind is making, as a result of its unconscious state. Its denial of reality is producing an hallucination of a SECOND world, which does not really exist, but seems temporarily to be very real. Upon waking, that world is nowhere. All its events are nowhere. It has had no consequences on God's world.
This is very fundamental A Course in Miracles metaphysics. You are awake, you sleep, you dream of a fake world, you wake up, the world is gone.
Now, see if you can follow this simple reasoning.
God is existence. God is infinite and unlimited. Therefore God exists everywhere without limits. He has no outer edges. You cannot be anywhere that He is not. He is everywhere always.
The idea of sleeping or dreaming, or the separation, or the tiny mad idea, or the ego, are all labels for one thing.... the idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God.
What would an opposite to God have to be?
If God exists, an opposite to God is non-existence.
If God is life, an opposite to God is death.
If God is reality, an opposite to God is unreality.
If God is true, an opposite to God is false.
If God is holy, an opposite to God is unholy.
If God is present, an opposite to God is not present.
What are we describing here? Let's group it all together. We're talking about a TOTALLY OPPOSITE state, which is non-existent, death, unreal, false, unholy, and not present.
Now, here's a simple fact. You cannot exist in non-existence. Non-Existence DOES NOT EXIST. Period. Never ever. There is no non-existence. It is nothingness. It is impossibility. You cannot be where God does not exist. You cannot go there, you cannot live there.
This idea of a total opposite to God, is the idea we had in the tiny mad idea. "What if"... I could be UNLIKE God? What if I could be NOT ALIVE? What if I could NOT EXIST? That is the tiny mad idea.
The reason it is mad, is because obviously you cannot NOT exist. You can't exist IN non-existence. The BELIEF THAT YOU CAN, is the whole problem. It's like claiming, non-existence DOES exist, and has reality, and you can go live there without God. This is a nonsense, insane idea. It is the idea we had. It is the idea we WANTED to believe in. And by believing it, we TRIED to make it real.
What were we really doing? We were BELIEVING that something which TOTALLY DOES NOT EXIST, exists. That an unreal nothingness, is real and something. Another word for that is HALLUCINATION.
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."
We hallucinated an entire "world", in an attempt to BELIEVE, that NON-EXISTENT NOTHINGNESS, actually has some reality. The desire to WANT it to exist, believed in it, and made it SEEM to do so, as an illusion. We MADE AN ILLUSORY WORLD, to DENY God's world, to DENY existence. A world of impossibility. A world which does not exist, but seems to, so long as we are insane.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be Eternal as Himself."
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"The world you see is the insane thought system of those driven mad by guilt."
We made this world in an attempt to REPLACE God's world. To attack existence. To shut God out. To suggest, there is a PLACE, an existence, where GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Where His son is dead. Where God cannot enter, because it is OUTSIDE OF HIM. We constructed a world OPPOSING The Kingdom, an illusion of being EXILED outside of the Kingdom. Outside of existence. In NON-EXISTENCE. A dream of death.
"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."
"The world was made as an attack on God."
"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
"The hell you made"
You made, invented, dreamed, hallcuinated, a UNIVERSE, a world, including planet Earth, to shut God out, to attack existence, to reject existence, to oppose the Kingdom, to depict God's son as dead, to make it seem God does not exist, and as though sin is happening. It is the idea of a NON-EXISTENT WORLD, seeming to take the place of real existence - the real world, the Kingdom. You made an opposite to God.
You now find yourself, IN THE WORLD YOU MADE. On the planet you dreamed. Inhabiting a body you manufactured as a separation device. A device which does not exist. On a planet which does not exist. In non-existence.
This is why this world does not exist. It is a counterfeit world. A made-up substitute world. A second home away from God. Where you thought God (existence) would not exist. This includes the Earth, which is a SELF-DENYING world, an illusory world, made of NOTHING. It's a world you attempted to make and enter, OUTSIDE the Kingdom. It is not life. It is an illusion of life. And it does not really exist.
"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, (being on Earth) 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. Life not in Heaven is impossible (Earth is impossible), and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. (Earth is the idea of NOWHERE). Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
God did not create the Earth because, the fact is, Earth is NOTHING LIKE THE KINGDOM. God can only Create ONE KIND of world. A reflection of Himself. That world is The Kingdom of God, comprising the Sonship. It is the Holy Trinity. God could not create ANOTHER world, DIFFERENT to the Kingdom. Earth is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature.
"The laws of this world go against your nature."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (Earth)and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence (which Earth does, being NON-EXISTENCE) and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.*** ... God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two."
***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***
***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***
***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***
Earth is the idea of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom of God, in NON-EXISTENCE. It is an illusion of death, nothing, fictional fantasy, insanity, darkness, the opposite to eternal life. Being made of NOTHING, it DOES NOT exist. When you stop hallucinating it, it will be nowhere. You only see it because you WISH to do so, with wishful thinking. A wishful thought that it is possible to be where God is not. There IS NO WORLD apart from your wishful thinking.
It boils down to this. God created ONE WORLD, Heaven, the Kingdom. That world IS NOT this world. It is NOT Earth. Then we MADE UP, invented, a fake world, out of NOTHING, to OPPOSE His world in every way. A picture of crucifixion, an attack on existence, a place of nothing. We now think the NOTHING world exists, because we are delusional. And we may even think God's world IS THIS WORLD, which is completely delusional as part of the BELIEF.... "there is no existence" "there is no Kingdom".
"Only the creations of light are real." There IS NO WORLD here. This is the central lesson in the course. You're DREAMING and hallucinating and making stuff up. because of your DESIRE, wish, to SEE and experience, that which DOES NOT EXIST.
"The world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."
"You cannot see both worlds."
There ARE TWO worlds. One God created, and one you hallucinate. In order to SEE God's Kingdom you have to develop christ vision which OVERLOOKS (does not see) the hallucinatory world of Earth. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Earth is a veil of illusions covering the face of Christ. You must see PAST it to see reality.
Heaven is BEYOND this world. Or rather, this world is NOTHING, NOWHERE, NOT HAPPENING, and Heaven is all that remains.
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
"**Beyond the body**,
**beyond the sun and stars**,
**past everything you see**
and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.
The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it no longer is contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside (no world, no earth). For there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within you, and joined to all of it as surely as all is joined to you."
Those course students who believe they are only supposed to correct their own perceptions - perceptions of the physical world, as though the physical world is reality and you simply need to see it without judgement in order to keep living in it peacefully, are missing a major point.
If the world is real, you have all your faith in the ego and none in God. You are faithless.
Also if you believe the world is reality, you will completely cut yourself off from God's supernatural power. You will cut yourself off from MIRACLES!
Miracles must demonstrate that the ego's laws are broken and have no power over God. That cannot happen if the physical world is reality. What is REAL cannot be changed and nothing has power over it, so how can miracles happen if the world is real?
When believing this world is real, or that the things happening in it are real, you will constantly be bogged down in a state of tension, upset, reactions and suffering. It's like a heavy blanket laid across everything. Every day will be like yet another day of doing "important things" and avoiding "serious things" and worrying and fearing and reacting with upset. No matter what happens, it will seem real and you will react to it with your ego.
It is not just that your mind has "illusions about" the world. There are two separate things. There are illusions, and then there are DELUSIONS. Delusions is the belief that an ILLUSION is reality. If you weren't delusional, you would recognize and see through the illusion and not fall for its appearance. You would not believe it was real, you'd know that it was a trick, and you would stop falling for it.
So most people seem to be working on their delusions but are thinking they are working on their illusions, and that therefore when they remove their illusions "about" the world out there, they'll come to be at peace with its reality. This then justifies as whole SHITLOAD of CRAP, about how events are still going to happen, things are still going to go wrong, people are still going to get sick, and Course students are going to "die in peace", which is a complete failure to understand the truth.
Shit does not have to happen AT ALL! The world is not real, and we share and extend God's supernatural power over it. The world ITSELF is a massive illusion, and BELIEVING IN IT means you are falling for that illusion and are convinced it is REAL, when in fact it's really nothing at all.
If you believe the world is real, sickness is real, sin is real etc, you will go through every day with your mind trapped inside a heavy shell of horror. Every single thing you perceive will make you react, either strongly or subtly, but never not at all. You are SO USED to this mode of functioning that you may not even realize the freedom that you can experience by regarding and relating to "this world" as though it actually IS an illusion.
You will not take it so seriously, you will not be so upset by it, you will not react to it, you will not perceive it as attacking what you are, and you will recognize there is nothing stopping you from changing it with the Power of God. It holds no weight, it's not real, it's like just some big giant pretend 3D holographic projection pretending to look like a world. It's not even really there. And if it weren't for certain atomic forces you would pass right through it!
Only by recognizing that the world ITSELF is just an illusion of a world, not a real world, can there be ANY justification whatsoever for having faith in God, relying on supernatural provision, TRUSTING God's truth, or any foundation whatsoever for performing miracles. Miracles and truth and trust and faith and love and Heaven might as well not exist if you want to keep believing the world is real.
And the reason you won't want to give up that belief is because you have a LOT invested in it. All the objects in your life that you are attached to. All the relationships you think are special. All the history and past which you value greatly. All the places you think are special. All the ways that you've come to develop a "spiritualization" of certain things and believe they are holy. All of the delusion that people really get sick and suffer and die. That's a LOT of belief. It's a lot of faith in the ego, trust in the ego, reliance on the ego, and permission being granted to the ego. And you can't believe the ego and believe God at the same time.
Come visit planet Earth (death), it's a really great place to be. Rated "zero stars", it's a popular attraction. Wouldn't you like to stay here for ever and ever? It's got bacon. ;-)
Hear what previous visitors had to say about their stay...
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"You do not want the world. "
"The world provides no safety. "
"This world was over long ago. "
"The world you see does not exist. "
"Nothing the world believes is true. "
"Love was never in the world of dreams. "
"There are no satisfactions in the world. "
"It is the world you see that is impossible. "
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. "
"Without the idea of death there is no world. "
"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing. "
"If this were the real world, God would be cruel. "
"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. "
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness. "
"The world was made that problems could not be escaped. "
"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. "
"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ. "
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all. "
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. "
"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be. "
"Only in the world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. "
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home. "
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten. "
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state. "
"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible. "
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. "
"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad. "
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. "
"Learning that stops with what the world would teach stops short of meaning. "
"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach. "
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone. "
"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity. "
"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon. "
"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world. "
"For no one walks the world in armature but must have terror striking at his heart. "
"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself. "
"The world believes in sin, but the belief that made it as you see it is not outside you. "
"Injustice is the basis for all the judgments of the world. "
"Where is the world, and where is sorrow now? "
"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. "
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it"
"How could you walk the world alone and separate from your Source? "
"If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes that it does not possess, and crowd it with images that do not exist. "
"Judgment and love are opposites. From one comes all the sorrows of the world. From the other comes the peace of God."
"The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth. Such a rebirth is impossible as long as you continue to project or miscreate. "
"The world uses its special relationships as a final weapon of exclusion and a demonstration of separateness."
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true. "
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release."
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you."
"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?"
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it. "
"Earth sucks. It's a shit hole. I'm never going back." (haha)
A major way the ego tempts us to seek outside of ourselves and to not find what we are seeking, is to suggest that the truth really is out there somewhere. The belief that you can actually find it outside of yourself, is simultaneously the belief that it does not exist inside of you.
Establishing that the truth is not IN you already, fully and completely, or that you do not have it, is the entire foundation of the ego‘s thought system. Once this is believed, you will cease looking within for it, and start on a quest, which you might even call a "spiritual journey", attempting to "seek" for the truth.
This seeking can show up as very earnest and well-intentioned and an attempt to find the ultimate spiritual answer. BUT, because you are fundamentally looking in the wrong place, you are guaranteed never to find it.
The ego is very sneaky about this. It will tempt you to believe that reality, and truth, are outside of yourself. This means the entire world is real. It also means the world contains the truth. And this then justifies your seeking IN the world to try to find it. The ego has promised you can succeed at this, but it is utterly impossible. The truth is already inside you, where you are not looking, and where the ego will NEVER have you look.
Looking outside yourself CAN also include finding the truth within a book such as A Course in Miracles. Especially if the FORM of the book seems to be more of a truth than other forms. If the words seem to show symbols which don’t even look like symbols, but look like concrete pieces of the truth itself, which is the ego’s way of turning illusions into reality, you can become quite fixated on picking apart the tiniest nuances of what specific words say, become extremely specific, and pull apart even the tiniest of statements, which completely loses all sense of context and increases your insanity. The truth is NOT THERE!
You will go deeply into the Course words and the form of the words. You will not recognize them as mere symbols twice removed from the truth, and will not acknowledge the Course’s holographic nature. You will instead attempt to turn the Course into a linear, finite, concrete piece of "evidence", an attempt to PROVE that the truth is outside of you.
The result of this is an OBSESSION in trying to find the truth. You will feel compelled by the lack of truth in you. And yet, here‘s the problem. The more you seek for it, the more you dwell on what the Coure says, the more you become obsessed with the exact specific words of a given version, the more you dissect it and analyze it and try to figure out what it means based on its form, the more it will slip through your fingers! And the more you do this, the more desperate you will become, because you continue to fail to truly FIND what it is the ego promised you would find there.
The form of the Course IS NOT THE TRUTH. The truth is an inner experience of direct reality with God. It is not intellectual. It has nothing to do with study. It absolutely has nothing whatsoever to do with quote fests or throwing quotes at people to correct them. It definitely has nothing to do with pitting different FORMS of the course against each other. It’s completely nothing whatsoever to do with what exact words were said, who can find the best citations, or who can use the Course as a weapon.
THE TRUTH IS NOT OUTSIDE OF YOU.
There is nothing so blinding as sight of FORM!
The Course is ONLY there to help point you AWAY from the form of the Course and towards an experience of God, which is already in you, just covered up. The more you obsess over the Course’s words the more you are going to get lost in the intellect. And the more you do that, the more you will believe you are "finding" the truth, and are delusional.
The words are just symbols, *representing* a truth that is quite removed from those symbols. When we fight about which exact words are used where, or what they mean, or what they "say", we’re completely forgetting they are symbols and are trying to break the Course out into some kind of direct truth in its own right. This was never how it was intended. This is an ego trap.
Blocks to awareness of the fact that you are ALREADY WITH GOD need to be removed. That’s all. Period. This is nothing more than the undoing of denial and stopping searching outside yourslf, even within the course, for something which is not there. The Course if understood is telling you to do this. You are supposed to leave the Course behind at some point and go within to God with empty hands! You can’t do this, and you cannot experience the truth, while trying to make yourself RIGHT about what exactly the FORM says or seems to prove. There is NO PROOF in the Course. It’s an illusion.
Go within.
Perhaps this will become clearer and more personally meaningful if the ego's use of guilt is clarified. The ego has a purpose, just as the Holy Spirit has. The ego's purpose is FEAR, because only the fearful can be egotistic. The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you.
In Heaven there is no guilt, because the Kingdom is attained through the Atonement, which creates it in you. The word "create" is appropriate here, because once what YOU have made is undone by the Holy Spirit, the blessed residue IS restored, and therefore continues in creation. What is truly blessed is incapable of giving rise to guilt, and must give rise to joy. This makes it invulnerable to the ego, because its peace is unassailable. It is invulnerable to disruption BECAUSE it is whole.
Guilt is ALWAYS disruptive. Anything that engenders fear is divisive, because it obeys the law of division. If the ego is the symbol of the separation, it is also the symbol of guilt. Guilt is more than merely not of God. It is the symbol of the ATTACK on God. This is a totally meaningless concept EXCEPT to the ego, but do not underestimate the power of the ego's belief in it. This is the belief from which ALL guilt really stems.
The ego IS the part of the mind which believes in division. But how can part of God detach itself WITHOUT believing it is attacking Him? We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty.
Whenever you respond to your ego, you WILL experience guilt, and you WILL fear punishment. The ego is quite literally a fearful thought. And however ridiculous the idea of attacking God may be to the sane mind, never forget that the ego is NOT SANE. It REPRESENTS a delusional system, and it speaks FOR it. Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU.
The classic picture of fear of retaliation from without then follows, because the severity of the guilt is so acute that it MUST be projected. Although Freud was wrong about the basic conflict itself, he was very accurate in describing its effects. Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you. It is, however, only the ACCEPTANCE which makes it real.
As an extreme example of dissociation yourself, you should have little trouble in understanding that it is perfectly possible not to ACCEPT what IS in your minds. If you enthrone the ego in it, the fact that you have accepted it, or allowed it to enter, MAKES IT YOUR REALITY. This is because the mind as God created it IS capable of creating reality. We said before that you must learn to think WITH God. To think WITH Him is to think LIKE Him. This engenders joy, not guilt, because it is natural. Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with guilt, because it IS the belief in sin.
The ego does not perceive sin as a lack of love. It perceives it as a POSITIVE ACT OF ASSAULT. This is an interpretation which is necessary to its survival, because as soon as YOU regard it as a LACK, you will automatically attempt to remedy the situation. And you will also succeed. The ego regards this as doom, but YOU must learn to regard it as freedom.
The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone. We said before that illness is a form of magic. It might be better to say it is a form of magical SOLUTION. The ego believes that by punishing ITSELF, it will mitigate the punishment of God. Yet even in this it is arrogant. It attributes to God a punishing attempt, and then takes over this intent as its OWN prerogative. It tries to usurp ALL the functions of God as it perceives them, because it recognizes that only total allegiance can be trusted.
The ego cannot OPPOSE the laws of God, any more than YOU can. But it can INTERPRET them according to what it wants, just as YOU can. That is why the question "what DO you want" must be answered. You ARE answering it every minute and every second, and each moment of decision is a judgment which is anything BUT ineffectual. Its effects will follow automatically UNTIL THE DECISION IS CHANGED. This is a redundant statement, because you have NOT learned it. But again, any decision can be UNmade as well as made.
But remember that the ALTERNATIVES are unalterable. The Holy Spirit, like the ego, is a decision. Together they constitute all the alternatives which your mind CAN accept and obey. The ego and the Holy Spirit are the ONLY choices which are open to you. God created one, and so you cannot eradicate it. YOU made the other, so you CAN. Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them.
But you are wrong. The function of thought comes FROM God and is IN God. As part of HIS thought, you cannot think APART from Him. Irrational thought is a thought DISORDER. God Himself orders your thought, because your thought was created BY Him. Guilt feelings are always a sign that you do not know this. They also show that you believe you CAN think apart from God, and WANT to.
Every thought disorder is attended by guilt at its inception, and MAINTAINED by guilt in its continuance. Guilt is inescapable for those who believe that they order their OWN thought, and must therefore obey its orders. This makes them feel RESPONSIBLE for their mind ERRORS, without recognizing that by ACCEPTING this responsibility they are really reacting IRresponsibly. If the sole responsibility of the miracle-worker is to accept the ATONEMENT, and I assure you that it is, then the responsibility for what is atoned FOR CANNOT be yours.
This contradiction cannot BE resolved except by accepting the solution of undoing. You WOULD be responsible for the effects of all your wrong thinking IF IT COULD NOT BE UNDONE. The purpose of the Atonement is to save the past in PURIFIED form only. If you accept the remedy FOR a thought-disorder, and a remedy whose efficacy is beyond doubt, how can its symptoms remain? You have reason to question the validity of symptom cure. But NO ONE believes that the symptoms can remain if the underlying CAUSE is removed.
The truth about you is simply that you are STILL EXACTLY as you were created by God. Absolutely perfect, immortal, permanent, changeless, eternal, powerful, innocent, holy, happy, loving, joyful, peaceful. There has not been even a slight change in what you are.
This you that is altogether perfect in every way, is still "in you", buried under layers of bullshit lies which you have placed sort of "between yourself and yourself" to try to pretend that you are NOT the perfect holy immortal innocent being that God created.
The fact that you don't seem to experience yourself AS a perfect immortal innocent spiritual being is simply because your mind has chosen to believe in a whole bunch of things which are DISTORTING your view of yourself. So much so that it makes you believe that your perfect self doesn't even exist, that deep down in your core you are corrupt and evil, and that there is something very wrong with you - as if you have literally transformed into a guilty mother#($*#)(.
These are ALL LIES. They are lies that we tell ourselves on a daily basis. Lies which attempt to slander and accuse God's perfectly innocent children and make out that they are faulty, flawed, malfunctioning, corrupt, damaged, evil, and have been changed into something totally unrecognisable. And recognition really is a huge part of this because if you COULD recognize precisely what is REALLY true of you, you wouldn't doubt for a second that you are EXACTLY as God created you, and not some hideous creature that you made up.
The issue then is that God has established the truth about you, which is ALWAYS true and is STILL true right now. But then you have attempted to throw away this truth - which is a matter of dishonesty and not accepting/admitting the truth - a matter of denial, in which you are trying to be something you are not, are claiming things are true of you which are not, and are generally trying to make yourself into a "false self" - or an ego as we call it.
Ego then is nothing but a cloud of lies that swirls around the perfect undefiled perfection of your being like vultures waiting to feast upon your corpse, swarming such that their numbers seem to blot out the light and make it seem like you are not even in there anymore. And yet at the core of this scene you ARE STILL exactly the perfect loving light-filled being that God created, shining away without the slightest dimming of your perfection.
So the ego lies are all designed to basically HIDE THE TRUTH, not that they have any power to actually cause the truth to go away or change or stop existing, but to simply COVER IT UP to make it SEEM like it's not there. And this then leads to believing that you HAVE literally changed into something corrupt and full of sin, because you have lost sight of yourself. But YOU ARE STILL IN THERE!
Believing things that are not true of you is madness, and is the insanity of what we call the ego thought system. A kind of delusional twisting of the truth, a mis-perception of your reality. YOU REMAIN exactly perfect as God created you right now and forever, you are just DENYING that you are perfect. You are a perfect immortal being PRETENDING to be mortal and imperfect. Trying to convince yourself that there is something horrendously wrong with you WHEN THERE ISN'T.
Listening to the ego means nothing more than simply listening to your own lies. The ego is nothing more than a part of YOUR BELIEF ABOUT YOURSELF, which means a FALSE belief about what is true of you. IF you could just stop lying to yourself about yourself, you would rediscover the truth about you and melt into a state of being much more calm, relaxed, happy and peaceful. Simply because all the lies ever do is stir up shit, create drama, intensify contrasts, enforce separations, magnify tensions, amplify war, and make out that some kind of nightmare is happening to scare the living daylights out of you.
The ego is the idea of the anti-christ. It is anti - christ ... ie AGAINST Christ. You are christ. It is AGAINST YOU. It is the idea of being something opposite to what you are. It is A LIE. The ego is a lie, the body is a lie, the world is a lie, space and time are a lie. This is why we call them an illusion - a claim to be something they are not. And all the ego can ever do is LIE ABOUT YOU, while trying to pass it off as truth. A lie which is has been confused with truth is a sin. A lie which is recognized as false is merely an error.
You are unmoved, you are peace itself, you are permanence, you are fixed and eternal, you cannot change in any way, nothing in the world HAS EVER changed you, nothing the world believes or says about you is true, EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS A LIE, and YOU are the living truth of God expressed forever. It is only ever then a matter of, when will you be willing to accept that there is nothing wrong with you whatsoever?
"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."
"Atonement remedies the strange idea that it is possible to doubt yourself and be unsure of what you really are. This is the depth of madness. Yet it is the universal question of the world. What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."
"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
"The world you see (with ANY kind of perception) is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
This is talking about THIS world, Earth, its physical nature, its inherent cruelty. Jesus goes on to say something which COMPLETELY bypasses any idea of having thoughts ABOUT the world, it being merely an emotional statement, or something to do with perceptual states...
"***Children are born into it*** through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. ***Their minds are trapped in their brain***, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And ***their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground***, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel. "
"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving."
Notice here the profoundly obvious references to things happening on a PHYSICAL level, within an environment He is referring to as "the world". He isn't speaking in metaphors or poetry or internal interpretative states. He's referring to this PLANET.
He mentions children being born "into it". This has absolutely nothing to do with your perception or attitude about the world. He's talking about child birth. The PHYSICAL birthing of human babies.
He mentions minds being trapped in brains. This CLEARLY distinguishes that the MIND, which might be the realm where you claim to have an attitude "about the world", is completely distinct from "the brain". And I think we all know that the brain is NOT a reference to an ATTITUDE. It's talking of the physical blob of brain tissue in the physical head of the physical body. And these bodies, which house these brains, are part of the physical world that is being referred to as THE WORLD THAT IS CRUEL.
Further He mentions about how the bodies become frail, wither, suffer and die, and are laid in the ground. Unless you have a graveyard IN YOUR HEAD, this is again a direct reference to MULTIPLE bodies (not just yours) being laid in the PHYSICAL SOIL of the ground. As an aspect of this WORLD that he is making reference to as CRUEL.
All of these references are clearly speaking of a world, the PHYSICAL world, where children are born through human child birth, people's minds seem trapped in their physical human brains, and their physical bodies grow old and die and are buried in the physical soil of the ground. None of this is metaphorical, poetry, fluffly language or indirect. It is totally literal and plain as day.
THAT WORLD, where all this stuff happens, is being referred to as CRUEL, and NOT a world that God would create. For God to create a world where children are BORN, where minds are stuck in BRAINS, and physical bodies become sick and die and are buried in the GROUND, God would have to be a CRUEL FATHER. Because all of this IS cruel. At the PHYSICAL level. This has nothing whatsoever to do with perception or attitude or meanings you give to things.
"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel."
This is fortunately NOT THE REAL WORLD. It is not reality, God is NOT cruel, God does NOT subject His children to this madness, and REALITY is nothing like this hellish world. The dream of death is not God's will. It was made to oppose His will. "The world was made as an attack on God." IT IS madness to think of life as being born, suffering, and dying in the end. It is completely unnatural.
This world is not the Kingdom of Heaven. Regardless of how you look at it, perceive it, think of it, interpret it, project onto it, or have attitudes or meanings given to it, it STILL remains what it IS, which is an unnatural artificial world of cruelty. Even teachers of God look upon it and RECOGNIZE THIS, and are NOT DECEIVED BY IT'S LIES.
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
Why are they not deceived? Because they RECOGNIZE that the world MUST BE A LIE, is NOT showing them reality, and does NOT contain the truth. They look upon THE DREAM (this world) and recognize it is FALSE. It is the ego's world of cruelty and hell. And even when forgiven it remains nothing but an ILLUSION of a world.
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
"The world you see (in any way) is an ILLUSION of a world. ***God did not create it***, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is ***nothing*** in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when ***all things visible will have an end.***"
Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth. Its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests. No-one in this world escapes fear, but everyone can reconsider its causes and learn to evaluate them correctly. God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide. Yet there are times and situations in which the patient-therapist relationship becomes the means through which He offers His greater gifts to both.
What better purpose could any relationship have than to invite the Holy Spirit to enter into it and give it His Own great gift of rejoicing? What higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God? To help in this is the proper purpose of psychotherapy. Could anything be holier? For psychotherapy, correctly understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him.
Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress, is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence. These tendencies are often described as "self-destructive," and the patient often regards them in that way himself. What he does not realize and needs to learn is that this "self," which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made up. Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even willing to "sacrifice" his "life" on its behalf. For he regards it as himself. This self he sees as being acted on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless in the power of the world.
Psychotherapy, then, must restore to his awareness the ability to make his own decisions. He must become willing to reverse his thinking, and to understand that what he thought projected its effects on him were made by his projections on the world. The world he sees does therefore not exist. Until this is at least in part accepted, the patient cannot see himself as really capable of making decisions. And he will fight against his freedom because he thinks that it is slavery.
The patient need not think of truth as God in order to make progress in salvation. But he must begin to separate truth from illusion, recognizing that they are not the same, and becoming increasingly willing to see illusions as illusions and to accept the truth as true. His Teacher will take him on from there, as far as he is ready to go. Psychotherapy can only save him time. The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong. Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses to save time, and to prepare additional teachers for His work. There is no end to the help that He begins and He directs. By whatever routes He chooses, all psychotherapy leads to God in the end. But that is up to Him. We are all His psychotherapists, for He would have us all be healed in Him.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
Notice that it says THOSE, meaning the world is made by multiple individuals.
"Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain."
Notice that it talks about children being born INTO the "world" that is being referenced. AND that as they are born they are born IN pain THROUGH pain. And I think we all know that this is talking about planet earth, with physical bodies, women giving birth to babies, and is nothing to do with internal perceptions or interpretations.
"Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death."
Notice again that it confirms the world being referenced is the one where bodies die. That's the physical world.
"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt."
Notice this is also true of anyone who has a BODY, a physical human organic organism, with a BRAIN, and therefore is definitely talking about the physical body of flesh and bones, living in the world that is outside of it - planet Earth. The container of the bodies.
"They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more."
Yes where do these once-children's bodies get laid in the ground, the physical soil? On planet earth, at a physical level. Also notice that he says basically that bodies withering and gasping and dying in the ground IS CRUEL. It's not something natural or something that God would want for you. And IF that happens to your body, you MUST be believing that God is cruel because if death happens THAT IS CRUELTY.
"Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving."
Notice that therefore in this reference, where Jesus has CLEARLY set up the fact that he's talking about the physical planet where human bodies are born, suffer and die, the same bodies that have brains and which grow old.... THAT WORLD.... would have to be coming from a CRUEL God, IF God were to be the creator of it. Because only through such a cruel creatorship and intention could such cruel things come about.
It would be thoroughly unloving for God to create a world where you lose things, you wither, your brain is attacked and diminishes, the body grows old and weak and sick, or where death happens at all. God simply WOULD NOT create such an environment. Such an environment IS cruel and not even remotely divine and holy. Not even slightly the hallmark of a totally loving God.
Also notice that it states IF this was the real world, ... meaning IT IS NOT the real world, and reality is ANOTHER WORLD that is NOT planet earth. NOT physical. With NO bodies and no death.
"LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could CONCEIVE of it."
Notice that it also refers to this physical planet as "the world of guilt", just as it also refers to it elsewhere as "the world of sin" and "the world of death". And God would NOT create a world of guilt, sin, or death.
"This world..."
(which we now know is referring to the very physical earth world of human bodies)
..."IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
So now the physical world, is a picture of crucifixion. A PHYSICAL picture. The crucifixion is BUILT INTO MATTER. That has nothing to do with "how you are perceiving". It is purely to do with the form of the physical planet itself. It's a picture of crucifixion, not a picture of heaven.
"And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see."
Notice that this states if you believe God's Son can be crucified, ie believe in attack and sin at all, YOU WILL be forced to SEE this physical world THAT YOU MADE. And this confirms further that God DID NOT create this physical planet. And this also implies that if you DO NOT believe in the crucifixion of God's Son you will STOP seeing this world THAT YOU MADE. You made the physical world and everything in it.
"But you will not realize this, until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is NOT GUILTY. He DESERVES only love, because he has GIVEN only love. He cannot be condemned, because he has never condemned."
Recognition of immortality, holiness and innocence is the key to NOT SEEING THIS WORLD and instead seeing the Son of God in its holy home.
"The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, he has no NEED of salvation."
Ahhhh.. "Dreams of death are not left by death, but by truth."
The world you made, which God did not create, which is the world of bodies, which is also the world of sin guilt and fear and death, is NOT GOD's world, because it IS a cruel world and it would be cruel to ACCUSE God of creating such a place.
The Kingdom of God is your home. It is not like this world at all. "God does not will that you suffer" or die.
When you chose to believe in being separate from God, you chose to make a thought system and world opposite to God.
That world did not have any choice of ITS OWN to determine its nature or functioning. You wanted it to be opposite to heaven, and so it is.
It therefore MUST function according to laws which appear opposite to God's laws, of an imperfect nature, and completely unilke heaven in EVERY way imaginable.
"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."
We chose that the world would function UNLIKE heaven, and therefore its foundation of separation and exclusion and lack and limitation is deeply embedded into its entire nature. That is why it devours and destroys, that is why it is limitation and scarcity, that is why it is cruel and dangerous, that is why everything in it dies.
Even right down to the subatomic particles, the illusory laws of physics, space and time themselves, all DEPEND entirely on the separation idea - the idea of opposition to God.
The world therefore CANNOT FUNCTION ANY OTHER WAY.
Its whole nature, its materials, its objects, its gravity and forces, its distances and delays, are all part of how the system MUST FUNCTION in order to be opposite to God's system.
The system itself is not choosing this. It has no choice. It cannot opt to work well, to be perfect, to stop being destructive, to be whole, to give you love or eternal life, to last forever, or to stop having problems.
It was meant to BE a problem, it was meant to OPPOSE God, it was meant to LACK, it was meant to NOT WORK, it was meant to ATTACK, it was meant to DESTROY, it was meant to facilitate SUFFERING AND DEATH.
That's ALL it can do. That's all it has to offer. It cannot change its mind, it cannot function as heaven, it cannot adopt God's laws, it cannot suddenly be free from murder and death, it can't stop having sicknesses, it can't be perfect, it can't last, and it won't ever stop having problems.
It's important to look at this honestly and recognize it. When you DON'T look at this, you will be delusional and in denial. You will believe that the world CAN be like heaven, it can somehow be manipulated to function well, things can last, suffering can be ended physically, accidents can stop happening, and all problems can be permenently solved.
All of this wishful thinking runs COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to the nature and functioning of the world, and if you try to implement it you will be RESISTING (fearing) the world, and causing tension and friction and suffering. It means you're trying to turn the machinery of separation into something that seems to function like oneness, and it's NOT possible. Not at a physical level.
If you can be willing to look at this fact hard in the face, you can drop the pretense and false hopes and silly dreams of making it work, and can ACCEPT that it is not going to ever work. And then you can recognize it for what it is. And you can also then recognize it is MEANT TO DIE. And problems are not meant to be ever solved here.
Once you recognize that, you can actually look for salvation WHERE IT IS, which is in heaven with God. You can then see that the OPPOSITE of this world is the only place where things can work the way you're hoping they could. The only place where there is no suffering, no sickness, no problems, and no death.
And in recognizing that this world HAS NO CHOICE in how it functions, you can forgive it, because thus you can recognize it is not trying to be a problem on purpose. It has no choice in it. It is a machine we made to be problematic intentionally, and that's it's nature. If you can accept that is its ONLY possible nature, then you can stop trying to STOP IT from being the way it is. And then you can accept it and find some peace, and let it go.
Basically everyone is trying to turn this world into heaven SO THAT they do not have to go home to heaven with God. We're looking in the wrong place for salvation and for a solution to the separation. The world cannot be solved or saved in this way, it can only be forgiven for being the way it is. And in your forgiveness you can set your mind free, because you are NOT part of this system, nor do you function like it. You are not of this world.
Jesus says NOT to try to escape all problems here. The world is MEANT to be problematic all the time and it wilL NEVER stop. You don't escape the world by fixing those problems, but by transcending them. Problems are DECEPTIONS that something is wrong that you need to attend to. YOU DO NOT.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."
There is a reason why we believe death is inevitable, and why we think there isn't any other choice.
At the beginning of separation from God, we attempted to sin against him. That means we tried to attack God, cause Him, and therefore produce real effects to change Him against His will. This was the Son attempting to be the Father's father.
More simply, we attempted to reverse cause and effect. We who are an effect/creation of God, tried to be the cause of Him, and to make Him the effect of us. This is a simple logical reversal of states. This is level confusion.
Having believed that we accomplished this, which is the belief that sin is real, that we really did it and there are real consequences, we automatically believed that God has been attacked against His will. The automatic logical state for God now is that He is now JUSTIFIED in anger and revenge, because he's been unfairly treated.
Part of the belief in real sin includes this "re-framing" of God as someone who rightly SHOULD be angry at us, should want revenge toward us, whose will is in opposition to ours, and who is an enemy that we've attacked. This frames God as unforgiving, not recognizing our innocence, and not wanting us to live with Him.
By believing in sin, we believed also in the false idea of God, and in the idea that we cannot be forgiven and don't want to be forgiven. We did not want to believe in being forgivable because we wanted to keep the idea of sin real. And real sin would depend on God agreeing with us that we are sinful. We believe he should agree with us because we believe in what we did to hurt Him and his right to seek compensation.
This belief in real sin leads automatically to the belief that God wills that we be dead, which logically produces the fear of God. We appear to then be unwelcome to God, we consider ourselves as exiled, we see our Home as "off limits", and God's unforgiveness seems to cast us out. Believing in our sinfulness makes us believe that it is not possible to BE forgiven, OR to return Home, OR to be innocent, OR to ever share ETERNAL LIFE with God.
This sets us up for the next step in the ego's logical progression of conclusions. That is, that since we can't return to eternal life, life is no longer an OPTION. It is no longer possible for us to return to the Kingdom of eternal life. We've banished ourselves. And on this basis alone, we believe that since life is not possible for us, DEATH is the only possibility that remains.
It seems all we can do is slither away in shame and darkness, hide in a corner, suffer and die. And we believe this is all we rightly deserve, in order to not only comply with God's will that we die, but also to support and KEEP the idea that our sin is irreversible and unforgivable. We demand that we MUST die, in order to "pay for" the sin we firmly believe we committed. And so all death is a chosen suicide.
And so now we "accept" that because "sin is real" to us, death is INEVITABLE. It appears to not even be a choice, because it seems to be the ONLY outcome that's possible. There doesn't appear to be any alternative. And so we seem to come into the world, to "come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
It's almost as if we gave up on eternal life right from the start, threw it away, and left God behind to go and die alone in hell. This "death wish" and its foundation is responsible for EVERY death that happens in this world. Every death is a form of self attack and suicide, no matter how it looks or what happens or who does what to whom. "No-one dies without their own consent."
The good news is that this need not be, nor is it God's will. We need to learn that sin is not real, we did not attack God, we are still innocent, God still loves and welcomes us, we can go Home, we are forgiven, we did not really do anything at all, no consequences came from it, it was nothing but a delusional dream of death, and we can be reunited with love and RE-ACCESS ETERNAL LIFE. We've been MISTAKEN about God and ourselves and what we thought we did, and all is forgiven.
This means that as we progress in our return to sanity and awareness, we'll gradually accept the atonement truth that nothing real was threatened, nothing unreal happened, and all is well. Upon realizing that we did not sin, LIFE becomes an option again. It becomes possible to return to eternal life and to trust that God wants us to live. It becomes possible to not HAVE TO die. There now appears to be a choice, between life and death. And now death is no longer the inevitable single outcome,. Death is merely an "fake alternative" to what God wills for you.
At some point we will fully accept not only that death is unreal and has no consequences, but also that LIFE is all that we choose. We re-invest in the Kingdom, we open up to forgiveness, we allow ourselves to recognize the truth about us and our brother's innocence, that there is no sin, and we prepare to return Home to God - in recognition that we never really left.
Here we decide to side with life so fully that we will not even support notions of death AT ALL on any level or in any way. Not even while in a dream, not even while still having a body. We prepare to exhibit our conviction that we are immortal and eternal, by demonstrating it symbolically through the body's condition. The more we accept our innocence and extend love, the more the body is healed along with us. All the way to the point where even the slightest sign of sickness and death is no longer a part of your physical demonstration.
You then are teaching only life on all levels, mentally and physically, for as long as it is useful. And then the appointed time arrives for the completion of your journey without distance, back to where you never left. A complete awakening from the dream of death, our of bodies an out of the world, into the Kingdom of Heaven, remembering your immortal soul and continuing as a co-creator with God. Forever, and ever, and ever. Permanently alive. Permanently immortal.
In recognition that death is nothing but an illusion, death now becomes the "impossibility". It is now seen as having no effect, no causality, and no consequences. It is surmounted and overcome. It is seen as nothing. And not one single thing in all the world can make it happen to you against your will. When the illusion of death is recognized, it disappears. And now the only outcome truly possible, is the INEVITABILITY OF LIVING FOREVER.
You no longer have a choice, because there IS no death TO choose. Death has ended and is snuffed out. Only Real Life is possible for you now, and now you cannot fail to continue as an immortal being, Created by God to share eternal life with Him Forever. There is no death.
"There is no death, the Son of God is free."
We're asked to demonstrate that nothing our brother does has the ability to affect us.
We're asked to show by example that our brother has no ability to hurt us or harm us or upset us or offend us.
If we demonstrate this, we are showing the truth to our brother who, if they are attempting to do something to cause us to be upset, must be mistaken about what the truth is. Truth cannot be attacked and attempting to do so is utterly wasted.
This demonstration shows them what the truth is, by demonstrating that the True Self is beyond the reach of all ego attacks and all ways that the ego targets individuals.
What cannot be affected by the world reveals that what our brother does has no effects. This proves to them that regardless of what they think they did, even if they did it seemingly intentionally, it has had no effects at all and so did not happen.
This is a demonstration that they did not really sin, or that whatever sin they seemed to do had no power to do anything to anyone. This literally requires complete invulnerability and demonstrates immortality.
If you can be sick or upset or offended or hurt by anyone or anything, you are demonstrating that you are less than immortal. "Sickness is an attempt to demonstrate that you can be hurt". - ACIM
If you cannot be hurt and are not hurt because you realize that you can only hurt yourself and you stop doing so, then nothing anyone attempts to do can hurt you. If their attempts to hurt you fails, or in other words, their attempts to sin do not produce any effects, this proves to them that sin can be undone and that nothing has happened.
This demonstration of innocence proves their innocence as well as your own. It teaches that forgiveness is called for and is present and is given, and that whatever they thought they did or whatever reason they seemed to have for doing it, it is completely irrelevant and nonsense and false and unreal.
This educates your brother that they are innocent in spite of what they think they did, which may be shocking to them but it will set them free. It will heal their mind and show them that what they believe about themselves cannot be true. They do not have the power to affect the Son of God. They do not have the power to destroy God's Creation. They have no authority over Christ and who they thought they were is not who they must be.
Be a living demonstration that this is your complete, whole truth, at all times, in order to be the salvation of the world. If you choose to go into upset and offense and reactions and fear and suffering, you are failing to fulfill this function and are in denial about who and what you really are. You are not being true to yourself. Only by being true to yourself can you be the truth to others.
You are not saving the world when you are offended by what other people do and feel hurt by it and react based on that, even if it is with good intentions or an attempt to help. You are not the salvation of the world if you keep attacking yourself and hurting yourself and then are accusing others of putting this hurt into you and are using that to justify retaliation or judgement. You are not anyone's savior if you are upset by anything anyone does or says or attempts to make happen.
These are all false attempts at salvation, designed to make it look like you care and want to save the world from suffering, but is really an attack. It is an attack on yourself and on the other person when you take their attempted attack seriously, fail to overlook it, and fail to demonstrate that it is meaningless. When you take it seriously and react to it and then try to fight with it to stop it, you are delusional and are fighting with your own self-attacking perceptions. This isn't helping anyone. It is the ego's version of salvation and is a complete lie.
You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that the world IS saved from attack because attack is impossible. You are the salvation of the world only when you demonstrate that there has been no sin, can be no sin, sin has no effects, everyone is equally innocent, and God loves everyone just the same. You are only a savior when you are able to show that you are unharmed, unharmable, harmless and cannot be harming to others, because regardless of what transpires, it does not change you whatsoever.
You are immortal. You are the light of the world. You only function is salvation.
I was watching a little bug crawling along the edge of the floor. I noticed how its "design" was going to mean it had a certain short amount of time to live, to crawl around trying to find food, likely to eventually starve, and die. It seemed obvious that death is built into things in this world, into the forms, into the growth and death cycle. And then a spider noticed the bug and approached and killed it and ate it.
Obviously the life of the bug is not exactly rewarding. It's demise is more or less programmed into its body. It's life duration is only mildly flexible and definitely short. It is born and it grows and suffers and dies. Like a guarantee. Like a destiny or fate. The bug was going to die, right from the start. It could not escape this. And how completely closed and cruel and insane that is.
This is the "nature" of this world. This is the fundamental way of space and time. Of separation. Of a world made in false perception, as an attack on God and life, and as an attempt to reject reality. The world we made is fundamentally cruel and insane and everything in it is made to die.
It is ridiculous that such a system, which on the physical level no bodies can seemingly escape, guarantees that death will happen to everything. And if you think that your body will escape this as well, you are mistaken, unless you can become miraculous. For most, death will take its toll sooner or late. Not if, but when.
The fate of the bug is the fate of every body. How ridiculous that we should think it natural that this is what happens, or what is going to happen. And who would still be insane to deny that this too is likely to happen to them. You can pretend a while, but eventually it will bite you in the ass.
If this is true, and if this is real, there is no way out. There is then essentially no hope. Sooner or later death will strike. Sooner or later, no matter what you try, the body will end. It is inevitable, unless you are a miracle worker. The only way for there to BE hope, to BE a way out, to BE sanity and sense, is if the world is not true or real. If this isn't the ONLY way. If this perpetual prison is in fact somehow transcend-able then you have a way out of hell. But otherwise you are stuck, and denying you are is pointless.
This is why "there must be a better way". A way that is better than the world itself. A way that is light and free and outside of the confines of the laws of this world, the laws of death and the laws of suffering. Only if there is an alternative, another world, another reality, another set of laws to live by, can there be any hope at all. And fortunately there is, because the laws of God and the nature of HIS Kingdom is nothing like this hellish place.
The task then becomes to learn to rise above the prison sentence, beyond the destiny of death, and to overcome the hell you made. To find a way to exist that is nothing like the existence of the body. To rejoin a thread of hope and life and power and miraculousness. Because it literally will take a miracle to free you from death. It will literally require you to break the laws of space and time, to set yourself free from the cycle of birth.
Fortunately God has a plan and it is the atonement, the way home. There IS a way out of hell, through forgiveness. And this requires un-learning everything the world told you is true, rejecting all notions of limitation and lack and suffering and death. And accepting the FREEDOM that God has given you in your creation.
You are free from hell because you are not of this world. You are free from death because God who created you gave you eternal life. And you are free from the nightmare of inevitable suffering, because in God there is only perfect peace. There is no world, there is no suffering, and there is no death. And only through acceptance of life without opposite can you set yourself free.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
This is one of those 'clincher' statements about the world which make it SO clear that he's talking about the physical world, and NOT some kind of interpretation of the world.
Children are PHYSICALLY BORN into it, through physical pain and in physical pain.
The children's PHYSICAL bodies grow and suffer.
Their minds are trapped in the PHYSICAL brain.
Their PHYSICAL bodies become hurt.
Their PHYSICAL bodies wither and die.
These are not perceptions. These are physical states.
And because of this, because of these things happening, PHYSICALLY, with actual physical matter going through these things, people would believe that God is cruel.
This has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with having false perceptionr OR true perception ABOUT the world. It is merely a statement of facts about the PHYSICAL. Physicality, ITSELF, is cruel, and if it were real, God would be its creator, which would make God cruel. And everyone who DOES BELIEVE that the physical world is reality, MUST believe that God is cruel.
Either the world is reality and God IS cruel. OR, the world is NOT reality and God is loving. Since the world IS PHYSICALLY cruel, regardless of anyone having any perceptions or meanings of projections or interpretations or judgements of it, PHYSICAL DEATH IS A CRUELTY, if such things are real then God must be cruel.
And this is why so many people legitimately recognize that because the physical world IS fundamentally, INHERENTLY cruel, a loving God CANNOT have created it. If God had created it, God MUST be cruel, because the world is physically cruel.
And this is why many people become disillusioned with God existing, because they reason that since the world IS cruel, God must either exist AS a cruel creator - which we rightly would want nothing to do with, and would be justifiably angry at, OR God does not exist at all.
But of course the alternative option which many overlook, is that God DOES exist, and IS NOT cruel, and HAS NOT created this world, because the physical world IS NOT reality. The assumption that it is real has to be questioned in order to arrive at any sense of what can possibly be NOT cruel - a loving experience, a loving God.
When you attune to the loving God, your interpretation of or use of this cruel physical world changes, and you RECOGNIZE it as cruel, and not of God, while simultaneously being in a greater state of love WITHIN yourself. The world then appears to take on what we might call a less harmful registering with the mind. But it is still always PHYSICALLY cruel even if it is interpreted as not psychologically cruel. It is then a STRANGE combination, like a "beautiful tragedy", or a "happy dream of death".
And who wants a world that is a contradiction anyway. A world that a loving God creates cannot even entertain the merest POSSIBILITY of cruel things occurring, such as damages or breakages or loss or getting stuck or attack or harm or decay or weapons or war or forms of sickness or pain or misery or death. These things cannot even be CONCEIVED OF by a loving God, yet alone exist.
If God is loving, there can BE no real explosion, no real wars, no real sicknesses, no real missing limbs, no real deaths, no real losses, no real attacks or lacks or limitations of any kind, no physical plane crashes, no broken bodies or bodies at all. And that means there can be NO PHYSICAL WORLD. Because physicality itself is literally a state of separation and sin. And without the idea of death, spacetime would vanish completely along with all its contents.
Earth IS NOT heaven. At best it can reflect heaven when you look at it lovingly, but in and of itself it is nothing but an illusion of a system of death and destruction. And it will end. Just as space and time will end. Nothing unreal lasts forever.
WHAT IS SIN?
Every aspect of an insane egoic mind is JUST A MISTAKE, which calls for correction. The mind "accidentally" considers something to be possible which isn't, and so is making an error. Like an error on a math test - a false conclusion, a miscalculation, a mis-thought. The mind believes impossible things, and because they are impossible it is not doing them.
"Sin" is what we call it when you become mistaken ABOUT a mistake, and fail to recognize its impossibility. Being mistaken about mistakes, not recognizing them as mistakes, converts them into TRUTHS, which are now sins. You don't realize they can't be true, and you think they are possible. As if you are actually doing them, giving them reality.
"Sin" is thus a "mistake about a mistake". A failure to recognize a mistake, leading to taking it seriously and taking it to be true and real. As if it is actually happening with real irreversible consequences.
Insane people are regarded as sinful when their insanity is not recognised as insanity, and is instead thought to BE SANITY, and thus assuming the person is SINNING ON PURPOSE from their right mindedness, which would indeed be deliberate attack. If this were true it calls for guilt and punishment.
Mistaking someone's delusional state for truth and reality, you think they are "actually attacking on purpose from a sane mind that should know better", which justifies anger and revenge for such a violation of the rules of sanity.
Guilt therefore arises from being mistaken about mistakes, regarding mistakes as deliberate acts of defiance against God and reality. If you COULD attack God it WOULD be a sin and you WOULD be guilty.
Sin is therefore a fiction about a fiction. The insane mind is in a deluded state believing illusions, which is just a set of mistakes, and then on top of this the delusion is taken to be NOT a delusion.
Sin is twice removed from God, mistakes are once removed. Guilt arises from taking mistakes to be truths. Or believing that illusions are real. Such as believing that the physical world is happening. If anything seeming to happen physically IS TRUE, it is a sin. If it is recognised that the world is JUST A MISTAKE, it is open to forgiveness.
Sin sees everything as unforgivable because it locks in the mistakes and regards them as concrete truths. Forgiveness recognizes what the mistakes ARE, and so sees an error has been made, which calls only for correction to appropriately treat the error. To fix the problem correctly.
Sin does not fix errors correctly, it compounds them by trying to use punishment as a fix. It says that the "mistake" is that you really did something impossible, as though it were possible, and now it has had real effects.
There is now "proof of sin", tangible sin, physical sin, evidence. Or in other words, an illusion (such as form) is mistaken for a real true possible thing and held up to be the "evidence" as to what you did wrong. Such as that the body did some wrong act causing the plates to be smashed, proven by the pieces of broken plate on the floor. Instead of being recognised as more illusions, it's taken to "prove" that you broke the plates in reality.
That presence of "an illusion being interpreted as proof that it's true" means "you did it" in space and time, and therefore are guilty. If you did sin, you deserve absolute punishment and death. Sin sees death as the way to CORRECT sins - death as atonement.
"Sin calls for punishment, as error for correction. And the belief that punishment IS correction, is clearly insane." UrT19C1
"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death." UrT19C3
"Yet, for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the immortal die?" UrT19C3
You not recognizing that this world is an illusion, converts the world into a place of sin and guilt, demeaning punishment for every act. You recognizing this world is just a MISTAKE and IS IMPOSSIBLE, forgives and overlooks the error and calls for the true atonement of the UNDOING of the error. The erasing of the world and space and time. The correction of the error - the illusion of a world - through its cancellation and disappearance, in which the mind returns to sanity and to God's kingdom.
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty." UrU5A5
Our opinions don't mean anything at all. They are absolutely worthless. It doesn't matter what your truth is or what my truth is or what anyone's truth is. It's all bullshit. An opinion is the delusional voice of the ego.
In attempting to express what we think is right or true, we actually are covering up the truth. We are replacing the truth with a viewpoint of what we want the truth to be. These expressions of "my truth", which come across as "this is what the truth is", are actually censorship of real truth.
Then there are those who say that everyone's truth is different or unique and to have your own truth. That's insanity. And then there are those who say no-one knows or can know the truth - not quite true - you CAN know the truth, it's just that hardly anyone is willing and we've become expert at obscuring it.
More and more I see that the truth - as God - simply 'is'. There is absolutely nothing we can do to change or define what it is. It can either be accepted, or denied, but nothing else.
We don't get to decide what God is. We don't get to decide what reality is. We don't get to decide what is true or false. We don't get to decide who we are. We don't get to decide where we came from or what our characteristics are. We don't get to decide God's will for Him. And we don't get to change God in any way. We also don't really get to be separate from God or have our own separate existence or "my life" that I've taken possession and control over.
"There is no life outside of Heaven" - ACIM
"I am as God Created me." - ACIM
"Only the truth is true." - ACIM
Fortunately for us, the gift that God has given us is so perfect and amazing that we couldn't really want for anything else, and nothing else is better for us. It is an absolute blessing and an act of grace. We should be overjoyed to accept what He has deemed us worthy of.
The truth is fixed. It is permanent. It doesn't change. God doesn't change. And no matter what anyone's opinion is, no matter what my opinion is, it's not going to change the truth.
It is actually insane to insist that I or anyone knows what the truth is IF it is not actually aligned with what the truth is. It is, however, sane to know the truth when it is clear and correct and in full acceptance of what the truth actually is.
The more that I allow Jesus and Holy Spirit to express through me, with less censorship and less desire to change what they say, the more "raw" their message becomes. The more completely blunt and unhidden and direct and factual it becomes. I see myself wanting to cover things up and not say some things and not be so brutally honest but they urge me to stop saving face and let the raw truth out.
I expect Jesus to have some kind of persona or way of softening the blow, but He is just like.... in your face! This is what the truth is, boom... take it or leave it. Totally exposed and out in the open with nothing to hide and no attempt to cover anything up.
If something is true and we try to avoid it or deny it or reject it or cover it up or disbelieve it or try to make something else true in order to claim it is false, we're being nothing but arrogant and we have an authority problem.
It's not going to matter whatsoever whether someone claims to know the true version of ACIM or any other teaching, or not. The truth is true. It can only be what it is and it can only be experienced "as-is". The truth itself will be the true measure of who is correct or not - you could call that "judgement day" in a symbolic kind of way. The truth knows what the truth is. The rest of us just get to accept it or attempt to block it and pretend we know better.
But this at least means that the truth is accessible, and you can accept it, and if you are willing to accept it you can align with it and it can be shared with God. Truth is sharing. But you can't have an isolated truth of your own. Isolation is not sharing and puts you into a private world where your own opinion seems to mean something. Your opinion doesn't mean anything at all.
God knows.
God just is, like it or not.
God has given His Creation. He has created us. He has shared everything with us. He has defined what we are forever. The course says something like - think not that you can improve upon Heaven, you cannot add anything to the truth that is more valuable than what it already contains.
We literally therefore must SURRENDER to the truth, lay down everything we want to believe that opposes or blocks or changes it, and simply allow it, accept it.
Related to this, when A Course in Miracles begins it says "This is A Course in Miracles, it is a REQUIRED COURSE." Do you think Jesus is being factual, literal, and absolutely truthful? It is a required course because it is part of God's plan for awakening, and what God says goes. It is inescapable. We have a curriculum for awakening and we must take it and we will take it. It is God's will. you can't avoid it. You can't pretend there is some other completely separate path that doesn't include the curriculum somehow.
The metaphysics of the truth as laid out in the Course is completely true. There are steps in awakening. There are things you have to admit to. You have to learn to admit to the real truth - not a truth that one book says or another argues with. The experiential factual real LIVING truth. You can deny it all you want but you cannot change it or define it. Other pathways may also lead to God but only if they include the same factual real truth.
This is why the "only" path to God is really A Course in Miracles, or to put it another way, it's not the form of the Course but.. "the course" is the "divine curriculum" which is "required" no matter what form your path takes or what materials you use or what books or what teachers. All paths - all forms of paths - lead to God, but some obscure it more than others. You cannot wake up without taking the one curriculum, either directly or inadvertently. And you can be an ACIM student and avoid the curriculum for a long time. ;;-)
This leads me to a different but related point.
I was asking Jesus about how I can possibly accept that someone is sick. If acceptance of the truth is so important, surely I would be better off not resisting the fact that someone is sick? Surely I would be more at peace if I stop fighting with the sickness? Can it be possible that I can come to a complete acceptance of and allowance of that sickness?
Jesus said no. How can I accept something that is false? Jesus speaks of His inability to tolerate the absence of truth in himself or others, and asks us to join Him in the great crusade to correct error in everyone. "As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. The power to work miracles belongs to you." - ACIM
I cannot accept someone being sick because the sickness isn't real. I can't simultaneously believe that it is real and be at peace. I can accept that they really DO NOT have sickness. I can accept that they are NOT sick. I can accept that they are One with the truth, in truth. But the sickness, the illusion of sickness, it is intolerable IF it is real. Fortunately it is not real, and that is what can be accepted. But then ... Love compels a desire to perform miracles.
"How can I help?"
If you believe you are guilty, it's because you believe you really did something which has caused a loss or damage to someone else. It means you believe you succeeded in attacking and taking something from them. The guilt tells you that because you did take something away from another (sinned), you owe them.
This means they are justified in doing something to you in return, in attempt to take back what you stole, and to retaliate against your crime. You now must fear revenge, and see it as an inevitable, constant threat. You believe in their likelihood of revenge because you believe in your success at sinning, hence your guilt.
So long as you believe that the person is suffering the consequences of your sin, which you want to believe because you want to have succeeded in separating, you will believe they are going to hunt you down and attack you. You believe they are completely justified in doing this and even agree with their motivations, even if it threatens you.
Therefore your guilt has automatically produced a state of fear, whereby simply because you are guilty, you yourself can see the sense in someone else wanting to attack you back. You believe in what you stole and see them as seeking revenge, to atone for the sin. Of this you must be afraid, and so guilt leads to automatic, mandatory fear of punishment.
The guilt will therefore automatically imply, project, and turn into fear. Now that you are in fear, you believe that you should be afraid, because you believe that punishment is going to come. And even though you yourself believe that you don't want the punishment to happen, you cannot help but be afraid it is going to happen because you already believe in the reason for it. It must happen, because you are guilty, and all your efforts will be to try to avoid and escape it, even though you believe it is inevitable. You attempt to escape BECAUSE you believe it is coming.
However, your own belief in your guilt will keep producing the fear, and the fear itself will keep visualizing the ways in which punishment is going to happen. At every turn it will haunt you and you will not feel safe, threatened by the revenge that you believe must be coming. In fact, so strong will be your belief that the punishment will come, that you will in fact begin to make it come. You will draw it to you, ask for it, and even take steps to make it happen. You will hate yourself for this but you yourself believe in the logical sense that you should be punished, and so you will agree to allow punishment to come to you, even if it makes you suffer.
Therefore because you have condemned yourself as sinful, it leads eventually to you implementing your own self punishment. Even if other people will not comply with your attempts to destroy yourself, you will do enough of a job on your own to ensure you receive what you believe you deserve. And so you will continue to prove your worthlessness by demonstrating that you deserve punishment, enacting it against yourself, and literally hurting your own self by your own hand.
And so fear inevitably leads to the enactment of punishment, because it strengthens the belief that you should be punished, and what you fear you attract. Fear pretends to not want what it focuses on, but it feeds tremendous energy into what it would avoid, through attempts at further separation, which only intensifies the sense of sin and guilt and produces more of the same. Eventually the shame and guilt produces so much fear of punishment that it starts to produce actual punishment. And so fear turns into punishment, sickness, and suffering, and perhaps even death.
Fear perpetuates and justifies a perception of yourself as being victimized, whereby whoever is to attack you is justified in doing so because of your sin. You owe them, and you know it. Therefore you dread the punishment that you yourself believe you should be receiving, and it's only a matter of time before it finds you. And if it is taking too long, one way or another you will cause it and welcome it, because you believe it is what should happen.
As punishment increases, so too is fear increasing, and gradually the atoning for sin nears completion. The more you are punished and suffering, the more you believe you are getting what you deserve, even if you exclaim that it is unfair and undeserved, and even if it is scaring you shitless. You yourself started this whole cycle through your own self condemnation, and your guilt and fear and punishment is just the fulfillment of your own belief in your worthiness of suffering. And so punishment comes and as it continues to ramp up in severity, so do you inflict upon yourself what you think you are worth.
The final blow of punishment is of course death, the idea that your sin is so great and so irreversible that you might as well give up on life completely and just let yourself be caught by those who you believe would bring the punishment to you. You surrender to death and lay down your life as though it is simply inevitable, because there is absolutely no way out of the logical sequence of conclusions you come to as soon as you start down the slippery slope of sin. Here you have followed sin to its logical conclusion, the call for atonement in death. The sinful must die, and the inescapable progression of logic from sin to death gives no way out, regardless of your protests.
This need not be.
The Son of God is not sinful. You are not guilty. And you have no reason to be afraid. Sin is not real, and no matter what you did, it is forgiven already by God. It wasn't reality and it didn't happen in reality. Only in a dream. Wake up to the happy news that all is forgiven and you are welcome home.
The progression of unfolding from sin through guilt fear punishment and death, need not occur, if the root foundation of that entire thought system is dug out. You must be willing to question whether the sin was real, whether you really did separate from God, or whether nothing has happened. This is the undoing of the dream of death, and is what the atonement represents. The idea of truth, that you cannot possibly separate from God, your attacks cannot have any effects, you cannot really sin, and no real consequences have come from trying.
You still remain as innocent as God created you to be. All the rest is just delusional nonsense and dreaming. You don't deserve to die. You deserve to live forever.
The ego is simply a state of self-attack, taking place within a mind which has become divided against itself.
In this state, part of the mind has disassociated from the other part. There now appear to be two identities.
One identity is consciously identified with as "me" and the other as "not me".
The "not me" self, is very often equated with "the ego". It appears to be the self that we're always blaming and scapegoating, attacking and accusing, thinking of as other people etc.
But the trap there is not realizing who is doing the perceiving of an enemy. The person who sees enemies, AND the enemies themselves, are both two parts of ONE delusional thought system. They are both you.
The ego is not so much "that enemy" or the thing which is against you or your problems etc. It is the attacker and that which is attacked. It is both sides of every war. It is the state of *separation* taking place within yourself, between who you are and this illusion of who you are not.
Separating yourself from God was also an attempt to separate yourself from yourself. This could only create a condition in your mind where your original self remained, and a second self was added. You now think that only the second self is the "bad self", and label it the ego, but it is no more or less the ego than the self which describes it, because your real self was placed with a "persona" that pretends to be who you really are. It is the separation BETWEEN the two fake identities that is the ego.
So basically, if no-one else existed and there was just you and your mind, the entire separation from God would have to be taking place inside of yourself. And any conditions of conflict in which there seems to be wars or threats or enemies, those things MUST be also included inside your own mind. They're not outside of you.
So this is the key - the secret to salvation, that you are doing this to yourself. You have to realize that this so-called "not me", aka "my enemy", actually IS you. It's you who are against yourself, not other people. It's you who are at war with your own self. You do not have any enemies beyond yourself. That "not me" self is just part of your mind and will which you're kind of pretending not to have any control over, as if it's running on autopilot.
You have to therefore learn to recognize, that whatever it is which seems to loom over you with power and a separate will and a sense of threat or causality, making "you" at its effect, is actually your own self doing this to yourself. In other words, it's one disassociated part of your mind attacking the part which you're still associated with. You think it is not you and is attacking you - that's just part of you that thinks you are not you, attacking part of you that thinks it is you.
Truth is, you are not EITHER of these two fake identities. You are not the attacker or the attacked. You are not the victim or the victimizer. You are also not the self who looks upon the "bad enemy" and condemns them. That self is the other half of the ego, and the ego is always attacking itself. You are not the persona who rejects the shadow, and you are not the innocent victim who believes the perpetrator is not their self.
If you could see, that every pain and suffering, every attack, every torture, was actually being administered by a split-off part of your own mind, which you had disowned and disconnected from your sense of "conscious control", or your sense of the scope of your power or the reach of your influence, and if you can learn to recognize it and see yourself actually working "through" it to do things to yourself, then you will realize... you can stop doing that.
You can stop attacking yourself. You can stop hurting yourself. But even moreso, since the self being hurt is not you either, you can realize that you are no longer going to play EITHER role of victim or victimizer, and are going to give up the sense of identity that you were trying to protect from a fake enemy, transcend both of them, heal the *SEPARATION* that was creating them both, and return to a mind of wholeness and oneness.
if you could but see that you do everything to yourself, and get in touch with that choosing and doing, then you would simply realize how futile that is and stop it.
Sometimes you'll find in the day that a song is playing in your mind. It seems to be on autopilot. It can play for hours without you even noticing. And then maybe you notice and can't get it out of your head. But the thing is, it's actually being played by a part of your own mind, a part which is mostly unconscious, and you are just "allowing" it subtly to keep going. When you reclaim that power and recognize, it's YOU who is making this song keep playing in your mind, you reclaim the ability to stop it from playing. And it will stop. Because no-one else was playing that song. It was you.
It's the same thing with any aspect of the ego. You think it's outside of your control, beyond your choosing, disconnected from your influence, outside your power, and separated from "you". Reclaiming and owning that is the key to salvation. Taking back responsibility for everything you are experiencing.
No-one and nothing can happen to you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent. If you do not choose to attack yourself, you will be in capable of experiencing attack. No-one else has the power to go against your will. Your will is as powerful as the Son of God. There is nothing that can cause you other than God. You cannot be at the effect of anything but God (and that's a good thing). It guarantees that you are immortal and invulnerable forever, if you will just stop doing stuff to yourself unconsciously.
TEMPTATION
"What is temptation but a wish to make illusions real? "
Illusions are not inherently real. However, there is a potential in illusions to be "tempted" to believe they are real. If someone is sane, they will recognize the illusion is just a trick and will not believe it. But the illusion contains this property of "trying to convince" you that there is a hidden, delusional truth, which you will "see" when and if you believe in it.
The world, is an illusion. It "tempts you" to believe that you are physical, a body, in a physical world, which seems real. But this illusion is only "potentially" taken as real, depending on your belief system and perception.
You are tempted by form to believe that sin and error are reality. You are tempted by the body to believe that you are limited and isolated. All the time, this world and everything in it is potentially a temptation. It tries to persuade you to believe its lies.
But it is then up to you, whether you buy into it and fall for the temptation, or whether you come to your senses and rise above it into sanity and truth, recognizing the world and body as lies, and not listening to these messages of temptation.
"Beware of the temptation to perceive yourself unfairly treated."
""Let me not wander into temptation.""
"Even the most advanced of God's teachers will give way to temptation in this world."
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. 2 It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die"
"When the temptation to attack rises to make your mind darkened and murderous, remember you can see the battle from above."
"The temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved."
"Let him not wander into the temptation of crucifixion, and delay him there. 4 Help him to go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way"
"Yet there will be temptations along the way the teacher of God has yet to travel, and he has need of reminding himself throughout the day of his protection."
"The purpose is to protect yourself from temptation throughout the day"
"Let nothing that relates to body thoughts delay your progress to salvation, nor permit temptation to believe the world holds anything you want to hold you back."
"And if we hear temptation call to us to stay and linger in a dream, we turn aside and ask ourselves if we, the Sons of God, could be content with dreams"
"I am constantly tempted to make up other laws and give them power over me. 5 I suffer only because of my belief in them."
"Let this not tempt me to look away from me for my salvation."
"No temptation but becomes a nameless and unwanted thing before God's Name."
"The temptation of the ego becomes extremely intense with this shift in goals."
"As you look upon yourself and judge what you do honestly, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless."
"And he will reinterpret all temptation as just another chance to bring him joy."
""Lead us not into temptation" means "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following my guidance.""
"If you are tempted to believe them true, remember that appearances can not withstand the truth these mighty words contain: 3 Salvation is my only function"
"When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for that is self-deception."
"Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently: 3 Light and joy and peace abide in you. 4 Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God."
"If you are tempted to be dispirited by thinking how long it would take to change your mind so completely, ask yourself, "How long is an instant?""
"Perhaps you would be tempted to agree with the ego that it is far better to be sinful than mistaken."
"This releases the mind from the temptation to see the body in many lights, and gives it over entirely to the One Light in which it can be really understood."
"When you are tempted to deny Him remember that there are no other gods to place before Him, and accept His Will for you in peace."
"And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes and change what you desire."
"When you are tempted to yield to the desire for death, remember that I did not die . 2 You will realize that this is true when you look within and see me."
"When you are tempted by the wrong voice, call on me to remind you how to heal by sharing my decision and making it stronger."
"The PURPOSE OF THE WORLD you see IS TO OBSCURE your function of forgiveness, and provide you with a justification for forgetting it. 3 It is the TEMPTATION TO ABANDON GOD and His Son BY TAKING ON A PHYSICAL APPEARANCE. 4 It is THIS THE BODY'S EYES LOOK UPON."
"NOTHING THE BODY'S EYES SEE CAN BE ANYTHING BUT A FORM OF TEMPTATION, since this was THE PURPOSE OF THE BODY itself."
Again it's quite simple. God and his kingdom are absolute reality and truth. Just "what is." The entire "separation from God" is just you denying this and becoming delusional that something else is true and real. This puts you out of touch with reality, and you start to hallucinate a false world. Your mind goes insane and can't tell what is true or real anymore.
The situation you're in physically, is that you seem to be in a world. But the psychological problem is that you are not even in touch with what this world is either. You do not see it correctly because you are to filled with denial.
The ego state of mind is full of distortions, denials, deceptions, lies, wishful thinking, fantasies, unwillingness to see, false beliefs, filters, judgements, meanings, opinions, and all manner of unreality. A kind of private inner world, like someone walking around in a daze, in a constant state of daydreaming.
Our attempt to deny God's truth and reality, also puts us out of touch with the "truth and reality" of THIS world. The desire not to see God's creation, causes us to also "not see" this world clearly. Our denial of eternal life, also causes us to not see heaven's reflection in this world.
What we're then needing to is to get in touch with reality and accept that reality. To become able to see truthfully and to see what is actually true. To recognize what everything is, without all the denial and distortion and lies about it. Jesus calls this "reality contact", as well as "true perception", and seeing the "real world." We might rephrase "real world" as "the world as it actually is."
We first become able to accurately perceive this world. This requires the undoing of all the ego devices, the unwillingness, the denial and distortion, the self-deception, the lies we keep telling ourselves. This requires a whole lot of radical self-honesty.
Honesty is really the same thing as "admitting the truth", which means also to "allow access" to the truth. To let the truth in. If we cannot accept the truth then we are not accepting atonement and are not having true perception. When we are reluctant to accept a situation, we dislike a situation, we want things to be different, we wish they were the way they used to be etc, that's all various forms of not accepting reality. It's always to do with not accepting a FACT.
The main issue here is denial. If all we did was undo denial and become more honest, we'd be finished. But we don't like to ever admit to being in denial, because denial is what keeps things away from us. It's a defense, it's what we use for ego protection and to keep our lies safe. To admit that you are in denial is to admit that there is something that is true that you do NOT WANT. And that means that to stop being in denial you'll have to becoming more WILLING, and open to ACCEPTANCE, that the thing you've been denying is actually true.
We basically just keep looking away from reality. We keep hiding our sight, unwilling to see what's really here. We keep avoiding, deceiving ourselves and distracting ourselves. We keep going off into the past and into the future. We are not present with what actually exists now, even on this illusory physical level yet alone the level of God's reality. We don't want to accept what is true, and this denial of truth was the beginning of the whole separation and the making of the ego.
So it's very helpful for us to pause and reflect on how we might be in denial, what we are denying, why we are denying it, and to become willing to stop being in denial. It means though having to swallow a "hard truth", something that you perhaps have been avoiding. Or even frightened of. Or something that seems that, if you were to face it, you would be horrified.
But it is the avoidance of truth that makes you horrified, and the horror comes from resistance - the lack of acceptance, not allowing the truth to be true. It has no effect on you when it washes over you and is allowed to be what it is. We have to accept this world first, even though it's an illusion, before we can accept God's kingdom. That doesn't mean accepting that it is ultimate reality, it just means letting it be what it is without fighting it.
All suffering, all despair, all loss, all unhappiness, all stress and fear, all threat and danger, all loss of peace, comes solely from the unwillingness to accept what is true. Your only choice is between denial or acceptance, and you will find hell or heaven as a result.
"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."
"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment."
"Make the world real unto YOURSELF, for the real world is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and so it BELONGS to you. Correction is for all who cannot see. To open the eyes of the blind is the Holy Spirit's mission, for He knows that they have not LOST their vision, but merely sleep."
"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception. It is miraculous because it heals misperception, and healing is indeed a miracle, in view of how man perceives himself."
"YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE."
"You who have spent your lives in bringing truth to illusion, reality to fantasy, HAVE walked the way of dreams. For you have gone from waking to sleeping, and on and on to a yet deeper sleep. Each dream has led to other dreams, and every fantasy that SEEMED to bring a light into the darkness but made the darkness deeper. Your GOAL was darkness, in which no ray of light could enter. And you sought a blackness so complete that you could hide from truth forever, in complete insanity. What you forgot was simply that God can NOT destroy Himself. The light is IN you. Darkness can COVER it, but CANNOT put it out."
"The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."
"All special relationships have sin as their goal. For they are BARGAINS with reality, toward which the seeming union is adjusted."
"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."
"The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."
"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"
In the separation from God, each of us has condemned ourselves. We've accused ourselves of sin, and condemned ourselves to suffer. We want ourselves to be punished, murdered, and destroyed. Ultimately this is a death wish, in which we have become suicidal because we don't believe we deserve to live or to be loved by God. You might be thinking, suicidal? I'm not suicidal. Well think again.
At the same time as trying to destroy yourself to prove you don't exist in God, your true self is utterly sinless, guiltless, innocent, holy and pure. You have never sinned or hurt or commit a crime or broke a law. You have never done anything to anyone, and no-one has ever attacked you. You are immortal and eternal and endless and permanent. And no harm can come to you because God himself protects you.
"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you"
The problem is, there is a seeming "gap" between what is really true of you, and what you currently BELIEVE. And if you are not in touch with your utter immaculate sinlessness, then some part of you DOES believe you are condemned to hell. God isn't doing this condemnation, nor are your brothers.
It's all an inside job of your own self attack. It is your self destruction. And this is suicidal. Even though death isn't real, this needs to be undone because the belief in your non-existence keeps you from being happy.
Looking at what you are doing to yourself is not pretty. If you are not accepting your sinlessness, it means you are believing you are sinful. It means you don't love yourself. It means you actively attack yourself and are trying to destroy yourself. Such as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." It means you don't really like yourself, yet alone love yourself with the love of God.
So now if you think about it in terms of the "relationship" that you have "with yourself", as if you could relate to yourself like a third party, how do you really feel about yourself? What is your honest current attitude towards yourself? If it's not one of total unconditional perfect love, then it isn't a very healthy relationship.
If there is a belief in being sinful, or evil, or a monster, or unworthy, or not good enough, or you resent yourself, or are angry at yourself, or keep judging yourself, or see yourself as weak, or hurt yourself emotionally or physically, or keep being abusive towards yourself, there are all signs of a breakdown in relationship.
And what that ultimately means is that you have not forgiven yourself. You're in this relationship with someone that you don't want to be with. And that is going to split your mind and hurt your mind. If you don't love yourself and embrace yourself with acceptance then how can you possibly relate to yourself at all?
Think of yourself as in the shoes of a person that you don't like in a similar way. If you don't like that person you don't want to be near them. You don't want to give them things. You don't want to share with them or spend time with them. You don't want them to exist. You don't care if they get hurt or suffer. You want them to suffer. And you may even feel so bitter towards them that you wish they were dead. Is that the relationship you are having with YOURSELF?
You have to look deep within yourself with much honesty to find this out. And it's probably going to be somewhat painful or even scary. You may not actually even realize or recognize that you have it in for yourself, or want yourself to suffer, because you may be so used to a general level of background destructiveness that you think it's totally normal. You might not have even seen how much you hate yourself.
"You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO."
"You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it."
"You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy."
"And why do you attack them anywhere except you hate yourself?"
"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love."
"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. "
So you have to look at this stuff. And typically you need a strong contrast in order to recognize it. Get in touch with what it means to be sinless. That your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Get a feel for total pure innocence and the complete absence of all attack, even slight annoyances. And then in that light, look at how you feel about yourself.
Do you still feel like attacking? Do you still feel a need or requirement to judge and blame? Do you condemn others to hide your self condemnation? Are you constantly fighting with people? Do you feel unhappy most of the time? If you have any of the "symptoms" of the ego, which is anything not of God, then certainly there is room for improvement in your relationship with yourself.
First you need to recognize that you even DO hate yourself, before you can be willing to take steps to heal that relationship. And you can't see that unless you have some kind of higher truth about you to compare it to. Your utter pure sinlessness in God, your immortal innocence, the guarantee of eternal life, can act as a contrast and at reality-tester to find out just how you really do feel about yourself. And once you find that out, you have healing work to be done upon yourself. You need correction and forgiveness. You need to FORGIVE YOURSELF, in order to recognize you are sinless and free.
"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God."
"You who believe you have condemned the Son of God"
"But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned."
"And unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion."
"Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find."
"If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice."
"Guilt is ALWAYS in your OWN mind, WHICH HAS CONDEMNED ITSELF. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot BE undone."
"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES."
"It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self."
"Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death."
"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."
You don't need to die. You need to forgive yourself.
The ego wants to believe that God created this world.
The ego believes the world is real.
The ego believes the body is real.
The ego wants to keep all forms and bodies.
The ego believes bodies and forms are alive.
The ego believes there is value in keeping objects.
The ego does not regard the world as unreal or a dream.
The ego insanely believes the illusory world is reality.
The ego believes God created its world and justifies it.
The ego tries to make its illusory world permanent.
The ego attempts to give the world reality and keep it real.
The ego does not want to look past the world.
The ego does not want to forgive or overlook the world.
The ego puts the world on a pedestal and worships it.
The ego has no conception of a world beyond this world.
The ego is totally in denial of the existence of heaven.
The ego has no desire to believe in a spirit realm.
The ego believes that there is nothing beyond its world.
The ego believes there is nothing beyond the body.
The ego believes you don't even have a mind.
The ego believes your body is your mind and thinks for itself.
The ego believes your body is the cause of life.
The ego both values and hates the body.
The ego manifests as the form of physical objects.
The ego is permanently stuck in false perception.
The ego made the body so as to only fixate on sinful forms.
The ego regards all forms and objects as real sin.
The ego believes everything the body senses and sees.
The ego uses the world as an attack on God and reality.
The ego made this world to defend against reality.
The ego made this world to try to block and deny God.
The ego constructed this world as a wall of sin and death.
The ego uses the world to block the reality of Heaven.
The ego believes that bodies are special and are living.
The ego values the body as a place to hide from God.
The ego does not question whether the world is real or not.
The ego has accepted that the world is real to it forever.
The ego has no intention other than to destroy everything.
The ego manufactured this planet for a reason.
The ego made the world to obscure God's nature.
The ego invented an artificial nature to replace God's nature.
The ego made the world to be completely unnatural.
The ego runs the world based on unnatural laws of death.
The ego has no intention of waking up, nor can it.
The ego pretends it can become spiritual.
The ego spiritualizes the world to lead you away from spirit.
The ego does not want you to leave this world and go home.
The ego regards this world as its home and yours.
The ego has placed the world on a pedestal and worships it.
The ego doesn't believe the world is a dream at all.
The ego has investment, faith and trust in the world it made.
The ego made bodies to ensure your unconsciousness.
The ego surrounded you with forms of error to trap you.
The ego made a world filled with temptation.
The ego made hell, and this world is hell.
The ego has no desire to go towards light or truth.
The ego leads entirely towards darkness and death.
The ego is unaware of the truth about God and Holy Spirit.
The ego sees life here as death and death as life.
The ego is threatened by reality.
The ego has no reality.
The ego's world is not real.
The ego's world is a delusional system of insane dreamers.
The ego made physicality to blind your perception.
The ego made space and time to live inside of.
The ego made planet Earth and all galaxies and worlds.
The ego made the world from unwillingness to accept truth.
The ego materialized the planet from a desire to attack God.
The ego ensures that all things it made will die.
The ego provides no escape from problems of any kind.
The ego built sickness into the world.
The ego tried to make death an inevitable part of spacetime.
The ego does not want you to question the world's reality.
The ego doesn't want you thinking of the world as illusion.
The ego hides in the world, in the body, in the darkness.
The ego is threatened by the idea that there is no world.
The ego sees God as the undoing of itself.
The ego sees the Holy Spirit as making itself invalid.
The ego sees eternal life as death and mortality as life.
The ego doesn't really exist, nor does its world.
"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this. What is the ego? But a dream of what you really are. A thought you are apart from your Creator and a wish to be what He created not. It is a thing of madness, not reality at all. A name for namelessness is all it is. A symbol of impossibility; a choice for options that do not exist. We name it but to help us understand that it is nothing but an ancient thought that what is made has immortality. But what could come of this except a dream which, like all dreams, can only end in death?
What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? Who asks you to define the ego and explain how it arose can be but he who thinks it real, and seeks by definition to ensure that its illusive nature is concealed behind the words that seem to make it so.
There is no definition for a lie that serves to make it true. Nor can there be a truth that lies conceal effectively. The ego's unreality is not denied by words nor is its meaning clear because its nature seems to have a form. Who can define the undefinable? And yet there is an answer even here.
We cannot really make a definition for what the ego is, but we can say what it is not. And this is shown to us with perfect clarity. It is from this that we deduce all that the ego is. Look at its opposite and you can see the only answer that is meaningful.
The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.
Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"
There are two approaches to ACIM. One is to learn the theory about what is true or false. The other is to actually change your mind and transform your awareness so that you wake up to experiencing it.
Theory is learned on a horizontal level. It involves the intellect. It involves trying to understand what ACIM says and means. It's analytical and it studies the words, the levels, the structures, the relationships of things, the definitions of words and the "description" of the truth. it dwells on the form and the word choices and so on.
Some people have an easier time learning the theory than others. Some people are not as intellectually able to get their heads around the intricate depths and nuances of Jesus's genius. For some the theory seems complex and off-putting. And many people get the theory profoundly wrong, while others are very accurate in their discernment of it.
Sometimes there are debates and fights about what the course says and means. This is all to do with the horizontal approach. It's an intellectual battle in which sides try to convince each other that their understanding of the course is the correct one. And in many cases some people may well be correct while others are very lost. There are some people who are so incredibly lost on the theoretical level that they are practically learning a totally different belief system. They think they're heading toward reality while heading away from it.
Then there is a vertical movement away from hell toward heaven, away from darkness toward light, away from ego towards the Holy Spirit, away from the body towards the soul, and away from the world towards the Kingdom of God. This is a transformational movement which does actually require a vertical change of mind, an awakening, a willingness, an opening, and a trust.
In the vertical learning we actually have to apply the theory. The mind has to be transformed. Beliefs have to be undone. Healing has to take place. Your life and your curriculum presents you with challenges and lessons which you have to learn. Your relationships have to change and your sense of identity has to alter. This is not achieved through theory.
Some people struggle to accurately understand the course's theories on the horizontal level, and turn a blind eye to this fact by trying to focus on something more experiential. They may focus on love or feeling. This can produce progress upwards to some extent, but then the faults in the theory hold them back.
It can hold them back such as, for example, someone believing that Earth is God's Kingdom, which is going to pull the person in the completely wrong direction. So while they're trying to go up, faults in the theory are pulling them down. It's like a handicap. There are some quite loving-seeming people doing ACIM who nevertheless say things which are profoundly wrong and delusional.
On the flip side, there are also people who become expert at the horizontal theory. Great intellects and scholars and theologians who are very good at discerning accurately the logical structures and relationships of things. Of realizing how everything fits together and correctly putting everything in its proper place. Some people are very good at this. But at the same time, those same people can at times become lost in this understanding and fail to apply the course to move vertically. The "study" of the course then becomes a handicap that keeps them from opening their minds and actually encountering reality.
I think for the most part the ideal is to be proficient at both. We need theory in order to help us to make sense of things, to guide us in the right direction, to clarify meanings, to have a proper framework so that you know what you're supposed to be doing and why. But to also then take that and use it, apply it, live it, look at how it works in your life, use it to change your mind, to develop trust, to actually open up to reality, to a different kind of vision, and to shift your sense of identity away from the body. As the workbook begins:
"A theoretical foundation such as the Text is necessary as a background to make these exercises meaningful. Yet it is the exercises which will make the goal possible. An untrained mind can accomplish nothing. It is the purpose of these exercises to train the mind to think along the lines which the course sets forth."
So yes you need to be pretty accurate with the theory, but the purpose of that is so that you can be more effective and efficient in your application of it to your life. Your living curriculum of lessons, holy relationships and life events is where you will be having to apply the principles.
"The miracle is the means, the Atonement the principle, and the healing is the result."
It's not enough to be excellent at the theory and not apply it to change yourself. It's not enough to try to change yourself while being absolutely all over the place on the theory. If you really want to shoot for the stars you need to understand the course in principle, and apply it in practice. The two work together to atone your mind correctly, heading in the appropriate direction for the appropriate reasons. Otherwise it's like sailing your boat in the wrong direction.
As Jesus once said to me, "you understand it, now you just need to apply it."
Let’s take a closer look at this.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's."
Now. THINK about this for a moment. Jesus is describing a world in which children are born. These children are born in pain. They grow. They have bodies. They have brains. Their minds are trapped in their brains. They wither and suffer. And they go through bodily death.
Now, WHICH world is that talking about? What world is it WHERE THIS HAPPENS? It should be PLAIN AND SIMPLE. It is obvious! This is talking about planet Earth. In common parlance, "THE WORLD." Earth, the physical planet. "The world" that pretty much anyone would refer to as the world. The world where children are born, have brains, grow old, and die. It is THAT WORLD that is being referenced. The world where YOU WERE BORN, into the body of a child, with your mind trapped in your brain. THAT WORLD. **THIS WORLD**. Earth. Not an interpretation OF it. THIS WORLD. ITSELF. The planet.
And THAT WORLD..... THIS WORLD....is very very clearlly being described by Jesus, as a CRUEL WORLD. He is also clearly talking about that world, where children are born, as being the kind of world that God COULD NOT HAVE CREATED. Otherwise, if He would have created such a world, HE WOULD BE CRUEL. Creating a world where children are born as bodies with brains who grow old and die, IS A CRUEL WORLD, the likes of which a LOVING FATHER would NEVER EVER EVER CREATE. Never. God would NEVER create a world where ANYTHING is born, where ANYTHING has its mind trapped in a brain, and where ANYTHING grows or dies. God does not create such cruelty!
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel."
THIS WORLD, EARTH, IS NOT REAL!!!!!!
This is not in any way talking about a world of ego perception. It is not talking about dream interpretations of Earth. It is not talking about your projections onto the world. It is not talking about any kind of perception. It is not talking about an internal private world that you project onto the "Real world of earth". Earth is NOT THE REAL WORLD. It is NOT created by God.
If you assign Earth to God’s creation, you are claiming literally that God is CRUEL because a world where CHILDREN ARE BORN, GROW OLD, AND DIE, IS A FUCKING CRUEL WORLD!!!! If you then attempt to NOT claim he is cruel while assigning the world to him, you are in DOUBLE DENIAL, wearing rose tinted glasses and glossing over the sheer cruelty and suffering that is INHERENT to this entire universe. When was the last time you saw a living dinosaur? Never. Why? Massive cruelty. Massive death. It’s not cruel merely because "ego interprets it as cruel". It is fundamentally cruel. To say it is not cruel and "love it" is UTTERLY INSANE. You cannot love death and it is insane to do so.
God did not, would not, can never, will not, has not and does not desire to, create a world where CHILDREN ARE BORN AND DIE. At all. In any way. God does not create babies! God does not create ANY KIND OF BODY. Not humans, not animals, not insects, not planets. "God did not create the body." God did not create ANY children’s bodies. Not one. Not even yours. God does not create a WORLD where children are born and die, where creatures have brains, or where there are bodies of ANY KIND. God does not create cruel planets with mass extinctions and being snuffed out in a supernova!!
Some people really seem to defend against this. But if you think the world IS NOT CRUEL, in an attempt to make it OKAY WITH GOD, and to justify that God MUST have created it because YOU think it is heaven on earth, there is a really profound level of denial happening. The world is *exremely* cruel. And I do not say this as a judgement or an unforgiveness. It simply is not heaven. Or heaven like. Not even remotely. The world is made of the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." Even true perception will ONLY reveal the TRUTH ABOUT this world, which is that it is FALSE, UNREAL, DOES NOT EXIST, IS NOT GOD’S NATURE, AND IS NOT LIFE.
God’s world is Heaven. It is not Earth. It is another realm unlike this universe. Nothing there but shines and shines forever. If you think God made the Earth, you have NO IDEA what God is like. A loving father could never create such mayhem and conflict and mindless destruction.
Let's take a closer look at sin and find out why no-one has ever sinned.
"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
""Sinless" means without sin. You cannot be without sin a little. You are sinless or not. If your mind is part of God's you must be sinless, or a part of His Mind would be sinful."
What is sin?
Simply, it is the attempt to reverse cause and effect. You are the effect of God, and God is the cause of you. When you attempt to reverse this, so that you are CAUSING GOD, this is "sin". It would mean God is now affected by you, changed by you, against His will. That means you have attacked Him and changed him. The belief that you CAN do this, and that you HAVE done this, is the belief that sin is REAL. But this is IMPOSSIBLE.
There is a simple fact to keep in mind. You CANNOT change God in any way. You cannot cause him or affect him. You cannot do anything against His will. You cannot attack Him or make Him be something He does not want to be. Which means, literally, YOU CANNOT SIN against Him. You cannot cause God, therefore you cannot sin. Your hands are tied. You cannot attack anything real.
This also means that IN REALITY, nothing real can be threatened, nothing real can be sinned against, nothing real can be CHANGED, and therefore SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE. You literally cannot go against, oppose, object to, resist, attack, defend against, or do anything TO God or anything real. Sin is literally impossible. Sin literally CANNOT HAPPEN, and HAS NOT HAPPENED. And this isn't mere theory, you literally HAVE NOT SINNED AT ALL.
It is vital to absorb this FACT, because it lays the foundation for correctly framing what's to come next.
You have not sinned, you cannot sin, sin cannot occur, you cannot attack God, you cannot change reality, and you cannot cause the death of life. SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY.
Now. As you find yourself in a DREAM WORLD, Earth, reading words on a screen, you are not being aware of reality. You are not effectively "IN" reality. The world is an attempt to overthrow reality and replace it with unreality. The world is unreal. It's a dream of death. It's an ATTEMPT TO SIN, despite the fact that actually doing this IN REALITY is impossible. It's your best effort to TRY to PROVE that sin is not only possible but has occurred.
You MADE UP a bunch of dream illusions to try to paint a picture of what it might look like *IF* you had sinned. That picture is this world. "The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." It's a picture of THE IMPOSSIBLE. "It is the world you see that is impossible." In this world, NOTHING HAPPENS. "All events are nowhere."
Yet this world SEEMS to contain things happening, seems to feature bodies attacking bodies, and seems riddled with sin. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." And if we BELIEVE that this world is REALITY, we WILL believe that the "sins" that occur are REAL sins, mistaking FANTASY SINS for reality. These ILLUSIONS of sin, IMPOSSIBLE sin seeming possible, are literally nothing but fiction, with NO REAL CONSEQUENCES against anything real. God is not affected by it, nothing real is threatened by it. You literally have NOT CAUSED ANY DAMAGE OR HARM EVER.
The fact remains. You literally cannot sin. You can't even begin to sin. This world is not real and so anything "happening" here is not REALLY happening. If you break a window, you did not break a real window. You broke a dream window. If you killed a flock of sheep in a fit of rage, you didn't. You merely dreamed of doing so. If you think you did some terrible crime that is punishable by death and suffering, you are ATTEMPTING to hold a deathly judgement against an INNOCENT Son of God, BY MISTAKE.
Because here's the fact of the matter. If you cannot sin against anything real, and therefore sin is impossible, you believing you HAVE DONE SO MUST BE MISTAKEN. You MUST be confused. You MUST be delusional. You MUST be out of your mind insane if you think it's even POSSIBLE to sin, yet alone that you have, or "have the proof" to show for it. There is no such thing as evidence of sin. There are only lies and illusions of sin. There is no real sin. ALL SIN IS FAKE.
Only by being very mistaken does anyone BELIEVE they have sinned. Only in confusion are we convinced that it's even POSSIBLE to cause something against its will. Only by being in ERROR having made an error of discernment does it seem plausible or "happening" that there can be "real death", "murder", "war" and the like. These are DREAMS of hell, not real hell. They are illusions of sin in an illusory world.
You have never sinned. You will never sin. God finds you guiltless, sinless and innocent forever. This is what you need to wake up to - accepting this is FORGIVENESS. The overlooking of sin, the overlooking of guilt, the overlooking of death. There is no sin, or guilt, or suffering, or sickness, or death. ALL of it SEEMS real, SEEMS to be happening, SEEMS like an awful terrible nightmare. But it is nothing BUT a nightmare. It's a nightmare to BELIEVE you can sin when you can't, or that you HAVE sinned when it's impossible.
You cannot sin. You will not sin. You have not sinned. There is no sin. No one has ever sinned. No one can sin against you. You have never sinned against anyone. YOU ARE NOT A SINNER. You are ETERNALLY INNOCENT. This is the only verdict the Holy Spirit will accept about you because He knows without a doubt that your idea of sinning is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE and completely illusory.
You are DREAMING of sinfulness, suffering and death. You are punishing yourself in a hell of your own making for NO GOOD REASON. You are finding yourself guilty for having DONE NOTHING. You are not criminal, sinful, or guilty. You have never hurt anything or anyone. You are EXONERATED because IN REALITY SIN DOES NOT EXIST. If you think it exists, you are unaware of reality.
Belief in sin IS THE PROBLEM, not the sin itself. This whole world, the entire ego separation, the dream of death, is ALL about your BELIEF that you DID SIN, in DENIAL of the fact that YOU DID NOT. The WHOLE THING is a case of mistaken identity and false accusations. A claim that you accomplished something you could never do. It's an attempt to invent the evidence and give it credit/reality so that it SEEMS to prove you DID commit a horrible crime against God. YOU COULD NOT, NEVER DID, NEVER WILL.
So this whole world is A MISTAKE. You are MISTAKEN when you believe you or others are sinful or guilty. "BELIEVING in" sin being true is the actual issue. Your belief is mistaken. Your belief is madness. Your belief is an ERROR. And all errors can be CORRECTED. You believing you CAN and HAVE sinned is NOT TRUE, it and this error in thinking needs to be corrected so that you will REALIZE, you never did anything AT ALL. You accused yourself FALSELY.
No matter what you think you did, no matter how extreme or severe or what the consequences seemed to be, YOU HAVE NOT done a single thing EVER that God is upset with you about. You have ONLY been very mistaken. You have only ever had "mental illness", believing something is possible that isn't. You've acted insanely because you were not in your right mind. No one in their right mind believes in sin because the authority-problem notion of "I can change reality" is utterly ridiculous.
Mistakes call for FORGIVENESS AND HEALING. To forgive is to overlook the error and recognize the truth. You have not sinned. There is no sin. "And in this view are all your sins forgiven." A mistaken person merely needs healing, not punishment. You deserve forgiveness and healing, not condemnation. You have simply been confused and have mistaken illusions and dreams of sinning for reality.
Not one single sin in the history of the planet has ever happened. There is no sin anywhere. All "doing" is illusion. Everyone is eternally innocent. God finds you worthy, and loves you forever. Sinless, guiltless, deathless, fearless. You are holy and always were.
"To the ego, THE EGO IS GOD."
"The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."
"The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it "sees" the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its enemies who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them."
"If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible." ... "According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT."
"A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice."
"Therefore, you have used the world to COVER YOUR LOVE, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the CLOSER you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it."
"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion." Jesus is clear about this. The ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE TO GOD. The idea that God is separate. That is, a seeming autonomous, separate entity, which stands alone, which rules its own kingdom, which is self sufficient and depends on nothing outside of itself, which has its own power, which does not need God for anything, and wants to be as completely distant from God's nature as possible. It wants to share nothing and have everything for itself selfishly. It wants to be the only thing that exists.
"Sin is the "grand illusion" underlying ALL the ego's grandiosity. For BY it, God HIMSELF is changed, and rendered incomplete."
"Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven."
"For the ego's destructive urge is so intense, that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it."
"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."
"The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships."
"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."
"The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."
"Possession for its OWN sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself."
The ego is like the anti-God. Just as it is also referred to as the anti-Christ. It is the illusion of a separate self, a little isolated cut-off self, disconnected and alone, imprisoned in a body, unrelated to anyone else, not communicating with God whatsoever, suspicious of everyone, having no trust of anyone, and completely backwards in all its perceptions.
"The ego's opposite in every way,--in origin, effect and consequence--we call a miracle."
"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."
"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God."
"Peace is the ego's greatest enemy, because according to ITS interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival."
"Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is COMPLETELY savage, and COMPLETELY insane."
"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."
"LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, NOT God's."
"BECAUSE the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend."
"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."
It sees God as everything the ego really is, believe itself to not be the ego at all. The ego actually believes it is sane. It regards its insanity as sanity, it regards its hell as heaven, it regards death as life, and punishment as atonement. It has everything completely backwards and upside-down. It sees God as evil and vengeful and sinful and attacking. It sees heaven as hell and holiness as blasphemy and innocence as guilt. Everything that is true is sees as false, and all that is false is regards as true. It is the complete anti-thesis to everything real.
"To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL."
"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT?"
"In a sense, the special relationship was the EGO's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's Answer to the separation. For, although the ego did not understand WHAT had been created, it WAS aware of threat."
"Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body."
"They provide STRIKING examples, both of the ego's INABILITY to tolerate reality, and your willingness to CHANGE reality on its behalf."
"Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL."
Each of us has this ego thing in our mind somewhere, and it has to be turfed out and catharted and undone. It is the central core of what keeps us in hell, and is the origin of all our guilt. It believes that everything sinless is sinful, that all of heaven is guilty, and that the Son of God is murderous. It tells every lie imaginable. It is twisted and dark and delusional and insane.
In this world, all things lead to death. It's as though a missile has been fired, flying through the sky, and hurtling toward the ground. There is a sense of inevitability of decay, that everything will just gradually erode and age and suffer and die eventually. As though this is the way of the world.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
When you look at the world in this way you can't really help but notice this is the case, except if you are denial of this fact. And while in that denial you might be thinking the world isn't so bad, except that eventually it proves itself. "Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer.
ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
I recognize that when I am looking with my ego, or my worldly earthly body-identified 'normal view', this is the view I am adopting. I am going along with this "plan" of the world that everything before my eyes will wither and die. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
This is just how the world functions. It's how we set it up. It's what we call "natural". So when the leaves fall from the trees we think this is totally normal. When the bodies lay in the graves we think this is totally normal. But this entire system is entirely unnatural and not at all like God's reality.
"Without the idea of death there is no world." When you are aligning yourself with God's reality, with heaven's true nature, you are in support of life. In fact you support eternal longevity. You reject all notions of decay, degradation and death. In fact you not only move away from the downward "arc" of death's direction, you move UPWARD in a direction towards God. In this direction there is an arrow pointing toward the sky, as things which were death come back to life, and life is restored, and things are working out, and there is healing and miracles and reasons for happiness.
After a while of trying to recognize that God's ways are upward-bound, and earth's ways spiral into the dirt, the two "systems" of thinking become more clearly distinguished. And they are very much opposed to each other. The contrast between the two "modes of perception" becomes more intense and obivous.
"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."
The world might be giving a message like "this is just going to get worse until there is death". But a God-aligned mind is asserting life, saying "This is going to get better and better until there is immortality." The two paths or viewpoints do not meet in the middle, they do not converge or agree with each other at all. They point in totally different directions - toward heaven or hell, towards life or death.
If you look at something happening and you say to yourself, this is real, and it's true, and this is natural, and this is how it's just going to be, and there is no hope and no future and eventually there's going to be death, then you're in the ego. You're falling for TEMPTATION. You're getting lost in the world and doing nothing to counteract its lies. Because the world is NOTHING like heaven and all its efforts are attempts to prove that sin is real and death is justified.
"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."
To be in this world but OF ANOTHER WORLD, to be of God and heaven and yet with your feed on the earth, is to be UNNATURAL in terms of what the world thinks is natural. But in fact it is to be ABOVE the nature of the world - which means super-natural. It is the world that is unnatural. It is the world that is false and a lie. To recognize it for what it is, one has to adopt the upward-pointing resurrective miraculous path. Otherwise you are simply heading for the grave.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. For there alone their SEEMING clearness SEEMS TO BE CLEARLY SEEN. Let us now turn AWAY from them, and follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."
Lately I'm getting the impression from the course, that we have two levels of mind. We have a lower mind and a higher mind.
Before the separation we only had the 'higher' mind, but then we produced a second-order reality or thought system.
"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"
"The calm being of God's Kingdom, which in your sane mind is perfectly conscious, is ruthlessly banished from the part of the mind which the ego rules."
So now we have this "split mind", where the majority of mind is actually still perfectly in line with spirit, but the other part of mind has the ego running rampant in it.
This "lower mind" is, if I understand it right, the mindset that we're in almost all the time. It's the mind of the upset self. The mind in which we have egoic thoughts, fear thoughts, angry thoughts, emotional reactions, perceptions of threat, and so on.
We also need to be honest and careful to realize that the lower mind is not "lower than my everyday self", it usually IS our everyday self. And we're operating almost exclusively in it in everything we do.
So we're actually hanging out in the lower mind almost all the time. And that's why we need to learn to train the main and have vigilance, to be careful with our thoughts and to try to elevate our quality and level of thinking. To get our minds out of the gutter, so to speak.
What that tells me is I need to be watchful for ego oriented thoughts. These are artificial thoughts and ideas which usually are laden with fear, attack, accusation, guilt and so on. Often they revolve around the past.
"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts."
"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."
"My meaningless thoughts are showing me a meaningless world."
So if it's true that I'm having ego thoughts all day long, and am often in states of upset and emotional reaction etc, then obviously I'm down in the lower mind. It the mindset of ego and separation and selfishness and unsafely and suffering.
To get out of it we have to first even recognize that we're in it, and there there is another level of mind we could access instead. We have to recognize our thoughts are ego thoughts, meaningless thoughts, thoughts of attack and unforgiveness, and realize that just merely having these thoughts is why we are upset.
"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."
So now we have to get into monitoring thought, and actually being aware of when we're entertaining ego thoughts. Identify the thoughts as having ego content in them. And then ask yourself, do I even need to have this thought?
We also should be aware that the Holy Spirit is in our mind and spans the parts of mind to keep them joined. And he also is fully aware of the higher mind and its truth. So we need to turn to him for help by giving him our lower-mind thoughts so that he can convert them into higher-mind miracles.
"Give Him (Holy Spirit) your thoughts (ego thoughts), and He will give them back as miracles (higher thoughts)."
You see, when you have a thought you tend to go along with it and just get lost in it. You think about whatever it seems you're thinking about without looking at the thought ITSELF. You don't question whether you should even be having the thought, you just have it and buy into its story.
Instead we need to be more careful to ask whether even having the thought at all is necessary, and if we did not have these ego thoughts at all maybe we would not be upset all the time. And recognize that having these kinds of thoughts is why we are constantly stressed out.
I choose not to have these thoughts. I can have other thoughts, higher thoughts. These thoughts are coming from my ego and my unforgiving beliefs. I can have higher thoughts with God, aligned with his will, which means that I can have thoughts based on love and peace and happiness and sharing. I don't have to have these lower ego thoughts.
So we need to get out of this lower mind and into the higher mind. "The higher mind thinks according to the laws which the Soul obeys, and therefore honors only the laws of God."
"While I am not attacking your egos, I AM working with your higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, (just as your ego does with your lower mind.)"
"Consider how much vigilance you have been willing to exert to protect your ego, and how little you have been willing to exert to protect your higher mind."
So right now because of the split mind and the separation we really do in fact have "two minds" in a way, and one of them is ruled by the ego's laws temporarily. That mind has to choose any from the egos laws and back towards God's laws. We have to get out of the ego thinking and think with and like God.
"What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." "This mind is the Holy Spirit, whose will is for God always. It teaches you how to keep me as the model for your thought, and behave like me as a result."
That means one way or another, these ego thoughts have to be managed, monitored, stopped if necessary or reversed, not identified with, and open up to the possibility that you don't even have to think this way. And thinking this way is the cause of all you problems.
To perceive truly is to be aware of ALL reality, through the awareness of your own. But for this, NO illusions can rise to meet your sight, for ALL reality leaves no room for ANY error. This means that you perceive a brother only AS YOU SEE HIM NOW. His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT see it. Your past reactions TO him are also NOT THERE, and if it is to these that you react NOW, you see but an image of him that you made and cherish INSTEAD of him. In your questioning of delusions, ask yourself if it is REALLY sane to perceive WHAT WAS NOW. If you remember the PAST as you look upon him, you will be unable to perceive the reality that is NOW.
You consider it "natural" to use your PAST experience as the reference point from which to JUDGE the present. Yet this is UNnatural, because it is delusional. When you have learned to look upon everyone with NO REFERENCE AT ALL to the past, either his OR yours as you perceived it, you will be able to learn FROM WHAT YOU SEE NOW. For the past can cast no shadow to darken the present, UNLESS YOU ARE AFRAID OF LIGHT. And ONLY if you are, would you choose to bring this darkness WITH you, and by holding it in your minds, see it as a dark cloud that shrouds your brothers, and conceals their reality from your sight.
THIS DARKNESS IS IN YOU. The Christ revealed to you NOW has no past, for He is changeless. AND IN HIS CHANGELESSNESS LIES YOUR RELEASE. For if He is as He was created, there IS no guilt in Him. No cloud of guilt has risen to obscure Him, and He stands revealed in everyone you meet, because you see Him through HIMSELF. To be born again is to let the PAST go, and LOOK WITHOUT CONDEMNATION UPON THE PRESENT. For the cloud which obscures God's Son to you IS the past, and if you would have it past AND GONE, you must NOT SEE IT NOW. And if you see it now in your delusions, it has NOT gone from you, although it is not there.
Time can release as well as imprison, depending on whose interpretation of it you use. Past, present, and future are not continuous, UNLESS YOU FORCE CONTINUITY ON THEM. You can PERCEIVE them as continuous, and make them so FOR YOU. But do not be deceived, and then believe that this is how it IS, for to believe that reality is what you would HAVE it be, according to YOUR use for it, IS delusional. You would DESTROY time's continuity by breaking it into past, present, and future, FOR YOUR OWN PURPOSES. You would anticipate the future on the basis of your PAST experience and plan for it accordingly. And by so doing, you are ALIGNING past and future, and not allowing the miracles, which could intervene BETWEEN them, to free you to be born again.
The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors ARE all past, and by perceiving him WITHOUT them, you are RELEASING him. And since his past is yours, you SHARE in this release. Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present, and you WILL find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is NOT, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it IS, and it WILL dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are BEHIND you, and unless you bring them WITH you, you WILL see that you are free of them.
Look lovingly upon the present, for it holds the ONLY things that are forever true. All healing lies within it, because ITS continuity is real. It extends to ALL aspects of consciousness AT THE SAME TIME, and thus enables them to REACH EACH OTHER. The present is before time WAS, and WILL BE when time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they ARE one. THEIR continuity is timeless, and their communication is unbroken, for they are NOT SEPARATED by the past. Only the past CAN separate, and IT is nowhere.
The present offers you your brothers in the light that would unite you WITH them, and free YOU from the past. Would you, then, hold the past AGAINST them? For if you do, you are choosing to remain in the darkness THAT IS NOT THERE, and refusing to accept the light that is offered you. For the light of perfect vision is freely given, as it is freely received, and can be accepted only WITHOUT LIMIT. In this one, still dimension of time, which does not change, and where there is no sight of what you were, you look at Christ, and call His witnesses to shine on you, BECAUSE YOU CALLED THEM FORTH. And THEY will not deny the truth in you, because you looked for it in them, and FOUND it there.
Now is the time for salvation, for NOW is the release from time. Reach out to all your brothers, and touch them with the touch of Christ. In timeless union WITH them is YOUR continuity, unbroken because it is wholly shared. God's guiltless Son is ONLY light. There is no darkness in him ANYWHERE, for he is whole. Call all your brothers to witness to his wholeness, as I am calling you to join with me. Every voice has a part in the song of redemption, the hymn of gladness and thanksgiving for the light, to the Creator of Light. The holy light that shines forth from God's Son is the witness that his light is of his Father.
Shine on your brothers in remembrance of your Creator, and you WILL remember Him, as you call forth the witnesses to His creation. Those whom you heal bear witness to YOUR healing, for in THEIR wholeness you will see your own. And as your hymns of praise and gladness rise to your Creator, He will return your thanks, in His clear answer to your call. For it can never be that His Son called upon Him, and remained unanswered. His call to you is but your call to Him. And in Him you are answered by His peace.
Children of Light, you know not that the Light is in you. And you will find it through its witnesses. For having given light to them, THEY WILL RETURN IT. Everyone you see IN light brings YOUR light closer to your OWN awareness. Love always leads to love. The sick, who ASK for love, are grateful for it, and in their joy, they shine with holy thanks. And this they offer you, who GAVE them joy. They are your guides to joy, for having received it OF you, they would keep it. You have established them as guides to peace, for you have made it manifest in them. And SEEING it, its beauty calls you home.
There is a light which this world cannot give. Yet YOU can give it, as it was given YOU. And AS you give it, it shines forth to call you FROM the world, and follow it. For this light will attract you as nothing in this world can do. And you will lay aside the world and find another. This other world is bright with love WHICH YOU HAVE GIVEN IT. And here will everything remind you of your Father and his holy Son. Light is unlimited, and spreads across this world in quiet joy. All those you brought WITH you will shine on you, and you will shine on them in gratitude, because they brought you here. Your light will join with theirs, in power so compelling, that it will draw the others out of darkness as you look on them.
Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING. Those who accept love OF you, become your willing witnesses to the love you gave them, and it is THEY who hold it out to YOU. In sleep you are alone, and your awareness is narrowed to yourself. And that is why the nightmares come. You dream of isolation, BECAUSE your eyes are closed. You do not SEE your brothers, and, in the darkness, you cannot look upon the light you GAVE to them.
And yet the laws of love are not suspended because you sleep. And you have followed them through all your nightmares, and have been faithful in your giving, for you were NOT alone. Even in sleep has Christ protected you, ensuring the real world FOR you when you wake. In YOUR name He has given FOR you, and given YOU the gifts He gave. God's Son is still as loving as his Father. Continuous WITH his Father, he has no past APART from Him. So he has never ceased to be his Father's witness, AND HIS OWN. Although he slept, CHRIST'S VISION DID NOT LEAVE HIM. And so it is that he can call unto himself the witnesses that teach him that he never slept.
If you did not feel guilty, you could not attack. For condemnation is the root of attack. It is the judgment of one mind by another as UNWORTHY of love, and DESERVING of punishment. But herein lies the split. For the mind that judges, perceives itself as SEPARATE from the mind being judged, believing that by punishing ANOTHER, IT will escape punishment. All this is but the delusional attempt of the mind to deny itself, and ESCAPE THE PENALTY OF DENIAL. It is NOT an attempt to RELINQUISH denial, but to HOLD ON TO IT. For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane. The acceptance of guilt into the mind of God's Son was the beginning of the separation, as the acceptance of the Atonement is its end.
The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel.
If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, NOT God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could CONCEIVE of it. Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in THAT belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it.
This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see. But you will NOT realize this, until you accept the eternal fact that GOD'S SON IS NOT GUILTY. He DESERVES only love, because he has GIVEN only love. He cannot be condemned, because he has never condemned. The Atonement is the final lesson he need learn, for it teaches him that, never having sinned, HE HAS NO NEED OF SALVATION.
Long ago we said that the Holy Spirit shares the goal of all good teachers, whose ultimate aim is to make themselves unnecessary, by teaching their pupils all they know. The Holy Spirit wills ONLY this, for sharing the Father's love for His Son, He wills to remove all guilt from his mind, that he may remember his Father in peace. For peace and guilt are antithetical, and the Father can BE remembered ONLY in peace. Love and guilt cannot coexist, and to accept one is to DENY the other.
Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son. In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you SEE him, then? By making HIM invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt.
As you look upon yourselves and judge what you do honestly, as you have been asked to do, you may be tempted to wonder how you can be guiltless. But consider this. You are NOT guiltless in time, but IN ETERNITY. You HAVE "sinned" IN THE PAST, but there IS no past. Always has no direction. Time seems to go in one direction, but when you reach its end, it will roll up like a long carpet that has spread along the past behind you, and will disappear. As long as you believe the Son of God is guilty, you will walk along this carpet, believing that it leads to death. And the journey will seem long and cruel and senseless, for so it is.
The journey which the Son of God has set HIMSELF is foolish indeed. But the journey on which his Father sets him is one of release and joy. The Father is not cruel, and His Son CANNOT hurt himself. The retaliation which he fears, AND WHICH HE SEES, will never touch him, for although he BELIEVES in it, the Holy Spirit KNOWS it is not true. He stands at the end of time, where YOU must be, because He is WITH you. He has ALWAYS undone everything unworthy of the Son of God, for such was His mission, given BY God. And what God gives HAS always been.
You will see me as you learn the Son of God is guiltless. He has always sought his guiltlessness, and he has FOUND it. For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made, and the way to find release is not denied him. Being IN him, he has found it. WHEN he finds it is only a matter of time, and time is but an illusion. For the Son of God is guiltless NOW, and the brightness of his purity shines untouched forever in God's Mind. God's Son will ALWAYS be as he was created. Deny YOUR world, and judge him not. For his eternal guiltlessness is in the mind of his Father, and protects him forever.
When you have accepted the Atonement for yourselves, you will realize that THERE IS NO GUILT IN GOD'S SON. And ONLY as you look upon him as guiltless, can you understand his Oneness. For the IDEA of guilt brings a belief of condemnation of one by another, projecting separation in place of unity. You can condemn only yourself, and by doing so, you cannot know that you are God's Son. For you have denied the condition of his Being, which is his perfect blamelessness. Out of Love he was created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father.
As you perceive the holy companions who travel with you, you will realize that there IS no journey, but only an awakening. The Son of God, who sleepeth not, has kept faith with his Father FOR you. There is no road to travel ON, and no time to travel THROUGH. For God waits not for His Son in time, being forever unwilling to be without him. And so it has always been. Let the holiness of God's Son shine away the cloud of guilt that darkens your mind, and by accepting his purity AS yours, learn of him that it IS yours.
You are invulnerable BECAUSE you are guiltless. You can hold on to the past ONLY through guilt. For guilt establishes that you WILL BE punished for what you have done, and thus depends on one-dimensional time, proceeding from past to future. No-one who believes this, can understand what ALWAYS means. And therefore guilt MUST deprive you of the appreciation of eternity. You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now. Guilt, then, is a way of holding past and future in your minds, to ensure the ego's continuity. For if what it HAS BEEN WILL BE punished, it's continuity WOULD be guaranteed.
But the guarantee of your continuity is God's, not the ego's. And immortality is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while immortality is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless. The future IN TIME is ALWAYS associated with expiation, and ONLY guilt could induce a sense of NEED for expiation. Accepting the guiltlessness of the Son of God AS YOURS is therefore God's way of reminding you of His Son, and what he is in truth. For God has never condemned His Son, and being guiltless, he IS eternal.
You cannot dispel guilt by making it real, and THEN atoning for it. For this is the ego's plan, which it offers INSTEAD of dispelling it. The ego believes in ATONEMENT THROUGH ATTACK, being fully committed to the insane notion that attack IS salvation. And YOU who cherish guilt must ALSO believe it, for how else but by identifying WITH the ego, could you hold dear what you do not want?
The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack MAKES GUILT REAL, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been. As He looks upon the guiltless Son of God, he KNOWS this is true. And being true for you, you CANNOT attack yourself, for WITHOUT guilt, attack is impossible. You, then, ARE saved BECAUSE God's Son is guiltless. And being wholly pure, you ARE invulnerable.
"The miracle establishes you dream a dream, and that its content is not true. This is a crucial step in dealing with illusions."
"Nothing at all has happened but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE'S dream."
The VITAL thing thing to realize, which is brought to light by the Atonement principle, and seen with true forgiveness, is this.
IT IS LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO SIN. You cannot do it in reality. You are literally incapable of changing God. You are literally incapable of making effects in God, stopping His will, changing who you are, corrupting your innocence, becoming sinful or dying. LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
You HAVE NOT sinned. You HAVE NOT separated. You cannot leave God. You cannot do anything to change reality whatsoever. God's Kingdom is totally the same as it always has been. His Kingdom cannot be assailed, it is permanent. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. You are 100% incapable of separation or sin or death. This is literally absolutely true. You simply HAVE NOT DONE, what you think you have done, and you ARE NOT doing it now.
So the question remains, what exactly IS this "state" that you are in? If it is impossible to sin or be separate, why does it seem like you are?
Simply, because you cannot ACTUALLY sin or attack reality or kill yourself, you have ONLY IMAGINED that it is possible. And that means, you are simply IN DENIAL, and you have made the ERROR of BELIEVING that you can do what you cannot do, that the impossible is possible, that you have done what you have not done, and you think something unreal is real.
So it's not like, you actually DID separate or sin, and that now you need to undo all that and heal it. You DIDN'T do it. You HAVE NOT produced real consequences. NOTHING REAL HAS HAPPENED AT ALL because nothing real can be threatened. So it has not been threatened. Whatsoever.
All that's "happened" is you've pretended to be ABLE to do what you CANNOT do, pretending to have done what you CANNOT POSSIBLY have done, and now you are "dreaming", literally "wishful thinking", having a fantasy, that you've convinced yourself you actually DID do it. That you are doing it now. That you are PROVING that it is real and possible. But you're not. You're failing to prove it. Reality is unaffected. You are just delusional.
So it's not that you're inside a real separation trying to get out. It's ONLY that you BELIEVE you are, you THINK you are, and you are MISTAKEN in believing and thinking you are, because in truth YOU ARE NOT. You have not done anything real whatsoever. You're just someone who believes they have committed a crime that they HAVE NOT committed. You think you sinned, but you didn't. You think you had a power that you do not have. You think you've CAUSED something REAL to happen against God, but you DID NOT.
LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
All you have is a case of BEING MISTAKEN. All you have is a case of having MADE THE ERROR, of believing, that you can and have done something that you shouldn't have done. It's not even that you DID make a real mistake. You just THINK you did.
It's like, a child who does something and they think they broke something, and they become upset and start crying, and hurting themselves, because they feel bad about what they did. And there's the adult trying to reassure them, that what they THINK they did, it totally does not matter, they DIDN'T cause any real harm, nothing has really been affected, and if they will just open their eyes and LOOK, they will SEE that it's TRUE, that NOTHING HAS GONE WRONG.
It's the recognition that everything is STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Everything is still perfect, holy, whole, innocent, unharmed, safe, protected, undefiled, unattacked, completely happy, and totally healed. Because it's only your MISTAKEN BELIEF that ITS NOT, that needs to be undone. You are just mistaken. Just very deluded and deceived, in believing something is true that isn't. YOU ARE JUST CONFUSED.
What you think you've done, you HAVE NOT DONE. What you think was possible, IS NOT POSSIBLE. You're merely in a state of denial, pretense, trying to convince yourself that you ACTUALLY CAN DO what you cannot do. You're using all kinds of illusory dreams of weapons against yourself and others to TRY to bring about the death of God's son, to try to attack, to try to produce PROOF that you ACTUALLY HAVE sinned and that you ACTUALLY DO deserve to die. But not only have you not sinned, YOU CANNOT DIE. And even your attempts to prove it with a DREAM, wherein the dream body seems to die, STILL does not prove it. Because you carry on.
"You have made a bargain that you cannot keep." You literally are NOT CAPABLE of proving to be true, what is NEVER true. You literally CANNOT destroy the Son of God. So this whole ENTIRE dream world, designed to try to demonstrate and prove that God's Son can be anything less than immortal, is TOTALLY FUTILE. It DOES NOT WORK. Death does not work. Death is FAILURE, failure to make illusions real, failure to prove death overcomes life, and failure to have ANY REAL EFFECTS WHATSOEVER.
So basically, there you are, an innocent IMMORTAL BEING, who can NEVER stop being immortal, PRETENDING to be mortal, pretending to suffer against your will, pretending to be a victim, pretending that a dream world is choosing everything for you against your will, and pretending that you can die. ALL TOTALLY FICTIONAL. All fake. All made-up. All illusions. Because NOTHING can change the sheer FACT of what you are, a totally immortal spirit being that IS STILL AS GOD CREATED IT. Which you can NEVER CHANGE. EVER.
"I am still as God created me" is atonement thinking. This is a forgiving perception. It is a recognition that only the truth is true. It is a remembering that NOTHING HAS REALLY HAPPENED. Nothing has gone wrong. You are totally safe and loved in Heaven. You HAVE NOT SINNED WHATSOEVER. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING REAL HAS BEEN AFFECTED!!! Not even a tiny bit! You're just sleeping and dreaming of being a sinner. You'll wake up to realize and remember, that dream was so ridiculous, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for you to sin!
Absolutely EVERYTHING In this ENTIRE WORLD, this whole universe, is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS NONSENSE. Not one single thing about it is true. It is the dream of death, a TOTAL FICTION, absolutely bullshit in every way imaginable. It is a state of denial, a state of unconsciousness, a state of dreaming that you're exiled from Heaven.
You are having nothing more than a bad dream of death, in which terrible things seem to happen, impossible things, unthinkable things. And yet when you wake up, you will know, without a doubt, the ENTIRE THING was totally impossible. And you will thank God that NOT ONE SINGLE THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAS EVER TRUE.
This is atonement. This recognition is forgiveness. This truth, that you HAVEN'T done anything, that NOTHING happened. That THERE IS NO WORLD, NO EARTH, NO SPECIAL THINGS, there is NO DREAM, there is ONLY HEAVEN. "Only the creations of light are real" "There is no life outside of heaven." Therefore you are JUST MISTAKEN to believe otherwise, and recognizing this is a forgiving attitude.
You ARE forgiven, fully, because you LITERALLY have NOT DONE ANYTHING!! Your only choice now is whether to recognize and accept this truth, or whether to stay in denial and pretend you can and should suffer. And it's not God's will that you suffer in any way.
"Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."
I've been noticing lately, in myself, and also in other people, that guilt may not always look like guilt.
I am familiar with guilt in the sense that, let's say, I steal someone's property and then see them struggling without it, maybe I start to feel remorse or shame or that I should give it back, and so acknowledge that it's wrong in some way and start wanting to make amends, feeling guilty that way. This seems a more typical definition of guilt.
But I think there is an experience of guilt which feels much more like a state of self attack, seriousness, and is very prone to projection. It's a state of accusation, and the person feeling guilty starts to accuse others at the same time. This accusing takes the form of projection and is usually hurled out in the form of anger.
As Jesus says, "All anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY"
Why would you attempt to make someone guilty? It's really an attempt to project your own guilt onto them, to make them out to be the one who is guilty rather than it be you. This isn't really the same experiencing as feeling afraid and trying to blame the cause of fear onto someone, but the projection dynamic is similar.
And so the clue here is, that there is a strong correlation between anger and guilt. And I've been noticing especially the past few days, not only that if I am angry there is some subtle but definite sensation of "feeling guilty" or "feeling wrong" or "its my fault" tucked in behind it. And I've been suddenly noticing this in other people as well.
I saw a couple of people today who seemed edgy and short and were a little accusational. While on the surface they seemed like they were sort of "raw" and pointing a finger at others, or were holding a sense of "I'm wrong, because of you", I noticed they also were feeling kind of guilty about something. And in that guilt they felt angry at themselves, but typically so caught up in projecting it that they seemed to be trying to make others guilty instead.
The reason I'm bringing this up is because in the past, for example, I was often afraid for various reasons, but I did not know it. I did not RECOGNIZE it. I would have the fear and all the stuff that goes with it, but I did not label "whatever that feeling is" as fear. I was too immersed in it, like being in a fog. I couldn't see it from the outside. So I would've said, in the middle of feeling fear, no, I'm not afraid. I didn't even know I was in such a state of anxiety. Or that what I felt WAS that.
Similarly with this guilt, I've been doing a lot of healing and I notice often that there is this kind of heavy "something" that seems hidden from my awareness, which always seems to drag me down and makes me feel serious and often moving into anger or projection. And as I try to lift up closer to happier lighter states, this same curtain of something keeps pulling me back down. And I'm realizing gradually that this un-recognized something is actually guilt.
I actually feel guilty for a whole bunch of things and I did not even know that i was feeling this way. I was just "doing the guilt" unconsciously. This came to my attention because in one situation I expressed that I felt guilty about something, not even thinking that this was why I was annoyed, that I had not admitted to before, and after expressing this noticed that I felt significantly better. And that was unexpected, like I accidentally discovered what was really bothering me. And then after admitting to feeling guilty and letting it go, I felt so much freer.
Also per some things I've been reading in the course lately, I see Jesus saying things about guilt and about how without guilt you'd be happy and without guilt you'd have salvation and so on. That guilt is the opposite of love as well. And this all seems to add up. The state of ego, the state of fear, guilt, sin, death, suffering, unhappiness, it all seems to be various "forms" of the movement away from God.
In general a belief in sin leads to a belief in guilt and then to a belief in fear of punishment. But in Jesus's descriptions it sounds more like any amount of separation from God, any movement away from love, puts you simultaneously into a state of fear, and guilt, and sin, and suffering and sickness. It's all a movement towards darkness. And in particular, without guilt or a belief in guilt, there is no support for sin.
Sin says, you sinned. If you believe it, you become guilty. If you do not believe it, you become forgiven. It pivots AROUND sin, but guilt is evidence that you've believed sin to be true. If sin is true, then you ARE guilty and will feel it. But if sin is NOT true, you are NOT guilty, and will experience the innocence that lies beyond sin. Sin is kind of like a principle or concept, an illusion, and whether you believe in it or not sets you on a path to listen to ego or to listen to holy spirit. And "the world of bodies is the world of sin" so believing bodies are real produces guilt, while believing they are not produces innocence.
"The laws of sin demand a victim."
"(body's eyes) For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt."
So now I'm working on the removal and undoing and acknowledging and recognition and noticing of "I feel guilty". And I think that it can be quite subtle at times and elusive. And it is "implied" in a lot of situations, even if its minor. And I think this guilt has a heck of a lot to do with all manner of unhappy feelings and conditions and forms of suffering. It's the heavy anchor that we drag behind us. I think most people are living in heavy guilt and don't even know it, and that has been me too."
I have also been noticing lately that I have not been giving myself enough credit for what I've been able to do. And I also notice myself "over-giving" or "over-serving" in a sacrificial way. And that suggests to me that its because I feel a GUILT, and this guilt is driving an illusory form of service which really is some attempt to "make up for" "being the cause of" the problem, which I'm blaming myself for. I think I don't credit myself with enough innocence and thereby end up making myself guilty for things I'm not even guilty for, and then start over-compensating for it.
Without guilt there is no self blame, and without guilt there is no reason to project guilt onto others through anger. And without guilt you cannot have sinned, so must be innocent.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Only by persuading you that IT is you, could the ego possibly induce you to PROJECT guilt, and thereby keep it in your mind."
"All anger is nothing more than an attempt to MAKE SOMEONE FEEL GUILTY, and this attempt is the ONLY basis which the ego accepts for special relationships."
"Projection means anger, anger fosters assault, and assault promotes fear."
"That is why the undoing of guilt is an essential part of the Holy Spirit's teaching."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
We may not think that people are trying to destroy themselves. People can seem relatively happy, fairly sane, living a seemingly active life, enjoying success in their career, raising families and so on. But the fact of what is happening in the big picture is still there.
God's Kingdom is the realm of creation, of the constructive use of the power of the mind. It is there that life is wholeheartedly supported and sustained eternally. Any degree of suffering or sickness is completely impossible. Everyone enjoys perfection and eternal life and immortality.
But in the separation, all who participated in it did reject the Kingdom, and thus rejected immortality and perfection. This rejection of God was a rejection of life, a rejection of innocence, and a rejection of existence. It thus led to a death wish, or a desire to not create. The opposite of creation is destruction, and it was the destruction of God and Self that was the aim.
"The world was made as an attack on God."
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"This is a dream of death."
And so we entered into dreaming, in which all dreams are based in the rejection of creation and life. And so all dreams are dreams of death. And the physical universe is a system of death. All its laws are based on death, and all its roads lead to death.
We seem to have a seeming escape for a while, a kind of in-between state where we have a "life", before we die. But this is still essentially a period of dying. And it still leads to the grave, which is something we can deny and avoid but this denial doesn't stop it happening.
Nevertheless, this all only happens as a result of choosing death, ie choosing the opposite of creation. Choosing to not be with God. Which means choosing self destruction.
So if you are willing to look, you'll notice that everyone who is here is in various degrees or stages of self attack and punishment. This is not something pretty to look at. Many people are so riddled with guilt they can't even look you in the eye.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
Why does this happen? It happens because each individual person believes they are a sinner. And in whatever way, somewhere in the mind there is a belief that sin is real and true, has happened, has had real irreversible consequences, and that they can never return to God.
But even moreso, we believe we actively deserve to be punished for it. That we want the punishment and want to suffer, because it is expected of us and we agree with it. And so the people inflict self attack upon themselves in all manner of ways and this eventually leads to the death of the body. And all of this is chosen and self inflicted. And if it were not for this, there would be no suffering or sickness or death.
The simple thing to realize then is that this whole world is filled with people who are trying to die. "a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." Where we come to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus doesn't pull any punches on this stuff, he's very blunt about it.
So you've got a world full of sacrificial lambs, people destroying themselves in various ways, all manner of self attack, and all of it is essentially suicide. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent." Which means that all of the sickness, all suffering, all forms of unhappiness, all death, is all a choice made by people who believe they deserve it.
Except that, they don't deserve it. No-one does. No one deserves suffering even if it's an illusion of suffering. No one deserves to be punished in any way. No one deserves to have to go through any kind of psychological hell or experience of pain or disfigurement or disability or disease. These are all forms of self abuse. Every single example is someone trying to hurt themselves.
"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."
We're a world filled with self attacking, self hurting, self abusing, self harming, self destructive, self sabotaging, self denying, self hating, self loathing, self corrupting people, all of whom think they deserve to suffer because they're guilty. But they're not really guilty, and the ENTIRE thing is just one huge mistake.
Sin is not real, or possible. Meaning attack on God is not real or possible. Meaning there is never justification for guilt, meaning there is never a PURPOSE for suffering, to inflict just desserts or due justified punishment. There is never a valid grounds for unhappiness or disease or depression or anything less than God's will that we be happy and healthy. The whole thing is a giant mistake.
So all that's really happening is that everyone is seriously mistaken, confused, lacking recognition, insane, unclear, uncertain, afraid, not sure of anything, and really kind of lost in a nightmare of their own making. All as a result of denial and an unwillingness to look at their own innocence. Which in a way is kind of funny, because if we'd just look at the fact that we could never have sinned, we'd stop trying to kill ourselves over it.
"What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."
Death isn't real, and nothing real can be threatened. But we certainly can go through the motions and try to make it happen, to have the experience of being a corrupt body, feeling pain and sensations, torturing ourselves in our dreams. All of which is unnecessary. All that's needed is the awakening to the truth. The acceptance of the facts. The recognition of what really is real and what is not. Because there really is no sin, in reality. And that means there is no grounds for any kind of self punishment, suicide or death.
No-one needs to be dying. No-one needs to be suffering or sick. No-one needs to be unhappy. We all just need forgiveness - the recognition of sin's impossibility, and the continuance of our absolute immortal endless innocence. And those who are innocent can never suffer, nor do they want to or choose to.
Because if you are just as perfect now as when God created you, and if you have never done anything to anyone, and if nothing you thought you did ever even happened, then all that's left is to thank God that you have been given eternal life.
Sometimes doing ACIM seems very difficult. It boils down to a simple fact. Everything in the world is opposite to the truth. And that means you're going to have to become opposite to everything in the world!
"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."
This is no easy feat. Everything in the world is totally backwards, inside out, and upside down. It is opposite to heaven's laws and nature in EVERY way.
"...earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
So it's calling for you to totally go against the grain in order to be sane, to deny and defy the whole nature of this entire world and not believe a single thing about it. The world is insane, and you want sanity.
"What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."
Our position in "false perception" is one where we have reversed or swapped cause and effect. We've also swapped what is true and what is false. Everything is totally back to front. We now believe the world is happening to us, causing us. And yet, we are immortal beings, causers, creators, rulers of the universe, to whom nothing is supposed to be happening.
There are very strong empowerment themes in ACIM to do with you learning to re-adopt the position of having power OVER the world. Over even sickness and death. Over all problems and forms of suffering. In which you are the cause of the dream, and not its effect. Where you are invulnerable and incapable of being hurt. Where you would show and demonstrate to others that you cannot be hurt even physically.
"Show your brother you've had no hurt of him."
"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."
Whenever our mind believes for a second that cause and effect have been swapped, we see ourselves as at the effect of the world and other people. They're doing it to us. We're being affected. We are now passive victims, suffering against our will, experiencing things we seem to have not chosen or wanted. But then the course is saying, absolutely everything that happens you must have chosen and wanted, and you did it to yourself.
This is reflected in the secret of salvation "you're doing this to yourself." It doesn't even matter what form it takes or who seems to be the victimizer. If you see yourself as an effect of the very thing you made, you are playing a role of victim and are positioning yourself to be hurt by it. And yet you are an immortal being, who cannot be hurt.
"Nothing real can be threatened."
The real meaning of this is that you are an immortal being and you are CAUSAL. You caused this world. You are the dreamer of it. It is nothing but an effect and it cannot do anything to who or what you really are. You've dreamed up dream figures and set them about attacking your body.
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? "
"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."
"My Self is ruler of the universe. 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."
And then Jesus even goes on to say that you cannot suffer or be sick or hurt or killed or anything against your will. That even death is CONSENTED to in all its forms.
"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."
So we've got the world seeming to function backwards, in which it seems capable of causing your body, making it an effect of the world. You've got random chaotic events "happening to it". You've got all manner of inescapable problems, people attacking you, stuff going wrong. And you're supposed to fly in the face of it all exclaim, THIS IS DOING NOTHING TO ME.
That's not easy. You're asked to act like an immortal being in a mortal world. And that means if you are not vigilant, you're going to be constantly drawn into the world's ways, tempted to believe what it shows you, deceived by its illusions and frightened by its images. You have to constantly be on-guard and vigilant in your willingness to take a forgiving attitude instead.
Forgiveness means little more than looking at the world from a point of view of it BEING NOTHING LIKE YOU, and therefore that you are immortal and it is not. Forgiveness symbolizes your immortality and points to your invulnerability. You can accuse no-one of sin if it is impossible for you to be sinned against. If the world can do nothing to you, you cannot be angry at it. You can only be benevolent by recognizing that you cannot be changed.
That's difficult work. Being confronted with a totally backwards world all day every day, and being asked to totally go against it and deny it in every way. That even your body lies to you. Even your planet is a false world. Even the events that sure as hell look like they're happening aren't happening. That even the suggested proof of sin that your body can be crucified is a total deception. The world is COMPLETELY UNNATURAL.
"as it seems to be the most unnatural and difficult for the untrained mind."
"Deny your own identity and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought which mocks creation and which laughs at God."
"The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE God's Will. This unnatural lesson CANNOT be learned"
"Miracles seem unnatural to the ego"
"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."
"Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with guilt, because it IS the belief in sin."
For you to become your natural self, you're going to have to stop believing anything the world says or does. That's not exactly easy if your'e used to being in false perceptions where you buy into the entire system and think it's the truth. You're quite literally stuck in hell and trying to get back to heaven. And the only way to get back there is to become heaven-like while you're in the midst of evil.
You're being PULLED in two different directions. The world is trying to pull you into hell and darkness and death. God is trying to pull you into heaven and light and happiness. The two are irreconcilable. They are totally opposite. You will have to abandon the world if you want to go home to God. You will have to turn your back on death and reject sickness and choose away from sin and guilt and fear. And most of all, you will have to learn to see yourself as the RULER of the universe, in no way a victim, and entirely equipped with the power of God.
God is a being of Spirit. God extends through Creation, producing the Sonship, and the Sonship in turn extends God's being as a co-creator. The Sonship is within God's being. The sonship's extension further creates more spirit beings, within each of the Sons's being, within God's being.
This creation of eternal life and extension of eternal life is spirit's ONLY function. All Spirit ever does is extend God's being. It never is involved with making worlds, planets, bodies, animals, forms, "life forms", sandwiches, or death. Spirit only creates spirit. It never creates objects or bodies.
"Being must be extended. That is how it retains the knowledge of itself. Spirit yearns to share its being as its Creator did. Created by sharing, its will is to create. It does not wish to contain God, but wills to extend His Being. ... The extension of God's Being is spirit's only function."
God creates only in the likeness of Himself according to His own nature, characteristics and laws. God is unlimited infinite being. God is omnipresent, meaning He is everywhere at once, and God has Eternal Life.
When God extends Himself in His Divine Application, He merely creates more like Himself. His Son is given spirit/being/soul, mind, eternal life, the ability to create, and omnipresence. Just like the Father. The Son has everything the Father has, lacks nothing, and is exactly identical in nature. This identically is what "Oneness" or "One With" means - being of like kind.
It is not possible for God to create something unlike Himself or unlike His nature. Nor is it possible for the Son to be unlike God's nature or to create something which is unlike God's nature. The son's creations are just as much like God as the Son is, following all the same characteristics of perfection and divinity and wholeness, and with just as much ability to extend creation.
Eternal life is eternal BECAUSE it is permanent and cannot be changed. Nothing real changes or wavers or fluctuates. Anything that changes is not real. "Reality is a constant state." Eternal life requires the total absence of anything that can change or be changed. Change itself is the idea of what exists no longer existing, and is the idea of death.
The idea of "spacetime" is exactly opposite to the nature of God's creation, and God could not, and did not, and cannot create it.
Space is in direct opposition to the nature of omnipresent creation. Omnipresence means everything that exists is everywhere at once. Space means whatever exists is NOT everywhere at once. Space goes on to assert that everything is not everywhere, nothing is fully anywhere, anything that is anywhere is not everywhere, nothing exists everywhere, and therefore everything does not exist anywhere. It is the ultimate statement that everything, God, does not exist anywhere. It is in total opposition and violation of God's will, God's laws, God's nature and God's creation.
Time is also in direct opposition to eternal life. In eternity everything is permanently the same, nothing changes, everything extends forever and there is no interruption or alteration to what is. In time, time suggests that nothing is EVER THE SAME, that all things are constantly changing, in a state of flux and uncertainty and fear, that what existed no longer exists, and what is to come will obliterate what is here now. Time is a direct attack on God's nature, Kingdom, laws and nature, just as space is. And together they form the foundation of the ego's manifestation of HELL - the exact OPPOSITE OF HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY.
Now, everything you see with the body's eyes, and the body itself, is directly and totally dependent on this system of space and time, which is totally and UTTERLY OPPOSED to God's nature and Kingdom. One part of the body is over here, but not over there. One part of the world is over here but not over there. This planet is not where the other planet is. My body is not occupying the same space as your body.
This is a system of the total ABSENCE OF SHARING of any kind. In God's Kingdom, everything is always shared everywhere by everyone simultaneously. With no ownership, no possession, no exclusivity, and no special rights. Within spacetime, there is no such thing as sharing. Space asserts that what is here, is not there, and so it is isolated, and in fact not whole, because wholeness means being everywhere and so nothing in space is whole. Time asserts that what just was, no longer is, and so it does not extend or share into the present or future, killing it off and turning it into history.
The planet Earth, is entirely dependent on space and time both for its apparent existence. In order to even be a three dimensional object made from particles which do not share space, and which are all spread out in different locations, and whereby England is not America and Australia is not the North Pole, nothing is everywhere and so everything is nowhere. It is an illusion of place and time, shift and change, destruction of reality, attack on God's Kingdom, and TOTAL DENIAL of the laws of God. This planet entirely goes against the nature of God and therefore is against YOUR nature. "The laws of this world go against your nature."
Without being separated out in "space", or changing over "time", there cannot be a three dimensional planet taking up space. Continents cannot be kept apart. Bodies cannot be maintained. Animals and plants cannot retain their shapes. Particles of matter cannot exist independent of each other. Drops of water cannot move as an ocean. And sunbeams have no capability of shining. All of this stuff is THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM, made as an ATTACK ON GOD. "The world was made as an attack on God". "The world was made as a place where God could enter not." "Earth, which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."
If you can grasp the nature of God's Kingdom, God's law, and God's ways, you MUST recognize that everything in and of spacetime is absolutely bullshit. It is TOTALLY NOTHING LIKE GOD'S NATURE, it is absolutely utterly OPPOSED TO LIFE, and is a PICTURE OF CRUCIFIXION. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of the Son of God." It is crucifixion simply because it is the idea of what God's Son is NOT LIKE, it is the idea of how God's Son would look if he were SPLIT APART, it is the idea of God's Son being in a state of constant change and insanity, and it is the idea of God's Son PERISHING AND DYING. It is NOT a pretty picture of God's creation, it is NOT EVEN REMOTELY HOLY, IT IS NOT GOD'S WILL, and it IS ***NOTHING LIKE GOD***.
Thankfully, God's ACTUAL creation, heaven, is not like this world. This world, is "the world you made" and "the world you see" with the body's eyes, which see nothing but illusions. God's creation is entirely a LIVING WORLD OF LIGHT, not even remotely in the shape of any kind of object or form or planet or body, FREE OF SPATIAL SEPARATIONS, FREE OF TIME AND CHANGE. It is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the world you see.
Anyone here who is claiming that God COULD, WOULD, SHOULD, or DID create this world, is not comprehending why that is an utterly ridiculous idea. That means you do not RECOGNIZE exactly HOW this world is attacking God, HOW and WHY spacetime is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature, why the laws of this world are entirely EGO LAWS OF CHAOS, and why God is NOT LIKE THIS AT ALL. If you really think God is LIKE THIS WORLD, you really, really, really do not know what God is like. To accuse Him of creating it, labelling it as sacred or holy, or regarding it are real, is nothing short of blasphemous.
God can only create LIFE. And that life MUST EXTEND LIFE. And so if that which God creates does not in turn CREATE LIFE OUT OF NOWHERE, through a MIRACULOUS CREATIVE ACT, then it is not life. Look now at the world YOU made, Earth, this universe, in which NOTHING extends life through miraculous creation, NOTHING creates in its exact image and likeness, NOTHING lives forever, NOTHING is permanent, NOTHING is free from threat because what is UNREAL CAN be threatened, and NOTHING is even remotely God-like. To believe this world is God's creation is to believe ILLUSIONS ARE REAL, which is FALSE PERCEPTION. It is delusional. And failure to recognize this is INSANITY.
C-4.1. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. 2 God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. 3 Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. 4 Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. 5 But the time will come when all things visible will have an end.
C-4.2. The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. 2 And so they do. 3 For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. 4 While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
"C-4.4. The world stands like a block before Christ's face. 2 But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. 3 It is seen at last for only what it is. 4 And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. 5 Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
"A forgiven world cannot last."
"18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."
This touches on the essence of A Course in Miracles and the Golden Rule. Jesus is literally telling us that YOU ARE ONE WITH OTHERS. This means you are literally IN THEM. And therefore the way that you treat them is the SAME as the way you treat yourself.
There is no exception to this. You treat BOTH yourself and others the same way at the same time. To recoil for another is to recoil from yourself. To not love another is to not love yourself. To hate another is to hate yourself. There is no escaping this because fundamentally, by the Law of God, you ARE them.
"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."
So per the Golden Rule, that means that every person you encounter, you should love them, IF you want to be loved and if you love yourself. You should SEE YOUR SELF in them. Because both you AND them are Christ. And your love of them IS your love of yourself, directly. What you give to them you receive. What you transmit to them, you transmit to the part of you that is in them.
The "part of you" that is "in them" is the target of everything you give to them, so you have a VESTED INTEREST - a shared interest, in treating them well in order for YOU to be treated well. This is not a play on words or an option. This is how minds share and relate. This is how they were created. This is the dynamics of the laws of God which are always applying.
It is always the ego that suggests, the way you treat another is NOT the way you are treating yourself. Or that you can attack without being attacked. Or you can be murderous without experiencing the consequences. Or you can judge without being judged. Or you can hate without being hated. Or you can be right and they can be wrong and there is no equality between you.
These are all LIES because they fly in the face of the inescapable LAW. It can SEEM as if you can treat someone differently to how you treat yourself, but all of that MUST be an illusion. Because the only truth is that ALL of God's children are perfect EQUALS. Making them perfect brothers in the sonship. And this is permanent fact.
Any kind of inequality is an illusion. And that not only means that you and your brother are SEPARATELY EQUAL as individuals, like two identical twins standing next to each other. It in fact means that you SHARE EVERYTHING, which means you OVERLAP with each other, are ONE with each other, JOINED with each other, IN each other. You literally are in your brother's mind with him. Even if that means part of you seems to be "over there" in another person, from a separated point of view.
This is really the only thing to be learned. How to love yourself AND others equally. How to recognize that you are ONE with all people. To realize that, you cannot GET AWAY WITH anything. You cannot hurt without being hurt. You cannot attack without being attacked. Scapegoating and blame are delusional and denial. When you attack anyone you are hurting yourself, and you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep hurting yourself?
Anger and attack towards "others" drives a RIFT into your mind between the part of your mind which seems to be isolated to "inside your body" and the part of you which seems to be "inside other people's bodies". The more you attack what you THINK is a "separate them", the more you are SPLITTING OFF part of you which is in "you" (as a body identified self) and the part of you which is ONE WITH THEM. Which means you are directly attacking yourself and splitting your mind.
The split mind is divided by bodily boundaries, and as you focus on the ways in which you are NOT ONE, by emphasizing the solidity and reality and restriction of bodily obstacles, it simply SPLITS your mind and causes you to disassociate from yourself. And now you think you are literally two selves, with one part of you trapped in your body and the other part of you trapped in another person's body. You've now made an ego for both of you. And now you want to attack another to steal back from them the part of your SELF that you believe they have kept from you. As discussed in "the laws of chaos", everyone is looking for the self they think they lost.
So this seems to be a catch. The catch is, that if you choose to attack someone, you WILL be attacked, and you will suffer consequences, directly inflicted BY YOURSELF upon yourself. This is the secret of salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. And the only way to alleviate this suffering is to LOVE the other person. If you love them you will be loved. If you hate them you will be hated. By yourself. You cannot escape this "clause". It is the law of God. It is the Golden Rule. It is both a curse if ignored, and a clue to how to be happy if embraced.
The Golden Rule doesn't just mean that if you might treat someone as you would have them treat you, they MIGHT elect to treat you in a similar fashion. If there is any possibility that cause and effect breaks down and they MIGHT NOT treat you how you are treating them, then the law is breakable, and it is not a law, and it has devolved to the level of physical behaviors. The true nature of the Golden Rule is the oneness you always have with everyone in the mind, whereby you LITERALLY are DIRECTLY treating yourself the way you are treating them, because you are IN THEM.
"Do unto others because you ARE doing unto yourself." is what it should say.
If there is a person you hate, you will drive a separation between you. In this separation you will believe that person is completely separate from you, and you want to have as much distance and dis-association between you as possible. You do not want to be associated with them. You want to destroy them and have them not exist. And in this intensity of hatred and rage and attack and anger, you believe THEY ARE NOT YOU. And as such you can hurl as much blame and condemnation upon them as you can muster, and it seems to be 100% about their faults, and 0% about yours. This is a state of insanity.
This is a great way to split your mind, leading to states of personal suffering, unlove, a total lack of peace, and literal self destruction. Those who murder are trying to kill themselves. And those who attack are undermining their own integrity. And those who hate do not love themselves. Just as those who are sick have made themselves sick in an attempt to accuse OTHERS of sin as well as themselves.
"You but accuse your brothers of your own sin."
"Damaged bodies remain accusers."
The only solution, and the only option, and the only law which you HAVE to abide by, and cannot escape, is the law of God, that how you DO treat others IS how you are treating yourself, because YOU ARE ONE WITH THEM. And being literally part of that person, anything you hurl at them you are hurling at yourself. And you WILL experience the consequences. So really, your hands are tied and you do not have any loopholes or ways to get out of it.
Either you love BOTH you and your brother, or you hate both you and your brother. Either you love both you and your brother, or you attack both you and your brother. Either you attempt to make both you and your brother sick, or you HEAL both you and your brother. When you suffer you suffer along with him. The truth that applies to you applies to them equally and to the same degree. And not simply because they are your equal, but because THEY ARE YOU.
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."When this is recognized as true, when cause and effect are reunited so that anything you cause you also experience the effects of instantly, and when there is no way to attack without attacking yourself, you now have shared interests and the only option is to love. The only sane choice is to love. If you don't love you will hurt yourself and others. If you do love you will uplift and heal yourself and others. And "when I heal I am not healed alone."
It is by recognizing that you have a vested interest in loving others, because it allows you to be loved, that you will automatically steer clear of attack upon yourself. You will realize that you CANNOT attack another person WITHOUT suffering the consequences. And there is no way to hurt them without being hurt. So your only sane choice is to love unconditionally, so that you will be loved. Otherwise a failure to recognize your oneness leads to it seeming plausible, justifiable and warranted, that you can attack without consequence. And then you are on the slippery slope to hell.
While we have an ego, we are not seeing reality directly. Instead, we lose track of the context or perspective of the whole, and enter into a kind of fictional private world. It becomes a private "version" of a world, which is not populated by real figures but by imaginary ones. These figures are "shadow figures" which a person then interacts with as if they are the whole of what is there. But these characters are made up of reactions and judgements and projected ego images.
This is the case for someone in a state of insanity, which means pretty much everyone. Anyone who believes in separation and has separated themselves off from reality, is in a private kind of world. It becomes a subjective world, a world of interpretation and judgement and fantasy. In this world they alone imagine personalized versions of everyone, which barricade them in and hide the reality of the person.
They interact with these images as if they are the actual people. They do not see the actual people, only their interpretations of them. Even if another actual person is right in front of them, they do not see them and instead have a special relationship with a fantasy that is not even there. They are lost in a dream, insanely relating to hallucinated entities as if they really exist, and only they can see them.
Everyone with an ego is doing this. We're all having privatized worlds in which we are in relationships with fantasy characters that we've made up to take over from our actual brothers. We don't see people for how they really are. We have made up an ego for them instead to take the place of them, and the ego we've made for them is in a special relationship with our "own" ego.
Inside this personal world it's as though the person doesn't even really see reality, or hear what's really happening. They see and hear what they project and perceive, and cannot see beyond it. They populate their world with figures from the past and illusions of people and interpretations of judgements laid upon them. They think that these things stand-in for the actual people and are all that exist. And now they are blind to reality and lost in a dream-world, imagining that illusions are real.
"The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL illusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his INDIVIDUAL past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ. But the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are made up ONLY of his REACTIONS to his brothers, and do NOT include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not see that he made them, and that they ARE NOT WHOLE. For these figures HAVE NO WITNESSES, being perceived in one SEPARATE mind only.
It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they SEE only those who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who ARE NOT THERE, and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he ALONE believes they answered him. Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E1
"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES. They do not wish to die, YET THEY WILL NOT LET CONDEMNATION GO. And so they SEPARATE into their private world, where everything is disordered, and where what is within, appears to be without. Yet what IS within they do NOT see, for the REALITY of their brothers they CANNOT see." UrT12E4
"Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE." UrT12E5 "You who know not what you do, CAN learn what insanity IS, and look beyond it. It is GIVEN you to learn how to DENY insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace." UrT12E7
"Yet in the darkness, in the private world of sleep, you SEE in dreams, although your eyes are closed. And it is here that WHAT you see YOU MADE. But let the DARKNESS go, and ALL you made YOU WILL NO LONGER SEE, for sight of IT depends upon DENYING vision." UrT12E9
"Yet this is what denial DOES, for BY it you ACCEPT insanity, believing you can make a private world, AND RULE YOUR OWN PERCEPTION. But FOR this, light MUST be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come, AND YOU CAN SEE." UrT12E9
"If I have no private thoughts, I cannot see a private world." UrW54L3 "I have no private thoughts. Yet it is only private thoughts of which I am aware. What can these thoughts mean? They do not exist, and so they mean nothing." UrW52L5
"Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts. Despite your initial resistance to this idea, you will yet understand that it must be true if salvation is possible at all." UrW19L2
"To the ego, THE MIND IS PRIVATE, and only the body CAN be shared. Ideas are basically of no concern, except as they draw the BODY of another closer or farther." UrT15H8
"For you think that your minds must be kept PRIVATE, or you will LOSE them. And, if your BODIES are together, your minds remain your own." UrT15H11 "How can you do this when you would prefer to have PRIVATE thoughts, AND KEEP THEM? The ONLY way you COULD do this, is to DENY the perfect communication that makes the holy instant WHAT IT IS." UrT15E7
"Let not your fear of sin protect it from correction, for the attraction of guilt is ONLY fear. Here is the ONE emotion that YOU made, WHATEVER it may seem to be. And it IS the emotion of secrecy, of private thoughts, AND OF THE BODY." UrT22B5
"If you are joined, how COULD it be that you have private thoughts?" UrT21G3 "Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity." UrT18G3
Ok's let's step back and look at the big picture. God exists. God created the Kingdom of Heaven, which comprises the sonship and the Holy Spirit. You and your brothers co-create to add to the Kingdom. The holy trinity is all that really exists.
"Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation."
"Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity."
"The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One."
Then there was this thing we call the separation from God, which is a mad idea. It's mad because it's not possible in reality, so believing it is insane. It's a mistaken belief that you have become separate through sin, when you haven't. This belief denies God and therefore makes the awareness of reality unconscious to you. It induces a kind of sleep state where God seems to be denied.
Denial does not change the truth, nor does it affect reality in any way. It is merely an attempt to hide from it, by shutting it out of awareness and pretending it is not true. Denial in fact implies that what has been denied IS STILL THERE, which is why denial contradicts itself.
"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."
"The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized."
In this sleep state we dream of an entire world whose nature is completely opposite to heaven. A world of space and time and galaxies and planets and civilizations. Worlds populated by bodies at war with each other. All of this is nothing but a fiction, because it cannot be true or really exist or happen in the Kingdom of God.
"earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." "For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."
In the dream of space and time, it SEEMS like impossible things happen. Sin occurs. Wars occur. Events seem to happen. People seem to do stuff. But the fact is that it is all a form of wishful thinking, it is all impossible, and none of it has any bearing on the reality of the Kingdom. This means that the entire history of the universe we made means absolutely nothing, does nothing, and does not even really exist.
"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.
"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."
The important thing to realize is that the premise of God leads to the conclusion of heaven, and the premise of "not God" (separation, attack on God) leads to the dream of hell and death.
If the premise for the world of death is FALSE, and if in truth the world is JUST A DREAM and has no reality in God's creation, then anything that seems to happen in it IS VOID. Every event is just part of a fictional dream. Every attack is a fantasy. Every dead body is an illusion. Every war is happening to nothing. Every conflict is artificial and make-believe. Every form of suffering is completely impossible.
Not one single thing in the dream world bleeds over into the reality of the Kingdom. Not one single attack has any effect whatsoever on anything real - remembering "nothing real can be threatened." Not one single child of God can ever by hurt, because all God's children are immortal and perfect. Not one single sin has every occurred.
Anything that you think you did in this world, anything that anyone else seems to do in this world, has NO EFFECT on anything real. No-one is ever really at war. No-one is every really hurt. No-one is ever invaded or attacked or suffering or dying. This is A DREAM. It's a dream that you're having because you are ASLEEP. Your mind is hallucinating a terrible world of conflict and nightmares.
"Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"
The ONLY way therefore to "forgive" what's seeming to happen, is to recognize that IT ISN'T. This is the proper use of denial to deny anything not of God any reality whatsoever. If the premise of this world is that the world is real, then every event is real and meaningful and true. But if the premise of this world is that it is UNREAL and a DREAM, then NOTHING that seems to happen means anything whatsoever. Nothing is having any real effect on anything real, because this world is NOT REAL.
If someone seems to attack someone in an UNREAL world, there has not really been an attack. If someone wages a war in an unreal world using unreal weapons to invade and attack an unreal country on the basis of believing there are "real benefits" to doing so, or justified reasons for anger, or any other such nonsense, then those people are delusional. They are fighting over scraps of dreams, imaginary lands, fictional purposes, and for completely made-up reasons. This is insanity.
"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God."
In order to recognize that what you THINK your brother DID, has NOT OCCURRED ..... you have to recognize this whole world is a dream. ONLY IF it is a dream can it be true that it has NOT OCCURRED. Even if you saw it, even if you remember it, even if it's on the TV, even if it's in the history books, even if there appears to be "real bloodshed" or evidence or proof of sin, even if huge chunks of the planet are destroyed.... if the whole premise of this environment is that IT IS NOT REAL, then NONE OF THIS HAS OCCURRED in reality.
There is no war in God. There is no pain in God. There is no attack in God. There is no conflict in God. There is no ownership in God. There is no invasion in God. There are no weapons in God. There is no land in God. There is no earth in God. There are no bodies in God. There is no disagreement in God. There is no suffering in God. NONE of these things are POSSIBLE in God because God is permanently perfect, his creation is perfect, his children are perfect, and nothing else is EVER true.
This is what you need to see if you want to forgive ANYTHING in this world. You cannot forgive it if you think it has really happened. You cannot forgive it if you think there is real proof that it happened. This is why the course asks you to "demonstrate that you had no hurt of him", which you do by healing your body, in order to SHOW HIM PROOF of his innocence, defying his attempts to destroy you, in order to testify to the fact that nothing can happen against your reality.
"For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes."
Nothing in the history of the human race, or the history of planet Earth, or the history of this all space and time, has happened. "All events are nowhere". NOTHING has happened. There is not even really a world here.
"There is no world." The ONLY way it is forgiven is by recognizing it has no substance, no value, no importance, no truth, no reality, no existence.
Your brother is forgiven because he literally in reality CANNOT DO ANYTHING to you. Your brother is forgiven because in reality HE CANNOT SIN against anything real. Your brother is forgiven because it is NOT POSSIBLE to wage war in the Kingdom of God. Your brother is forgiven because everything he SEEMS to do to sin is happening entirely in a MISTAKEN state of mind, in a dreaming state of sleep, in a TOTAL FANTASY, which has NO REALITY AND NO TRUTH.
None of this has happened. Only the Kingdom of God exists. There is no world. There is no war.
Each to their own. But for me, I cannot reconcile how God can be purely benevolent, peaceful, loving, gentle, kind, happy, soft, life-affirming, life-giving, joyful, etc. ... and in ANY WAY, even CONCEIVE OF .... a thought, idea, creation or otherwise, which could take on the form of things like weapons, pain receptors, teeth, explosions, problems, colliding objects, damage, sickness, death, incompatibilities, conflict and war etc. ALL OF WHICH MUST BE HIS WILL if he created it.
If God is truly truly so incredibly unconditionally loving at all times, incapable of anything BUT love.. .. HOW "on earth" is it ever possible that a world, an environment, a perfect home created just for you, could emerge from his mind and heart, created from that same love and tenderness, and produce horrifically un-traversible landscapes, widespread droughts and lifeless frozen tundras, scorching deserts of starvation and thirst, war zones and stinking trash heaps, the "fetid scent of death", rotten corpses, and all manner of murder.
ALL OF THAT would have to come FROM GOD, by his will, from the purity of his absolute love and gentleness, without a single ounce of cruelty or malice or viciousness or vindictiveness or meanness. There is simply NO WAY... NO WAY EVER, that a benevolent loving God could come up with, condone, allow, permit, cause, will, want or create, an environment in which it is even POSSIBLE... yet alone whether it happens or not, POSSIBLE.... to even have such things as weapons or destruction or things that die.
To claim that this is possible is to claim that God's OWN NATURE, entails and includes, fickle transformations, unstable changes, contradictions, self attack, insane murderous intentions, threat and danger, corruption and malice. ONLY such a nature could ever give rise to such things as machine guns and atomic bombs. ALL of which, if part of HIS world, are part of HIM.
I don't know why anyone reading A Course in Miracles, would EVER come up with a notion that God could have created planet Earth, space or time, along with all of its horrendous malfunctions, limitations, problems, difficulties, cruelties and inherent conflicts. A person would have to conceive of God not as purely absolutely unconditionally gentle and loving and kind, but as some kind of bizarre mysterious twisted strange maker of nightmares and awful landscapes of torture and twisted shapeshifting bullshit. No perfect loving harmless peaceful God, could EVER EVER EVER create this planet and its contents.
This has nothing to do with perception either. It doesn't even require the presence of a single human being standing on the planet looking at it. If we were all wiped out the world would still be horribly cruel, with no-one around to re-interpret it. Because its NATURE is cruelty and punishment and death. This will ALWAYS be its nature because it is made from the idea of an OPPOSITE to beautiful perfect harmony and effortless safety and loving joy of God.
We ARE asked to see this world differently. We ARE asked to not judge it, hate it, attack it, or regard it as real sin - instead to see it as a MISTAKE. We ARE asked to love toward it, thinking more charitably toward it, and even to repurpose it to help us to return to HEAVEN where we belong. But at no time are we asked to WANT the world, to KEEP the world, to MAKE the world be heaven, to TRANSFORM it into something God has created, or to MISTAKE it for heaven. Even a happy interpretation of a broken planet still shows a broken planet.
No amount of forgiveness is EVER going to stop airplanes from crashing, or tigers from ripping the living guts out of live animals, or people shooting each other with guns, or starvation and lack of food, or diseases, or the eventual death of the planet when the sun swallows it whole after burning it to death. You can forgive it, you can bring light to it, you can carry peace to it, you can envelop it in love and happiness, but it's still going to function the same way because that is its non-God-given nature.
God could not, would not, never has, and never will, create a world such as this. If could could or would or had, God would be a complete and total murderous asshole. And I don't think we want that.
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it still more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no-one asks if a benign Creator could will this." UrM28A1
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel." UrT11J2
"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real." UrM28A3
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." UrW131L7
"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION." UrT16F3
When I believed that I had really sinned, I would've rejected God on the basis that the sin PROVED I could not be loved. I believed the sin was real, therefore that it was TRUE of me.
And since I believed the sin was true of me, I would've actually viewed God's love as false, unfounded, unjustified and something I did not want. If it was offered, I would've rejected it and sneered at it like someone had just said something ridiculous, or that it was even offensive. I did not believe in it, and was certain of rejection.
The sense of having sinned and the belief in real sin produced a new IDENTITY. A false self. An ego. It changed the definition of my "self", from innocent to guilty. Not just like a label being added on top of my innocent self, but a suggestion that I had become corrupted and transformed and changed into a guilty person. As if my very sense of WHO I AM was altered and turned into sin or evil.
Then anything which was in agreement with truth of sin, was in agreement with me, and I would not only defend it but cultivate it. I would express the belief - prayer - that sin was real and that I was sinful, and that this was truth. Therefore, I would "hire", attract or invite, or make agreements with people who were to come and punish me. Not necessarily in a fully conscious way but still a choice based on that belief.
So people showed up, to reflect back to me what I believed was true about myself. Even if I did not like what these people did, and even if I thought they were an enemy, and even if they were hurtful, somewhere inside I asked for it with my belief in sin, and I got what I asked for. I proved over and over again how sinful I am. And if there were people who were not a part of this, who were attempting to be kind and loving, who chose to overlook my sinfulness, I did not trust them or believe them, and instead rejected the love.
As time went on and I got fed up with the suffering, I gradually started to come around and seek some kind of healing. I had a lot of insights about self-forgiveness, and the fact that nobody around me was offering forgiveness clarified that I simply was not going to be forgiven unless I claimed it for myself. That seemed like a bold move, to claim innocence when everyone else seemed to be reflecting sinfulness and believed in my sinfulness. But it was a stepping stone towards seeing myself differently.
Over time I came to clearer expressions of the idea of my innocence, but mostly these were rationalizations or justifications, or other explanations within the scope of the ego illusion, where I kept trying to explain to myself that it was "ok" that it happened. I was trying to resolve the belief in the sin without actually undoing the belief that it happened. I even dug into past lives and became aware of how the person involved had done the same thing to me before, and how this was in fact his lesson to learn as well, and for me to learn his prior perspective. But that didn't fully alleviate the guilt either.
Because I believed that the sin was real, I believed there was truth to it, and I was still prepared to defend that, deep down. I thought I'd worked through all this, on a "world is real" ego level as best I could, to clear out all the "damage", but when I exposed myself to a higher truth it came back out to exclaim itself. To defy and deny that the truth was true.
The truth was revealed only by being willing to look at the idea, that sin is not reality. That is it not actually REAL. That things which "happened", were a dream, an illusion of things happening, and that it was my taking it seriously and thinking it was real that led to all of my upset about it. Perceiving illusions to be real, IF they were real, it WOULD have meant that I really did sin. And that MUST mean that I could not be loved. Without the undoing of the idea of "real sin" there was basically no way to fully and deeply escape from the torment that "real sin" implies.
If sin is real, you simply MUST be guilty, and there is no escaping that, no matter how much you justify it, no matter how much catharsis you have, and no matter how metaphysical or mystical you get in explaining why it was "meant to happen" or was karma or was an accident or was intentional or whatever. Nothing will fully FREE you from the guilt and the constant PRODUCTION of more guilt, while the sense of "real sin" remains in place, unchecked.
If your sin is real, it simply will keep generating more guilt and fear over and over, and keep reinforcing itself, and keep proving that you're sinful, and keep attracting disasters, and any time that anyone targets you with any kind of attack, that same sin will rise up in your mind to RE-MIND you that its TRUE, that you really are a sinful wicked person who deserves the abuse you're getting. Even if you don't like the experience and want it to stop on some surface level.
The ONLY way to be free of all of the suffering, ego, rebounds, punishments, shame, self-attack, attracted reinforcements, events, people and justifications, and to finally fully put it to rest, is through the PROPER FORGIVENESS. Through the Atonement.
That means, actually coming to realize, be open to, and accept as TRUE, the fact that the so-called "sin", the thing that you thought you did, was not REALITY. It sure was a convincing illusion at the time, you REALLY thought you really did something awful, that it had "real" consequences, and therefore redefined you as a "real sinner". ALL of that has to be FALSE.
In God's truth, in God's reality, God created you as innocent. Permanently. You don't even have any functionality in your being that is capable of generating a real sin. You are absolutely incapable. Innocence cannot even begin to conceive of real sin. And in God's reality, which is the true reality, it is not possible to be separate from God. Therefore you cannot actually "do" anything. You cannot actually sin, or hurt anything, or anyone, or mess anything up, or really produce really bad consequences, or commit a real crime, or do anything evil whatsoever, because there IS no "real world" in which to do these things. There is only the illusory dream world that you THOUGHT was real.
So you must be open to the idea that sin is not real or true, if you are to accept the atonement. It is the only way you can be innocent. If sin is real, you're stuck. If the world is real, you're stuck. The ONLY way for you to lay claim to being 100% innocent through and through, in God's eyes and your own, is to RECOGNIZE that the illusion you thought was real, was NOT real, it was only an illusion. You did not REALLY sin. You did not REALLY do anything at all. And in that view, your so-called sin is forgiven.
ACIM says: "Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred (also what you did to them). It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God. "
I was trying and trying to pardon a real sin. It doesn't work at all. Because real sin cannot be pardoned. Only UNREAL sin can be pardoned.
Forgiveness sees there WAS NO SIN, and as such, your sins are forgiven. When Jesus says to someone "all your sins are forgiven", it is because He is literally recognizing that the person has not done any "real sins". So they're all seen with forgiveness and therefore Jesus is acknowledging your permanent innocence. Ie nothing "real" happened, nothing really happened, that's the Atonement.
"What is sin, except a false idea about God's son?" - in a nutsshell. I had a false idea about myself that I had become evil because I had committed a real sin. Everything about the situation SEEMED real. But it wasn't. I was unconscious and having a delusional nightmare. It did not REALLY happen at all. And because of that, I AM INNOCENT.
This innocence therefore reaches way beyond all illusions, beyond the world, beyond all events, beyond all illusory consequences. And this is not some kind of denial or further rationalization or an attempt to cover up the actual remaining presence of a belief tha the sin was real. It REALLY was not real at all, and if you can REALLY honestly believe that totally, then you are free. The world cannot have even HAPPENED in this innocence, which is why there is no world. The Atonement PROVES and demonstrates that the world is not real at all and does not exist. The ego is not real and does not exist.
Then there is great cause for relief, freedom and celebration, as you finally OWN and CLAIM the innocence which has been yours, for real, all along. Nothing can take it away from you. Nothing can stake a "real claim" of any kind that you don't deserve it. Therefore YOU ARE WORTHY OF GOD'S LOVE! All sense of unworthiness and the belief in it is nothing more than the belief that you are a real sinner. Undo that, and it becomes 100% obvious and clear that you MUST be worthy of God's love because you ACTUALLY ARE still innocent. And the atonement is something you can actually EXPERIENCE!
You are forgiven. God has never condemned you. You were GROSSLY MISTAKEN in believing that you had actually done something really wrong, producing real suffering. You just weren't perceiving illusions correctly. Sin is not real. There is no sin. "What if you looked within and saw, there is no sin?"
You're still the innocent holy child of God. You are still as God created you. Claim this atonement by recognizing ALL sin, guilt, fear, suffering, sickness and death, bodies and the world, are just part of an unreal illusion which is not reality at all. That's how you're still innocent, still worthy of God's unconditional love, and still authorized to be a part of Heaven.
Welcome Home.
"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."
When we believed in separation from God, we entered into a very confused and backwards way of thinking. We shut out reality. We denied truth. We split and narrowed our minds and drove ourselves insane.
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
We swapped the meaning of everything. What was true became false. What was false became true. Innocence was considered a sin. Sin was considered innocence. God was regarded as an evil dictator. Ego was regarded as your saviour. Death was believed to be life, and sickness was believed to save you from God. Darkness was light and punishment was atonement.
You no longer recognize what anything actually is. When you look upon things you do not see what they are, you see what you made of them. You see the twisted meanings and deceptions that you made of them. You don't believe that God is love. And you think death is your friend. You do not even recognize your own self.
"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself."
"Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."
So now we have a world filled with crazy people. People who do not know which way is up. People whose priorities are all over the place purely because they think they've made a really great decision, when in fact they have poor judgement.
If your whole belief about what something is, is wrong, it changes how it looks to you and what it means to you. If it's something which in truth would hurt you, and you see it as helpful, you might choose it on purpose believing it will help you.
This is the case with sickness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" tells you that you mis-perceive God. You think God or Truth is a threat to you, an enemy. You see attack and vengeance and danger in him. Having hallucinated these lies, you then react to them. And you reason, if God is trying to destroy me, I need to get away from God.
Then you will try to create a distance between you and God. And this is a problem because God is, in the big picture truth, life and wholeness and health and happiness. So you resist God, thinking God is your enemy, and by doing so choose to go away from these things. So you head towards sickness and death and limitation and weakness, all under the belief that you are saving your life from a real threat.
Then you end up suffering and you hate it and you think you didn't choose it. You don't want it because who could want it really, but you did want it because you chose it. And you chose it because you made a wrong decision.
"I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace."
The decision was based on you thinking that you knew what everything is, when you didn't, and were misinformed and deceived. So you deceived yourself and lied to yourself and then followed that lie as guidance and ended up hurting yourself. But you didn't think it was going to hurt, you thought it was helpful.
So literally the people in the world believe that suffering is salvation. Punishment is seen as justified and right and a form of healing and education. More suffering for the guilty is seen as atonement. And people literally choose to die, in an attempt to claim their innocence. If someone else is to blame, you get to be exonerated, and you think this will save your life, but you die instead.
"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."
It's all to do with having a faulty guidance system. A screwed up navigation. The map is all wrong. The signposts are all backwards. You think you're going towards stuff which is truly good by choosing things which are definitely not. And all because you do not know what the fuck you are doing.
You do not know who you are, what you are, where you came from, how you got here, why you are here, what you are doing, why you are doing it. You even doubt whether you were even ever really created and suspect that you are an illusion that doesn't even exist.
"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."
So this is the problem we all have. We do not correctly recognize what anything actually is. And so we keep being in a state of self-deception. And then we make choices based on this deception, which turn out to move us towards "what we want", just as all choices do, except the stuff we've chosen is not in our best interests. But we thought it was.
So we keep hurting ourselves. We know not what we do. We are lost. We are insane. We need to be straightened out. We need help from outside the insanity (Holy Spirit etc). We need to be corrected. We need to be willing to be mistaken. We need to examine the beliefs and meanings we've given to everything and look for a better way.
"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."
Every strategy. Every form of problem solving. Every way of relating. Everything you think you'll gain or lose. Every scenario. It all has to be brought into question and re-evaluated by the One who knows. Your mind needs to be corrected and trained to line up with what is ACTUALLY TRUE, and what you can actually have, and want, and what is fully in accord with God's will.
"ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self."
Recognition is the key. Properly discerning what something is or isn't. Being not deceived by anything. Correct clear accurate perception. Proper categorization of things. Is something true on God's terms, or is it false? Can it be real in God, or is it unreal? It is really what it appears to be, or is it something else? Are you mistaken? If you are not enlightened, you are mistaken.
"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."
If you could fully recognize what everything actually is, to see it clearly, without distortions of reality, without hallucinations, without fake meanings and artificial values, without wishful thinking or delusion, without denial and without attack or resistance, you would be enlightened.
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
When everything false is finally seen for what it is, recognized to be unreal and nothing, with no value and no further purpose, it will disappear.
"Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers when you choose to see all suffering as what it is."
"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are."
"Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you."
"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body."
"In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas."
"The ego will NEVER let you perceive this, for this recognition WILL make it homeless. For, when this recognition dawns clearly, you will NOT be deceived by ANY form the ego takes, to protect itself FROM your sight."
"Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality."
"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed."
"Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings."
"The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world's."
"That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity."
"The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself."
"For recognition comes of vision and SUSPENDED judgment."
"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED."
"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible."
"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."
"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."
"Your function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you want, in recognition that YOU DO NOT KNOW. How, then, CAN you decide what you should do? Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it."
"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is ONLY WHAT IS TRUE."
"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point."
"The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace."
"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."
"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is." "Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them."
"Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you."
Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…
“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”
“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”
“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”
“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”
“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”
“I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty.”
“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”
“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”
“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."
“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”
“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”
“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”
“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”
“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”
“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”
“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”
“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”
“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”
“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”
“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”
“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”
“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”
“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 is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”
“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”
“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”
“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”
“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”
“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”
“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”
“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”
“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”
“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”
“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”
“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”
In the course, we know that Jesus tells us how we project stuff out and then perceive it. Okay, makes sense. But for the most part, it makes sense at the level of you as an individual perceiving "the world out there" in a certain way, that you've got stuff "inside your mind, inside your body", which you're putting onto the world.
And then we think that the course is also telling us to "change our mind about the world", meaning, the world stays as it is, and we need to "see it differently." This is because we apply it at the level of an individual, assuming the world got there through some other means.
BUT HOW ABOUT THIS.......*roll up your sleeves*
The Son of God is dreaming the entire physical universe. He is PROJECTING IT. He is doing so using the power of his mind, which has within it the power to perform miracles.
HE projects and makes the world appear. HE then perceives what he has projected. Therefore, if HE changes HIS MIND, about what he has projected, the projected world WILL LITERALLY CHANGE FORM, PHYSICALLY!
Not your "view of the world". THE WORLD ITSELF WILL CHANGE. A direct power of the mind over matter, a power to make anything appear AT WILL. Not you shifting your little private perspective to "see it differently".... but your mind, actually CAUSING THE WORLD TO CHANGE, by projecting A DIFFERENT WORLD! AT THE PHYSICAL LEVEL!
With this viewpoint in mind, consider, that maybe when you read statements about perception, projection, what you see, the world you see, and what changes or shifts when you change your perception, MAYBE... you read it in a certain context thinking it was about your view OF the world, and didn't realize it was talking about YOU MAKING THE WORLD LITERALLY CHANGE WITH YOUR MIND. And what if we revisit those statements and consider them from this new perspective?
Here we go...
"Projection makes perception. The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you."
---- How about this.... "the world you see" means the physical earth and NOT your interpretation of it.
---- "what you have put there to see" is because YOUR MIND has literally projected PHYSICAL OBJECTS, in order to see them.
"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."
--- How about this... "witness to your state of mind, and outward picture of your inward condition", literally means, THE PHYSICAL FORMS THAT ARE SHOWING UP, are being put there by your mind! They reflect what's going on inside of you. This relates to YOUR BODY, as well as to objects in the physical environment. Your body shows up as a representation of how your mind is expressing (love or attack), and SO DOES THE ENVIRONMENT. The environment is being projected this way BY THE SON OF GOD who is responsible for putting all of the content into the world, all objects, all forms. You are PROJECTING THE WORLD LITERALLY, not just as a metaphor, nor anything to do with you having a "separate" perception of what is out there.
--- How about.. projection makes perception, actually means, you FIRST PUT OBJECTS INTO THE WORLD, then you perceive them! NOT... that you project mental interpretations ONTO the objects and perceive the interpretations! What if, changing your mind, literally will show up as a DIFFERENT WORLD OF FORM? What if you will project a different earth?!
"As you think so do you perceive. So do not seek to change the world but choose to change your mind about the world's reality. What you perceive is a result, not a cause."
--- How about this... "what you perceive is a result, not a cause", tells us that what we see, in any form of seeing, is not causality, because THERE IS NO CAUSE IN THE WORLD. What we see out there, objects, cars, people, houses, trees, is the RESULT of what we WANT TO BE OUT THERE.
--- How about, our minds are so powerful and strong, and creative, they are capable of, and ARE ALWAYS, projecting images of bodies and trees and houses and other stuff, literally MATERIALIZING MATTER, based on the inner content of our mind!
--- How about, when Jesus tells us to not to seek to change the world, he is ACTUALLY telling us, that there's no point changing the RESULT of what we project, we MIGHT AS WELL JUST PROJECT SOMETHING ELSE. Since we have the ability to PUT objects out there, which we then perceive, we might as well just change our mind about what to PUT THERE, and therefore change the content of the world! Changing your mind "about the world" therefore means to shift what you WANT TO SEE, and so be it, IT WILL APPEAR!
"That is why no miracle is harder than another."
--- How about this... miracles demonstrate that nothing in this world is caused by anything but your mind, and they are only effects, projections, from YOU, and nothing would even be showing up OUT THERE if YOU weren't putting stuff there with your mind right now, as you have been all along. Your body, your world, your environment, are all coming from the miracle-minded son of God. Therefore, just as miracles can EASILY CHANGE what is out there, so too do you have the ability to CHANGE THE WORLD by USING A MIRACLE, and there is no limit to what you can do.
Perhaps then, Jesus isn't so much teaching us here, in this context, about changing "how we view" the world or what ways we're misinterpreting it and so on. How about, if he is actually telling us that what's showing up out there, is COMING FROM US AT ALL TIMES, and we are supposed to be in a position of having this kind of mastery, where we can CHOOSE, whatever it is that is going to show up, BECAUSE we are miraculous and our mind has POWER OVER ALL MATTER?!
We are supernatural. We are not bystanders in a world that someone else made.
Jesus goes onto say similar things in other quotes, which COULD also lend themselves to an entirely new interpretation of how we project the world, rather than talking about how you "interpret" what's there.
For example:
"The world you see is an illusion of a world." (literally the world itself, not HOW you see it)
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (literally you invented the physical objects themselves, not HOW you see them)
"Every thought you have makes up some segment of the world you see. It is with your thoughts then, that we must work, if your perception of the world is to be changed." (literally your thought MAKES THE WORLD, the PHYSICAL PLANET, and therefore you need to change your mind in order to SEE something else!)
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. Ideas leave not their source. " (the physical planet IS NOT THERE UNLESS YOU WISH IT TO BE. Change your mind about WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE, and the world - planet earth - physical matter, WILL CHANGE ACCORDINGLY!)
"The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that." (you literally see only the world that YOU PUT THERE IN FORM, nothing to do with "how you interpret what's there" at all)
"The world you see does not exist." (the world you see means the physical EARTH, and it does not exist. This has NOTHING to do with YOUR INTERPETATIVE PERCEPTION *OF* it)
"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (you choose what you want to see and project the forms! then you see them)
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt" (because people made mad with guilt have PROJECTED FORMS which symbolize and represent madness, making a dysfunctional planet!)
If we interpret all these kind of statements from a perspective of YOU CAUSING EVERYTHING, and not from a perspective of "the world is out there objectively on its own and I need to change how I interpret it)... it lends an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT meaning to the MIRACLE WORKING which Jesus is trying to teach us to perform!
What if all along, Jesus has been trying to get us to change our mind, SO THAT we project a different world? A happy dream? So that we "cause" a state of peace on earth temporarily? Literally, in manifestation? What if we were never supposed to think of our perceptual changes as "reinterpretations of whats out there" but simply as, undoing our self attack so that we PROJECT a different world?
Is this not what Jesus is teaching when he tells us, that how you use the body, it will become to you? That if you use it for attack, it will SHOW UP WITH SICKNESS? That if you use it for love, IT WILL SHOW UP AS INVULNERABLE? That are we supposed to be DEMONSTRATING IN THE FLESH that we cannot be hurt, because the MATTER that we project can be made incapable of being caused by the world? Because it's coming from our mind? THAT WE LITERALLY, DIRECTLY, ARE DREAMING IT ALL?!
You can share the power of God, if you know how to pray. "Prayer (asking) is the medium of miracles". - ACIM
How do you ask? How do you pray? How do you accurately communicate with God as to what you want? How do you cause to happen what you want to happen, instead of what your unconscious chooses against you?
One part of miracles is believing you have received what it is you want, or in other words, acceptance of its "reality". But the receiving is only part of it. There is also the asking. "Ask and you shall receive". So how do you ask?
Asking isn't done by there being a sense of separation between you and what you want to happen. It isn't done in a typical asking fashion, where you say, "I do not have this yet, but I want it". That simply affirms and states that you do not have it, and that's going to remain the case. You think this is asking, but this is how a victim asks.
In victim consciousness, where you see yourself as powerless, where there are causes outside of you working against you, and where you are afraid, you tend to withdraw and stay frozen, acting as if you are choosing or wanting, but basically remaining paralyzed. There is no power in it.
This lack of power, or empowerment, literally means that the Holy Spirit - who is the expression of God's Power, has been blocked. Or basically, you are choosing not to USE His Power. His Power is shared with Christ, who you are, but if you are in a victim consciousness you have disowned yourself, and therefore disowned this power.
To ask correctly must entail the presence of POWER, because it is that power which actually gives you power OVER illusions, and actually is like a "force" which can make actual changes. If you are not empowered, then you are cut off from the power you share with God, and therefore do not have the power to do anything. So when you ask, in a disempowered state, you really strongly believe that there is no power that can actually act, and therefore the power does not do anything.
So you could be in a victim mindset and be very very strongly "asking" for help or change, pleading with God, begging for someone to be healed, and nothing is happening. Because even though you're making a lot of noise, most of which is a reaction to perceiving that there's a "really big real problem", it's all ego expressions, not expressions of empowerment.
You can also be in wishful thinking. You could be saying "I wish I wasn't sick". There is no power in that whatsoever. So it's a wish, but it doesn't do anything. So it's not really a request. You're not really asking for the sickness to be healed even if you're wishing very hard. You can really really strongly feel that you really really "want" a person to be not sick, because you think the sickness is real and want to help, but this "wanting" is not asking. It is just making the problem real and reacting to that delusional perception, taking the form of "looking like" you're asking, but really doing absolutely nothing.
God has the power to do anything. And the Holy Spirit can express that power with no limits. This power comes because God EXTENDS. And you are meant to be sharing in that power, causing you to be ABLE to actually CAUSE ANYTHING to happen. But you're not going to be able to wield that power if you are not in alignment with "being empowered". So victimhood has to go. You have to become responsible for being what you really are. You have to claim the truth and own up to your causality, which you share with God.
When you are in the victim mindset, you have disempowered yourself, and you are used to having no power. You think that if you do spiritual practices and "wake up" then you will still be a disempowered being, perhaps more responsible and aware but you don't realize it means you will have ACCESS TO REAL POWER. The power that creates worlds. There is a line in ACIM urtext which says "your mind has the power to create planets". No joke.
So if you want to get access to the power, first and foremost, you need to get out of the victim mind, which is your long-term goal of becoming closer to God's truth. As you approach that truth and align yourself with it, you are opting to become an extender of God's power (love). Meanwhile, you need to learn how to ask.
Asking is more of an act of stating that something is already manifest. It is a command. It isn't really a question. It's like writing reality. You don't ask by begging or traditional ego asking. You state what you believe in. There is, however, a caveat to this.
Such power can only be used for the highest good of all. You cannot be a "power ego" that gets access to God's power but uses it for all kinds of ego whims and purposes. The power only works through ego relinquishment, which automatically means it cannot be even accessed for malevolent purposes. It can only be accessed and used for loving purposes. This is why you need to be clear about what God's will is, because you can only use His Power if it is God's will that you do so.
if you want, lovingly, for a person's sickness to be healed, you do not say, "I'd like that healed please". You also do not ask God "are you going to heal this" or "can you heal this please?". You instead state a "new reality". You command the old reality to go, by cancelling the illusions psychologically, then you state what you want to change. You tell it to change, using that power. Your word becomes powerful.
"All your sins are forgiven, get up and walk" - Jesus' example.
Jesus isn't wishy washy in his asking. He is commanding. Authoritative. That's the key to asking. He doesn't ask God to maybe do something. He joined WITH God, BECOMES the power, SHARES the power, and EXPRESSES the power. THAT is correct prayer. That is the highest level of prayer. When there is a separation in the prayer where you think there is some obstacle to overcome, some time delay, some real problem, or some doubt as to whether it's going to transfer, that's basically ego and it will rob you of your power.
True prayer, the highest song, ACTS, as if it is real already. Jesus says his "workers are ACTIVE workers". It's not a form of asking that the ego is used to. It's counter to the ego's intuition. It's almost like, looking into the future and visualizing what it's going to be like, believing it is true, and pulling the future state into the present by receiving the truth that it WILL happen and already has. This is totally the opposite of the ego's form of asking, which focuses on the PAST and the reality of existing problems, causing there to be no power in the present and no ability to affect the future.
Thus, since asking is prayer, prayer must mean commanding results, ie expressing LOVE from love's perspective, as a representative of love, and it means that whatever song you are singing, whatever truth you are radiating, whatever you are ASSERTING, that is what you are giving, and that is what you are asking for. So asking in a way is backwards, you do not ask, you command. You receive.
You believe God's truth and make it a reality, regardless of what form looks like currently. How can a new form be expressed (e.g. a healed body) if you are dwelling on what the existing form looks like, or if you keep looking to the existing form to see if it has changed? Instead you focus squarely on the reality in the mind - what you are CAUSING TO HAPPEN. You do have a right to this power and you can access this power. It is your inheritance. But you need to unlearn the ego's ways of causing stuff to not happen, in order to reawaken the proper FUNCTIONING of the Son of God.
THE GOLDEN RULE - THE LAW OF PERMANENT EQUALITY
Because God creates in His own likeness, all creations are of the same nature. What is true of one, is true of another. They are all equal and identical. This establishes "The Golden Rule", God’s law of oneness, that all created things are of one kind. And so what applies to me, applies to you and the whole sonship. Here giving and receiving are one.
The ego is the attempt to deny the Golden Rule and oppose it. It’s an attempt to break Gods law or to live as if the Golden Rule does not apply. The Golden Rule always applies without exception. It is the belief that you and your brother are different. It is disagreement, war, competition, selfishness, isolation, posession, attack and conflict.
In egotism, in separation, you believe the truth of you is not the same as the truth of another. This puts a divide between cause and effect. You now believe giving is separate from receiving. You think you can give without receiving (sacrifice). You think you can receive without giving (getting). It is also a state of separation between cause and effect. In this denial, you believe you can cause effects in another, and yet escape the consequences. By doing so, you get away with murder. ("What is not love is murder.")
Even if you are in denial of the Golden Rule, it still applies. So now you think you can attack or have something be true of someone else, and have no effects in you. But the Golden Rule applies, so you do not escape the effects. You think you can hurt another without hurting yourself, but you do not realize that you still hurt yourself. The plans you make for your brother, you receive the effects of.
This ties directly into the secret of salvation. Any suffering you experience, you chose and made happen. You thought you could make causal choices without be affected, but you can’t. As such, if you use the body for attack, thinking this will hurt another, you will be hurt, and your body will suffer. Condemning a brother will make you sick. Whatever you attempt to make apply to them, applies to you. If they are guilty, so are you. The body, used for attack, is attacked, by you directly. ("sick bodies are accusers.") With enough attack, the body will become so sick it will die. This is all because of misuse of the law.
When you are in denial of the law, it will seem that the law is working to punish you. This shows up as what seems to be karma. Not a score-keeping karma, but an immediate karma that is self imposed. In other words, if you try to make someone suffer, you will hurt yourself. You cannot escape the law. And so because of the law, when you attack, you will be attacked. And it will be you who attacks yourself.
"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves". In other words, if you do not love yourself, thinking you hate another, you will hate and attack yourself and make yourself sick. This self attack becomes literal suicide. Any sign of sickness or death in the body symbolizes the attacking attitude of the mind. You will literally force yourself to suffer and be sick in an attempt to accuse your brother of sin. You will even kill yourself to prove your innocence. No one escapes the effects they attempt to cause in another.
The Golden Rule can also work in your favor. When you are teaching only love, you are causing only love, and so the effect is love, and you will receive love. If you do not want to suffer, your only option is to love - yourself and others., equally. Whatever you cause or choose, you absolutely must receive the effects. You cannot get away with thinking you can cause a brother or have something be true of them only, such as that they are sinful and you are not, and expect to escape your own attack. "Those who attempt to send others to hell, must be in hell themselves."
The Golden Rule is not a law of punishment. Nor is it religious dogma. Nor is it a threat. Nor is it an attempt to make anyone guilty. It is purely a law of permanent equality and accountability. Whatever you try to make true of a brother you will have to experience as true of you also. You are free to CHOOSE what it will be that is true for you, but you cannot be free of the consequences. You yourself, per the law of your own mind, will ensure that you receive everything you cause.
This is what it means that "all prayers are answered". This is what it means that "ask and you shall receive". Whatever you ask, ie cause, or believe in, or choose, will become true for you and your brother. It always applies either to both of you, or neither. Either you are both sinners or you are both innocent. You can choose what seems to apply, but you cannot choose WHO it applies to. It always applies to the whole sonship. You are always included in the effects of your causing.
What is true of you is always true of everyone. If you try to attack another, you will attack yourself. You cannot hurt anyone without being hurt. It is delusional to believe you are separate from the effects of what you choose. If anything seems to apply to another and not to yourself, you are in denial. You may not be aware of how it is hurting you, and because of this denial you think you CAN dump sin onto another without you being sinful. This is impossible. If you become more aware of your feelings, reactions, health etc, you will realize every time you attack, you suffer. You can become more sensitive to this and less tolerant of self-inflicted pain.
It is not possible to hate and love at the same time. Hate another and you will hate yourself. It is not possible to be innocent and find someone else guilty at the same time. Either you are both guilty or neither are. It is not possible to maintain peace while attacking. It is not possible to try to hurt another without hurting yourself. It’s not possible to be offended without offending. It is not possible to be a victim without being a victimizer. It is not possible to be sick without attempting to make others sick. And is it not possible to die without attacking the world, accusing everyone else of causing it to happen.
When the body is used to bring the word of God to those who have it not, which means to use it only to love and heal, you are being loving towards yourself. This means you are healing yourself. Your body, which symbolizes your attitude towards yourself and others, will be healed. It cannot be sick, nor can it die. When you and your brother are recognized as healed and holy, the body will also heal. The body can no longer be left through death, because this would violate the law. It is erased from the dream by vanishing, as the gap is closed. The mind then returns to Heaven, one with and equal to the whole sonship.
Abide by God’s law and you will enjoy eternal life. Attempt to deny it and you will use it to hurt yourself. This isn’t God’s punishment, it is your own. It is not God’s will that you suffer. God’s will for you is perfect happiness. Heaven is a choice you must make. Teach only love, and you will receive only love. And this will overcome all suffering, sickness and death forever. The secret of salvation is your guide. It’s aim is joyful, willingful compliance with the law. The law is your friend. It guarantees your equality with all of creation and oneness with God. You are free to choose how you apply it, but you are not free to choose how it operates. Choose only life and you will never die. Those who love themselves, do not hurt themselves, and therefore do not choose death.
The body is a wall, like a fence, which was drawn around a PART of your total mind, in order to section it off and claim it as personal territory. The purpose of this body fence is to define that some tiny portion of your mind is yours alone, not shared with anyone, and that all of God and Creation are kept outside. Within this fence is the idea of the selfish self, the ego, which now regards itself as a whole self, but through bodily identification lacks the relationships that imply being.
This means that as you return to the wholeness of yourself, of your soul, you necessarily must re-inherit and open up to the vast expanse of the rest of your mind, which had been disconnected and externalized. Literally, the rest of you is out there, in your brothers. You are much larger than the tiny little PIECE of self that is hidden in a body. Only a PART of your mind finds itself imprisoned in flesh and the rest of you is unlimited.
Your mind is in fact so unlimited it is larger than the universe of spacetime. And symbolically we invented bodies as a tiny speck of a fence around a tiny speck of the total mind/self. This tiny piece of yourself is what finds itself within the body, as an ego, believing it is the whole of yourself. The whole rest of yourself symbolically is outside the body fence as the external universe. And it is huge in comparison. When you awaken, you reunite with the rest of the universe that you separated a PART of your mind off from. Thus not ALL of you went into the separation, only a tiny portion of your total mind.
"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."
"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate ***parts of his Self from other parts***. It is ***within this fence he thinks he lives***, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love (the whole of himself). Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is. How else could he be certain he remains within the body, keeping love (the rest of him) outside (symbolized by the external world)?"
"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him. The body is a tiny fence ***around a little part*** of a glorious and completely limitless idea (your full self). It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little ***segment*** of Heaven (a PART of your full mind), splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules (the selfish/special/posessive self that produces the body fence), and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe (the rest of you which seems outside the body and symbolically extremely vast).
***This fragment of your mind ("the ego") is such a tiny part of it***, that, could you but appreciate the whole, you would see instantly that it is like the smallest sunbeam is to the sun (you are much bigger than your little body self). Or like the faintest ripple on the surface of the ocean. In its amazing arrogance, this tiny sunbeam has decided it IS the sun; this almost imperceptible ripple hails itself as the ocean. Think how alone and frightened is this little thought, this infinitesimal illusion, holding itself apart, against the universe. The sun (God/soul/oneness) becomes the sunbeam's "enemy," which would devour it. And the ocean terrifies the little ripple, and "wants" to swallow it.
Yet neither sun nor ocean is even aware of all this strange and meaningless activity (God does not acknowledge your belief that part of you is separate from the rest). They merely continue, unaware that they are feared and hated by a tiny segment of themselves. ***Even that segment is not LOST to them*** (this tiny part of mind must be KEPT and reintegrated), for it could not survive APART from them. And what IT thinks it is in no way changes ***its total dependence on them FOR ITS BEING***. Its whole existence still remains IN THEM (you are always joined to the rest of yourself). Without the sun, the sunbeam WOULD be gone; the ripple WITHOUT the ocean IS inconceivable.
Such is the strange position in which those in a world inhabited by bodies seem to be. Each body seems to house a SEPARATE mind (a part of your total mind that is separated off), a DISCONNECTED thought, living alone and in no way joined to the Thought by which it was created. Each tiny fragment seems to be self-contained (your little sense of self), needing each other for SOME things, but by no means TOTALLY depended on their One Creator for EVERYTHING. And needing the whole to give them ANY meaning, for by themselves, they DO mean nothing. Nor HAVE they any life apart, and by themselves. (the little part of mind separated off in the body is still part of the whole).
Yet, like the sun and ocean, your Self continues, unmindful that this tiny part regards ITSELF as you. It is not missing; ***it could not EXIST if it were separate*** (its not really separate), nor would the whole BE whole without it. It is not a separate kingdom, ruled by an IDEA of separation from the rest. Nor does a fence surround it (body is an illusion), preventing it ***from JOINING with the rest*** (of you), and keeping it apart from its Creator. This little aspect is NO DIFFERENT from the whole (still holy mind), being continuous with it, ***and at one with it***. It leads no separate life, because its life IS in the Oneness in which its being was created.
Do not accept this little, fenced-off aspect ***as*** your Self (because you are unlimited). The sun and ocean are as nothing, beside what YOU are. The sunbeam sparkles only in the sunlight, and the ripple dances as it rests upon the ocean. Yet in neither sun nor ocean is the power that rests in you. Would you remain WITHIN your tiny kingdom (body), a sorry king, a bitter ruler of all he surveys, who looks on nothing (the world/gap), but who would still die to DEFEND it? This little self is NOT your kingdom. Arched high above it, and surrounding it, with love, is the glorious whole, which offers all its happiness and deep content to EVERY part. (including the separated off mind that's in a body)."
Here is also an additional quote from elsewhere in the course which confirms further that only a small part of our mind was stolen away from heaven, not all of us, and finds itself now to be in a body.
"Therefore, it is the tiny part of your self, the little thought that seems split off and separate, that the Holy Spirit needs. The rest is fully in God's keeping, and needs no guide. But this wild and delusional thought needs help, because, in its delusions, it thinks it is the Son of God, whole and omnipotent, sole ruler of the kingdom it set apart to tyrannize by madness into obedience and slavery.
This is the LITTLE part of you you think you stole from Heaven. Give it back to Heaven. Heaven has not lost it, but YOU have lost sight of Heaven. Let the Holy Spirit remove it from the withered kingdom in which you set it up, surrounded by darkness, guarded by attack, and reinforced by hate. Within its barricades is still a tiny segment of the Son of God, complete and holy, serene and unaware of what you think surrounds it. Be you not separate, for the One Who DOES surround it has brought union to you, returning your little offering of darkness to the Eternal Light."
Have a look at this picture. It seems like an image of a person. You can see a hand waving. You can see the person's head and shoulder. There's a person there, isn't there?
Well actually, take a more discerning look. There is no person in the image. It's a wall with a shadow on it. Look at the shadow, what is it? Is it a thing in its own right? In fact, the shadow isn't really a thing at all. It's really nothing other than "the absence of light."
It's not as if "a darkness" came along and put itself onto the wall, forcing the light to go away. It's the reverse. It's merely a seeming appearance of light not being present. And that's not even remotely the same thing as "darkness being present". Even in this physical world, by the laws of physics, light dispels darkness, darkness does not dispel light.
So there is light, and there is the absence of light. People think of the absence of light as "real darkness", as if it's a something, has substance, exists. It doesn't really. It's just a lack of light. What happens when the light shines brightly? The shadow disappears completely, because the "lack of light" has been supplied and filled up with light. Then there is no more shadow, no more "illusion of darkness."
Believing that the shadow or the darkness are a real something, that they represent a life form, that they are alive with a mind of their own, that it is doing something, that has will and power and causality, that there's an entire "something happening" there... that's all totally illusion. Total fiction. It's nothing other than light's absence. It's an illusion that "light is not everywhere", which can't be true because real light is infinite and omnipresent. In the light of God, there is no darkness.
And so you can't call the darkness "real evil". It's not. It's absolutely nothing more than what appears to be light's absence. As soon as light shines, light shines away the darkness. The "darkness" that seemed to be "its own thing" has no defense whatsoever against this light. Light dispels it instantly. The shadow can't say to the light "I will not be shone away". It vanishes. It has no power, no mind, no will, no decision, no say in the matter. Because it literally is nothing.
Believing otherwise is as if to say, a fictional illusion of darkness chooses of its own free will to scream with a voice that says "I shall not be removed", which has absolutely no effect and has no power whatsoever unless YOU believe in it. And this is why Jesus says the ego (darkness) is nothing but a tiny mouse. And the darkness HAS no power unless YOU give it power. And it's only YOU trying to MAKE the darkness "be something" that makes you delusional and believe that something "dark" is happening (suffering, death etc).
This world, the world we made in the "separation" from God, is nothing other than a shadow. A seeming illusion of light's absence, in which the shadow itself SEEMS to take on shapes and forms and to do things. There even seem to be events, living creatures, and stuff happening to them. But ALL of it is fiction. It's entirely just "darkness" pretending to exist. And all of this darkness, what holds it in place in the mind (by the mind), is simply an attempt to DENY THE LIGHT. To block it, and to try to give "light's absence" some kind of reality or truth that it does not and never will have. You can't make an illusion real.
When you're looking at the shadow and thinking, that's really a "something", now you've lost your mind and gone into the ego - the belief that darkness really exists and can oppose the light, or do something to the light, or cause the light to stop shining. The belief that "darkness can hide." Darkness cannot make light go away, anymore than the shadows under a tree can determine for themselves that they continue to stay put when the sun moves its location.
There is a very subtle fine line between *recognizing* that all of this shadow stuff is JUST light's absence, an illusion of darkness, versus starting to READ INTO IT and believe that the darkness actually has its own properties, a life of its own, that it is making stuff happen. That's when you fail to recognize the illusion for what it is. That's when you're going unconscious and hallucinating that illusions are real and darkness is real evil and terrible things are happening.
Look at it. This world is nothing but a shadow. It's nothing but a blob of the appearance that light is absent. It is NOTHING on its own. It has no reality. No substance. No real solidity. It's not really there. The instant the light comes to shine upon it, it must VANISH. Darkness has no defense against the light.
"Eternity will shine away the world."
The ONLY reason that it seems as though the world of darkness persists or SEEMS able to RESIST the light, or choose against it, or deny it, or block it.. the only reason you SEEM to be even ABLE to have a "block to awareness" to PREVENT light from shining upon you and keeping you in the light "against your will"... is because you HAVE free will. You can choose, and you can believe in things, even if they are not real. And it's your free-willed, God-given free will attempt to DENY THE LIGHT, by choice, that is "causing" what seems to be a situation where the darkness is "persisting". That you seem able to "block God". That sin seems possible.
All you are doing is choosing to deny the light with your mind, and hold onto the dark shadows, to try to KEEP the light from shining away the world. And this takes mental effort. It requires active denial. Because the instant that you surrender and let go and stop resisting the light, the darkness must be dispelled.
This is also why Jesus says that "illusions recognized must disappear". The instant you *recognize* that that thing you thought had reality/mind/causing you etc is NOTHING but an ILLUSION of a shadow, seeming to be a "something", but is literally NOTHING other than light's absence, the minute you stop believing there is REALLY a "living scene" with a person standing there waving, you have RECOGNIZED it's just an illusion.
You see through the illusion - which is what FORGIVENESS means. To forgive is to overlook - to overlook the darkness and NOT BELIEVE IT IS ANYTHING. You recognize - that's just light seeming to be absent. And this recognition transcends whatever FORMS the shadows are seeming to take. And you see clearly, without interpretation, there is nothing there, just light seeming to be a little absent. That recognition DISPELS the illusion that the darkness "was alive and doing stuff." And so the illusion is broken. The light of awareness shines upon the illusion and shines it away. The illusion - the darkness - DISAPPEARS.
Look at that image again. It's just light and its absence. Think of this world. It is just light's absence. Just a shadow, a nothing. In heaven, from reality's perspective, there is no world. There was just a brief moment of seeming "lack of light", and then through willingness the light was allowed to be recognized as NOT absent, and thus the darkness was dispelled. Recognizing Heaven's truth makes it impossible for darkness to remain. And what is that darkness - it's the ego. The ego is just another word for "what does not exist." It's just another way to say, "light seems absent, but it's not".
When the entire universe is recognized as being NOTHING other than a mere shadow on a wall, in which NOTHING is happening whatsoever ("all events are nowhere"), and the only NEED is to supply the light, the light will come.. and the universe will vanish. The Earth and all the planets and stars and galaxies will vanish in this LIGHT. And "Heaven is all that remains". Because there is no Earth, no world, no universe. There is only the Kingdom of God. The living world of light. Pervasive light that is everywhere WITHOUT shadows, where darkness DOES NOT EXIST AT ALL.
"The ego is nothing more than a PART of your belief about yourselves. Your other life has continued without interruption, and has been and always will be totally unaffected by your attempts to dissociate (separate)."
"Ego" is just a label, for what seems to happen within a PART of your own mind, when that part of your mind BELIEVES in separation. It is a label for the mind's insanity, its confusion, its attempt to be separate.
This "ego" is nothing more than a "lack of light", or the seeming darkness that appears to be there when light is lacking. But the darkness itself is not the PRESENCE of a darkness, it is merely the ABSENCE of a light.
Like a shadow, the shadow only forms when there is a limitation on the light, ie a blockage. When something is denying the light, it produces a seeming area of darkness. You would be DECEIVED to believe that this darkness itself was the PRESENCE of something, as if to say that "darkness can hide the light", or that darkness has a POWER to CAUSE light to go away.
"Miracles are associated with fear only because of the fallacy that darkness can hide."
The idea that the darkness has "come alive", has a mind or will of its own, has an evil nature, has evil intentions, is an enemy, is working against you on its own, etc, can only be believed by a confused mind. This is a "temptation" to be deceived.
To believe that the appearance of darkness means the PRESENCE of a "real evil", is delusional. It would be like saying that the darkness of night has caused the sun to go away.
In truth, the darkness COMPLETELY DEPENDS on the sustained blockage of the light. It depends on light's seeming absence. If the light were to shine, the absence of light would end, and whatever seemed to be "in" or "as" the darkness would literally disappear instantly into nothing. Light ALWAYS dispels darkness.
"Light dispels darkness automatically, by definition."
When mind is confused, insane, split, at war with itself, believing in separation, is twisted, believes that true things are false and false things are true, it develops a system of thought which seems backwards or "evil". It seems opposite to God and to goodness. It seems mad and selfish and special and exclusive, a mindset of war and destruction and death.
When this part of your mind believes wrongly, it somewhat hallucinates that the darkness is there. It invests the darkness with belief. It tries to give the darkness the properties of God, such as permanence, life, existence, power, will, etc. This is an attempt to believe that darkness or evil "really exists".
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
This illusion of darkness, which is NOT anything because it is a LACK OF anything, seems to a deluded mind to have its own existence. It seems to come alive, to have a voice, to have power, to have evil intentions of death. This is what we call the "ego". It is an illusion of a separate self, some kind of alien will or separate mind that seems to have its own power.
But at no time does this illusion of an ego or a "real darkness" ever become anything more than the absence of light. It never stops being a mere shadow on a wall, a temporary appearance of something missing. It is not a self, it is the LACK of self. It is not a real entity, it is the ABSENCE OF a real entity. It is like an empty dark hole.
The key thing is that this seeming darkness only persists so long as the MIND is believing in separation. The darkness completely depends on the continuation of this belief. The mind is the seat of all power. The mind is USING its power to PRETEND to be powerless, in which it SEEMS that this "dark self" has power over it. But in truth the powerful mind is animating this dark self, using this dark self, making this dark self act out like a puppet on a string.
This taps into the secret of salvation - that you are doing this all to yourself. The ego is not doing anything on its own. There is merely a part of your mind which YOU - as your mind - are pitting AGAINST the rest of you. You are at war with yourself. You are the mind that is "being egoic". You have an attitude problem. You have a faulty belief. That part of your mind which is believing wrongly seems to be "ego-like". It's trying to be evil. It's a part of YOU that you are trying to convert into the "devil."
In absolute truth, however, this egotism is nothing but an hallucination, this darkness is nothing but a lack of anything, its world and its body are nothing but illusions of nothingness pretending to be something, and there is no real separation anywhere. In absolute truth, there is no such thing as a real ego, a real devil, a real evil, and nor is the body or the world real. This is all part of the dream of separation, in which YOUR MIND is trying to hide from the light.
We should then not think of the ego as a separate entity, or the presence of a real evil, or some enemy with a will of its own to be fought and overcome. You do not do "battle with" the devil. There is no real war going on here beyond your BELIEF. Literally a part of your mind is "doing it all to itself." A part of your mind is trying to be evil. It is mistaken, but you DO have to own up to it.
You, as the soul, or the utilizer of the whole of mind, must find a way to reintegrate ALL of your mind into one whole. This INCLUDES the part of mind that is being ego. It does not include "the ego" itself, because that's just a description of a temporary "bad attitude" that part of mind is having. When that SAME mind receives correction from the Holy Spirit for its bad attitude, that same mind becomes holy again and reunites with the rest.
In truth then we have to at least temporarily own up to being the one who is trying to be separate. That ego in us - that's just a part of our own mind which is not healed yet. It's filled with ambitions that are twisted and evil-like. It needs significant correction and purification. That part of mind is sick and needs to be resurrected. Or rather, needs to awaken again to the awareness of the light. The light will dispel its hallucinations of darkness, and with it "the ego" - the lack of anything - will vanish completely.
The ego therefore has no power or will of its own to cause itself to exist, to maintain its existence, to fight against reality, or to stop "you" from undoing it. Literally there IS NO SEPARATE EGO. It's just part of YOU. Part of your mind that has gone astray.
When you own up to this, you RECLAIM ALL POWER from it, and no longer GIVE it power over you. How can it have power over you at all when it was really YOU having power over yourself all along? All you were ever really doing was using this puppet to have power OVER YOURSELF. You played BOTH victim AND victimizer. All the while believing you were being victimized by something which "is not me doing it."
When you finally see that ego is nothing but YOUR own self attack, and that you are the one doing all of the attacking, where is an enemy then? When you have owned up entirely to being the one who is being the devil/ego, your mind can now choose again, decide better, embrace the true self, and undo the separateness of the split. Mind reintegrates with mind, you reclaim ALL the power as your own, and never again will you victimize yourself with this fantasy of an enemy.
Where is the ego when the light has come? Nowhere. What was the ego? It was just an illusion of nothing seeming to be something. What was it made of? The lack of anything real. What did it seem to be? The darkness come alive. What was it really? The absence of the light. Where is it now that there is light? Nowhere. What is the ego? Nothing at all. It never really existed.
"The ego depends SOLELY on your willingness to tolerate it. But if you are willing to look upon your grandeur, you CANNOT despair, and therefore you CANNOT want the ego."
"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son."
"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."
"This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid."
"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"
"My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away."
"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."
"THERE IS ***NO LIFE*** OUTSIDE OF HEAVEN. Where God created life, there life must be. 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. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. Outside of Heaven (planet Earth, galaxies etc), only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions are but forms. Their content is never true."
A seed is sown. It sprouts. The plant grows tall. A bud appears. The bud opens and the flower blooms. The flower pollinates. The flower dies. The leaves wilt. The plant is dead. It crumbles, and all it becomes is the ground in which other seeds are sown.
THIS, is the fundamental nature of spacetime. Because you'll notice that the plant has to be in a constant state of CHANGE in order to be in ANY state. It cannot remain constantly the same. It has to always be transforming, growing, sprouting, adjusting, dying.
We like to say that new things are born, and old things die. This is a lie. There are not two states here, there is only one state. It is all death. All things here are changing, always, and they can never stop changing. Change is death, because only permanence is life. So even birth is death as well.
This is what stuff in this universe does, fundamentally, because everything here is based on the idea that "nothing ever stays the same." Which is the opposite of "everything lives forever."
We made it to be this way. It's a world based on the laws of death. Death is built into it. Not just the end result of death but even the sprouting and the flowering is a sign of death. It's death because it's not an eternal state. Change means the opposite of immortality, and therefore the opposite of life.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
Even if things appear to be born, to grow, to transform, to seem to live and then to die, all of it is death. All of it is what happens when nothing ever lasts and all things are constantly coming and going.
Nothing here is ever still. The idea of something being constantly the same is totally alien. Nothing here ever perpetuates forever. Nothing here can hold onto any sense of stable identity for any amount of time. Nothing is ever quite here and now, it's always transitioning from the past to the future. And therefore nothing here has an identity, because nothing is stable or ongoing or inherently permanent.
There is no self in a world of shifts and changes. There is no reality in such a world either, because reality cannot be shifting and unstable and constantly in flux. That which is real must always be the same, reliable, trustable, constant and changeless. It's like a rock that you can rely on. But nothing in this world provides this stability, because it's an unreal world.
Human bodies in any stage of development, ranging from fetus to birth to children to teens to adults to those older of age, it doesn't matter. Every stage is just one more version of a state of death in a dream of death under laws of death. Death is change. Life is eternal changelessness. Even as a newborn arrives, the body is already not really there and not really anything.
If something can change from one thing into another, it cannot really be what it seems to be. If it were a seed, and now its a plant, and then its a flower, and then it is garbage, it is not any of these things. There is no permanent nature to it. It has no continual identity that is unwavering and consistent. And so every state it transitions through is an illusion of appearances.
This ultimately is why there is no world. Everything that shifts and changes is unreal and does not really have any real here-and-now existence. And the body is never really in a state of complete here-and-now. It seems to be here now, but it is transitioning from what it was to what it will be. It has not stopped to be here and now, it will not stay the same for even a nanosecond.
"The body does not really exist."
"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all."
"None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."
Fully in the holy instant, in the total present, there is no body and there is no world. The world and the body are a little bit removed from here and now. In fact, the world is the past. And the body is either a memory or an anticipation. There is a slight delay between here and where the body and world are. Even in terms of the body's functioning, there is a delay in the perceiving of the world's signals.
A flower is not a flower, because it was a stalk, and was a seed, and will be a bush, and will be dirt. It is not fully anything, and so it is fully nothing.
Space, in general, is really the idea that nothing fully exists anywhere. It was made to oppose God. God exists fully everywhere. Space, and its contents, which includes flowers and bodies and the planet, depicts the idea that God is not fully anywhere, nothing exists everywhere, and therefore God is dead and has been replaced by non-existence. This is why it is an attack on God, an opposition to the nature of the Kingdom.
Time is no better. Time suggests that everything must always be different and nothing can ever be permanent. This too is an attack on eternity. It constantly changes what is into what it was not, and back again, and on it goes, never stopping to be anything truly. And so time is the idea that you never fully exist, and have no identity, and there is nothing true about you.
Space-time is just a belief. It's an ego belief in separation. When the belief is gone, space time is gone. And without space time you cannot have flowers and bodies and planets. There is nothing to keep things separate. Nothing to hold the atoms apart. Nothing to keep time ticking. They just vanish and all their dream contents go with them. Because there is not really a world here. It's an illusion. A world of death does not exist because death is an illusion. And the world is already dead.
"Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego's world because of this."
"But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."
"In this world, there appears to be a state that is life's opposite. You call it death."
"Yet each must fail and crumble and decay, because a form of death cannot be life, and what is sacrificed cannot be whole."
"Leave the world of death behind, and return quietly to Heaven. There is nothing of value here, and everything of value there."
"It is the world of birth and death, founded on the belief in scarcity, loss, separation and death"
"For this world is the opposite of Heaven, being made to be its opposite, and everything here takes a direction exactly opposite of what is true."
"All the world of pain is not His Will"
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear (=death). And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God (life) could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world"
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
"Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."
"He has overcome death because he has accepted life."
The first obstacle that peace must flow across is YOUR desire to get RID of it. For it cannot extend, UNLESS you keep it. YOU are the center from which it radiates outward, to call the others IN. You are its home; its tranquil dwelling-place, from which it gently reaches out, but NEVER leaving YOU. If YOU would make it homeless, how can it abide within the Son of God? If it would spread across the whole creation, it MUST begin with you. And, FROM you, reach to everyone who calls, and bring him rest by JOINING you.
Why would you want peace homeless? What do you think that it must DISPOSSESS, to dwell in you? What SEEMS to be the cost you are so unwilling to pay? The little barriers of sand still stand between you. Would you reinforce them NOW? You are NOT asked to let them go for yourselves alone. Christ asks it of you, for HIMSELF. He would bring peace to everyone. And how can He do this, EXCEPT through you? Would you let a little bank of sand, a wall of dust, a tiny seeming barrier stand between your brothers and salvation?
And yet it IS this little remnant of attack you cherish still against each other, that is the first obstacle the peace in you encounters, in its going forth. This little wall of hatred would STILL oppose the Will of God, and keep It limited. The Holy Spirit's purpose rests in peace within you. Yet you are STILL unwilling to let it JOIN you wholly. You still oppose the Will of God, just by a little. But that little IS a limit you would place upon the whole. God's Will is One, NOT many. It HAS no opposition, for there is none BESIDE It.
What you would still contain behind your little barrier, and keep SEPARATE from each other, is mightier than the universe. For it would HOLD BACK the universe AND ITS CREATOR. This little wall would hide the purpose of Heaven, and keep it FROM Heaven. Would you thrust salvation AWAY from the GIVER of salvation? For such have YOU become. Peace could no more DEPART from you than from God. Fear not this little obstacle. It can NOT contain the Will of God. Peace WILL flow across it, and join you WITHOUT hindrance.
Salvation cannot BE withheld from you. It IS your purpose. You CANNOT will APART from this. You HAVE no purpose apart from each other, nor apart from the one you asked the Holy Spirit to SHARE with you. The little wall will fall away so quietly, beneath the wings of peace! For it will send its messengers from you to all the world. And barriers will fall away before their coming, as easily as those which YOU would interpose will be surmounted. To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained.
There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same. Each is a gentle WINNING OVER, from the appeal of guilt to the appeal of love. How can this FAIL to be accomplished, WHEREVER it is undertaken? Guilt can raise no REAL barriers against it. And all that seems to stand between you MUST fall away, because of the appeal YOU answered. And from you who answered, He Who answered you would call. His home is in your holy relationship. Do not attempt to stand BETWEEN Him and His holy purpose, for it IS yours. But let Him quietly EXTEND the miracle of your relationship to everyone CONTAINED in it, as it was given.
There is a hush in Heaven, a happy expectancy, a little pause of gladness, in acknowledgment of the journey's end. For Heaven knows you well, as you know Heaven. No illusions stand between you. Look not upon the little wall of shadows. The sun has risen OVER it. How can a shadow KEEP you from the sun? No more can YOU be kept by shadows from the light in which illusions end. EVERY miracle is but the end of an illusion. Such was the journey; such its ending. And in the goal of truth, which YOU ACCEPTED, must ALL illusions end.
The little, insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited IN, and push Him OUT, MUST produce conflict. As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon ANYTHING. For it HAS no purpose now. BEFORE the Holy Spirit entered to abide with you, it SEEMED to have a MIGHTY purpose; the fixed and unchangeable dedication to sin and its results. Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.
This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once SEEMED to be the world. It is no longer an unrelenting barrier to peace. Its pointless wandering makes its results APPEAR to be more erratic and unpredictable than before. Yet what COULD be more unstable than a tightly-organized delusional system? Its SEEMING stability is its pervasive WEAKNESS, which extends to EVERYTHING. The VARIABILITY which the little remnant induces, merely indicates its LIMITED results.
How mighty can a little feather be, before the great wings of truth? Can it oppose an eagle's flight, or hinder the advance of summer? Can it interfere with the EFFECTS of summer's sun upon a garden covered by the snow? See but how easily this little wisp is lifted up and carried away, never to return. And part with it in gladness, not regret. For it is nothing in itself, and STOOD FOR nothing when you had greater faith in its protection. Would you not rather greet the summer sun, than fix your gaze upon a disappearing snowflake, and shiver in remembrance of the winter's cold?
What A Course in Miracles calls "the separation", was a rejection of reality. We denied what was real and blocked our awareness of it. We lost touch with reality and forgot what it was like.
"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL."
"For separation IS the source of guilt, and to APPEAL to it for salvation IS TO BELIEVE YOU ARE ALONE."
This event - the fall of man, the detour into fear - marked our entry into a "separated state" of mind, which we are still in. The separated state is an entire system of thought in which separation is constantly being perpetuated and chosen.
"Separateness" is a mindset in which we believe in being cut off, we separate ourselves off from each other, we stop sharing and become selfish, we try to be special and different, we withdraw from reality, and we exclude ourselves in isolation and imprisonment. We're still doing this right now and every day.
"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."
"Separation is only the decision NOT to know yourself. Its whole thought-system is a carefully-contrived learning experience, designed to lead AWAY from truth, and into fantasy."
"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it."
Denying reality means we cannot tell what is true and what is false. We cannot tell what is real and what is unreal. This produces tremendous confusion. This confusion is insanity. It means we are now distracted with things which are not true, deceived by things which are impossible, believe in things which cannot be of God, and become lost.
"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."
Being lost in an illusory world and not being able to find the way out is the common symptom of all of us "separated ones". We're like little children who have been told a bunch of lies, we've been deceived, led astray, convinced we're evil when we're not, and have been sent off into the wilderness in exile not knowing where we are, who we are, how we got here, why we're here, what home is, where home is, or how to get there.
The real issue as ACIM says is that there is only one problem, and it is this sense of separation from reality (God). In our denial and self-deception we keep believing things which are not true. We keep being heavily mistaken. We keep pretending to know what we're talking about when we don't, we think all our beliefs are valid, we don't want to admit to being wrong, and we stay committed to lies.
What much of this boils down to is an inability to RECOGNIZE what something is. Whether it is one thing or another. To recognize that we are even really suffering, or that there is fear, or that we are in denial. To recognize that we believe something false, or to even have the humility to recognize we are probably way more mistaken than we realize. We don't even know what we don't know, and we don't even know the ways we are mistaken and confused.
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
Not recognizing anything is insanity. This is why the opposite - enlightenment - is a recognition. It is a state in which you recognize clearly what everything is, what is true, what is false, what is real and what is unreal. If you could just get everything straightened out in your mind, and ACT like someone who accepts only God's truth (atonement), you would stop participating in "being separate". You would drop all the defenses and illusions and lies, all the false beliefs and attitudes, all attacking and rejecting and excluding and separating.
As far as heaven is concerned, they look upon us as simply lost lonely little children who are very confused and don't know what they're doing. We're like in a kind of daze, disoriented, wandering around in the dark trying to find something we think we lost without really knowing what it is. We are believing in things which don't exist, and are taking things out of context, and this leads to tremendous distortions of reality. These distortions show up as hallucinations and nightmares and being freaked out by monsters.
We literally see things which are not there, hear things which are not really sounds, touch things which don't exist, and believe everything our bodies tell us. But "only the body makes the world seem real", and without it the world would not seem real. Without it the world would be clearly apparent in its unreality, because it is so opposite to reality. We don't recognize reality because we buy into everything the body says is true. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." It is literally incapable of detecting reality. "You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself." And so the body is a deceiver and everything it tells you is a lie, and the whole world is set up to tempt you to believe things which are not true. To distort your mind and take you away from SANITY, and towards insanity. To bind you to confusion and to the loss of self. Separate from God, hopeless and alone.
What we then experience when our mind is insane, while in this world, is what we call false perception. It's a distorting twisting perception in which we USE the world, which is meaningless in itself, and interpret it as though it is a nightmarish hell. We read into it, attack it, use it for separation, reject it, blame it, condemn it, hate it, all in order to split our minds further and go more insane. What we then experience is an "unreal world."
"The Separation is merely another term for a split mind. It was not an act, but a thought."
Jesus asks us in ACIM to "make the world real unto yourself." This means to see it only for what it really is. This doesn't mean it is ultimate reality, but it means having accurate perception which just looks straight at it and recognizes what is true and false. Recognizing its actual nature, which is an illusion and is nothing. And what you thought was a nightmare turns into a happier dream because you no longer are having a psychological nightmare in relationship to it. This is true perception and shows you a forgiven world.
The "real world" therefore is a view of the world which is closer to "reality". A view in which you are not insane, are not deceived, are not twisted and distorted, are not lost and alone, are not separated off, are not isolated or excluded, or selfish or special. It's a view which stems from being more integrated and whole and healed, without a split mind and without attack or condemnation or dissociation or guilt. Looking upon the world from this view can only show you "the real world", ie what the world "actually is", rather than a filtered and mangled view of it.
Either way, our task then is the return to reality. This entails recognizing that we are not in a state of reality because we do not recognize what is real. It also entails a willingness to admit to being insane, an openness to asking for the Holy Spirit's help, and a desire to move towards sanity. To become sane you have to become very deeply honest in looking at what you are believing and doing that is out of accord with God's will. Out of accord with reality itself. And accepting the atonement is nothing more than accepting reality.
"Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. BUT DO YOU BELIEVE IT?"
This is also why Jesus refers to "reality contact", in that we are to move out of a state of being very heavily mistaken, lost, confused, distorting, deceiving, admit to our efforts to attack reality, and move our minds back into a more natural, peaceful, happy and whole state. To heal the split in the mind. As Jesus says all you can do is either separate or join. That means you can either split your mind or undo the split and return to wholeness.
So the whole path of ACIM or any spiritual "awakening" is really nothing more than a movement out of insanity back to sanity, our of unreality back to reality. Just waking up to what is real. To just being real and getting in touch with real existence. Real existence is The Kingdom of God. In order to become sane we're going to have to heal our insanity. And our insanity is driven by a "belief in separation."
Note though that believing in separation isn't about believing that there was a separation event a long time ago, although there was. THE separation DID happen, as a belief in a false thought. But it's now about realizing you are STILL believing in separation, you are still actively separating, you are continually using your mind TO separate, and you keep re-enacting separation over and over again.
Every time that you attack, condemn, accuse, blame, hate, judge, reject, withdraw, fear, become angry at, project guilt, make sinful, try to destroy, push away from, or any other mental act which seems to create a "distance" or gap between you and ANYTHING, you are separating from reality. You are splitting your mind. This is the belief in separation, an actual psychological act in which you are trying to keep the separation going, to deepen the wound, to emphasize the guilt and to split yourself off from being one.
Any attack you make which you think is an attack upon something "not yourself", is a result of dissociation. Dissociation is the same thing as separation, and as exclusion. It means you HAVE separated and have split, and now you think something is not a part of you. It is excluded from you, and you attack it in what seems to be "externally" in order to push it away from you. To distance yourself from you. This distancing is SPACETIME. It means you are MAKING time and space in your mind by rejecting stuff. The gap of separation, the pit of hell, is in your mind. And stuff only appears to be outside your mind because you HAVE separated it off. Ideas leave not their source.
Any time you attack anyone thinking they are not you, and that they are receiving the attack and not you, you are deluded. Your mind is attacking itself and projecting the split and seeing the "other part" outside of what's left "within". It has dissociated the guilty part of mind and hates it. And the more it hates it and wants it dead, the more it is wanting to increase the split and thus increase the insanity. We are doing this every minute of every day.
"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."
To see "the real world" is literally to simply be in touch with reality and look out from reality and look upon the world we made (the illusion/dream/physical) and see what's there. It is a state of recognition, in which the illusory nature of the world is recognized clearly. In which there is no DECEPTION. In which you are no longer deceived by what you see.
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
Awareness of dreaming is sanity. It is as close to ultimate reality as we can be while still slightly separated from it. Because "perception still is a separated state." So the entire course is really just telling us that we've gone nuts and we need help to get back to reality. We've become lost in a fantasy-land and we need to get back to the Kingdom of God. And along the way we need to see the world we made as "the real world", ie the truth about it in reality, and then leave it behind as we move on to actual existence. To our real life in heaven with God.
"There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY. Perceive ANY part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have CORRECTLY EVALUATED ALL OF IT."
"You are no longer wholly insane, NOR NO LONGER ALONE."
"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception."
I've recently been diving into doing more physical things than usual. Clearing out old junk. Reorganizing rooms. Throwing out old furniture. Buying and assembling and installing new furniture. Changing layouts. Cleaning. Just lots of physical stuff.
And while I do these things, on the one hand I feel more appreciative of some of the appeal of physical objects. Things look nice. The function better. They have flaws. But at the same time, I am seeing them more as all the same. Instead of seeing individual objects, I'm looking at the laws that drive them, and their sameness. The laws of physics which apply to them all.
Just about everything that happens in the world is more or less driven by physics. Snow melting. Ice forming. Objects falling over. Soup boiling over. Things not staying put. Stuff dropped on the floor from a pile of laundry. Bumping into things. Making food. Cleaning the house. It's all just basically physics interactions. Chemistry, forces and energies and forms and states and so on.
It's becoming part of my forgiveness practice to recognize that almost everything that happens physically is simply what was inevitable, given the states of the objects and the physics that's applying to them. The world is mindless and very automatic in its obedience to the laws of physics. Stuff just does what stuff does. It doesn't do it to specifically spite you, it just blindly follows the rules.
Objects falling off shelves, bumping into things, stuff dropping on the floor, pens rolling off desks, garbage cans getting full, water boiling, leaving the keys somewhere, changes in temperature, fingers trapped in a door, knees banging into table legs, hands cold in the winter, all the just normal everyday stuff. It's all just the laws of physics playing out. It's just part of the system.
It's almost like this whole world is just one big machine, sitting there poised to do what it was always set up to do from the beginning. Which makes everything that happens somewhat inevitable. If enough force is given to an object, it falls off its resting place. It has to because the laws say so. If enough wind blows, the branch will break. If enough impact is made, the window breaks.
In a sense then the world's laws are laws of inevitability, based on the idea of original sin demanding death as punishment. Kind of a system of logic, the laws of chaos are simply sitting there poised for action, waiting for something to trigger them. Then pretty much everything that occurs physically cannot be said to be "personal" as such, it's just stupid matter moving around and doing its thing based on its properties.
So if you slam your hand in the car door, you might swear at the door and kick it in a rage, but the stupid door was totally impersonal in its behavior. The amount of force on the hinges, the degree of rust, the tension in the springs, the amount of wind blowing, the position of the door relative to your body, all colludes to produce a corresponding change in state, and lo and behold your hand is impacted. It's just the system playing out.
If you can recognize then that the whole world is on a kind of autopilot, whenever anything physically happens it's really just yet another case of the world doing what it does. The laws are just governing the particles like they always do. Objects obey the laws so much that it's like they're dead, until the laws tell them to move, then they move, and then the laws tell them to stop and they stop. The world is like kind of a giant graveyard of trash that just sits there until something stirs it up. You can't really hold it against itself, it just follows the rules.
If this is all there is, if this is "life", where we plant certain objects in the garden, where we turn the dial to flip the radio station, where we cook foods and shove them in our bodies, where we walk to and fro mechanically and just about everything that occurs is one object doing something to another, that's not much of an existence. It's more like a lifeless prison.
It also means that death becomes inevitable, because it's basically built into the system. Death itself is part of the laws of the world. The laws of physics determine that there is going to be decay and separation and attack and damage and degradation and lack and sacrifice and suffering, eventually breaking things down until they are rotting in the ground. This isn't "personal", it's just the laws playing out. It's just the system. The machinery of death.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
If this is all there is, then life is meaningless and pointless and fundamentally cruel. It means life is not life, but a system of death pretending to be life for a while, all the while ensuring that death will eventually come. So then you seem to live a while and pretend you won't die, and then you die. Or as my wife likes to put it, "life sucks and then you die." That's all this world really has to offer, in the big picture.
"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. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."
There has to be a better way. There has to be something more sane and meaningful and lasting. There has to be a way to be free of all this, to break out of the laws of death. To break the laws of physics. To work miracles which raise you above and beyond the world, beyond the battlefield of attack, and into the celestial order. Only by moving beyond the laws of the world of inevitable death can you be free, and that means you have to surmount death and overcome the world, like Jesus did.
"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death."
"A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."
""And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die? "
"We have repeatedly stated that one who has perfectly accepted the Atonement for himself can heal the world. Indeed, he has already done so. Temptation may recur to others, but never to this One. He has become the risen Son of God. He has overcome death because he has accepted Life."
"To overcome the world is no more difficult than to surmount your little wall. For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained."
"God holds out His hand to His Son to help him rise and return to Him. I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal. Can those who are created like Him be limited? The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there anytime you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. And then, and then... I cannot speak of that."
"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer."
"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID. "
"In me, you have ALREADY overcome EVERY temptation that would hold you back. We walk together on the way to quietness that is the gift of God. "
And now the reason why you are afraid of this course should be apparent. For this is a course on love, because it is about YOU. You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven. It would thus destroy you here, and bury you here, leaving you no inheritance except the dust out of which it thinks you were made. While it is reasonably satisfied with you, as its reasoning goes, it offers you oblivion. When it becomes overtly savage, it offers you hell.
Yet neither oblivion nor hell is as unacceptable to you as Heaven. For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience. For hell and oblivion are ideas which YOU made up, and you are bent on DEMONSTRATING their reality, TO ESTABLISH YOURS. If THEIR reality is questioned, you believe that YOURS is. For you believe that ATTACK established your reality, and that your DESTRUCTION is the final proof THAT YOU WERE RIGHT.
Under the circumstances, would it not be MORE DESIRABLE to have been wrong, even apart from the fact that you WERE wrong? For while it could perhaps be argued that death suggests there WAS life, no one would claim that it proves there IS life. And even the PAST life, which death might indicate, could only have been futile if it must come to this, and NEEDS this to prove that it WAS. You question Heaven, but you do NOT question this. You could heal and be healed, if you DID question it. And even though you know not Heaven, might it not be more desirable than death? You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this.
The ego has a very strange notion of time, and it is with this notion that the questioning might well begin. The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful. You will remember that we said its emphasis on guilt enables it to ensure its continuity, by MAKING THE FUTURE LIKE THE PAST, and thus AVOIDING the present. By the notion of PAYING FOR the past in the future, the past becomes the DETERMINER of the future, making THEM continuous, WITHOUT an intervening present. For the ego uses the present ONLY as a brief transition TO the future, in which it brings the past TO the future, BY INTERPRETING THE PRESENT IN PAST TERMS.
NOW has no meaning to the ego. The present merely reminds it of PAST hurts, and it reacts to the present AS IF it were past. For the ego cannot tolerate RELEASE from the past, and though it is no more, the ego tries to preserve its IMAGE by responding as if it were present. Thus, it dictates reactions to those you meet NOW from a PAST reference point, obscuring their PRESENT reality. In effect, if you FOLLOW its dictates, you will react to your brothers as though they were SOMEONE ELSE, and this will surely prevent you from perceiving them AS THEY ARE. And you will receive messages from them out of your OWN past because, by making it real in the present, you are forbidding yourself to LET IT GO. You thus DENY yourself the message of release that every brother offers you NOW.
The shadowy figures from the past are precisely what you must ESCAPE. For they are not real, and have no hold over you, unless YOU bring them WITH you. They carry the spots of pain in your minds, directing you to attack in the present, in retaliation for a past that is no more. AND THIS DECISION IS ONE OF FUTURE PAIN. For unless you learn that PAST pain is delusional, you are choosing a future of delusions, and losing the endless opportunities which you COULD find for release in the present. For the ego would PRESERVE your nightmares, and PREVENT you from awaking, and understanding that THEY are past.
Would you RECOGNIZE a holy encounter, if you are merely perceiving it as a meeting with your OWN past? For you are meeting no one, and the SHARING of salvation, WHICH MAKES THE ENCOUNTER HOLY, is excluded from your sight. The Holy Spirit teaches that you always meet YOURSELF, and the encounter is holy because YOU are. The ego teaches that you always encounter your PAST, and because your dreams WERE not holy, the future CANNOT be, and the present is without meaning. It is evident that the Holy Spirit's perception of time is the exact opposite of the ego's. And the reason is equally clear, for they perceive the GOAL of time as diametrically opposed.
The Holy Spirit interprets time's PURPOSE as rendering the need for it UNNECESSARY. Thus does He regard the function of time as temporary, serving only His teaching function, which is temporary by definition. HIS emphasis is therefore on the ONLY aspect of time which CAN extend to the infinite. For NOW is the closest approximation of eternity that this world offers. And it is in the REALITY of now, without past OR future, that the beginning of the appreciation of eternity lies. For only now is HERE, and IT presents the opportunities for the holy encounters, in which salvation can be found.
The ego, on the other hand, regards the function of time as one of extending itself IN PLACE of eternity. For, like the Holy Spirit, the ego interprets the goal of time as its own. The continuity of past and future, UNDER ITS DIRECTION, is the only purpose it perceives in time, and it closes over the present, so that no gap in the EGO's continuity can occur. ITS continuity, then, would KEEP you in time, while the Holy Spirit would release you FROM it. And it is HIS interpretation of the means of salvation that you must learn to accept, if you would share His goal of salvation FOR you.
You, too, will interpret the function of time as you interpret yours. If you accept your function in the world of time AS HEALING, you will emphasize ONLY the aspect of time in which healing can occur. For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past. But if you interpret your function as DESTRUCTION, you will lose sight of the present, and hold on to the past TO ENSURE A DESTRUCTIVE FUTURE. And time WILL be as you interpret it, for OF ITSELF it IS nothing.
Forgiveness happens when you reframe a sin as simply a mistake. When you can realize that it was just an error, and not an intentional attack, it is forgivable. Sin demands punishment, if it is truly evil. But mistakes can be corrected and undone with no consequences.
If a person is fully sane, in their right mind, with full awareness of all consequences, and actually performs a sin, which has real consequences on reality, then truly this would be a real sin. It would also be unforgivable.
However, such things are not possible. Nothing real can be threatened and real sin does not exist. You cannot attack anything real with any real consequences.
What we call sin is really a state of belief. It happens when a mind is mistaken, believing that sin is POSSIBLE in the first place, such as that reality CAN be attacked. This is impossible, so the mind that believes it must be confused. This confusion is mental illness.
Anyone who is in a state of "sinning" is therefore NOT really in a state of real sin, they are in a state of BELIEVING IN sin, but are completely mistaken. They believe something is possible which isn't. They believe they have done something they could not do in truth.
If we think that the world exists, and recognize honestly that it is cruel and full of sins, then it is unforgivable. If we think the world is really there, doing what it does, it does NOT justify forgiveness. If its attacks are true, or if its impossible proof of attack is real evidence, then there is no basis for forgiving it.
In order to forgive the world, something has to happen. You have to find a way to recognize that it was NOT MADE BY A SANE MIND. If it were, sin would be real, and the world cannot be forgiven, because making a cruel world is truly evil.
Similarly if God in his right mind made the world, and given the world IS a cruel place (come on, admit it), then God WOULD indeed be cruel and evil to make such a thing, and to subject his children to it on purpose. If God DID make the world, God is a sinner and the world is made of real sin and CANNOT be forgiven.
But if the mind that made it is having an hallucinated nightmare, which projects an imaginary world of sin, and does NOT KNOW what they are doing, then the world they make is NOT really sinning.
What we need to recognize in ACIM is that we actually went into a state of internal insanity first, believing we had sinned against God with real consequences, and this induced huge guilt. We then moved into denial and projection and dissociation to try to disown it, which eventually produced the face of innocence as a cover-up.
But it was actually from our internal state of "false perception" that WE PROJECTED THE WORLD OUTWARD. It was a projection OF our inner self-attack and the wish for death. The world was supposed to be a SOLUTION to our sin, by getting rid of what we did not want, and externalizing our guilt.
"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source."
"You are AT ODDS with the world as you perceive it because you think IT is antagonistic to you. THIS IS A NECESSARY CONSEQUENCE OF WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. You have projected outward what IS antagonistic to what is inward"
"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."
What this means is that we actually were NOT in our right minds when we made the world. We were in an insane state of darkness, confusion and despair. Instead of sanely undoing our self-made attack, we instead projected it as a world to try to put it outside the mind. This was a magical solution to an internal problem.
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
"The ego made the world as IT perceives it"
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear."
"The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up?"
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." The world, as a picture of crucifixion (death and attack), was projected out from our minds, in a state of guilt and insanity. We did not make it in happiness. We did not make it in awareness of the consequences. We did not make it as a sane logical conclusion. And we did not make it in a clear-headed state of mind.
We made the world as a bandaid of denial to cover up our guilt. We made it by mistake. We chose a poor sloppy solution to the guilt in our mind, in an attempt to use dissociation to make the guilt unconscious. We tried to escape from our inner world, by projecting its contents outside. This formed the physical universe.
"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition."
We didn't know what we were doing. We WERE in a state of being mistaken. We believed sin was possible, which is a mistake. We believed we had sinned, which was not true. We believed we should be guilty, which was unjustified. And we believed we should be punished, when it was un-called for. We believed in lies and deception. We had rejected truth, and reality, and sanity.
The world we made wasn't really made in a clear state of mind. It was made as an ERROR. It was an extension or expression of mental confusion. We made it in the darkness, out of fear and death, having lost touch with truly sane solutions. This produced an ERRONEOUS WORLD. A world made of error. Not really a world of sin, because the mind that made it was not sane. It was made as a mistake, by a mistaken mind.
"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it."
"The world is false perception. It is born of error"
If we can then recognize that when we made the world we were not sane, and that the world symbolizes that insanity, and what we made WAS ugly and cruel and vicious and deadly, because of the state of mind we were in at the time, then there IS JUSTIFICATION FOR FORGIVENESS. As Jesus says, "forgive them for they know NOT what they do." In our guilt we insanely made an insane world. A grotesque, strange, self-denying, self-attacking, confused insane world.
"What is producing this world is insane, and so is what it produces."
Given that it IS an insane world, this means that it is NOT REALLY A SIN. Nor was the mind that made it truly sinning. The mind that made it was MISTAKEN. Which means that WHEN we are mistaken, we make the physical world. We make FROM our mistakenness, and by mistake. Given that it IS a mistake, it CAN be forgiven.
When we separated from God, two things happened. 1) We entered an insane state of mind, and 2) We projected out a physical world from that state of mind. Our task now is to CHANGE OUR MIND, to receive correction without punishment, so that we can lift the insanity from our minds. By doing so, we become able to look upon the world WITHOUT the insanity that we had when we originally made it.
Insanity is a state of attack and guilt and sin and fear and blame and all manner of distortion. This was PUT ONTO the world, or more precisely, was what the PROJECTION of the world was based upon. It is the world's roots. The world CAME FROM a belief in sin and attack and death. But that belief was a mistake. And if that belied is corrected, then you're left with a world that you made IN ERROR, FROM UGLINESS, AND DO NOT WANT.
"This world was over long ago. The thoughts that made it are no longer ***in*** the mind ***that thought of them***, and loved them for a while."
The perception you have "of the world", without the baggage of sin and guilt, is what we call the forgiven world. It's a strange miscreation, an odd form, which we sculpted in insanity. And now that we are coming around to sense and reason, and can see the whole picture, what we made is now seen from a lighter and truer perspective. That light true perspective is forgiveness and it lets us look on what we DID MAKE IN HATE, but without hating it.
"the world they thought was made in hate to be love's enemy." "Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate."
ie you are changing your mind "about the world". But the world itself is still going to remain as it is. It will still seem to function in time. It will still spin. It will still have seasons. It will still feature animals eating each other alive. It will still have wars and murder and sickness and death. Because this is what you made when you were insane. You set it in motion. But now you can look at the twisted forms you made "in hell", and see them from a more loving perspective.
ONLY IF the world is a mistake, CAN IT BE FORGIVEN. You cannot forgive reality, or real sin. You can only forgive mistakes. The world is a mistake, and recognizing that you made it BY MISTAKE, lifts away all of the possible reasons why you might hate it. You can only hate the world if you believe it was a deliberate sin made by a fully-aware mind. But the world was made by someone who was ill and afraid. Someone whose belief system was mistaken. Someone who did not know, because they had rejected knowledge. Someone who was confused, because they had lost touch with reality.
You can't really hate the world if it is recognized as ... only... an odd thing you made one day when you were in a "bad mood." To acknowledge that you DID MAKE IT, actually owns up to the fact that IT DID COME FROM YOU. And this too is the key to unlocking forgiveness. Denying that you made it in fact keeps you from forgiving it, because in denying it you are affirming that you sinned. Admitting you made it affirms that you DID make it by mistake, and so can forgive it.
"Your brother thinks he made the world with you. Thus he denies creation. With you, he thinks the world he made, made HIM. Thus he denies he MADE it."
I forgive the world because I made it in error, and from error. The world is erroneous because it is false, made from a false mental state. I made it myself but I can choose otherwise. I don't have to worry about the consequences of this wrong decision, because the Holy Spirit will UNDO THE WORLD if I will let him. I can look upon the world with love by letting him choose for God for me. And this can show me with christ vision that the world is not a sin, it is just a mistake I made one day. A twisted dream I had one day when I was a little mistaken.
There is a huge rift in the ACIM community.
It mainly hinges around a single assumption. Some people make this assumption and some do not.
Those who make it are very consistent in the consequences of that assumption, because it leads to massive level confusion. There is an entirely different interpretation of the meaning of almost everything the Course means, which arises based on that one assumption.
The assumption is this:
Everything about the course applies to "my identity" as I see it right now. It ALL applies to ME.
This is a MISTAKE!
And this happens because .... every course student has a EGO, which is a false sense of identity or self, which perceives that everything is about IT. It is an ego-centric interpretation of the course.
Here is a fact which you can deny or accept:
Sometimes the Course is speaking to and about an "individual son" as part of the "sonship." "A son", "A brother", "my brothers", "God’s children", etc of which there are many. And sometimes, the course is speaking about The One Son of God - "The son", "God’s son" etc.
These are two very different LEVELS OF IDENTITY. The scope of these levels is vastly different. What applies to one individual may not apply to another individual. What applies to the one son, does not apply to an individual son in isolation. The mind of the One Son is HUGE, it is the mind of Christ. The mind of an INDIVIDUAL SON, has its own individual free will choice and its own ability to independently deny God.
Confusing or combining these two levels, which is a confusion of identity, will lead to massive level confusion and false conclusions.
When YOU, as an "individual son", think that everything the course says about the One Son applies to YOU, you are making a massive level confused mistake! It does NOT apply to you! When you, as an individual son, believe that every teaching in the course is ABOUT YOU, as you see yourself as an individual right now, you WILL come to false conclusions. And these conclusions are radically warped in comparison to what they would be if you saw all the levels in their appropriate placement.
Some parts of ACIM are talking about an individual son, and some parts are talking about the One Son, which is a vast difference. Knowing WHEN Jesus is talking about WHICH LEVEL, is very important, otherwise you will just lump them all together and .... come to some very distorted conclusions.
To understand and accept this DOES REQUIRE that you believe that there ARE multiple sons. Some people refer to multiple souls as mentionedin earlier versions. Or the sonship, which even in edited versions talks about multiple sons. The sonship IS supposed to be a term that refers to MULTIPLE INDIVIDUALS. The sonship is NOT the One Son of God. The sonship IS NOT CHRIST.
If you confuse certain intentions of "which level of identity" Jesus is talking to or about, it will produce huge differences in what you think he means. If he says something which only applies to the One Son, and you think it applies to YOU as an individual, you will become mistaken.
This is what is happening throughout the course community. A kind of rift or difference of opinion, between those who take the course as "all one level talking about me as the only son" versus "multiple levels talking sometimes about me as an individual and sometimes as a shared single identity."
Those who believe the course always is talking at one level, who fail to see the levels or discern when Jesus refers to which identity, WILL come to the following FALSE CONCLUSIONS:
1) "I dreamed everything in the world, it’s all in my mind, therefore if I heal my mind, it will heal everyone else, because they are all part of me." —�- NO. This is only true of the One Son! It is not true of individuals. You as an individual are NOT responsible for what other individuals are experiencing!
2) "I dreamed the world myself"—�- NO. The One Son dreamed the world and you are INSIDE HIS DREAM. You are having an ADDITIONAL LAYER OF DREAMING within his dream.
3) "When the course talks about perception, he is talking about my pecteption." —� NO not always. E.g. When he says "the world IS perception", he literally means, planet earth is part of the perception of the ONE SON. It showing up is the One Son’s dreaming. You, as an individual, have your own INDIVIDUAL PERCEPTION *OF* the Son of God’s perception of a world. There are two levels here.
4) "I need only change my mind about the world to be at peace". —� NO. When you heal your individual perception OF the One Son’s perception, you will wake up IN the dream, but not FROM it. Many gurus have done this. Doing this will still result in death.
5) "If I change my perception, I will be able to transcend sickness." —� NO. If you change your perception of something which you think has been put there by someone else, in order to deal with it, IT will still stick around, proving that the One Son’s mind has not been healed.
6) "God created the world" —� NO. A person WILL come to this conclusion if they do not believe that there is a sonship of many individuals. This is because, somehow, they have to account for what the world IS or how it got there beyond their personal perception. Since they don’t believe there is a separate LEVEL of identity of the One Son, and they think they ARE the one Son at this level of individuality, they MUST conclude that the only identity LEFT who might be responsible for making the world is God! They do not see, that the One Son made the world, NOT their individual self.
7) "If you heal your perception you cannot perceive sickness in another." —� NO. This level confusion comes from believing that you, as an individual, are the one son. This means that everything you see in the world is "part of you". That then means that if sickness is showing up, like a person has cancer or some disease, it must be "part of your mind". And this leads to the conclusion - if I change my mind about this sin I’m seeing, that person will get healed. NO—�- it does not work. That other person is NOT part of your mind. You are an individual, they are an individual, and you both have free will. Believing that you are the one son of God at this level makes you delusional that a) you are responsible for other people’s sickness, b) they are sick because of you, c) if you withdraw your projection they won’t be sick. NOT TRUE. You are having an INDIVIDUAL FALSE PERCEPTION. And so are they. You are not the one son of God at this level. Other people are NOT part of your individual mind. They are part of the One Son’s mind, and that’s NOT your identity right now, not even if you reach true perception.
8) "What I project onto others affects them or is in them, so I need to take back those projections so they will be healed" —� NO. Your projections within the scope of your own individual mind, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR MIND. It only seems that these things are outside of you in another person. You have a belief in sin - an independent belief. Not the one son’s belief. This independent belief splits your independent mind. Your mind then has one area which seems innocent and one area which seems sinful. You will shift your identity to associate with the innocent part, and disassociate from the sinful part. This is internal denial. Your mind is at war with ITSELF. Your identification with the innocent part makes it seem like the sinful part is OUTSIDE of IT, but it is still within YOUR individual mind. You will hallucinate that because it seems "outside me", it is IN or belongs to or is doing something to other people. IT IS NOT. All attack is SELF attack. You NEVER attack others. Your projection DOES NOT leave your mind and go onto them. They HAVE NOT been affected by your projection! And when you take your projection back, it will NOT CHANGE ANYTING in terms of what the other person is experiencing. This is because both of you are individuals. Interpreting this whole part of the course based on the assumption it’s referring to "you" as "the one son" is a huge error.
9) "If I stop identifying with the body I will be free"�— NO. This is part of the belief that the body is there on its own, which is part of the belief that either God or the Son of God made it, and that if you just detach from it you will be free. The body is showing up because YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL are projecting it. What YOU, as an individual, use the body for, it will become to you, individually. Use it for attack it becomes sick, use it for love it is healed. This is about you as an individual son, not as the one son. You can’t disidentify from something that YOU are responsible for putting there. This includes all sickness in your body. YOU, as an individual son, made sickness and death, and therefore can abolish both.
10) "If I stop projecting sickness I will not see my brother as sick" —� NO. This is the erroneous assumption that everything "out there" is "in you". Therefore that you are the one son, not an individual son. This makes you believe if you correct your false perception of sickness, you will never again be able to SEE that someone is sick. You will think of people as just parts of your own mind, that their sickness is your own, and that therefore YOU need healing. THIS IS FALSE. You can get your individual self to a healed state and be whole as an individual, free of sickness, while other individuals continue to be sick. You will not be blind to their choice to be sick. Because at this LEVEL, they are OUTSIDE OF YOU. They are inside the One Son, yes. But you are NOT the one son at this point. Healing your perception heals YOUR perception, not anyone else’s. Accepting the atonement accepts it for you, it doesn’t force anyone else to accept it. Other people WILL NOT suddenly become cured when you see correctly. True Perception is INDIVIDUAL. You will still see the illusion of sickness other people are projecting, you just won’t believe it is real. People can stay sick in spite of you!
11) "I can be at peace with death" —� NO. You cannot. This suggests death happens regardless of you choosing the truth. Which suggests God is doing it to you. This is not true at ANY LEVEL of identity. If you are going to die, as an individual, it is because you, as an individual, have a belief in death. And it will not affect anyone else.
�—�—�—�
There are other examples but I’m out of oomph right now. We need to be careful to read the course, maybe even re-read it, knowing that there are TWO levels of identity. And we need to discern, when is the course talking about me as an individual, and when is it talking about the entire One Son. At times it talks about perception and seeing in terms of The One Son’s perception, not yours! And we have to recognize, while we’re in bodies, if we’ve awoken to the maximum limits of our individual mind, our individual identity in its most natural whole state, that mind is STILL MUCH SMALLER than the mind of the one son.
The mind of the one son can experience THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE at once. Recognizes that absolutely all individuals are part of itself. Knows that IT dreamed the entire universe. Knows that it has the power to create planets. That One Son’s mind is huge. To awake to THAT mind requires a TRANSCENDENCE OF INDIVIDUALITY where a single son in the sonship unites with God. Just like Jesus did. That happens AFTER you wake up individually in the dream! Becoming the Christ, is another whole level of awakening FROM the dream, that takes place after you as an individual wake up IN the dream. Becoming healed as an individual IS NOT the same thing as becoming Christ! You have to transcend the entire sonship to do that!
For me, the Course makes so much more sense, is much easier to understand, is clearer, more consistent, less confusing, and gives you much more relief of responsibility and guilt if you can recognize that there is MORE THAN ONE LEVEL in what Jesus is presenting. We need to learn the individual level first, then the second level later. That there are two levels in the awakening is clear, evidenced by some individuals who have woken up IN the dream, believe they are done, only to find they are NOT done. They still die. And they still do not perform miracles. Because they did not transcend the sonship yet to return the mind to Christ.
It’s a simple concept that there are two levels of identity. But failing to recognize which identity you have right now, and which identity Jesus is speaking about or when, WILL lead to huge level confusion. And many many false conclusions have come from this.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but ****has the mark of death upon it****. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
Jesus here tells us that this world, Earth, which comprises homes and cities and roads etc, has the mark of death upon it. That even from the start, even when it was made, it already had death and disappointment infused into it. It was made in an idea of death, being the idea of the opposite to eternal life. This is because "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." and so an illusory world is really a dream of death.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it ****are the laws of death****."
Recognize then that by death he's talking about the fact that everything in spacetime, including spacetime itself, is founded on the idea of an interruption to life, or an attempt to change the eternal into the temporary. Things coming to an end. Things changing over time. Things decaying and rotting and dying. Things becoming sick. Things lacking and sacrificing and losing. Even things growing and transforming. All various forms of limitation. A limit on life and on eternity. A notion of "not forever".
One thing that I've been doing lately is just accepting the fact that this world's laws, the laws of physics, are just automatically set up to fail. Chaos becomes possible because of the way that objects interact with each other seemingly randomly. Your car breaks down. Objects fall on the ground. You bump into things. Stuff breaks. Your new toy has a mark on it. Your clothes wear out. Your food rots. Your house needs repairs. Your kitchen smells bad. And your clothes are all dirty.
We could struggle against such things as if we have an expectation that the world can be perfect or free from defects. And some people try to control the world and twist it into an illusory palace of perfection. But the problem is, it can't be that. It is fundamentally rooted in the idea of death, of interruption and inconsistency and difference and change and transformation. All the royal castles crumble. Always there is the drive to become something it's not now.
If we try to expect that we can make a life where these things are avoided, or you can make a little oasis or illusion of safety and security, you really are in denial. Sooner or later the grim reaper is coming to look for you and yours. Either in terms of bodies dying or in terms of melting your phone or sickening your pets or scorching your grass or breaking your flowers or freezing your toes or puking in your shoes or whatever.
"Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
It's better to recognize this is the way of the world, based on its laws. It's just how it is. It's how this whole system, this whole universe, functions. There's no point in being mad about stuff breaking, or things falling on the floor, or stuff getting trapped in the door, or physical objects doing their quirky strangely annoying things, especailly when you're in a bad mood. They kind of can't help it. They are governed by rules that force them to "behave" this way, like they always will. Even in a forgiven world, the cookies still crumble.
I've been finding a lot more patience and forgiveness in just accepting that this is the functioning of this whole world. It just is broken from the start. The laws of physics are simply "at it again". Gravity is messing with you. Forces and energies are messing with you. And none of it is really "personal" because it's just doing what it does blindly and mindlessly. To expect it to ever not be like this must be some kind of insanity because a separated world cannot help but act this way.
We do need to accept that we did in fact make a fundamentally broken world. A world that does not really function properly according to the laws of God. A world where stuff is pretty much destined to change and break and grow old and die eventually. Where things collide and conflict and seem to attack, and where you can seemingly even be hurt - a notion which is utterly impossible in heaven's reality.
"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."
Jesus is clear that you cannot really want this world, because it is not a perfect world. It is not heaven. It was made in a mad idea of rebellion against reality. It is a protest against harmony and peace. It was made to attack God and to attempt to depict the death of his creations.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love."
"Here is the world you do NOT want"
We have to be willing to look at this. The world is not EVER going to satisfy you and make you happy. It is not ever going to give you what you want. It is not ever going to feed your properly. It is not ever going to make you well or heal you or fix your problems. It has a neverending supply of madness and problems and difficulties. ALL its roads are pointed towards change, dissolution and death. Even planets and stars and galaxies die off eventually. And problems are completely built into its chaotic systems.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."
The world does not really give you any real choice, because ALL of its options are rooted in death. This isn't a pessimistic or negative view either. It is an honest and truthful view. The entire system was set up on a basis of separation and attack. Everything about it is aimed towards punishment for original sin, trying to bring about the death of life and the end of God.
"The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore, give no obedience to its laws, for they ARE laws of punishment." "The laws of sin DEMAND a victim. WHO it may be makes little difference. But death MUST be the cost and MUST be paid."
"Sin calls for punishment"
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
Can you accept that everything in this world was set up to die, right from the start? That this its inherent NATURE? Because only by looking at that and recognizing "there is no way out", on its terms, can you be willing to seek for a better way.
This is just how the world is set up. There is no point in denying it. There is no point in expecting it to behave differently. The laws of physics work how they work. The only reason we become angry about stuff breaking and things failing and attacks happening and so on is because we have an unrealistic expectation that the world isn't going to be like this. That somehow in the world we can make a little safe corner where the bad things don't happen, to fend off death and keep attack at bay. Good luck with that delusion.
Now, of course if this were the only state of affairs then we would indeed be screwed. But fortunately we are not stuck inside this closed-loop of hell. There is another way. There is another perception and another belief and another reality. This other way, however, isn't a rose-tinted glass of pretending in denial that the world isn't a world of death. Nor is it a form of denial that says it's okay that things die and suffer. Or an attempt to dress up the world or to expect it to be something it's not. The world can't work because it began with an impossible goal.
We can become miraculous, in that we can in fact override the laws of death. We can overcome the laws of physics. We can see past what the world was made to see. We can see with a mechanism of vision that doesn't depend on the physical eyes. We can overlook and not hold the world against itself, or condemn it for its shortcomings. We can recognize that a world made in error cannot help but be mistaken. And we can disregard notions that the world is real in its sin and attack. Indeed we are supposed to do this in order to be forgiving and to be set free from suffering.
For me lately, I have been doing a lot of physical stuff. Rearranging the house, buying and assembling new furniture, throwing out old stuff, cleaning, organizing, moving things around, and to some extent enjoying new stuff. But I've also become aware that all of these things are already fundamentally limited in what they are and can be. I'm not in denial or pretending that they can be perfect.
The furniture with the dents in it, the gaps between the planks of wood, the poorly written instructions, the missing parts, the slightly wrong color, the stuff that doesn't fit, the wrongly shipped item, the misunderstood specs, all the ways that there is shortcomings and failures and forms of death. Lacks of perfection and order.
But I feel mostly unbothered by all these things because I am no longer expecting the world to be capable of better. It is not capable of being perfect, so I now accept that "good enough" or "less than perfect" is the best it can acheive. And then I can let it go instead of trying to find perfection where it is impossible.
We made a broken world. It can't fix itself. And it's not capable of taking on a form of perfection. It will not ever fully satisfy us. And even in forgiveness where it is seen beyond and reflects heaven, even then it still falls short in its forms and its functioning. Ultimately, the world cannot make you happy. It cannot give you peace, or take it away. It cannot be the cause of anything. Nor can it really have any meaning of its own.
At best it can reflect meaning you give to it, and that is all, because by itself it is an empty void. We made a meaningless, chaotic, broken world, and we need to simply recognize this about it. The world is not our home.
"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
The sooner you realize this the better, provided you also realize what CAN make you happy. What makes you happy is to laugh at the fundamental brokenness of the world. To realize the WHOLE THING is limited and false and can't do what you hoped it could do. The whole world is handicapped and disabled, falling short and incapable of eternal life. That's all it can be. And yet there is another world, a world we want, where this need not be.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."
"But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
The idea of separation is madness, because what it implies is impossible. It is not possible to be separate from God. But the mad idea was the idea that you CAN be separate from God, even though it is impossible.
To insist it is possible, must be madness, because to believe it you have to deny reality and truth and blind yourself to sanity and sense. This belief makes the mind insane, because it now believes impossible things are possible. This is why the separation from God was an entry into a state of mental illness, ie insanity.
"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth."
"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."
The mad idea gave rise to a mad world, based on insane notions and crazy laws, devoid of meaning and empty of truth. And into this insane world we projected our insane beliefs, producing a mad and false world to reflect our inner madness. And all who participate in it are mentally ill.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
What we've ended up with then is a fictional world which insane people believe exists. And it is populated with people who have insane beliefs about who and what they are. They do not know themselves, are out of touch with their own reality, and think they are something they're not. This especially is entwined with the belief that they are physical bodies, which their immortal souls could never be. And they see themselves as limited and lacking.
"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"
Realize then that the world as we know it is populated by beings who originally were, and in truth still are, wholly immortal, perfect, innocent, loving, healthy, happy and completely invulnerable. Beings who God created to live forever in divine perfection, who lacked nothing and were capable of anything.
In the separation, these beings gave belief to impossible nonsense and thus moved their minds into insane states. This produced the anti-christ or otherwise known as the ego, which is an idea of what you THINK you are, as a kind of wishful thinking or denial of your true nature. Thus each person developed a SECOND self for themselves, which they identified with and as, and thought to be the whole of who they are.
"This is the anti-Christ; ... Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."
So now you have a world seemingly populated by individual beings who strongly believe they are NOT as God created them. They've added an entire layer of lies on top of themselves, to cover themselves up. They've invented a second self to suit their preferences.
They have profound denial which means they actively resist admitting to the truth about themselves and each other, and instead participate in lies and fantasies about what they are. They want to be a body and they want to suffer and they want to die, and they think this is normal because they think the hell they created is heaven.
"He has come to save me from the evil self I made."
"They DO believe that Heaven is hell, and ARE afraid of love. "
"For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience."
This has thrown these individuals into states of mind that are distorted and unnatural. They are mentally ill. They believe they are something or someone they are not. They have associated with being a physical object. They think they came into existence with the body. They believe they are limited and lacking and insufficient and defective and broken and sinful and guilty and in need of fear. And they relate to others through specialness and selfishness and mistrust and victimhood.
"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt."
On the level of the world then it always seems that you're interacting with a whole person, who is egoic, and who has major selfishness issues, and who relates in special ways, and strikes bargains, and wants to get, and sees themselves as limited and lacking and defective. And it seems this is ALL THERE IS to the person. As if they ACTUALLY ARE a limited dysfunctional individual.
You see this appearance as the whole truth about the person, and people seem to really be in states of "becoming", of "growing", of transformation, learning, progression, acquisition and so on. As if they have started out with nothing and are lacking and little and weak and frail. And so the whole world seems to be populated with egoic individuals who are all far less than magnificent and most of whom find themselves to be unworthy of love or life. Which drives them all to self-punishment and suicide.
"...the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."
"the delusions of the Separated ones."
"All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. This is because they BELIEVE in attack and rejection, so this is what they perceive and teach and LEARN. "
It seems then that we're living in a world where people represent varying degrees of ability, accomplishment, skill, confidence, and a very wide range of personalities and potentials. And in all cases no-one is perfect and everyone is lacking in some way. And everyone is trying to improve themselves because they all think they were created broken. And now there is competition and everyone fights to be better than all the other defective ones, while the defective ones lick their wounds and want to die.
If you take this at face value, if you think this is normal and natural, then you'll think that the EGOS that you interact with ARE people. That their egotism is NOT a mental illness, but is in fact just some normal psychological structure. A personality trait perhaps. And that it's completely normal for people to hate themselves, to attack others, to be angry, to worship idols, to take from others, and to seek for exclusive relationships. As if this is what completely natural mentally-sane people do. So normal because it's so common.
What we have to realize is that this is NOT sanity. And these ego people, the way they present themselves, is NOT really their self. It's not their real identity. They in fact are pretending to be something they're not. They present themselves as fictional characters, with traits and behaviors that aren't even natural. With beliefs about themselves that are unfounded and false. In denial of their own self and repressive of their own freedom.
"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick."
They don't even know who they really are. They don't know where they came from or how they got here. And they certainly don't even suspect that they even have a real self. And even think that maybe they don't exist at all, have no real creator, invented themselves, and maybe aren't even real.
"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."
What we're looking at, when we look at the world, is in fact a place where a very large number of mentally ill people are gathered together. And all of their mental illnesses are regarded as largely normal and natural, ie not an illness at all. We don't even recognize insanity when we see it. We think it's normal that people relate the way they do, think of themselves in such unnatural ways, and are completely lost and out of touch with their own reality. On a planet filled with suffering, how can you remember what it's like not to suffer?
If we don't suspect that there is a higher, larger truth about people, then it's going to make it seem like their ego self is REAL, that it is the WHOLE truth of them, and there is nothing more to it. And in that view you will relate to their EGO in terms of special relationship, and with no sense of forgiveness. Anything they do in insanity will be a sin, and you will justify holding it against them. Because you don't recognize they are mentally ill. And all their twisted behaviors are in fact part of their illness.
If you had only ever known someone in an ill condition, and had never known them when they were healthy, you would have great difficulty seeing past their illness. If you had only met them after they became dysfunctional, you'd have a hard time having any notion of what they are REALLY like when they're not sick. And if the whole planet is sick, how can you know what society is supposed to be like, when no-one can even remember a time when there was no suffering at all?
If we have no sense of the actual REALITY of each person, then this is what we're going to do. We're going to BUY INTO their illusions of who and what they are, fall for the same temptations, go into false empathy, join them in suffering, and compound their ego. This keeps them imprisoned and does not offer any kind of healing. And they need healing because they are not sane. Falling for this means YOU are insane, because you've failed to recognize that the illusion of sanity is not sanity, and so think that you are sane when you're not.
Everyone, when sane, is a loving, powerful, supernatural, immortal, eternal being of light, filled with joy and laughter and miracles. Such a person is invulnerable, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be upset, has no grievances, doesn't judge or blame anyone, is perfectly innocent and holy, knows God intimately, depends on God for everything, and has no authority problem. This is what EVERY person in the world was like when they were created. This is the kind of self they ARE behind their mental illness. And if their mental illness was cured, this is how they would be. A world of christs!
To not RECOGNIZE that people's egos are not their real self, is to fail to forgive. To forgive requires having in mind an awareness BEYOND THE LIES, of what the person's souls is really like, as created by God. The original self. The real self. The holy self. The higher self. That is their true self. And that self has no limitations or lacks or failures or malfunctions or depressions or sicknesses or lies about themselves or others.
So then we have to realize that we join with the Holy Spirit as therapists in the world, as healers, come to offer SANITY to those who are insane, and to lift them up and resurrect them to truth and light, so that they are restored to their true function and true abilities. To their real identity. To remember who they are, to know themselves and to live out from the love that God put in them.
"Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."
"your function in this world is healing"
"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth."
The only way you can forgive someone is to know the real truth about them on a higher level. The bigger picture. Their true nature as established by God. And this truth has to STILL be true, even if it is covered up by their own mind, and obscure and hard to see. Even if they themselves don't know it's there, and even if they themselves deny that it's true of them. Because people are in fact out of touch with their own souls and don't even remember what their real identity is. It is our task to REMEMBER FOR THEM, so that they might remember also and wake up to their true nature.
"Remember for everyone your Father's power, that He has given them"
"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."
Since the ego is really a smokescreen of lies, it is not true of a person. Even if they are holding it up strongly in front of your face as an obstacle to peace. To forgive is to OVERLOOK it, and see BEYOND it, beyond their body, and beyond their false sense of identity. To recognize who they are in spirit, and to acknowledge the PERMANENT TRUTH about them. To hold them in the light and acknowledge that they ARE in the light.
This means in fact bypassing their illusory ego beliefs, their ego self, and realizing that on a higher level their mind is SANE. Only a small portion of their mind is insane and their soul is still perfect. By tapping into the higher self and truth of the person, you JOIN with them in love. This bypasses the ego and increases the wholeness within the mind, which in turn undoes the false ego identification - the sickness - the mental illness. Because "all sickness is mental illness." This is how miracles are performed.
Don't be deceived. People are not who they say they are. Everyone has an imposter in them. The Holy Spirit knows who we really are, and will awaken this truth in us if we will let him.
"Seek not to make the Son of God ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of Truth, and who will wander off. He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the STRANGER is made homeless, and YOU are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "who am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know."
Let's have a closer look at what the course says about the world and whether it is God's creation. This is going to be a long post so bear with me or pick and choose which quotes you want to look at. I put a comment after each one.
To me, the way that all of these statements sound paints a clear picture that the "physical world" i.e. the physical universe - planet Earth, is NOT God's creation whatsoever in any way shape or form.
It also says to me and that every time Jesus refers to the world as something we do not want, he is not referring to some "misperception of it" that we don't want - some imagined version of the world, which he talks about in other passages - but rather, literally "the world" - planet Earth. It is an illusion not created by God, and it does not exist, and it is not our home.
Confusion comes in because at times, Jesus IS speaking about our false perceptions and the need for the correction of perception. But at other times, he is speaking at a higher "level" either at the level of someone with true perception, or even higher at a level of the One Son of God who made this universe. Not having a clear distinguish about WHICH level he is talking at in any given quote leads many people to a lot of confusing and false conclusions. Let's take a look at some quotes....
"You do not want the world." (who would want a world God didn't create?)
"The world provides no safety." (because it is an attack on God)
"This world was over long ago." (because it never happened)
"Nothing the world believes is true." (because the world itself is fundamentally a lie)
"Love was never in the world of dreams." (because God cannot be in the world or of the world nor can He create the world. The world of dreams is not your dreamy interpretation of planet Earth, it IS planet Earth, a dream which you are inside of right now, sleeping - look around you! "Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all." - tells us that when we wake up in the morning to eat breakfast, WE ARE INSIDE A DREAM, not a world that God created.)
"There are no satisfactions in the world." (because the world was made by us as a substitute for God's universe)
"It is the world you see that is impossible." (because the world we see - literally planet earth, not your interpretation of planet earth - is impossible. It cannot exist because God did not create it.)
"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world." (because this world is entirely an EFFECT and it has no power to do anything)
"The world is not left by death but by truth." (because the world ITSELF is death, and truth is its undoing)
"Without the idea of death there is no world." (see .. the world is MADE OF DEATH and it will not ever be made of Life or given life or resurrected or turned into something living or God-created).
"All the "pleasures" of the world are nothing." (because they are illusions, and substitutes for God's love. This means the world can NEVER be a satisfying replacement for God's Creation).
"Perception selects, and makes the world you see." (Many many people think this means, that you have misperception OF the world, peeking out from a separate body, looking incorrectly at planet earth which somehow objectively came to exist "on its own" or created by God. What this really means is, YOUR perception, as the One Son of God, MADE THE ENTIRE WORLD, and the world *itself* IS a state of mind containing images. Trees, houses, people, it's all part of perception. Not perception OF trees and houses and people, but literally the things themselves. Those objects, your body, planet earth, are misperceptions.)
"The world you see is but a judgment on yourself." (because you are the One Son of God and the ENTIRE WORLD is a judgement against you. It's an attempt to deny who you are, to turn you into a form which dies, to picture what it would be like to be dead, and to completely obscure the light of Christ. The world itself IS judgement. Judgements OF or ABOUT the world are an entirely additional LAYER of bullshit that you added as a separate human, and is a SECOND LAYER of sleeping you added on top of dreaming the world.)
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality." (Again, this is one which many people think means, the world your little separate body-located self sees... thus your private perception. No. It's the world your eyes see. You see trees. You can call the trees good trees or bad trees, hated trees or loved trees, you still see trees. The trees you SEE - trees AT ALL - are nothing to do with reality. God did not create trees.)
"If this were the real world, God would be cruel." (This SHOULD be an obvious one. Given all the suffering and terror and death in the world, which is inherent to the world's nature, should NOT be possible if God created it. And claiming that it's really love or life if viewed correctly, is a complete distortion, again based in one person's body-identified personal opinion about the world. God does not create worlds where there are forms or bodies or things which die, NOR does he create worlds where even if those things are all part of one lovely "whole", they are possible either. God only creates HEAVEN, which is formless and has absolutely nothing to do with planet Earth in any way.)
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness." (Yes, planet Earth, is a bleak little world, and it will vanish into nothingness, because God did not create it. This does not mean your personal misperception of the world will vanish (though it will also) - the world ITSELF will vanish, because it is a lie).
"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." (the purpose for this self-made world was to create problems that are inescapable, such as sickness and death. These problems however have no power over miracles which can undo them all BECAUSE God did not create a world of problems.)
"This world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son." (I like this one because it says it like it is. The entire world, the entire physical universe, is a "picture" in the MIND of the Son of God, who is absolutely vast and unlimited, who is dreaming this ENTIRE physical universe and everything in it, and it was designed by him as the crucifixion of himself. Its depiction of things which have beginnings and ends, stars which are born and die, flowers which wilt, people who die of disease, planets that die, etc... is a picture of CRUCIFIXION not a picture of "God is very loving." While you can come to perceive it in a more forgiving way, that does not make or prove it is God's creation either, because if you recognize it for the illusion/lie it is, it MUST disappear.)
"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all." (This is because the world is an effect of dreaming. What appears in it as "causes" are illusions of causes put in place by the dreamer. The world has no consequences. Anything God creates MUST have the power to CAUSE, and since the world cannot cause anything, it cannot be a creation of God.)
"The unreal world is a thing of despair, for it can never be." (There can only be joy and love and peace in what CAN be, i.e. God's creation, heaven, the kingdom, but outside of that there is no life and nothing can be joyful or loving or peaceful. The world is inherently a depiction of what peace is NOT like. Separation in all its forms is played out here, and every single particle of matter is at war with all the rest.)
"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home." (This world is not your home... literally, planet Earth is not your home. This entire physical universe is not your home. But some people interpret this to mean, well, this imaginary interpretation of the world is not my home - the world I'm putting on top of the world is not my home. Bullshit. "The world" is simply planet earth. Planet earth is not your home. Surely you FEEL this? Surely you recognize that you feel like an alien here, and that the more you wake up the more you recognize that you do not belong in this illusory place? I know I do.)
"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."(Thank God, because this world is not something God would ever create. God is suddenly the author of duality and sickness and death? God sees sickness and death as lovely and precious? I think not.).
"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state." (Planet Earth has never existed at all. This is hard to accept I know. There is no world. This is the one core teaching in ACIM which many people refuse to entertain. This is because we believe the world is REAL and cannot conceive of how it would not be. Especially if you come to the course with a background in beliefs which say God made the world in some way, that's hard to put down. This isn't referring to a privately perceived interpretation of the world. Again, it's just simply... this world, planet earth, has never existed. We can deny and fight this all we want.)
"In the world of scarcity, love has no meaning and peace is impossible." (Would you say planet earth is a world of scarcity? I sure would. That's not a judgement or an inability to see its pure loveliness. Yes there's a forgiven world, which is the recognition that this world is an illusion and is nothing, but I think most would agree this is a world of lack and rarity. Just look at how empty outer space is and how distant civilizations or inhabitable planets are. Extreme scarcity.)
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt." (So here again you could say, well, this means my perception is nuts and I'm not seeing the world correctly. Ok. That's one LAYER of the problem. Once you undo that false perception you're going to find out, that the world is STILL a delusional system. Inherently, the mountains, trees, planets, forests, oceans, it's all a state of DELUSION, and that's not going to change when you get over your personal misinterpretations of it. See, the problem is, we think that when we overcome "my" personal misperceptions, that's going to be the end of the story. It's not. You have to not only get over your personal interpretations (which is ONE level of awakening), AND then go beyond the definition of "my self" to incorporate ALL SELVES into one single Son of God - as Christ. And in that view, there is an entirely second level of awakening which leads to God, and the acceptance that the One Son of God MADE this world out of insanity and guilt. Guilt, denied, became unconscious, and projected out as the physical universe, in which we are now hiding from it by pretending to be innocent. Hmmm)
"The Holy Spirit sees the world as a teaching device for bringing you home." (because the world ITSELF is not your home. It's just a way Holy Spirit can USE it to help you to ESCAPE from it through truth - because it doesn't exist)
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." (Plain and simple. Normal language. The world you see, with your eyes, regardless of your mental interpretations or labelling or judgements, is an illusion of a world. God did NOT create it. Many people want this mean, my personal interpretation of the world is not the world God created, and once I am free of my personal interpretation, God is going to reveal that this world - planet Earth - is his lovely creation. Good luck with that. Planet Earth does not exist. It is an illusion. The course even tells us the "real world" is an illusion and will disappear.)
"There is no world! This is the central thought the Course attempts to teach." (AHA!.. .. If you can GET this one and accept it, you've made a huge leap away from the ILLUSION that this world dis real, or that God could have created it whatsoever, to the awareness that this world can NEVER be real because to believe that requires a belief in sin and death. There is no world. Yes, planet Earth. There is no planet earth, neither as a separate planet nor as part of some seamless "soup" of God-stuff. Pretty threatening to the ego which is why it fights it tooth and nail.)
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never be undone." (Miracles can UNDO the world itself, and everything the world says cannot be undone (itself), BECAUSE the world CAN be undone, proving that it is NOT REAL. What is real cannot be undone. If miracles can undo the world, they can bring about RESURRECTION - the undoing of death in ALL its forms, including physical and mental death. Eventually the entire physical universes is going to be UNDONE, because it does not exist. Only God's kingdom will remain.)
"This is an insane world, and do not underestimate the extent of its insanity." (Obviously, but this actually does not just mean that the people in the world are nuts (and most are, me included), it means the world ITSELF, the very fabric of spacetime, is insanity. It is impossible to be separate from God and this universe attempts to prove otherwise.)
"On confusion has this world been based, and there is nothing else it rests upon." (here, we're told the world RESTS UPON confusion. The world itself. Now, if this means your perception, sure, that'd seem to make sense. You can be confused, and become unconfused. Sure, makes sense. But this statement isn't speaking about you or your personal world. In fact, most of the course is not speaking to or about anyone's EGO SELF, and yet 90%+ of ACIM students THINK that the Course is talking about THEIR PERSONAL EGO, which leads to a ton of confusion. The world ITSELF is based on confusion because it's an expression of a belief that separation from God is possible, which is a confused state of mind.)
"It is not will for life but wish for death that is the motivation for this world." (And this never changes. The world is BASED ON death, made of death, and is ALWAYS DEAD. There is no life here. There is no life outside of heaven. All forms of "life" in the world, all bodies, animals, plants etc, the sun and stars, it is all part of a DREAM OF DEATH, and not one part of it has eternal life. Death was the motivation that MADE THIS WORLD. This world was MADE BY A DEATH WISH, not by God. That's quite extremely opposite to the folk who believe God created this world somehow).
"The world is only in the mind of its maker. Do not believe it is outside of yourself." (When this says "yourself" note that it does not just mean "you in a body and not other people." Most people take it that way because they have an ego. Statements about you making the world or the world being in your mind, is not about it being in your SEPARATE MIND. It's about it being in THE ONE MIND of the son of God. The ONE son of God is the maker of this entire world. It is not outside of THAT SELF. You are busy focusing on how to get your LITTLE SELF to a state of awakening of maximal naturalness, but there is more beyond that - realizing that you are the entire sonship and more. You are Christ, not just one Son.)
"What profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?" (Who wants the crappy world anyway? It's full of shit.)
"You are not the victim of the world you see because you invented it. You can give it up as easily as you made it up." (You can believe you are victimized when you believe the world itself is a CAUSE and you are its EFFECT. But when this is reversed (this is a course in cause not effect), YOU become the cause and the world is recognized as an EFFECT. It has no power over you because it is an EFFECT of YOUR dreaming it (as the One Son). This is how you are not a victim of it. Otherwise, the world can still kill you against your will. No-one dies without their own consent.)
"Holy are you, eternal, free and whole, at peace forever in the Heart of God. Where is the world, and where is sorrow now?" (Apparently Jesus is clear that the world is not a place of peace or freedom or holiness. So God cannot have created it.)
"What is seen in dreams seems to be very real. Yet the Bible says that a deep sleep fell upon Adam, and nowhere is there reference to his waking up. The world has not yet experienced any comprehensive reawakening or rebirth." (Yes dreams seem very real. What if i told you right now that you are actually INSIDE A HUGE DREAM? Right now... this room you are in or whatever, the people you are near, it's part of a DREAM. This is not what God created because it is a DREAM, not a reality. God does not dream or make worlds of dreams, or dreams of death. God did not create a dream world. You're dreaming, and you need to wake up FROM this dream, not TO it.)
"Forgive the world, and you will understand that every thing that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real." (Objects in this world have ends and beginnings. Every particle begins and ends. Every flower is sown and grows and blooms and dies. Beginnings and endings. It's not just a matter of not seeing them correctly or not realizing that "God is making them grow" or some BS, it's simply that, ALL FORMS ARE FORMS OF DEATH, and they all end, and that is why they are NOT eternal, and God did not create them.
"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel." (Exactly, and elsewhere Jesus tells us that love (God) did not make the body. God does not create forms, or planets, or a physical universe).
"The tiny instant you would keep and make eternal, passed away in Heaven too soon for anything to notice it had come. What disappeared too quickly to affect the simple knowledge of the Son of God can hardly still be there, for you to choose to be your teacher." (The entire world and all things in it were MADE by us to be NOT ETERNAL, which is WHY it passed away, because it could not last. Nothing God creates can die or end or transform or change, no matter what words you use to try to make out that it wouldn't be seen "as change" when you're awake.)
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." (I like this quote also because it locks in the form of the world as being evidence of a mistake. Everything in the world, bodies, objects, even the planet, are "little". All little particles and atoms. All little tiny little creatures walking around thinking they are big. Go up in an airplane and you'll see how little it all is. Every FORM in this world is little, as an idea of not being unlimited or infinite, because it's an idea of contraction AWAY from God. This is not God's creation or God's will, and God would not maintain this for an instant.)
"There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see and all the world must change accordingly. (mind over matter)" (Again this is another one which people can and do use to try to prove that references to the world are all about "your personal misperception", and that you need to fix how you see in order to see it properly, and that afterwards, you'll keep the world and stay in it because it's real. No. Your WISHES have MADE A PLANET. The wishes of the one son of God, has made an entire physical universe. These are wishes to die. Wishes to be crucified. Wishes to sin. Wishes against God's will. God did not make this. What you want to see, changes, IN FORM, as mind-over-matter, because your mind is THAT POWERFUL. It doesn't just mean you change your perception OF stuff, when your perception properly changes, the world ITSELF must change form, and so must the body.)
"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less and so it is important to you. The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition." (You put it there (forms, bodies, trees, buildings) because you WANT TO. Do you think you don't have that much power? The mind is very powerful. The world must match the outward picture of the inward condition of the mind of the ONE SON. The One Son is attempting to destroy himself BY fragmenting himself into many many individuals and forms scattered across many worlds. What shows up as objects and bodies is what the Son of God wants to see there. It IS his perception. The course says literally "the world IS PERCEPTION", which does not mean that your little human "perception" contains the illusory world, it means the ENTIRE WORLD OF EARTH is inside the perception of a vast mind - it is that mind's IMAGINATION. Meaning, physical objects, are actually a part of SEEING, the mechanism of trying to VISUALIZE STUFF, which brings it into appearance as fake images i.e. objects and forms and bodies. When the mind is free of all this, the physical world - yes - planet earth in all its ways - MUST DISSAPPEAR.)
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." (I would rather have what the Kingdom of God offers than what this world offers. This world is not my home. It does not contain the truth. It is not real. And God did not create it. It HAS blinded the sons to the father, which was its purpose. You cannot behold (see in any way) the world (physical planet earth) and behold the kingdom. Only one of them is true and real. Planet earth does not exist, was not created by god, is an illusion, and if you're still SEEING IT in any way, with any mind whatsoever, you are not in the Kingdom. To suggest you can BE in God, in his kingdom, while the world continues to appear or move or change or have form, you are in denial.)
"O my brothers, if you only knew the peace that will envelop you and hold you safe and pure and lovely in the Mind of God, you could but rush to meet Him where His altar is. Hallowed your Name and His, for they are joined here in this holy place. Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love." (Looking forward to this! Finally a relief from this world of nightmares and death and suffering. THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD BEYOND THIS which God did create - his kingdom, heaven, filled with joy and life and peace and celebration. It is HOME. It is where you really want to be. Do not let the world, planet earth, bodies, objects, forms, people, places, idols, or anything else, KEEP YOU FROM going there and accepting it as your true home where your true nature is free at last. The world offers nothing in comparison. Pleasure is not love. Specialness is not love. Forms are not love. Sunsets and kittens are not love. "Never was love in the world."
There is no world. The people who do not believe this will continue to not believe this, and will object to this post and everything it says. They are free to do so, but they are not free of the confusion that is going to accompany those beliefs, or the fear that will be induced upon being confronted with this truth. I would hope people will change their mind and see what the course is really telling us. Then we have real hope.
We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL illusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them.
Each one peoples his world with figures from his INDIVIDUAL past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ. But the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are made up ONLY of his REACTIONS to his brothers, and do NOT include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not see that he made them, and that they ARE NOT WHOLE. For these figures HAVE NO WITNESSES, being perceived in one SEPARATE mind only.
It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they SEE only those who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who ARE NOT THERE, and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he ALONE believes they answered him. Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world.
And thus it is that you MUST attack yourself first. For what you attack is NOT in others. Its ONLY reality is in your OWN mind, and by attacking others, you are literally attacking WHAT IS NOT THERE. The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES. They do not wish to die, YET THEY WILL NOT LET CONDEMNATION GO. And so they SEPARATE into their private world, where everything is disordered, and where what is within, appears to be without. Yet what IS within they do NOT see, for the REALITY of their brothers they CANNOT see.
You have but two emotions, yet in your private world, you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE.
As you look with open eyes upon your world, it MUST occur to you that you have withdrawn into insanity. For you see what is not there, and hear what is soundless. Your behavioral MANIFESTATIONS of emotions are the OPPOSITE of what the emotions ARE. You communicate with no-one, and you are as isolated from reality, as if you were ALONE in all the universe. In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look. God calls you and you do not hear, for you are preoccupied with your own voice. And the vision of Christ is not in your sight, for you look upon yourself ALONE.
Little children, would you offer THIS to your Father? For if you offer it to yourself, you ARE offering it to Him. And He will NOT return it, for it is unworthy of you BECAUSE it is unworthy of Him. But He WOULD release you from it, and set you free. His sane answer tells you that what you have offered YOURSELF is NOT true, but HIS offering TO you has never changed. You who know not what you do, CAN learn what insanity IS, and look beyond it. It is GIVEN you to learn how to DENY insanity, and come forth from your private world in peace.
And you will see all that you denied in your brothers, BECAUSE you denied it in yourself. For you will love them, and by drawing nigh unto them, you will draw them to YOURSELF, perceiving them as witnesses to your reality, which you share with GOD. For I am WITH them, as I am with YOU. And we will draw them from their private world, for as we are united, so would we unite with them. The Father welcomes all of us in gladness, and gladness is what WE would offer Him. For every Son of God is given you, to whom God gave HIMSELF. And it is God Whom you must offer them, to recognize His gift to YOU.
Vision depends on light, and you CANNOT see in darkness. Yet in the darkness, in the private world of sleep, you SEE in dreams, although your eyes are closed. And it is here that WHAT you see YOU MADE. But let the DARKNESS go, and ALL you made YOU WILL NO LONGER SEE, for sight of IT depends upon DENYING vision. But from denying vision, IT DOES NOT FOLLOW THAT YOU CANNOT SEE. Yet this is what denial DOES, for BY it you ACCEPT insanity, believing you can make a private world, AND RULE YOUR OWN PERCEPTION. But FOR this, light MUST be excluded. Dreams disappear when light has come, AND YOU CAN SEE.
Do not seek vision through YOUR eyes. For you MADE your way of seeing, that you might see in darkness, and in this you ARE deceived. BEYOND this darkness, and yet still WITHIN you, is the vision of Christ, Who looks on all in light. YOUR vision comes from fear, as His from Love. And He sees FOR you, as your witness to the real world. He is the Holy Spirit'sMANIFESTATION, looking always on the real world, and calling forth its witnesses, and drawing them unto YOU. For He loves what He sees within you, and He would EXTEND it. And He will not return unto the Father, until He has extended your perception even unto Him. And there perception is no more, for He has RETURNED you to the Father WITH Him.
You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision He beholds Himself. And seeing what He is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see, as you look with Him. For His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you.
The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed. And all who would behold Him can see Him, for they have ASKED for light. Nor will they see Him ALONE, for He is no more alone than THEY are. Because they SAW the Son, they have risen IN Him to the Father. And all this will they understand, because they looked within, and saw, beyond the darkness, the Christ in them, and RECOGNIZED Him. In the sanity of His vision, they looked upon themselves with love, seeing themselves as the Holy Spirit sees them. And WITH this vision of the truth in THEM, came all the beauty of the world to shine upon them.
Originally, the only existence was in Heaven. But in the separation, we opposed heaven and made an opposite state of mind. This state of mind then projected an opposite world, rooted in the idea of death (opposition to eternal life). This includes the Earth and the Sun.
"Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." "For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."
What we actually did was, we went from total heaven, to total hell. We took it to the extreme. We wanted to be AS opposite to heaven as possible, opposing EVERY law and nature and property of reality. This threw us immediately into insanity, resulting in "false perception."
In making a world opposite to God's nature, we made space and time and matter and planets and bodies. All of these were made in the spirit of opposition and falseness, of attack and sin, of murder and death. The body was also made within false perception, LOCKED IN to false perception, such that we could only see what is false and project it out to make a world. The world was therefore made by us to symbolize total opposition to reality, and the crucifixion of God's son.
"The world is false perception. It is born of error"
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"These eyes made not to see will never see."
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see."
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."
It's important to realize that in fact TWO things happened in the separation:
1) Your mind was in a false state, believing in the murderous opposition to God. It was insane, driven mad by guilt over the attack on God. It could not perceive accurately or truly, it could only be confused and lost and afraid and murderous. It was trying to destroy itself. It had lost touch with truth and reality, and was in darkness or 'evil'.
2) From this dark state of mind, we projected the world. This includes the making of the physical planet Earth and all its bodies and forms, as well as the environment around it. We made the physical world as an attack on God. Due to the insane state of mind we were in, we made it "in hate", with laws of death and punishment, and with the intent to destroy. This is why everything in it eventually dies.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin." "The body is the idea of sin made flesh." "You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."
Since we made the world in INSANITY, to oppose heaven's nature and to attack God's family, we really made it without seeing it clearly. We made it in a confused state of mind. We made it in blindness and in darkness and in unwillingness to see. We made it TO hide reality from ourselves, and so have not really looked upon its 'actual' nature. We haven't seen what we really made, we've only seen what it APPEARS to be while in a state of inner false perception.
What Jesus is saying in the course is that because this is all rooted in your mental state, and you can change your mind, you can also be restored to sanity. Your internal landscape can be healed so that it becomes able to recognize reality, recognize that an illusory world IS an illusion and not real, and that you can then return to having real vision. That you can open your eyes and actually take a good clear look at what you made, WITHOUT the negative dark evil baggage of false perception.
It's like, okay, you were in a bad mood one day, you lashed out and made some horrible sculpture, which seemed evil and twisted and wrong. And then your mood brightened, and you lightened up, and you remembered sanity, and then you looked upon the sculpture you made and saw it as if new - as if for the first time, without the past and without hate or sin or guilt or fear. And in that "new light", it does not appear to you the way it appeared in false perception.
Note that this does not mean the world's FORM necessarily changes at all. In fact, the same physical laws apply, the same decay and chaos and war and famine and murder and death and sickness still occur. And the body, which is part of that system, is always able to still "see" that as its reality. BUT, when you see it without the ego baggage of murderous destruction, you are "forgiving it".
Jesus refers to true perception as "accurate perception". That means you are becoming able to see correctly, or clearly, "what is there". ie, to take a look at the twisted, "strange world you made", but from a lighter mood. With a more loving attitude. One which doesn't project guilt and sin ONTO it. But one which also lets you "see it straight", without distortion and without confusion. And this lets you see the world you made in a "forgiving way".
This doesn't in any way really change the fact that the world STILL is a place of suffering and murder and death, or run by death's laws, or designed to attack. But you no longer are DECEIVED BY it, tempted by it, fall for its forms and appearances, or buy into its implications.
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."
"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them even though they were made of hate."
"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear, and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."
So what we're trying to do here is to, while being in a body, change the internal contents of our minds, so that we are no longer in the same state of mind we WERE in when we made the world as a projected attack, so that we STOP PROJECTING THAT. At first, the world is seen WITHOUT the hateful baggage, and then later the lack of ITS SOURCE within our minds, the undoing of the world WITHIN our mind, causes us to STOP PROJECTING IT AT ALL. And then the world disappears.
"These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God."
"You have been promised full release from the world you made. "
"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE. But take it from the hand of Christ, and look upon it. ITS reality will make everything ELSE invisible, for beholding it is TOTAL perception."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"For time YOU made, and time you CAN command. You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made."
"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what IT wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source."
"LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
""The real world, in its loveliness, YOU learn to reach. Fantasies are all undone, no-one and nothing remains still bound by them, and, by YOUR OWN forgiveness, you are FREE TO SEE. And WHAT you see is only what YOU HAVE MADE, with the blessing of your forgiveness on it. And, with this final blessing of God's Son UPON HIMSELF, the REAL perception, born of the new perspective he has learned, has served its purpose.
The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him.
The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. *****And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness.***** Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release.
All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently ***across chaos*** (the chaos is still there), and removing all illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign (symbol) of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there, he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there in peace.
Even salvation will become a dream, and vanish from his mind. For salvation IS the end of dreams, and, with the closing of the dream, will have no meaning. Who, awake in Heaven, COULD dream that there could ever be NEED of salvation? How much do you WANT salvation? It will GIVE you the real world, trembling with readiness to BE given you. The eagerness of the Holy Spirit to give you this, is so intense He would not wait, although He waits in patience. MEET His patience with your IMpatience at delay in meeting Him. Go out in gladness to meet with your Redeemer, and walk with Him, in trust, ***out of this world***, and into the real world of beauty and forgiveness."
In this world, sin is an EVENT. In fact, it is anything that seems to HAPPEN. Any physical change, any transformation of materials, any movement, any action, anything bodies of any kind do, any chemical interactions of particles, it is sin.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin."
Sin is also insanity.
"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"
The whole world, all of spacetime, anything the body can see, is a model of sin and punishment for sin. "Everything the body sees is a form of error."
"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws that seem to govern it are the laws of death."
The physical world, matter, is also referred to in the course as a granite block of sin. The illusion of physicality, rooted in the idea of PHYSICAL SIN. This is why sin requires a BODY, because only bodies can PHYSICALLY SIN.
"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would try to pass it. ****The body's eyes behold it as solid granite****, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it (x-ray christ vision) easily, BECAUSE it is an error."
"And ***they were made to look on error, and not see past it***. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."
So basically, the entire physical universe is formed on the idea of sin. Everything that seems to transpire is sin. Breathing, eating, sleeping, working, laughing, milking a cow, sucking a milkshake, it's all sin. Even just the appearance of an illusion or a physical world AT ALL is sin.
It's sin in that sin is the idea of "something happening" or "something existing which doesn't", or "the impossible seeming possible", that "affects" something else seemingly against its will. Like a collision of two forces. And this is fundamental to the laws of physics.
When one thing "hits" another, it is the idea of sin taking place, that there can be a conflict, a war, a collision of interests, in which one thing is impacted seeming from outside of its own will.
And when sin occurs on this level, in this realm of spacetime, physical matter seems to change, reacting with effects and consequences. Materials change, properties change, objects change their locations, atoms rearrange, forces and counter-forces interact, and the whole picture shifts and changes and suffers and dies.
If anything CAN be changed, it CANNOT be real, because nothing real can be threatened. So that means that any change that occurs in anything, is artificial evidence that SIN IS HAPPENING TO IT. It is an illusion of sin, and not reality, but in THIS world it appears to "really happen".
This is why in this world, when you attack something, and it produces a "change" in any way, the change now TESTIFIES that "sin has occurred." If something happens to something else, and it is modified, and now it is different, and it seems to DEMONSTRATE that it is different, and maintains its "new state" for anyone to point a finger at and say, "look there, SOMETHING HAPPENED TO IT" .... this changed state is a PROOF OF SIN.
It then does not matter how you frame it. If the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE is still there to look at, to point out, to touch and see and evaluate, then it PROVES that SIN DID TAKE PLACE. You can't have effects without causes. This is how the ego "locks in" the consequences of sin, and uses physical evidence to PROVE that sin has occurred. If you can measure it, it's a sin.
This means that if you are playing in the realm of illusions, of physicality, you are automatically dabbling in sin. Because the WHOLE WORLD is founded on the idea of sin.
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh"
So let's say that someone seems to attack your body and this produces a CHANGE in the body. Maybe some kind of wound is inflicted, some kind of damage. The body is bleeding and there is a hole. Well, this physical appearance PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt to anyone looking at it and thinking it real, that SIN HAPPENED. It testifies to it. You can't deny if, if you think it's reality.
You cannot claim that sin did not happen IF THE RESULTS ARE STILL THERE. If I can point a finger at it and say, well, it doesn't matter WHAT you claim, the EVIDENCE is still there, the body IS STILL WOUNDED, then it STILL SHOWS that SIN HAPPENED. There is no getting around this. Changing your perception to recognize that "there is no sin" also isn't the same thing as REVERSING THE CONSEQUENCES.
"Thus does the ****miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone.**** And hopelessness ***and death MUST disappear*** before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."
When attack is taking place, or more to the point, when a person REFUSES TO HEAL the effects of the sin, to reverse the physical symptoms of sickness, or to REMOVE the PROOF OF SIN from the body, then there is still ACCUSATION OF SIN HAPPENING. Because if the body is STILL damaged, the UNDENIABLE PROOF is still sitting right there staring you in the face. A damaged body is STILL testifying that NO MATTER what the state of mind is, or how forgiving you think you are, SIN STILL HAPPENED. I can look at it, I can see it, I can touch it, sin has NOT been undone. I can't claim to be holy while showing you PROOF THAT YOU SINNED!!
"For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. ***He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes.*** And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his (mental AND physical) healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."
"Only the mind AND body need atonement." ---- AND THE BODY NEEDS ATONEMENT!!
Do you see here that Jesus is literally saying that you MUST heal the body of any signs of attack, otherwise it STILL PROVES that sin happened?
If you hold a "proof of sin" before your brother's eyes - the wounds, the scars, the fallout, the consequences, the broken limbs, whatever. If you hold it in front of them you are SHOWING HIM consequential, cause-effect PROOF, that because this EFFECT is here, A CAUSE MUST HAVE BEEN HERE ALSO. And that testifies in a way that cannot be denied that you HAVE NOT forgiven him or yourself.
This is why Jesus says that forgiveness is not complete, is not real, and has not been finished, IF the PROOF OF SIN has not been removed. That means, the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE HAS TO BE UNDONE. THE BODY HAS TO BE HEALED, otherwise you HAVE NOT forgiven him.
This vital paragraph tells you exactly that.
"***Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself.*** ***YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real.*** How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."
To demonstrate his sins were NOT REAL, you must SHOW HIM that THE EFFECTS ARE GONE.
You can only attest his sins had NO EFFECT on you, or your body, by REMOVING THE EFFECTS. If you still have the effects to show him, you are not only still accusing him ("sick bodies remain accusers"), you also HAVE NOT finished forgiving. Because effects REQUIRE an ONGOING CAUSE, and if the effects remains, you are STILL ATTACKING HIM for it. This is what the course is saying. You must heal the body in order NOT to accuse your brother of sin.
Forgiveness HAS TO INCLUDE the UNDOING OF PHYSICAL PROOF OF SIN. If it does not bring a physical healing along with it, and if all the signs and effects of the DOING OF SIN are not COMPLETELY OBLITERATED, the mind HAS NOT been healed and it still harbors attack thoughts and a purpose for accusation.
"A damaged body shows the mind has not been healed."
So you cannot say you are DONE forgiving, if PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS still remain. You cannot say you are DONE forgiving, if the BODY is still sick. You cannot say that a healing has taken place, if the BODY and the ENVIRONMENT testify in ANY WAY, to the PRESENCE OF PROOF that "something happened."
It has to be that all of the proof vanishes. If I spill milk on the kitchen floor, and there is STILL milk on the kitchen floor, IT PROVES that I MUST have spilled the milk. I cannot deny that. So long as the milk is ON THE FLOOR, there remains proof. The EFFECTS IMPLY that there WAS A CAUSE. Because you cannot have effects WITHOUT a cause. If the effects remain, it PROVES that a CAUSE did happen. And causation is tied to sin.
"Nothing can have effects without a cause"
And in this world, cause is SIN. So if someone CAUSES your body to be wounded, they CAUSED a sin. And the effects are the wound. And until the WOUND IS GONE, the sin is still PROVEN, which ACCUSES your brother and damns him to hell. This imprisons his mind and curses him to death.
So Jesus does in fact ask that even in this world, even in bodies, even if it's an illusion, and even if it seems to be meaningless, that you HEAL THE BODY of all effects of attack, IN ORDER TO exonerate your brother and TEACH HIM of his innocence. WHILE you have a body.
If he attempted to attack your body, chopping off your arms, and then you return and your ARMS ARE RESTORED.... HE has no way in his mind to connect cause and effect, he sees that HE CANNOT HAVE SINNED, and that your HEALING PROVES HIS INNOCENCE. And thereby he now recognizes that the SYMBOLIC HEALTH of your body TESTIFIES to his innocence, and this PROOF OF INNOCENCE ... HEALS HIS MIND. Physical health EXONERATES your brother, just as sickness is an ACCUSATION OF SIN.
"For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers." "Your body can be means to ***teach that it has never suffered pain because of him***. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak ***with power greater than a thousand tongues.***
**********For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. *********
A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (mind and body) show your mind is healed, and has forgiven ***what he did NOT do***. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, *****and healed along with you.****"
This is using the physical body as a communication device FOR HEALING! Using it as a symbol of innocence. And using it to AFFECT YOUR BROTHER'S MIND. Your healing and your health IS your brother's healing and health. When you are healed, you are not healed alone, EVEN on the physical level.
This is what Jesus's physical resurrection was all about. "SHOW your brother you had no hurt of him."
When you are having true perception.... "M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be ***HEALED*** will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There ***will be those who seem to be "sicker"*** than others, and the *******body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before*******. 4 But ***the healed mind*** will put them all in one category; they are unreal.
5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories (false and true) are meaningful in ***sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world.*** (through the body's eyes) 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."
As you begin your journey towards truth and are using the body's eyes, which SEEM to see the physical world, but isn't REAL sight, and is actually a state of not seeing anything real, you start to open the spiritual eye and develop christ vision. The whole workbook is designed for the purpose of developing christ vision, which, by the way, entails the simultaneous use of the body's eyes to READ the workbook lessons ;-)
The body's eyes, made not to see, are always functioning as biological machinery in the same way. They are sense organs, which pick up photons of light which are DENIED by surfaces of objects, and bounce into your retina, sending "signals" of "images" into your mind. The eyeballs obviously do not see at all even at the physical level, they are just relays or sensors, which pick up light and transmit it to the brain, where the mind then "sees" the images. Only the mind really sees.
The thing is that, if you BELIEVE these images depict truth or reality, that you are seeing reality when you see physical objects, you are deluded IN your mind, and your MIND is having false perception. That is, your mind is believing in, investing in, and "making real", the images coming from the body's eyes. So now the body is fixed having false perceptions of an unreal world, it's trying to send these pictures to the mind and the mind is deciding one thing: "are these images real, or are they unreal?" "are they true, or false?".
So yes, you can continue to SEE THIS WORLD.... EITHER as "it is real" or as "it is unreal". It's not a matter of "do I see the world or not", at the level of perception. Perception EITHER sees the ILLUSORY WORLD and BELIEVES it is true (false perception), or it SEES the SAME illusory world and BELIEVES it is false (true perception). In both cases, the world IS SEEN STILL!! It's a dream! Either you are seeing the nightmare dream of false perception or the HAPPY DREAM. A happy dream is the illusory world RECOGNIZED as being UNREAL!!! You are happy BECAUSE You know it is BULLSHIT!!! How else COULD you be happy but to recognize that images of hell are NOT TRUE?
In order to come to realize that these images are false and unreal, that the physical world is an illusion, the mind has to learn to FORGIVE. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". Through forgiveness, you train the mind to recognize illusions as illusions, to NOT believe they are real, and to NOT see value or truth in them. This results in the continual transmission of images into the mind by the body's eyes but when the mind looks AT these images, it learns to OVERLOOK the ILLUSIONS they are trying to present, the temptation, and the mind learns to CATEGORIZE ALL of these images as UNREAL. Yet, the mind STILL IS SEEING THEM. It simply shifts its vantage point and sense of TRUTH, to be able to discern that NONE of these images depict truth or reality.
Therefore Christ Vision is gradually developed in parallel to having body eyesight, and the more that you progress in forgiveness of ILLUSIONS, which means THE WORLD, the more your mind is able to recognize the world is FALSE, and the world now registers with you experientially as something false. You still SEE IT, but it doesn't seem believable. It doesn't strike you as "really happening". In this state, your mind can be SIGNIFICANTLY HEALED, and very very close to awakening, while STILL seeing simultaneously with the body's eyes.
So what now is happening is, your mind is being STILL presented with images of hell - physical world - which it can still see, but these images become so OVERLOOKED, that they start to become transparent as if you are literally looking THROUGH them rather than stopping at the surfaces. You start to glimpse the face of christ BEYOND the physical images, beyond the universe, beyond the body. And so now you are starting to see God "in everything you see" because you are seeing God BEYOND the physical illusion of objects.
In this state, you are a teacher of God, who is still in the world, having a body, SEEING WITH the body's eyes, AND simultaneously seeing with Christ Vision which OVERLOOKS what the body sees. In this state, it is TOTALLY NORMAL to be able to still see the bodies of other people, moving around, doing things in the physical world, while ALSO overlooking them and recognizing them as unreal. Since the body's eyes do not "Switch off" at this point, it's kind of like you're getting bombarded with images of hell at the same time as trying to approach heaven. And so you have to learn to NOT BELIEVE what the eyes are showing you. BUT YOU DO STILL SEE IT "mixed in" with your Christ vision.
Jesus speaks of this again in this statement:
"M-12.6. Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. 2 God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. 3 It is a conscious choice. 4 For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. 5 The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? 6 Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. 7 They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. 8 Yet they are not deceived by what they see. 9 They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. 10 Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. 11 And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
Notice how it says that such persons are AWARE of dreaming, which means they can SEE the dream world - the physical world. Notice how it says THEY WATCH DREAM FIGURES come and go, shift and change, AND ... SUFFER AND DIE! All seen from A HEALED MIND!!! They CAN SEE bodies being sick, they CAN SEE "people" suffering, they CAN SEE DEATH, EVEN THOUGH they themselves are having a very healed mind, a very "sick free" mind, which does NOT BELIEVE IN sickness, and IS NOT PROJECTING SICKNESS ONTO OTHERS. And this is because the body is still dangling in front of the mind picking up signals from the dream world. The body will continue showing the mind pictures of sickness and death EVEN IF the mind does not believe in sickness and death. The result is that the images are SEEN, but they are NOT BELIEVED. They register as UNREAL, FALSE, NOT TRUE. It's a shift in vantage point which makes the whole world be RECOGNIZED as an illusion, instead of BELIEVED to be real.
In this state, it is perfectly possible for a teacher of God to be "in the world but not of it". To walk around the Earth, seeing bodies still, but overlooking them as well. Seeing people with broken legs, severe diseases, missing organs and so on, or even states of death. But the miracle worker in their right mind DOES NOT BELIEVE any of these things are true of any brothers, and they do not AGREE WITH what those brothers ARE BELIEVING about themselves and their bodies. The brothers ARE recognized as calling for love, since it is forgiving to recognize this and not that punishment is real, and as such there is EFFORTLESS perception of the "need" that people SEEM to have. And that means, you recognize who is viable as a recipient of A MIRACLE. It means you CAN SEE A CALL FOR HELP.
This combination of body vision and christ vision is precisely why JESUS was able to walk the Earth, SEE people sick and dying, and DO SOMETHING. He could tell that someone's body was showing up to his mind as "it is in the form of sickness", EVEN THOUGH he did not BELIEVE in sickness being TRUE. He did not merely "switch off" the ability to SEE the body at all, at that point. He did not have a state of "if I see sickness, I am sick". You have to remember there are TWO functions of seeing happening at once. In His mind, in his Christ Vision, he OVERLOOKED the sick body and it registered to him as NOT REAL. But in his body vision he could still SEE the state the body was in. And this is how he was able to SEE, those who were suffering and sick, even though HIS MIND did not believe the images he was seeing. HE was not sick. HE was not projecting sickness. HE was not MAKING people be sick. He knew the were not REALLY sick. But he also knew he could SEE that THEY believed they were suffering. So he HELPED THEM!
This is precisely the scenario that sets up a foundation for being a MIRACLE WORKER. Because now a teacher of God is HEALED, and yet CAN SEE those who are NOT healed. The teacher of God now has an abundance of love, while recognizing that those whose dream bodies still seem to suffer, are SEEMING to LACK love, and are "in need". That they are, from their own perspectives as individuals, suffering. Their minds are sick, their bodies are sick. And this establishes the dynamic where the miracle worker IS HEALED, but OTHERS ARE NOT. Thus, "Miracles supply a lack". and "Miracles are given by those who temporarily have more, to those who temporarily have less." It would be absolutely impossible to EVER be in a situation where you HAVE MORE, while others HAVE LESS, if the commonly-held mistaken view of how perception works were correct. And it would VIOLATE numerous miracle principles.
See, this is how most people think of perception, and it's wrong... the idea that "I have perception", it's one thing, it looks upon the world, and "I need to shift it". And the idea that projection makes perception, implying that whatever I see, I am putting there. So now it's like, my perception was aiming at hell, because I was putting hell there, and I need to redirect it towards heaven, so that I will perceive heaven and NOT SEE HELL at all. This is a big problem. Because if that's your model of perception, it means you become BLIND TO what is happening in the world as soon as you no longer believe in it. So like, if you stop believing sickness is real, in this model, you would literally expect to not be able to SEE anything that is sick, ever again. And this would imply, if you see sickness, YOU are sick, or you are attacking, or you are trying to make your brother be sick. That their sickness is your sickness. And this essentially makes you TOTALLY INCAPABLE of seeing whether or not your brother is in need of help.
Also in this broken model, it results in a situation where there is total inner and outer equality between what you believe and what you see. Therefore, you will assert that the outward picture (equated also with what the body sees) matches my inner condition and the world is like a mirror. So I see only myself. I'm all that exists (narcissistic, selfish). And thus you can never be in a position where "you have more" and someone else "has less". It means thus you never see any reason to help or heal or supply a lack for others, because you think "their sickness" is just a reflection of "your sickness." You think if you see sickness at all (e.g. broken leg), YOU must be making it be broken, and you need the healing, and no-one else needs anything. This is in TOTAL DENIAL of the way the body's sight functions continually in parallel to spiritual sight.
This is a very prevalent belief about how perception works, and it is totally bullshit. Or rather, it's only one half of the picture. It leads to a justification for NOT PERFORMING ANY MIRACLES FOR OTHERS. It completely WIPES OUT, the entire situation where miracles given to others could EVER be seen as "needed" or "making sense" to "called for", because the person now thinks that all they see is themselves. That the whole world is their own self. This thus becomes SELFISH. And it cancels the entire practice of miracle working in the world. It completely obliterates any reason why you would be able to SEE the "call for love" of another, yet alone giving a reason to respond to it. And this model of perception is treasured by those who do not want to work any miracles ever. It is a miracle-fearing, course denying paradigm of a mistaken understanding of how perception functions.
There is SOME truth to this false model, in the sense that it IS describing the transition from false perception to true perception. It is describing the healing of the BELIEF IN sickness being real or true. It IS a movement towards healed perception and christ vision. It IS the opening up to forgiveness and the overlooking of illusions and lies. It is recognizing the you DO project stuff onto others and see it. And it recognizes that YOUR MIND DOES need healing when you see illusions AS REAL. But that's a far cry from believing that you must not see the world AT ALL in order to be healed, which denies what the body's eyes are doing. It is taken in isolation to mean, THE BODY STOPS SEEING ANYTHING, or that, you will see through the body's eyes and NOT SEE AND BROKEN BODIES, with is totally a level confusion. It completely IGNORES and shuts out the FACT, that the body's eyes CONTINUE to send images from the physical world into the mind, right up until the atonement is accepted and you leave the world behind.
The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other, but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. seen.9
The result is that the body still sees "the veil", which is the physical world, while the mind is overlooking those images and seeing THROUGH them to the light of heaven BEYOND the physical. In that state, let's say the veil/body images are registering with 1% visibility and perception of heaven is registering at 99% visibility. You DO transition from one to the other proportionately, linearly, because "you cannot see two worlds", but body vision does NOT END until christ vision is TOTALLY 100% PERFECTED. Meaning you're going to HAVE TO still keep seeing the physical world UNTIL you are practically ready to ascend to heaven.
WHEN Christ vision is absolutely complete, the face of Christ appears. That means, heaven becomes "visible". And it also means, Earth become "invisible." Literally. If you look upon the face of christ it should last merely an instant before God takes you to Heaven. The forgiven world has disappeared from your sight. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." And then perception ends entirely, the body's vision ceases to send anything to the mind, because the mind is now free of bodies forever. And that's what it means to be 100% spirit identified. And ONLY THEN, when you no longer HAVE A BODY AT ALL, ONLY then do you no longer have a PERCEPTION with which to see the illusory world of hell and death.
UNTIL THAT HAPPENS, you WILL continue receiving images from the body's vision! You WILL continue being able to see bodies in various states of health. YOU WILL be able to discern "who" is calling out for love and who isn't. Who is SICK, and who isn't. Who is DEAD, and who isn't. Who is mistaken and delusional and who isn't. But your mind will recognize these things are not REAL. The people BEING sick DO think it is real, but you do not agree with them. And this is how you are able to set them free and weaken their belief. This is how you are able to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD. To help others, to heal the sick, to raise the dead. To let the Holy Spirit USE YOUR BODY'S EYES for HIS PURPOSES! Because he is very much ready and willing and desiring to PERFORM MIRACLES IN THE WORLD TO HEAL THOSE WHO ARE IN THE WORLD. And that DOES include healing of sickness in mind AND body!!
Only when you ascend to heaven and leave the body entirely will you cease to be able to see the suffering of others in this world. And until then, you are to be a miracle worker. And if you're not doing that, you're in denial and being selfish.
Let us review the meaning of "forgive," for it is apt to be distorted and to be perceived as something which entails an unfair sacrifice of righteous wrath, a gift unjustified and undeserved, and a complete denial of the truth. In such a view, forgiveness must be seen as mere eccentric folly, and this course appears to rest salvation on a whim.
This twisted view of what forgiveness means is easily corrected when you can accept the fact that pardon is not asked for what is true. It must be limited to what is false. It is irrelevant to everything except illusions. Truth is God's creation, and to pardon this is meaningless. All truth belongs to Him, reflects His laws and radiates His Love. Does this need pardon? How can you forgive the sinless and eternally benign?
The major difficulty that you find in genuine forgiveness on your part is that you still believe you must forgive the truth and not illusions. You conceive of pardon as a vain attempt to look past what is there; to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true. This twisted viewpoint but reflects the hold that the idea of sin retains as yet upon your mind as you regard yourself.
Because you think your sins are real, you look on pardon as deception. For it is impossible to think of sin as true and not believe forgiveness is a lie. Thus is forgiveness really but a sin, like all the rest. It says the truth is false, and smiles on the corrupt as if they were as blameless as the grass; as white as snow. It is delusional in what it thinks it can accomplish. It would see as right the plainly wrong; the loathsome as the good.
Pardon is no escape in such a view. It merely is a further sign that sin is unforgivable, at best to be concealed, denied, or called another name, for pardon is a treachery to truth. Guilt can not be forgiven. If you sin, your guilt is everlasting. Those who are forgiven from the view their sins are real are pitifully mocked and twice condemned; first by themselves for what they think they did, and once again by those who pardon them.
It is sin's unreality which makes forgiveness natural and wholly sane, a deep relief to those who offer it; a quiet blessing where it is received. It does not countenance illusions, but collects them lightly, with a little laugh, and gently lays them at the feet of truth. And there they disappear entirely.
Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."
The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth. It is because of this that it becomes the undeceiver in the face of lies, the great restorer of the simple truth. By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth, which had been blocked by dreams of guilt. Now are you free to follow in the way your true forgiveness opens up to you. For if one brother has received this gift of you, the door is open to yourself.
There is a very simple way to find the door to true forgiveness, and perceive it open wide in welcome. When you feel that you are tempted to accuse someone of sin in any form, do not allow your mind to dwell on what you think he did, for this is self-deception. Ask instead, "Should I accuse myself of doing this?"
Thus will you see alternatives for choice in terms which render choosing meaningful, and keep your mind as free of guilt and pain as God Himself intended it to be, and as it is in truth. It is but lies which would condemn. In truth is innocence the only thing there is. Forgiveness stands between illusions and the truth, between the world you see and that which lies beyond, between the hell of guilt and Heaven's gate.
Across this bridge, as powerful as Love Which laid Its blessing on it, are all dreams of evil and of hatred and attack brought silently to truth. They are not kept to swell and bluster and to terrify the foolish dreamer who believes in them. He has been gently wakened from his dream by understanding what he thought he saw was never there. And now he cannot feel that all escape has been denied to him.
He does not have to fight to save himself. He does not have to kill the dragons which he thought pursued him. Nor need he erect the heavy walls of stone and iron doors he thought would make him safe. He can remove the ponderous and useless armor made to chain his mind to fear and misery. His step is light, and as he lifts his foot to stride ahead, a star is left behind to point the way to those who follow him.
Forgiveness must be practiced for the world cannot perceive its meaning, nor provide a guide to teach you its beneficence. There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality. And yet it joins your mind with the reality in you.
Today we practice true forgiveness that the time of joining be no more delayed. For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace. Our practicing becomes the footsteps lightening up the way for all our brothers, who will follow us to the Reality we share with them.
That this may be accomplished, let us give a quarter of an hour twice today, and spend it with the Guide Who understands the meaning of forgiveness, and was sent to us to teach it. Let us ask of Him:
"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is."
Then choose one brother as He will direct, and catalogue his "sins" as one by one they cross your mind. Be certain not to dwell on any one of them, but realize that you are using his "offenses" but to save the world from all ideas of sin. Briefly consider all the evil things you thought of him, and each time ask yourself "Would I condemn myself for doing this?"
Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom. If you have been practicing thus far in willingness and honesty, you will begin to sense a lifting up, a lightening of weight across your chest, a deep and certain feeling of relief. The time remaining should be given to experiencing the escape from all the heavy chains you sought to lay upon your brother, which were laid upon yourself.
Forgiveness should be practiced through the day, for there will be so many times when you forget its meaning, and attack yourself. When this occurs, allow your mind to see through this illusion as you tell yourself:
"Let me perceive forgiveness as it is.
Would I accuse myself of doing this?
I will not lay this chain upon myself."
In everything you do remember this:
No one is crucified alone, and yet,
No one can enter Heaven by himself.
Whenever you deny a blessing to a brother, YOU will feel deprived. This is because denial is as total as love. It is as impossible to deny part of the Sonship as it is to love it in part. Nor is it possible to love it totally AT TIMES. You CANNOT be totally committed SOMETIMES. Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind. If you use it to deny reality, reality is gone FOR YOU. REALITY CANNOT BE PARTLY APPRECIATED. That is why denying any part of it means you have lost awareness of ALL of it.
That is the negative side of the law as it operates in this world. But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively. Used negatively, it WILL be destructive, because it will be used for attack. But in the service of the Holy Spirit, the law becomes as beneficent as all of the laws of God. Stated positively, the law requires you only to recognize PART of reality to appreciate ALL of it. Mind is too powerful to be subject to exclusion. You will NEVER be able to exclude yourself from what you project.
When a brother acts insanely, he is offering you an opportunity to bless him. His need is YOURS. YOU need the blessing you can offer him. There is no way for you to have it EXCEPT by giving it. This IS the law of God, and it HAS NO EXCEPTIONS. What you deny you LACK, not because it IS lacking, but because you have denied it in another, and therefore are not aware of it in YOU. Every response you make is determined by what you think you ARE. And what you WANT to be IS what you think you are. Therefore, what you WANT to be determines every response you make.
You do NOT need God's blessing, because that you have forever. But you DO need YOURS. The picture you see of yourselves is deprived, unloving, and very vulnerable. You CANNOT love this. But you can very easily escape FROM it, or better, leave it behind. You are NOT there, and that is not YOU. Do not see this picture in anyone, or you HAVE accepted it as you. ALL illusions about the Sonship are DISPELLED together, as they were MADE together. Teach no-one that HE is what YOU do not want to be. Your brother is the mirror in which you will see the image of yourself as long as perception lasts. And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole.
You MADE perception, and it MUST last as long as you WANT it. Illusions are investments. They will last as long as you value them. Values are relative, but they are powerful because they are MENTAL JUDGMENTS. The only way to dispel illusions is to withdraw ALL investment from them, and they will HAVE no life for you because you have put them OUT OF YOUR MIND. While you include them IN it, you are GIVING them life. Except there is nothing there to receive your gift.
The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU. You are unaware of YOUR gift BECAUSE you do not give it. You CANNOT make nothing live, because it cannot BE enlivened. Therefore, you have NOT extended the gift you both have and are, and so you do NOT know your being. All confusion comes from not extending life, because this is NOT the will of your Creator. You CAN do nothing apart from Him, and you DO do nothing apart from him. Keep His Way to remember yourselves, and teach His Ways lest you forget yourself. Give only honor to the sons of the living God, and count yourself among them gladly.
ONLY honor is a fitting gift for those whom God Himself created worthy of honor and whom He honors. Give them the appreciation which God accords them always, because they are His Beloved Sons in whom He is well pleased. You CANNOT be apart from them, because you are not apart from Him. Rest in His love, and protect your rest by loving. But love EVERYTHING He created, of which YOU are part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift FOR yourself and AS yourself. You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you.
One Child of God is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach another. One Teacher is in all your minds, and He teaches the same lesson to all. He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks. Every attack is a call for His patience, because ONLY His patience can translate attack into blessing. Those who attack DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE BLESSED. They attack BECAUSE THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE DEPRIVED. Give therefore of YOUR abundance, and teach them THEIRS. Do not share their delusions of scarcity, or you will perceive YOURSELF as lacking.
Attack could never PROMOTE attack unless you perceived it as a means of depriving you of SOMETHING YOU WANT. But you cannot lose ANYTHING unless YOU do not value it and therefore DO NOT WANT IT. This makes you feel DEPRIVED of it, and by projecting YOUR rejection, you believe that others are TAKING IT FROM YOU. One MUST be fearful if he believes that his brother is attacking him to tear the Kingdom of Heaven from him.
This is the ultimate basis for ALL of the ego's projection. Being the part of your mind which does NOT believe it is responsible for ITSELF, and being without allegiance to God, it is incapable of trust. Projecting its insane belief that YOU have been treacherous to YOUR Creator, it believes that your brothers, who are as incapable of this as you are, are out to TAKE GOD FROM YOU. Whenever a brother attacks another, THIS IS WHAT HE BELIEVES. Projection ALWAYS sees YOUR will in others. If you will to separate YOURSELF from God, that is what you will think others are doing TO you.
You ARE the will of God. Do not accept anything else AS YOUR will, or you ARE denying what you are. Deny THIS and you WILL attack, because you believe you have BEEN attacked. But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you as you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him. The peace of God IS understanding this.
There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY. Perceive ANY part of the ego's thought system as wholly insane, wholly delusional, and wholly undesirable, and you have CORRECTLY EVALUATED ALL OF IT. This correction enables you to perceive ANY part of Creation as wholly real, wholly perfect, and WHOLLY DESIRABLE. Wanting this ONLY, you will HAVE this only, and giving this only, you will BE only this. The gifts you offer to the ego are ALWAYS experienced as sacrifices. But the gifts you offer to the Kingdom are gifts to YOU. They will always be treasured by God, because they belong to His Beloved Sons who belong to Him. All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His.
The CONTINUING will to remain separated is the only possible reason for continuing guilt feelings. We have said this before, but we did not emphasize the destructive results of this decision at that time. ANY decision of the mind will affect both behavior AND experience. And what you will you EXPECT. This is NOT delusional. Your mind DOES create your future, and CAN turn it back to full creation at any minute, IF IT ACCEPTS THE ATONEMENT FIRST. It will also turn back to full creation the instant it has done so. Having given up its thought DISORDER, the proper ordering of thought becomes quite apparent.
God in His knowledge is not waiting. But His Kingdom IS bereft while YOU wait. All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS. Delay does not matter in eternity, but it IS tragic in time. You have elected to be in time rather than in eternity, and have therefore changed your belief in your status. But election is both free and alterable. You do NOT belong in time. Your place is ONLY in eternity, where God Himself placed you forever.
Guilt feelings are the PRESERVERS of time. They induce fears of FUTURE retaliation or abandonment, and thus ensure that the future will remain like the past. This IS the ego's continuity, and gives it a false sense of security through the belief that you cannot escape from it. But you can and MUST. God offers you the continuity of eternity in exchange. When you will to make this exchange, you will simultaneously exchange guilt for peace, viciousness for love, and pain for joy.
My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way. And as its maker, you KNOW what it can do, because you GAVE IT the ability to do it. The mind does indeed know its power, because the mind does indeed know God. Remember the Kingdom always, and remember that you who are part of it cannot BE lost. The mind that was in me IS in you, for God creates with perfect fairness. Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?
What you do not understand is that the two voices speak for different interpretations of the same thing simultaneously, or almost simultaneously, for the ego always speaks first. Alternate interpretations are unnecessary until the first one has been made, and speaking itself was unnecessary before the ego was made. The ego speaks in judgment, and the Holy Spirit reverses its decisions, much as the Supreme Court has the power to reverse the lower court's decision about the laws of this world.
The ego's decisions are ALWAYS wrong, because they are based on a complete fallacy which they are made to uphold. NOTHING it perceives is interpreted correctly. Not only does it cite scripture for its purpose, but it even interprets scripture as a witness for itself. The Bible is a fearful thing to the ego, because of its prejudiced judgment. Perceiving it as fearful, it interprets it fearfully. Having made YOU afraid, you do not appeal to the higher court, because you believe its judgment would be AGAINST you.
We need cite only a few examples to see how the ego's interpretations have mislead you. A favorite ego quotation is "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." Another is "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord." Still another is "I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and the fourth generation." And also, "The wicked shall perish." There are many others, but if you will let the Holy Spirit re-interpret these in its own light, they will suffice.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap" merely means that what you believe to be worth cultivating you will cultivate in yourself. Your judgment of what is worthy DOES make it worthy for you.
"Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord" is easily explained if you remember that ideas increase only by being shared. This quotation therefore emphasizes the fact that vengeance CANNOT be shared. Give it therefore to the Holy Spirit, who will undo it in you because it does not BELONG in your mind, which is part of God.
"I will visit the sins of the fathers unto the third and fourth generation," as interpreted by the ego, is particularly vicious. It is used, in fact, as an attempt to guarantee its survival beyond itself. Actually, all it really means is that the Holy Spirit in later generations retains the power to interpret CORRECTLY what former generations have thought, and thus release THEIR thoughts from the ability to produce fear ANYWHERE in the Sonship.
"The wicked shall perish" is merely a statement of fact, if the word "perish" is properly understood. Every loveless thought MUST be undone, and even the word "undone" is fearful to the ego, which interprets "I am undone" as "I am destroyed." The ego will NOT be destroyed, because it is part of YOUR thought. But because it is uncreative, and therefore unsharing, it WILL be re-interpreted entirely, to release you from fear.
The part of your thought which you have given TO the ego will merely return to the Kingdom, where your whole mind BELONGS. The ego is a form of ARREST, but arrest is merely delay. It does NOT involve the concept of police at all, although the ego welcomes that interpretation. You CAN delay the completion of the Kingdom, but you CANNOT introduce the concept of ASSAULT into it.
When I said "I am come as a light into the world," I surely came to share this light with you. Remember the symbolic reference we made before to the ego's dark glass, and remember also that we said "Do not look there." It is still true that "Where you look to find yourself is up to you." The Higher Court will not condemn you. It will merely dismiss the case against you. There can BE no case against a child of God, and every witness to guilt in God's creations is bearing false witness to God Himself.
Appeal everything you believe gladly to God's own Higher Court, because it speaks for Him, and therefore speaks truly. It WILL dismiss the case against you, however carefully YOU have built it. The case may be fool-proof, but it is NOT God-proof. The voice for God will not hear it at all, because it can only witness truly. Its verdict will always be "Thine is the Kingdom," because it was given you to remind you of what you ARE.
Your patience with each other is your patience with your selves. Is not a child of God worth patience? I have shown you infinite patience, because my will IS that of our Father, from whom I learned of infinite patience. His voice was in me, as it is in you, speaking for patience toward the Sonship, in the name of its Creator. What you need to learn now is that only infinite patience CAN produce immediate effects. This is the way in which time is exchanged for eternity. Infinite patience calls upon infinite Love, and by producing results NOW renders time unnecessary.
To say that time is temporary is merely redundant. We have repeatedly said that time is a learning device which will be abolished when it is no longer useful. The Holy Spirit, who speaks for God in time, also knows that time is meaningless. He reminds you of this in every passing moment of time, because it is His special function to return YOU to eternity and remain to bless YOUR creations there. He is the only blessing you can truly give, because He is so truly blessed. And because He has been given you so freely by God, you must give Him as you received Him.
Let's take a good hard look at something that very few people want to ever admit. Something dark and awful, but true.
Planet Earth, and the rest of this universe, were made in a thought of opposition to Heaven. This was an attempt to make hell real, by dreaming up a world that runs completely opposite to the beautiful divine nature of the Kingdom.
To do this, an opposite to life had to be invented - death, and the entire system of thought had to be based on not only the belief in this but the attempt to make it as real as possible. To bring it about. This alternative world was an attempted weapon to destroy the Kingdom and destroy God, if that were possible.
"The world was made as an attack on God."
Because of this, everything in this world runs contrary to life and is governed solely by the laws of death and destruction. The world is an attempt not to exist and to destroy the Son of God.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
The world wasn't made in order to have a place to live forever. Heaven is where you live forever. The world was made to kill you. Everything in it, even those things which seem to begin or are born, are automatically infused with death right from the outset.
Death, separation, limitation, spacetime, conflict, attack, are all built into every single part of the system. Even the most beautiful flower, the cutest puppy, the loveliest sunset, are made of the illusion of death. They take on forms whose appearance is designed to tempt you to believe they are desirable, valuable, wanted. But they are nothing but illusions, designed to distract and deceive you and keep you in hell.
The fact is, that everything in this universe dies sooner or later. It does not matter what it is, or how long it takes. Planets die. Galaxies die. People die. Animals die. All of it. Sooner or later, death is going to fully express itself, as the entropy and decay gradually erode whatever illusion of life there is. And as Jesus says, this world is "at best an illusion of life, at worst death", since it cannot be alive at all.
"There is no life outside of heaven."
Jesus asks that we take a good hard look at this, because we seem to be quite deceived and deluded in believing that the world can offer us something valuable. We are constantly tempted by its attractions and exciting adventures. It offers us toys and objects and pointless things to keep us entranced. But most of it, is attempts to convince us that avoiding death here is possible, if we will just put our faith in the ego a little while longer, until death arrives.
And so one of the biggest problems we have, is that we do not recognize this world is ENTIRELY made of death, or that ALL its roads lead to death, or that there is NO ESCAPE from this hell if you play by its rules. The idea of "living here" is ridiculous. It can never be experienced as a true home. And everything it does is a murderous attack on your happiness and wellbeing. The world eats you alive. And it is designed to do nothing but destroy you. At least, eventually, when it's done pretending to be your friend.
The problem we have is that in our deception and rose-tinted blind optimism, we keep believing that this world can be or do something that it can never be or do. We keep trying to turn it into heaven. We keep trying to wrap it up and dress it up to be what it's not. In a state of denial. One more flavor, one more combination, one more appearance, one more new distraction, one more toy, one more desirable temptation to lure you in. And by believing that you can achieve some kind of escape from death through this means, the world has deceived you for a while, and you think you like it here. Until it fails. Which it will.
Make no mistake. This world was designed to result in, lead to, culminate in, and guarantee, one thing only. The death of God and his son. It has no other ambition. It has no other direction. It will always enforce this ambition sooner or later. You might spend most of your life pretending that this is not the case, avoiding the inevitable, but regardless of your outlook the world is run by laws of death.
When you don't recognize the world's "nature", its complete failure to accomplish anything, its automatic built-in destruction, and its inability to be heaven, you enter into wishful thinking, delusions, denial, and start down a fairy-tail road of spiritualized egos and thinking that this time you'll win. If you play in the ego's sandpit you will die, by its rules, when it wants you to die.
Expecting the world to be something it's not, can only make you frustrated, and disappointed. You might hope that it can be something, that you can succeed, that you can have your cake, that you can win, that you can escape somehow, but sooner or later it comes crashing down, it turns out to be an empty promise, something you don't really want, and then it breaks, and it fails, and it dies again. Wanting it to be otherwise will only frustrate you. Not recognizing that this is the only way it can be, and letting go of the wish to have it be different, simply traps you in it more.
The world WILL disappoint you, if you try to build your house on its unstable rock. It WILL disappoint you if you forget for a moment that perfection is impossible here. It WILL disappoint you when you start to become attached to hopes and dreams which are later dashed against the rocks. And it WILL disappoint you when you thought that next toy you buy was going to be your salvation, only to discover it was the wrong one, or it broke, or it didn't quite do what you thought it would do.
Nothing really works in hell, it's all broken. How many times will you have to go through the same lesson of expecting it to not be hell, only for it to result in hell, before you you learn? And no this is not an attempt to make hell REAL, it is a reminder that hell IS AN ILLUSION, and to not fall for its tricks. Because hell's biggest weapon is to make itself seem like heaven, something you want, and somewhere you want to live forever.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."
We need to at least acknowledge this. We need to recognize it, see it, notice it. We need to realize this is its nature. The world is not a perfect living place. It's a place of destruction and conflict and incompletion and damage and problems and everything going wrong. It can't be any other way. All illusions have this nature built into them, because they lack the harmony, perfection and love of the Kingdom.
THE WORLD JUST SUCKS It simply does. It can't not suck. But by recognizing it inherently sucks, you can at least let go of the expectation of it not sucking. Which in fact is a truer perception, a more accurate way of looking at it. The world was made to be hell. If you can recognize that, you can be free of it. NOT recognizing illusions deceives you. And "Illusions recognized must disappear."
You are only trapped in it if you resist it, make it real, believe it's true, consider it heaven, or mistake it for God's creation. And you only keep holding onto it if you think you want it or it offers you something of value. But it cannot. Ever.
"This world holds nothing that I want."
"Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world."
"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. ***All of them will lead to death.*** On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
Jesus isn't being negative here. He isn't being judgement or closed-minded. He's not in ego. He's being very truthful and honest and sane. He's simply pointing out what the world's nature is, without flinching or looking away or being in denial about it. The world was made from the idea of death and everything in it is designed to fail and die and cease existing. That's just how it is. It can't be any other way.
Even in the happy dream, or the real world, the laws of the physical world still remain in effect. Trees still die in storms. Animals get eaten. Planets die in supernova explosions. Stars get swallowed in black holes. Your car rusts, your shoes wear out, your food rots, and people die. It's supposed to happen this way. It's not fate, but it is an illusion of fate, based on the idea of sin being real. The wages of sin is death, and everything in this world is designed to make death and sin real.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"
"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this."
When you "get excited" about something, there's a very high likelihood that you will enter into disappointment. Maybe it's a new car. Maybe you're going on a wonder vacation. Maybe it's a new pet or some new food you're trying. And maybe it will seem to you that these things are great and enjoyable and nothing to complain about. But then, maybe ignorance is bliss and you didn't notice the experience of HEAVEN that you did not have, while these falling-short substitutes came to drag you into hell.
I got a new car. Winter came. The snow and salt fucked up the interior. Oh well. I got a new fish tank. A fish died, plants died, it didn't go quite to plan. Oh well. I ordered items online, they came, they were the wrong items. Oh well. This is the kind of stuff that happens here. But if you expect it NOT to happen, you are expecting some kind of spiritualized salvation and external perfection, which is setting you up for total disappointment. The more you worship idols and seek for external saviors, the more you will be let down. And even your most valued teachers have their skeleton-full closets hidden away.
"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.*** Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
Even for a teacher of God, a highly healed and awakened individual, the world continues to SUCK AND DIE!
THE WORLD SIMPLY SUCKS ASS! It was designed that way. It will never not suck. Even if you are happy. Even if you are truly forgiving and loving. It will still keep doing what it does until it finally vanishes into nothingness. Waking up doesn't stop the world from killing 130,000 people a day. Waking up doesn't repair everyone's broken limbs. Waking up doesn't make waterfalls flow uphill or prevent planets from colliding. Stuff still keeps ticking over, per the laws of death, and there is no hope here.
This is essentially the crux of the matter. The belief that there is hope, faith, trust, in the ego and its death world. That it has a redeeming quality, some possibility of being heaven or home, and a chance of escape from God. It's this wishful thinking that just maybe, you can get away with murder, just maybe you can be God, and just maybe you can overthrow the Kingdom and prove the Son of God is dead. Or that this world can be perfect. But you can't. And you never will. So the whole endeavor is pointless.
There is no hope in the world. Hope is of God. There is only hop because the wrold is NOT real and its illusions of hell are fictional WHEN RECOGNIZED. If you want hope, you have to look beyond the world, and forget the world and all its twisted ways. We can but recognize the world's limitations and laugh at them. The world will end in laughter because it is a place of sorrow. In laughter we will shine it away because of its fundamentally unhappy nature. The world will never be your home. You do not belong in hell.
Is it not far saner to recognize and accept that no matter what you do in this world, its laws will steer it towards failure? Because if you expect the opposite, you will be disappointed, again and again and again. This does not mean there is no hope at all. Only that trying to find it where it is not, cannot work. God and His Kingdom are your only home and your only happiness.
"The thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."
"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
"To be without a body is to be in your natural environment."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
"There is no life outside of Heaven. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. 4 At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are but forms. 9 Their content is never true.
T-23.II.20. The laws of chaos govern all illusions. 2 Their forms conflict, making it seem quite possible to value some above the others. 3 Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos are the laws of order as do the others. 4 Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. 5 The seeming gentler forms of the attack are no less certain in their witnessing, or their results. 6 Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs that they imply, not for their form. 7 And lack of faith in love, in any form, attests to chaos as reality.
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.
T-23.II.22. Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. 2 For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. 3 And they will follow. 4 Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. 5 Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. 6 How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? 7 Quite easily. 8 How do you feel? 9 Is peace in your awareness? 10 Are you certain which way you go? 11 And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? 12 If not, you walk alone. 13 Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go."
Catchy title eh.
"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."
Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.
"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."
The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.
At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.
You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.
All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.
This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.
So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.
Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.
"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."
So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.
"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it."
By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.
You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.
"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."
But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.
But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.
"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."
It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.
Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.
These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.
Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."
This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."
"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."
"The worlds nothing that I want."
The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."
"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."
"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."
"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."
"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."
"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."
"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:
"My salvation comes from me.
It cannot come from anywhere else."
"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."
"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:
"My salvation comes from me."
"Salvation comes from my One Self."
"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."
"Salvation comes from my One Self.
Its Thoughts are mine to use."
"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."
"Salvation comes from my One Self."
From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains
Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan
For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."
"My salvation comes from me."
"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."
I'm posting these quotes which focus on the ways that this world - Earth - is not created by God, is unlike God, and is the world WE made.
I'm posting these not in order to "be negative" or to attack the world or to make the world out to be something it's not. Nor am I trying to correct perception with these quotes - the true-perception view of this world is an entirely different topic.
I'm just offering a willingness to LOOK AT and recognize that ACIM is teaching that God DID NOT create this world, and that this is clearly stated. If God HAD created this world, the world itself would be perfect and would NOT be something requiring forgiveness, or needing salvation, and there would be no function for the Holy Spirit. The world HAS to be opposite to God's will in order for there to be any point to forgiveness at all.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
"The world stands like a block before Christ’s face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"
"For where God’s memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it."
"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world."
"Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, and do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make, is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."
"To give this sad world over, and exchange your errors for the peace of God, is but YOUR will."
"He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. "
"Your Father knoweth that you have need of nothing. In Heaven this is so. For what could you need in eternity? In YOUR world you DO need things, because it is a world of scarcity, in which you find yourself BECAUSE you are lacking."
"God’s Son is not a traveler through OUTER worlds. However holy his perception may become, no world OUTSIDE himself holds his inheritance."
"Salvation FROM the world lies ONLY here. My peace I GIVE you. TAKE it of me, in glad exchange for all the world has offered but to TAKE AWAY."
"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well."
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love’s absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."
"We must save the world. For we who made it must behold it through the eyes of Christ"
"The world you see cannot be the world God loves"
"It is not the world that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible."
"I am come as a light into the world which DOES deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself from everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, MAINTAINED by fear of the same loneliness which is its illusion."
"My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."
"The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me ARE the reactions of the world to God."
"My Kingdom is not of this world because it is in you. And you are of your Father. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from beyond this world."
"If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are denying the world and accepting God."
"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."
"You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."
"The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."
"This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."
"Except for God’s teachers there would be little hope of salvation, for the world of sin would seem forever real. The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is hell?"
"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. "
"The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment."
"When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."
"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed."
"The final lesson, which brings the ending of the world, cannot be grasped by those not yet prepared to leave the world and go beyond its tiny reach."
"The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep?"
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function."
""What profiteth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own Soul?""
"The world is very tired, because it IS the IDEA of weariness. "
"Memory rises in your mind, peace must still surmount a final obstacle, AFTER which is salvation completed, and the Son of God ENTIRELY restored to sanity. For here your world DOES end."
"It seems to you the world will utterly abandon you, if you but raise your eyes. Yet all that WILL occur is YOU will leave the world forever. This is the re-establishment of YOUR will."
"The world is nothing in itself. "
"Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."
"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again."
"Today’s idea is true because the world does not exist."
"Others find it in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world."
"There is no place where you can suffer, and no time that can bring change to your eternal state. How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?"
"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere? Deny illusions, but accept the truth. Deny you are a shadow briefly laid upon a dying world."
"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. "
"Never forget the world the sightless "see" must be imagined. "
"This they do not believe. And so they keep the world they learned to "see" in their imagination, believing that their choice is that, or nothing. They hate the world they learned through pain. And everything they think is in it serves to remind them that they are incomplete and bitterly deprived. Thus they DEFINE their life and where they live it, adjusting to it as they think they must, afraid to lose the little that they have. And so it is with all who see the body as all they have, and all their brothers have. They try to reach each other, and they fail. And fail again. And they adjust to loneliness, believing that to keep the body is to save the little that they have."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
"If this were the real world, God WOULD be cruel. For no father could subject his children to this as the price of salvation, and be loving. LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, not God's. Only the world of guilt could demand this, for only the guilty could CONCEIVE of it. Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son cannot be crucified, this is the world you will see. But you will not realize this, until you accept the eternal fact that God's Son is NOT GUILTY."
"In this strange world which you have made, the Son of God HAS sinned. How could you see him then? By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt which you accepted, and you hold it dear. For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."
"Deny YOUR world, and judge him not."
"Let me accept the strength God offers me And see no value in this world, that I May find my freedom and deliverance."
"Illusions will not last. Their death is sure and this alone is certain in their world. It is the ego’s world because of this. "
"In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. Yet could God’s Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form? "
"Judgment, like other devices by which the world of illusions is maintained, is totally misunderstood by the world. It is actually confused with wisdom, and substitutes for truth. As the world uses the term, an individual is capable of "good" and "bad" judgment, and his education aims at strengthening the former and minimizing the latter."
"The world goes against your nature, because it is out of accord with God’s laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."
"The unreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God’s Being with Him, could never be content WITHOUT reality. What God did not give you has no power over you, and the attraction of love for love remains irresistible."
"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."
"Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin, and seems to witness to its reality. It still is true that nothing is without. Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds."
"And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."
"But in this world there ARE no simple facts, because what is the same and what is different remain unclear."
"There is no basis FOR a choice in this complex and over-complicated world. For no-one understands what is the same, and seems to choose where no choice really is. "
"Only the Oneness of Knowledge is conflictless. Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world. Only IN this world is the idea of an authority problem meaningful. The world is not left by death but by truth, and truth CAN be known by all those for whom the Kingdom was created, and for whom it waits."
"God's laws do not obtain directly to a world perception rules, for such a world could not have been created by the Mind to which perception has no meaning."
"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way."
"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ".
""Heaven and Earth shall pass away" means that they will not always exist as separate states."
Personal note: For me it is perfectly clear that God did not create the Earth or this world. We made it as an attack on God and a defense against the nature of Heaven. As such it is a dream illusion, which does not really exist. Our task is to learn to see it in a different light (that's a whole other post), so that we can learn to recognize its unreality and go home to Heaven.
The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK. It NEEDS no healing. Its health or sickness depends ENTIRELY on how the mind perceives it, and the purpose which the mind would use it FOR. And it IS obvious that a segment of the mind CAN see itself as SEPARATED from the Universal Purpose. When this occurs, the body becomes its weapon, used AGAINST this Purpose to DEMONSTRATE the "fact" that separation HAS occurred. The body thus becomes the instrument of illusion, acting accordingly, seeing what is not there, HEARING what truth has never said, and BEHAVING INSANELY, being imprisoned BY insanity.
Do not overlook our earlier statement that faithlessness leads straight to illusions. For faithlessness IS the perception of a brother AS a body, and the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union. If, then, you SEE him as a body, YOU have established a condition in which UNITING with him becomes impossible. Your faithlessness to him has separated you FROM him, and kept you BOTH apart from being healed. Your faithlessness has thus OPPOSED the Holy Spirit's purpose, and brought illusions, CENTERED ON THE BODY, to stand BETWEEN you. And the body WILL seem to be sick, for you have made of it an "enemy" of healing, and the OPPOSITE of truth.
It CANNOT be difficult to realize that faith MUST be the opposite of faithLESSness. But the difference in how they operate is less apparent, though it follows directly from the fundamental difference in what they ARE. Faithlessness would always LIMIT AND ATTACK; faith would remove ALL limitations, and MAKE WHOLE. Faithlessness would destroy and SEPARATE; faith would unite and HEAL. Faithlessness would interpose illusions between the Son of God and his Creator; faith would remove ALL obstacles that SEEM to rise between them. Faithlessness is wholly dedicated to illusions; faith wholly to truth.
PARTIAL DEDICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Truth is the ABSENCE of illusion; illusion the ABSENCE of truth. Both cannot BE together, nor perceived in the SAME PLACE. To dedicate yourself to BOTH, is to set up a goal forever impossible to attain. For PART of it is sought through the body, THOUGHT OF as a means for seeking out reality through ATTACK. While the OTHER part would HEAL, and therefore calls upon the mind, and NOT the body. The INEVITABLE compromise is the belief that the BODY must be healed, and NOT the mind. For this divided goal has given both an EQUAL reality, and can SEEM to be possible only if the mind is limited TO the body, and divided into little parts with SEEMING wholeness, but WITHOUT CONNECTION.
This will NOT harm the body. But it WILL keep the delusional thought-system IN THE MIND. Here, then, is healing needed. And it is here that healing IS. For God gave healing not APART from sickness, nor established remedy where sickness CANNOT be. They ARE together, and when they are SEEN together, ALL attempts to KEEP both truth AND illusion in the mind, where both MUST be, are recognized as DEDICATION TO ILLUSION. And GIVEN UP when BROUGHT to truth, and seen as totally UNRECONCILABLE with truth, in ANY aspect, or in any WAY.
Truth and illusion HAVE no connection. This will remain FOREVER true, however much YOU seek to connect them. But ILLUSIONS are ALWAYS connected, AS IS TRUTH. Each is united, a COMPLETE thought-system, but totally DISconnected to EACH OTHER. Where there is NO overlap, there separation MUST be complete. And to perceive THIS is to recognize where separation IS, and WHERE IT MUST BE HEALED. The RESULT of an idea is NEVER separate from its source. The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it.
You THINK you are PROTECTING the body by HIDING this connection. For this concealment SEEMS to keep your identification safe from the "attack" of truth. If you but understood how much this strange concealment has hurt your mind, and how confused your own identification has become to you, BECAUSE of it! You do NOT see how great the devastation wrought by your faithlessness. For faithlessness IS an attack, which SEEMS to be justified BY ITS RESULTS. For, by WITHHOLDING faith, you SEE what IS unworthy of it, and CANNOT look beyond the barrier to what is joined with YOU.
To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you HAVE accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you OFFER the gift of freedom from the past, which you have RECEIVED. You do NOT use ANYTHING your brother has done before to condemn him NOW. You freely choose to OVERLOOK his errors, looking PAST all barriers between your self and his, and seeing them AS ONE. And in that One you see your faith is FULLY justified. There IS no justification for faithlessness. But faith is ALWAYS justified.
Faith is the OPPOSITE of fear, as much a part of love, as fear is of attack. Faith is the acknowledgment of UNION. It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is HIS Love that joins you, and FOR His Love, you would keep no-one separate from YOURS. Each one APPEARS just as he is perceived in the holy instant, united in YOUR purpose to be RELEASED from guilt. You saw the Christ in him, and he was healed, because you looked on what makes faith FOREVER justified in EVERYONE.
Faith is the gift of God, through Him Whom God has GIVEN you. Faithlessness looks upon the Son of God, and judges him UNWORTHY of forgiveness. But, through the eyes of faith, the Son of God is seen ALREADY forgiven, free of all the guilt he laid upon himself. Faith sees him only NOW, because it looks not to the past to judge him, but would see in him ONLY what it would see in YOU. It sees NOT through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the NEW perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to YOU.
Faith is as easily exchanged for knowledge as is the real world. For faith ARISES from the Holy Spirit's perception, and is the sign you share it WITH Him. Faith is a gift you offer to the Son of God THROUGH Him, and WHOLLY acceptable to his Father as to him. And therefore offered YOU. Your holy relationship, with its NEW purpose, offers you faith to give unto EACH OTHER. Your faithlessness had driven you APART, and so you did not RECOGNIZE salvation in each other. But faith UNITES you in the holiness you see, NOT through the body's eyes, but in the sight of Him Who joined you, and in Whom YOU are united.
Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed. THERE is the altar where the grace was given, in which IT stands. Do you, then, offer grace and BLESSING to each other, for you stand at the SAME altar, where grace was laid for BOTH of you. And be you healed by grace TOGETHER, that YOU may heal through faith.
In the holy instant, you stand before the altar God has raised unto Himself and BOTH of you. Lay faithlessness aside, and come to it TOGETHER. There will you see the miracle of your relationship, as it was MADE AGAIN through faith. And there it is that you will realize that there is NOTHING faith can NOT forgive. NO error INTERFERES with its calm sight, which brings the miracle of healing with equal ease to ALL of them. For what the messengers of love are sent to do THEY DO. Returning the glad tidings that it was done, to you who stand before the altar from which they were sent forth, TOGETHER.
As faithlessness will keep your little kingdoms barren and separate, so will faith help the Holy Spirit prepare the ground for the most holy garden that He would make of it. For faith brings peace, and so it calls on truth to enter and make lovely, what has already BEEN prepared for loveliness. Truth FOLLOWS faith and peace, completing the process of making lovely that they begin. For faith is still a learning goal, no longer needed when the lesson has been learned. *But Truth will stay forever.
Let, then, your dedication be to the eternal. And learn how NOT to interfere with it, and make it slave to time. For what you think you do to the eternal, you do to YOU. Whom God created as His Son is slave to nothing, being lord of all, along with his Creator. You CAN enslave a body, but an IDEA is free, INCAPABLE of being kept in prison, or limited in ANY way,EXCEPT BY THE MIND THAT THOUGHT IT. For it remains JOINED to its source, which is its jailor or its liberator, according to which it chooses as ITS purpose FOR ITSELF.
The "tiny mad idea" was an idea of madness, leading to an entire thought system of insanity. Within this thought system there is a sense of self that we call the ego. The course refers to this as yet "unmanifested" thought system as "the first dream", which was then projected out as a "second dream" as the physicality of spacetime.
"The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based." UrG3A9
The ego projected out, ie "mis-created" from fear, a world from the INSANE mind, symbolising in form its ideals, preferences, beliefs and attitudes. This produced the physical world, which symbolises the ego's "attack on God." A sort of solidified defence against the truth. And now the physical world SYMBOLIZES the ego thought system in all its ways.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear." UrW240W32
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4
"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it." UrT11D10
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death." UrT11J2
"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this." UrT19C6
This means that the way the physical world is set up and how it functions - its nature, the relationship of separate objects, what it seems to mean when things happen, was all originally a symbolic representation of an ego idea of madness. And this isn't with any kind of judgement or negating entering into it. Just its nature and how it functions is NOTHING like God's Kingdom.
"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true." UrT16F3
For example the ego sees you as a separated off person, and in its insanity (which is sin), this insanity led to the making of the body, giving the body eyes and senses, and regarding the body as a real person.
"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" UrW250W41
"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin (egoic insane thought system) 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." UrT20G11
Similarly the ego believes that there is a separation between giving and receiving, between cause (God) and effect (Son). Thus it perceives that to give is to lose, and means deprivation and sacrifice. This plays out PHYSICALLY by virtue of the fact that if you give someone something physical you DO NOT have it any more and have lost it. This is a simple fact. Any object you give you lack.
The idea of SHARING (oneness), natural in heaven, is pretty much obliterated on a physical level. So too is any idea of oneness or real love or creation or extension or sanity or harmlessness or safety or any other property of God. This is why the world is so opposite to heaven and so dysfunctional on a physical level, regardless of any judgements about it. It is designed by the ego to be "physically insane." And yes - that confusion of mind and body is what the ego is all about.
"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2
"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." UrW153L1
Also on the physical level, when a body is regarded as a person, and if the body dies, this is a statement of the ego belief that death is real and the son of God is dead. Its whole system is anti-life and death promoting. It is against health and wholeness in every way possible.
"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain." UrW190L3
The entire notion of physical space is an idea opposite to omnipresence and depends on separation. You can't even have particles of matter without separation. While time is an attack on eternity, attempting to make everything that existed before stop existing (die). Change itself is the idea of uncertainty (fear) and instability and impermanence - the opposite of immortality. As such everything in the physical world is mortal.
"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die." UrM13A6
"Death (physical) is the symbol (physical symbol) of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction." UrM28A3
"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end." UrW129L2
Everything in the physical world is a SYMBOLIC VERSION OF THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM. Like a physicalised MIND. That's why it was made, that's who made it, and that's how it is set up. So it is indeed a PHYSICALLY INSANE world, so to speak. Riddled with separations, contradictions, attacks, death, murder, lack and loss, suffering of every kind, etc. All ideas the ego made up.
You can see throughout all these quotes that there is clearly a level of mind post-separation which is an insane thought system, which houses all of the ego's fearful beliefs. That mind is mad and dark and horrifying. That mind MADE spacetime and everything in it as a physicalised, condensed version of that thought system. You can see in the quotes sometimes references to the underlying "ego mindset", and in others to the physical world that was made FROM that.
"You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error (the insane ego mad idea thought system). It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge (the physical world/spacetime illusion projected from it). What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them (physical things). But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error (underneath the surface, the ego mindset that made it), which seemed to cast you out of Heaven" UrT18B12
"That was the first projection of error outward (the physical world was a symbolic projection of the mental error). The world (spacetime, physical) arose to hide it (to hide the underlying mindset of ego), and became the screen (like a physical screen) on which it (the ego mindset) was projected (as a second projection onto the world AFTER the world was projected), and drawn between you and truth." UrT18B3
The ego thus projects its mindset out, making an insane world, which symbolises TOTAL INSANITY and a TOTAL OPPOSITE to heaven, as physical form and spacetime and galaxies. And then it projects its underlying insanity ONTO that world in its purpose and USE OF that world. To sort of "operate it", make it real and believe that what happens physically is what it means. The physical world is a MEANINGLESS world, and has no meaning of its own, because it is really nothing, like a void.
"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space (void) which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void (spacetime) may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW13L2
You can see clearly that 1) We were in heaven ("level 1") and believed the mad idea, 2) This produces a whole thought system of insanity ("level 2"), 3) Ego symbolises this thought system, 4) Ego insanity projects out as spacetime ("level 3") a physical fake "universe", 5) That universe is meaningless and nothing, and now the ego tries to project its MEANINGS onto that spacetime world, using the SAME insanity it used to make it.
So now the ego's thought system, mindset, beliefs, attitudes, identification, starts to PERCEIVE (through the body) the physical world IT MADE, from its vantage point, with a psychological false perception that MATCHES a PHYSICAL false perception (physical sight).
It sees it through a thought system of insanity and darkness and evil. And so it believes that the physical world is reality, it believes people are bodies, it believes there is no level of mind (the physical denies the mind, hides the ego thought system), and basically regards physical things as the symbolic version of itself.
Thus even the body symbolises the ego, the egoic mind identifies with the physical, and believes this is all that exists, hiding in the body as "its chosen home." The ego in the mind sort of now "takes up residency" in the body it projected.
"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. UrT15I8
"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS." UrT23B3
So now you've got the underlying ego thought system which is insane still, a physical world being projected by that thought system as an hallucination, and then further projections of insane egoic meaning ONTO that physical world by that thought system to try to keep the separateness going.
For example it says that a physical person is the son of God, and when the physical body dies the son of God is dead. That death is a hard ending from which you cannot return. That's the egos idea of a total and utter permanent destruction and cessation of all creation. Putting a STOP to God. So it sees the death of a body as a total ending, after which there is nothing, and no coming back from it, producing horrendous loss. And there should be loss if a part of reality itself has been lost.
But this is the ego's insane perception of the world that IT set up to look this way on the surface. There is ANOTHER WAY to perceive the physical world thought because the insanity in the MIND can be corrected, causing the mind to USE the world for a higher purpose. You can see it without the ego, without the insanity, without the murderous thought system of separation. You can see it with the Holy Spirit with Christ Vision and forgiveness.
This forgiveness looks upon the highly malfunctioning lacking world that your ego made, and OVERLOOKS the ways in which it falls horrendously short of an immaculate creation. It does not BELIEVE the forms of the world. It does not interpret change as death, or the death of the body as a finality. I takes no meaning FROM the world, because it knows it HAS NONE. It recognizes that what is real is NOT OF THIS WORLD, and is utterly unaffected by what happens in form. Thus death is nothing and the world is nothing.
To this mindset of sanity and reason there is no death at all, and all physical things are illusions not to be believed. A mere MIS-creation produced by a MAD mind. It can be forgiven and reinterpreted and UNDONE by sanity. And then it must disappear, when an ego insane thought system is no longer upholding its separations and its physicalised lies and literal physical madness. The world is a mistake, not a sin, and mistakes can be undone.
"The world is false perception. It is born of error (a projection from an insane mind), and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation (insane mind) has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world (physical) be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear (physical literal disappearance), and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well." UrW240W31
Even death can be reinterpreted and seen as "not meaning" what it means to the ego. It can mean nothing more than that the illusory form has changed and the soul/mind has left the body to continue its eternal existence. That is a thought and perspective of permanence and immortality and continuation, rather than a thought of death and endings.
And so thoughts of eternal life replace the egoic thoughts of death and interruption, and this causes us to PERCEIVE the physical world as "the forgiven world", overlooking its nonsense and disregarding its physical falsity. Such a healed mind RUNS OPPOSITE to the nature of the world, and the entire thought system and physical nature is REVERSED.
"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." UrM29A2
"The only effort you need make, to give this world away (earth, physical, spacetime, bodies) in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (Kingdom of God, heaven) is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE (cus ego made it FROM falseness)" UrT12G3
"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever." UrU5A7v "Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6
"The ego made the world as IT perceives it (how it perceive it is the SAME AS how it is designed physically), but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home." UrT5E15
What is true is true. God's truth and reality are the only truth and reality. God's truth is permanent and cannot be changed or damaged. This means that you can either accept tit, or you can PRETEND it is not true, but you cannot change it into something truly false.
This means you can accept or deny it, and you have no other options. Denial does not make the truth change or go away, it merely is an attempt to hide FROM it, pretending it is not there, while it still is there.
When we went into the separation from God, all we did was enter a state of denial. An attempt to shut out God from our awareness and bury our head in the sand pretending that God does not exist. The world was made in an effort to be somewhere where could doesn't exist, made in a thought of denial and completely insane.
This denial comes about through the belief that sin is real, which induces guilt. Guilt then becomes a block to the awareness of love, because you can only be guilty if you are unforgivable.
"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."
"For it is guilt that has obscured the Father to you, and it is guilt that has driven you insane."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."
So we made a world, opposite to God's world, made of denial, built on guilt and sin, in a state of insanity, attempting to go unconscious to God and therefore deny our own existence, aiming towards a state of self destruction and death.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."
"We CANNOT be united in crucifixion and in death."
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so."
"The hell you made."
So we end up with a hellish world which is a state of the DENIAL OF GOD.
What we essentially did is we took our natural ability to DENY ILLUSIONS, to deny death, to deny attack and fear and sin and guilt, and we flipped it on its head. We used denial AGAINST reality instead of FOR the protection of it.
We're now in a position where this must be reversed. The world, and the body, are MADE OF denial. They are the denial of reality. They are the denial of the Kingdom. It now becomes our task to flip denial back around and USE IT properly, as a corrective device, to UNDO the "denial of God". To use denial in its proper way, as a defense and a protection AGAINST illusions, and as a way to keep illusions OUT of our minds.
The ego, our belief in the world of sin, is the denial of truth. This denial is in turn an ASSERTION that the opposite of the truth is true. That the opposite of eternal life, which is death, is true. False denial is therefore the ASSERTION of death. It's an attempt to EXPRESS death, to make death real, to make death happen, and to make death permanent.
The opposite to this assertion of death is the assertion of LIFE. And this is what resurrection means. And by asserting life we do the complete opposite to denying the truth. This runs AGAINST THE GRAIN of the world, against every way the world is set up, against all its forms and natures and laws, and VIOLATES every law of space and time.
"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."
To use denial correctly, ie the proper use of denial, you are to DENY that every aspect of the world of illusions is real. You are to DENY, reject, not believe, assert against, oppose, cancel, undermine, question, remove faith in, stop trusting, detach from, overlook, forgive, and let go of, all of the insane manifestations of the denial of God. And that includes the rejection of death.
"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."
"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way. This is the PROPER use of denial. It is not used to HIDE anything, but it IS used to correct error. It brings ALL error into the light, and since error and darkness are the same, it abolishes error automatically."
An improper use of denial happens when you first of all believe that something about the world is TRUE. Such as the belief that the body really exists. If you hold this belief, AND THEN claim that it does not exist in an attempt to "deny its existence", but without letting go of the denial of God that PRODUCES the body.... your belief in it, you are simultaneously denying God while trying to deny the body. This is now a denial UPON a denial, and is now twice removed from reality. It's a double-denial and this is what an IMPROPER use of denial means - using denial to make denial worse.
"The body is merely a fact. Its ABILITIES can, and frequently are, overevaluated. However, it is almost impossible to deny its existence. Those who do are engaging in a particularly unworthy form of denial." This does not mean bodies are REAL just because they are "facts", it just means the body is what it is and is an inherent part of the dream. It only means that if you PRETEND not to believe in them while YOU STILL HAVE ONE, you are probably in a double-denial. True denial would erase the body completely.
You have to be willing to question the ORIGINAL denial of God, the assertion of death, the belief that bodies really exist, the belief that the world is real. If you KEEP these beliefs while DECEIVING yourself, lying to yourself, that you believe the opposite, then you are IN DENIAL about being in denial. And that is how the ego operates. It is worse and not an improvement. The ego is always about INCREASING denial of the truth this way.
The body and the world and sickness and death MUST be denied, but they must be CORRECTLY and HONESTLY denied. That means recognizing how the world and body etc ARE denials of God's truth, and then DENYING them any power, reality, truth, belief, withdrawing all investment in them, cancelling your belief in them, and therefore UNDOING them. Doing this is ATONING, because "to atone is to undo." This is also why miracles UNDO. They cancel ie DENY illusions of death any existence.
"The miracle does nothing. All it does (which IS a kind of doing) is to UNdo. And thus it ***cancels*** out the interference to what HAS BEEN done. It does not add, but merely ***takes away.***"
"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."
It's important to realize that when you attempt to "cancel a sickness", that you don't get lost in making it real. If you assert, for example, that "that sickness does not exist.", which has some cancelling/denying properties to it, you ARE first of all making the sickness REAL and then are attempting to DENY the existence of the sickness. This is a double-bind and is an improper use of denial. In effect you work against yourself by asserting BOTH positions at once.
When you make statements of asserting the cancellation of sin/attack/death etc, if your focus is on what you see/dream of as "the apparent sickness", the physical real-seeming problem, know that your cancellation efforts are in fact attempts to CORRECT YOUR OWN MIND.
By reminding yourself of why what you see is NOT THERE, you are attempting to move from false perception TO true perception. You are trying to use denial to undo your own mistaken perceptions. This is important to do, but it is not the end of the story.
If you see a sickness and then work on "cancelling" your belief in it, this is an act of receiving CORRECTION for your own false perceptions. It's an attempt to correct your faulty beliefs and remove YOUR denial of the truth. This prepares you because it opens the way for true perception and for love to extend, but it should not really be mistaken for healing of ANOTHER person.
Focusing on someone's sickness and using cancellation/denial to try to "deprogram it", you're really just battling with your own false perceptions try to to get your own mind corrected so that you can SEE and RECOGNIZE that the sickness is not there. But this effort is one of moving UP TOWARD forgiveness/true perception, and isn't itself an EXPRESSION of healing love.
Once you have cancelled out your OWN mistaken judgements, and have used proper denial to remove your wrong beliefs and projections, moving into forgiveness, you regain vision. You become able to express love. You become able to extend. Your miracle working power THEN switches on. Because it is the expression of love and the ASSERTION OF LIFE that actually heals.
To atone and forgive and cancel and undo is really an act of flattening out, diminishing, depleting, taking power away from, what has been projected by you. This is preparation. Or you could say, this is your own purification. It's necessary in order to get your mind into a miracle minded state. But once you're IN that state, that's when the light starts to radiate unhindered, when you recognize that illusions ARE illusions, and when you can now GIVE life to another.
In the Song of Prayer, Jesus says, "forgive first, then pray." This is what it means. Cancel out all of YOUR beliefs in the reality and existence of the "real sickness" first, to purify your mind and perception, so that you can attain whole mindedness. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." THEN you can pray to God to receive the love that you then can express as a miracle.
"Through prayer love is received. Through miracles love is expressed."
So you use a form of denial to get your mind back into the forgiving state. Then you are ready to ASSERT LIFE, and thus BE the resurrection. And now you can GIVE the strength and power of God's love, because you have opened yourself up to it. HIS love then does the healing for your brother through extension.
"They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification."
The assertion of LIFE is more than just to say, that you don't believe death exists. It's more than just the UNDOING of the idea of sickness. It's the active powerful forceful EXPRESSION of ACTUAL LIFE. The radiation of light into your brother's mind. The recognition of his holy christ self, and the willingness to extend love to him.
To assert life means to believe that ONLY LIFE IS TRUE. Add this means the COMPLETE REJECTION of the idea of sickness and death. Not merely to believe the IDEA that there is no death, but to actually BE THE LIFE that OVERRIDES it.
What this really boils down to is, we need to learn how to approach people from the perspective that they ARE AS GOD CREATED THEM. Even if they seem to be in a body. Our BELIEF about them must ONLY be that they are still as God created them. NOT off on some distant plane of existence, in some other dimension, but HERE AND NOW!
My brother, I do not believe you are a body. My brother, you are Christ. My brother, you are immortal. My brother, you cannot be sick or die. My brother, there is no sickness. My brother, you are still perfectly innocent. My brother, you are always happy. My brother, you deserve God's love. These kind of sentiments must be expressed and shared and given. Towards the person standing in front of you.
In a sense, we are to treat people NOW, while we're here, the way we WOULD treat them if we were in heaven. This is what holy relationship is about. It is a reflection of heaven's real relationships. You are to believe that the only things true of your brother are what GOD defined as true of him. And you are to relate to him in recognition that HE IS THAT NOW. From that perspective.
If he is pretending to suffer and be sick and die, you should be DISMISSING his attempt to prove his sinfulness and LAUGH in the face of his efforts to destroy what cannot be destroyed. You are to REMIND HIM of what is true of him. And that includes the FIRM CONVICTION that he is immortal and NOT SICK, HAS no faults, IS not sinful, CANNOT be hurt, HAS NEVER attacked, is UNFOUNDED in his guilt, and IS LITERALLY immortal and sane right now.
To do this requires YOUR denial that what the physical senses show is true. It requires YOU not being deceived by illusions. It requires YOU recognizing your brother's innocence and holiness. It requires YOU not being deluded to think he is a body, or you. It requires YOU to ASSERT that THERE IS ONLY ETERNAL LIFE, and anything else you might assert has to be dropped. And by affirming the truth about him only, devoid of ego bullshit, you INFUSE him with his own light and heal him.
"Teach only love, for that is what you are."
You must not believe that ANYONE is sick. Sickness is a lie. You must believe that everyone is immortal and can never die. There is no death, the son of God is free. EXPRESS THIS. Treat everyone like they are permanently alive, and recognize in this light that anything ELSE to the contrary must be a ridiculous lie. By affirming ONLY LIFE, you are the resurrection and the life, and you now SUPPORT AND HEAL your brother of HIS self-inflicted suffering.
By NOT SUPPORTING your brother's delusions about being sick or dead, or unhappy or depressed, or suffering or victimized, you WEAKEN his belief that these things are true of him and REMIND HIM of what is true. Your remembering IS HIS.
"Do not allow your brother not to remember (that he is immortal innocent spirit), for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
Use true denial OF denial, to reject what is not true, and assert what is true. The world, the body, sickness, suffering, death, MUST all be denied. Even the notion that any of these things EXISTS must be denied. There literally IS no real death or sickness. There is no real sin or guilt. This whole world is a LIE. It is the denial of truth. It is utterly FALSE!
You must not believe its ASSERTIONS that sickness, malfunction, damage, attack, vulnerability, corrosion, decay, or any other kind of imperfection exists. They were illusions made to blind you and keep you in hell.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it. For what He creates must be eternal as Himself."
REJECT THE WORLD. DENY IT ANY TRUTH. REJECT DEATH. CHOOSE LIFE. ASSERT RESURRECTION. HEAL YOUR BROTHER. REMIND HIM OF HIS IMMORTALITY.
THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you. For God created only this, and He did not depart from it, nor leave it separate from Himself. The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him. Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within.
What could God give, but knowledge of Himself? What else IS there to give? The belief that you could give AND GET something, else, something OUTSIDE yourself, has cost you the awareness of Heaven, and the loss of knowledge of your identity. And you have done a stranger thing than you yet realize. You have displaced your guilt to your bodies, FROM YOUR MINDS. Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO.
Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity. Mind cannot attack, but it CAN make fantasies, and direct the body to act them out. But it is never what the BODY does that seems to satisfy. Unless the mind BELIEVES the body is ACTUALLY acting out ITS fantasies, it will attack the body by INCREASING the projection of its guilt upon it.
In this, the mind is CLEARLY delusional. It cannot attack, but maintains it CAN, and USES what it does to hurt the body, to PROVE it can. The mind can not attack, but it CAN deceive itself. And this is ALL it does, when it believes it has attacked the body, It CAN project its guilt, but it will NOT lose it through projection. And though it clearly can MISPERCEIVE the function of the body, it CANNOT change its function from what the Holy Spirit ESTABLISHES it to be. The body was NOT made by love. But love does not condemn it, and can use it lovingly, respecting what the Son of God has made, and using it to SAVE him from illusions.
Would you not have the instruments of separation RE-INTERPRETED as means for salvation, and USED for purposes of love? Would you not welcome AND SUPPORT the shift from fantasies of vengeance to RELEASE from them? Your PERCEPTION of the body can clearly be sick, but project this not upon the body. For your wish to make destructive what CANNOT destroy, can have no REAL effect at all. And what God created is only what He would have it be, being His Will.
You cannot make His Will destructive. You can make FANTASIES, in which your will CONFLICTS with His, but that is all. It is insane to use the body as the scapegoat for guilt; DIRECTING its attack, and BLAMING it for what you wished it to do. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO ACT OUT FANTASIES. For it is still the FANTASIES you want, and they have nothing to do with what the body does. IT does not dream of them, and they but make IT a liability, where it COULD be an asset. For fantasies have made your body your "enemy," weak, vulnerable, and treacherous, "worthy" of the hate which you invest in it.
How has this served you? You have IDENTIFIED with this thing you hate, the instrument of vengeance, and the perceived source of your guilt. YOU have done this to a thing that has no meaning, proclaiming it to be the dwelling place of the Son of God, and turning it AGAINST him. This is the host of God that YOU have made. And neither God nor His most holy Son can enter an abode which harbors hate, and where you have sown the seeds of vengeance, violence, and death.
This thing you made to serve your guilt, stands between you and other minds. The minds ARE joined, but you do not IDENTIFY with them. You SEE yourself as locked in a separate prison, remote and unreachable, incapable of reaching out as being reached. You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it. Yet you would NOT escape from it, leaving it unharmed, WITHOUT your guilt upon it. But only thus CAN you escape. The home of vengeance is not yours; The place you set aside to house your hatred is NOT a prison, but an ILLUSION OF YOURSELF.
The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind. But the communication is INTERNAL. Mind reaches to ITSELF. It is NOT made up of different PARTS, which reach each other. It does not go OUT. Within ITSELF, it HAS no limits, and there is nothing OUTSIDE it. It encompasses EVERYTHING. It encompasses you ENTIRELY; you within it, and it within you. There IS nothing else, anywhere or ever. The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you.
IT IS NOT THERE. There IS no barrier between God and His Son, nor can His Son be separated from himself, except in illusion. This is NOT his reality, though he believes it IS. Yet this could only BE, IF God were wrong. God would have had to create DIFFERENTLY, and to have separated HIMSELF from His Son, to make this possible. He would have had to create DIFFERENT things, and to establish different ORDERS of reality, only SOME of which were love. Yet love must be forever like itself, changeless forever, and forever WITHOUT alternative. And so it is.
YOU cannot put a barrier around yourself, because God placed none between HIMSELF and you. Your hand can stretch out, and reach to Heaven. You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves. To reach your shared identity TOGETHER. Could this be OUTSIDE you? Where God is not? Is He a body, and did He create you as He is not, and where He CANNOT be? You are surrounded ONLY by Him. What limits CAN there be on you, whom HE encompasses?
Everyone has experienced what he would call a sense of being transported BEYOND himself. This feeling of liberation FAR exceeds the DREAM of freedom sometimes experienced in special relationships. It is a sense of actual ESCAPE from limitations. If you will consider what this "transportation" REALLY entails, you will realize that it is a sudden UNawareness of the body, and a joining of your self and SOMETHING ELSE, in which your mind ENLARGES to encompass it. It becomes PART of you, as you UNITE with it. And BOTH become whole, as NEITHER is perceived as separate.
What REALLY happens is that you have GIVEN UP the illusion of a LIMITED awareness, and lost your fear of union. The love that INSTANTLY replaces it EXTENDS to what has freed you, and UNITES you with it. And, while this lasts, you are NOT uncertain of your identity, and would not limit it. You have escaped from fear to peace, asking no questions of reality, but merely ACCEPTING it. You have accepted this INSTEAD of the body, and have LET yourself be ONE with something beyond it, simply by NOT letting your mind be limited BY it.
This can occur REGARDLESS of the physical distance that SEEMS to be between you and what you join; of your respective positions in space; and of your differences in size and seeming quality. Time is not relevant; it can occur with something past, present, or anticipated. The "something" can be ANYTHING and ANYWHERE; a sound, a sight, a thought, a memory, even a more GENERAL idea, WITHOUT specific reference. But, in every case, you join it without RESERVATION, because you love it, and would BE with it. And so you rush to meet it, letting your limits melt away, suspending ALL the "laws" your body obeys, and gently SETTING THEM ASIDE.
There is no violence at all in this escape. The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED. It does not limit you, merely because YOU would not have it so. You are not really "lifted out" of it; it cannot CONTAIN you. You go where you would be; GAINING, NOT losing, a sense of self. In these instants of release from physical restrictions, you experience much of what happens in the holy instant; the lifting of the barriers of time and space, the sudden experience of peace and joy, and, above all, the LACK of awareness of the body, and of the questioning WHETHER OR NOT ALL THIS IS POSSIBLE. It IS possible, BECAUSE YOU WANT IT.
The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace. NOT through destruction, NOT through a "breaking out," but merely by a quiet "melting in." For peace will join you there, simply because YOU have been willing to let go the limits YOU have placed on love, and JOINED it where it is, and where it led you, in answer to its gentle call to be at peace.
"Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality." ALL words in ACIM are symbols TWICE removed from the truth.
The word "apple" is twice removed from reality. The thing it represents, the actual apple itself sitting in your fruit bowl, is once removed from reality. Notice that words are symbols OF SYMBOLS. Therefore the apple itself is a symbol, and is NOT reality. Everything in this world is symbolic, just as all dreams are made of symbols.
"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are."
"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin"
"The body is the symbol of the ego"
"As nothingness cannot BE pictured, so there IS no symbol for totality."
"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."
"The body can become a **sign** of life ... and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that ***it represents***." (symbolizes)
Symbols are not an end in themselves. They don't have their own identity. They represent something else. They serve as a reflection or representative for something they point to. The body for example is not a THING in its own right, it is not an end. It SYMBOLIZES something else, and therefore is an effect of something else.
"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end. "
The metaphysics of ACIM does not really exist at the level of words twice removed. The metaphysics is once removed from reality. The words themselves, SYMBOLIZE, the metaphysics. They are expressions FROM or structured BY the metaphysics. Behind the words, deeper than the words, there is a core metaphysical structure which the course's expressed statements are BASED ON or coming from.
Or to put it more accurately, the ACTUAL metaphysics takes place as STATES OF MIND, as REALITIES, as WORLDS, playing out in the mind as SYSTEMS of logical thought. A THOUGHT of separation produces an ENTIRE WORLD representing that LOGICAL STATE. So what is this "deeper" metaphysics? There is a perfectly pure LOGICAL SYSTEM, underlying both reality and illusions. But the system is not a concept. It actually takes places as STATES of mind. As experiences of "realities". Conclusions have effects because PREMISES ARE CAUSES!
Both God's thought system and the ego's thought system are based on a LOGICAL premise. God's premise is Himself. His nature establishes the laws of what is TRUE. As He expresses/creates, His thought SYSTEM functions, and follows the laws established in his nature. The OUTCOME or "logical conclusion" of His system of thinking, MUST be in accord with his nature and be THE ONLY possible outcome that could come from such a starting point.
Because God is eternal, the outcome of His thinking must be eternal. Because God is alive, His thoughts must be alive. Because God is love, His thoughts must be made of love. Because God is happy, His thoughts must be happy and lead to happiness. Because God is a creator, the living beings He creates must be creators also (co-creators).
Everything that comes FROM Him is in accord with His Will and nature, and is in his perfect LIKENESS. It HAS to be in His likeness because in a logical system, everything that comes from the ORIGIN of the system stays WITHIIN the confines of the system and thus is governed by the same laws.
These FACTS, have nothing to do with interpretations, ideals, made-up spirituality, theory or theology, or any other kind of conceptual make-believe. These are ACTUAL FACTS of reality. And "metaphysics" is based on irrefutable FACTS. It is a fact that God is a creator, and therefore it MUST be a fact that God's creation is also a creator. Regardless of whether ACIM ever mentioned that in its words at all, that HAS to be true.
ACIM happens to say "A co-creator with the Father must have a Son." But you can DEDUCE this, LOGICALLY, by following God's system of thought. Simply, God is a creative father. He passes on Himself to whatever He creates. Therefore, logically, if God Himself has a nature which results in a Son, then the Son MUST have a nature which results in a Son of a Son. YOU, as a Son, MUST therefore have creations. This isn't true just because ACIM says so in its words. It's true LOGICALLY. And that is the deeper metaphysics. Jesus has BASED those quoted statements ON that logic.
Let's look at another example, the separation from God. Without even considering anything ACIM says about separation, let's assess it with purely impeccable logic and see what we get.
Ok so God wills eternal life because God IS eternal life. God wills happiness. God wills a total lack of limits because He is unlimited. God gives freedom, because God IS freedom. The co-creative living entities that God MUST create, therefore must have His freedom. But this also means, they are free FROM any kind of limitation or restraint. The only truth is that they must function WITHIN the system of God. They cannot leave God. BUT, they can exercise their co-creative ability to freely choose to try to DENY or oppose God's will and nature, thus opposing their own. What would HAVE to happen if you did that?
Look at it purely logically. Reality is ..... light, life, happiness, peace, love, unlimited, constant, unchanging, equal/harmonious, permanent, truthful, open, immortal, etc. BECAUSE, this is what God is. So everything IN God's system must be this too. What would an OPPOSITE to this be? What would you get, if you DENIED this system and tried to bring about an OPPOSITE system?
Well, an opposite system would have to be based on the "belief" that all of the nature of God is NOT true or real. It has to be a PREMISE, that OPPOSES God's premise. So the premise is, ... darkness, death, unhappiness, conflict, hatred/fear, limitation, change, inequality/difference, impermanence, everything is false, closed, mortality, etc. Because these are the LOGICAL opposites to God's nature. And if this collection of "unpleasant" CONDITIONS is the PREMISE of the entire ego SYSTEM, everything WITHIN this "line of thinking" MUST RESULT IN, all of these things. DEATH, is the logical outcome of the ego thought system.
So the question is, does this logical conclusion LINE UP with what A Course in Miracles says. And the answer is YES. It does. In fact Jesus even says so.
"From the belief in sin (the premise), the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a ***logical conclusion***; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos ***DO follow neatly from their starting-point***. Each is a different form in the **progression** (logical thought process) of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth."
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."
"The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing."
So what you find is, if you can get a grasp of the PURE LOGICAL BASIS of God's system, and if you can then grasp the idea that the "separation" is simply the idea of AN OPPOSITE TO REALITY, you can LOGICALLY come to conclusions. And the fact is, that these conclusions EXACTLY MATCH what Jesus has described in A Course in Miracles. WITHOUT ERROR. They totally correlate to the separation, the result of separating, the OUTCOME of starting on a basis of sin.
"The wages of sin is death - ie, if you start with sin (which is the idea "an opposite to God is possible", you must end with death". Death is the suppression and denial and NEGATING OF, God's reality. It is the "end of life" because it OPPOSES GOD'S WILL which supports life.
Therefore, and this is a metaphysical FACT.... a belief in separation MUST LEAD TO a seeming "world" or "logical state of mind", wherein everything is based on an idea of sin and death. e.g. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son" - ie its the idea of God's LIVING son, pictured in a condition OPPOSITE to living. Similarly "the world was made as an attack on God" is based on the LOGIC that by trying to OPPOSE THE TRUTH, you "attacked" the premise of the truthful thought system (God), by trying to establish another SYSTEM that was totally opposite.
For example, Jesus says "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way". Why is Earth OPPOSITE to Heaven? Because it is part of a "world" or STATE of OPPOSITION to THE TRUTH. The world is thus a logical outcome of the ego thought system. It is MADE OF DEATH. It is made of denial. It is made of sin. This isn't something I need to say based on ACIM saying it. I can make this "claim", IMPERSONALLY, WITHOUT OPINION, because the METAPHYSICS accurately indicates that this MUST be the case.
Now, here is the interesting thing about metaphysics. The underlying core logic describes VERY accurately, PERFECTLY, not only the nature of God's "system" or world, and the nature of any world that tries to oppose it. Through LOGICAL REASONING, which must be "impeccable", you can actually make "statements"- symbolic word expressions once removed from the metaphysics, that were never written IN the Course itself, but which are TOTALLY in line with it. This is not an opinion or a matter of making something up. The LOGIC tells you, BY ITSELF, WHAT MUST BE TRUE.
For example we could say, anything that is opposite to God who is eternal life must be incapable of living forever. It doesn't necessarily explicitly SAY that in the course, but it MUST be true. It does however say basically the same thing in other words, e.g. "there is no life outside of heaven."
We could also say, "everything in this world opposes reality". It doesn't necessarily say that in the course. But it MUST be true. The metaphysical LOGIC, the impeccable reasoning, TELLS YOU, that it MUST be true because it is perfectly sound logic. And this world IS A LOGICAL SYSTEM BASED ON AN ENTIRELY LOGICAL PREMISE.
The really interesting thing is, the metaphysical LOGICAL SYSTEM completely removes the need for OPINIONS. Of any kind. If God is truth, anything not of God is not true. That is purely logical. It's not an opinion. In fact the LOGIC is such a COMPLETE system, with no strange fuzzy exceptions or loopholes or things unaccounted for, totally black and white in its perfect clarity and precision, that it leaves NO ROOM for ANY INTERPRETATION. NONE.
And this is why the multitude of "interpretations" of the course, ALL of which are NOT really based on pure logic, are faulty and OF THE EGO. And this inevitably results in conflict and arguments because it inherently leads to CONTRADICTIONS. The ego cannot even reason correctly. Our normal ego thought processes don't even typically function "LIKE GOD THINKS", and therefore comes to FALSE conclusions about His system of logic. Frequently. And you can see by all the debate and WAR in this forum the sheer extent of this CONFUSION, which has resulted from NOT SEEING THE METAPHYSICAL FACTS CLEARLY, errors in logical reasoning, and false conclusions that EGOs have arrived at. There is ONLY ONE TRUTH.
All we can do is look at the logical system and let IT TELL US, what the truth MUST be. If we don't, and we start trying to MAKE UP TRUTH, or DECIDE what the truth is, we are now delusional and are not following the logic and are not having REASON. We then will not MAKE SENSE and this leads to all confusion. That means, the logical conclusions being drawn here, or by anyone who can reason impeccably, COMPLETELY TRANSCENDS opinion. It REFLECTS the truth. It is FACT. That means it is not MY opinion, or yours, or anyone's. It is how things actually are.
Therefore, if you can grasp this and SEE the sense in it, you can USE the metaphysical logical BASIS of everything the course says as a TOOL. You can USE it, practically, to inform you of what the course MUST BE MEANING. You can actually hold up a quote, and COMPARE IT, to the metaphysical structure, and provided your grasp of the structure is accurate, it will TELL YOU the context in which the quote is placed, the meaning of the references, what it is referring TO, and thus what it MUST MEAN.
If you get used to doing this, you will find gradually that everything Jesus says in the course is BASED ENTIRELY ON logical reasoning. Jesus is an absolute MASTER of this. And you will then realize that all of the WORDS in the course are in fact expressions OF the metaphysics. The number of ways and forms of expression OF those FACTS, is largely unlimited. Jesus wrote a huge book expression FROM the facts. He could've written more. If you "get the facts straight", and are not in denial or making logical errors, you can evaluate everything the course's WORDS say, and CORRECTLY RECOGNIZE what they MUST MEAN, in light of what the logical truth says MUST be true.
This however is one area that we are all struggling with, because most of us do NOT think logically or impeccably enough. We make a lot of errors. And the main reason for that is simply NOT SEEING the core logical BASIS behind the ENTIRE metaphysics of the course. And so instead, we'll try to "put together the pieces" from the bottom up, starting with loose ends, trying to assemble a cohesive picture, and making a lot of errors along the way. We then depend too heavily on the WORDS. The wordings. The phrasing. What it SEEMS like it says. And we will find that sometimes the CHOICE of words can seem misleading, when you compare it to the metaphysical meaning.
What the logic can do for you though, is it can provide you with a powerful tool for discernment, it can guide you, it can tell you what Jesus's words mean, it can clarify what the words CANNOT mean, and it can help you to get past all the nit-picking arguments and disagreements that come from MULTIPLE OPINIONS, all of which result from a LACK OF true facts and too much faulty reasoning or "blindness" to the LOGICAL METAPHYSICS. All of the discussions about "is it this or that" come from this "difficulty" with seeing the logic behind it.
Does A Course in Miracles line up with a PURELY LOGICAL set of conclusions, a logical system of black and white conclusions? YES. It totally does. Was this world made as a result of a LOGICAL conclusions? YES. Does death occur because of the conclusion that MUST come "inevitably" from a premise of real sin? YES. Would we make BODIES as a logical CONCLUSION in a thought system? YES, because they are the "natural outcome" of WALLS THAT BLOCK TRUTH, as "separation devices". Bodies ARE the idea of the rejection of wholeness. They ARE limitation, as an experiential idea or state of mind.
The atonement is logical too. It is nothing but the recognition that only the truth is true. There is no real sin. An opposite to what is all encompassing does not exist. It is the TRUTH. It represents God's PREMISE and therefore results in the resuming of the extension of creation. IT HAS TO. That's part of its logical basis. This is also why by "denying the denial of truth", you LOGICALLY cancel out the denial. Because you took what is FALSE, and you tried to make it TRUE, in order to deny that the truth is true. So if you REVERSE that by DENYING that the false is true, you deny the denial of the truth, restoring the truth as the only truth. This is entirely logically based.
To restore you to reality, you must UN-OPPOSE God. You must stop "negating" the truth". You must stop believing in sin, which is the idea of God's system having been destroyed and opposed. You must surmount death, which means resurrection is nothing but an assertion of TRUTH, which is life. Everything to do with God's creation, everything to do with the separation, everything to do with the descent into the ego and death, and everything to do with healing and awakening to reality, is all ENTIRELY the interplay of PURELY LOGICAL SYSTEMS or states.
Awakening is even logical and inevitable because you, being an effect of God, must FOREVER be an effect of God, since God never changes, and therefore CANNOT ever stop being God's son. Your reality is SECURED as a result of the logic of the system. The ending of death is just as inevitable, because when you get yourself into a logical STATE of ONLY TRUTH, there cannot be a state of an opposite to life, and death is therefore "snuffed out" as Jesus puts it.
Jesus's choice of words is masterful, but sometimes potentially misleading. There is a lot of material to digest. There seems to be a lot of stuff to figure out. Sometimes things seem contradictory which are not. And our egos make a TON of logical errors. Error, ie sin, is nothing but a logical mistake. You cannot oppose God's will, so it is "error", logically, to CONCLUDE you can. Healing is therefore the undoing of error, by re-establishing the facts of reality and accepting God's premise as the only true one.
This is all the metaphysics. It's behind the words. When you GET it, you can express FROM it, and be coming from the truth. You can express 100,000 books BASED ON this and every single one will be in line with ACIM. We're inside a logical system of thought, albeit based on a FALSE starting point, resulting in FALSE experiences, and FALSE outcomes. A false outcome is SUFFERING. Suffering is inevitable when the entire SYSTEM is founded on opposition to health and life. Suffering means you are "suffering from" being mistaken about the facts of reality.
If you want eternal life and happiness, you must open up to accept the REASONING of the Holy Spirit, which is the SAME as God's SYSTEM or WAY of thinking. Thought BASED ON TRUTH will set you free.
ALL of the conflict in the ACIM community is based on NOT SEEING and NOT ACCEPTING the purely LOGICAL CORE TRUTH in A Course in Miracles. All of the disagreement about what it says, what it means, what it implies, is all based on NOT being logically sound. ALL OPINIONS ARE MUTE! Your opinion has no value, and nor does mine. We are supposed to get away from having opinions. We are supposed to recognize the FACTS OF REALITY, instead of trying to MAKE UP interpretations. Interpretations are entirely ego. The course HAS NO INTERPRETATIONS. The course is based on FACTS. It is based on TRUTH.
And truth is not an intepretation. It is an expression FROM THE PURE LOGIC SYSTEM OF GOD'S THINKING. When everyone finally recognizes this and accepts the ONE CORRECT metaphysics, there will be no more NEED for conflict, no more BASIS for confusion, no more REASON to fight about it, and no more DEBATE about what it means. Behind all the seemingly varied WORDS in the course, behind all the many EXPRESSIONS, behind the choice of phrases and the language and the way Jesus speaks, there is a PURE METAPHYSICAL CLARITY.
Do not be DECEIVED by the ILLUSION OF DIFFERENT FORMS in the course. Do not be deceived by taking the WORDS too literally. The WORDS ARE NOT THE METAPHYSICS. They are only based on it. And if you base your entire understanding on THE WORDS, you will very likely come to false inconsistent conclusions. When you get bogged down in isolated quotes, inconsistent reasoning, things taken out of context, and all the rest of it, you are missing the CLARITY of the course's truth.
Go deeper. Get behind the words. SEE the logical structures. Recognize the metaphysics. It's beyond words. It's beyond those symbols. The course is PURE TRUTHFUL FACT and it is totally consistent without contradiction. If you are confused, wondering about meanings, uncertain about structures, or any other reaction to what's said, you are not using logical reasoning and so are using blind ego interpretation. If you see contradictions, you made a logical error.
If something doesn't fit, you haven't seen the logic behind it clearly enough. And if you conclude things OUT OF ACCORD with what the LOGIC says, you are mistaken, regardless of what the words seem to say. Jesus is 100% perfectly ACCURATE in every single thing he has expressed FROM a PERFECT GRASP of the PERFECTLY CLEAR metaphysical basis of truth. HE has not made any errors. His expressions in words are not erroneous. He is PERFECTLY CORRECT. Our only challenge is coming to SEE, RECOGNIZE and ACCEPT, the CORE TRUTH behind the entire course. REASON will allow you to literally SEE SENSE.
"The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."
"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."
Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.
Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.
Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.
This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.
It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.
This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.
Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.
So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.
This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.
There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.
You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.
Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.
It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.
It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.
On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.
The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.
This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.
But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.
A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.
The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.
Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.
Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.
Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.
But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.
All is well. It's just a room.
The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.
As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.
The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.
To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.
Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.
If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.
True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".
Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.
To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."
Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.
Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.
In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.
"To see a sinless body is impossible."
"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."
"A world forgiven cannot last."
As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.
To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.
You can think of the Sonship ONLY as one. This is part of the law of Creation, and therefore governs ALL thought. You can PERCEIVE the Sonship as fragmented, but it is IMPOSSIBLE for you to see something in part of it that you will not attribute to ALL of it. That is why attack is NEVER discrete. And why attack MUST be relinquished entirely. If it is NOT relinquished entirely, it is not relinquished at all. Fear and love are equally reciprocal. They make or create depending on whether the ego or the Holy Spirit begets or inspires them, but they WILL return to the mind of the thinker, and they WILL affect his total perception. That includes his perception of God, of His Creations, and of his own. He will not appreciate ANY of these if he regards them fearfully. He will appreciate ALL of them if he regards them with love.
The mind that accepts attack CANNOT love. This is because it believes that it can DESTROY love, and therefore does not understand what love IS. If it does not understand what love IS, it CANNOT perceive itself as loving. This loses the awareness of being; induces feelings of unreality; and results in utter confusion. Your own thinking has done this, because of its power. But your own thinking can also save you FROM this, because its power is not of your making. Your ability to DIRECT your thinking as you will IS part of its power. If you do not believe you can do this, you have DENIED the power of your thought, and thus rendered it powerLESS in your belief.
The ingeniousness of the ego to preserve itself is enormous, but it stems from the power of the mind WHICH THE EGO DENIES. This means that the ego attacks WHAT IS PRESERVING IT, and this MUST be a source of extreme anxiety. This is why it NEVER knows what it is doing. This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimitable to its existence FOR its existence. Fearful of perceiving the POWER of this source, it is forced to DEPRECIATE it. This threatens its OWN existence, a state which it finds intolerable.
Remaining logical but still insane, the ego resolves this completely insane dilemma in a completely insane way. It does not perceive ITS existence as threatened, by projecting the threat onto YOU, and perceiving your BEING as NONexistent. This ensures ITS continuance, if you side WITH it, by guaranteeing that you will NOT know your OWN safety. The ego CANNOT AFFORD TO KNOW ANYTHING. Knowledge is total, and the ego DOES NOT BELIEVE IN TOTALITY. This unbelief is its own origin, and while the ego does not love YOU, it IS faithful to its own antecedent, begetting as it was begotten.
Mind ALWAYS REproduces as it was produced. Produced by fear, the ego REproduces fear. This IS its allegiance, and this allegiance makes it treacherous to love BECAUSE you are love. Love IS your power, which the ego MUST deny. It must also deny everything which this power gives TO you, BECAUSE it gives you everything. No-one who has everything WANTS the ego. Its own maker, then, DOES NOT WANT IT. Rejection is therefore the only decision which the ego could POSSIBLY encounter if the mind which made it knew ITSELF. And if it recognized ANY part of the Sonship, it WOULD know itself.
The ego therefore opposes ALL appreciation, ALL recognition, ALL sane perception, and ALL knowledge. It perceives their threat as total because it senses the fact that all commitments which the mind makes ARE total. Forced therefore to detach itself from you who ARE mind, it is willing to attach itself to anything ELSE. But there IS nothing else. It does NOT follow, however, that the mind cannot make illusions. But it DOES follow that if it makes illusions it will BELIEVE in them, because THAT IS HOW IT MADE THEM.
The Holy Spirit undoes illusions without attacking them merely because He cannot perceive them at all. They therefore do not exist for Him. He resolves the APPARENT conflict which they engender by perceiving CONFLICT as meaningless. We said before that the Holy Spirit perceives the conflict EXACTLY AS IT IS, and it IS meaningless. The Holy Spirit does not want you to UNDERSTAND conflict. He wants you to realize that BECAUSE conflict is meaningLESS it cannot BE understood. We have already said that understanding brings appreciation, and appreciation brings love. Nothing else CAN be understood because nothing else is real and therefore nothing else HAS meaning.
If you will keep in mind what the Holy Spirit offers you, you cannot be vigilant for anything BUT God and His Kingdom. The ONLY reason why you find this difficult is because you think there IS something else. Belief does not require vigilance UNLESS it is conflicted. If it IS, there ARE conflicting components within it which have engendered a state of war, and vigilance has therefore BECOME essential. Vigilance has no place at all in peace. It is necessary ONLY AGAINST beliefs which are NOT true, and would never have been called upon by the Holy Spirit if you had not believed the untrue yourselves.
But you CANNOT deny that when you BELIEVE something you HAVE made it true FOR YOU. When YOU believe what God DOES NOT KNOW, your thought seems to CONTRADICT His, and this makes it appear AS IF YOU ARE ATTACKING HIM. We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this. If the mind CANNOT attack, the ego proceeds perfectly logically to the position that YOU cannot be mind. By not seeing you as YOU are, it can see ITSELF as it WANTS to be. Aware of its weakness, the ego wants your allegiance, but NOT as you really are. The ego therefore wants to engage your mind in its OWN delusional system, because otherwise the light of YOUR understanding WILL dispel it.
The ego wants no part of truth, because the truth is that IT is not true. If truth is total, the UNtrue CANNOT exist. Commitment to either MUST be total, because they cannot co-exist in your minds WITHOUT splitting them. If they cannot coexist in peace, and if you WANT peace, you MUST give up the IDEA of conflict ENTIRELY, and for ALL TIME. This requires vigilance ONLY as long as YOU DO NOT RECOGNIZE WHAT IS TRUE. While you believe that two totally contradictory thought systems SHARE truth, your need for vigilance is apparent. Your minds ARE dividing their allegiance between two kingdoms, and YOU are totally committed to neither.
Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY. What you are is NOT established by your perception, and is NOT influenced BY it at all. ALL perceived problems in identification at ANY level ARE NOT PROBLEMS OF FACT. But they ARE problems in UNDERSTANDING, because they MEAN that you perceive WHAT you can understand as UP TO YOU TO DECIDE. The ego believes THIS totally, being fully committed TO it. But it is NOT TRUE. The ego is therefore totally committed to UNtruth, perceiving in total contradiction to the Holy Spirit and to the knowledge of God.
You can be perceived with meaning ONLY by the Holy Spirit, because your being IS the knowledge of God. ANY belief that you accept which is APART from this WILL obscure God's voice in you, and will therefore obscure God TO you. Unless you perceive His Creation truly, you CANNOT know the Creator, because God and His Creation ARE NOT SEPARATE. The Oneness of the Creator and the Creation IS your wholeness, your sanity, and your limitless power. This limitless power is God's gift to you, because it is WHAT YOU ARE. If you dissociate your mind FROM it, you are perceiving the most powerful force in the universe of thought AS IF it were weak, because you do NOT believe YOU are part of it.
Perceived WITHOUT your part IN it, God's Creation IS perceived as weak, and those who SEE themselves as weakened DO attack. The attack MUST be blind, because there is nothing TO attack. Therefore, they make up images, perceive them as unworthy, and attack them for their unworthiness. That is all the world of the ego is. NOTHING. It has no meaning. It does not exist. Do not TRY to understand it, because if you do you are believing that it CAN be understood, and therefore is capable of being appreciated and loved. This WOULD justify it, but it CANNOT BE justified. YOU cannot make the meaningLESS meaningFUL. This can ONLY be an insane attempt.
Allowing INsanity to enter your minds means that you have not judged sanity AS WHOLLY DESIRABLE. If you WANT something else, you WILL MAKE something else. But because it IS something else it WILL attack your thought system and divide your allegiance. You CANNOT create in this divided state, and you MUST be vigilant AGAINST this divided state because ONLY peace CAN BE extended. Your divided minds ARE blocking the extension of the Kingdom, and its extension IS your joy. If you do not extend the Kingdom, you are NOT thinking with your Creator and creating as He created.
In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators WITH God, and are therefore depriving YOURSELVES of joy. This is not God's will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God's, YOU ARE WILLING WITHOUT MEANING. But because ONLY God's will is unchangeable, no REAL conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, IS your will BECAUSE it is God's. And nothing that opposes this means anything at all. Being a perfect Accomplishment, the Sonship can only accomplish perfectly, EXTENDING the joy in which it was created, and identifying itself with both its Creator and its creations, KNOWING they are One.
"There is not one principle the world upholds but violates the truth of what love is, and what you are as well."
The physical planet, Earth, was made by us as a place of "hell", in an attempt to make a world which is totally opposite to Heaven in EVERY way. The problem now is that we don't recognize HOW it is opposite to Heaven, or why it is not like Heaven at all. So let's take a look at the "laws" that run this world.
This world was based on the separation idea. This idea includes death, sacrifice, loss, scarcity, attack, competition, murder, suffering, lack, darkness, etc. This idea has created LAWS, the ego's laws, which has produced space-time, and has invented the "laws of physics". The physical planet is founded ON and BY these laws, and without these laws it could not maintain its form or function or exist at all. "Fear has made everything you think you see".
Look closely at what happens with physical matter. When two objects come close to each other, they never touch. Contradictory forces of attraction AND repulsion pull objects near and then push them away. If two objects were to touch, they would cause an atomic explosion and annihilation. That means when anything tries to join, or share, or "be one", it results in DEATH. How more opposite to Heaven can this be, that joining is death, and being separate is to "be alive".
Then consider what happens when you try to share an object. Let's say you have an apple and you want to "have" the apple, but you also want to share it. You could give it to someone, but now you have LOSS. And loss induces grief, and represents LACK and SCARCITY. To give, is to SACRIFICE. This is ego law, and totally unlike the laws of Heaven in which to give is to increase and allows you BOTH to SHARE everything.
Try to give the apple without losing it, it is impossible. Another's gain is your loss, and so you are now in COMPETITION. And the apple represents the idea of finite, LIMITATION of amounts, rather than unlimited supply. "God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."
There is no INCREASE when you give, as there would be in heaven, and it is impossible for you to BOTH have the whole apple. You can try to COMPROMISE, which is a law of SACRIFICE and SUFFERING, by having half an apple each, meaning neither person get's the whole and you both are EMPTY. And so there is no real sharing. These are the ego laws that run this world.
Also, because all objects are separate, nothing can ever share the same space with anything else. Objects cannot overlap, or they would DESTROY each other. To join or be "one", to unite in any way, results in death and destruction. This is the complete opposite to Heaven's laws, whereby when two things join there is oneness, harmony, peace and life. And so anything physical, any form, including human bodies and the planet, can never join or be one. Every single particle of matter is kept apart, separated off and different to the rest.
There is also no consistency of properties among particles of matter. While some things seem to act similarly, nothing is identical. While in God's world everything God creates is created in His perfect likeness and image, and all sons of God are perfectly EQUAL and identical in their nature, in the ego's world its "nature" is utterly UNNATURAL, CHAOTIC and NOT LIKE the rest. An apple is not an orange, or a banana. A house is not a car. A human is not a fish. Water does not behave like rocks. It is all made to be different, meaning there is NO EQUALITY.
Differences also mean that no two things can AGREE on anything, producing a state of PERPETUAL WAR, conflict, tension, disagreement and imbalance. Nothing is WHOLE within itself, everything LACKS what other things have, everything is only PARTIAL and finite and limited, and nothing has everything. This also means that no PART of this world FULLY exists.
Chemicals which are present in an apple, are NOT present in a screwdriver. The screwdriver LACKS what the apple has, sees the apple as having stolen part of wholeness from itself, and wants to destroy it to complete itself. This is all outlined in the ego's "laws of chaos" whereby we perceive that special love has been stolen by other people (ie you lost your SELF and they have what you LACK), locked up in their bodies, and we are willing to kill them to get it. Every object in the world is fundamentally in a state of LACK, LOSS, EMPTINESS and DESPERATION, producing compulsions to "seek and do not find."
And this isn't even half of what the purpose of the world is.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."
You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to oppose God, to shut out his NATURE, and to make it seem like he DOES NOT EXIST. Physical matter, is MURDEROUS. (what is not love is murder). The world didn't simply take on the form of a planet "just because". It was INTENTIONAL, to make a place governed by laws NOT OF GOD, which opposes and is UNLIKE Heaven in EVERY WAY POSSIBLE.
God's nature is that he is omnipresent. This means that God is fully present everywhere. This doesn't just mean God is really big and stretched out to cover the universe, but it also means ALL of God's being, is in EVERY location. The fullness of God is here, and there, and over there. This is utterly impossible according to ego laws, because if God were to be "fully over here", there is no God "left" to be "fully over there" simultaneously. Yet this is God's nature.
The ego, and its WORLD, including the Earth, was designed to create a PICTURE OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF GOD'S SON, in which God has been obliterated from existence. It does this by the physical ego laws. If you look at an object, you'll notice that this object is not the same as another object. If it's an apple, it is not the same as a television. This means, there is some of the possibility over here in the apple, and some of the possibility over there in the television set. Neither of them contains "everything". They are separate, distinct, and kept apart.
What this does, is it presents a physical "picture" which is trying to STATE, to affirm and assert, that "nothing contains everything" "no part of the world contains all of it" "there is no everything in any single object". THEREFORE... because "everything" is nowhere, and NOTHING IS WHOLE, THERE IS NO WHOLENESS ANYWHERE, SO GOD, WHO NATURE IS TO BE FULLY PRESENT EVERYWHERE, DOES NOT EXIST *ANYWHERE*! This picture then forms what you think is "nature", which is the UNNATURAL laws of the ego world. It was made to COMPLETELY OBSCURE sight of God, to make it seem like God's NATURE does not apply here AT ALL, and therefore that God is dead.
THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE WORLD AS THE EGO MADE IT. "The world was made as an attack on God." If you BEHOLD IT, ie see it, with your eyes or mind, you CANNOT KNOW GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God." Because simply, if you are looking at this picture of "God cannot exist", it is distracted you and blocking you from seeing that "God does exist." "You cannot see two worlds". Either you are in Heaven with God, or you're dreaming of planet Earth and trying to be dead.
This is why Jesus says "there is nothing so BLINDING as sight of form." To SEE FORM, to see the Earth, is to be BLIND and to NOT SEE ANYTHING REAL. The body's eyes were made to look on SIN and DEATH and believe they are reality. You think you are here observing a real world, when in fact your head is buried in the sand and you do NOT HAVE VISION. The body's eyes were designed by the ego, ON PURPOSE, to make it seem like you are sensing and looking at something that exists, but in fact is a hallucination, stuck in a box, in the dark, looking at nothingness. It's designed so that you WILL NOT SEE GOD.
In every way, the underlying FUNCTION of this planet, is MADE OF, based on, run by, and dictated by, the idea of separation and DEATH. It is a state OF death, because life which is eternal and of Heaven does not change. "Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals".
The world also is a state of DENIAL - it is the physical embodiment of the denial of God and reality. It is a state of UNCONSCIOUSNESS and death. And Jesus says "a world that denies its own existence does not exist." "There is no world."
"From knowledge and perception respectively, two distinct thought systems arise which are opposite in every respect. In the realm of knowledge no thoughts exist apart from God, because God and His Creation share one Will. The world of perception, however, is made by the belief in opposites and separate wills, in perpetual conflict with each other and with God. What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real."
"When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."
This world, Earth, is the ego's world, nothing but a dream, a fiction of OPPOSITION TO HEAVEN, designed to attack God and separate the Son and kill the Son of God. Or at least to create the illusion that this is possible.
Now. You can, with the Holy Spirit, change how you look AT and INTERPRET this world. "Holy Spirit is the great reinterpreter of the world". You can join His way of looking, and learn to SEE and RECOGNIZE, that this world that you think is so special and lovely in all its ways of death and murder, even at the subatomic level, IS NOT REAL. That it is showing you a picture which is FALSE, or not true. That its very FORMS, its separations, its objects, are a FANTASY about murdering God.
This leads you to True Perception and the "forgiven world", aka "real world", which entails the ability to look at THE WORLD *YOU* MADE, hell, this Earth, WITH the truth, to look at and admit to the ways that IT IS NOT LIKE HEAVEN AT ALL. The truth will show you the ways that it is in fact SO unlike Heaven that it could not possibly be created by God, it could not possibly be real, it cannot exist, and it is MADE OF LIES.
Correcting perception and approaching True Perception is STILL going to show you apples, different from oranges. Humans, different from fish. Objects colliding with each other. Plants growing and producing flowers only to die and rot. Bodies in various states of sickness. BECAUSE ITS BUILT INTO THE LAWS THAT THIS WORLD COMES FROM. You can perceive it in a loving WAY, or in a better light, but you're still going to be seeing all the shit you made up, FUNCTIONING according to the same physical laws of death, and still DOING what it always did. The fact that the "Earth" remains a "planet" at all means it is STILL built on sacrifice, loss, lack, attack, rejection, separation and death.
You can look at this death hole in a heavenly way and see a reflection of Heaven BEYOND it, or IN SPITE OF it. But forgiveness OVERLOOKS the world and the body. To say that you are forgiving when you are MAKING THE WORLD REAL, is NOT FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness looks and recognizes that this world is OPPOSITE TO REALITY. It is not real, and it doesn't really exist. THAT is what forgiveness shows you. You don't look AT bodies and AT the world - you OVERLOOK them, rendering them non-existent!
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
"It is the world you see (with body's eyes, Planet Earth) THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE."
A glimpse of reality, which shows you that everything about this world right down to the smallest particles, is operating on FALSE LAWS, and that those laws are fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, and NOT OF HEAVEN, and therefore must NOT BE REAL. And this will merely prepare you to realize, that "this world is not my home".
And this is why you go *SOMEWHERE ELSE*, to another realm, another world, the world that GOD CREATED as your home and inheritance. You leave behind what Jesus calls "the bleak little world", in which "everything in the world is little because it is made of LITTLENESS" (rejection of the grandeur of heaven), and go to Heaven. Heaven's laws are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the laws which the Earth runs on. In Heaven there is TRUE sharing, oneness and overlap is possible, you can truly merge and join with others, you can share space, you can be TRULY intimate in communion, and you can be ACTUALLY ALIVE. "There is no life outside of Heaven."
If you can recognize the way that this world is SO unlike Heaven in every way, and realize that Heaven's laws are NOTHING like the laws this world is based on, even when reinterpreted with Holy Spirit, you MIGHT be wiling to see that this world - Earth - that we MADE, in a state of insanity ("the world is the DELUSIONAL SYSTEM of those driven MAD by guilt"), is not only NOT HEAVEN, it also CANNOT BE heaven, or turn into Heaven, because it is fundamentally the idea of OPPOSING Heaven and reality. It will NEVER be Heaven. To be Heaven requires laws which simply do not support FORMS of any kind, and that includes bodies and planets. All forms are forms of error, and Heaven contains no mistakes.
So we can keep trying to glorify and spiritualize this world, to try to make it special, to pretend God would've created it, even though its cruelty and meaninglessness are utterly opposite to His nature. We can learn to forgive the hell we made, and "love it", and be at peace about it. But this does not MAKE IT heaven. It does not turn it INTO your home. It doesn't make it an appropriate SYSTEM, or state of functioning, in which the Son of God is best suited. You are a fish out of water here. "This world is not my home." "You are a stranger here."
The world now, seen through the Holy Spirit, is ONLY there as a teaching device to bring you Home, which is beyond this world. The body, is only a teaching device, to show you that the body is utterly unnecessary. Perception, which is a state of fundamental judgementalism and instability and uncertainty, was made only as a result of a rejection of reality. It will never contain awareness or reality or God and once its lesson is learned perception has NO USE. All of these things we MADE, will end, because they were never really begun. They are illusions. A fantasy of an attack on God and an attempt to destroy ourselves. "You do not want the world." "This world holds nothing that I want."
"You have been promised full release from the world you made. You have been assured that the Kingdom of God is within you, and can never be lost". Heaven is my home, not hell. And "heaven on Earth" is still a dream, and a poor substitute for the direct experience of Heaven itself. Earth cannot BE heaven. Its laws are totally opposed to peace and life. It was made to kill. You don't want it. You can view it in a heavenly way but you can never turn it into heaven just because you see it lovingly. Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS. Earth is NOTHING. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "There is no world. This is the central lesson the course would attempt to teach." You will give up nothing, this world, and gain everything, Heaven. And that is God's will.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. 2 God made no contradictions. 3 What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. 4 He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's SORRY OUTCOME which is HEAVEN'S OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY."
You are accustomed to the notion that the mind can see the source of pain where it is not. The doubtful service of displacement is to hide the REAL source of your guilt, and KEEP from your awareness the full perception THAT IT IS INSANE. Displacement ALWAYS is maintained by the illusion that the source, from which attention is diverted, MUST BE TRUE. And MUST BE FEARFUL, or you would not have displaced the guilt onto what you believed to be LESS fearful. You are therefore willing, with little opposition, to look upon all sorts of "sources" underneath awareness, provided that they are not the deeper source, to which they bear no real relationship at all. Insane ideas HAVE no real relationships, for that is why they ARE insane.
No real relationship can rest on guilt, or even hold one spot of it, to mar its purity. For all relationships which guilt has touched, are used but to avoid the person AND the guilt. What strange relationships you have made for this strange purpose! And you forgot that real relationships are holy, and cannot be used by YOU at all. They are used ONLY by the Holy Spirit, and it is that that MAKES them pure. If you displace YOUR guilt upon them, the Holy Spirit cannot use them. For, by pre-empting FOR YOUR OWN ends what you should have given HIM, he cannot use them unto YOUR release. No-one who would unite in ANY way, with ANYONE, for his OWN salvation will find it in that strange relationship. It is not shared, and so it is not real.
In any union with a brother, in which you seek to lay YOUR guilt upon him, or share it WITH him, or perceive his own, YOU WILL FEEL GUILTY. Nor will you find satisfaction and peace with him, because your union with him IS NOT REAL. You will see guilt in that relationship, BECAUSE YOU PUT IT THERE. It is inevitable that those who suffer guilt WILL attempt to displace it, because they DO believe in it. Yet, though they suffer, they will not look within, AND LET IT GO. They cannot know they love, and cannot understand WHAT LOVING IS. Their main concern is to perceive the source of guilt OUTSIDE themselves, BEYOND their own control.
When you maintain that YOU are guilty, but the source LIES IN THE PAST, you are NOT looking inward. The past is NOT in you. Your weird associations to it HAVE no meaning in the present. Yet you let them stand BETWEEN you and your brothers, with whom you find no REAL relationships at all. Can you EXPECT to use your brothers as a means to solve the past, and still to see them as they really ARE? Salvation is not found by those who use their brothers to resolve problems WHICH ARE NOT THERE. You wanted not salvation in the past. Would you impose your idle wishes on the present, and hope to find salvation NOW?
Determine, then, to be NOT as you were. Use no relationship to hold you to the past, but with each one, each day, be born again. A minute, even less, will be enough to free you from the past, and give your mind in peace over to the Atonement. When everyone is welcome to you as you would have YOURSELF be welcome to your Father, you will see no guilt in you. For you will have ACCEPTED the Atonement, which shone within you all the while you dreamed of guilt, and would not look within and SEE it.
As long as you believe that guilt is justified in ANY way, in ANYONE, WHATEVER he may do, you will not look within, where you would ALWAYS find Atonement. The end of guilt will never come as long as you believe THERE IS A REASON FOR IT. For you must learn that guilt is ALWAYS totally insane, and HAS no reason. The Holy Spirit seeks not to dispel REALITY. If GUILT were real, ATONEMENT would not be. The purpose of Atonement is to dispel illusions, NOT to establish them as real, and THEN forgive them. The Holy Spirit does not KEEP illusions in your mind to frighten you, and show them to you fearfully, to demonstrate what He has saved you FROM.
WHAT HE HAS SAVED YOU FROM IS GONE. Give NO reality to guilt, and see NO reason for it. The Holy Spirit does what God would have Him do, and has ALWAYS done so. He has SEEN separation, but KNOWS of union. He TEACHES healing, but He also KNOWS of creation. He would have you see and teach as He does, and through Him. But what He knows, you do NOT know, though it is yours. NOW it is given you to heal and teach, to make what WILL BE, now. As yet it is NOT now. The Son of God believes that he is lost in guilt, alone in a dark world, where pain is pressing everywhere upon him, FROM WITHOUT. When he has looked within, and seen the radiance there, he will remember how much his Father loves him. And it will seem incredible that he had ever thought his Father loved him not, and looked upon him as condemned.
The moment that you realize GUILT IS INSANE, WHOLLY unjustified, and WHOLLY without reason, you will NOT fear to look upon Atonement, and ACCEPT IT WHOLLY. You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love. And, looking without mercy upon your brothers, you do not remember how much YOU love HIM. Yet it is forever true. In shining peace within you, is the perfect purity in which you were created. Fear not to look upon the lovely truth in you. Look THROUGH the cloud of guilt that dims your vision, and look PAST darkness, to the holy place where you will see the light.
The altar to your Father is as pure as He Who raised it to Himself. Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released. There is no other way to look within, and see the light of love shining as steadily, and as surely, as God Himself has always loved His Son. AND AS HIS SON LOVES HIM. There is no fear in love, for love is guiltless. You who have ALWAYS loved your Father can have no fear, for ANY reason, to look within, and see your holiness.
You CANNOT be as you believed you WERE. Your guilt is without reason, because it is not in the Mind of God, where YOU are. And this IS reason, which the Holy Spirit would RESTORE to you. He would remove ONLY illusions. All else He would have you see. And in Christ's vision He would show you the perfect purity that is forever within God's Son. You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal.
You can love ONLY as God loves. Seek not to love UNLIKE Him, for there IS no love apart from His. Until you recognize that this is true, you will have no idea WHAT LOVE IS LIKE. No-one who condemns a brother, can see HIMSELF as guiltless in the peace of God. If he IS guiltless and in peace, AND SEES IT NOT, he IS delusional, and has NOT looked upon himself. To him I say, "Behold the Son of God, and look upon his purity, and be still. In quiet, look upon his holiness, and offer thanks unto his Father, that no guilt has ever touched him."
No illusion that you have ever held against him, has touched his innocence in any way. His shining purity, wholly untouched by guilt, and wholly loving, is bright within you. Let us look upon him together, and love him. For in our love of him IS your guiltlessness. But look upon yourself, and gladness and appreciation for what you will see, will banish guilt forever. I thank You, Father, for the purity of Your most holy Son, whom Thou hast created guiltless forever.
Like you, my faith and my belief are centered on what I treasure. The difference is that I love ONLY what God loves WITH me, and, because of this, I treasure you beyond the value that you set on yourselves, even unto the worth that God has placed upon you. I love all that He created. And all my faith and my belief I offer unto it. My faith in you is strong as all the love I give my Father. My trust in you is without limit, and without the fear that you will hear me not. I thank the Father for your loveliness, and for the many gifts that you will let me offer to the Kingdom, in honor of its wholeness that is of God.
Praise be unto you, who make the Father One with His Own Son. Alone we are all lowly, but together, we shine with brightness so intense, that none of us alone can even think on it. Before the glorious radiance of the Kingdom, guilt melts away, and, transformed into kindness, will never more be what it was. Every reaction that you experience will be so purified, that it is fitting as a hymn of praise unto your Father. See only praise of Him in what He has created, for He will never cease His praise of YOU. United in this praise, we stand before the gates of Heaven, where we will surely enter, in our blamelessness. God loves you. Could I, then, lack faith in you, and love Him perfectly?
Forgetfulness and sleep, and even death, become the ego's best advice for how to deal with the perceived and harsh intrusion of guilt on peace. Yet no-one sees himself in conflict, and ravaged by a cruel war, unless he believes that BOTH "opponents" in the war are real. Believing this, he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy him. But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom. No-one finds himself ravaged and torn in endless battles, which he HIMSELF perceives as wholly without meaning.
God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy," which he made, is TOTALLY unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you HAVE escaped. The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came.
The concept of "set" is among the better psychological percepts. Actually, it is used quite frequently in the Bible, and also here, under many different terms. "God will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed (or set) on Thee because he trusteth in Thee."
The pronouns here are confusing without explanation, and the attempt to shift "Thee" to "Him" is a misinterpretation. The statement means that God's peace is set in the Holy Spirit, because it is fixed on God. It is also fixed in you. You, then, ARE fixed in the peace of God.
The concept of "fixation" is a very helpful one, which Freud understood perfectly. Unfortunately, he lost his understanding because he was afraid, and as you know all too well, fear is incompatible with good judgment. Fear DISTORTS thinking, and therefore DISorders thought. Freud's system of thought was extremely ingenious, because Freud was extremely ingenious. A mind MUST endow its thoughts with its own attributes. This is its inherent STRENGTH, even though it may misuse its power.
Freud lost much of the potential value of his own thought system because, much like Cayce, he did NOT include himself in it. This IS a dissociated state, because the thinker cuts himself off from his thoughts. Freud's thought was so conflicted that he could not have retained his sanity as HE saw it WITHOUT dissociating. This is why the many contradictions which are quite apparent in his thinking became increasingly less apparent to HIM.
A man who knows what fixation REALLY means and does NOT yield to it is terribly afraid. Fixation is the pull of God, on whom your mind IS fixed because of the Holy Spirit's irrevocable set. "Irrevocable" means "cannot be called back or redirected." The irrevocable nature of the Holy Spirit's set is the basis for its unequivocal voice. The Holy Spirit NEVER changes its mind. Clarity of thought CANNOT occur under conditions of vacillation. Unless a mind is fixed in its purpose, it is NOT clear. But clarity literally means the state of light, and enlightenment IS understanding. It stands UNDER perception because you have denied it as the REAL foundation of thought. This is the basis for ALL delusional systems.
The concept of fixation, as Freud saw it, has a number of real learning advantages. First, it recognizes that man CAN be fixated at a point in development which does NOT accord with a point in time. This clearly could have been a means toward real release from the time belief, had Freud pursued it with an open mind. But Freud suffered all his life from refusal to allow eternity to dawn upon his mind, and enlighten it truly. As a result, he overlooked NOW entirely, and merely saw the continuity of past and future.
Second, although he misinterpreted what the Holy Spirit told him, or better, reminded him of, he was too honest to deny more than he had to, to keep his fear in tolerable bounds, as he perceived the situation. Therefore, he EMPHASIZED that the point in development at which the mind is fixated is more real to ITSELF than the external reality with which it DISagrees. This again could have been a powerful RELEASE mechanism, had Freud not decided to involve it in a strong defense system because he perceived it as an attack.
Third, although Freud interpreted fixation as irrevocable danger points to which the mind can always regress, the concept can also be interpreted as an irrevocable call to sanity which the mind cannot LOSE. Freud saw return as a threat to maturity because he did not understand prodigality. He merely interpreted it as squandering. Actually, "prodigal" also means careful. This confusion between careful and careless led him to confuse the escape from care with something desirable. In fact, he even went so far as to equate it quite literally WITH desire.
But throughout his thought-system, the "threat" of fixation remained, and could never be completely eliminated by any living human being anywhere. Essentially, this was the basis of his pessimism. This was personally as well as theoretically the case. Freud tried every means his very inventive mind could devise to set up a form of therapy which could enable the mind to escape from fixation forever, even though he KNEW this was impossible. The knowledge plagued his belief in his own thought-system at every turn, because he was both an honest man and a healer. He was therefore only PARTIALLY insane at the perceptual level, and was unable to relinquish the hope of release even though he could not cope with it.
The reason for this amount of detail is because YOU are in the same position. You were eternally fixated on God in your creation, and the pull of this fixation is so strong that you will never overcome it. The reason is perfectly clear. The fixation is on a level that is so high that it cannot BE surmounted. You are ALWAYS being pulled back to your Creator because you belong in Him.
Do you REALLY believe you can make a voice that can drown out His? Do you REALLY believe that you can devise a thought-system which can separate you from His? Do you REALLY believe that you can plan for your safety and joy better than He can? You need be neither careful nor careless. You need merely cast all your cares upon Him because He careth for YOU. You ARE His care because He loves you. His voice reminds you always that all hope is yours BECAUSE of His care.
You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it. There have been many healers who did not heal themselves. They have not moved mountains by their faith because their faith was not WHOLE. Some of them have healed the sick at times, but they have not raised the dead. Unless the healer heals HIMSELF, he does NOT believe that there is no order in miracles. He has not learned that EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE.
You are asked merely to return to God the mind as HE created it. He asks you only for what He gave, knowing that this giving will heal YOU. Sanity IS wholeness. And the sanity of your brothers IS yours. Why should you listen to the endless insane calls which you think are made upon you, when you KNOW the voice of God Himself is in you? God commended His Spirit to you, and asks that you commend yours to Him. He wills to keep it in perfect peace because you are of one mind and Spirit with Him.
Excluding yourself from the Atonement is the ego's last-ditch defense of its own existence. It reflects both the ego's need to separate, and your willingness to side with its separateness. This willingness means that YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE HEALED. When I told Bill that there is "just one more thing," he heard me very well. I hope he will hear me as well now. His intelligent mis-hearing of "river" as "rivet" showed that, even though he wanted release, he was not able to cope with it at the time.
But the time IS now. You have not been asked to work out the Plan of Salvation yourselves, because, as I told you before, the Remedy is NOT of your making. God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will. I have made His Plan perfectly clear and perfectly explicit to you, and have also told you of your part in His Plan and how urgent it is that you fulfill it.
There is time for delay, but there need not be. God weeps at the sacrifice of His children who believe they are lost to Him. The "one more thing" that Bill must learn is merely that he is NOT the one more. He is both ONE and AT ONE. If he will learn this NOW, he will be willing in accord with the last judgment, which is really only the Biblical reminder of the inevitability of self-INCLUSION. This is what "Physician, heal thyself" really means. Bill has frequently observed for HIMSELF that this is hard to do. He has, however, been perfectly aware of JUST what YOU should do about it.
You might ask him for me whether he does not think he might be dissociating HIMSELF from his own awareness, since he is so clear about the remedy for YOU. You might also remind him that to whatever extent he separates himself from you, he is separating himself from ME. This IS a collaborative venture. Let me therefore return his own ideas to him, so that you can share them and thus help each other to help me.
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:
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.
In ACIM we're told about "the real world" and many people have different ideas about what that's referring to. Here's my take on it. It took me quite a long time to realize this.
Contrary to popular belief, the real world is actually another name for Heaven. God's creation. Reality. This is why Jesus correctly uses the word "Real" in relation to it. It is the Heaven that God created, which also is another name for the Sonship. It is described for example in this quote:
"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever."
The shining forever only takes place in Heaven. It's not a temporary shining or an intermediary place. There is no Earth there, no bodies, no walls, and no sun to cause "night and day." No buildings, no streets, nothing physical. It's talking about Heaven.
Now, in some OTHER statements Jesus makes, he is speaking in a context of having perception still. And when He is speaking within this context, He refers to "the real world". But is now referring to the real world, Heaven, from a perceptual standpoint. So now what he's calling the real world, is the PERCEPTION OF the real world. It's a symbol, within a dream. An interpretation or judgement, a partial glimpse or reflection of Heaven within the separated state. He refers to that "image" of the real world AS the real world, because you are PERCEIVING the real world - heaven - but this is not the same thing as being IN Heaven.
"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made."
"The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."
Jesus says for example that you can PERCEIVE the real world, which means that you can be still OUTSIDE of the Kingdom, looking in from a separated state - because "perception is a separated state". It's like window shopping.
"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself."
"The forgiven world", is actually a reference to Earth/this universe which is seen through, past, and beyond, as a thin veil which covers the face of Christ. The "face of Christ" is another synonym for the PERCEPTION OF the real world of heaven - sort of an outside exterior look at the surface of Heaven from a separated state. The forgiven world is Earth, the real world is Heaven. And "the real world" (perceived) is what you see BEYOND "the forgiven world" (earth) when you overlook it with forgiveness but are still having perception. And "those who perceive still need healing" and "perception of the truth (perception of the real world) is not the same as knowing it (being IN IT, one with it)".
"All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world (perception of heaven), reaching quietly and gently across chaos (earth/hell/forgiven world), and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf (part of the forgiven world, NOT the real world) becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection (signs are symbolic, not the ACTUAL thing - the perfection seen is the real world BEYOND the forgiven world of the leaf). From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."
Similarly "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" really means that you look at/through/beyond the forgiven world of Earth, it becomes transparent, and you see BEYOND IT, to the real world, and it is the real world that is GOD... that you SEE BEYOND the physical, beyond forms, and seems to be "in" what you physically see, because you're seeing both the physical AND the real world at the same time. This does not in any way make the forgiven world REAL, NOR does it associate it with God. God is IN what you see because he is BEYOND the forgiven world that forgiveness is OVERLOOKING and seeing PAST, TO reality. And when you forgive the world and see God "in" it, the world disappears and reveals there is ONLY GOD, no world.
"Every illusion brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears."
"A forgiven world cannot last."
Once the face of christ is seen, ie real world is perceived, the forgiven world - the veil - actually disappears from sight completely, because "it is impossible to see two worlds."
"This world you see (earth/forgiven world) MUST BE DENIED (not put on a pedestal!!!), for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS (there ARE TWO WORLDS, heaven and earth, and Heaven is HERE, Earth IS NOT HERE). For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - its like a seesaw, you can be up or down but not both. As true perception dawns, false perception ends. As heaven is recognized, earth is forgotten.
"For what appears to hide the Face of Christ (earth/forgiven world) is powerless before His Majesty, and **disappears** before His holy sight." (thus earth can't be holy)
"Before this light the body disappears, as heavy shadows MUST give way to light." (body is made of darkness - "the body is a dream" "the body is the IDEA OF SIN made flesh and projected outwards.")
Here for me is the key distinction between these "four" different worlds/terminologies:
Unforgiven world" Earth/this world, not overlooked, it is an illusion, and IF YOU BELIEVE IT IS REAL, you are delusional and insane and are blinded by perception of form. You are not seeing PAST form so are no forgiving. This makes the world seem like a real place, a real nightmare of hell. Where "things happen", people suffer, and there is real death. THIS is "the world you made." It has nothing to do with God, and the Holy Spirit DOES NOT see it because His forgiveness COMPLETELY overlooks it and fixates on the real world.
Forgiven world: Earth/this world, overlooked with forgiveness, seen through, recognized WITH truth of true perception as BEING FALSE, becomes transparent and disappears when the face of christ/real world is seen. True perception overlooks it. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Teachers of God (not advanced) still see it overlaid on top of the perception of the real world as a thin veil and so can operate "in" the forgiven world/earth from a state of "mostly awake" or "Awareness of dreaming is the function of God's teachers". This awareness is NOT awakening. It is "conscious sleep", because dreams are still being DREAMED.
Real world (as perception of heaven from outside): Also is the same thing as the face of christ, and "the real world still is but a dream". This perception OF the real world isn't reality, it's a reflection of Heaven within the dreaming state. It seems heaven-like and "holy" but it is still an illusion. Perceiving this FULLYy you NO LONGER SEE planet Earth and cannot remain in this state longer than an instant before God scoopes you up and you return to awareness of BEING IN Heaven.
Real world (as Heaven itself): Being IN heaven, with no perception, no forgiven world, no bodies, no buildings etc. This is the living world of light. God's creation. The sonship. Reality. The REAL world that is not earth in any way.
"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike (no perception IN the real world of heaven). Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done (includes atonement). And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God (all physical forms/worlds). God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant (perception of real world has made it impossible to see physical worlds), and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause (forgiven world disappears in this perception of light). For where God's memory has come at last (in heaven) there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies (no f'ing bodies in heaven!), and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
Here for example is a reference to how Heaven, the REAL real world, can reach into THIS world - the forgiven world.
"This aching world (Earth/physical/unforgiven world/hell/even as the forgiven world) has not the power to touch the living world (real world of Heaven) at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world (Heaven IS ANOTHER WORLD - the REAL world). But the REAL world (heaven) HAS the power to touch you even here (outside the Kingdom, in this illusory world), BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT (heaven). And what you call with love WILL come to you (from Heaven). Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made (earth/unforgiven world), and do not want (earth holds nothing that I want). The only effort you need make, to give this world (earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (God created Heaven not earth), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE. (Earth, un/forgiven world, is FALSE!)."
"The world you made (earth etc) is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself (heaven)."
God created the real world of heaven: "The real world (heaven, perceived) is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade (earth will disappear). But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son ("And God so loved the world (heaven) that he gave it TO His only begotten Son - God doesn't give planets."). Your ONE reality (heaven) was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him. (in heaven)"
Now, the Holy Spirit is a simultaneous MAKER (not creator) of the world you made. You made hell, but he repurposes it to direct you towards Heaven, and to change your perception of/making of it so that you stop interpreting it as hell and reinterpret it as a REFLECTION of Heaven, once removed from Heaven. HE, therefore, made "the real world" as in, the PERCEPTION OF the world GOD CREATED, Heaven, from inside the dream. And this real world is the face of christ. It is NOT EARTH. He ignores, overlooks, cancels, everything of the forgiven world and points beyond it.
"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it (heaven), but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made (you made earth in error/sin), BECAUSE it has another Maker Who CAN reconcile its **goal** with His Creator's purpose.
In His perception of the world (forgiven world, totally overlooked), nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness (and "to see a sinless body is impossible" because perception does NOT SEE bodies). Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."
You can only perceive bodies if you believe in sin. You can only see bodies if you are Unforgiving. You can only see bodies/the forgiven world if you are NOT fully forgiving! Because a forgiven world cannot last and sinlessness is not OF the forgiven world, it's of the real world. Holy Spirit totally overlooks Earth and bodies and the forgiven world and fixates on the real world, temporarily through perception OF the real world and simultaneously IN the real world (heaven).
The Holy Spirit offers a happy dream to replace the nightmare dream that you made. It does not replace the world you made, it reinterprets it, OVERLOOKS it, and looks toward Heaven. The world you made as opposite to Heaven is hell, this planet, this universe. Spacetime. It is opposite to Heaven in every way. Holy Spirit allows you to forgive it and overlook it and forget it. This does not mean looking AT IT and LOVING IT. IT means learning TO SEE, by NOT SEEING THE WORLD - not allowing "perception of form" to BLOCK YOUR SIGHT. To look away from dark dreams of hell towards the light and eventually beyond it entirely. The real world is BEYOND the forgiven world. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision.
"You will first DREAM of peace (forgiven world/perception of real world), and THEN awaken to it (in Heaven/THE real world). Your first exchange of what you made for what you want, is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love (false perception vs true perception). In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams (earth + symbol of real world) where ALL perception is."
"And the real world is but your welcome of what always was (perception of heaven gets you ready to wake up TO heaven). Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening (being IN heaven) to what you have NOT lost. "
"The world you made" and "The world you see" are this planet and the surrounding environment. All of spacetime. You are not supposed to hold it dear or value it or want to keep it. *****SIGHT OF IT, IS COSTING YOU*****. "This world you see (earth, with body's eyes) MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. ****YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS****. (very key mechanic, one or the other not both) For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER." - you cannot see earth if you see heaven, period. You cannot see even the perception of the real world/face of christ and still see physical objects.
"You do not really want **the world you see** (earth + space), for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built (yes physical houses) have never sheltered you. The roads you made (yes physical roads) have led you nowhere, and no city that you built (yes like chicago, new york, london) has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of ***death*** upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it." (get rid of that shit!)
"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."
True perception, perception of the real world (heaven), the face of christ, the happy dream, are all the same. Perception is always within the dream, OF the dream, or as an interpretation of heaven. It can reflect heaven or rather you can shine heaven's light into the dream from heaven and illuminate it and shine it away or overlook it, and see YOUR reflection of your IMAGE of your real self there. Once removed from reality.
"Knowledge is power BECAUSE it is certain, and certainty is strength. Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love. Misperception produces fear, and true perception produces love. NEITHER produces certainty because all perception varies. That is why it is NOT knowledge. True perception is the BASIS for knowledge, but KNOWING is the affirmation of truth."
Knowing occurs only IN heaven, not through perception.
Notice also there is a huge difference between the REFLECTION of heaven, and ACTUALLY BEING IN heaven.
"Those who have learned to offer ONLY healing, because of the reflection of holiness in them (YOU are the reflection), are ready at last for Heaven. There, ***holiness is not a reflection***, but rather the ***ACTUAL CONDITION*** of what was but reflected TO them here (on earth, BUT IN YOU, Earth does not become holy). God is no **image** (reflection are IMAGES in a dream), and His creations, as part of Him, hold Him in them in truth. They do not merely REFLECT the truth, for THEY ARE truth (ACTUAL holiness). When **no perception** stands between God and His Creation, or between His Children and their own (perception is gone), the knowledge of creation MUST continue forever. The **reflections** that you accept into the mirror of your minds in time (within the dream of spacetime), but bring eternity nearer or farther.
But eternity ITSELF is beyond ALL time (beyond spacetime!) Reach out of time and touch it, with the help of its ***reflection IN you***, and you will turn FROM time to holiness, as surely as the reflection of holiness calls everyone to lay all guilt aside. Reflect the peace of Heaven HERE, and bring this world to Heaven. For the REFLECTION of truth draws everyone TO truth. And as they enter INTO it, they leave ALL reflections behind. In Heaven, reality is SHARED, and not reflected. By sharing its reflection HERE, its truth becomes the only perception which the Son of God accepts. And thus, remembrance of His Father dawns on him, and he can no longer be satisfied with anything but his own reality."
PERCEIVING the real world (heaven) is seeing the "face" or "surface of" Christ from the outside. Outside the kingdom essentially. "The world", aka Earth etc, is a block - a literal physical blockage - a wall of sin - the veil - standing before and in the way of sight of heaven. Jesus refers to it as "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes are totally blinded by and cannot see past. PHYSICAL sin.
"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world (earth) forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."
So as stated in you cannot see two worlds, once you FULLY perceive with true perception, you become INCAPABLE of seeing the world of bodies. The veil - which houses all the bodies and planets - DISAPPEARS, and now you PERCEIVE Heaven only. This is perception of the real world. What many people think "is the real world". But this reference, this perceived IMAGE of a real world, is a dream. ie "The real world still is but a dream"
The world of bodies, planets, animals, forests, civilizations, galaxies, is a dream world. It becomes the forgiven world. HELL, becomes forgiven. And this "forgiven world" WAS made of the idea of sin and separation and death. And by forgiving it, you are OVERLOOKING it, which causes it to DISAPPEAR. If you forgive hell, it will disappear. If you overlook sin, things MADE OF SIN, will disappear. If you overlook the separation, THE GAP, which contains spacetime, will disappear. And leave no trace in its going.
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin (earth is made of sin), for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world (spacetime world) in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. (spacetime ends) Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible (bodies cannot exist in heaven, they rely on spacetime). Forgiveness proves it is impossible (no exceptions) because it sees it not (forgiveness, complete as the atonement, DOES NOT SEE THE WORLD OF BODIES). And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty. This is the shift that true perception brings"
Once the world is forgiven by all beings/souls, the forgiven world will entirely vanish. It is made of darkness. It is the ABSENCE of light. It is the idea of death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." It is opposition to reality. It is denial. It is made of the attempt to claim that light does not exist and darkness exists. When the light comes, light shines away darkness because darkness is not a real "thing". It's merely the illusion of the absence of light/love/God, and being an illusion it vanishes when it is recognized as such. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot stay without illusions."
"They live in secrecy, hating the sunlight, and happy in the body's darkness, where they can hide, and keep their secrets hidden, along with them."
"And the seeming reality of the darkness makes the idea of light meaningless."
"No darkness abides ANYWHERE in the Kingdom, so your part is only to allow no darkness to abide in your OWN mind." (yes, your OWN mind, as an individual mind, one of many)
"Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it does shine it away."
"The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes." (body's eyes cannot see reality ever, and it also cannot perceive the real world!)
"The body is darkness."
The universe, as we know it, the physical, with Earth and other stuff, will disappear in the light. Earth does not translate INTO light, because it an ILLUSION of light's absence. It does not BECOME heaven. Earth is the ILLUSION, that there is an absence of heaven. It's a lack of light, which is impossible. "It is the world you see that is impossible." It's NOT THERE NOW. It's just an illusion, not a real thing. IT doesn't have an "it". When there seems to be darkness it is only because there seems to be a lack of light. There is a huge difference between light's seeming absence, and ACTUAL real darkness. Real darkness does not exist. The world, does not exist. It will simply vanish as an hallucination. There is no world. There is no body. There is no earth in heaven.
"Eternity will shine away the world."
"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
THERE WILL NOT BE A SINGLE SHRED OF EARTH KEPT WHEN IT IS SHONE AWAY BY THE LIGHT, just as all darkness VANISHES COMPLETELY when you switch the light on. "Illusions leave NO TRACE in their going."
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it (because to SEE it you will NO LONGER see earth). For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."
And yes it does say literally, the SUN.... will vanish.
And then... there's being IN heaven.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (earth) and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself (earth does this) is not of Him. He did **not** make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."
Yes the physical planet earth, hell, is opposite to Heaven in EVERY WAY. And God would've have to have been SPLIT MINDED In order to make it because he DID create Heaven and heaven is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Earth's nature and laws. "The laws of this world go against your nature." So he could not have created Earth AS WELL as Heaven. And earth IS NOT Heaven, it's a "sorry outcome".
"He thinks he made a hell opposing Heaven, and believes that he abides in what does not exist, while Heaven is the place he cannot find. " (you think you abide in, live, in reality, on planet earth. It is not reality, it is hell)
You can go beyond this world to the world of light, Heaven, which God created as your true home. Your REAL HOME. The REAL world.
"Put out your hand and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams. (talking about PERCEPTION of the real world/forgiven world).
You cannot fail today. There walks with you the Spirit Heaven sent you that you might approach this door some day, and through His aid slip effortlessly past it to the light. Today that day has come. Today God keeps His ancient promise to His holy Son, as does His Son remember his to Him. This is a day of gladness, for we come to the appointed time and place where you will find the goal of all your searching here and all the seeking of the world, which ends together as you pass beyond the door." (into heaven).
"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy (perception OF the real world from outside). It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth. (forgiven world has disappeared). The bridge between that world (perception of the real world) and this (Jesus talking from INSIDE OF HEAVEN - the REAL world) is SO little, and SO easy to cross, that you could not believe it is the meeting-place of worlds so different (yes, two entirely different worlds, earth and heaven). Yet this little bridge is the strongest thing that touches on this world (earth/forgiven world/perception OF real world) at all (from beyond it). This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time (spacetime) into eternity (heaven), and beyond all ugliness (YES EVERYTHING IN SPACETIME IS UGLY - the forgiven world is ugly), into beauty that will enchant you (the beauty of HEAVEN ITSELF), and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."
No-one can escape from illusions unless he looks at them, for not looking is the way they are PROTECTED. There is no need to shrink from illusions, for they cannot be dangerous. We are ready to look more closely at the ego's thought system, because together we have the lamp that will dispel it, and since you realize you do not WANT it, you MUST be ready. Let us be very calm in doing this, for we are merely looking honestly for truth. The "dynamics" of the ego will be our lesson for a while, for we must look first at this to look beyond it, since you HAVE made it real. We will UNDO this error quietly together, and then look beyond it to truth.
What is healing, but the removal of all that STANDS IN THE WAY of knowledge? And how else can one dispel illusions EXCEPT by looking at them directly, WITHOUT protecting them? Be not afraid, therefore, for what you will be looking at IS the source of fear, but you have learned surely by now, that FEAR IS NOT REAL. We have accepted the fact already that its EFFECTS can be dispelled, merely by denying THEIR reality. The next step is obviously to recognize that WHAT HAS NO EFFECTS DOES NOT EXIST.
Laws do not operate in a vacuum, and what leads to nothing HAS NOT HAPPENED. If reality is recognized BY ITS EXTENSION, what extends to nothing CANNOT be real. Do not be afraid, then, to look upon fear, for it cannot BE seen. Clarity undoes confusion by definition, and to look upon darkness through light MUST dispel it. Let us begin this lesson in "ego dynamics", by understanding that the term itself does not mean anything. In fact, it contains exactly the contradiction in terms that MAKES it meaningless. "Dynamics" implies the power to DO something, and the whole separation fallacy lies in the belief that the ego HAS the power to do ANYTHING.
The ego is fearful BECAUSE you believe this. But the truth is very simple; ALL POWER IS OF GOD. What is NOT of Him has no power to do ANYTHING. When we look at the ego, then, we are NOT considering dynamics, but delusions. We can surely regard a delusional system without fear, for it cannot have any effects if its source is not true. Fear becomes more obviously inappropriate if one recognizes the ego's GOAL, which is so clearly senseless that any effort exerted on its behalf is NECESSARILY expended on nothing.
The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation. Every idea has a purpose, and its purpose is always the natural extension of what it IS. Everything that stems from the ego is the natural outcome of its central belief, and the way to undo its RESULTS, is merely to recognize that their SOURCE is NOT natural, being out of accord with your TRUE nature.
We once said that to will contrary to God is wishful thinking, and not real willing. His Will is One, because the extension of His Will CANNOT be unlike ITSELF. The real conflict you experience, then, is between the ego's idle wishes and the Will of God, WHICH YOU SHARE. Can this BE a real conflict? Yours is the independence of Creation, NOT of autonomy. Your whole creative function lies in your complete dependence on God, Whose function He shares WITH you. By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM. Do not ascribe the ego's arrogance to Him, Who wills NOT to be independent of YOU. He has included YOU in HIS Autonomy. Can YOU believe that autonomy is meaningful APART from Him?
The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES. The ego sees ALL dependency as threatening, and has twisted even your longing for God into a means of establishing ITSELF. But do not be deceived by ITS interpretation of your conflict. The ego ALWAYS attacks on behalf of separation. Believing it HAS the power to do this, it does nothing else, because its goal of autonomy IS nothing else. The ego is totally confused about reality, BUT IT DOES NOT LOSE SIGHT OF ITS GOAL. It is much more vigilant than YOU are, BECAUSE it is perfectly certain of its purpose. YOU are confused, because you do NOT know YOURS.
What you must learn to recognize is that the LAST thing the ego wishes you to realize, is THAT YOU ARE AFRAID OF IT. For if the ego gives rise to fear, it is DIMINISHING your independence, and WEAKENING your power. Yet its one claim to your allegiance is that it can GIVE power to you. Without THIS belief, you would not listen to it at all. How, then, can its existence continue, if you realize that by accepting it, you ARE belittling yourself, and DEPRIVING yourself of power?
The ego can and does allow you to regard yourself as supercilious, unbelieving, "light hearted -," distant, emotionally shallow, callous, uninvolved, and even desperate, BUT NOT REALLY AFRAID. MINIMIZING fear, but NOT its undoing, is the ego's constant effort, and is indeed the skill at which it is VERY ingenious. How can it preach separation WITHOUT upholding it through fear, and would you listen to it, if you recognized this IS what it is doing?
YOUR recognition that whatever seems to separate you from God is ONLY fear, regardless of the form it takes, and quite apart from HOW THE EGO WANTS YOU TO EXPERIENCE IT, is therefore the basic ego threat. Its dream of autonomy is shaken to its foundation by this awareness. For though you may countenance a false idea of independence, you will NOT accept the cost of fear, IF YOU RECOGNIZE IT. Yet this IS the cost, and the ego CANNOT minimize it. For if you overlook love, you are overlooking YOURSELF, and you MUST fear UNreality BECAUSE YOU HAVE DENIED YOURSELF. By believing that you have successfully attacked truth, YOU ARE BELIEVING THAT ATTACK HAS POWER. Very simply, then, YOU HAVE BECOME AFRAID OF YOURSELF. And no one wills to learn what he believes would DESTROY him.
If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible. Only by learning what fear IS, can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible, and the false from the true. According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT. According to the Holy Spirit's teaching, ONLY God's Purpose IS accomplishment, and it is ALREADY accomplished.
God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it. You can only ESTABLISH your autonomy by identifying WITH Him, and FULFILLING YOUR FUNCTION AS IT EXISTS IN TRUTH. The ego believes that to accomplish ITS goal IS happiness. But it is given YOU to know that GOD's function IS yours, and happiness CANNOT be found apart from your joint will. Recognize only that the ego's goal, which you have pursued quite diligently, has merely brought you FEAR, and it becomes difficult to maintain that FEAR is happiness.
UPHELD by fear, this IS what the ego would have you believe. Yet God's Son is not insane, and CANNOT believe it. Let him but RECOGNIZE it, and he will NOT accept it. For only the insane would choose fear IN PLACE of love, and only the insane could believe that love can be gained by ATTACK. But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them.
The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit ACCEPTS. The appreciation of wholeness comes ONLY through acceptance, for to analyze MEANS to separate out. The attempt to understand totality by BREAKING IT UP is clearly the characteristically contradictory approach of the ego to everything. Never forget that the ego believes that power, understanding AND TRUTH lie in separation. And to ESTABLISH this belief it MUST attack. Unaware that the belief cannot BE established, and obsessed with the conviction that separation IS salvation, the ego attacks everything it perceives, by breaking it up into small and disconnected parts, without meaningful relationships, and thus without meaning. The ego will ALWAYS substitute chaos for meaning, for if separation is salvation, harmony is threat.
The ego's interpretations of the laws of perception are, and would HAVE to be, the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's. The ego FOCUSES ON ERROR, and OVERLOOKS TRUTH. It makes real every mistake it perceives, and with characteristically circular reasoning, concludes that, BECAUSE of the mistake, consistent truth must be meaningless. The next step, then, is obvious. If consistent truth is meaningless, INCONSISTENCY must be true if truth has meaning. Holding error clearly in mind, and protecting what it has made real, the ego proceeds to the next step in its thought system; that error is real, and TRUTH IS ERROR.
The ego makes no attempt to UNDERSTAND this, and it is clearly not understandable. But the ego does make EVERY attempt to DEMONSTRATE it, and THIS it does constantly. Analyzing to ATTACK meaning, the ego DOES succeed in overlooking it, and is left with a series of fragmented perceptions WHICH IT UNIFIES ON BEHALF OF ITSELF. This, then, becomes the universe it perceives and it is this universe which, in turn, becomes its demonstration of its own reality.
Do not underestimate the appeal of the ego's demonstrations to those who would listen. Selective perception chooses its witnesses carefully, and its witnesses ARE consistent. The case for insanity IS strong to the insane. For reasoning ends at its beginning, and no thought system transcends its source. Yet reasoning without meaning CANNOT demonstrate anything, and those who are convinced by it, MUST be deluded. Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son.
Would YOU remember the Father? Accept His Son and you WILL remember Him. Nothing can demonstrate that His Son is unworthy, for nothing can prove that a lie is true. What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is, the Father MUST be. Accept what God does NOT deny, and HE will demonstrate its truth. The witnesses for God stand in His Light and behold what HE created. Their silence is the sign that they have beheld God's Son, and in the Presence of Christ, THEY need demonstrate nothing, for Christ speaks to them of Himself and of His Father. They are silent because Christ speaks to them, and it is His words that THEY speak.
Every brother you meet becomes a witness for Christ or for the ego, depending on what you perceive in him. Everyone convinces you of WHAT YOU WANT TO PERCEIVE, and of the reality of the Kingdom you have chosen for your vigilance. Everything you perceive is a witness to the thought-system YOU WANT TO BE TRUE. Every brother has the power to release you, IF YOU WILL TO BE FREE. You cannot accept false witness of him, unless you have evoked false witnesses AGAINST him. If HE speaks not of Christ to YOU, YOU spoke not of Christ to him. You hear but your own voice, and if Christ speaks through you, YOU will hear Him.
If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience ONLY this you MUST be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace, it can only be because you do not believe you are IN HIM. Yet He is all in all. His peace IS complete, and you MUST be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern EVERYTHING. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you CAN disobey them. But if you do, and ONLY if you do, you WILL feel lonely and helpless, because you ARE denying yourself everything.
I am come as a light into the world which DOES deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself FROM everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, MAINTAINED by fear of the same loneliness which IS its illusion. I have told you that I am with you always even to the end of the world. That is WHY I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are NOT alone.
My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, YOU shine it away WITH ME. The light becomes OURS, and you CANNOT abide in darkness, any more than darkness can abide anywhere you go. The remembrance of me IS the remembrance of yourself and of Him Who sent me to you.
You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world.
The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me ARE the reactions of the world to God. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are DENYING the world and ACCEPTING GOD. My will IS His, and YOUR will to hear me IS the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As He sent me to you, so will I send you to others. But I will go to them WITH you, so we can teach them union and peace.
Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will NOT receive it. If you will to have it of me, you MUST give it. Rehabilitation does not come from anyone ELSE. You can have GUIDANCE from without, but you must ACCEPT it from within. The guidance must become what YOU want, or else it will be meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to DO, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I KNOW what to do. Only then will your MIND will to follow me.
Without YOUR will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are deciding AGAINST healing, and your veto of my will FOR you MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless our wills ARE joined you CANNOT be healed. This is obvious when you consider what healing is FOR.
Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by UNION. It CANNOT be overcome by separating. The WILL to unite must be unequivocal, or the will ITSELF is separated or NOT WHOLE. Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot OVERCOME yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal.
All things BECOME possible through our joint will. But my will alone will not help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His.
If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true.
When your will is NOT mine, it is not Our Father's. This means that you have imprisoned YOURS, and have not LET it be free. Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF. I will ALWAYS remember you, and in MY remembrance OF you lies your remembrance of YOURSELF. In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him.
Join then with me in praise of Him AND you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is.
Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One.
The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One. If you exclude YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You MUST be included in It, because It IS everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function AS part of It, It is as bereft as YOU are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its Truth is to be known.
Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. The delusional believe that truth will ASSAIL them, and so they DO NOT SEE IT because they prefer the delusion. Judging truth as something they do NOT want, they perceive deception and block knowledge. Help them by offering them YOUR unified will on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on YOURS. Alone we can do nothing, but TOGETHER our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.
By NOT BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established IN ours and AS ours. This will is invincible BECAUSE it is undivided. The UNDIVIDED will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it IS. YOU cannot be exempt from it, if you are to understand what it is and what YOU are. By separating your will from mine, you ARE exempting yourself from the Will of God which IS yourself.
But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to UNITE with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness IS to recognize the Father. If YOUR perfection is in Him and ONLY in Him, how can you KNOW it WITHOUT recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There IS no separation of God and His Creation. You will learn this as you learn that there is no separation of YOUR will and mine.
Let the love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. MY reality is yours and His. By joining YOUR will with mine, you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is One. His Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness ENCOMPASSES ours. To join WITH me is to restore His power TO you BECAUSE we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies ALL truth. As WE unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His Holy Sons, because all glory lies IN them because they ARE united.
The miracles WE do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting WITH His Will FOR us. When you unite with me, you are uniting WITHOUT the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore CANNOT unite with yours. OUR union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in YOURSELVES. The truth in both of us is BEYOND the ego. By willing that, you HAVE gone beyond it toward truth.
Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share my perfect confidence IN His Promise because I know He gave me this confidence for both of us and ALL of us. I bring His Peace back to all His Children, because I received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's. Would ye know the Will of God for YOU? Ask it of me, who knows it for you, and you will find it. I will deny YOU nothing, as God denies ME nothing.
Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is ALWAYS because the ego has attempted to JOIN the journey with us AND CANNOT DO SO. Sensing defeat and angered by it, it regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation BECAUSE I AM WITH YOU. On this journey, you have chosen me as your companion INSTEAD of your ego. Do not try to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.
The ego's way is not mine, but it is also NOT YOURS. The Holy Spirit has one direction for ALL minds, and the one He taught me IS yours. Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for ONLY illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God's Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey, because it HAS none, and the journey is the way to what is TRUE. Leave ALL deception behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back.
I DO go before you, because I AM beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you WANT to transcend the ego. My will will NEVER be wanting, and if you want to share it YOU WILL. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need YOU as much as you need ME.
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."
Let me first just say that I don't intend for this to be a "negative" post. Nor is it being pessimistic. But it's going to point out the inherent negativity of the world. Not to try to make it real or be drawn into despair over it, but to just recognize it for what it is. And there is no need to react to it with assertions of "happier interpretations."
There is a tremendous need for us to stop believing that the world is something we WANT. Or something that can offer us any redeeming qualities or content. Jesus actually wants us to learn to recognize that this world has nothing to offer, nothing to give, does nothing, means nothing, and is nothing.
Jesus frames the world - by which I mean EARTH and its physical neighbors regardless of your perceptions - as nothing. And that we are to recognize its nothingness in order to realize that giving it up is not a sacrifice. And that by giving it up, we stand to GAIN EVERYTHING by accepting the reality of the Kingdom that God created for us.
"The world I see has nothing that I want."
"But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth."
"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?"
ACIM is teaching that the world is nothing, it has no value, and everything in it is a pain. It says you do not want this world. That even though you made it you do not want it. And even that you made it BY not wanting it - by not wanting what was in your mind, which you projected outward as a world to try to get rid of it.
"the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want."
We are confused and caught up in the world because we keep believing that it can offer us salvation, something of value, something beneficial, something we want. And before you start dreaming up denials via the repurposing of the body and world, let just just clarify that the purpose of the world does not change what it IS.
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
Our problem is that we do believe the world has something to offer. That it is a great place to live forever, and never leave. That it has real pleasures and that its pleasures entail no pain. But Jesus also teaches that even the pleasures of the world are really pains in disguise, because the cost is that by indulging in temptation you are separating from God, and real pleasure only comes from doing God's will. Pleasure binds you to the body and takes you away from reality, just as pain does.
He wants us to recognize that pain IS pain, and pleasure IS pain, because truthfully we actually don't quite recognize what anything is. We think that pain is pleasure. We even think that sickness is saving us from life, and death is salvation. In our confusion we keep trying to dress up this world and frame it as somewhere that you can enjoy the full fruits of heaven. But as Jesus aptly explains, you CANNOT ESCAPE from the world's suffering by staying in it.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."
Much of our problem then is that we think there really is a way to be in the world that fixes it up and makes it great and provides room for an entire civilizations to emerge. A massive attempt to tame hell and "civilize" it. But this is really a form of DENIAL. The truth is that ALL of the world's roads lead to death, suffering, loss and disappointment. If you are willing to look at it you'll see this is true. And it will just keep on disappointing you until it disappears. That is its NATURE. It is a device for guaranteeing death.
"The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it"
"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."
These are the facts. Everything in spacetime is limited, it is not even really life (only eternal life is life), bodies are mostly destined to die, flowers can't bloom without dying off, entire planets cease to exist after a while, there is decay and destruction everywhere, sacrifice is built into spacetime itself, and there is scarcity everywhere. The world is TURD floating in cess-pool toilet-bowl of spacetime. Failure is inherent to the entire cosmos. This is not being negative about it either, it's being honest and truthful. This is a dream of mortality.
"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."
If we go into DENIAL that the world is basically a one-way trip to hell and death, we will start trying to find ways to PRETEND it's not true. We in fact have built up what we call a "civilized society" (a dysfunction), complete with the "comforts" that avoid as much pain as possible, the clever manipulations of matter that result in seeming "fixes" for problems, we've found all kinds of distractions and ways of making life seem "interesting", and have discovered every imaginable toy and play-thing to occupy our time. And yet all the while death can strike at any instant in any number of ways. And no-one knows what the heck they're doing.
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
The world really, in truth, is fundamentally broken, and it was broken from the start. It was made from the idea of the malfunction of reality. It was an attack on order and peace and love and harmony. Its separations are constant and relentless. Its isolation and exclusion are rampant. And not one single particle in all of spacetime is without a form that symbolizes separation, repulsion and rejection. The world is made of denial, and it even denies its own existence.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What ***denies its own existence and attacks itself*** is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite*** in every way."
If you look, you'll notice that the world has a plentiful supply of problems lined up for you, and even if you seem to solve one using a highly specific customized solution made just to perfectly fix this one problem, it WILL NOT EVER stop the onslaught of all the other problems it has lined up for you. Not to mention death. The one problem that everyone seems to be in TOTAL denial about, as if it doesn't matter because it's off in the future. And so we pretend we won't die, while nevertheless rushing towards it and making sure it happens.
We have to be willing to put aside all of these adjustments, these wishful thinkings, these rose-tinted glasses, the ignorant bliss, the framing the world as heaven, the trying to make it be our home, our adjustments to it and our attempts to make it out to be a great place. It is nothing. It can be forgiven, like all illusions can, but its nothingness is what makes this possible.
"YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it."
Adjusting to the world, trying to cope with the world, trying to make it more palatable, trying to make it softer and safer and seem to be a place that's not all that bad, is all forms of denial. The desire for the nice materials, the riches, the shiny objects, the fancy cars and expensive buildings, it's all an attempt to pretend that the world is desirable and that it WON'T disappoint you, as you seem to enjoy SHORT LIVED temporary reprieves from its hell-bent destructiveness. And as you hide behind the next "new thing" which claims to offer escape from death.
It is an avoidance of the fact that the world is just fundamentally not EVER going to really work correctly. It cannot function correctly because it is based on an idea of death and destruction. It is fundamentally a world of suicide and self-attack. Everything in it will always go wrong sooner or later. Expecting it not to will make you suffer.
This isn't a pessimistic view, by the way. This is a truthful view. I am not saying that we should be sad and unhappy and despairing because of it. Or that there is no alternative. In fact, Jesus is trying to get us to look at this truth SO THAT we can be recognize it is something we DO NOT WANT, so that we will in turn change our minds and choose the one reality that God created for us. And in which we will be infinitely happy forever. We only keep choosing the world because we mistakenly think it is WORTH HAVING, but how can you want a world made of rejection?
The world is not supposed to be your home, the thing you are in love with, your special adored idol, or your salvation. If you watch honestly you'll see that everything just goes wrong, eventually. It happens, again and again. Stuff breaks. Things get lost. Objects fall off tabletops. Food splats on the floor. The clothes become worn. The beds become mis-shapen. The roofs leak and cave in. The cars break down. The rust creeps in. I like to say, "there goes the physics again". And the assault of time, which is the idea of change and therefore death, guarantees that everything comes to an end.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
Shall we live in denial that this is true, that the world can NEVER BE HEAVEN? Shall we live in denial that everything in the worl WILL END? Or even that it has death built into it from the start? That it can never turn into a perfect society or an ideal civilization or even a safe place? We try to make it safer with our defenses and castles and our potions and rituals and our avoidance of dangers, but it remains an unsafe place. Can you escape a supernova?
"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."
The world cannot GIVE us what we want. It cannot make us happy. It cannot provide us with peace. It cannot satisfy us. It gives only to take away. It fails in order to disappoint. Every road, path, way, direction, goal, ambition and achievement in the world is pointless. Yet the world can present seeming illusions of "things going well", for a while, before it attacks and destroys what it has given. It can tempt you will fake happiness and fake values and fake salvation, only to fail you once again and deceive you in doing so.
"On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once."
"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while."
Jesus is not being negative when he describes the world like this. The world IS like this, isn't it? It's not a matter of how you look at it. There is no real loss in admitting to this, nor is this an attack upon the world. It isn't an unforgiving accusation. It is just a simple clear look at the world we made, its inherent nature, and its limitations. It is a world of limits, not a world of freedom, which is why it is like a prison for everyone in it.
"Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you."
"If it (mind) does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."
The world itself is tyrrannical. It is selfish and separate. Each part of it is separate and at war with every other. Even the forms of objects are in conflict, which is why they are different. Conflicting shapes, sizes, colors, textures, they are all forms of war. Everything the body sees is a form of conflict. Every atom is at war. You cannot turn something that is fundamentally conflicting into something that isn't, because this will erase all of its properties and it will cease to exist.
It is by recognizing the world as "the hell you made", that we might be willing to go the other way. It is when we sugarcoat it as "not hell" in a spiritualizing pretense to make it seem wanted and worthy, that we put ourselves to sleep. We are blinded by perception of form and tempted by its luster and flair. Its picture frame of jewel-encrusted death suggests it is not a world of death but our most cherished possession.
We are to correctly identify that the world IS meaningless and IS nothing and HAS nothing that we want and DOES nothing for or to us and ISN'T our inheritance from God and IS NOT real and HAS no power and is basically absolutely NOTHING. The recognition that "there is no world." How can a world which does not really exist appeal to us and be something we want INSTEAD OF God? At the cost of heaven? And in a bargain where we "gain the whole world and lose our soul"?
True escape from the battleground does not entail the faulty belief that the battleground can be made into a pleasant place. You can rise above it, and you can leave the desert, and you can see it in a better light. But you cannot change what it IS. And denying what it is merely keeps you in hell for longer. And that isn't going to make you very happy.
"The world you see must be denied."
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."
"A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert." ... "The thing to do with a deserve is to LEAVE."
"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."
"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
"That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."
"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."
"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"
"What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise."
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"
"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."
"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."