It may appear there are many problems, all of which are different and seem to call for very specific solutions. The form of each problem tempts you with its appearance, to believe it is unique and unlike anything else, calling for a response that must be dictated by the form of the problem. This suggests to you the only solution is the one that matches the problem, and that nothing else will work.

But what if love is like a skeleton key, able to unlock every problem, able to solve every situation, and able to heal all difficulties? What if there is one simple answer to all scenarios, requiring you to trust that love can solve all problems and answer all issues now? What if your "go to" is to become just one tool, miraculous love, which enables you to accomplish the impossible?

"Every problem is the SAME to Him, because each one is solved in just the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach"

"In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved."

"There is NO problem, in ANY situation, that faith will not solve"

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"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."

"No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems which confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem."

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo." "

The world of physical form is a projection of the ego thought system. It is based on a belief in separation, which has produced 3D images of physical objects, all of which appear to be different and unique. And every form screams "we are not one" or "I am not the same."

Miracle mindedness, on the other hand, is an opposite state, in which there is no regard for differences, forms or appearances. All differences are completely ignored. All forms are recognized as a deception. All illusions are the same. All seeming levels and degrees and variations and intensities and difficulties and measures are completely irrelevant.

The world of bodies is the world of form. And form takes on many forms, being the forms of the same one error. The single belief in separation has produced a fragmented world, with an entire hierarchy of differences. Big and small and heavy and light and round and square and near and far and every other conceivable difference is represented here. But they are all forms of separation.

Separateness produces form, and form pictures the ways in which the separate parts are separate. One object sticks out more, another is smaller, another a different color. One has extra parts, which the others lack. One moves in a different way, while the others seem more or less alive. And this results in an entire world filled with contrast and conflict, competition and inequality. A world of a trillion truths.

"Illusions are always illusions of differences."

"Where do all these differences come from? Certainly they seem to be in the world outside."

"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation."

"He has one answer to appearances regardless of their form, their size, their depth, or any attribute they seem to have"

"You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest."

"the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal."

But miracle mindedness is not deceived by any of this. It is a state of mind of wholeness, not fragmentation. It completely ignores all forms of difference, all measures of value, all sense of degrees and proportions and ratios. It has absolutely no regard for the infinite ways in which separation shows up. It does not buy into the temptation to believe that one thing is NOT another thing, seeing ALL illusions as the same and equal.

To live in a world of form is to live as though surrounded by many different things. Countless objects, each with many parts and sub-parts. Even to the extent of all things being formed from tiny little microscopic parts. All of them different, all of them unique. No two objects are even alike.

And so you believe this is normal and natural. You think this is reality. You accept it as if the form of an object defines its meaning, its true inherent nature. As if apples are apples and oranges are oranges, and they have no thing in common. As if cars are not houses and dogs are not cats and Earth is not Mars and one body is not another body.

But moving toward miracle mindedness must entail the questioning of appearances. The questioning of ALL forms. Every disguise. Every temptation to believe that the form of an object is truth. To recognize that all objects are disguises. They are all projected images from an egoic belief in separation. Not one of them is anything else other than just another form of the same one error, the same one problem, the same one illusion.

This must entail moving away from a dependency on different forms. Believing that life is normal when you use a car key to open the car door, and a house key to open your home. Or that one food is different to another. Or that some kinds of weather are better. Or that some relationships are more special. Or that one piece of clothing is different to another and changes your whole appearance.

This whole "lifestyle" of living in a world of differences, has to go. We can't continue believing that there are in fact many things here. That is the deception. We can't keep believing that we're surrounded with an utter buffet of choices. As if there are even any different choices at all. As if things are really any different.

"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."

We have to stop being dependent on unique special forms, and particular options, and conditions and styles and themes and preferences. We have to let go all prejudices and all ways that we make some parts of the world special.

We should not believe that one form of sickness is different to another, just based on how it looks or its severity or its size or appearance or how it seemed to arrive. We should not be deceived that a dead body is more dead than a living one. Or that a small wound is more difficult to heal than a gaping hole. Or that there is any such thing as "orders of difficulty."

The illusion of separation has not only taken on many forms, it has resulted in a vast hierarchy. A tremendous amount of different values, different amounts, severities, intensities, difficulties, degrees of problem, sizes of activity, degree of value or credit, amount of importance, etc. We've built our whole lives on the basis of fictional differences, buying into illusion after illusion of how "this is not the same as that".

We have to put all of this aside and recognize that ALL FORMS ARE LIES. Every way that one form says "this is how I am not the same", is a lie. They are ALL doing this. Every object is doing this, claiming to be different somehow. And we buy into it. And now we believe in the differences, and set up a whole egoic thought structure of rules and laws and limits of freedom, about how one thing is more or less something than something else.

Miracle mindedness is the state you reach when all of this is undone. When you are not convinced by ANY forms. When you see clearly and recognize the truth that ALL forms are a temptation to believe something that isn't true. You are not deceived by size or weight or severity or strength or proportions or values or importance or colors or shapes or types or classifications. You just put them ALL into one category - they are all equally unreal, equally the same, ONE ILLUSION, ONE PROBLEM, ONE SOLUTION.

This is why in miracle mindedness there are NO ORDERS. There is no hierarchy, no levels, no separations, no divisions. There is no sense of one thing being different to another. No belief in the deception that a slightly broken body is different to a severely damaged one. Why raising the dead is really on different than curing a headache. Why converting water into wine is effortless. Why walking on water is no more special or different than walking on land.

Once all things are equalized, once all differences no longer deceive, once all problems are recognized as one problem, once all forms are seen to be untrue, and once you stop living in a world of many reactions and many relationships and many separate conditions, your mind becomes WHOLE. It becomes unified and singular and "one with itself." It is not divided or twisted or mis-shapen by differences of any kind.

"You are one within yourself, and One with Him. Yours is the unity of all creation. Your perfect unity makes change in you impossible."

Such a mind is miraculous because it utterly ignores differences. It can have power over them all because it is not deceived by them. It sees that to change one small illusion is in fact NOT different to changing a "big one".

That to raise the dead is NOT really a bigger feat than curing a headache. And it is precicely this equality and singularity which gives the mind its POWER. A power which is derived from being undivided and singular. You are a singular whole unified one being, presently confronted with a world of many differences and separations, learning to disregard all of these alien separations so that you can be restored to ONE SINGULAR STATE. One mind. One voice. One will. One power. One wholeness. One capability. And this capability has the power to move mountains, just as much as to reconfigure objects, or materialize different body images, or to do anything at all. Because a mind free from differences is a mind free from limits, and there is nothing your holiness cannot do.

The course is moving us away from fragmentation, towards INTEGRATION. Away from a split mind, towards WHOLENESS. Away from many, towards ONE. Away from separation, towards ATONEMENT. Away from hierarchies, towards UNIFORMITY. Away from exclusion, towards INCLUSION. And away from isolation, towards UNION. Away from rejection towards JOINING. Away from selfishness towards SHARING. Away from the eseparation, towards GOD.

"In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"When you maintain that there MUST be order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would WITHHOLD from truth."

"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY"

"there is no order of difficulty in healing."

"Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless."

"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient."

"This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same."

"To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES."

"Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other."

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?"

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"Healing and Atonement are not related; they are identical. There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement. It is the one complete concept possible in this world, because it is the source of a wholly unified perception."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles, for they ARE all the same."

"WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness."

"He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them."

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations. For there IS no situation to which miracles do not apply, and by applying them TO all situations, you will gain the REAL world."

"It is emphasized here that these differences have no effect at all on the miracle, which can heal any of them with equal ease. This is because of the miracle's inherent avoidance of within-error distinctions. Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

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

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

"As you survey your inner world, merely let whatever thoughts cross your mind come into your awareness, each to be considered for a moment and then replaced by the next. Try not to establish any thought of hierarchy among them. "

"The concept of ANY sort of need HIERARCHY arose because, having made this fundamental error, he had already fragmented himself into levels with DIFFERENT needs. As he integrates, HE becomes one, and his ONE need becomes one accordingly."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. The body's eyes will never see except through differences. Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. Only the mind evaluates their messages, so only the mind is responsible for seeing."

"Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."

"It is impossible that one illusion be LESS amenable to truth than are the rest. But it IS possible that some are given greater VALUE, and less willingly OFFERED to truth for healing and for help. NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true."

"It is not a thought which judges an illusion by its size, its seeming gravity, or anything that is related to the form it takes. It merely focuses on what it is, and knows that no illusion can be real."

"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."

"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. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

ACIM suggests something far more radical than we might fully realise: absolutely everything you experience is chosen, and you can choose what happens and not just your reaction to what happens.

If you start to tell yourself, I am choosing this... I must have chosen this... I wanted this. ... you will step out of the fog of unconsciousness and start to get a sense of the kind of power that this must entail. You'll start to realise how much you DO NOT BELIEVE IT, and how much of your time is spent in a victimhood state of "this is happening to me against my will."

In fact, I think most of us are living in a state somewhere in between total empowerment and total victimhood. We make some decisions and have some influence, but we also tolerate a whole lot of "stuff happening on its own", "happening to me", "didn't choose this", "don't want that".

It especially can take the form of suffering and victimhood which seems like something totally unwanted. Pains, sickness, fear, loss, stress, anger, etc... all suggest "I didn't choose this." As if you not only have no say, but there is NO WAY OUT.

Putting up with shit, tolerating difficulties, going along with sickness like you have no choice in the matter, it's all part of this general trend we have of NOT believing that we CHOOSE everything we experience. And therefore, we can CHOOSE AGAIN.

"I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked."

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

Now that might sound interesting to read, but if you consider that it is giving NO EXCEPTIONS, and it really does mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, then you'll start to resize the sheer extent to which we are supposed to own this responsibility.

We are being asked to literally reach a state in which everything we experience is a DELIBERATE CHOICE, where there is absolutely no victimhood or sense of tolerating or reacting, and where you literally stop making yourself suffer permanently. Where you take total ownership of your life and, with the Holy Spirit deciding for you, wield the unlimited power of God.

In general, we actually are living in a very disempowered state, where we have given away power, causation, will, identity, and responsibility. And in this state we really don't think that we could even conceive of having as much "say" in what happens as what the course is suggesting. Maybe some influence yes, but not TOTAL ABSOLUTE POWER.

What do you mean we can choose not to be sick, or choose not to die, or chose to stop having a pain, or choose not to experience loss, or choose not to having a problem today? What do you mean we are so powerful and capable that literally everything that happens every day is BECAUSE OF OUR CHOICE?

But that's what Jesus is claiming. And it's all over the course. The power of decision to choose absolutely everything we experience, reclaiming that power, using that power intentionally, and therefore choosing never again to make any kind of suffering for ourselves. To literally choose never to be sick, nor to die.

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

"It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

It may seem at first that all events in this world are random, sometimes negative, difficult, cruel and should not be happening. We try to avoid some events and promote others. We want the bad stuff to go away and escape into only the good stuff, to prolong the good stuff as long as possible and have some sense of control.

But one thing that has become glaringly obvious to me in recent weeks of turmoil and trust-development, is that there absolutely is a higher plan whose reach spans everything that happens here, including the timing of meetings between individuals and groups and everything that occurs.

The plan of atonement, or the universal curriculum, orchestrates all events, encounters and occurrences. "Those who are to meet will meet". The Holy Spirit has laid out this plan, and it includes both what seem to be positive and negative events, or rather, the re-purposing of them for awakening.

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

We are willing to endure "trials" and "lessons" only because, in the much bigger long-term picture, we know that the outcome of these, when we elect to learn the curriculum of truth, brings us closer to God. No one in their right mind would deliberately choose to endure suffering and difficulty, except if they knew that such things would educate them and eventually persuade them towards a better way.

"***Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn*** presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. ***In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face***, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created alters unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

This world is not a collection of random occurrences. I see it now more as a winding, twisting dream sequence, with threads of stories and encounters and happenings, where designated people are supposed to be exactly where they are, where environments and events transpire on purpose to present lessons, in the hope that we will use these situations with the Holy Spirit towards the goal of awakening rather than as a way to strengthen our belief in hell. The world is just one big school of classrooms in which to unlearn the lies of the ego. And all of this is planned, somewhat like a form of voluntary destiny.

Before our lifetime we consent to various such classrooms. We may agree upon a body, a family, a location, a lifestyle. We may even agree that certain physical problems arise at certain times, seemingly triggered by certain events. But we have to realize that behind these seemingly random events, such as a car-crash for example, there is orchestration. There is purpose. It is meant to happen, because these trials need to be revisited so that certain stimuli will be presented to offer an opportunity for spiritual growth. And we sign on the dotted line to say, ok, I will be willing to go through all this if it will lead me closer home to God.

Sometimes really awful stuff happens. If a person is in a car crash and even perhaps dies for a while, perhaps this is to facilitate that they can visit Heaven, be healed, be restored and enlightened to some degree, so that upon returning they are a new person and live in a new way, making possible new avenues of expression and help. We might think some things happening are horrendous and cruel but when it's part of a much bigger plan, even the most awful of occurrences might well be divinely intended, not to cause suffering but to create circumstances and consequences that are ultimately beneficial spiritually.

In the really big picture, everything that happens here is entirely designed and repurposed as a tool to bring you home. The whole world is one big rescue mission, gently trying to get us to become willing to see sense and let go of our ego toys. God has protected us and is using space and time to present a curriculum that applies to all entities here, using scripts and events to present lessons that we agree to, so that we will gradually learn of the truth and awaken from our sleep.

We would only be willing to go through difficulties if we knew that it was in fact a purposeful lesson, and one which would point us eventually in the direction of love and happiness. Lessons that make us grow and present opportunities for forgiveness. We learn by applying the truth and forgiving what seems to occur, which in turn collapses periods of time and scripts that we no longer need.

The appearance that events and encounters and meetings are entirely at random is complete fiction. The Holy Spirit has control over all of this, with his plan for salvation. As you atune to this plan and trust it rather than fight against events, it becomes more obvious that He speaks through a variety of persons, He works through a variety of happenings, and that regardless of surface chance, some things simply are meant to happen a certain way, and will, by His will.

How else could we develop trust than if it were true that there is a plan to trust in, an ability of the Holy Spirit and God to guide and direct what transpires, and not just some chaotic random mishmash of cruelty and crime that we keep trying to escape. To trust in the plan is to learn the curriculum. To overlook the chaos and see the order is forgiveness. Everything happening here is an intricate symphony of education and opportunities to choose once again. And all of it continually points us towards reunion with God.

For sure, I used to believe in bodies. I believed people were their bodies. I believed if their bodies were sick or hurt, the person was in danger. I believed that bringing miracles to change their body into health was a noble cause.

In miracle working I believed the body was real, and that the body had to be attacked with the truth in order to correct it. I actually thought being intense or angry at the problem would make it go away. This never worked at all and probably made things worse.

I didn't realize that I was tempted by the idea that bodies are real at all. And once you believe they are real, you identify with your own, and identify others with theirs. And now you are on a slippery slope to trying to fight against death, without undoing the belief that bodies are real.

You find yourself trying to enforce or preserve or increase health and safety, in a world where you believe that it can be threatened and diminished. And now you're some kind of fighter against your own deception. Trying to heal and attack at the same time, as an unhealed healer.

While we believe bodies are real, or bodies are people, we can't work true miracles. To reinforce a belief in the reality of sickness is incompatible with its undoing. Only by recognizing that living and dead bodies are ONE illusion taking on irrelevant deceptive forms, and only by believing there is NO hierarchy to them, can there be NO ORDER of difficulty in miracles.

Only by recognizing that people are NOT bodies, can you heal their bodies. Only by recognizing that the forms of sickness are NOT true, can you undo and change the forms permanently. Only by realizing that the form is a deception, distracting you away from the real problem in the mind, can you address the underlying problem and cause.

When no form of objects is believed, and no state of bodies are thought to be different, and no appearances seem true, and no conditions of the body are thought to be more or less important or valuable or difficult or permanent, they are all treated the same way. One solution to one problem. One response to all illusions.

And in that singularity, that wholeness, that union of mind, which sees the wholeness, your mind is ready to bestow blessings of love and power which defy all forms and transcend all difficulties and are equally as effortless in application to ALL forms of suffering.

"The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

"When you maintain that there MUST be order of difficulty in miracles, all you mean is that there are some things you would WITHHOLD from truth."

"As long as you would have this be, so long will the ILLUSION of order of difficulty in miracles REMAIN with you. For YOU have established this order in REALITY, by giving some of it to one teacher, and some to another."

"Yet it is when judgment ceases that healing occurs, because only then it can be understood that there is no order of difficulty in healing."

"Once the professional therapist has realized that minds are joined, he can also recognize that order of difficulty in healing is meaningless."

"To understand there is no order of difficulty in healing, he must also recognize the equality of himself and the patient."

"This is the message of the crucifixion; there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

"The first thing to remember about miracles is that there is no order of difficulty among them. One is not harder or bigger than another. They are all the same."

"To the Holy Spirit THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES."

"Without a range, order of difficulty IS meaningless, and there must BE no range in what you offer to each other."

"In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion. Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one?"

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because there are no degrees of Atonement."

"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."

"WHOLLY natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles MEAN."

"There is no order of difficulty in miracles because all of God's Sons are of equal value, and their equality is their Oneness."

"He need make no distinctions among the problems he perceives, for He to Whom he turns with all of them recognizes no order of difficulty in resolving them."

"It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with CLEAR-CUT PRIORITY FOR VIGILANCE."

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

"You will recognize that you have learned there is no order of difficulty in miracles, when you have applied them to ALL situations."

"Its SOLE concern is to distinguish between truth, on the one hand, and ALL kinds of error, on the other. This is why some miracles SEEM to be of greater magnitude than others. But remember the first point in this course, i.e., that there is no order of difficulty in miracles."

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

"The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."

At times I get this sense that when "life lessons" come along, they are not so much "optional lessons" or just painfully difficult trails and struggles,, but rather, that situations and circumstances happen "on purpose" as a kind of "conditioning". A kind of reprogramming.

You are exposed to these conditions and the conditions change you. Rather than that, like, you have to learn by making decisions and picking up facts and figuring something out mentally. You kind of inevitably end up learning something almost as if the situation "forced" you to. But of course, you have free will still.

It seems at times these lessons are more like... corrections... in the form of three dimensional spatial scenarios and interactions and happenings .... as if, some larger being is putting stuff in front of us that it knows will change us in a certain direction. That it is in fact, a form of healing? That you can't really fail to "learn the lesson", you just "go through it" and come out the other side changed.

It seems also that whenever Holy Spirit tells me some difficult situation is a lesson, before I would've thought of that as annoying as hell, and confused about what I have to learn. But lately when He says this, I almost get that this is a clue telling me "it is educating you" "it is correcting you" "it is steering you" "it is prompting you to change your mind in a good way"... almost "it's happening to you, choose God".

Like, this situation and your way of dealing with it and so on WILL lead to you discovering new things and developing more trust and opening up to new truths. Sometimes when I get through a lesson I might've learned something new about working miracles or had some deep insight or it produced a major catharsis or something.... and so when the lesson is "happening", I might more easily consider, "somehow, this is leading to growth and making me better off".

Like, the lesson is a "nudge in the right direction" regardless of how it appears, and you always come out the other end "better off". Because what I see and know now versus what I didn't know at the beginning of a recent "trial" I could never have imagined would be the outcome or insights gained as a result of going through the difficulties.

You could almost think of life situations as little "scenarios", little holographic 3D classrooms, into which you enter and are exposed to, and the classroom itself molds and shapes you and steers you in a certain direction. And generally speaking you will learn whatever you are ready to learn, freely, while passing "through" that chamber of conversion.

It really reminds me of the dream I had just recently where I was going through all kinds of trials, obstacles, escape acts, problems and people chasing after me, running through different rooms and stuff, ending up in an open area where the "host" of a game show (Holy Spirit) showed up as this woman... who asked, "what is it that is so valuable to you that you would be willing to go through all this to attain it"? And the instant answer in my mind was HOME... Heaven... I would be willing go through all these trials and life events IF it would in the very long term picture actually POINT me in the direction of home.

This also ties in with what I've heard about writing our life scripts before we incarnate... we literally choose to go through various things, those who are to meet will meet, we choose our family and major life events etc, even our enemies and people we will clash with. Even our serious illnesses and accidents etc. Even when we are likely to "die" ie leave the classroom. And then we come in and "go through it all" like it's a real "pain in the ass you wish wasn't happening", but in the big picture, somehow, using these difficult scenarios as a way to guide us home to love.

And the only reason the life events SEEM like trials, or difficult, or stressful, or upsetting etc.. is because of our ego. Our egotism and "what we need to learn" or unlearn is what makes the situations into a challenge. It's why we sort of "need" these lessons. So that we can move closer to love and way from ego choices. To that we will will surrender. And sometimes the lessons are so annoyingly fucked up that the only thing you are left able to do is surrender and give up and let go. And that's a good thing. lol

This makes me think of this...

"W-pI.135.18. What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? 2 Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. 3 But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. 4 While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

and

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again." He would not leave one source of pain unhealed, nor any image left to veil the truth. He would remove all misery from you whom God created alters unto joy. He would not leave you comfortless, alone in dreams of hell, but would release your minds from everything that hides His Face from you."

I feel more relaxed and peaceful, which I think is a result of looking at the world's system of failure, unrelenting attack and constant problems.

There was always an effort to resist the world going wrong, a constant tension of trying to stop bad things happening, an expectation that things should be going well all the time, and a desire for nothing to ever turn sour.

These were all forms of denial and wishful thinking. An ignorance about the system of the world and how it functions. It was rooted in a mixed belief that the world was even capable of sustaining anything. That it should, that the norm of life should be that the world "works well", and that problems are occasional annoying exceptions.

If you look at the fact that the world is utterly bullshit and hell-bent on inevitable destruction, that all its roads lead to death, that it disappoints at every turn, and it is literally incapable of being free of problems and difficulties, you actually get more of a sense of its "true nature". Instead of the fanciful denial that attempts to insulate us from it.

We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make the world more tolerable. We build fancy homes and cities to try to shut out and ignore the weather. We try to farm foods more carefully to avoid contamination. We're told to do healthy things and exercise so as to avoid health concerns. We're told to make money so that we don't starve to death.

And so the drive of "civilized society" is really a REACTION to the fact that the world is raw and wild and cruel and unrelenting in its onslaught of carnage. We've become quite good at making it more "comfortable" and "safe", to a degree, in an effort to make hell more palatable, trying to tame its wicked ways. To form an oasis in the desert where we can be insulated from its "nature" and distanced from its ravages. Even though NONE of this prevents the destruction of all these things.

If we drop all that and just recognize the way the world is, and not just the planet but also the whole fundamental fabric of spacetime, then we can see that it was made to function a certain way. It cannot do what it was not designed to do. Its nature has to remain opposite to heaven otherwise it will cease to exist. It must BE different and separate otherwise it cannot appear to exist at all.

So it has to maintain this system of destruction at all times. If we let go of expecting it to be otherwise, and undo this denial that tries to constantly fight against it, or has an expectation that it's supposed to turn out well at the physical level, then when its nature just "does what it does", we won't be so upset. And we won't have to keep resisting it all the time, or fearing it.

The fear really comes from the "hope" or wishful thinking that it's not going to do what it always does. That it's not going to attack or destroy or make things difficult. And then when it does we're seemingly in shock and upset because our expectation has been destroyed. Without the blindness of believing the world can function like heaven, or that it can operate peacefully, or that it will ever be devoid of its devouring deadly nature, we can actually be more at peace about it.

In sense this a form of acceptance. Not accepting that the world is real and true, since only atonement should be accepted and only heaven should be validated. But an acceptance that the world, as it is, is just the way it is, and it cannot help its nature. A recognition that it's just always going to fuck up and destroy everything, because that's the only way it can function. And then in recognition of this we can actually laugh at it and not be so disturbed or surprised or shocked when everything goes to hell again.

This isn't the same as "expecting the worst", because you can get yourself into a belief that this world is real and it always is just negative and depressing, and therefore there is no hope or alternative. But you can expect the worst in the sense of realizing that the world can't be anything BUT the worst, due to its attacking nature, and can separate your relationship with it into a space of laughing at its hilariously flawed ways. We are, after all meant to learn to laugh at the mad idea that has produced this world.

As I sit here I'm looking out the window - not a perfect window but a dirtied stained window - upon an environment in which the leaves on the trees are all dead. The grass is browned and half-dead as a result of the snow that covered it. The weather is cold and unrelentless. The brickwork on the buildings is uneven. The light of sun is blocked and producing shadows of darkness. Roof tiles are missing. Rocks are weathered and decayed. Electrical power boxes are slightly mis-aligned and a strange ugly color. And the somewhat mutilated fir trees are struggling to stay alive.

But is this unexpected for a world where all things must die because time is change and change is death? No. This is the only way it can be. It is hilariously faulty. Ridiculously tragic, and quite a mess. The world is really kind of like a giant trashcan filled with broken pieces and old rotten shite.

Can it be otherwise? It cannot. It can never be otherwise. The dust of dead civilizations will always be blown by the winds of hate in this world. And recognizing this is its nature can actually set you free. Free from the horrible suffering that results from believing it could be any other way. And free from the constant efforts to put some extra lipstick and bandaids on the corpse, trying in vain to turn a tired old world into a new one. In a sense, let the dead bury the dead, and let death be, that there may be life in the mind.

We are to forgive the world, yes. To do this we have to want another world. We have to tune into another reality. Beyond space and time, a world of light and eternal life. A world where the laws of God do not permit suffering, difficulty, problems or death. And then we bring that wholistic perspective with us as we shine its light upon the broken world and see it from a loving perspective. We don't have to condemn the world in order to see that it is inherently broken. We can forgive it for being the way it is, only because it IS broken. And in forgiveness we can laugh it away.

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone." "The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. 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 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? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

sThe world in itself is altogether intolerable. It was designed to be a place of limitations and difficulties and problems.

As Jesus says,"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

That means you can't really expect the world to stop having problems, making things go wrong, being utterly awkward and stupid.

But what you can do is change your attitude.

All your suffering comes from believing that the world SHOULD NOT have problems, that it should work, that perfection is possible, that things will always go well, that every problem has a solution, that you can gain everthinge you want without losing it, and that the world has something truly valuable to offer.

If you believe that, you will be up shit creek, because the world CANNOT function that way. It's not capable of acting like heaven because it was made to be heaven's opposite in EVERY way imaginable. If you want it to function OTHER than how it DOES function, you will fight with it and be at war with it and hate it.

It was designed to be difficult, riddled with problems, totally contradictory, and hard to deal with. It was designed so that all choices are choices for partial things, and never can you get the whole from anything. It was designed to fail and be broken and lacking and special. It was NOT designed to be sane or to have order or to function benevolently. It was meant to be cruel and vicious and malicious and murderous. So let it be that.

If you can accept that the world is completely broken and ridiculously beyond all hope of improvement, then you're onto something. Because now your attitude is not BASED ON the world and not playing by its rules. You are under no laws but God's. You are not dealing with the world on the world's terms, you're transcending its terms.

If you can accept that the world is a completely stupid pile of shit that would be better of flushed down the cosmic toilet, then you'll be better off. Because then you'll allow and RECOGNIZE that it is like this, and not deceive yourself. It's only when you DENY that it is like that that you suffer, because then you are going against its grain and are in conflict with it.

Everything it is made to tempt you into suffering, to believe in death, and become disappointed. But only if you thought that the world would NOT be like this. If you are deceived into thinking that you can have it all, succeed, stop the problems, make everything work right, or prevent everything from dying, then you're going to be VERY upset when it constantly works against you. The world WILL have it's way, and it will fuck you over.

It will then seem that the world is against you because your demand for what you want the world to be like is against the world's nature. And so really you are against yourself. Strangely and paradoxically, if you can let the world be utterly shit and BE OKAY WITH THAT, without resisting it or hating it, without condeming it with sin or judgement, then you can let it be only what it is.

And then even though it is not heaven and is not of God, and continues to completely fuck up at every opportunity, you can now laugh at these mistakes and shortcomings, you can overlook them in forgiveness, you can not let them disturb or disappoint you, and you can therefore transcend them in peace. As Jesus said, you are not then trying to "escape from problems here", but you are instead seeing those problems with a more forgiving view.

The more forgiving view is to recognize that the world was MADE TO be a place of suffering and bullshit and conflict. It functions on the basis of separation. It was projected out from the insane ego mind, made by minds driven mad by guilt. It is not meant to WORK. But because it was designed BY something other than itself, it is NOT really responsible for its shortcomings. It can only be what it has been designed to be, and in that light you CAN FORGIVE IT, because it is not the cause of its own limitations.

The way out then isn't to try to stop the world from being the way it is, it's allowing it to be the way it is to that you are not caught up in fighting against it. Resistance is futile, and all it does is bind you to the world. When you drop the resistance you drop the attachment, and then you are free from the world. The world is not then disappointing you, if you never expected it to work out well. The world is not then doing something horrible that it shouldn't be doing, because that's all it CAN do. And you can just recognize its corrupt and inadequate nature and have pity on it for its inability to work any other way. And in that lack of sin you are set free.

Let the world burn, and be happy. A world that truly works and has order and peace and wholeness and where you can get everything you want without loss and receive perfection and have no problems, is not this world. It is the Kingdom of God, which God created as your true home, beyond this realm of nonsense and impossibilities. Let the impossible be impossible, so that possibility can be possible. Let the world "world" itself to death, while you by passerby and laugh at its unimportance.

Everyone is an immortal being. If they are portraying themselves otherwise, do not listen to their claims. They are trying to deceive themselves and you with a story about being a mortal victim. It is not true.

Everyone you meet is an immortal being. There is nothing that truly can come to them against their will, and nothing has befallen them from which they are not already free.

Every single person is immortal, regardless of their standing in life, occupation, merit or accountability. There is no one who is outside of the scope of immortality and divine right to perfect living.

Each and every brother or sister on your journey should be met as though they are capable of sustaining immortal living, unfettered and distinct from every conceivable form of suffering. They have chosen to pretend to lose the power of God and to suffer at the hands of another.

There is no being who walks this Earth who is truly mortal, because death is a lie. We are all equal in our immortality and we disguise ourselves behind a brick wall of flesh and bones, pretending to go through trials and difficulties at the hands of someone other than ourselves.

The great lie has portrayed the Son of God as a mere mortal, as weak and frail and preparing to die an unnatural death. How can God's infinite Creation give rise to a being whose life can be terminated by circumstances and illusions?

Every person you meet has infinite immortality, cannot die, has never died, will never die, and is truly in divine health. It is only through their own attempt to pretend to be not themselves, and not Life, that they portray a fiction in which they play a starring role as sufferer and loser of Life.

How can that which is immortal ever experience the end of itself? How can that which has eternal life, given by God Himself, ever come to cease to exist? It is not God's Will. The Father knows only the everlasting nature of His Creation and, by His Will alone, has chosen for it to live forever.

So while it is very popular to meet those who believe in dying, who believe in suffering, in sickness, in despair, and those who perceive loss as though it were real, and who think themselves little and mortal and absolutely destined for the grave sooner or later, you should always choose to look beyond the lie they have told and focus your awareness on the living reality which governs them.

While they pretend to die and put on a good show, you know this is not the truth. It is not reality. It is not God's way. Death is a fictional religion of artificial mortality, come to disguise the underlying factual truth that you cannot die, and nor can anyone. Even if a person should lay down their body in attempt at death, they will find themselves out of it and continuing on, having failed to terminate their existence.

And on it goes, around and around, having one more try at overcoming the self-made belief that you can die, taking another lifetime to learn that death is not real, and putting first the priority of the Kingdom of God over all else, such that you do not believe for an instant the sorry tales of despair that befall every believer in death.

The plague of this Earth lies in the illusion that death is real and that dying is inevitable. Death is powerless over the Son of God. It can do nothing to Him whatsoever, and cannot rob Him of his immortality. And it is He alone who is attempting to give death this power to do so, through acts of suicide and a death wish which has no hope of succeeding.

Whether through your current body or another, or ten from now, you will at some point surrender the absolutely futile attempt to prove death is real, and will learn from your mistake that no matter how hard you try, your immortality cannot be extinguished. There is no end to you. And there can be no moment in which you cease to be. Because you are real to God.

There is no real death. You can pretend all you like. You can even make it seem to happen to your body in a thousand ways, but you can never bring an end to the Spirit of Life that constitutes your entire reality. You are safe forever in Heaven with God, incapable of destruction and absolutely free from harm or fear of it. You cannot be genuinely sick, or actually suffer, or truly die for any reason. Your maladies are pretend and make believe.

When will you wake up? How long does it take for you to stop trying to make death real? How much effort will you expend pointlessly trying to bring about an impossible end which can never actually happen? Regardless of your efforts you die, you cannot, and even your death wish to do so will never succeed. It is not God's will that you can possibly die even remotely, and it is impossible for you to overthrow it.

Give up. Surrender your desire for destruction. Stop pretending that you are mortal. There is nothing about you that can be truly terminated. There is no aspect of your immortal being that can suffer in any way. There is nothing you can do to change God's will. And there is absolutely no way you can end Eternal Life. Trying to do so it like banging your head against a wall, which may seem for a time to make your head bloody or even to bring to you a moment of bodily death, and yet still this won't work. It will cease to succeed in isolating you to nothingness.

You can never die. Nobody ever has died. Nobody ever will die. The body is not real. Death is not real. You are immortality itself, set in stone for ever and ever and ever by your Holy Father who loves you with an eternal heart.

To accept this is to stop fighting with the truth, to acknowledge what has always been factual, and to surrender to the effortless never-ending existence which God has given you. You are what He wills you to be, His Shining Light of Holy Creation, and there is nothing you can do to change it.

Put aside your mortal stories of how you have been undermined, attacked, weakened, damaged, offended, hurt or betrayed. How can they be true of someone who is immortal spirit, invulnerable, incapable of suffering and absolutely indestructible? You are absolute, not relative. You do not die. You only live forever.

Peace.

In the separation from God, we basically denied God and tried to reject him. We tried to will against his will, reject his fatherhood, block awareness of his love, and hide in the darkness. We did not want God to love us, and wanted to hide our love for him.

This means that now, in our separated ego state, we are actually in a position where we are not allowing ourselves to be aware of God. Or to put it another way, we're trying to shut him out of our mind.

This means ultimately that we're trying NOT to be loved, to block and limit love, and are trying to resist being loved or loveable. We have to suppress our love and lovability in order to shut God out, because God himself IS love.

Before the separation, and in our creation, God gave ALL of himself, all of his immense unlimited unconditional love to us, and loved us with an endless deep love. We received this love and ARE this love. We are created as entirely lovable to God, loved BY God, and we are THE love of God.

In the separation, in the authority problem, we tried to deny this love and therefore also this lovability. But now we find ourselves feeling empty, lacking love, unlovable, unworthy, not good enough, and feeling that we don't love ourselves.

The thing is, that we can't love ourselves WITHOUT including God in that love, and that means that any willingness to love ourselves will have to also be a willingness to LET GOD love us as well. It means being willing to RECEIVE LOVE.

The problem we have is that we basically have stopped letting ourselves RECEIVE, and have placed great emphasis on giving without receiving, which is sacrifice. We don't love ourselves in isolation, and can't love ourselves while trying to be separate from God.

The secret then is that in order to feel loved and loving, you HAVE to let God love you. You have to let God in, into your mind, into your awareness. You have to be willing to allow yourself to RECEIVE LOVE from God, acknowledge that God has already GIVEN total love to you, and have gratitude that it has been given so that you can give it back as well.

You can't feel loved unless you share and flow love. You can't flow love unless God is its source. You can only share the love of God. You can only feel loved if you let God love you and are willing to extend it to others. You can't find love in isolation or exclusion, nor can you find a love in yourself that you can love yourself with that is other than God's love.

This is why when you try to love yourself you fail, because you cannot create love out of nothing. You have to get it from God. There is no love other than God's love, so you have to let God in and let him love you in order to feel love. And when you do... .... you feel loved and safe and happy and strong, and have love to give.

"And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them. Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within."

"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. "

"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."

"I am sustained by the Love of God."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence."

"I am surrounded by the Love of God."

"I feel the Love of God within me now."

"If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love."

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received."

"You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves."

"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's."

"Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."

"If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied."

"But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you. YOU do not love what you have made, and what you have made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His Souls, because of the hatred you have for the Self you have made."

"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. 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."

Jesus clearly refers to the physical body dying. He remarks about how the physical worms eat the physical body. Which is indeed true. Go dig up a freshly buried corpse and look at the worms. Just as the body is destructible and can be destroyed, so too are the worms destructible and can be destroyed. What do you suppose the worms would eat if this world was heaven and there was no destruction and no way to take anything away from anything?

The worms wouldn't even eat, because eating is part of the devouring aspect of destruction. And human bodies wouldn't eat or digest either because all that means is they harvest chunks of the world and kill them off and destroy them and shit them out.

"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."

When people suggest that planet Earth is God's creation and is real, it sets off my immediate bullshit alarms. There is absolutely no two ways about it, and no way to twist it around. We could say, well, the world is totally neutral, it doesn't have any meaning, so if an animal seems to die and we strip away all meaning, we could say that's totally neutral and means nothing and its not really death and its not really life. We could smile on it and love it and be joyful even as it happens and clap our hands as human bodies are mowed down my machine guns and bombs which we celebrate along with God as the children are savagely killed.

We could celebrate happily as the bodies are blown up. And if the bodies were real, that would indeed be quite insane. Who would be able to feel joyful about people's bodies getting killed off if the bodies are really people and the world is real? If the world is real all those victims are horribly mistreated and destroyed against their will and it is all terribly upsetting. There is NO WAY to be happy about that, if it is true. The mind HAS to suffer because of its belief that it is true.

We could say, well, if you lift away all judgements and all meanings and sense of guilt and attack and calling some things bad or wrong and labelling some things as horrible etc, then what are we left with? A strangely neutral meaningless world in which, even so, the machine guns are blazing and the bombs are ripping through the bodies and all the nice creatures are snuffing it still. Can this really be completely natural and normal and sane and the way things really are? Can this really be the hallmark of a completely loving creator?

Can it be, in all honesty, the will of a loving creator God, to create a world which is simultaneously regarded as perfect and harmless and holy and innocent and joyous and eternal and safe and free from all attack, smiling upon it like it's an absolutely beautiful creation, while simultaneously the actual forms of the world continues to fight and kill each other and suffer? While the pain receptors are still firing and the bombs are still destroying the houses and the bullets are still ripping holes in people's bodies. If you are totally forgiving toward it and seeing it with love and holiness then it could perhaps reflect heaven. But this heaven would have to be still separate from the things that occur.

It would be quite ridiculous to suggest that God in his infinite love would simultaneously love AND attack, or create beautiful things AND cause them to not last and to destroy each other and to change their forms such that none of them have long to exist at all, becoming unrecognisable and forgotten. Does it really make sense to suggest that even a world loved and forgiven that continues to have creatures falling down holes and weather freezing bodies and starvation and pain and all manner of limitations and difficulties, that this would make Earth BE heaven? It simply cannot be.

Who wants a God that is so contradictory that he produces a chaotic world while laughing about it? Who wants a God that in his infinite unlimited unconditional love produces environments for his creations to live in which simultaneously attack them and make their lives difficult? Who wants a God that "allows death to happen" as though He Himself condones and causes and sanctions and lives it? And who wants a world created by such a split-minded freak? Surely anyone with half a brain can at least see that the idea of God creating this world is utterly nonsense.

Some people will take this obviousness - that the suffering in the world is ridiculous and no-one can love it if it's real - and draw a conclusion. Either you could conclude the world is real and therefore life is bullshit and God is an asshole or doesn't exist at all. Or you could conclude that God does exist and is not an asshole and instead the whole world is not his creation. Either the world is real and God sucks, or the world is not real and God is great. Those are the only options. And thankfully God's reality guarantees that the suffering can end forever.

The strange twisted unforgiving loveless difficult limiting world of Earth and space and time is not of God. You can look upon it without judgement and forgive it, you can project the meaning of love onto it, you can transcend its separations and overlook its differences of form, you can bypass its behaviours and its faults and shortcomings, and remain in a happy state in spite of it. But to think that this means the world IS heaven is a huge mistake.

Heaven, the Kingdom of God, the world created by a truly loving and benevolent creator, could never even so much as CONCEIVE of forms and shapes that conflict, of scarcities that require feeding, of such things as weather which threatens existence, of wars and war machine and weapons, of having any such bullshit as a part of his pure perfect divine holy mind and life. Regardless of forgiving these things, of lifting away the demonising of these things, or labelling them as sinful, regardless of shining happily upon them as the light of the world and blessing them with love and healing, EVEN THEN the machinery of spacetime marches on its dismal chaotic endless tirade of destruction and uncertainty and constant indecision.

God could never create a world such as this. And if he could, he could not be a God, nor could he live, because his own nature would be to be partly alive and partly dead. He would be literally devouring parts of himself, destroying parts of himself only to make up new parts that were nothing like the ones that came before. This constant shifting and changing and fluxing of reality would mean that nothing is real AT ALL because there is no stable reality or constant state or perfect dependable anything. If God created the Earth, God is fragmented and deceptive and has multiple personalities and is at war with himself and is insane.

Anyone with half an ounce of sanity should recognize that a world such as the physical is absolutely in all ways and to all degrees utterly removed from what God could EVER be capable of creating or condoning. It is NOT his will that you live in this environment, in this way, with these objects, around these things, with these happenings. The world is insane and God wants better for you than this. God has created an environment for you in and as heaven which is so perfect you would laugh hysterically at even the suggestion that Earth could match up to its qualities.

This has nothing to do with hating Earth, or judging it or attacking it, or condemning it, or dwelling on its negativities, or amplifying its faults. It just is what it is. It is a flawed mistaken world made from insane minds that thought they could do better WITHOUT God. It just is what it is and nothing more. It simply is far short of the divinity of heaven and the perfection of real creation. A beautiful mistake at best, a half-hearted effort at best, and a rather confused strange twisted mistaken effort at best. But you can do better, and you deserve better.

The body is very much the opposite of your reality as an immortal being. Your real self can never be changed, attacked, hurt or destroyed. But the body is defenseless, exposed and vulnerable, capable of destruction and utterly unsafe in a dangerous world.

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

Having lived your life in a body, you've had to deal with all kinds of vulnerabilities. And this has taught you that you are a target for destruction. Weak, susceptible, fragile, attackable and unsafe. That you can be destroyed and should take great care to avoid all possible threats. Wary of every passing car, frightened of every stranger, upset by the mere presence of something moving.

The body has endured suffering, pain, breakage, malfunction and damage. It has been influenced by the weather and the environment. It has been attacked and hurt, bullied and hit, poked and prodded, maybe even assaulted surgically. Maybe the body has been mutilated, perhaps parts of it are missing, perhaps it is ugly and deformed and lacking, and maybe it was never whole to begin with.

Because of this, and because you believe you are your body, you must have thought this about yourself. You believed you'd lost parts of yourself, that you were under attack, that you have to be constantly vigilant when crossing roads and stepping on cracks and turning corners just in case it is your day to die - hoping to alert you early that you might avoid more suffering. You've put considerable effort into securing your body, making a home for it, protecting it with walls upon walls and layers upon layers, trying to shield it from your enemies.

All of this has told you that you are weak and fragile, vulnerable and attackable, defenseless and exposed. It has caused you to feel frightened and threatened all the time. It has given you constant anxiety and nervousness, constant stress and concern. You never feel fully safe anywhere, you are always on alert and wary of the next biting teeth or hammering nails or sharp pointy objects, trying constantly to avoid the body's death.

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies. Its safety is its main concern. Its comfort is its guiding rule. It tries to look for pleasure, and avoid the things that would be hurtful."

This can have done nothing but undermine your peace of mind, your sense of safety, your confidence and your happiness. Having to be constantly on the lookout for danger like some kind of animal in dangerous territory. You avoid the places you don't like to go, you avoid the people who bother you, you steer clear of the brand names you don't trust, and you only expose yourself with select few. And you reason that better the devil you know than the ones you don't.

This all comes about by confusing your identity with the body, believing you are a body, that you are body-like or of a physical nature. It comes with the territory. You cannot believe you are a physical body without being afraid of death, because you know the body can die. You cannot believe the body is your self, without being traumatized when you clip your nails or cut your hair. If you are a body, you are literally as susceptible and vulnerable as the body is, even if you take measures to defend yourself or ward off attackers.

It is not possible to believe you are a body and to feel confident. It is not possible to believe you are a body and be sane. It is not possible to believe you are a body and have real relationships with anyone, because the body literally cuts you off from them. It is not possible to believe you are a body and feel a sense of true safety and peace, or happiness and love. "the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

The body is separate in a separated world. It stands apart and alone. By the mere fact that it does not share with others, separate by space and time, it is lonely and isolated. Believing you are a body brings with it a fundamental loneliness and sense of exclusion, of conflict and disagreement, and even constant war. Bodies can never be equal because they rely on inequality and difference to make them distinct. And so there is no peace available when bodies are your truth.

Believing you are a body deceives you and sets you up for failure. It guarantees death and sickness and ensures a breakdown in communication. Being a body means putting a death sentence on your head and limiting yourself to a small span of time, riddled with obstacles and difficulties and suffering. If you are a body you cannot be a mind, or an idea, or a thought of God. You are parentless and orphaned and alone.

The body is essentially a blasphemy against God, because it suggests things about you which cannot be true in reality. You are actually an immortal, permanent, absolute, unchangeable, endless being, given eternal life and incapable of ever being hurt in any way. If you believe you are a body, you do not believe in yourself. If you believe you are a body, you are shutting yourself off from who you are in reality, and are guaranteeing suffering.

Your real self is immortal, it cannot be hurt or attacked, it cannot be affected or altered, it is utterly invulnerable, it is impervious and unassailable. It cannot be attacked or threatened, it cannot be hurt or made to be sick, it cannot be poisoned or traumatized, and it cannot die. Your real self is permanently happy, constantly joyful, and utterly at peace. Its peace can never be disturbed because nothing can ever threaten it, just as it is always free from all fear and anxiety because it knows that it is perfectly safe from all harm.

To identify with who you really are as God created you is to escape from the torment of being a body. It is to free you from all potential for suffering, attack, sickness and death. Identifying with your spirit/soul lifts you out of hell and into heaven. It lifts you away from danger and out of harm's way. It gives you real protection and permanent peace. It guarantees you are sinless and guiltless, incapable of being evil, unable to attack or be attacked, harmless and unharmed forever.

Only by not being a body can you be as God created you, because God did not create bodies. Only by not being a body can you laugh in the face of death and overcome the world. It is the body that becomes a target for attack and destruction, and not your real self. Your real self is beyond the world and beyond space and time and beyond the laws of physics. It is not of this world because you were created in another world, in the Kingdom of God, where everything is eternal.

"You can never suffer because the Source of all joy goes with you wherever you go."

Your eternal self can never suffer pain, can never be hurt by another, can never be upset or offended, can have no reason to ever be afraid, can never have its peace disturbed, can never become sick or suffer, can never experience pain, can never malfunction or break down or degrade, can never become old or tired, can never lose anything, and can never die. Surely you would rather identify with your real self and be free from hell forever, than to regard yourself as a lump of flesh and bones stalking the earth like a zombie waiting to finish dying.

Only by associating yourself with the properties of immortality can you be set free from the mortal body and all its limitations. Only by identifying as permanent and unchangeable can you have no grounds for upset. Only by recognizing you can never be changed can you free yourself from the blame and tyranny of other people's actions. Only by knowing yourself as the eternal life God gave you can you utterly disregard anything the world seems to do or cause.

"I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"This is accomplished very simply, as you instruct yourself that you are not a body."

"But I am not a body. What am I?"

"The Christ in you inhabits NOT a body. Yet He IS in you. And thus MUST it be that YOU are not within a body."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body."

"But I am not a body. And my mind cannot attack. So I can not be sick."

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

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

There is a certain leap of faith required in learning to trust and work with Spirit. It's like opening up to trusting that something completely out of sight and out of control is going to be there when you need it. We are completely unaccustomed to seeing situations this way and it requires a lot of TRUST.

Since we have been relying on our own self all this time, on our ego intellect, our own abilities, our knowledge etc.... we are very used to needing to have a sense of personal confidence in a situation in order to proceed with an action.

So we'll have to make sure that we're in the right mood, we have to have all the ducks in a row, we need reassurance that this is the right thing to do, and we feel that we need to kind of talk ourselves into the right frame of mind to 'perform'. We have to ready ourselves, and we won't move ahead to take actions until we have gathered enough ego information and enough reliance on our own capabilities. And to create something of quality simply threatens us to have to perform at the top of our game, which is nerve-wracking.

But the problem with this is that it shuts out Spirit. The problem is, since we are experiencing ourselves as disconnected from Spirit, we keep having to rely on ourselves, depend on ourselves, accumulate our own skills, develop our own prowess, acquire our own knowledge, and build ourselves up to try to handle situations. But this puts all of our sense of TRUST squarely in our own ego abilities. Trusting our own ego produces FEAR which undermines any sense of reliability.

Spirit doesn't work the same way the ego works. Spirit is much more spontaneous. Spirit is also extremely capable and unlimited and doesn't suffer from the inadequacies, limitations, insecurities and difficulties that our ego self has to deal with constantly.

Spirit is actually ready to fly right now, right away, without any preparation. God is immediately on hand and ready to heal, right now. Holy Spirit is immediately on hand and ready to teach the highest of truths, right now. They don't need time to get ready. They don't have to figure out what to do. They don't need to get themselves into the right mood or to be on their best form or to have put aside as many fears as possible in order to take some decisive action.

So what this means is, if you want to work with Spirit, such as to express Holy Spirit's Voice or to teach from a higher place or to perform a healing miracle, there has to be a certain amount of 'blind faith' and a different kind of trust. This trust quite literally means that you really need to actually START taking steps to move forward and express, knowing that Spirit is going to show up immediately and be there to help you.

It actually kind of requires you to be much more spontaneous and UNPREPARED. (Who knew that being unprepared could lead to greater confidence when trusting Spirit?!) And even if you feel unprepared and uncertain and afraid and doubtful about whether YOU can pull off whatever it is that you're about to attempt - teaching, healing, writing, whatever.... even though you do not know what the heck you are going to say, even though do not know how the heck you're going to 'do this', you have to actually start doing it with faith that Holy Spirit is right with you in the MOMENT.... and that as you begin to 'flow', all of Heaven is going to rush in to support and help you.

There are people who receive healing miracles, let's say for example they have a broken arm or something. The person prays for them and healing begins, but the person still believes they don't have a healing, and the arms seems to be a problem. But then the healer tells the person, MOVE YOUR ARM. And the person moves their arm, and AS they move their arm, healing comes to the arm.

There are countless examples of this in Jesus's miracles where he tells someone to actually DO something, to do something that they supposedly currently cannot do, so that WHEN they attempt to do it, with some faith that it will BECOME possible, their willingness and openness is what actually brings the miracle into them and healing occurs, AS they ACT AS IF they are healed. For example Jesus might've commanded 'get up and walk', and a paralyzed person who could not walk, would at least ATTEMPT to get up and walk, with enough trust and faith that perhaps it COULD work, and then as they get up, suddenly they can walk. But not until they started trying to do so.

So you see, Spirit is very immediate and becomes a part of the flow as and when you are willing to actually take some action on faith. You will not be prepared. You will not be ready. You will not know how you're going to do this. You'll get to the very limits of the edges of your own ego abilities and all the information you could possibly have gathered and all the preparedness you could've possible done, and still there is another step needed. To trust Spirit, you have to take the leap. You have to ACT AS IF miraculous things can happen, ACT AS IF healing is going to flow when you say it will, ACT AS IF Spirit is going to back you, even if right now you don't feel even connected to Spirit. And Spirit will rush in and be right there to support you.

For example, I am writing a book and I have procrastinated on this for a long time because I kept feeling that I wasn't quite ready, or in the right mood, or I just wasn't prepared. I felt like I needed to get MYSELF into the best possible frame of mind, the most purified readiness, the most spiritual of mindsets etc, in order to be ABLE to pull off this writing. And I could never really rise up to the occasion. I couldn't get myself into the 'heights' of what I knew needed to be written down, and was just always riddled with insecurities and excuses and fears and worries about how was *I* going to write this and how was *I* going to be able to know what to say or to say it correctly etc. So I avoided it.

But then what broke, was that I came to a place of at least realizing it's not going to be me doing this on my own. It's not going to come FROM me, its going to come from Spirit. And I'm going to write it down, but I'm not going to know WHAT to write. I'm not going to be able to prepare for it or study for it or have everything all organized to try to get a sense of confidence about it. Instead, what its going to call for is for me to actually sit down, hands on the keyboard, and to be in that moment WITH Spirit, inviting Spirit to be the one to write, and to then just start doing it. Just GO. And that means trusting something totally outside of myself, totally beyond my own abilities, beyond my mind, beyond any personal readiness. And in that moment, in the now, in the present 'flow' of it, Spirit is right there and started talking, and I started typing, and out it came.

Surprisingly easy once it got going, but I'd avoided it so much because my mind, my ego mind, my separate mind, couldn't see past itself. It couldn't get outside of its own box or its own reliance on "I must do this all by myself". The mind needs to be handed over to Spirit. Spirit is meant to be in charge of how the mind is used. And this really does mean actually surrendering this constant reliance on independent self, on separately having 'the power' or 'the skills' to do whatever. To be Spirit-backed we have to stop being so independent and so self-reliant and trust something that we don't even seem to have any control over, a source of confidence and teaching and creation that is beyond our own self. And nothing can prepare you for that. You have to just do it and try to trust that you're going to be backed up, and you will be.

This is why development of trust is so important. Learning to trust that Spirit has got your back, that Spirit can heal, that Spirit can do miracles through you, and that Spirit can help you no matter whether you have everything under control or not. It's all about learning to be part of a TEAM, instead of going solo all the time. You don't have to do this all by yourself, and you DO NOT have to find the confidence and prowess to pull off some amazing feat of expression all on your own. It's much easier to let Spirit do the heavy lifting, if you can let go enough to take a shot in the dark. And that's what it's like often, just blindly assuming that Spirit will do its thing when you take action to begin the flow.

I'm glad to say I got a whole chapter written, once I finally stopped fearing (depending on my own strength) and trusted that I just had to 'show up' in the present moment and be ready and willing and that Spirit would do the rest. It can really be daunting to have this kind of trust, to trust in something you can't see and doesn't even seem to be there until the very moment that you're having the faith that it will show up. Something outside your control, outside your mind.

Our minds are supposed to be connected to Spirit in this way. They're not supposed to be separated off and trying to rely on themselves. We're not supposed to be bolstered up, or turned into 'models of success', or superheroes. We're not meant to be thoroughly educated and learned. We're not meant to develop this extraordinary prowess at doing something amazing all by ourselves. This is not how the mind is meant to operate in isolation. It's meant to be connected to and a RECEIVER of a flow of spiritual power from Spirit. It's meant to be in service to Spirit. It's meant to receive God and to extend God, not to come up with its own separate power or its own separate abilities. Transitioning over from self-reliance to God-reliance is a tough challenge and goes entirely against our entire ego-centric way of living, but it's what we're called to do.

It adds a whole new level of meaning to "let go and let God".

Think of the physical body as having a purpose. It has a purpose, because it has a USE, because it has a USER. It is being used FOR something, other than the body in and of itself - because the body is not an end in itself. It is a tool.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

The ego - ie insanity in your mind - can use the body for a negative purpose. This purpose is attack and destruction. When you are using the body for this purpose, the mind uses the body like it's a weapon.

It actually transforms the form of the body into what looks like "a picture of crucifixion." This is a picture of body which has things like damage, sickness, disease, signs of death, cancers and deformities and so on. Basically various forms of DEATH, to try to GIVE DEATH to others.

These are USED by the ego mind to send a message to those who look upon the body. At the same time the ego is using the body to try to ATTACK others. The sickened states that it invents in the body are themselves attempts to reach out and "infect others" with suffering.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

Not to induce guilt in anyone who might be doing this or experiencing the difficulties of sickness, but the course is indeed teaching that when the ego USES the body it uses it as a weapon to try to inflict suffering on others.

Its primary method is to put sickness "symptoms" into the body so that the body itself, physically, becomes a way to "spread death" to others. In particularly virile forms the body becomes contagious and capable of causing to others what seems to have happened to itself, thus extending sickness and death.

When the body is sick, it also sends a kind of visual physical message to those who witness it, that says "look what you did to me." It induces guilt, it accuses of sin, it projects an egoic message of the proof of sin, and we hold this suffering up for others to see so that they will be accused of causing it. And thus by our own desire to make our own body sick, we're willing to suffer if it means others are accused of sinning against God and can take on the guilt and the punishment.

In effect, a sick mind uses the body to make the body sick so that the body can make others sick. But the mind can also be healed of its sickness and its attempts to attack or to make guilty. And then the mind is more healed and now the mind is still USING the body but it is now using it for a higher purpose.

A healed mind USES the body not as a weapon or to try to project guilt or to scapegoat or to prove others to be the sinful cause of its symptoms. Instead a healed mind sends healing through the body. This healing love literally heals the body and removes from it the signs and symbols of attack and death.

As the body is healed, it now changes its symbolic message, and instead of now showing a picture of crucifixion to another it instead shows a symbolic image of something "unharmed", something innocent and free from attack. Such a healed healthy body sends a broadcast, visually, symbolically, that other people have not done anything to it, and therefore they cannot have sinned. This "physical message", a literal physical embodiment of the mind's belief in wholeness, exonerates those who look upon it, and in turn CAUSES their minds and bodies to be also healed.

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

In effect, a sick body provides a powerful TEMPTATION to others to believe that they are guilty because of its suffering. While a healed body provides a powerful LIBERATION to others to believe that they are NOT guilty because the body is obviously unharmed.

What actually happens is an interesting repurposing of things. Given that a person with an ego will believe the body is real, and give a great amount of weight to the FORM that the body takes, they will tend to derive MEANING from the form of the body. As such we might say, because the body has the shape of a cancerous growth, "that means" there has been an attack and a sickness.

And by thus deriving meaning from the body based on its appearance, the mind of the viewer BELIEVES and gives POWER TO that body, making it real to them. And now it cannot escape being at the EFFECT of that body. The unhealed mind of the viewer now sees that body as confirming their guilt, providing their sinfulness, suggesting they must have attacked it, and they basically AGREE with its condition. Entering into false empathy, they cannot help but feel personally responsible - guilty - that the other "real body" is sick. And this cannot be escaped while the person believes bodies are real.

The result of this is that those with egos view sick bodies as offensive and accusatory and harmful and not to be trusted and as attacking and threatening them. I couldn't find the exact quote wording but the course does say the ego hates sick bodies and feels threatened by them.

"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."

What then happens when your mind is more healed, and thus removes the sickness from the body, is that you TAKE ADVANTAGE of the fact that other people are making your body real still. They still have an ego, their minds are still sick, they still need healing.

When they look upon your body with the same mentality of "making it real", and believing that its FORM defines MEANING, it looks there and sees no evidence of attack, no suffering, no pain, no proof of sin. Because your mind has truly forgiven and has PROVED forgiveness by healing the body of any side effects.

When a sick mind looks upon a healed body, the sick mind still believes the body is real and that its form is meaningful, and thus is "giving its power away" to that body to define FOR IT what is true. When you thus show an egoic mind a HEALED BODY, it taps into THEIR belief that they've given power to your body, THEIR belief that your body defines the truth, and because your body is depicting a healed FORM, they now automatically derive a MEANING from its form that "there's nothing wrong with it."

Because of their own giving away of their own power to your body, they can't help now but be AFFECTED BY your healed body, having given it power over them. And thus your healed body now taps into this dynamic in their mind and gives them the message "I have the power to inform you that you have not sinned."

And by this kind of indirect "back door" in a way, a re-purposing of their belief that your body DEFINES their guilt or innocence, your healed body TEACHES THEM, through its repurposed use of symbolic FORM, that they must be innocent because there is no sign of suffering. That they cannot have done anything. The impact of this teaching has massive amounts of POWER to educate them that, because your body is healed, THEY ARE INNOCENT.

And thus by witnessing that their nightmare has turned into a happy dream, your body has turned into a herald of harmlessness, their mind is now ACCEPTING the message - on their own terms - that they must be innocent. And thus, indirectly, their mind will now allow your body to exonerate them and this (by their own causation) causes them to believe they are innocent.

Thus does a healed body become a messenger to the sick, to tell them that they are not sick, because there is no evidence of them having caused sickness. It shows them they are not guilty, and uses their belief in your body's "power" to tell them what's true, to correct their view of themselves. So they think, I cannot have done anything because your body is in great condition and it is literally inspiring me to believe in life and health and wholeness.

As such their mind now accepts healing, becomes itself more whole, is lifted up, resurrected, and it in turn facilitates the side-effect that it also heals their own body. Thus the miracle of healing which was given to YOUR mind to heal YOUR body, extends and transfers to the minds of OTHERS as they witness your miracle. And thus is your brother HEALED ALONG WITH YOU. And now HIS BODY HEALS AS WELL!

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."

"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. 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 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."

I think this runs somewhat against the expectations of many ACIM students, but at the physical and personality level we are all considerably different. No two bodies are identical. There are many many sub-types of human bodies, brains, nervous systems, outlooks, orientations, races, gender identities, etc. We are not all the same in terms of human bodies, never were, and never will be. Everything physical is, at best, similar, but not equal.

When there comes to be a social "norm" where we think there's a normal way to be, a normal type of person, a normal interaction style, a normal behaviour, a normal way to process information etc, it becomes a way to create a "closet". People start to feel ashamed for being different, ashamed for having difficulties matching up to the expected behaviour.

An obvious example is in the case of gay/queer people whereby, quite literally their bodies and brains are different. A gay person does not have the "wiring" to produce experiences of excitation and attraction to members of the opposite sex, or at least this "ability" is altered and in a different ratio. A trans-sexual person may have a wildly different sense of gender identity compared to their physical biology. There is science to confirm that gay people have different pheromones, different brain structures, different chemistry.

Another example is in terms of the differences between extroverted and introverted people, or those who are highly sensitive compared to those who are not. The extroverted people find release and stress-processing through social connection and external ways to work through things. This totally does not work for an introverted person who needs to go within, withdraw, process deeply and reflect. When either of these become an expected "norm" the other group becomes ashamed and repressed.

It's far better that we realize that on the physical and personality level, the human level, and to a degree in the mind as well since it is influenced by the brain wiring, that we are a collection of highly discordant, highly differentiated "persons". There is not a norm, there is not a standard, there is not a one-size-fits all, there is not a "we are all one" on this level. There is no such thing as physical oneness or physical equality. The idea of making the human race have a "physical oneness" must be completely destroyed. Oneness only works in the mind, not the body, and trying to make it work for bodies is insane and backwards.

I've been working with ACIM for over 20 years now and have gone through a lot of healing and transformation. But in spite of this, my body is still largely wired the same way it was years ago. It is still highly sensitive and introverted, my nervous system is still wired to process deeply rather than broadly, I still need down time to catch up with the processing, I still at times am shy and finding it harder to push out expressions and open up emotionally. These are physical traits rooted in how my brain is structured, regardless of my spiritual aspirations at the mind level. I work in abstracts and symbols and metaphors and subtle nuances, which is not true of most people.

You'll notice that as people work on spiritual awakening their body stays much the same. It may heal, it may seem more alive, it may seem healthier or younger, but it still has its accent, it still moves with similar mannerisms, there's still the same collection of language, there's the same eyes and mouth, the same height, the same weight, the same muscles and sense of motion. These things aren't really going to change because they're part of the body. Waking up more doesn't suddenly turn your body into a spiritual thing because it can't be that. It's a body, not a spirit.

Trying to expect bodies to be more spiritual is a spiritualisation of the physical, which is a form of level confusion. The physical can't be spiritual because it is not spirit. Trying to expect human physical persons to shed the wiring and uniqueness and differences that are hardwired into their physical makeup is highly unrealistic. Trying to act spiritual or look spiritual or trying to get the body to stop having its quirks is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

I would say that to some degree I have become more understanding of, at peace with, and perhaps a bit more masterful of working WITH the limitations of my physicality, but I wouldn't say that the physical has stopped being the way it always was. My mind has changed and that perhaps means that I now operate the body differently, but it still largely looks similar, moves similar, processes information similarly as before. I still have high sensitivity and am easily overwhelmed with too much input. I still fart and pee and shit and sleep and all that.

I see sometimes that people expect that they're going to turn into a butterfly or something as they work on their spiritual path. Doing workbook lessons for example doing meditations, starts to seem like it's going to cause a persons perception to change so much that they become non-physical. And in other words, that they won't be able to function on the physical level anymore. And yet, there they are, using the same physical body and the same eyes and the same brain to physically perceive the same book which still looks exactly the same with the same physical pages as before. The physical stuff barely changes at all.

So I think it would be healthy for us to acknowledge that we each are working with a distinct, specific, limited, quirky, and DIFFERENT type of physical body to everyone else. And this physical body brings with it unique challenges, unique wiring, unique preferences, unique pros and cons, unique talents and limitations. We're NOT all the same on this level. And it's okay to sort of embrace the way that you are different, the kind of body device you are having to work with, and it's okay to treat "your self" with kindness and acknowledgement even if it does not work for other people.

If your body has needs, if your brain has needs, if certain types of interactions or relationships or environments or people or whatever don't work for you, that's fine. It's likely to do with how your body is wired. Yes you can change some things psychologically but the body itself cannot actually ever be whole, cannot be spiritual, cannot be like as swiss army knife, cannot do all things in all ways with all people and all situations, and does not have every ability that everyone else has.

Letting "yourself" off the hook for it to be okay to be NOT like other people, to have your own path, to go your own way, to do things in your own style, to have your own needs and boundaries, to dislike some things that other people like, to not want to participate in certain things that other people tout as ideal, is totally fine. Most of these "preferences" are totally rooted in how the physical body is made up and how the brain is connected, how the personality is structured and what that makes you feel comfortable with (or not).

We're all working on transcending these limits and things but we shouldn't be in denial that the body has its own very unique persuasion which is not very likely to completely match anyone else on the planet. I like most spiritual people want to 'become' or remember being the perfect soul that God created, my true self, my real self, but I highly highly doubt that this is going to change the nature, shape, color, style, orientation, workings, mannerisms, cycles, or character of my physical body in any significant way.

The body is an encounter suit. It's not you, but it IS a major limit and it does have major differences to other bodies. We can't pretend that's not true at this level. We're trying to rise above it and not identify with it and not use that to keep us from God, but at the same time we also don't want to get into people-pleasing and trying to fit into something that we are not comfortable with. It's okay to be different while you're working on trying to become "all the same" and "one" with everyone in spirit.

I've yet to see a single awakening person whose speaking voice suddenly sounds like it's a whole other person. Same accent, same intonations, same pacing, same emphasis, everything. That's not going to change anytime soon. We are not bodies, but bodies ARE bodies.

For me I am going to just be DIFFERENT, and NOT the same, until I can find a way to transcend the LEVEL of differences and be truly equal in mind and spirit. And I do not expect my body will ever suddenly turn into a rainbow, will not tolerate expectations to fit in with any body-oriented category, and will stick out like a sore thumb until the soreness is healed in my mind.

"The surface traits of God's teachers are not at all alike. They do not look alike to the body's eyes, they come from vastly different backgrounds, their experiences of the world vary greatly, and their superficial "personalities" are quite distinct" UrM5A1

"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently, Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them as you were before." UrW155L1

"The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness." UrT1C12

"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. " UrM9A6

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you." UrT18I1

"The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs." UrT15H12

I'm noticing quite a lot of ways in which our "sympathies" about victims are being uprooted in ACIM.

Where we might've bought into and felt sorry for someone who is going through difficulties or having pains or a sickness etc, we're instead being asked to recognize the big picture.

In general, we are immortal beings who are perfect and have no real needs. Jesus then frames all forms of suffering as "the game of death", in which we deliberately choose to suffer in a very wide variety of forms, in order to try to convince ourselves and others that guilt is real, sin is real, we're bodies, we're victims, we didnt' chose it, etc.

There is a huge displacement of responsibility, a huge lack of recognition, a huge disowning of power, and a presenting of oneself in a role of a victim which makes it look like we're totally helpless and didn't choose anything. But all of this is an ego disguise to cover up the secret of salvation, that we're doing it to ourselves.

So that then reframes all suffering as self-chosen, and it means that we're playing a game at trying to portray ourselves as victimized and powerless, as if we didn't choose it and don't want it, while simultaneously denying God and rejecting immortality and trying to make out that we're something dying.

A suffering person puts on a disguise in which they portray themselves with the appearance of a victim who is going through something terrible, in order to hide the other side of the coin which is the denied and disowned responsibility, choose, causation and power, that put the thing there in the first place. It's like someone presenting a lie about themselves, deceiving themselves with it, and then trying to convince everyone else. But if you see only the surface appearance you won't see the deeper fact of how they are using their power to do this.

When we then look upon someone suffering from false perception, we'll fail to recognize the truth of what the person is really trying to pull off - an illusion of being unfairly treated - and will instead enter into false empathy, where we sympathise and go into the suffering and believe in it and then react to it with egoic impulses to fix and stop the problem, having made it real.

When we buy into suffering we're not really helping or healing, and then we're not being miraculous. To be miraculous you have to assert God's truth, which is eternal life, immortality, perfection, no problems, no needs, the impossibility of sickness, the responsible ownership of power and the power of decision, the fact that we can be hurt by nothing but our own thoughts, etc.

If we want to heal someone for example we have to NOT believe in what they are believing in, otherwise we will enter into it with them and now both of us are lost. We have to believe they are NOT suffering and are NOT sick, otherwise we can't give them anything OTHER than sickness and suffering. If someone seems to be suffering, they're not really suffering. Not in truth. Nothing real can be threatened. There is no real suffering, no real sickness, no real death. It's all an illusion made by our egos, like putting on a performance in a play and pretending.

So if you knew and recognized that someone is a perfectly capable powerful immortal being, Christ even, who has been given all the power in heaven and earth, and can do absolutely anything, and here they are presenting themselves as weak and suffering and victimized and helpless, and you knew this was an "act" in a fictional story, would you believe it and buy into it? Or would you see through the appearance and remind them that this is not the truth of them?

It is not forgiveness to be deceived by people who seem to be suffering. Yes, ok, we need to be sensitive and compassionate and have empathy and so on, and it may not be appropriate to even reveal any of this to them directly. But nevertheless for our own sanity AND for theirs, we must uphold a position of NOT believing in the lie that we are something mortal, a sick and suffering self that has had things happen to it that it didn't put there. Everyone who suffers and dies choose it, including ourselves.

To be forgiving is to be miraculous, because it means that you overlook and see right through the guilty assertion that "there is something wrong", you recognise that in truth NOTHING is wrong, and therefore you do not BELIEVE the lies that are being presented. And people who are suffering and sick and afraid and unhappy and dying and so on are NOT being honest, they are lying to themselves about what is true of them. It is your job as a miracle worker to NOT buy into it, but to recognize it as a lie and not be deceived.

In order to then be truly helpful you have to be in a position where you are believing only God's laws, God's truth, God's perfection and God's reality. That means that you believe everyone is inherently immortal, invulnerable, powerful, perfect, innocent and has nothing wrong with them. And that means you cannot believe that sickness is real or true or exists, or that suffering is real or true or exists. Such things are not POSSIBLE in God. Believing in them causes and choose and reinforces them, which is the mindset of the unhealed healer.

To be a healed healer entails not believing in suffering or sickness or death in any form it appears, because you recognize it is not true and not possible at all in God. And so it must be a lie, and you will not be deceived by it. Instead, you will assert the only truth of unconditional love, which is that the other person is already perfect, and you will affirm this in them, and hold that space for them strongly, in the light, in which you see the perfection in them and refuse to accept anything else as true of them. This makes it very hard for their mind to buy into its own lies because in your joined mind you are looking right through them.

To then assert ONLY LIFE, is the expression of love that has power and life in it, which is the giving of a miracle of resurrection. It then truly helps and truly heals, because it gives what is truly asked for - a call for love is given love. You can only give this by NOT believing the lies of sickness and suffering, and instead recognizing that only immortality is true, and the person is not really dying, and they do not really have a problem, and they are not really sick or even a body. This assertion of life gives life only, and does not give death or the belief in death, and so is only a blessing and can only help.

So we need to be aware of the fact that sympathising is ego, and false empathy does not heal, and buying into someone's pity part does not help them, and even if people are convinced with a long story about what has happened to them and how awful it is and so on, you must not buy into it if you are to be truly helpful. Yes you can have compassion for where they are at, what they believe, what seems real to them, and what they are experiencing, but not at the expense of adding extra weight to it buy believing it's true and real under God's laws.

Everyone in the world has a serious case of self-deception, which is ego, and that results in all forms of suffering. And people will always complain about the suffering and seem to not want it and to have not chosen it, but that's all part of the deception and the giving away of power and responsibility. It's how we play the game and role of being a helpless victim. It is not empowering to someone to just join them in misery, it's only empowering to give them power, which comes from God, through love and healing.

As such, those who we sympathize with and who we feel sorry for and who we think are seriously definitely stuck in some situation that no-one can do anything about, are all temptations to regard ourselves and our brothers stuck in a hell of our own making, a hell that we don't want to admit to having chosen, or having power over. But we always have the power to choose otherwise.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"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."

"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. 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."

"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?

What does it mean that you are not the body? It's not what you think.

What you are, is whole, within. Like you are this little orb of light which contains the whole of God.

As a whole self, you increase by extending and creating.

When the separation idea was introduced, it was suggested that there was something separate from you or outside of you, or indeed that you were separate and outside of yourself.

This was the idea of sin, and it ultimately led to the invention of the body through OUTWARD PROJECTION FROM THE MIND. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

The body then is sort of this "shell", really an IDEA, which you have surrounded yourself with as a result of this belief that a) you are outside of yourself and b) there is something separate from your inner self.

It has thus formed a picture which seems to surround and enclose you. This is why when there is a body showing up it seems like you are "inside" it.

But it also then simultaneously seems as if you "are" the body and the stuff inside you is invisible and not yourself. This leads you to build a "bodily identity", to be identified with the body. In more extreme cases the outer bodily self seems to be the ONLY self, and the inner self is very hidden. We need to reverse that.

So the part of your mind that you split off and think of as separate from your inner self, forms a fake identity composed of a body image, which you now think is yourself.

So what happens when you stop having a split mind?

What is the purpose of saying "I am not a body I am free"?

The purpose is not to deny the body. It is not to identify yourself as being that which is inside the body while the outer bodily image remains either. It is not to disassociate from the body. It is not to escape the body. And it is not to think of yourself as "only mind and not a body."

The state you are meant to be returning to, is a state in which there is no separation in you, there is no sense of something having been split off as outside of you, and therefore of being whole "within" yourself. When you do that, what is going to happen to the body which was "outside you"? How is it going to even show up if there is no part of you that identifies AS IT because there is no part of you which exists outside of your inner self?

IT IS GOING TO DISAPPEAR.

It was only showing up there because your inner self projected it (the idea of sin projected outward) and it is only showing up because part of you believed that you were outside of yourself.

Your sense of identity formed a "bodily identity" or an identification not just with a body but AS a body. You can also think of it as an "external self". And however the mind is relating to its own identity, that is how it shows up. If the mind is thinking that it has separation in it, ie walls, it will materialize a body! And yet if the mind does not believe it has any walls within itself, the body will disappear because the mind is seeing itself as a WHOLENESS, not a split-off self.

This is also correlates to the creation of sickness. When the mind is more strongly believing that it is separated from itself, split in two and part of itself is outside the inner self, this belief in separation attacks yourself and makes you SICK. And that sickness will now manifest IN, or more accurately, is projected outward AS, a sick-looking body, which is really just a mental image of yourself as sick. The less you believe in separation, therefore, the less your mind is split and the less you believe you ARE an external self, the less your body image will show up as sick, and thus sickness will appear to disappear as well, leaving a "holy" and "immortal" body, just prior to its complete disappearance.

When that externalized identity is returned to your true "inner" identity, the "outer" illusory separate self is not there anymore. It's been integrated into the whole of what you are within. So there is no basis for the body. It has no grounds, no function, no purpose, no reason to be there. SO IT DISAPPEARS. The mind is not seeing itself AS one, it does not believe it has a second identity, so it STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY.

The presence of a body is simply a symptom or side-effect of you believing that you are not pure spirit and therefore you have a separate second identity. Identification "with" the body is nothing more than the strength of your belief that you MUST BE a body, because you must be outside of yourself , having gone "out of your mind."

It's not that the body exists on its own and you happen to "come into it" or incarnate into it or that it was there before you arrived or that it will remain after you leave. If you seem to go through that process of discarding bodies, you will reincarnate, because the discarding process (death) is really an attempt to SEVER yourself from yourself. What that means is, you have tried so hard to DISCONNECT your inner self from the part of you which became "outer", the part which identified with being "a body", and so CUT OFF part of yourself and destroyed it. All death occurs to the "projected self", not the inner self. And all death is just a testimony to how much SEPARATION and therefore false identification there was within you. And that mental state REMAINS, and will CAUSE ANOTHER BODY to be desired and projected.

That's what causes all death. Death is the self-attack of the inner self upon the outer self. Or to put it another way, what we think of as "mind" seems to be the inner self only, and we say that this mind-self attacks the body self, but the body self is actually another PART of your mind which is temporarily identified with being an external illusion. So one part of mind is attacking another part of mind. Mind is not just the part of you that is INNER, and it is not just the part of you which is INSIDE the body.

The body IS WITHIN THE MIND and it is an image being thought of, projected, imagined WITHIN the mind as a whole. One part of mind attacks the other and tries to destroy it, and that results in the illusory sickness and death of that other part of mind, but does not heal the desire to attack, and so the mind "makes" another body (reincarnation) and proceeds to attack it again. This will keep on happening until both parts of mind are rejoined as one so that there is no separation, then there will be no more bodies materializing as ideas of sin.

So then having destroyed part of yourself and yet still believing your identity WAS the outer self, your inner self is still projecting and split and MUST manifest another body. And this forms the basis for reincarnation - that you still believe you are a body and must have a body and so this magnetizes you to a body or causes one to materialize. YOU put your body into your mother's womb and YOU grow it and YOU cause it to show up the way it shows up. Sperm and egg coming together does NOT CAUSE bodies to appear. It is an illusion. Mind causes bodies to appear and arranges FAKE JOINING on an ego level (which must be an illusion of joining) to pretend that you are inherited from the dream.

So death is not a way to leave the dream, or to heal separation. It cannot accomplish this because it means that you simply attacked part of yourself with hatred and tried to destroy it and had identified strongly with "being a body" at least in part. The only way out of the dream is NOT THROUGH DEATH. "The dream is not left by death but by truth."

The dream is only left by truth by re-integrating the part of you which you split off and associated with a body, and returning its identity to be identified with the INNER self which remains hidden behind the body or seemingly trapped inside the body invisibly. You do not withdraw FROM the body, you withdraw the body itself. You withdraw belief in BEING a body. You must not try to "separate yourself from the body"!

If you do that all you're doing is adding denial on top of denial. Denial of the body is an unworthy form of denial - that's what this means. If you believe the body exists ON ITS OWN and HAS ITS OWN WILL and you then try to get away from it to "be only mind", you are SEPARATING YOURSELF MORE. You are trying to separate yourself off from the separate self which you already split off from yourself, adding another whole layer of denial and separation. This will make you more sick. The body in a sense should be embraced but only up to the point where you recognize that you are projecting it and therefore can un-project it through its PROPER UNDOING, by reversing your belief in separation. Without a belief in separation, there is no sin, and therefore sin cannot be made flesh and projected outward. No more body.

You withdraw the PROJECTION of the body through re-owning yourself and identifying with Spirit. This does NOT mean that the body exist at the same time as the spirit. It does NOT mean that the body WILL REMAIN once you have shifted identity to being ONLY spirit. It means the body MUST DISAPPEAR. It is only showing up because it is what you believe about your identity and what you think you are. When your mind is no longer believing that you are a body AT ALL and is completely whole and healed and no longer split or divided or separated off, there is no NEED for a body, no BELIEF in a body, no PROJECTION of a body, and your mind will STOP MAKING ONE.

That is when you are free. Not free of a body that carries on existing. Not free through deathin which the body CONTINUES. Not free because you laid the body down to die and then headed on over to God's party. But simply free of MAKING bodies at all. If you want to be free of reincarnation, and free of DEATH, you MUST STOP BELIEVING YOU ARE SEPARATE FROM YOURSELF, which means you must stop believing you are, or need to be, a body. And thus you will stop making bodies and your body will disappear entirely.

Doing this alleviates all signs of sickness and makes the body temporarily invulnerable and useful only as a communication device. Just prior to the body disappearing completely, it becomes a sign of immortality. Jesus writes about this clearly here:

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

And here...

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. 2 Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. 3 Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies. 4 Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. 5 Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. 6 When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. 7 The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition."

Note that when he says "laid by" here he is not talking about making it die and laying it on the ground and letting it rot while you whiz off to heaven. He means literally, you stop making it, as evidenced by his statements about how he did exactly that.

Jesus already accomplished and demonstrated this through the PROPER UNDOING OF THE BODY through truth and the DISSOLVING of it through spirit identification, not "escape" from it through death or separation or denial or thinking that it still exist OR making it still exist. We are responsible for making ourselves show up as bodies, WE made the body with our mind and can un-make it! We made all sickness, all death, and the body itself. " "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both."

Here is what Jesus has to say about this whole process, which ultimately is the completion of the atonement and the RESURRECTION.... and guess what... not just the disappearing of the body, but the disappearing of THE WORLD (this universe), which is only showing up based on the exact same principle of mind believing in separation, and MUST DISAPPEAR when mind has returned to spirit identification.

""My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. 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.

"I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body’s worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. But now I talk to you and give you the same message. The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more. And you still do have the power to make this decision as I did.

"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 any time that 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.

"A body can not stay without illusion and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion; There is no order of difficulties in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection: Illusions are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains.

"These lessons needed to be taught but once, for when the stone of death is rolled away, what can be seen but an empty tomb? And that is what you see who follow me into the sunlight and away from death, past all illusions, on to Heaven’s gate, where God will come Himself to take you home"

One of the major teachings of A Course in Miracles, also present in Buddhism and Hinduism and many other belief systems, even present in the very first lessons of the Workbook, is that the physical world is a world of illusions. That many different objects only appear to be different, and their differences are meaningless.

In effect, the teaching is that you cannot judge a book by its cover, and you absolutely cannot take the objects of the world at face value. While most of the world believes that the world contains many many different things, different forms, objects, bodies, types, shapes, sizes, configurations, combinations etc, in truth there is actually only one thing here.

At first, to a person who is somewhat "blinded by perception of form", the world appears to be a tremendously complicated place filled with many different things. The differences are identified by how they appear, or what materials it seems to be made of, or how it behaves, or how it's constructed, or what it is used for, or what the symptoms seem to be etc. But these are all disguises.

Such a person will then believe that there really is a major real difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, between a car and a house, between a man and a woman, between a cake and some icecream. Places will all seem to be different and offer different seeming experiences. The next new toy will appear to be something you've never seen before. And everywhere you turn every single object seems to be distinct, separate and unique.

In such a view, uniqueness is valued highly, as though being unique and different sets you apart and identifies you and defines you. As if you stand out and be yourself by being unlike anything else. This merely emphasizes the sense of separateness between things and reinforces the belief that space and time are real.

The more a person thinks that there really are real differences between things, the more they will buy into what we call the "hierarchy of illusions". That is where some things are considered to MEAN something different to others, such as that a death is far "worse" than a mild headache, or that a million dollars is better than 1 dollar, or a burning house is a far worse problem than just that your fingernails need clipping.

For such a person, the world is seen as having the power to cause them, to victimize them, to do things to them. They see the world as both offensive and attractive. Some parts of it they will separate out and label as desirable, wanted, meaningful and valuable. At the same time other things which induce more unpleasant reactions will be relegated to hell and labeled as unwanted.

A person then will be living half a life, separated off, trying to maximize the good stuff and minimize the bad stuff. Always on the run and living in fear, trying to hide from and prevent all the terrible suffering and tragedies that happen, while simultaneously strongly investing in, believing in and wanting to keep, the very same world which induces these things - for its supposed benefits.

This is clearly an insane state of mind, in which a person is in a relationship with a fickle, unpredictable, demanding, controlling, overpowering world, which sometimes throws them a bone and gives them something to seemingly celebrate, while quickly turning around and slapping them in the face the next day with some horrifying problem.

Such a life is a rollercoaster of constantly being thrown around by the waves of whatever's next, with no real peace and no consistency and no true invulnerability. It is a life of fear, wrapped up in an interpretation which frames parts of it as a life that is wanted. A life of judgement, in which some aspects of the world are despised and rejected while others are overly embraced and absorbed into. This is not a spiritual life, it's a life of contradiction and conflict.

What we have to all come to realize, and what a person generally WILL realize given enough time, is that the offerings of the world are not REALLY different things. It may take exposure to a great many things the world seems to separately give, in order to "tire" of the lure of these differences, to transcend them, to see through them, and to realize they are all the same.

This is real spiritual progression, where a person begins to see that the differences between objects are all artificial and meaningless. That having that super precious rare gem is not really that important, versus having a glass of water. Where the extremes of the values of things versus others, flattens out, and a person becomes far less attracted to, or put off by, any particular "temptation" that the world is offering that day.

What this means is that the learning becomes generalized. As a person matures more spiritually they will realize there isn't really a significant difference between things. That in order to retain a sense of integrity, peace, consistency and honesty, the difference forms of things have to be ignored. In order not to be constantly thrown around on the rollercoaster of hell, reacting to everything as if it means something, you have to learn to become more stable and unconditional.

Not changing moods based on conditions, not adapting to what's happening, not allowing the world to do things to you, not seeing yourself as either victimized negatively OR positively, not giving power TO the world to change or define you, not allowing circumstances to dictate what will happen, not giving away power to the extremes of the hierarchy of illusions, and no longer falling for the temptation to believe that the world in certain configurations means hell on earth.

Being deceived by the forms and differences of the world is unconsciousness. It is a state of unawareness and spiritual irresponsibility. It indicates a person who is selfish and wants to get things from the world, but at the same time doesn't want the world to give them the wrong things. It's a person whose relationships are all based on specialness and unholiness, a person who is themselves not whole, who is in denial of wholeness and therefore distanced from God in their "independence."

In order to wake up to reality, a person has to learn that this world isn't really offering anything different. It is really regurgitating the same stuff. It spews out the same illusions in different forms. Masses of materialistic products are made in which everyone now tries to create every single possible variation of a thing. And how many such variations does anyone really need? Their differences are insubstantial and superficial. Their different appearances are regarded as the defining factor as to how valuable they and what price tag they come with. But it's all made of the same lies and untruths.

The real truth is that there IS no difference between anything in the world. All appearances are illusions. All forms and shapes and sizes and amounts and values are utterly deceptive. They are all designed to tempt you to believe, to deceive you into believing, that physical reality is real when it isn't. That there is a world of many things, all of which are unlike the others, offering you constant distractions and side-quests and tempting pathways, all of which lead to the same ultimate end in death.

The truth is that there is not really any choices in the world. ALL of the things the world offers lead to death and destruction. Whether it appears to temporarily give you something you want or to take it away quickly, all forms end in death. They are made of death because they are made of the attempt to separate things out, to attack the other, to be unlike, unequal, in a constant state of war and conflict, incapable of peace and never offering anything consistent.

Fluctuating illusions cannot be reality. If something can change its form and be something one day and something else the next, it has no real permanent identity. A flower goes from a seed to a bloom to a wilted mess and not one of those states is reality. It is all the same thing. Be not deceived by what you see in the world. The world presents a picture of nothing pretending to be something, and it has absolutely no meaning.

The entire drive of A Course in Miracles is to teach us and help us to practice NOT being deceived by physical differences, by appearances, or by any sense of there being any variation in importance or relevance between one object and another. As we look around the room and OVERLOOK any particular reason to categorize things or to say they are more or less applicable to the ONE truth, we are training ourselves to no longer be deceived by the world and its lies.

"The belief in order of difficulties is the basis for the world's perception. It rests on differences; on uneven background and shifting foreground, on unequal heights and diverse sizes, on varying degrees of darkness and light, and thousands of contrasts in which each thing seen competes with every other in order to be recognized. A larger object overshadows a smaller one. A brighter thing draws the attention from another with less intensity of appeal. And a more threatening idea, or one conceived of as more desirable by the world's standards, completely upsets the mental balance. What the body's eyes behold is only conflict. Look not to them for peace and understanding."

"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."

"Appearances deceive BUT CAN BE CHANGED. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see BEYOND appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and CAPABLE of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change. The miracle is means to demonstrate that ALL appearances can change BECAUSE they are appearances, and CANNOT have the changelessness reality entails. The miracle attests salvation FROM appearances by SHOWING they can change."

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"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."

"Applying the same idea to each of them separately is the first step in ultimately recognizing they are all the same."

"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."

"This world SEEMS to hold out many purposes, each different, and with different values. Yet they are all the same. Again, there is no order, but a SEEMING hierarchy of values."

"The spark of beauty, or the veil of ugliness; the real world, or the world of guilt and fear; truth or illusion; freedom or slavery, - it is all the same. For you can NEVER choose EXCEPT between God and the ego."

Concepts, theories, explanations, metaphysics, it is not enough. Mind is not changed through an accumulation of information. Mind's quality must be changed by an INFUSION OF LOVE, which can only come from God - because God IS the only love there is.

A willingness to let yourself be loved by God, allows you to RECEIVE LOVE into your awareness. This will act like a strength of light which gives LIFE to you and intensifies your light. It is impossible to explain how it does this, or what it does. Love simply heals and miraculously brightens mind's quality and condition, restoring it to order and perfection.

This has absolutely nothing to do with learning concepts or ideas, mastering theories or metaphysics, intellectually grasping complicated logic, or figuring out what the course is saying. This is AN EXPERIENCE OF RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. A direct repairing of the only problem - which is the sense of separation from God.

ONLY your sense of separation from God needs correcting. This is all about your relationship with God. Directly. God to you, and you to God. This has NOTHING to do with other people, bodies, the world, thoughts, ego, forgiveness, or anything other than BEING ONE WITH HIM.

For mind to become higher and truly be more whole and healed, it has to open to love. And that love is not a theory. It is FELT AND EXPERIENCED DIRECTLY. LOVE IS ALIVE! That love is God himself, in your mind, not as some mind-thing or thought-thing, but as an actual FEELING OF LOVE AND HAPPINESS.

This love holds you, embraces you, supports you, reassures you, comforts you, cares for you, strengthens you, and heals you. It is God's arm around you through the Holy Spirit. It is RESURRECTION. This love IS WHAT YOU ARE. Not some concept of a thing, but actual experienced reality, the truth of your being.

Receiving this love from God is the highest form of prayer, in which you recognize, acknowledge, and become grateful for the fact that God HAS GIVEN YOU ALL HIS LOVE ALREADY. He gave it in your creation. It is in you, it is what you are. Acknowledging and receiving this love is the recognition of WHAT YOU ARE, and the reclaiming of your inheritance and identity.

If distance from God is the problem, then you need to get more God into you in order to solve the problem. What you are lacking is God, and nothing else. The only thing you NEED, is God. God fulfils ALL your needs. Every problem, every suffering, every loss, every pain and fear, every sickness and death, is nothing other than a symptom of a lack of God. The ONLY ANSWER to this is to become MORE UNITED WITH GOD.

Miracles are the expression of the love that you receive from God, and GIVE LIFE where it seems lacking. Miracles give love, through the power of God, to illuminate and intensify the light and love in others. We are to give the kingdom to the kingdom, to teach only love because that is what we are, and to RECEIVE GOD in order to HAVE GOD to GIVE GOD to GOD.

The experience of God's love is a HIGHER state of mind and experience. It is not just another sophisticated and clever interpretation of the truth, or a more abstract or higher grasp of the theory of it. It is a direct plugging into the supernatural source of all life and love and strength. It is a real felt condition of being and light and life.

You simply need to GET WITH GOD! To let God into your mind again. To admit that God is with you everywhere you go. To regard yourself as one with God, dependent on God for everything, trusting God for everything, and allowing God to work through you in all things you do. The whole must be given to the whole in order to have the whole.

LET GOD LOVE YOU RIGHT NOW, AND FEEL IT!

"I am sustained by the Love of God."

"Only the Love of God will protect you in all circumstances. It will lift you out of every trial, and raise you high above all the perceived dangers of this world into a climate of perfect peace and safety. It will transport you into a state of mind which nothing can threaten, nothing can disturb, and nothing can intrude upon the eternal calm of the Son of God."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence."

"I am surrounded by the Love of God."

"I feel the Love of God within me now."

"To feel the Love of God within you is to see the world anew, shining in innocence, alive with hope, and blessed with perfect charity and love."

"If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love."

"I feel the Love of God within me now. The Love of God is what created me. The Love of God is everything I am. The Love of God proclaimed me as His Son. The Love of God within me sets me free."

"But let me follow Him Who leads me home, and peace is certain as the Love of God."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"I am sustained by the Love of God."

"As I listen to God's Voice, I am sustained by His Love. As I open my eyes, His Love lights up the world for me to see. As I forgive, His Love reminds me that His Son is sinless. And as I look upon the world with the vision He has given me, I remember that I am His Son."

"Who, with the love of God upholding him, could find the choice of miracles or murder hard to make?"

"Grace is an aspect of the Love of God which is most like the state prevailing in the Unity of truth."

"Grace is acceptance of the Love of God within a world of seeming hate and fear. By grace alone the hate and fear are gone, for grace presents a state so opposite to everything the world contains that those whose minds are lighted by the gift of grace can not believe the world of fear is real."

"For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you BE released. FORGET THIS NOT, or love will be unable to find you, and comfort you."

"But Jesus is for you the bearer of Christ's single message of the Love of God. You need no other."

"Give thanks for mercy and the Love of God. Rejoice in the power of forgiveness to heal your sight completely."

"Can anything EXCEED the love of God? Can anything, then, exceed YOUR will?"

"There is no veil the love of God in us together CANNOT lift. The way to Truth is open. Follow it with me."

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received. And so they learn that it is theirs forever. All barriers disappear before their coming"

"You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves."

"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's."

"Never forget the Love of God, Who HAS remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from His loving Mind, wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever."

"Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."

"Today accept Atonement, not to change reality, but merely to accept the truth about yourself, and go your way rejoicing in the endless Love of God."

"I will forgive and this will disappear. To every apprehension, every care, and every form of suffering repeat these selfsame words. And then you hold the key that opens Heaven's gate, and brings the Love of God the Father down to earth at last, to raise it up to Heaven."

"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."

"Think, then, how great the Love of God for YOU must be, that He has given you a part of Him, to save from pain and give YOU happiness."

"For still deeper than the ego's foundation, and MUCH stronger than IT will ever be, is your intense and burning love of God, AND HIS FOR YOU."

"The love of God is in everything He created, for His Son is everywhere. Look with peace upon your brothers, and God will come rushing into your heart, in gratitude for your gift to Him."

"You will no longer see what never was, nor hear what makes no sound. Is it a sacrifice to give up nothing, and to receive the Love of God forever?"

"If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here."

"The power of Heaven, the Love of God, the tears of Christ and the joy of His Eternal Spirit are marshalled to defend you from your own attack. For you attack THEM, being PART of them, and they must SAVE you, for they love themselves."

"Do not side with sickness in the presence of a Son of God, even if HE believes in it, for YOUR acceptance of God in him ACKNOWLEDGES the love of God which he has forgotten. Your recognition of him as PART OF GOD teaches him the truth about himself, WHICH HE IS DENYING."

"Let the love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another."

"God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love."

"Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them."

"Now are they all made free along with us. Now are they all our brothers in God's Love."

"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you?"

"God loves His Son."

"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."

"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."

"Could you not look with greater charity, on whom God loves with perfect love? Do not interpret AGAINST His love for you."

"Every brother God loves as He loves you; neither less nor more. HE NEEDS THEM ALL EQUALLY, and so do YOU."

"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father's love forever."

You can heal with the ego, or with God.

The ego's form of healing is terrifying. It involves becoming very very certain that you know what the problem is. It's entirely based around looking at the problem so closely that you see every part of it intensely, describe its every detail, explain its every reason for happening, analyse and disect it and do studies on it, and even give it a name. Another word for this is diagnosis. The real name for this is insanity.

When you go to a doctor who is operating with the ego, and they give you a diagnosis, they are doing the best they can given their belief system. They've been trained by other ego's that the diagnosis-and-prescription model is healing. But when they do this, it is terrifying. And it's not just terrifying because you're a scaredy cat.

It's terrifying because it makes the problem very very real. It is no accident that when someone is told "you have cancer" or "you've got a disease" or they finally find out what the heck is wrong with you, it scares the living shit out of you. Many doctors are fear-mongers, and they create fear without realizing it, because they do not realize they are in the business of associating truth with illusions. For the most part they don't even know they're doing this because it's so widely accepted to have this approach to sickness.

It's not just because of what the diagnosis says, or what they think is going to happen to you because of it, but because it makes an illusion seem like it is the truth. The alignment of a sense of truth with something that is, in God's terms, NOT true, is horrifying, precisely BECAUSE it is not really true. IF it were true, it WOULD be very upsetting. Anyone who aligned truth with what is false would be forgiven for being upset about doing so because it MUST produce fear.

One time I was at the dentist and as the person announced that I had some signs of 'gum disease', with all their fancy very-serious medical equipment showing pictures of it, and with all sincerity and sense of authority in their voices, it caused me to have a panick attack. Not because it was true, but because it was NOT the real truth, but was being passed for it, and the 'authority' of medical people puts a huge amount of clout behind the ego's barrage of attack. They do think that they are helping, and perhaps to a degree they are, but making the sickness seem real is nothing more than an ego mechanism for inducing fear and death.

Another time, when an authoritative and specialist and highly-educated and responsibility-for-your-life-grabbing guy said of my wife that she had cancer, I just about fainted. Thanks for that! It wasn't because it was true, but because it was not God's truth, and it was an ego attack of fear-inducing unconsciousness. The same thing happened in hospital visits where I had to depend on the word of very experienced specialists to "give the news" etc, which was just so nerve-wracking and horrible, not because of the news, but because of the arrangement of the ego portraying itself as knowing so seriously and so provably that "something terrible has happened". For me it was a lesson in not believing them. But I digress...

To the ego, getting a good hard look at the problem and describing it, and asking you to accept that it is what IS happening, and therefore it is the TRUTH, means it is being accurate and correct. Its sense of certainty is basically a death sentence, whereby it claims that all evidence points to you being 'actually sick'. As if sickness is real.

And then, having made the problem intensely real and accepting it as true, and therefore deciding to keep it real, it will prescribe for you some kind of measures that you must undergo, which also are nothing but terrifying, which allegedly, and in some cases appears to, produce certain changes which you might find preferable.

Yes, some of these procedures do seem to 'help' if you think of help as maybe trading one problem for another, or if you're comfortable with the side-effects, etc. Maybe a surgery might well seem to save your life by hacking a tumor out of your body. This might seem better than the alternative, but it is still terrifying.

The reason the's ego's diagnosis is terrifying is that it makes illusions seem real. When you associate something that, in God's terms, is false, with an idea of it being true, this is what makes shadows turn into monsters. It causes insanity. You can become very good at figuring out "what is really happening" or "what is really the cause", which really is an act of trying to prove with the ego that the problem really does have a cause. If you can prove that a problem has a cause, that means the problem must be real, and so the effort to do this is actually a choice to CAUSE the problem to be real, in the name of trying to fix it.

To a degree, this does mean that those who diagnose, cause sickness, or at least that they tend to believe in sickness so strongly that all they can do is reflect back your own belief in sickness rather than liberating you from it. The ego's efforts to "cure" are extremely rare, even if it has this as a supposed goal. It is not really intent on curing, only in disguising and temporarily alleviating, only to bring a return of the suffering in some other form at some other time, perhaps to some other person.

It is one thing to find out and know "for sure" that someone is sick. But doing so keeps them sick. And the solutions offered based on this belief generally are magic, not miracles. Magic seeks to keep the problem and the belief in it, while pretending to get rid of the problem.

God is not like this.

God's form of healing is nothing like the ego's form of healing. God's healing does not make illusions real. That means that God's healing really has nothing to do with diagnosis, and that only the bare minimum of diagnosis might be needed, and in fact really none at all. Describing the problem has nothing to do with whether God is healing it. Knowing what is causing the problem has nothing to do with God healing it. Being very certain about how the problem came to be or how long someone had it has nothing to do with God's healing.

When we see someone who is sick, if we see their sickness as acceptable, that it is normal and natural, that it cannot be reversed, that we do not have the power to do and that it would be frightening to do so, we KEEP the person sick. We compound the sickness. This is the same thing as describing (diagnosing) a person as sick, making the sickness real, believing it is true, and that it is happening, and that it is supposed to be happening.

"When miracles are not happening, something has gone wrong." - ACIM

Why do we tolerate sickness like it is a normal part of life? Why do we think the only way to deal with it is through the ego's medical system? God has a way to heal. It's called a miracle. And this is what Jesus is trying to teach us to do. It's not called A Course in MIRACLES for nothing.

The ONLY truth, is that a person is NOT SICK. The ONLY truth, is that it is NOT true that they have a disease. The only truth is that they are perfectly whole, perfectly innocent, perfectly guiltless, perfectly happy, perfectly divinely healthy. That's what the TRUTH is about everyone. That is the only truth.

When your sense of truth is aligned with this truth, you WILL NOT be afraid. You will not find this truth to be terrifying. And what this truth DOES to deal with the illusion of sickness, will not INSTILL FEAR, and it will not frighten the living shit out of people as they worry about how horrifying procedures will have to be endured in order to be relieved. The idea of having to go through a suffering in order to regain health is the ego's idea of SACRIFICE, which says that you MUST SUFFER, in order to ATONE for having sinned, and that only after enough suffering will you be, maybe, allowed to experience relief. For a while.

God's truth is the only truth that is truly true. When you mistake any other piece of information for truth, you will be afraid. And when you are doing that, you are CAUSING SICKNESS. You read that right. Either you are causing health, or you are causing sickness. Either you are supporting health, or you are attacking it. When you see sickness and think it real and justify keeping it, that is an attack. Would love keep sickness and maintain suffering?

Therefore what we need to UNLEARN is the ego's system of healing, which is really a system of keeping problems real and terrifying you with them, while prescribing you with half-baked solutions of unconsciousness which either don't work or work partly or have side effects. Side effects are produced by a dualistic thought system which is not operating from a mind of wholeness. When the ego is coming up with a magical prescription, it is going to have both positive and negative effects. That is because it is based in a thought system of separation. Even food - the perfect diet - is a myth, because all food is an attempted magical attack.

"I am sustained by the love of God" is literal. 100%. Insert the word "only".

We need to recognize that we're operating in the ego and are attempting to heal through the attack of making illusions real, and that our main tool (weapon) is aligning truth with the untrue. Mistaking sickness for reality. Mistaking disease for health. Mistaking the appearance of sickness for something which cannot be reversed or undone - which is the idea of sin. We need to see and notice ourselves ACCEPTING that an accurate diagnosis of disease, even if it seems to be completely convincing and backed up by evidence and proven and true, IT IS STLL NOT THE TRUTH. It is the ego's truth.

"Only love is real" - ACIM

"Only the truth is true" -ACIM

What we then need to do is open up to GOD'S WAY OF HEALING, which is divine health. And this will appear to the ego's of the world to be supernatural. Beyond the ways of the ego. Ultra-natural. God's way of healing does not look at the problem in fine detail and terrify people with it and then shock them with it and then tell them to suck on a pill. God's way of healing is to recognize that the person IS NOT REALLY SICK, and to NOT BELIEVE in sickness, and to DENY the illusion of sickness any sense of reality at all. This is the absolute OPPOSITE of diagnosis. It is CORRECTION, and correction is true healing.

God's way of healing is to affirm, enforce, express and extend, God's natural order, divine health and truth. It is to affirm what is really true about a person, and to focus on that, even if it is not what appears to be how they are currently expressing themselves. Even if it is in the face of sickness or disease or death. That stuff is NOT TRUTH. Even the most convincing ego lie of all - that someone has died, IS NOT TRUTH. We are not meant to just lay down and take it and accept it and go along with it. That's going along with the ego.

We're to RESURRECT our brothers and BRING THEM BACK TO LIFE. Bring them back to God. Bring them back to divine health, invulnerability, strength, power, illumination, awareness, and truth. Real truth, not the ego's fake truth masquerading as "what is happening".

God' truth does not harm. It does not cause fear. It does not focus on what has gone wrong. It does not pay attention to what appears to be happening to a person. It does not VALIDATE sickness. It does not make it real. And it does not take it seriously. It sees that sickness HAS NO POWER OVER GOD. And it recognizes that sickness CANNOT HAPPEN, IS NOT HAPPENING, and WILL NOT HAPPEN, because it is not God's will.

God does not will that people be sick. It is sick to believe that God wants people to be sick for a reason, that sickness is karma, that sickness is asked for, that sickness is true and real or that sickness is natural. God does not will people to be suffering. God does not require people to go through trials and tests and difficult times for special mystrious reasons. God does not allow people difficulties and suffering and make them go through hell. What kind of a love would that be?

God only wills perfect health, immortality, eternal life, invulnerability, innocence, happiness, peace, and abundance. That's it. Anything else is false and is not true. Anything else you need to learn to IGNORE and not believe in and not ALLOW.

All sickness is hereby banned. There is no such thing as "real sickness". Reality and sickness do not go together and should never be associated. To do so is to claim that God is sick. Would you hold your brother in bondage and keep him sick rather than set Him and yourself free?

If your brother is standing before you sick and you stand there and let him be sick, and you do nothing, you are keeping him sick and adding to it. Why do we do this? Why do we just keep tolerating illusions and letting them run our lives? It is time to perform miracles. It is time to stop believing that sickness is true, that it has a place, that it is acceptable, that it is tolerable, that there is nothing we can do about it, and that God created it.

God did not create sickness, therefore sickness is not real, and therefore that person is NOT sick. Any illusion or appearance that they are sick is NOT the truth. I OVERLOOK THEIR SICKNESS (that's forgiveness), and recognize and acknowledge ONLY the True Christ in them, and affirm the absolute perfection of the person, and NOT the shoddy diseased IMAGE that is trying to block the light.

Sickness and disease is not reality. Only love is real.

In A Course in Miracles, there is a significant theme of allowing the Holy Spirit to fulfill his function, without you interrupting it, and without you attempting to take over his role as healer and therapist. But it may not be obvious how far this goes and what this implies. So let's look at what your role in this world is supposed to be.

As an ego, you stand in the way, you direct everything, you control everything, you make all decisions on your own, you tackle all challenges alone, and you believe you have the power and capabilities to succeed independently and with no reliance on spirit. It's kind of a state of "I don't need you God, leave me alone."

In this mode, we are trying to be God. We have an authority problem. We hold life by a tight grip of attempted control and brace ourselves against difficulties believing we do not want any help.

We're unwilling to acknowledge that we might not be capable, that we are too weak, that we cannot succeed, or that we need anyone. It's an attempt to be "independent" in a separated way, attempting not to depend on God at all. It is actually a form of isolation, imprisonment, desperation and failure.

As we attempt then to become more spiritual, there will at first be a transitionary phase in which we try to keep our selfish egotism while trying to turn it into something more spiritual. This is the ego's "seeking" and not finding, which results in a spiritualized ego. The spiritualized ego is quite capable of regarding itself as a hero, a savior, a fixer, a healer, a rescuer, a saint, and exalts itself to a very high level of what it thinks of as holiness.

"All unhealed healers follow the ego's plan for forgiveness, in one form or another.

In this phase, the person will attempt to be the one who heals others, to be the one who has power, to be the one who can perform miracles, to be the one who still relies on themselves but with a higher demand of achievement and perfectionism. The ego self can still adopt a mode of trying to be like Jesus, but it is the trying part where it all falls down.

You might take on various healing modalities or start to tap into forms of guidance, but these will likely be limited because there is still much ego interfering. The ego still wants to be the center of attention, the doer, the one who causes the results. And in fact the ego will even use aggression, anger, forcefulness, intensity, loudness, as "tools" that it believes will cause miracles to occur. And it's fairly guaranteed that these will not work.

But it's important to try to do this, and to fail. Because in the failing you may become more willing to give up on the effort to go it alone. You will recognize what does not work. You will give up on this false hope of being a superhero, and begin to seek a deeper surrender to something larger than yourself.

As you go beyond this phase, you begin to surrender to the holy spirit, ask for help, seek guidance, and reach out beyond yourself for love, support, comfort, healing and guidance. This means a willingness to put aside your self-driven ego efforts, your "going it alone", your "being the one who does it". It means getting out of the way, not merely sitting on the sidelines but removing the ego self that would need to sit on the sidelines. It means opening up to the spirit, to the spiritual eye.

This overall entails a deepening of trust, of allowing there to be something not of you, that is there to help you. It means putting aside the idea that you will be powerful in and of yourself, and no longer being the central figure. Instead of being self-reliant, you must become willing to rely on HIM to HELP you, knowing you cannot go it alone. In a way, it's like you turn more into a medium or channel through which something "not of you", something prior to you, operates. And you want it to, and trust it to, because you know you cannot do this alone.

So what does this really mean? What is our proper role in this world? Everything points to a state in which we ourselves become an open window, a portal, a doorway, through which THE HOLY SPIRIT functions. And in this role, WE do not get to be heroes. And as this doorway, "we need do nothing" is very literal in that it applies to our own self. We no longer need to source or cause things, to be the one who does things, we merely need not interfere with WHAT HE does through us. And he WILL act through us if we will let him, which includes allowing Him to heal minds and bodies.

We're told that he will direct us everywhere we go. We're told that we will be told very specifically what to do. We're told that he will heal through us as we allow him to heal us. We're told not to place limits on what Jesus/HS can do through us. We're told that what HE allows "us" to do, ie what he does through us, is not of this world - meaning it is capable of doing things WE have no clue how to do.

We're told that WE do not understand anything, and HE knows how to heal because that is his function. We're told HE is the only therapist, not us. We're told that OF ourselves we have no power, but there is a power in us that works THROUGH us FOR us.

We're told the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of our wrong decision (all effects, symptoms, errors, manifestations, sicknesses, problems) if we will LET HIM (allow him to ACTUALLY DO IT).

We're told not to assume his function. We're told that when he heals he never fails because he knows how to succeed and cannot fail. We're told to not interfere, to not get in the way. We're told to let him literally SPEAK through our mouths to let HIM to talk others, which means literally channeling him. We're told to let HIM use our bodies, to allow our body to be a device for HIS communication and healing.

We're told to adopt His Christ Vision and to see WITH him how HE sees, so that His vision becomes shared with us - that we tune into it, but do not originate it. We're told this vision is GIVEN to us, we did not create it, so we need to accept it. Were told the atonement is GIVEN to us, and needs only our acceptance and allowance, which means we do not MAKE IT or define it.

We're told that we had everything before the separation and we must now re-receive INHERITANCE FROM GOD. What God wills that we have and be, not what we make of ourselves. We're told that we're still as God created us and that because He created us, we do not MAKE ourselves or redefine ourselves, so must stop trying to be the gatekeeper who decides what is true and false but to instead accept HIS definition of us. We're asked to make NO decisions on our own, relying heavily on guidance. The list goes on.

This all requires a laying down and surrendering of our entire ego effort for control and definition of who and what we are, what the truth is, what we have, and what God would have us do. A willingness to ACCEPT as our own, that which GOD HAS DECIDED we should have and be and share in. And to do so willingly and joyfully, knowing and trusting it is for our highest good to take on board HIS provision, decision, mind, will, power and safety. We are to EXTEND creation, we are not to invent things which are not in alignment with what God has already created.

All of this points to a clear picture that in our natural God-given state, we are not in the business of being something "of ourselves". We're not inventing or reinventing. We're not trying to make something as substitute for what God already created. We're not trying to give ourselves a function that God did not give us, some kind of heroic role that makes us look good or that we think is better than the "chore" of doing God's will "against our will".

Our only function in heaven is creation, our only function on earth is healing. We're more or less asked to completely surrender all control and resistance and unwillingness. We're asked to do GOD'S will, rather than our own separate interests. And to settle into returning to being ONLY what God has decided is true of us.

So our proper function, our natural way of being in harmony with Creation, is basically to be what God defines you to be, to act in accord with HIS will, to create WITH him, to extend FROM him, to communicate and share what HE would have us know, to perform the miracles HE directs, and to have complete total trust and dependency on him for EVERYTHING. To be in a kind of symbiotic relationship of happy dependency. "God and his miracles (you) are inseparable."

Learning to adopt this position allows you to become "a miracle worker". But not because you are a powerful independent superhero, but because you have let go and let God, you have surrendered deeply all efforts to BE God, you have given up "trying" in favor of trusting Holy Spirit's supernatural power which never fails, and you have become a conduit through which HIS POWER can move to cure all ills, solve all problems, and correct all suffering. And that means you are now allowing God to operate THROUGH you in the world.

It is humbling. We do not get to be the center of attention. We do not get to be the false savior. Our inflated spiritualized ego needs to be dissolved and replaced with SHARING. And we simply settle into being OF SERVICE to God, trusting Him in all things, doing what He bids willingly, listening to and following his instructions, and being a representative of His Will. Nor does this mean you are some kind of slave, unwilling worker, coerced victim or person who is being forced to do what they do not want to do. You must be WILLING to recognize and trust that His will is for your good.

So the question is, do you want to be on team ego, or do you want to be on the Holy Spirit's team? Are you willing to adopt HIS function, shared with him in trust, or do you want to keep being the hero of the dream? And are you willing to allow a supernatural power to move THROUGH you, in this world, to perofrm miracles which are not OF you, and which are not of this world?

Are you willing to be a FOLLOWER? A disciple? A willing participant in the great crusade and a professor of Christ?

"The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."

"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. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"ANY attempt you make to correct a brother (which includes attempting to heal him), means that you believe correction by YOU is possible, and this can ONLY be the arrogance of the ego. Correction is of God, Who does not know of arrogance. The Holy Spirit forgives everything, BECAUSE GOD CREATED EVERYTHING. Do not undertake HIS function, or you will forget YOURS."

"Accept ONLY the function of healing in time, because that is what time is FOR."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK. "The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all. This course is a guide to behavior. Being a very direct and very simple learning situation, it provides the guide who tells you what to do. If you do it, you will SEE that it works. Its RESULTS are more convincing than its words. THEY will convince you that the words are true."

"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."

"All miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life. He will direct you VERY specifically."

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan of God, which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone, but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy" and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

"Today I will make NO decisions by myself."

""Take up thy cross and follow me" should be interpreted to read "Recognize your errors and choose to abandon them by following My guidance.""

"I have repeatedly asked MY pupils to follow me. This means that, to be effective teachers, they MUST interpret teaching as I 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."

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

"I must found His church on you, because you, who accept me as a model, are literally my disciples. Disciples are followers, but if the model they follow has chosen to save them pain in all respects, they are probably unwise NOT to follow him."

"RELEASE yourselves to Him Whose function IS release. Do NOT assume His function FOR Him. Give Him but what He asks, that you may learn how LITTLE is your part, and how great IS HIS."

"Healing is the one ability that everyone CAN develop, and MUST develop, if he is to BE healed. Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

"Yet what makes God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body.As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source.From this understanding will come the recognition, in this new teacher of God, of what the body's purpose really is; the only use there really is for it."

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and healing that is of Him ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary. But healing itself IS consistence, because ONLY consistence is conflict-free, and only the conflict-free ARE whole. By accepting exceptions, and acknowledging that he can SOMETIMES heal and SOMETIMES NOT, the healer is OBVIOUSLY accepting INconsistency. He is therefore IN conflict and TEACHING conflict.

Can ANYTHING of God NOT be for all and always? Love is incapable of ANY exceptions."

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you can see His manifestations. And unless you do, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak for it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. 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."