Denial itself is a defense, but it can be used positively or negatively. In its negative use it is used to deny God, reality, truth. In its positive use, it is used to deny the denial of truth, to deny ego, to deny illusions and unreality.
The entire separation from God is simple a misuse of denial. Blocks to awareness are denials of what is true in God. The ego is nothing but denial of reality. All sickness and death are denials. The world is the denial of heaven. Bodies are the denial of the soul. The opposite of denial is acceptance - ie the acceptance of the truth and reality of God - the atonement.
Here are some interesting quotes about how we use denial in the wrong way, in support of ego and in denying God, reality, and truth....
"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."
"It is the DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God."
"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."
"Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds."
"What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth which lies beyond?"
"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true."
"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. 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. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."
"Projection arises out of FALSE DENIAL."
"But in every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship."
"Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."
"Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition, in the very mind where God Himself has placed it."
"YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE."
"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son."
"Denial of light leads to failure to perceive it. Failure to perceive light is to perceive darkness."
"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."
"Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."
"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made."
"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."
"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."
"In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power that He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All that, lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt, and in the dark denial of innocence."
"For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him."
"And therefore those who look on sin ARE seeing the DENIAL of the real world."
"This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious."
"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."
"This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on light."
"DENIAL of the error results in projection."
This may not be explicitly pointed out anywhere in the course, but basically everything on "level 1" (reality) is permanently miraculous. God is miraculous. You are a miracle. Your creations are miraculous. The Holy Spirit is miraculous. Heaven is miraculous. Miraculousness is more than just the expression of miracles, it's a state of ego-law-breaking limitation-defying unlimitedness.
In this world, on level 2, we are able to bring miraculousness into the world to heal and correct. To shine a light in the darkness. This helps to resurrect the dead and restore life. Basically, as you remove blocks to the awareness of love's presence, you are removing blocks to your miraculousness - the state of miracle mindedness. The more blocks you remove, the MORE miraculous you become. Eventually there will be NO LIMIT to what you can do.
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."
"Miracles are natural and should be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wrong."
Jesus is more miraculous now than he even was on Earth.
It is totally natural to be totally miraculous all the time. Removing blocks unveils your naturally miraculous nature. Miracles become natural, effortless, automatic and constant. This is why they become like habits. This is also why miracles aren't about shifts in perception - the shifts merely uncover your miraculous nature and allow you to get in touch with love.
Love is an absolutely essential ingredient in being able to PERFORM a miracle. Miracles are expressions FROM love. Barriers against love have to be removed to allow the miraculous nature of love to express, to perform miracles. Which is why "miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."
Jesus is saying that being miraculous is our natural inheritance and totally natural, WHEN we are being natural, and therefore we need to unlearn our unnatural attack thoughts, denials, blocks and fears, in order to get back in touch with the miraculous power we share with God.
In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.
Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.
In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.
The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).
Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")
Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.
Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.
Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".
Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.
Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.
The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.
Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.
Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.
Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).
This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.
The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.
Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.
Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.
Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.
The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.
This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.
This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.
From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.
And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.
To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.
This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.
Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has
built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."
There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.
There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.
There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.
Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.
It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.
The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.
The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.
It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.
The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.
Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.
"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."
"Heaven is a choice I must make."
"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."
"The truth shall set you free."
One thing I never could make sense of in the Course was when Jesus referred to minds being joined or how it wasn't possible to be sick if minds were joined.
My ego could not understand this. It made no sense in terms of people being normal separate minds in separate bodies. I could only think in terms of doing something to something separate. How does anyone join with the mind of someone else in the first place? And why would that bring about the impossibility of sickness?
What I see now is that individuals in separate bodies are just fragments of a larger Self - the Christ Self, the One Son, and that identity has a single mind. There are not multiple Christs.
Mind, in its natural condition, is a single mind shared everywhere. It is the mind of the Whole Self. When pieces of mind seem to split off and be separate, that's because there is an illusion of separation happening. This separation is the root of all sickness.
Separation is two-sided, in that when the mind is divided, there is a piece of mind over here and piece of mind over there and they are kept apart by some kind of illusion of not being joined. That belief in separation produces sickness because it's a belief in limitation and lack. The separation blocks awareness, and blocks to awareness are denials which deny Life and thus produce death.
So when separation is present, and there are "two selves", that's a state of sickness. The mind is sick. It has multiple personality disorder. I'm talking about the one mind here, not an individual's mind. An individual's mind also is sick and divided within itself - each personality of the multiple personality disorder of the one mind, has within it further multiple personalities, lol
Ok so, to maintain the separation between selves, and thus to mantain sickness, both of those parts of the multiple personality must continue to exist. Without them being different from each other they would be one. If one of those two parts of mind decides to transcend what seems like the illusory limits placed upon itself, and redefines itself as the WHOLE, not a part of the whole, then it comes to experience Oneness with the other part of the mind, recognizing it as literally itself. Then there is only one mind. The two parts of mind are joined as One.
If the other part of the mind was trying to be an individual, it no longer can maintain that state of sickness because the first part of the mind has decided not to believe in it. So it doesn't have support for its belief and no matter how much it tries, it can't establish separation. If part of mind has woken up to the One Self (Christ), the other part has no way to remain in separation either. They must both wake up together to a single identity.
When Jesus woke up, He must have woken up to the reality that we are all One. And thus His awakening must have been the awakening of everyone. I don't know if this means that our minds MUST be healed, but certainly that it is POSSIBLE to be healed. If we were to decide to be one with Jesus, we would be healed instantly.
In the thought system of Holy Spirit, we are all one shared mind, and one identity. Holy Spirit looks upon CHRIST. Nowhere does it say he looks upon multiple real individuals.
When minds thus join, there is a healing of the separation between them. The separation defines their separate identity, so this must mean the undoing of a false sense of isolation and opening up to realizing that you are much more than you thought you were. An increase in awareness. Awakening. We awaken TO the Christ mind, the one mind, that we all share as the One Son of God. We're all the same Self. And this is how miraculous healing is possible.
Denial has two applications. Either to deny reality, or to deny unreality. The ego uses it to deny God. You as a miracle worker are to USE DENIAL to deny anything NOT of God any power to do anything.
Miracle-working therefore entails DENYING that what is not of God exists at all. This strips it of all reality and power. You must withdraw all the power you GAVE it. You must not beleive in it. You must cancel its whole existence. What is not of God simply is not possible, and the illusion that it is possible can be undone by denying it any reality. To recognize illusions as nothing makes them disappear.
We are therefore asked to REJECT things which are not of God. To deny and reject sickness, suffering, and death. Not to pretend they aren't there, which is really a hidden belief in support of them. But to properly deny them. They are themselves denials of God, because sickness is the ego's religion of denying God.
To deny the world of illusions is to remain in strength and to not allow anything of the world to intrude upon you or another. Deny that your brother is a body. Deny that sickness is possible. Deny death can ever exist. Deny that "its true" that your brother has problems or is imperfect.
Denial couples with acceptance. To deny what is not real is to accept what is real. Just as to deny reality is to accept illusions into your mind. Whatever you DON'T deny, you accept and allow to remain. Acceptance is supportive. Denial is not. Using a "lack of support" AGAINST weakness and suffering and death, cancels it out, just as two negatives make a positive.
"The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."
"To deny the denial of perfection is not so difficult as the denial of truth."
"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."
"THIS peace is totally incapable of being shaken by human errors of any kind. 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."
"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."
"Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU."
"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS."
"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."
"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."
"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."
We are in a state of denial where we are attacking reality. We are blocking truth, we do not want to see what is really there to see, we're trying to hide from God, we don't want to own up to being who we really are, we're trying to bind ourselves to something we're not, and we see ourselves as separate from what is real.
When Jesus talks about vision, he's talking about your willingness to see reality. When we say "above all else I want to see", we're saying that above all else, we're willing to pierce through illusions and walls and denials and take a good hard look at what is actually there. This is also what the course calls "reality contact" .Physical sight cannot see it, so we need to open the mind.
"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."
For example, God right now knows you exactly as you really are. He is aware of your perfect permanent innocence. But you are not. You are blocking your awareness of the truth about yourself. You do not know yourself as you really are, because you do not want to. You think things about yourself which you prefer, but which are not true. God therefore knows you better than you know yourself right now, and your job is to come to know what is really true of you again.
Similarly the acceptance of the atonement is really the acceptance of what is actually true. It's a willingness to see everything as it is, to recognize what it is, and therefore to no longer be deceived. It means no longer being in denial and no longer resisting the truth. We quite literally are hiding from reality, trying to identify with bodies in order to keep ourselves away from God.
It's like we're protesting against reality. We're fighting with it, we don't want it, we constantly attack it, and want to be separate from it. So we're out of touch with reality, which means we are confused and lost. It means we do not recognize what is real or not real, true or false, and are mistaken. This also means we are temporarily insane.
The desire to SEE, is the desire to KNOW, and the desire to BE. To see the real world is to be open and inclusive enough that you want to directly experience what actually is real. You can only experience this by not attacking reality, not separating from God, and not denying your soul. We basically are part of a rebellion, which began in the fall of man, and is ongoing. An ancient war against the truth.
If we are "the resistance" against the truth, which is also sickness and death, then we have to lay down our arms and put away our sharp-edged toys and be willing to be exposed to God again. To be open to sharing, to union and to oneness. If we want to be awake we're going to have to be willing to take the blindfold off and open the spiritual eye.
To see closer to reality will show us the real world, and the unreal world of Earth will be forgiven. In "reality" it will only be seen for what it is, before it fades away into nothingness. The closer we come to intimate contact with reality, the more we will see the light of the real world, and see God's reflection in the Earth.
Full reality exposure will reveal God to you, and your true self as Christ will reveal itself as Christ's face finally appears. And then you are ready to penetrate through the gates of heaven into total immersion and communion with all that is. To be in reality is to be in heaven.
"Every adjustment is therefore a DISTORTION, and calls upon defenses to uphold it AGAINST reality."
"For what could house this mad idea AGAINST reality, but for an instant?"
"WILLING AGAINST reality, though impossible, can be MADE into a very persistent goal, EVEN THOUGH YOU DO NOT WANT IT. But consider the result of this strange decision. You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be?"
"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY. You cannot love PARTS of reality, and understand what love MEANS."
"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it."
You can be completely sure, or at least convinced that you are, that something is true or 'the case', and still be mistaken.
You can be totally adamant that you're right about this, and still not be right about it.
You can be convinced that what you believe is absolutely THE truth and everyone else is stupid and wrong, and still be believing something that isn't true.
You can even have insanity and be convinced that you're sane and not even suspect that you aren't.
You can trust your senses and believe what your eyes are showing you and still be mistaken about what's happening.
You can have reactions that you think are normal and natural and objective and still be totally out of touch with reality.
You can have circumstantial evidence that seems to all point toward something being true as if it's really clear convincing proof of it, and it still be a completely false conclusion.
You can think you did something or learned something already and it doesn't need to be learned and yet still fall short of knowing how to do it.
You can be sure you've fully dealt with a past hurt or a complaint or a grievance or an old hatred and have let it go and still have a shitload of release work to do (lol, story of my life).
You can be totally sure that your faculties are telling you the truth, that your mind is capable of discerning what something is or isn't, and that you are being totally objective about it, and still be subjectively hallucinating.
You can trust your ego as if you believe it is really your friend and is on your side and is helping you and protecting you and all the while being deceived and led down a dark path by it.
You can be really convinced that getting something that you're missing is going to solve your life and fix your lack and still totally feel empty and hopeless when you get it.
You can think you know what things are for or why they're happening or what the purpose is or why someone is doing something and still be totally clueless as to what the real plan is.
You can think you know what's best for other people and how they need to be fixed or helped and what their problem is and still be projecting all your own problems and unconsciousness and not even recognize it.
You can also believe you know who you are already, and think you are awake, while all the while being asleep and unaware of your real self, convinced that you are some other identity.
You might also have conviction that you really are a body or that you can die and that you're not as God created you, and still not realize that this isn't true and that you are immortal spirit.
The ego's mistakes and deceit and denials and illusions go on and on and on, always convinced of its own prowess and ability to discern the truth, or that it is actually aware of 'what is', and all the while living in a private fantasy world of insanity where nothing is true at all.
A little willingness is needed to consider that you might be mistaken or that there is more going on here than you are aware of.
"You're doing this undo yourself."? No way!!!
The ego objects to the secret of salvation. "I CAN'T be doing this to myself! There's no way I'm causing or choosing this! I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I didn't do anything to make this happen."
Of course the ego thinks this because this IS the defense that is covering up the awareness that you are all powerful. That you chose and caused.
See, ego equates responsibility with guilt and it has absolutely no notion that you can be responsible WITHOUT being guilty. It sees responsibility as "where the blame lies", who is guilty, who sinned, who did it.
It doesn't WANT to be open to the idea that you could take responsibility and be INNOCENT. And so it has a lot of defences and denials and resistance to this idea.
When you start taking responsibility the ego is going to come in and say that you are guilty because of this. So you're going to have to learn to separate out the responsibility from the accusation.
It can really challenge you to be willing to consider that you might actually be choosing what you are experiencing. It means you're going to have to let everyone off the hook and not hate them. It means you can't be a victim, you can't be unfairly treated, you can't be being misrepresented or not heard or accused.
The ego sees taking responsibility as on par with admitting to a crime that's going to send you to prison. It does not want to do it. It sees confession of truth as totally against your best interests. It's like admitting to being a guilty sinner, tapping into your deepest hidden hurts and sense of regret and guilt and shame.
Who wants to admit to being the cause of something awful, or some suffering, or something unpleasant even? But this is what we're going to have to do. The ego has been judge and jury and has decided that the only way you can have the power to do anything is by having the power to be a guilty suffering attacker.
This is why it's a bit challenging, admitting to the truth. You suspect that you sinned, you suspect you're guilty, you don't even want to look at it in case it's true. Or it seemed true when you last looked at it, so you hid from it and vowed to keep it hidden.
But the truth is that you cannot suffer unless you choose to do so. And that's easy to say but a lot harder to totally own. It means you're going to have to look at and question how you might have actually done this. How you chose. The power of your decision. How you decided and the purpose you were trying to serve in your deciding. Why you wanted to suffer. Why you wanted sickness. Why you wanted pain and misery.
Probably you'll feel that the reason for this self-attack was some kind of horrible sin that you committed long ago, maybe an ancient sin, you know, like trying to kill God? Which you believe is true. So you're going to have to confront that at some point to find a path through so that you can get to where you are responsible without the guilt. Where responsibility can mean a verdict of freedom.
We are quite averse to admitting to what we think we've done because we don't want to. And we've become used to projecting it rather than owning it, because owning it feels like shit. But we are not being asked to own up to something terrible that we did, we're being asked to own up to having NOT DONE ANYTHING.
But the road to freedom requires the total acceptance of total responsibility. Without ANY sin or guilt entering into it. When responsibility is polished clean of all guilt, it simply means you are still as God created you, pure and clean, innocent and sinless. And cause for celebration.
"Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. 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."
All this time, I and most of us have been seeking the truth from the bottom up. That means, we find ourselves in the midst of the illusion, lost and confused, scrambling in the dark, trying to find our way to the light.
But everything about the darkness has been lying to us, painting a picture the opposite of the truth. The darkness makes it appear that we have become sinners, or fallen from grace, or changed into a limited confused person, or have developed an ego and changed our identity. This is not true.
As you move "upward" closer to the truth, you will gradually open up to greater awareness and insight into the nature of the truth. And gradually you will start to "take root" in the truth. Another way to put it is you "attach" to the truth or identify with it more, having un-attached from ego lies. Jesus once said to me "you are growing stronger in the truth". So as we undo the lies and the ego, the darkness starts to clear and we can see more clearly and accurately.
At some point you start to get this sense that the ego has been lying all this time, and in fact, not only have you not really been changed into a sinful corrupt evil being, but the person you were before the separation is actually still your true nature.
So now we flip things around. If you look at the truth from the top down, we put Heaven first as the only real truth and everything else is a lie. If you can recognize that you were created perfect from the outset, you are incapable of sin, nothing has gone wrong, you have not left God, you are permanent, you can't change yourself from God's intention, your real self has not changed at all, etc.... then you'll start to get this picture... .that actually you literally ARE still as God created you, and everything else the ego says is just an attempt to COVER IT OVER with a bunch of lies and denial.
So this is quite a different focus. Acknowledging that inside of you, even if it's buried, you literally ARE already innocent, holy, awake, with God, in heaven, having eternal life, unaffected and unchanged, sinless and guiltless, already free of every ego illusion, and nothing has happened to you. And this is true NOW, and it has ALWAYS BEEN TRUE.
So now you start to put things into their proper perspective. If it's true that you are STILL as God created you, and you are PERMANENTLY as God created you, then everything else cannot be true of you. It can't be true that you have changed, or fallen from grace, or sinned, or become a different identity, or that you have removed your light, or lost yourself, or become corrupted or damaged, or anything else the ego makes up.
Not only have you ALREADY ACCOMPLISHED PERFECTION because God created you perfect to begin with, and you are incapable of changing God's Will, but this also means then that the "spiritual goal" of trying to become enlightened is, itself, unnecessary really, because you already ARE PERFECT LIGHT right now. Anything else which suggests otherwise, must be an illusion or a lie.
So it's like, you were created 100% perfect and whole and complete by God, so utterly perfect that you could not possibly be improved upon or added to. And that self is PERMANENT. It does not go to sleep, it does not really dream or enter a dream, it does not go insane, it does not sin and it does not become affected by anything. Only a TINY PART of that self seems to have dreamed and seems to have entered the dream temporarily, but really it hasn't.
So all this other stuff, the ego stories, the notion that you stopped being perfect and are not this limited, weak, fearful ego self stuck in a body, not sure how to get home or if it's even possible, not even remembering what Home IS or how to get there, forgetting who you are and not even sure if you exist, all this stuff is actually just designed to BLOCK OUT the truth that is ALREADY present, your divine immortal self, which is already DONE, TOTALLY DONE, with any need for awakening, because it is not asleep in the first place.
To think that anything can have happened to you is a lie. To think that you can have changed into someone you are not is a lie. To think that you actually turned into a body is a lie. To think that you are sick or suffering is a lie. To think that you can die is a lie. To think that you replaced what God made with something else is a lie. To think that you changed God's mind or will is a lie. None of this has happened. This entire world we're in is a lie. The human race is a lie. This planet is a lie. ONLY HEAVEN IS REAL. Only the creations of light are real.
So all this while, you think that you are just this little self who is struggling to get to God for the first time.. welll... it's not the first time. You've ALWAYS been with God and can't leave God. So is it the fact that you are away from God and need to go home that you're trying to accomplish, or is it the fact that you actually have NOT left God and the suggestion that you have is, itself, a lie that needs to be undone?
All you need to do here is REMOVE AND UNDO layers of lies and denials which are fictional which are layered ON TOP OF your perfect immortal self, your divine permanent unchangeable self, which is ALREADY PERFECT, in order to reveal and expose your real self once again. Enlightenment is a recognition of who you already are in God, not a change into something you weren't before. The ego has lied to tell you that you changed in the first place and must change again to become what you are not. Which is impossible.
You're already with God. It's a done deal. You can't not be perfect. But like Jesus said, He has nothing that does not come from God - ie He is fully as God created Him to be and has not tried to change that into something else, to deny it or to cover it up. All that we're doing is still coming up with a story about how we have changed God's creation into something else and now have a huge pile of stuff to "do" to fix it. But really we need do nothing but accept what is already true. It is already fixed. "Let me recognize that my problems have already been solved".
We simply need to remove the layers of denial and lies and hiding and avoidance and accept what is already true. This is what it means to accept the atonement. To ACCEPT that God's truth is true. It has nothing to do with accepting life's circumstances or accepting the world or accepting events or whatever else. They don't exist. It's only to do with being vigilant for God's kingdom ONLY and accepting NOTHING ELSE into your mind, because what you accept into your mind becomes real to you. So if you only accept that God's Creation is truth, then you will stop making illusions real and return to full awareness of who you are.
You are not in the business of making yourself. You are not in the business of establishing yourself. You are not in the business of transforming yourself. You are not in the business of producing a perfect self. GOD ALREADY DID IT. You are only in the business of UN-LEARNING the lies you told yourself so that you can admit the truth and become aware again that you already, and still, are perfect as God created you, and it has not changed, and it will never change.
The world was made to die. It is hell. Bad shit happens, sooner or later. Everything breaks down, suffers, dies in the end. It's an insane world.
However.
When a whole shit ton of bad shite happens, and it keeps coming, at first it seems to attack all the defenses you made against its nature. All your safeties are called into question. All your values are turned upside down. Everything you held dear is threatened. All your expectations that the world can be a great place are shattered. All the bodies that you valued highly are threatened.
You don't realize it at the time but this is a transformation and it's leading somewhere quite useful.
Later when the dust settles, the world has left a very bad taste in your mouth. You think perhaps that you should heal from this by undoing everything that the world did to you, except that you start to notice something.
By turning to vengeance and brutality and cruelty and despair the world (ego) revealed its true nature. It shoved its deadliness in your face. It taunted you with its unfairness and harmfulness. It opened up a chasm of hell and all the voices of sin roared up in front of you. While temptation tried to lead you deeper still into its suffering dirge.
And so now, you got a really good look at the shit hole that it is. It stopped being so hidden and all its fucked-up shite just flew out in the open. And it was hell, but then you noticed.
This is how the world is. Not just "this time". Not just "because it has a grudge against you personally". It's how it ALWAYS is.
And through its destruction of your defenses against this fact, and though its deterioration of the ways this is usually hidden from view, you see the world now more squarely. It's more obvious that it simply, fundamentally, sucks ass. Because it was designed to.
And now a new awareness starts to dawn on you.
While you might've tried to escape from hell's onslaught and veer off into coping mechanisms and avoidance and denial, grasping desperately at the rose-tinted glasses in attempting to scrape together some kind of normality, all of this was brought into question.
And now instead of moving in the direction of trying to dress up the world again, to make it home again, to repair the breakdown, to create another illusion of safety in the midst of turmoil, you instead shift direction.
You notice that you've been doing this your whole life. Building up defenses against death. Believing the world can be a great place to be. Trying to assemble a home to shut out the brutality and attacks of the outside world. Forming special relationships and allegiances to defend against the enemies. All this hiding. All this defending. All this avoiding. It comes to a halt.
And now you realize it wasn't just that the world COULD be a great place, and you just weren't very good at making it one, it's actually that there's a much bigger thing going on here. The world is DESIGNED TO FAIL. Over and over again. It is HELL BENT on death and destruction. It WANTS to end and it wants to end you. This is is NATURE. But no-one told you that, and everyone taught you of its illusory virtues and hopeful outcomes and partial loveliness.
It wasn't you. It wasn't just your efforts and your denials. It's the world. It's not just something you did wrong that kept making things fail. All the times you hoped that things would be better. All the wishful thinking. It was all pointless given that the world, itself, was ALWAYS going to end in the dirt.
And now the disguise has been taken off. The world's bullshit has slapped your face rather too openly, and now you are no longer in the business of defending IT, or dressing IT up to be something pretty, or imagining that ITS nature is fundamentally good. No more trying to turn the world into heaven or expecting that it CAN be that.
There is now a willingness to recognize, to accept, this world just wants to die. And it's always dying. And everything in it dies. It's not you, it's not even personal. It's just how the world is. It's it's nature. Kill or be killed, and kill anyway. This whole planet is going to turn to dust someday, or the sun will explode and destroy it. That's a fact. This is the inevitability of the wages of sin, in a world driven by laws of death.
In a way, the world's onslaught has done you a favor. It's brought into question all your little home-making defenses and all your special values and things you liked about it. It's ripped your life apart and destroyed your idol worship. It's shown itself it be cruel, desperate, unfair, brutal, vicious and deadly. And it cares not. Because it can't do anything but make everything die.
So now you know. Your eyes have been opened. No more denial about this world being a pretty bundle of icecream and kittens. This is the recognition that the world IS hell. It's NOT your home. It's designed to make you suffer and all things in it are cruel and tempt sin and guilt.
"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. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. "
You had taught yourself that this world was your home. You taught yourself it could be heaven. You taught yourself things in it didn't have to die. You taught yourself you could avoid and resist and deny all you want, but eventually it still turns to shit, and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.
Form, flesh, appearances, bodies, animals, nature, planets, galaxies, it's all part of a system of death. Take the veil off. Lift away the lies. See through the temptation to believe otherwise. Undo the confusion, in which you thought this world was heaven. Reverse the lies, in which you thought there was truth and reality and holiness to something which is just a dream of nothingness. See the world for what it IS.
The world is just an illusion of a world, the hell you made, an opposite to life, and designed to do nothing but destroy God's son. There is no way out of it except through forgiveness. There are no roads made of its hellish substrate that lead out of it. Everything dies here. It's what it does. Spacetime makes sure of that.
Recognizing this is seeing through illusions, not being deceived and learning. While hell came to take the truth from you, all it ended up doing was exposing itself. And now that you've had a good hard look at its desperate sucky ness, you can see it's not the dressed-up doll you thought it was. And that's a good thing. You now recognize it's made to die, so you can stop trying to run away from this, or expect otherwise for its forms.
You can indeed certainly become miraculous and overthrow all this, demonstrating that all this can be changed BECAUSE its an illusion. You can show that you are under the laws of ANOTHER world. You can demonstrate this world's fundamental bullshit by reversing its bullshit. But the world is what it is. And it will end because it never really began.
Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel, or the "gift" that has come of this passage through darkness, is that you can now see, without the blinders on, what this world really is like. And seeing that sets you free, because only denial keeps you bound to the lies. And recognizing the world's nature gives you power over it. It is ONLY what it is, and nothing else. It is ONLY an illusion, not a reality. It is ONLY a dream of death, NOT real life. There is nothing in it worth having or that you want, because everything you really want and value is of God. And that lives in another world.