You do not need to find the power to rise up against a seemingly mighty external power.

That external power is YOUR power. It's your own power that you have temporarily displaced into the hands of someone else.

You want that other person or group to hold onto your power for you, so that you can disown it.

This makes you think 'they' have power over you, since now you are left with like 10% power to their apparent 90% power. So now you see yourself as a vulnerable victim. And in that victimhood you will experience it as though.... I don't like how these other people have power.

But that's a fucking lie.

You want them to have the power because its YOUR power and you do not want to take YOUR power back from them.

And if you were to take back the 90% of YOUR power that you handed over to them, how much power would they be left with to hold over you?

ZERO!

So you do not need to find the courage to rise up and be like some kind of super opponent to a powerful enemy. You do not need to become some kind of dragon slayer or wage a massive war against a power that is completely fixed in the hands of others.

The war is YOU against YOURSELF.

You play them off as having power over you so that you can create a disguise, whereby it SEEMS like they conveniently have taken it from you against your will, and it can SEEM like you don't have any left. Oh, poor you, weak and powerless. Well, .... you are PLAY ACTING at being weak and powerless, when all the while you are fricking invincible.

So take YOUR power back. Take it back out of the hands of the people you have put it into, and recognize therefore that it was never THEIR power that you were afraid of, it was YOUR power that you were afraid of. You were afraid of it because in order TO put it into the hands of someone else, you have to use FEAR, which is a device for disownership and the illusion of rejection and is the greatest cover-up deceptive lie of all time. Fear makes it look like you are not having ANYTHING AT ALL to do with why your power has been displaced into someone else's hands, when in fact it is precisely this fear that GIVES it to them.

Take it back. Its yours. Own it. Be yourself. THEN.... who is out there with power over you? Who has power over the Son of God who knows that he is all powerful?

"I am not weak but strong". "I am not afraid but all powerful" - ACIM

So now instead of being a powerful opponent, or an equal power in a war, or rising up in protest and conflict with other people's apparent power, now in your empowerment you are invulnerable because THERE IS NO OTHER POWER OUT THERE.

You have the power. YOU are the one. And the ego has no power when you do not GIVE it any. And when you take back your power, you will have to stop being a victim and stop being afraid, and HAVING your power back will do that for you. You don't need to be super brave or courageous. You just need to own up to the fact that all the stuff outside of you that you are afraid of, ITS YOURS. Reclaim it and the fear device has no further purpose of separation and it must disappear. And you must be empowered.

And here is the climax.

Those who are empowered have no enemies.

Those who are empowered are invulnerable.

Those who are empowered are immortal.

Just as being forgiving ensures there is nothing to forgive, just as being awake ensures there is no reason to fall asleep, and just as being loving ensures there is nothing unloveable, so too does being empowered ensure there is nothing that you need to have power OVER because ALL of the power is yours.

If there were some power left out there that is not yours, you would still have enemies. There is ZERO power out there that is not yours. You share ALL POWER WITH GOD.

This is why.... Jesus says repeatedly...... FEAR NOT. You have nothing to fear because only love is real. If you choose to fear, you will STOP being powerful and lose your power. Don't do that.

Be all powerful.

What we see in our lives outside of ourselves, is a displacement of all of our own sense of self, which we do not want to own up to.

We are Christ. We do not want to own up to that. So instead we've shoved all of that freedom, power, responsibility, ownership, identity, outside of our very own self. So now instead of it being 'in here', now it's 'out there'.

That means, everyone else now has the freedom which 'they' have taken away from us.

That means, everyone else now has the power which 'they' have taken away from us.

That means, everyone else is now responsible for everything that has gone wrong, and not us.

That means, everyone else is who we are trying to be, instead of being who we really are.

It's as though, we've 'leaked' and bled all of the properties of everything that is inherently our own, given by God, out onto the world, like a great disowning and disassociating from ourselves. And now all the stuff that is supposed to be 'in here' is now 'out there', separate, kept apart from us behind some special walls and barricades.

Who disowned you? You did.

Who put responsibility outside of yourself into the hands of other people, weather, events, happenings? You did.

Who handed over masses of power to everyone else so that you would seem to be weak? You did.

You've shelved yourself.

Its YOUR power that you see out there that you fear, thinking it is against you. It is YOUR responsibility for being who you are that you see out there, taking over your life against your will. It is YOUR identity that you've displaced into other people and objects and idols and things, thinking that they are who you really are. You did this.

Take back your power. Take back your freedom. Take back your responsibility.

There isn't a power out there being held over your head that isn't your own. Once you take it back, who else is there to act against you, and with what power? Nobody.

You're afraid of your own shadow.

You're your own victimizer.

Having fun?

When someone is attacking, it will come across as them being attacked by you. And thereby they believe they are justified in attacking as though they themselves are not doing it at all.

Victim consciousness automatically means someone is trying to blame someone else for doing what they themselves are doing, or for believing what they themselves are believing.

Those who are afraid, sick, feeling unworthy, guilty, judged, affected, upset by others, etc... are all attackers. They are believing in attack, have attacked themselves, and are now trying to attack others.

Those who accuse are themselves subject to their accusations. You but accuse your brother of your own sins. Whatever you believe is true of yourself you will come to believe is true of others. If it is true that you're sinful and unworthy, you'll see others as being sinful toward you and making you unworthy.

Attack seems to justify itself by projecting itself out (projection) and then perceiving what has been projected (perception). Thus projection makes perception. The ego is then perceiving its own reflection of attack and calling it someone else's.

If someone else truly is the origin of attack, then you would be justified in revenge. You would be justified in claiming you are innocent, and that you have been unfairly treated. But what appears to be an attack from others is really your own self attack which you've displaced onto them, or hired them to take responsibility for.

If you are perceiving that someone is "treating you" in a poor way, or "being" a certain way toward you, or has "done something to you" etc.. you know that this is really you being in a state of self-attack. Your attempt to find someone guilty is just your attempt to find yourself guilty. Proving that someone else is to blame just proves all over again that you are to blame.

The only way to undo attack is to stop abusing yourself. See yourself as innocent and worthy of God. Stop finding yourself wrong and guilty. Stop attacking yourself with beliefs in sin and guilt. You didn't do anything really wrong and nothing that cannot be forgiven. Do you deserve redemption?

We have appointed our own worst enemies, our controllers, our dominators, our victimizers, our haters, and everyone we do not like, to do all of these things TO us, FOR us, because we have a secret agenda.

We do not want to be responsible for our own lives. We do not want to own up to who we really are. We want to hide. We want to shovel responsibility for our own lives onto someone else. We want to be victims so that the state of our lives is someone else's responsibility and then we can blame them for what has happened in our own life.

We have disowned ourselves. We don't even know who we really are. We have attempted to shut out God. We've gone unconscious. And we've displaced ownership of our own Real Identity, our Truth, into the hands of everyone and everything that we think is 'not us'. We now say the world is responsible for our life being terrible. No it's not. Our irresponsibility is what makes it seem like the world is responsible for our life sucking.

We need to wake up. We need to take our fucking power back. We need to own up to who the fuck we really are. We need to stop hiding our light and our truth and stand up and be visible. We need to return to the truth and stop wallowing in a dark world of victimization and blame.

It is not someone else's fault. It is not them that are doing this to you. It is not the government or the neighbors or the coworkers or strangers on the street. It is not anyone else. Its YOU. YOU are fucking up your life by not being who you really are. YOU are destroying your happiness. YOU are the one who is against yourself. YOU are your worst, and ONLY, enemy.

You are doing this to yourself. On purpose.

Why are you hiding from God? Why are you hiding from yourself? Why are you pretending to be someone you are not? Why are you pretending that someone or something outside of you is responsible for who and what you are and what you're experiencing?

Nobody has any power over you. ZERO. ZEEEEERO!

You are the one who has done all of this shit to yourself, and it's you who can undo it. You can choose again. You can remember who you really are. You can wake the fuck up to reality and stop burying your head in the sand with this victimy sob-story about, oh, so-and-so did this to me, and such-and-such a government body did that to us, and they-and-them did these terrible things to these poor innocent people, etc... its all ego blame. It's all passing the buck, shifting the responsible, and acting righteous about deserving to be outraged about how everyone ELSE is wrong.

LOOK AT YOURSELF. Take an inventory of your OWN fuck up. This is all about you, what you're doing to yourself, on your own, all by yourself, without any help from anyone else. You do not need anyone else's attack or vengeance to make up for the tremendous job you are doing attacking the living shit out of yourself, all on your own. You have enough self-hate to fill a mountain, yet alone needing anyone else to come along and add a tiny amount to it. This is all about you.

Who are you? Who the fuck are you really?

"The secret to salvation is this, that you are but doing this to yourself" - ACIM

STOP IT!

It's not just a matter of me taking back responsibility for everything in life, and then sitting there all by myself.

There is instead a shift away from ego-self and towards being aware of and TRUSTING in God.

It's not just a matter of realizing the cause of things is in my mind, not out there, although that's necessary.

What is cause? It's not just some idea or decision. GOD is cause.

It's also not just a matter of removing blocks to awareness of love. What happens when the blocks are removed? Love/God shows up. And that's no small matter.

I've relied on my intellect, on my ego's abilities, on my separate intelligence, on my self-taught learning. But this is all essentially because I am not depending on God.

Independent thinking... okay... highly overrated. It's actually a substitute for being connected to, trusting in, and having real faith in God.

I'm opening up to a willingness to surrender, and to actually believe and stay unwavering in, a knowing-based trust that God is taking care of things.

It's not God that wavers or fails, it's my selfish ego trying to do everything on its own.

I have to let go. I have to surrender. And I have to stop being the one who has all the truth all gathered up in my separate mind like a big database of information.

Truth as information is a substitute for truth as an experiential relationship with God. It is a substitute for being WITH God, intimately. For being AWARE of God's real presence and communicating with Him and being directed BY Him.

It really boils down to a simple either-or question. Either I trust in my own abilities, or I trust in God. Either I think that I have to control and enforce everything myself, or I let go of the reigns and let God.

And in that trust, in that surrender, it's not that God just sits there idle. To trust that he is taking care of things, that he can heal all situations, requires strong faith and belief and certainty and loyalty. And that also means, knowing that God actually IS taking care of things... even worldly things, even worldly problems.

This is the next stage in the development of trust. I have to learn to step aside and not only 'let God' but actually trust God, believe God, and put aside my own little fears and worries about how God won't help or isn't in charge or can't heal things or whatever.

It's about opening up to relying on God, knowing that God goes with me, allowing God, being intimate with God and allowing myself to be supported BY God. And this has everything to do with working miracles, which REQUIRES faith and firm belief and TRUST in God.

My lack of faith, is what it comes down to. As Jesus says in the course we have placed great faith in the ego, in our own selves, in intelligence and thinking and learning, that we have displaced our faith away from God.

I/we must learn that God really is on our side, really is our partner, that we really are taken care of by Him, that he really can and will do what He says he can and will do, and to trust Him to manage life for us.

It's not just that we are separate from God and have to live in separation and maybe get some input from God once in a while. That isn't the LIFE that we are meant to live. We are meant to team up with God and be loved and united with Him, and actually have Him IN us and working THROUGH us FOR us, without us having to carry the entire weight of the world by ourselves.

How can I trust God unless I am willing to let go of control of life and actually allow Him to do this? How can I trust unless I am 'hands off'?

God repeatedly says to me, "let me". And I did not really understand what this meant. I didn't know if it meant he would do something through me if I did something. I didn't know if it meant he was 'maybe' taking care of something, and then me having no faith in that entering into fear and believing that He wasn't doing anything.

If I don't have trust and faith that God can take care of things, I in effect block God's power and actually do fail to RECEIVE God's blessings.

Anyway.

Today I am grateful and thankful that God HAS delivered, God HAS provided, God IS taking care of situations, and I am not alone any more.

Cause and effect means that causes produce effects. Cause is a power and effects result from it. This is only has any meaning in terms of a dreamworld because outside the dream there is no dream and no dreamer.

Either you are identified with cause, or you are identified with effect. This means either you are dreaming the dreamworld, or the dreamworld is dreaming you. When the dreamworld is dreaming you, what this really means is the dreamer of the dream is dreaming of a world in which he himself becomes identified as part of the dream, so that it seems he is dreamed by the dream - ie dreamed by himself. This is the ego's entire concept of creation.

You come into the world through what appears to be the dream giving birth to you, originating in the parent's bodies and taking the form of a baby. If this is true, then the dream has dreamed you and you are its effect. If this is true, you were created by the ego/dream and not by God. But the truth is that you are not a body or a form of a part of a dream and God DID create you, but the dream will never testify to that. As God's creation, YOU are the cause of the dreamworld and you are the one who invented ALL bodies and all body-based relationships.

Cause and effect become reversed the moment that you identify with the dream and believe that you are a part of it, made from it, or created by it. The responsibility for causal power which was inside you, capable of dreaming, is now projected outside of you AS the dream, and the dream now seems to be the causal power. The dream IS your own causal power displaced away from you and disowned.

If the dream is causal, then it is indeed true that it would seem the dream has the power to both create you (birth) and destroy you (death) at its own whim, and in complete violation of any supposed rights or power you might have. When the dreamworld is causal, YOU become its effect. As an effect, you are powerless and are a VICTIM. Whatever the dreamworld wants to throw at you, whatever it wants to do to you, however it wants to REDEFINE who and what you are, you can do nothing to stop it.

When you are the effect of the world you see, therefore, you become 'affected by' the world. It does stuff to you. It seems to change you. It seems to be capable of eliciting a REACTION in you. This is what it means to be an effect. External causes decide who and what you are, you do not. You are then a passive victim and if the world decides to CHANGE YOU in any way, to redefine your identity, to treat you a certain way as if to say that this is how you should be treated because of what you are, you can do nothing to stop it. If you believe the dream is causal, then this is what will happen to you.

In childhood, then, when you have entered the dream through a 'doorway' of birth, after which you believe that the dream has created you, you have a mind which perceives this way. As a baby you are a passive victim. You receive. You soak everything in. You have no identity of your own but you start to develop one. You develop an identity based on what the DREAM tells you you are. This can come through the form of any person or experience that occurs, mainly through parents role-modeling or examples given by others. You "learn" an identity based on what the dream/ego tells you you are.

It goes further. Because now, anything that happens to you BY the dream, redefines not only the meaning of who you are (as anything other than powerful, unconditionally lovable, truth, God-Created, immortal etc). Since the dream is itself void of any truth it can only redefine you FALSELY, and however it treats you is like a statement telling you what is true of you. So if someone abuses you, that person represents a signal from the causal dream, as if it is an expression of TRUTH, telling you what you are.

If you are abused, and if the abuse is truth, then you MUST be something abuseable, you MUST have asked for it, there MUST be something wrong with you, and you simply ACCEPT and ALLOW this display of lies to enter your mind. It reconfigures your sense of who you ARE, which modifies your IDENTITY. And especially as a young person you have no memory of your true self and nobody is modeling unconditional love for you all the time, so you basically lose sight of the truth about you. You form a sense of self which is artificial, dictated by the world, and you actually believe it is true - it is what you are. You have been turned into an abused victim by the dream, not by the events that seemed to make this happen or by the people who were involved, but by the sheer fact that you believed and perceived the dream was your creator, it had power to define you, and that you are at its effect.

This can of course go on for years before you start to get a sense of discord within yourself, which may lead you to healing paths or exploring who you really are or trying to find out why these things happened. But ultimately, it all boils down to the reversal of cause and effect. All the ways the "dream dreams you", dictates your identity and defines what you are. If you allow that, accept it, believe it, or go along with it in any way, having abandoned your TRUE SELF, you become a powerless victim. Unconscious. The dream would kill you if you let it.

Correction is needed. Healing is called for. A reawakening to the TRUTH about you is absolutely required. You need to reverse cause and effect back to its proper orientation, which means learning that YOU are the cause and the dream is YOUR effect. You have command over it, dominion over it, power over it, and it extends solely from you. It never happens TO you, you are never victimized BY it, it is never responsible for turning you into an effect against your will, and essentially, it is nothing. Effects are nothing. They have no power, they do not make anything happen, they aren't real.

Recognize then that EVERY SINGLE TIME that you RE-ACT to the dreamworld, it must be that you believe the dream is dreaming you. You have become the effect of it, and the cause has been displaced outside of you. You are reacting TO it because of what it is doing TO you. You've disowned your power. You've got things back to front. You've forgotten that YOU are the cause, and have turned into a victim. You cannot be victimized when you take back your power and learn that you are the cause of the dream. You are the dreamer, not the other way around!

All reactions are reactions to the belief that cause is outside of you. All reactions are the responses that the `powerful dream` with an `alien will` has determined you are supposed to have. Its as if the dream is broadcasting a signal "this is what you are" and you are receiving it, and your experience of victimhood or upset is how it feels to receive that signal and to experience its power OVER you, changing you against your will. All reactions are the redefinition that the dream is trying to impose onto you, to change who you are and to affect you. All reactions are responses and retaliations that map to the stimuli that is being thrown at you.

Seemingly serious and important external causes seem to call forth seemingly larger reactions in you. This is the hierarchy of illusions. Big causes call for big effect. If you are constantly re-acting to the dreamworld, it is because you firmly believe that CAUSE is outside of you and that YOU are at its effect. Everything about the dream testifies to this. Every single thing that 'happens' is an attempt to affect you and redefine your identity as the ego. The ego is the dream fabric and the ego-dream wants you to be described AS a dream. It sees you only as a victim and as your own victimizer.

Because projection makes perception, and because perception could be likened to 'receiving' the dream into your senses (symbolically), it is perception which seems to trigger ALL reactions. You perceive something external has caused something, and now it has produced effects in you. These artificial effects attempt to mangle and distort you and throw you into chaos, with upset emotions and crazed thinking. All reactions are reactions to perceptions. What came before perception?

Before perception there is projection. And this is why you have to take responsibility for what you are projecting, in order to free yourself from your OWN reactions to your OWN STUFF. It is YOUR OWN CAUSALITY out there staring you back in the face and scaring the shit out of you, to which you then react as if it is NOT yours and is some other horror show made to upset you. YOU gave it its power, YOU gave it its causality, by disowning your own. It's YOU that is attacking you. It is YOU that has been projected AS the very dream that now attempts to dream you. You must move past the reactions by realizing you are reacting to your own projected power, AND TAKE BACK THAT POWER, so that you can admit that the cause is IN YOU. YOU are the dreamer of the dream. Get it straight! It takes orders from you. You're the boss.

What is life like when you are 100% the cause? When you are 100% cause there are no effects, no dream, no illusion, no suffering, no death. Immortality is a state of perfect causality, the 'effect' of which is the same thing as the cause, with no separation between them. You are not a victim of the world you see. Take another look at this with Holy Spirit and admit the truth. The truth shall set you free. You dreamed up all this shit, remember?

It's always tricky going from fear to fearlessness.

While you are afraid you see yourself as weak and vulnerable and as though you don't have what it takes to stand up for your truth.

What you don't realize is that WHEN you decide to stand up for your truth, this is going to give you ADDITIONAL STRENGTH.

And once you are in that mode of additional strength, you will no longer be seeing yourself as weak and vulnerable, and you will be much more able to transcend the judgements and threats that others attempt to make.

But it can be a leap of faith to go from your sense of powerlessness, to taking ahold of the responsibility of being powerful and choosing it and trusting that AS you choose God, God's strength will be ADDED unto you.

It means going from "I am weak and have no power and am threatened and therefore I will not do this" .... to "I will do this and I am empowered and I am not afraid". You have to leap straight from that first state to the second, and there isn't going to be an in between state where you have NOT chosen to commit to the truth and yet feel more powerful. It's all or nothing. Who are you going to be? Weak or strong?

"I am not weak but strong. I am not afraid but all powerful" - ACIM

So while you think that you should not go against the crowd and should not be true to yourself, for fear of what others will do, know that WHEN you decide to do so, the decision to do so will empower you, and you will no longer see yourself or others in the same way.

Really then it's like, you can either stay weak and afraid, or you can simply claim your power back and consequently not be afraid. Nowhere in that equation is there ever a time when you are choosing to be true to yourself and REMAINING WEAK. That's what you fear will happen.... that you'll stand up for truth and be beaten down. But standing up for the truth will empower you, and you will learn to be more assertive and confident and strong in the truth.

Don't listen to the fear that you have to become "tough" in order to go up against what you perceive as a powerful enemy. They are not powerful. You just see yourself as disempowered ONLY because you're not owning your own. You keep giving it away. Own it, take it back, choose it, and RESTORE it to its rightful place WITHIN you, rather than projected outside of you. Then you'll realize that really, all along, you were only ever afraid of your OWN power, which you had tried to displace onto others.

Disempowerment simply means you have attempted to give your power to others, to empower them, to empower the ego, and to give outside causes the power to do things to you. YOU GAVE IT TO THEM. It's your power. And now that you see it in them and not in you, you are afraid of "them". But really you are afraid of your own power, because fear is a device for disowning power.

Recognize then that the power you think you don't have, and the power that you think others have over you, IS THE SAME. And it's really secretly YOURS. And you need to claim it if you're going to EXPERIENCE being more certain, with a firmer footing, with a confidence to assert yourself and to stand up for yourself. And guess what happens when you TAKE BACK the power that is yours? Having no longer displaced it onto others, they no longer look like as big of a danger any more.

That's right, take all your power back and nobody will HAVE any power to have over you.

I complain that food manufacturers constantly package food in containers which are way larger than the contents, and when you go to open it up you find it's half empty and feel deceived. It IS a dishonest practice. At first it was the 'oh potatoe chips need extra air space to cushion them against breakage' but then it was... well, here's 20 other foods that don't have this risk but still come with a large airspace. The packaging mis-represents what you actually will get. Ok, that's just a deceptive shitty lie.

Ok. That's my complaint. Now, let's look at what has happened because of this complaint.

I've started out by seeing myself as being victimized. I ask, who am *I* in this scenario. There's the food manufacturer over there and there's the product sitting in front of me and I'm seeing this scenario where I'm looking at ME in a particular way. I think I'm looking at the food container and complaining, but that's actually a few steps down the road. What happened before my angry reaction was me seeing myself 'in' the scenario as a victim. ie..

1) If the food item has more empty space than needed, I have decided that this means there is dishonesty. It's dishonesty on the level of form and implies deceit.

2) If there is deceit in the food item, and because I say it means they are being deceiving, and because I have an interest in this food item, I am now a part of the story and it is ME that is being deceived. It's personal!

3) Now that it's 'affecting me' (because of the way I CHOSE to position myself as the victim in the story), I am now justified in anger and annoyance. Now I can blame them. Now I can say it's their fault that I am angry, because what they did happened before what I did. But this covers up the fact that what I did (made it real, gave it meaning it doesn't have, treated it as non-neutral), happened before anything else.

4) If I am seeing guilt in the food container then who is experiencing guilt? I might be trying to get THEM to experience guilt but it's a part of my reality, so *I* am experiencing guilt, albeit displaced. That means there's guilt in my mind, and I believe in my own guilt. That means I believe I've sinned, and I'm trying to pin it on the food container and the people who made it wrongly.

So as I find the huge airspace in a bag of chips annoying, or the gross vomit-like quality of tv dinners to be nothing like the beautiful arrangement on the box cover, or the totally unnecessary container size housing rather less product just to get me to think that I am getting more than I am, I have this opportunity to realize.... this is ONLY there to trigger my own self-attack and to remind me that I am CHOOSING to see myself as a victim, and I'm only choosing that because *I* BELIEVE* I am deceptive and dishonest and guilty. Hmmm.

So... then it boils down to this. I can't hold THEM guilty without holding myself guilty, because this guilt is mine. Hmm. Ok, I forgive them BECAUSE they did not do anything, I DID IT. And I forgive me because I did not really DO anything, nothing has happened. And I am forgiven already because none of this happened in the first place, it's just a dream that isn't real. And I am actually whole and one with GOD right now being HAPPY rather than right. Yay. We are ALL innocent and equal and One and none of us are guilty at all.

Ok now to eat some chips.

In the course there is a lesson about how God is in everything I see, and later ... because God is in my mind etc. And it talks about seeing God "in" things, like in a waste paper basket. This is often misunderstood to mean that God IS the waste paper basket, when in fact it means you project God's meaning onto it because He is in your mind, not because He is outside your mind. Essentially, if you were to see God, you would not see the basket at all.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

So there I was, sitting on the toilet. Pondering life's mysteries, like you do. And next to me was sat a wicker basket which we use for the laundry. And so I looked at the basket and wondered in my mind, "is God really in this basket?". Jesus then took the opportunity to immediately show me the truth about this.

I noticed that I could not seem to feel my hands, as if they were barely there. I seemed to be "out" of them as if out of my body or something. This was slightly disorienting, but they felt like they barely existed and weighed nothing. At the same time, I felt what seemed to be "my spirit hand", passing through the basket, and waving around.

As it did this I was aware that the basket was nothing but air, or like a puff of smoke, which was being wafted and displaced by the movement of my spirit-hand. It was very interesting, because it was like the basket didn't even exist. It had no barrier, it was not solid, it put up no resistance, and there was no physical collision with it. Instead it seemed like the lightest, faintest, slightest hint of a whisp of air, dispelled and moved simply by waving. As if just a cloud of particles that could effortlessly be blown away on a breeze.

This ended after a few seconds. But it was enough to reveal to me the quite surprising and "real" truth about the basket. As my physical eyes feasted once again on its solid form, its structure, its shapes and colors, its firmness to the touch, I couldn't help but remark that all of this must be an illusion. In comparison to there being literally NO BASKET, all these seemingly real properties must be some kind of fakery. Without that sense of a boundary, that sense of colliding with it physically, and not being able to pass through it, the basket is nothing but a whisp of smoke. A thin veil.

And so beyond the basket, if God were to be seen, it is recognized that there is no basket at all. It is easily and effortlessly dispelled. Dismissed with the simple waving of a hand, as if it were made of the lightest air, and really nothing at all. Only the spiritual sight could really see this. And clearly spirit is capable of anything, instantly, with no effort at all. Because Jesus showed this to me as if it were the easiest thing in the world. My physical eyes could not see this at all, and my body still reported the solidity of the basket. I wondered then what it would take to recognize this about all the world.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"There is no world."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. "

"Raise it together, for it is but a veil that stands between you. Either alone will see it as a solid block, nor realize how thin the drapery that separates you now."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

It makes sense that if you keep seeing people as being able to affect you, as being the cause of your problems, as being to blame, as being an enemy, or having power over you, you will simply have to experience fear. Fear will be present in the mind because the mind is now split and has diminished its perception of itself.

Now that you are 'suppressed', you will sense that you have much less power, and that this power has been displaced outward to other people who now have power over you. You will see enemies all over the place and will not feel safe, but rather will be afraid all the time.

Fear isn't just a reaction. Fear is a state of mind in which you are perceiving enemies. Fear is what it is like when the mind is experiencing itself being at war with itself, where its inner conflict is overlaid on top of the world, filtering out the beauty and peace and causing you to only see part of what's there, which then looks harrowing and insane and a threat.

Fear is a reversal of cause and effect, and fear is also the mechanism of perceptual distortion that forces you to see enemies where there are none.

You'll also find that once you're in a victim consciousness like this, you will feel afraid all the time and not even imagine that it's possible to be less afraid. And more importantly, you won't realize that you feel afraid because of some attitude you have, OR that it's really got anything to do with how other people are behaving.

You will think your fear is just your separate problem, and that other people probably aren't this afraid and there's something wrong with just you. You'll notice everyone else seems to be more confident and you can't figure out why you're the scared one.

You imagine ways you might stand up to the intensity and terror of everyone you meet, by bolstering yourself up or talking yourself into being tougher, but it doesn't work. You still feel insecure, until you realize what part you play in doing this to yourself.

Something marvelous happens when you start to change your perception. What you need to do is to take back your power, by realizing how your way of perceiving is attacking you. You have to realize that people look like enemies to you because of how much you are attacking yourself and them. And you have to see in your mind the processes that go into trying to separate you from yourself.

You can't feel strong and safe when you're perceiving yourself in a split way, which means there is a strong contrast between what applies to you and what applies to others. So long as you imagine that other people have taken something away from you, that they are the cause of you feeling afraid, that they are doing this to you, you are going to experience fear. But you have to realize, that's just how YOU are choosing to perceive. It's got nothing to do with other people, and you're not really seeing them correctly.

When your mind is split, you will project your shadow mind onto other people and see it in them, and will be threatened by it. This makes other people seem like an enemy, like they are powerful and dark and evil and scary. They're not. But you will see this in them because it's in your mind like a filter. And within your mind, that dark evil stuff is at war with the part of you that you think is you - the positive-seeking goodie-goodie self that people pleases and wants to be adored. Both of these are within your own mind, having a war between them, and that's entirely down to the fact your perception is broken.

That also tells you that if you would heal the separation between these two parts of yourself, undoing all of that attack content, you would not see people AS threatening because you would not have this negativity in your perception, and therefore would not HAVE grounds for feeling afraid.

This healing will lead to a feeling of continually increasing strength and empowerment. It will make you literally less afraid. You will marvel at how you feel stronger, brighter, more energetic, more expressive. You will be surprised at how less anxious you are around others. You will feel more aware and awake and will be happier more often. And you'll be quite surprised at how you don't feel terrorized like you used to. Because you've stopped doing it to yourself.

And as such the forgiven world starts to rise up before your perception instead of a world of hate and vengeance. As you forgive yourself, the world will appear to be a happier place. It will seem like it doesn't contain the threats and guilts that it once did. And it will be like unveiling a beautiful world that was right in front of your face all along but you didn't see it because it was all covered up with your blocks to awareness.

And eventually too this will mean, you will come to realize that God is right here in front of you and with you and inside you, and that you can experience Him. For real! And how joyful that will be.