For something to be special it has to have a value that is different to the value of something else. We give it its value by taking away value from something else.
So if I have an apple and an orange, which are essentially equal, and I say, well, I like apples more than oranges, I have to 'demote' the orange and withdraw some of its value and give it to the apple. Now I have a sense that the apple is more important or 'special' than the orange.
What this does, is it makes me have a 'special love' relationship with the apple, and a 'special hate' relationship with the orange. I've also turned the apple into an idol, and the orange into an enemy.
The Course also talks about how we use special love to cover up special hate. The ego has made a world from separation and has made everything in the world be separate. This is based on hate. It is an attack on God. However, the ego then comes along and tries to 'cover up' and deny this hate by creating the illusion that things are somehow joined. It does this by the illusion of 'sameness', things being similar, of like mind, or having minimal conflict.
Minimally conflicting individuals end up as 'friends and allies'. And as the Course says, these allegiances are formed because two people temporarily agree to be against something else. Thus their allegiance still 'includes' an idea of attack and rejection, because it can't exist unless 'everyone else' is not like them. Thus the friends become special and have a special love relationship. But this special love is at best temporary, and covers up the foundation of the relationship which is hate. Separation from others. Isolation. Exclusivity. And so if something takes away that veneer of special love, it 'reveals' the hate beneath it and the claws come out.
While we attempt to make certain parts of the world more important or valuable than others, we make them special. This is our attempt to 'spiritualize' the dream. We attempt to make some parts more spiritual than others, so that at least some of the parts seem sacred, spiritual, holy, valuable, rather than it all being equal and neutral. In this way the ego holds onto these parts of the dream to make it real and to be attracted to it. And of course, to be attracted to one part of the dream requires the formation of a 'shadow' attitude which is against other parts.
So for example, to me, Apple Mac computers are more special than Windows PC's. Green grass is more special than brown. Summer days are more special than winter. Certain TV shows are more special than others. The olympics are more special than regular team sports. And raspberry-anything is more special than most other flavors. These are things I've made special, at the expense of other things being despised and disliked.
This is where the Holy Relationship comes in. With a goal of true holiness, we recognize that instead of depending on another separate thing to 'get' what we lack, or to reinforce our own self-specialness, we instead become wholly dependent on God. It is now God who created us, not our parents. God now also created our children, and he is responsible for them, not us. This of course dissolves all family structures. Absolute equality is the only family - God's family. Equality dissolves specialness and sees everything with unconditional love.
You can still be having your relationships and your favorite foods and whatever, but eventually we will let Holy Spirit choose everything for us and we will live in freedom. We may well remain with those we had special love with and no longer see them with specialness. But this doesn't mean we don't love them. It means we love them even MORE. We love them with an unconditional, ego-free love. One where being together is voluntary and not forced, or maintained out of guilt. But not until we are truly ready to accept this. It can't be forced while we still value specialness or we will experience sacrifice and loss.
You can still be in a one-to-one parternship all the way to waking up. Just look at Jesus and Mary as an example.
"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."
"Miracles are ENERGIZING."
"What you share you STRENGTHEN."
"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack."
"A miracle is a universal blessing from God"
"..he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."
"I give the miracles I have received"
"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."
"By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself."
"And both are strengthened by their union with each other."
"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."
"KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. "
"A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place."
"The miracle dissolves error"
"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."
Forgiveness overlooks, undoes, and makes disappear. Forgiveness is not something you apply to REALITY. It is something you apply to an UNREAL world, an illusory world, in order to dispel it.
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
"I will forgive and this will disappear."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."
"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."
The aim of reaching "the forgiven world" is NOT to keep it! The aim of forgiving the world is to SHINE IT AWAY and see it not!
"You cannot behold the world and know God."
"Eternity will shine away the world."
"The world will END in laughter"
The aim isn't to forgive the world so that it can become beautiful and KEPT. It appears only temporarily beautiful because you do not CONDEMN it. You see a reflection of holiness and heaven's beauty IN it, because YOU are beautiful. But the world itself is UNDONE by your beauty.
To heal the world is to ERASE the world.
To raise the dead and heal the sick is to END THEM.
Bodies cannot remain in a state of forgiveness. Seeing the face of Christ causes you to FORGET THE WORLD.
Forgiving the world means lifting away from it the efforts you made to MAKE IT REAL. Believing an ILLUSORY world is real, means you believe illusions are reality, which is FALSE PERCEPTION.
Loving the world does not KEEP it. It dissolves it. Love shines away all forms and erases the universe in light.
"Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream."
"Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."
"for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."
"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."
"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."
God is aware that we are sleeping because he is also aware that we are not properly communicating with him. That's why he created the Holy Spirit. He couldn't and wouldn't have created the Holy Spirit without KNOWING that there was a need for it.
He may not make the world real or interact with it personally but the Holy Spirit is there as "part of God" as well, to bridge the gap between God's reality and the part of our minds that are temporarily having faulty beliefs ie in the dark. Holy Spirit is the one who is equipped with an ability to perceive AND know, and can bridge the gap on behalf of God.
He speaks FOR God on his behalf and does the work that God himself would have done. So yes this world is not real and does not really exist, but we can't really just stay God is not aware because then we get into all manner of level confused nonsense about how "God cannot help you" and how the holy spirit cannot enter into the world and so on, which is NOT true. That myth has been spread unfortunately.
The Holy Spirit can USE anything we made for his purposes including he has the ability to heal bodies and do other physical things. He is part of us and part of God and is fully aware of what is needed and how to accomplish it perfectly.
We have not been "left alone and comfortless." God has sent the Holy Spirit on his behalf to do his will and fulfill his desire that the sonship reawaken to their reality. God knew exactly what the perfect solution to the separation was and how to correct it perfectly and guarantee its ending. And he did something about it.
You can see here that God IS very much aware of "the separation" and came up with an answer/response to it, through a creative act of will, which has addressed this issue and will bring guaranteed salvation. That does not sound like a God that just sits there oblivious and couldn't give a crap about what his children are going through, or a God that cannot reach his children even in their states of madness to help them. God loves you no matter where you are and he has PROVEN it by creating the Holy Spirit to lead you home.
"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, was blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened." UrT6F2
"Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your minds. With this link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge. That is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it. Therefore, that is its function in truth." W43L1
"The Holy Spirit was God's answer to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating. The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound." UrT5C10
"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God. NOT as the Law Itself upholds the universe as God created it. But in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error. There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose." UrT25D4
Seeing yourself as deprived makes you perceive others as taking from you, and that you don't have enough left to give.
For example when I'm having some emotional release/healing, maybe I cried and I'm tired and crabby and feeling vulnerable. Maybe I'm not totally past it all yet and still am feeling whatever the lack is - lack of love, lack of peace, whatever... I'll see myself as being quite 'in need', i.e. needy.
When I see myself this way, I start to perceive everyone else as being needy too. Even if they're not. I'll perceive they're trying to take from me or demand something of me that I can't supply. I'll feel put upon and taxed and offended by the demand I see in them.
And especially if the other person is in a state of need themselves, it'll trigger anger that someone is so insensitively expecting something from me when I apparently don't have anything to give. I see them as trying to 'take take take'.
But what's really happening is I'm seeing myself - the demand in them is ME demanding FROM them. So I'm needy AND demanding, stating that I do not have what I need and someone else needs to give it to me. (Secret side-tip: although I'm saying I am in need and want to GET from others, I secretly do NOT want to get because then I would't be able to see myself as needy).
I'm the one who is actually trying to 'take take take'. I'm trying to GET, in order to make up for the lack that I perceive in myself. I'm accusing other people of trying to take because they're thwarting MY effort to take.
So as I see myself deprived and lacking, it's because I believe I don't have enough love. I believe the love is not in me and that I need to get it from someone else. So if they fail to give it, or if they demand it from ME, then I am left totally empty-handed with no way to resolve my problem, and that produces fear and anger... A sense that 'I can't and I won't... which often is in the form of a lot of reluctance or resistance or, comedically, "I can't take it anymore" (when secretly I am taking big-time).
But the thing is, seeing myself as deprived is actually the CAUSE of my perceiving a sense of lack of love, which led to the feeling of neediness, which led to the drama of being pressured to give what I don't have to needy people.
So an antidote for this... if I'm seeing myself as needy, and realizing it, is simply this:
Give love.
IMMEDIATELY this cancels out and dissolves all trace of a sense of neediness, all trace of not having enough, all trace of anger and reason for fear or resentment.
I'll be honest, I've only remember this a couple of times in real situations. One of them was just now. As soon as I suddenly remembered (after asking Holy Spirit to help) that my neediness is making me try to 'get' because I am seeing myself as deprived, it made me LAUGH. Because it introduces truth at the root of this bullshit and immediately corrected all of the EFFECTS.
I have to learn to remember this more often. When I feel shit and like I am deprived and don't have anything to give and don't want to give..... the way I am feeling is BECAUSE I don't want to give, not the other way around.
I choose to position myself as unloved and in need, which creates feelings of deprivation, which leads to the whole drama. If I choose NOT to see myself unloved by SHARING love (remember giving and receiving are both required, not sacrifice or greed), the whole problem is corrected.
And then, now that I've accepted healing of the actual problem - a lack of love - I can now give love and FULFILL the needs of others, which in fact then disappear, because they were never really needy to begin with. I was just seeing my own neediness projected.
Problem solved.
"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"
"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."
What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.
You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.
BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.
In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.
"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."
Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.
The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.
Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.
Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."
The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.
The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.
To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.
This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.
In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.
Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.
You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.
"There is no death, the son of god is free."
Many course students believe that the physical world is a kind of heaven-in-disguise, but simply hidden behind their mistaken perceptions. It's as if to say, once they purify their mind of false perceptions, they will see it 'how God intended it' and that this is the same thing as being in heaven.
If you are setting out with the belief that the physical world is reality, and especially if you believe God made it, then that background acts as a 'context' in which you read all of the rest of the Course. There is so much in the course written about undoing false perceptions and becoming able to see the real world or forgiven world etc, that it's possible to read into that to mean the physical world is reality.
For example, the course does say things like.... you must undo your false perceptions.... your false perceptions are clouding your perception of reality.... once you undo false perceptions you will see clearly.... then you'll see you brother as Christ and will see the beautiful forgiven/real world.... etc.... and there isn't specifically anything in those 'pieces' of the Course - if taken out of its total context - to challenge the notion that the physical world is real. So that can lead you to believe that this fundamental idea that the world exists goes unchallenged by the Course.
Another example is that people heavily believe they are bodies. They read things about how they should just accept the world 'as it is' and change their mind, and this leads to this kind of 'separation' between the mind and body. i.e., that we should let the body do whatever because its not real (a level confusion) and we should let the world do whatever because it's not real (a level confusion). And that's really a kind of paralysis, and a lack of responsibility, and a total lack of power (especially over death, which is a key part of the Course).
It is very possible therefore to take most of the course and slot it into an existing belief system and have it seem to mostly make sense. So then in order to bring the truth into the world, instead of bringing the world to the truth (in which it dissolves), people will try to sort of 'glue together' the broken pieces of out-of-context metaphysics, such as to say God made the world, the world is heaven on earth, the body can live forever, God made beautiful stuff in the world and sustains it, etc... none of that is in the course, but those finer points are easy to gloss over and ignore.
As I go back through the ACIM text and read it slowly and really digest it and ask myself what it is saying, how is it consistent, I continually see evidence that it is quite literally saying "there is no world" and that heaven and the world are completely opposed, that God did not create it - we did, that the world is something we 'made' as an attack on God, etc. Its not just our perception OF the attack that is an attack on God. The world ITSELF is fundamentally an attack on God, down to the very fabric of spacetime.
And on the point about perception, it is CLEAR in the text that the only point of having true perception (right mindedness) is that it parallels the One mind and allows us to transition to the one mind, which exists entirely beyond the world. Everything Jesus says clearly indicates this physical world is an ILLUSION and a dream and is not reality and never will be reality. It is VERY difficult for us ego humans to accept this as truth, and that is why the ego is extremely careful to disguise the evidence of this and gloss over the truth.
I guess I'm making this point because I continue to see prominent people 'teaching' other students with statements that seem to exalt the world and make it seem spiritual, but which is in fact the complete OPPOSITE of what the Course is actually teaching. As clearly defined in the Disappearance of the Universe, for example, which IS aligned with the Course's message, the world is basically a giant turd, metaphorically speaking, it holds nothing that we want, it is not our home, it is nothing more than a nightmare or bad dream, and IT WILL DISAPPEAR because it is not eternal.
It is quite a severe distortion of the Course's message when, within the wrong context, it can seem to be saying that the world will transform into heaven or the the world is God's 'movement' or that bodies are a permanent form of identification etc. The idea that the world is exalted and filled with any kind of truth is the absolute opposite of what the Course says and a total misinterpretation of its meaning. Imagine you believe an interpretation of truth that is 100% false. That's what many people are doing. To believe the world is our spiritual home is an absolute farce, and is precisely how the ego wants to INTERFERE with the Course and absolutely distort it to its aims of KEEPING ITSELF GOING.
The world isn't real.
Here are some very interesting passages from the section about "The Mind of the Atonement" plus a few others. It's talking about God creating the Holy Spirit and what the Holy Spirit is FOR.
Do not underestimate or disregard what GOD HAS DONE! Do not throw away the opportunity for healing that the Holy Spirit represents and provides! GOD HAS GIVEN YOU HELP!
It is clear that God created the Holy Spirit as HIS ANSWER to the separation, and is the MEANS BY WHICH the separation will be healed. He does not need YOUR answer to the separation.
"****Resign NOW as your own teachers.**** THIS resignation will NOT lead to depression. It is merely the result of an honest appraisal of what you have taught yourselves, and of the learning outcomes which have resulted. Under the proper learning conditions, ****which you can neither provide nor understand****, you will become excellent learners AND teachers."
What this means is, you need to "resign as your own teacher" and stop trying to wake up by yourself. GOD HIMSELF has created the MEANS by which you will wake up to reality. That means is the Holy Spirit. The means IS NOT YOUR EGO.
We are asked to LISTEN TO HIM, and to LET HIM help us. In fact, we're even told that we should not attempt to forgive AT ALL without first asking for his help. And secondly that his FUNCTION is to FORGIVE US, which means, to bless us with HEALING, AND to remove our fear and hatred FOR us, AND to undo all the consequences of our wrong decisions FOR US.
That's a whole lot of HELP coming from the Holy Spirit to correct the separation, heal the mind, and undo the ego. That means that OUR PROPER ROLE as students, is to LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION by asking him for help, letting him literally HEAL US, and allowing him to change our mind FOR us.
This is radically different than the typical ego approach which entails everyone running around like headless chickens trying to convince themselves that a bunch of concepts are true. Our own individual efforts to HEAL OURSELVES WITHOUT HIM, are egocentric and arrogant. You are shit at waking yourself up!
God himself has GIVEN US the help that we need. The Holy Spirit has the power, the ability, the wisdom, the knowledge, the holiness, the innocence, the perception, the clarity and awareness, TO BE of help to us, to give us the help that we need.
We are NOT supposed to be doing this course alone or without him. We are supposed to be making FULL USE OF HIM, as intended by God. And when we don't do that, we are depriving him of his function and are saying "no thanks" to God.
We must ask the Holy Spirit to HELP US to see everything in a better light, in a more forgiving way, and LET HIM actually MODIFY our mind and perception for us, so that we then in fact start to see with Christ Vision. Not as something we go out independently and try to manufacture, but as something he is there to install in us, to BLESS US WITH.
The holy spirit is our healer, our therapist, our comforter, our friend. We should rely on him for our entire awakening process instead of all this "self help - self study" bullshit. Are you done with going it alone and trying to do this all yourself? Can you save yourself like God can?
You are choosing a GUIDE FOR HELP, and if you choose the EGO as your guide you will reject the Holy Spirit's help in fear and arrogance and try to do it all yourself. When you choose the Holy Spirit to be your guide to awakening, your awakening will accelerate and skyrocket in ways you had never dreamed of.
"The Holy Spirit, the shared Inspiration of all the Sonship, ****induces a kind of perception**** in which many elements are like those in the Kingdom of Heaven Itself."
"****The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION**** for miracle-mindedness. ****It is the will to HEAL the separation**** by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. *****God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time.****"
"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. ****It is the call to return****, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons."
"The Holy Spirit was ****God's answer to the separation, the means**** by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating."
"When man made the ego, God placed in him ***the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound.****"
"That is why you can choose to listen to two voices within you. One you made yourself, and that one is not of God. ****But the other is given you by God, Who asks you only to listen to it****. The Holy Spirit IS in you in a very literal sense. It is the voice that calls you back to where you were before and will be again."
"********Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function.******** Your part is ***only*** to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to ****LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.**** On your little faith, joined with HIS understanding, HE will build your part in the Atonement, and MAKE SURE that you fulfill it easily. And ***WITH Him***, YOU will build a ladder planted in the solid rock of faith, and rising even to Heaven. Nor will you use it to ascend to Heaven alone."
"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise. I WILL to decide otherwise, because I WANT to be at peace. I do NOT feel guilty, because ****the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.**** ****I WILL to let Him**** by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why ****the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist.**** HE TEACHES THAT THE PAST DOES NOT EXIST, a fact which belongs to the sphere of knowledge, and which therefore ****NO-ONE IN THE WORLD KNOWS.****"
"****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.****"
I love learning about miracles.
There are kind of two levels or layers of mind. The higher level is filled with love. It is a mind at-one with others and filled with God’s Will. It has no ego, has let go of its separate will (the authority problem), and is free to perform miracles. This mind is naturally miraculous. It shares the Power of God, which is unlimited. This mind is so holy and so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do.
The second layer is accessed via a kind of "descent into hell", aka the separation from God. This lower level is like going into darkness, into separation, into isolation and suffering, into sickness and death. It is here that all of the beliefs in sin, guilt and fear seem to exist. It is here that people choose to die. It is here that all suffering seems to occur.
A miracle, is a HEALING ACT, where a higher-level mind "lifts away" (undoes) the darkness. It’s like the hand of God reaching down into the darkness and lifting up the souls who find themselves trapped there. It brings them back towards God. It restores and heightens communication, because communication means sharing the mind of oneness - the undoing of separation and darkness.
A miracle is an EXPRESSION OF LOVE, which shines with a healing power onto the "starved and thirsty creatures", blessing them with beautiful healing softness and restoration, undoing all signs and symptoms of separation. These signs include all sickness, suffering, pain and death, as well as all emotional states and states of mental illness. All of these are healed because the mind is LIFTED UP towards the light, which dissolves the darkness and causes the symptoms/expressions of a lack of love to disappear.
The miracle lifts away layers of separation which have come between the Son of God and God. All forms of sickness are symptomatic of this belief in separation, and therefore all forms of sickness can be healed by the miracle.
The higher-level loving mind is able to lift away layer upon layer of separation and denial. The result is a *supernatural*, ego-law-defying, sin-reversing, death-reversing, separation-reversing, uplifting demonstration that the mind of love has power over all forms of separation.
The miracle heals from the top down. It is a light which shines upon the darkness and dispels it. This doesn’t just mean, but does include, the healing of the mind, the removal of blocks to awareness, the undoing of false beliefs, and the correction of perception. Yet since all suffering stems from false perception, and all forms of sickness and death stem from it also, all such things are simultaneously dissolved (undone).
"The miracle does nothing - all it does is undo." This doesn’t really mean that miracles have no power and do not cause anything to change. What it really means is, because the ego is entirely a state of "doing stuff", and all illusions take effort to maintain, and all sickness is an act of force, the CESSATION of that effort which comes about through "doing nothing" actually COLLAPSES AND UNDOES what the ego WAS doing, including all of its illusory symptoms and signs and effects. They simply vanish. That vanishing is perceivable and tangible!
The ultimate aim of miracles is therefore the lifting up of the mind to wholeness, the restoration of communication and union, and the healing of all separation. That IS going to entail the un-doing of all the things the ego is doing, and therefore WILL INCLUDE the reversal of all forms of death.
If death means separation or distance from God, as a descent into darkness and hellish nightmares, then the UNDOING of death results in RESURRECTION. This resurrection is not just going to take place "in the mind" and not the body and not the world. ALL of these things are equally parts of the ego thought yssystem. Mental death, emotional death, physical death, all of them can be lifted away and reversed by the miracle worker.
This does also mean that miracles therefore can literally reverse physical death, can literally undo all sickness such as cancer, blindness, damaged or missing limbs, mental disorders, etc. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.
Your holiness is also able to do things which you might think do not appear to be useful miracles. IF it were beneficial in raising awareness and increasing knowledge of the fact that the ego’s dream is a LIE, ie would be useful to *literally* move a mountain. If it taught a lesson, showed that the ego’s laws are false, or healed false perceptions in some way, it would be valuable.
When Jesus walked on water, it was not to show off. It was an act to demonstrate, and prove, that the laws of physics have no bearing on the miracle worker. It was a teaching act. When Jesus multiplied food for thousands of hungry people, it wasn’t to show off. It was to demonstrate and use the miracle-working power of the mind, to manifest food out of nowhere, to prove that hunger is unnecessary and people need not suffer. It was educational. Miracles are teaching devices.
Wherever there is suffering, there is bondage to the ego. This means the person is attempting to be far from God. All sickness is a defense against the truth. Everything about the ego and suffering and death is about trying to put more distance between yourself and God. The miracle CLOSES THE GAP and heals the separation, causing miraculous results.
This is also a maximal service that you can render to another person, giving them the love they are lacking, supplying a need from above, from those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less. Think of this as all happening on a VERTICAL axis. This is why the course says that miracles are a shift in perception from horizontal to vertical perception. A movement UPWARDS towards God heals and undoes the manifestations of the ego.
Miracles lift you and your brothers up towards Heaven. They loosen the chains, release you of the darkness, and allow you to express and shine a light. That light is a Life Giving force. It has the power to REVERSE DEATH. And it is only by this power that YOU can resurrect back to life, away from the lower state of death in which you find yourself.
Miracles lift you UP from a lower level, at first by having faith in a higher level power (Holy Spirit). Later, you will be up AT the higher level, more able to then RAISE OTHERS UP out of their darkness. Your expressions of love toward them can heal them, undo all of their suffering, reverse all states of suffering and even bring them back from the dead.
Love heals. Love is powerful. Love is ALIVE and gives Life, even to the dead. There is nothing that love cannot do, and there is nothing that cannot be undone. If love could not reverse death, it would be powerless and unmiraculous, and have no ability to return you to Heaven. A belief in death is a belief in the end of miracles. A belief in Life is a belief and a trust in UNLIMITED RESURRECTION and Eternal Life.
Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."
The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.
An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.
Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.
The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."
When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.
Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.
All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.
The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.
When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.
The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.
It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.
The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.
Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."
The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.
As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.
The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.
The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.
Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."
Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.
THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.
"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).
To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."
Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."
I kind of feel like, all this time doing the course I've been generally "pulling away" from the world. Seeing the world as out there and sort of trying to detach from it and rise above it. Or rather, to withdraw from it and get away from it.
But I'm getting this intuition that, maybe this is backwards. That the darkness and confusion and illusions and ego stuff isn't "out there in the world", but rather than I am IN that stuff within myself.
The result being that I need to get OUT of myself and "embrace reality", ie attune to the reality of the world - the real world - through forgiveness and awakening. To experience "loving the world", as that vital stepping stone towards ascension to heaven.
Not that this means like, regarding spacetime as God's creation or as ultimate reality but... I'm wondering if my whole approach has been fundamentally wrong this whole time, due to the projection of judgments onto the world and associating them with it, and then trying to get away from those projections.
If I stop judging the world, then it's obviously not the world that's "in the wrong", it's my mind. There could be a "lovable real world" "out there" that I'm not seeing because I keep trying to "separate from it", because I'm lost internally in the ego darkness and judgments and stuff.
The course is clearly pointing toward finding a way to see what the world is in the present moment, without condemnation, without my ego judgments, without guilt projection, and with the Holy Spirit's holiness and eyes of Christ. To look upon that "out there" I obviously can't be trying to "remove myself from it".
Perhaps the defensive posture of "get away from the world" has been a backwards ego decoy this whole time, laden with projected judgments designed to justify not engaging with it or opening up to it. Because who would want to become in some way "closer to" something "judged" to be evil and cruel.
Maybe my judgements of it have been unfair and unwarranted and incorrect, and maybe the forgiven world is there to be seen when I'm not projecting internal confusions onto it. Maybe there is a way to love the world, for what it is - not to give it reality or permanence or confuse it with heaven but, at least to look at it with a greater embrace of "what it is" without all the projections of "what it is not" that I keep putting onto it.
The world has been my favourite scapegoat for many years, presumably my whole life. Maybe the world isn't really the problem. Maybe the problem is in my mind. And maybe I've been lost in an internal "dream" of reality distortion and denial of the truth.
It seems we're meant to learn to see "with accurate perception", the world "as it is". To recognize it, to see past the differences and contrasts. To see an underlying "reflection of heaven" in it. Actually seemingly "out there". Such that we experience the world from a whole-minded forgiven vantage point of openness and welcome and sharing rather than attack and rejection.
Perhaps ultimately we give the world we made a big hug and then watch as it dissolves away.
"Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does so. "
"From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home."
"Father, Christ's vision is Your gift to me, and it has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world. How glorious and gracious is this world! Yet how much more will I perceive in it than sight can give. The world forgiven signifies Your Son acknowledges his Father, lets his dreams be brought to truth, and waits expectantly the one remaining instant more of time, which ends forever as Your memory returns to him."
"The teachers of God have trust in the world, because they have learned it is not governed by the laws the world made up. It is governed by a Power which is in them but not of them. It is this Power that keeps all things safe. It is through this Power that the teachers of God look on a forgiven world."
"Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming, with all my past mistakes oppressing it, and showing me distorted forms of pain? Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."
"Can the world seem bright and clear and safe and welcoming, with all my past mistakes oppressing it, and showing me distorted forms of pain? Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."
Someone who is in their right mind, who is sane, and who is correct, and who is not believing illusions, has a whole mind and recognizes what is true.
Their mind is filled with love because love is the quality of what is natural and correct. A natural mind, or being miracle minded, is a state of correct accurate perception. It's an awareness of the truth and a willingness to accept it.
If a person makes a mistake, produces an error, or slips into a fantasy, in which the truth is mistaken for something else, they go into illusions. Their mind has become incorrect. This is simply a mistake, an error they are making. It is not a sin.
In this state, the "curriculum" now becomes to "learn love" again. The aim is to restore the mind to its wholeness, to return to sanity, to regain right mindedness, and to recognize what is true. The only thing the student needs is the correction of the mistake.
A loving teacher, such as the Holy Spirit, recognizes that the student has simply made a mistake in their understanding or grasp of the truth, or what is real, and therefore needs a simple correction.This loving teacher offers and provides correction in a loving and gentle manner, which does not dwell on the error or make the student out to be sinful for making it, and especially He does not move into inducing guilt for having made a mistake. He is also not deceived by the illusion. He recognizes that all mistakes are simply innocent mistakes which do not call for any kind of punishment.
True correction, to such a teacher, is to restore the sanity of the mind. To return the mind to a loving condition. The curriculum thus is to re-learn love, and to accept what is true. To reintegrate the REAL ANSWER to correct the wrong one. And this real answers corrects the false conclusion which the student came to.
In order for the student to be corrected, they have to move upwards, back into the truth and into love. They have to become the truth and the love in order to BE correct. To be as God intended. To be real. They must become part of the atonement itself.
The movement away from the truth placed the student into a state of mistakenness, and since this seemed to be an investment in LACK of love, the correction is actually the SUPPLY of the lack of love to the student.
In other words, punishing the student for a mistake will not move them into a loving state. It will not correct them. What they need is to be treated with love and gentleness, and healed. The loving teacher needs to show the student a larger truth, a light, which correctly frames the mistake they made AS a mistake and not a true sin, so that they can SEE what the truth really is.
Upon seeing and recognizing the truth, the student can acknowledge it and move into it, accepting atonement. Their mind becomes whole again and they are restored to sanity and to love.
A miracle therefore, is the blessing of love and forgiveness given by the loving teacher, which could be any teacher of God, which recognizes the sinless innocence of the student, the fact they are temporarily mistaken, the recognition of the truth, and the offering of what the truth is. The truth is offered by being GIVEN to the student through an expression of love.
The truth, or love, must actually be GIVEN by the teacher, TO the student, or from the giver to the receiver, so that the student can HAVE what they were missing. The student must RECEIVE the love, the correction, allowing it to heal their mind and perception.
That which transfers from above to below, from "those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less", since "miracles supply a lack", is a blessing of love and life and clarity and power, which corrects the mind of the student and clarifies what is true. In this sense, a miracle falls like a drop fo healing rain from those who are closer to heaven, down, onto those who need resurrection, bring them back to life. We can thus say that ALL miracles raise the dead.
This is why a miracle can correct a mistake in the mind, undo level confusion, resurrect the dead, raise the level of communication, unite brothers, and intervene for their holiness. It is a blessing, an emitting of life and power, which is bestowed upon someone and shone into their mind, so that the person is reminded of what is true and awareness of light increases. Miracles correct the mistakes the student was making by shining a light which enlightens their mind.
"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."
"The miracle does not awaken you, but merely shows you who the DREAMER is."
"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE."
"A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the Atonement principle, where perception is healed."
"undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle.
"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack; they are performed by those who temporarily have more for those who temporarily have less."
"Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love."
"Miracles are a universal blessing from God"
"Miracles bear witness to truth."
"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself.""Miracles rearrange perception and place all levels in true perspective. This is healing because sickness comes from confusing the levels."
"I inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness and make your perceptions holy.""Miracles restore the mind to its fullness. By atoning for lack they establish perfect protection. The spirit's strength leaves no room for intrusions."
"The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, darkness automatically disappears."
"A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack.""Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
"The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true, and rejecting what is out of accord as false."
Fear is always produced when you perceive anyone as your enemy.
You cannot have enemies without fear. Fear turns innocent people into enemies.
There has to be a perception within your own self, for whatever reason, which has 'framed' the other person as though they are, can, will, or have done something to you that you didn't seem to want.
This can take on a lot of forms. It can be that someoneis making noises that you don't like. It can be that someone is outright yelling at you or trying to attack you physically. It can be that you don't like the color of someone's hair. It can be that you have a long-standing resentment toward someone for stealing your favorite object many years ago. The entire gamut of human ego experiences fall into this.
So you perceive that the person 'out there', is separate from you, and they are starting to do something, which for some reason seems to be CAUSING ME to experience something less than love, which is starting to have a seeming EFFECT on me. As soon as you perceive this, even slightly, and are having even a slight reaction, you are "under attack".
This is entirely based on, and requires, that you perceive the other person as 'causing you' to be a certain way for some reason. It doesn't even matter what the reason is. Just the mere suggestion that they're doing something 'to you' is enough. Therefore, 'cause' is in them. And if cause is in them, to any degree, then to your ego perception, cause is no longer in you.
It IS possible to see cause in others and to have cause in you - that happens in recognition of Christ and Oneness in all people - but when we lose sight of it in ourselves we DISPLACE it onto others, disown power, start being irresponsible for ourselves, stop being truthful, and enter into a state of unconsciousness, which is ego. If the cause is NOT in you, then you will see it ONLY in others, and that will scare the shit out of you because you have literally MADE YOURSELF POWERLESS by giving your power away. So fear feels like having no power (or hope) of being able to prevent attack.
So basically, ALL FEAR is produced when you perceive someone as being a 'cause' when you are an 'effect'. If you are affected by them, upset by them, don't like them, attacked by them, in any way or form, you ARE believing that you are under attack. You see them as a threat, a danger, a something you do not want and cannot accept. That makes them your enemy. And that means you're now in this... experience, of ego, which feels something like this...
The other person suddenly seems threatening, they approach, your blood pressure goes up, you start to feel anxious and self conscious, and yet at the same time you begin to rise up against the threat in what we call 'anger', and you try to counter-attack because you feel like you're being attacked, and the two of you (egos) come together and 'clash', and are now in a fight or at 'war' with each other, and this is TERRIBLY UPSETTING. You try to fight off the other person but you can't help but feel simultaneously in great danger and threat and therefore very afraid.
Now, the antidote then should be fairly obvious. And it takes the recognition that YOU, not anyone else, but YOU, at some point in this process, YOU decided to perceive the other person as unacceptable, something to be resisted, unworthy of love, in some way offensive, in opposition to you, or representing something you don't believe in, or perhaps have a history of upsetting encounters with you. YOU decided to see them this way. You didn't HAVE to see them this way but you did. You maybe didn't realize that you actually have a CHOICE, and you can choose again.
So you have to recognize the POWER you have, which is the power to CHOOSE, which you DID use, to decide that you would perceive this person as your enemy - in some way. And because of that choice, you AUTOMATICALLY entered into a state of mind in which there was separation between you, a sense of threat and danger emerged, you felt unfairly treated and angry and agitated, and simultaneously FEAR arose. And the strange thing is, that you thought that person was not only causing you to feel this way, but that it was THEM who were RESPONSIBLE for you feeling this way, as though you weren't even contributing to this experience at all. It seems on the surface as though 'they' are doing this 'to you', BUT, the 'it' that they are doing to you, is really ONLY possible because of how you have first perceived them as an enemy.
Perceiving others as against you or causing you or as your enemy automatically makes you a VICTIM. This is absolutely inescapable law. You cannot see someone as an enemy without being both afraid and experiencing victimhood. And no matter how much you are upset about what it feels like to be in that state of mind, and all the feelings that come along with it, and all the fear that floods your system, YOU ARE CHOOSING IT. And it is ONLY happening NOT because of what the other person is doing, but because of how your mind is looking at the situation. Your decision to SEE yourself in the role of victim, to SEE yourself as in opposition, and to essentially see YOUR own unacceptability projected onto someone else, THAT is the only reason why you are upset.
So what happens now is that you decide to take responsibility for choosing. You recognize you DO have a choice, you CAN see the situation differently, you WANT to, and then you do it. That means, realizing the other person is NOT causing this. At all. Not even a tiny bit. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM, EVER. This is all about you. It's your ego. It's your perception. You GOT what you wanted to get in your perception of attack. You GOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR in asking to be positioned as a victim, and by seeing yourself as one. So if you don't want that, choose not to do that.
Choose to see yourself as not a victim. Choose to see yourself as NOT having this enemy, and that that person is NOT your enemy and is NOT the cause of your upset and does NOT have the power to change you or affect you in any way. Remember miracles..."denies the ability of anything not of God to affect you." So if no causes outside of you can affect you, you are restored to INVULNERABILITY, to IMMORTALITY, to perfect SAFETY, to FEARLESSNESS.
Fear HAS to disappear because you're ripping out its foundation. Its foundation is the mental perceptual construct of seeing yourself as separate from and attacked by others. You cannot experience fear if you do not see yourself and others this way. It is impossible. Fear is separation. Fear is ego. Fear is being a WILLING VICTIM, on purpose, which is why fear - even though it is experienced like some horrible thing you DO NOT WANT, and some terrible experience you SAY you want to end, fear itself is actually YOU CHOOSING TO BE AFRAID because you want to be able to maintain a scapegoat - that someone else is responsible for your life and it's not your fault.
So if you want to wake up and be free of fear FOREVER, you need to take responsibility for your life, your experience, your feelings, your attitude, and for the RESULTS that you get when you 'play with fire', which is that when you play at positioning yourself as a victim, which you do by seeing someone else as your victimizer, you must inevitably experience terror and threat. You do not have to. And if you do not choose to see the situation as though someone is against you or has power over you or is choosing for you or is directly 'causing you', you cannot experience fear. Fear must vanish. And it will.
The instant you take back responsibility for what you're experiencing, right now, fear will massively deflate in a mere moment.
Similarly when you are justifying anger at someone seeming to do something to you, and you realize that underneath that anger there is actually FEAR, watch how that anger deflates and disappears INSTANTLY, because you've shifted to becoming aware of what the real problem is and not its projection. And if you go deeper to look behind fear, you will find your own victimy attitude which got you into this mess. If you can get there, watch as fear dissolves INSTANTLY. Watch as miracles of healing happen INSTANTLY, as you return to peace.
Surrender.
Ego's world is run by the egoic thought system, based on an EITHER-OR mindset of separation.
God's world is run by God's thought system, based on a BOTH-AND mindset of sharing.
EITHER-OR is based on the idea of separation - there is a separation between who has and who has not, who does and who does not, what is and what is not, etc. An object is this, but not that. It's either red or blue. It's either here or there.
BOTH-AND is based on sharing, something is equally true of both me and you, we both have everything, me and you are loved the same by God, etc. There is no separation in that. What exists is in all locations simultaneously, space and time do not place limits on anything.
Because the world of physical matter is entirely an expression of the egoic thought system, space and time and everything within them (bodies, planets, etc) are governed by this idea of EITHER OR. Living in such a world, the seemingly "natural" way to think about anything is to align our thought processes to the "natural world" and think in accord with it.
So now we "learn" to think in an EITHER-OR way. Either I will turn left or right. Either I will eat at 5 or at 6. Either I'm male or female. Either I am asleep or awake. Either I choose option A or option B.
We adopt this as an entire way of thinking about the world, of reasoning about anything, of what to do, where to go, what to choose, always a selective judgement based on either this or that. It seems to "fit" well with the way the physical world is structured and how it behaves. But it is completely unnatural and completely opposite to God's world.
In God's world, seemingly miraculous things are possible. Everywhere. All the time. Everything in God's world breaks all the ego's laws of separation, and therefore the entire basis of EITHER-OR thinking. God does not think, hey, either one son or another will get my attention. He thinks, BOTH of them get my FULL attention. Nor does he think, I will give 50% attention to one and 50% to another. He thinks, I will give 100% love to both at the same time. And this is done WITHOUT loss, without sacrifice or lack, and without compromise.
The true meaning of divine sharing is that everything applies to BOTH me and you equally, simultaneously, and always. If there were such a thing as a divine pizza, I could eat the whole pizza and you could eat the whole pizza. We both get everything. This is not possible in the physical world, but it is possible in spirit.
One of the tricky things about understanding ACIM is that we come at it with the ego thought system. We come at it with EITHER-OR thinking. And that's a serious problem. Because whenever ACIM speaks of ANYTHING to do with God, Heaven, Creation, Sonship, Holy Spirit, Laws of God, beyond spacetime, etc.... any of those topics, the laws of GOD are applying, not the laws of ego.
So then a statement like "I and my father are One", is completely misunderstood. It's a truth WITHIN the scope of God's BOTH AND system of thought. There, I can be one with God while still being an individual. I am both, myself and part of God. The course also states that God has only one son, BUT that the one son is also many sons. It literally states that BOTH statements are true, that there is one, and many. The Sonship comprises many children, who are ALSO one.
But to the ego this seems nonsense, it cannot fathom how there can be ONE AND MANY at the same time. It insists that it is EITHER one, OR many. And then it decides that many sounds like an ego thing, and one sounds "more spiritual", so it hacks out the many from the one and ends up with its version of what Heaven must be like. And it's totally bullshit.
To grasp anything of the divine nature of the Kingdom, on ANY topic "that side" of the separation boundary, anything real and true, anything to do with Sonship or Creation or God, you have to totally put aside the EITHER OR exclusive separatist way of reasoning logically, think WAY out side the box, and adopt a BOTH AND way of reasoning. THEN the things that Jesus says that sound totally contradictory finally make perfect sense, WITHOUT having to change anything or turn stuff into ridiculous metaphors.
"One brother is all brothers." "One mind is all minds."
Does not mean there is EITHER one brother OR many brothers. Nor does it mean there is either ONE mind OR many minds. Literally, the entire statement is true. There are many brothers, and they are all one. There many minds, and they are all one. And as soon as your thought process tries to "axe" the "many" part of those statements in favor of keeping only the seemingly unifying "one" part of the statement, you're off on an ego tangent of error.
We are one, but we are still brothers. We are the one son of God, but we are also PART of a sonship of many sons. I am a child of God, and so are you. I have individuality, and so do you, and yet simultaneously we share everything. I have everything that God is, which should to the ego mean there is nothing left for you, but you also have everything that God is, simultaneously, because we share it all. Sharing does not mean a collapse of individuality either.
The BOTH AND system of thought, which "runs heaven", is a completely miraculous thought system. It defies all ego laws. It breaks space and time. It ignores silly limitations and false conclusions. It allows to be possible that which the world of EITHER OR would find absolutely impossible. It ignores spatial limitations of all kinds. This is why God is omnipresent, meaning existing in all locations simultaneously. It ignores the idea that we must be kept apart in order to be individuals. And it defies every attempt to split it up and compartmentalize it into nice little prison cells.
The entire Kingdom of God and everything in it is miraculous because of this fundamental logical premise of the whole system. "Nothing real can be increased (God cannot create) except by sharing". As God SHARES, this is an AND scenario. God AND his creation. God AND his son. BOTH God and His son exist. His son is in his likeness because they BOTH are of the same Kingdom and nature.
When I give to you, BOTH of us have it, and I do not lose it. This is why sharing INCREASES the supply in heaven, while sharing causes scarcity in the ego world. When God creates you, God gives ALL of himself to you and yet loses nothing and HAS everything still - BOTH you and God now share everything and there has been an INCREASE. This is miraculous, it dissolves the idea of separation and exclusivity, transcending all ego concepts. The entirety of reality depends on it.
The system of God's mind, his thought system, how the Kingdom is run, is entirely based on this idea of simultaneous sharing, union at the same time as creation, multiplicity at the same time as oneness, having everything while also sharing it with others without anyone being excluded in any way. Heaven is not like this world. It's laws are totally different to the separated-out world the ego made to depict isolation and selfishness. There is no selfishness in the Kingdom, only self-fullness.
"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."
You have everything, and we all share it as God's family.
Something just popped into my mind on our lovely walk home from the cafe.... there are different LEVELS of forgiveness.
The dream was created through this process:
Separation idea > sin > guilt > fear of punishment > death.
At each of these 'stages' there are different kinds of perceptions and choices being made for different reasons. When we're in the world faced with something that seems upsetting, it's usually an experience somewhere between the last two stages - fear and death. When we apply forgiveness, we tend to work on undoing the projections of fear, and perhaps if we dig deeper we undo some of the projections of guilt as well.
But what I found myself noticing was, I don't often get even deeper into the undoing of sin, or deeper than that - the undoing of the idea of separation.
The idea of separation entails our CHOICE to be separate from God, which was a disowning of responsibility and a desire to be different. If I am to take 100% responsibility for what I've chosen, realizing I've only done this to myself, I have to take my forgiveness ALL the way to that original 'source point' in my mind - the decision to die - to be opposite of Life.
So if I'm mainly caught up in forgiving projections and blame, that's helpful but it's maybe confined to some of the 'lower levels' or more external levels of the mind. I need to go deeper. I need to get to where I can see that I CHOSE everything about this because I wanted to be separate. That's the 'root cause' in my mind. I need to admit that I wanted to deny God and wanted to be dead. That's the pivotal point. To get there I need to make sure I am undoing the layers of fear and guilt but also the layer of a belief in sin and come to realize that this is ALL something I chose to do to myself.
Undoing fear: Seems fairly simple, recognizing we're choosing to be afraid and are projecting causes for it outside of ourselves. I can take that back. But I might still believe someone is guilty, maybe myself.
Undoing guilt: I need to now see that I'm not guilty, or at least that guilt is stemming from a sense of sin. I'm afraid because I feel guilty. Well, I need to get past feeling guilty. And as I get past it I'm going to confront a deeper level - a sense of having sinned. The reason WHY I'm guilty. And that deeper level is going to seem even MORE upsetting to admit to. Layers of fear and guilt are weaker than the layer of sin, which is also weaker than the layer of separation. These surface layers were made to cover up the deeper layers and make them more palatable.
Undoing sin: Now I'm aware that I believe I really did something bad, that it cannot be healed, that it cannot be undone or reversed. Something I'm ashamed of and guilty for. Something that supposedly 'happened'. I need to undo that and get past this perception that it's permanent, unhealable, irreversible and has had a real serious effect. This is digging into the depths of 'what I've done' and the root of my guilt. And this should lead me to ask, why did I sin in the first place? It seems like I as I progress here I should be finding out that I am more innocent, but so far it seems I'm more to blame. But I'm moving past it. It's difficult to admit to guilt, but even harder to admit to sin. The ego says, see, you shouldn't have looked at the guilt because now you've uncovered a deeper darker layer of horror. But we can move past this - we have to. Because underneath the idea that 'we really did this' (sin) is an even darker idea - that we WANTED to be separate.
Undoing separation: Sin can only arise out of some kind of separation idea, which actually is a CHOICE and DECISION to be separate. I must've wanted to sin. I must've wanted to do this, to be sinful. So underneath the sin is a choice. It's the awareness that I DID THIS TO MYSELF ON PURPOSE, for a reason. And what is that reason? Why would I separate? I have to own up to this. I wanted to be separate because I wanted to deny that God exists so that I could have an ego. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be not loved. I wanted to die. If I can't get all the way to seeing that I made this choice, then I am not going to truly be ready to COMPLETELY RELINQUISH it. I need to admit to all of the sorrow that came from this choice, and that the choice was mine. Nobody else was to blame. No-one did this to me. I wanted it. And now I'm realizing it hasn't worked - because sin hasn't really worked - and I'm not guilty, and don't need to be afraid or get punished. I'd rather be happy. I might as well give up, surrender this choice, and CHOOSE AGAIN.
And it's at that point that you actually fully let go of the decision for separation, which dissolves the ego and unifies you with God.
So as I forgive now I plan to remind myself of this - exactly how deep am I willing to go in forgiving? Am I just giving up surface projections or am I willing to get all the way to the CORE IDEA - the death wish - the decision to be without God? And am I willing to let that go. Having let go of all the projections and blame and consequences of ALL the other levels, I should be ready to squarely admit to and own up to this decision, and subsequently choose differently. I'd rather choose Holy Spirit's truth at this point and join with His version of the truth and ACCEPT GOD instead of trying to deny God. ACCEPTING GOD is ACCEPTING THE ATONEMENT.
So it seems that as we dig deeper, we uncover darker and more vicious levels of disaster. First it was palatable fear, then some tolerable guilt, but now it's serious sin and hate, and beneath that - a death wish, a desire to be without God on purpose. That's not easy to want to look at or to admit to. And it can seem like the worst thing you could possibly admit - that I wanted this suffering - I wanted to not be with God. I wanted to get rid of God. Or even as some describe it - a murderous thought - the desire to kill God's son. Pretty heavy stuff! We need to come to admit to this so that we choose differently. If I can't own up to having made this CHOICE then I'm not going to be able to UNDO that choice and choose God/Atonement instead. And if I don't, I will continue to die. It IS a life-or-death decision, although we must remember death is an illusion.
So the choice is up to us. Do we want to accept God again and allow Him to love us, or do we want to keep choosing suffering and despair and lack and destruction? It's up to us.
There is a theme in the miracle principles. Many of them speak of the fact that you as a miracle worker are in a position of greater supply than others. You are DIFFERENT to them. They are lacking something you have and are in need of healing. And it is now your role to GIVE to them, or supply, that which they lack, for them, so that they will be lifted up to a healed state. This means that miracles are a way to HEAL OTHERS. To be truly helpful. To actually CAUSE effects in them whereby they CHANGE, are transformed, and BECOME healed. In mind AND body.
Miracles are not the same thing as the state of miracle mindedness. They arise FROM that state and EXPRESS outward to others.
"Miracles ARISE FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
"Miracles are an EXPRESSION of love."
They are miracle impulses, sparks of life, divine broadcasts, thought creations, ("miracles are thought creations" "miracles are a spark of life") which EMIT from the mind, travel through you from the holy spirit, to your brother's mind, where they are received. This entails a GIVER and a RECEIVER. They CAUSE HEALING IN OTHERS. In your brother. Because he has placed himself in a position where he is blocking his own healing and so NEEDS the light in you to shine into his mind to heal it, for him. Just as if someone is disabled, you HELP THEM to cross the road.
Having placed himself in a state of sickness, your brother is in a position to NEED HELP. He is not willing to correct the error himself, even though he made it, and even though his mind could heal itself. So now your function is to perform a miracle of healing FOR HIM, as a SERVICE that you provide to help him.
"Miracles are a universal BLESSING from God through me to all my brothers."
A miracle is an intercession. You INTERVENE on his behalf and do FOR him what he is not currently able/willing to do. You CAN do this because your mind has a light in it which is compatible with his mind and is able to shine INTO HIS MIND to enlighten it. The light in you can shine away HIS darkness. Your mind can HEAL another mind. This is not magic, it is miraculous. The love in you can RESURRECT your brother from death!
"Miracles are healing because they ***supply a lack***; they are performed ***by those who temporarily have more FOR THOSE WHO TEMPORARILY HAVE LESS***."
"Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are always miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws. They bring ***more love both to the giver AND THE RECEIVER***."
"Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive. They simultaneously ***increase the strength of the giver and SUPPLY STRENGTH TO THE RECEIVER***."
"The miracle, on the other hand, is an ***ENERGIZER***. It always strengthens, and never depletes. It DOES ***induce peace***, and by establishing tranquillity it enables both giver ***AND RECEIVER*** to enter into a state of Grace. Here his miracle-mindedness, is restored."
"A miracle is a ***SERVICE***. It is the maximal service you can ***render to ANOTHER***. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. You recognize your own and your neighbor's worth simultaneously."
"Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by ***extending it to OTHERS.***"
"Miracles enable you to ***heal the SICK and raise the DEAD*** because you made sickness and death yourself, and ***can therefore ABOLISH both***. You are a miracle, capable of creating in the likeness of your Creator."
"A miracle is a universal ***blessing*** from God through me ***to all my BROTHERS***. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive."
"I inspire all miracles, ***which are really INTERCESSIONS***. They ***intercede*** for your holiness"
"A miracle is a ***CORRECTION*** introduced into false thinking by me. It acts as a catalyst, breaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly."
"The miracle ***DISSOLVES error*** because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by perceiving light, ***darkness automatically DISAPPEARS***."
"A major contribution of miracles is their ***strength in RELEASING you*** from your false sense of isolation, deprivation and lack."
"A miracle is never lost. It may touch ***MANY PEOPLE*** you have not even met, and produce undreamed of changes in situations of which you are not even aware."
"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."
"The miracle is the ***act*** of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he ***strengthens*** His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. ***The power of one mind CAN shine into another***, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."
"Our brothers are forgetful. ***That is why they need*** your remembrance of me and of Him Who created me. Through this remembrance, ***you can change their minds about themselves***, as I can change yours. ***Your mind is so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them***, as I can enlighten yours."
This is not a violation of the person's free will. If they are willing to be helped, a little willingness is all that is required to invite the holy spirit to move and act and heal. It is our role as MIRACLE WORKERS, to GIVE healing to others who need it. We are in a position to do so because of our greater strength, and the Holy Spirit is EAGER to bring as much healing as possible as soon as possible.
"Your function on Earth is healing."
"You share the Holy Spirit's function on earth."
"Do his works."
"You will see miracles through your hands through me."
"If I live in you, you ARE awake. But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH you, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you."
"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."
"The truly helpful are God's miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom. I will direct you to wherever you can be truly helpful, and to whoever can follow my guidance through you."
Here are some steps and keys to performing REAL miracles. This is for real! I've already experienced success healing pain and leg cramps and emotional upsets with this approach in the past few days and I'm just getting started. Try following this process. Relevant ACIM Miracle principles are given throughout...
1) Acknowledge that God is unconditional love and loves everyone completely. Love is the opposite of fear. It is important to put all fear aside in order to work miracles. Opening up to LOVE will shine away your fears. "26 - Miracles represent freedom from fear. Atoning means undoing - undoing fear is an essential part of the miracle." "28 - Miracles are a way of earning release from fear."
2) Acknowledge that God's love is powerful and is more powerful than any other power, including any form of sickness. You must be willing to really believe that God CAN heal this, 100%. This may require a leap of faith. God's power is the only power, all other powers are powerless before Him and do not really exist. God's power, as light, shines away the illusion of alternative powers such as sickness/death/ego/body having any power over the Son of God.
3) It may be useful to remember there is no order of difficulty in miracles and no matter what a sickness looks like or how severe, that is irrelevant. God's power is greater and can heal all things unconditionally. "1 - There is no order of difficulty in miracles. One is not harder or bigger than another." "49 - The miracle makes no distinction among degrees of misperception."
4) Acknowledge God's love for you and the other person and feel it in your heart, whole-heartedly. Half-hearted love doesn't produce results. The process of performing a miracle entails prayer and communion with God in your right mind. "11: Prayer is the medium of miracles." "36 - Miracles are examples of right thinking."
5) Acknowledge that God has already healed everything, that Holy Spirit has already undone all consequences of the entire separation, and now 'in time' it's just a matter of catching up. What you 'see' as ego evidence of sickness is NOT God's truth. In God, there is no sickness and God wants to heal all sickness now
6) Being aware of what God already is (already loves you, already has healed you/other) makes you appreciative. Express gratitude to God for his love and healing which are ALREADY the truth. "33 - Miracles honor you because you are lovable."
7) Express gratitude to God for creating the Real version of you and the other person, your Holy Self, and be grateful for the properties of that true Self - innocence, perfect health, beautiful joy, lovability, etc i.e. look past the ego self to the Christ. Remind yourself of what the real truth is about you and the other person. "14 - Miracles bear witness to truth." "17 - Miracles transcend the body." "20 - Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth." "40 - The miracle acknowledges everyone as your brother and mine." "50 - The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true."
8) Extend God's love by RECEIVING it and EXPERIENCING it for yourself and thanking God for loving you, and then allowing it to overflow from you to another. You will be a channel or bridge for it and God/Holy Spirit/Jesus will do all the actual healing FOR YOU and THROUGH YOU if you just stay open to love. "3 - Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love." "5 - Miracles are habits and should be involuntary." "16 - Miracles are teaching devices for demonstrating it is as blessed to give as to receive." "21 - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others." "
9) Thank God for already healing the xyz sickness in yourself or the other person, and focus on gratitude for it having already been healed. Believe this healing is possible. Know it. "27 - A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." "29 - Miracles praise God through you."
10) If with someone, lay hands on the area of their sickness, or you can put your own hand on your own area, or just be open. Touching isn't strictly necessary but it seems to help focus and transfer spiritual power. "8 - A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service you can render to another."
11) Invite Jesus and Holy Spirit to come into you and feel their presence. This isn't the same necessarily as asking or requesting them to come in, it should be an open-ended invitation. e.g. Jesus I invite you to come into me and join with me. You may experience their presence in you. "44 - The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement."
12) Ask Holy Spirit and Jesus to go now into the person/area of sickness and heal it. But try to focus mainly on thanking them for doing so, rather than the idea that there is something still 'to do', because the latter involves a perception of separation while gratitude is immediate. Keep focusing on love. Stay in the love. Feel the love. Extend the love. The power of love should start to flow through you into the area/person. You might experience shaking or other sensations. "8 - Miracles are healing because they supply a lack." "9 - Miracles are a kind of exchange." "19 - Miracles make minds one in God." "38 - The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."
13) Centered in love, centered in God, centered in Spirit, you can 'command' sickness to be healed. It must obey because God has power over it and you are extending the authority of God. You can be authoritative and literally command it to leave. "Pain I command you leave this body right now, get out now" for example. Remember that half-hearted attempts do not work. Do not be afraid to be strongly assertive (which is not the same as being forceful). Be firm in your affirmation of truth and wholeness. "41 - Wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles." "43 - Miracles arise from a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."
14) Continue focusing on gratitude and thanking God, which opens up the flow of His power even more. Try not to focus on having to do anything yourself. You are not the healer. Your job is to stay connected to God's love and be open to extending His healing. "39 - The miracle dissolves error because the Holy Spirit identifies error as false or unreal." "42 - A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation ."
15) You can also thank Jesus and Holy Spirit for their healing. Remember it may appear the 'body' is being healed but really the mind is being healed - the body is inside of and made of 'mind'. Bodies are just ideas and images that can be corrected. All sickness is created BY the mind using attack thoughts/false thinking. "24 - Miracles enable you to heal the sick and raise the dead because you made sickness and death." "32 - I [Jesus] inspire all miracles, which are really intercessions. They intercede for your holiness." "34 - Miracles restore the mind to its fullness." "37 - A miracle is a correction introduced into false thinking by me [Jesus]."
16) They may tell you that the issue is gone, or healed, or maybe they will give you guidance to clarify what the issue is or what it's based on etc. During an experiment yesterday I simply heard "its gone", and the pain was gone. The Voice for God can and will direct you specifically especially when you are in the flow of performing miracles or 'ministering' truth to your brother. "4 - All miracles mean life, and God is the Giver of life. His Voice will direct you very specifically."
17) If needed you can repeat 'commanding' the issue to be healed, or to fall into line with God's truth, or whatever form of undoing of ego you want to verbalize. But know that it's not so much your mind or head that is doing something, it's your 'spirit', through your Higher Self. The ego is not a healer. "35 - Miracles are expressions of love, but they may not always have observable effects." "45 - A miracle is never lost. It may touch many people you have not even met."
18) When done, express more gratitude. And hopefully now you've experienced a miracle. "31 - Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe."
I'm still fleshing this out but this is basically what I've learned is sort of the process... still refining it and simplifying it as I learn.
tl;dr ... but it's a forgivable mistake.
Heaven is an environment of spirit, of sharing and openness, of oneness and love. It permits the shared overlapping presence of many created beings. All of spirit PERMEATES each other and PASSES THROUGH each other.
Remember that "nothing real can be threatened." Heaven does not permit any part of the environment to act against any other part. It does not put up boundaries, there are no walls to keep things out or in.
Everything has access to everything at all times. There are no prisons, nothing to imprison, and nothing to attack the prison. There are no objects that are solid, with surfaces that collide, or which can attack or damage other objects.
In heaven, there is nothing acting against the freedom of will. There is nothing to oppose the will of God. There is no way to will against anyone. This produces an environment where there are no COLLISIONS between things, there are no hard surfaces that keep things out, there are no separate wills or forces which can act upon objects and cause them to change or move against their will.
In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of SIN. It's the idea that will can be used against will, that you can attack and affect something without be affected, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, that something can be hurt with no power to stop it. It's an idea of destruction and damage, of sickness and death.
This idea alone produced what we call SPACE TIME, a whole second order of "reality" rooted in the idea that one part can be separate from another, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, and real irreversible effects can be produced. Where one thing can act upon another thing against its will and change it forever.
"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."
SPACE TIME is an environment, a system of thought in mind, completely dependent on the idea of sin. The idea of attack. That one thing can act against another. That there can be a war, a conflict, and a COLLISION. It is a world of attack on the will of God.
"The world (spacetime) was made as an attack on God."
This is why we have here physical matter, with objects which can act upon other objects without their consent. A rock can fall down a mountain and slam into a tree. The tree didn't ask for this. The tree is changed irreversibly. This is sin. Physical sin. One thing acting upon another without its consent.
It requires that there be solid surfaces. There has to be a resistance that is strong enough to REPEL something. This is why physical matter has atomic forces. The repulsion, a form of unwillingness, PUSHES AGAINST other things. It allows two objects to push against each other, thus affecting each other, moving each other, changing each other. Without solidity, sin is impossible. Without OPPOSING FORCES (wills) solid matter cannot exist and cannot have any properties.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For without a body sin is impossible."
A body, a solid material physical object, be it human or animal or a mountain or a planet, is required in order to have sin. There has to be a separation, to keep the things apart. This takes the form of materials which seem to have mass and solidity. These two "separate" things can now act upon each other independently, not sharing a will, not sharing a mind, not sharing interests. They are in CONFLICT with each other constantly.
Conflict and war and murder and attack and sin are BUILT IN TO SPACE TIME. It is its fundamental nature. The entirety of spacetime is an hallucinated image, a PICTURE, of what it would look like if heaven (God's Son) were attacked against its will, complete with forces acting upon each other and opposing each other and conflicting and damaging and destroying.
"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
One thing acting upon another thing against its will. That's the root of all of spacetime, the tiny mad idea, the violation of God's will, the attempt to oppose reality. The mere idea of FORCING something to happen TO something OTHER than (separate from) oneself. The idea of sin, of murder, and of death.
Because now if you can use power to cause/will a change in something else, and it changes, and the change is IRREVERSIBLE, that is the idea of sin. If I throw a brick through a glass window and the glass is broken and the brick is chipped, these are effectively PERMANENT changes. The broken window is now THE PROOF OF SIN, and testifies that someone DID throw a brick through the window. So long as the window remains broken, the proof is still there. And the window will never be the same again.
The ability to DAMAGE, to destroy, to attack, to rot and decay, to change anything at all, is the idea of sin. It's sort of like, we've tried to suggest that heaven can be attacked, hurt, changed, destroyed, and mangled into some new form. The entirety of spacetime is testifying to this at all times without end. Even when the objects are not touching. Even when they do. Even when the planets are far apart from each other. They are still at war.
It is an entire system of war, conflict, attack and death. The important thing to realize is that WITHOUT the idea that will can act against will, ALL of this is impossible. You cannot have WALLS, you cannot have OBJECTS, you cannot have BODIES, you cannot have PLANETS, you cannot have attack or murder or destruction, you cannot have MATTER, without the idea of sin.
Heaven is a system of total access. Spacetime is a system of denied access. Heaven is a system of everything being shared. Spacetime is a system of nothing being shared. Heaven is a system of nothing being separate or kept apart of unable to merge or overlap. Spacetime is a system where everything is kept apart and nothing ever joins or shares. They are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to each other in nature.
This also means that you CANNOT take Earth, bodies, space or time, INTO heaven, and keep it. They are absolutely incompatible. One denies the other. Sin is a "lack of love". You cannot take a lack of love INTO love and have it still BE a lack of love. Nothing about its LACK nature can be maintained if there is love. Just as light shines away darkness and REPLACES the darkness. You cannot take the darkness into the light and have it still retain its dark properties.
Earth, human bodies, space and time, are all ideas of sin and darkness and a lack of love. They will NEVER be that which they deny. They cannot be integrated into heaven because they ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE and DEPEND ON a LACK of heaven for their nature. As soon as you introduce the oneness, sharing, lack of walls, lack of hard surfaces, lack of collisions, lack of spatial separations, that is true of heaven's nature, there is nothing left to SUPPORT matter existing at all in ANY way. Earth DISSOLVES in the light and CEASES to exist. It is made of separateness.
You will not be able to "walk on the surface of the earth" in heaven's reality under heaven's laws. There are NO surfaces. There is NO gravity. There is no COLLISION between feet and ground. There is no SEPARATENESS to keep you from sinking into the planet. There is no POSSIBILITY of Earth or bodies whatsoever there.
What you CAN do, is you can adopt heaven's laws and viewpoint and look up the world of sin with forgiveness. It forgives the world BECAUSE of the world's limitations. It recognizes that the world (spacetime/earth) is not REAL sin, it is an ILLUSION of sin. And that really it is just A MISTAKE. Earth is a mistake. Spacetime is a mistake. It is FALSE. Not attacked, not condemned, simply nothing.
This is a key point which people need to really deeply realize. Spacetime is totally opposite to heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in EVERY way." There are no collideable solid material objects in heaven's reality. The world, earth, space and time, all bodies, must eventually be LET GO AND FORGOTTEN. Because they are nothing. And they cannot exist WITHOUT sin and death.
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."
"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."
"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."
"From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."
"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings"
"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."
"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED."
"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 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 body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."
"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."
"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."
"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."
"They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."
YOU HAVE TO GIVE LOVE FIRST TO RECEIVE LOVE
Love is in you, it is you, it is God given. God put love and light and power into you. You did not put it there and cannot produce it on your own. But if you believe love is not in you, you are unlovable, unworthy, are denying your real self, etc, love will be blocked. Love does not enter where it is not welcome.
Believing the love is not in you, you will see yourself as lacking love, and "in need". You will believe the love is separate from you and external to you. So you will go seeking for it. You will try to GET IT from anywhere other than inside yourself. That is, you'll try to acquire it, without undoing your belief that you don't have it.
The problem is even IF people give it, you will not allow yourself to truly receive it. Openness to receiving love requires that you NOT believe you're lacking it, and requires to TO believe that love IS IN YOU ALREADY.
It's not that you need to find a way to get the love you are lacking, it's that you need to learn that unless you GIVE or EXTEND it, you WILL NOT receive it. And this also means, no-one else can give you the love that you are unwilling to give yourself or to others.
If you fail to give love to others, ie you deny them love, what happens is you deny yourself love. In other words, if you find that you cannot love or aren't willing to, your "unloving attitude" towards others will also be experienced by yourself. You will find yourself lacking and needy and dependent on external sources.
How love really works, is that it must extend. It must be given. In order to have the love, you have to give the love. In order to receive the love, you must express the love. You must flow it, extend it. It's given to you BY GOD, and your natural function (when sane) is to extend it or "pass it on" to everyone else (and God).
When you do that, you acknowledge the love is in you, it's already being supplied to you, you are NOT lacking it, and therefore you HAVE it to give. If you feel like you're lacking it, you will also feel like you cannot give any more. The remedy for that is not to try to get more love from others, but to become more willing TO love. To give more love.
When you give more love, YOUR lack is supplied from within, and by giving your love away to others you RECEIVE it from God. This is the only way it works. This is how you love naturally. And that also means you MUST acknowledge that God loves you in order for you to be willing and able to love yourself and others. If you can't acknowledge God as the source of ALL love, it is impossible to experience real love at all. Sorry atheists but if you deny God you deny love.
Unless you are choosing to express love, you will not receive it. What applies to you applies to others. This is the Golden Rule in action. Love others to love yourself. If you unlove them you will unlove yourself. If you attack them you will attack yourself. If you are unforgiving in your attitude towards them you will find yourself guilty. If you love them you will love yourself. It's a rule of equality.
This also does not mean sacrifice. By giving love, you should not aim to only cause others to receive love, and omit yourself from receiving it. That too is egocentric. It's a form of sacrifice in which you believe others deserve love and you do not, so you try to give love but only in a way or form that ensures you do not receive or experience it yourself. You "burn out" that way because you are not getting fresh love input from God. You're trying to give yourself away and actually get rid of yourself. It's suicidal.
People who SEEM very giving and selfless can be the most denying of self love and unwilling to receive. This is the ego's illusion of love. Appearing to be loving or sacrificial in an attempt to look loving, when in fact all you're doing is creating a hole in yourself and denying yourself what little you have. This happens when you try to be the SOURCE of love, as an ego, rather than getting the love from God. Sacrificial selflessness is NOT unconditionally loving.
Similarly, if you are afraid, it is because you are failing to love. You are not fulfilling your function of extending God's being. Fear is what you experience as the absence of love. All suffering comes from that sense of lack or denial. You'll think, you are too afraid to love, you have nothing to give, you are empty, and this is terrifying you because you have no strength, nothing to stand up to others with, people are walking all over you and you have no confidence.
But what happens is, surprisingly, if you can will yourself to love, to express and extend genuine love, unconditional love, it immediately dissolves that fear. It gives you strength, it empowers you, it sets you up in the correct arrangement of being an extender of God's power in which He takes care of you, it protects you, it makes you sane, and it shines away all darkness. The ONLY way to make that happen is to extend love.
By giving it, even if you don't THINK you have it TO give, you INCREASE how much you HAVE and find yourself in a better position. It seems counterintuitive because you think you can only give what you seem to have already. But if you give and extend willingly, it simultaneously instantly increases your supply. You can ride that wave and become much "higher" on that love. But you must initiate the giving of the love in order to break out of the sense of lacking it. As soon as you get into the flowing of it, your situation improves.
To love everyone equally and fully is the goal. EVERYONE. And that means no exceptions. And that is not easy for us ego people. People who are conditional in their love. Who don't want to love everyone. And who find some people to be sinful. This also indicates that you are unwilling to love because you are unwilling to love yourself. If you reach the limits of how much you can love someone and you feel like you just can't love them anymore, or enough, it's because you do not love yourself. You are blocking love from being received because you don't think you deserve or want it. And that makes it impossible to give it.
Yet you have to move past those blocks, those beliefs in negativity towards yourself, so that you can come to recognize that you DESERVE God's love. And this is what forgiveness and the atonement are around. Learning to recognize the truth about you, that you never sinned and all is forgiven, such that you utterly deserve God's total undivided love forever. Accepting that you are innocent and there is no reason NOT to love yourself. Or others.
You can only give the love you have received. You can only give the miracles you have received. But once you receive it and accept it as true of you, you accept it as true of others, and become willing to love BOTH you and others all the more. Which also means willing to give miracles to others. That's the path towards enlightenment. Towards the recognition that there is only love. And that nothing else exists to block it. Nor would you want to. In your right mind, there is no reason to do anything other than love fully and maximally. All expressions of true love are maximal.
Give to receive. Give first, receive next. If you receive first before giving, that is conditional and blocks the receiving, leaving you empty handed, especially if you fail to get it from someone. You must "give away" the love that you want to keep, then it will increase, and you will not lose it. This breaks all the ego's laws of lack. Ideas are increased by being given away. Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver. If you want more love, love more. Find out the barriers you've placed against love and remove them. Become willing to love everyone, all the time, without exception. Then you're ready for God.
When everyone is willing to extend God's love, they share in that love together, but you don't give love due to other people lacking it, nor do you seek for people to love you on the basis that you lack the love yourself. Imagine if everyone already is full of love and everyone is extending love to everyone. The extension isn't done at this point in order to uplift those who are lacking (which is what miracles are for) but simply as a communication, an expression, a natural way of existing. You love the love that is already in everyone, not because it's not there, but because you acknowledge everyone is already love. Love then moves beyond its healing function and become simply a way of relating forever.
It is not your task to necessarily learn to "love more", however, because God has already in fact created you WITH love and AS love. Extending love is totally natural to you as a son of God and you are unlimited in your ability to do so. The only issue are your blocks to the awareness of love, your denial, which stops you from receiving unlimited love and stops you from expressing it. You should not be trying to KEEP your blocks and INCREASE the love. That will not really work. Keeping blocks while "trying to love more" will reach a limit fast. Instead, your job is to seek out the blocks you've made AGAINST love, remove them, and then love NATURALLY will flow at an increased rate. Effortlessly.
Because the fact is, if you didn't have insanity or blocks or denials, love would NATURALLY go out on its own because of what it is. "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you don't interfere with it, love maximally extends through you all the time and its so natural and joyful that it's all you want to do. But when you erect barriers against it, in preventing yourself from being loved by God, you block the receipt, and try to cut off your mind from spirit. That SEEMS to reduce the love. It doesn't reduce love at its SOURCE (God), it only reduces your willingness to RECEIVE and flow it.
That's similar to the idea that you have a pipe, and God is flowing maximum love through the pipe, through you, and your tap is fully switched on so that the love just flows right through you and on to others (extension of creation). But when you turn the tap OFF, you reduce the flow to a trickle. Not because the source is limited but because YOU are limiting it. All you have to do is OPEN UP the flow and let love in and through you and be willing to love. Because actually it takes effort to not love. It takes effort to be unwilling. To resist. To deny. It takes deliberate belief and energy to PREVENT love. So when you stop all that effort (ego doing), you open up and the love just flows full-force on its own and it is effortless and very natural.
Be a channel for God, basically. Let him move through you. Let the Holy Spirit perform miracles through you. "What the holy spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world" "Do his works". Obviously you cannot do his works on your own, you do his works by working with him to extend HIS healing power THROUGH you TO others. Which means cooperating in not resisting, not getting in the way of, not putting up blocks against, His power through you. This is a miracle working principle. This doesn't mean you become uninvolved and "sit on the sidelines" in your ego. It means you become an EXTENDER OF LOVE, a relay, a device which forwards the love through WILL, and in that you and the Holy Spirit team up and you become part of the machinery of miracle working. You MUST ACTIVELY EXPRESS LOVE YOURSELF in order to perform miracles, but you get that love from God.
You're basically learning to plug yourself back into God. Plug yourself into love. Allow yourself to depend on God as the SOURCE of everything you are and have. By being willing to extend what you are given (your inheritance) to others, to share it equally with everyone. This entails learning to TRUST the Holy Spirit, learning to DEPEND on God, learning to make decisions WITH him (not just him, and not just you). Letting go and letting God. And fulfilling your function as spirit. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." Then you are being your natural self. You're being as God created you. And God created you to be an extender and expresser of miraculous powerful unconditional love all the time.
A collection of ACIM quotes focusing on the UNREALITY of the world. It is vital, and our only task, to correctly identify the world AS unreal, to take away from it all sense of reality and assign it to the truth of God. Only God's reality can be real. The world we made is completely unreal. Nothing in it is real at all. Recognizing its unreality is the awareness of dreaming. Recognizing its unreality is liberation from all suffering.
"Fear has made everything you think you see. All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love's enemy has made them up. Yet love can have no enemy, and so they have no cause, no being and no consequence. They can be valued, but remain unreal."
"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these."
"We will not make a thousand meaningless distinctions, nor attempt to bring with us a little part of unreality, as we devote our minds to finding only what is real."
"Dismiss temptation easily today whenever it arises, merely by remembering the limits on your choice. The unreal or the real, the false or true is what you see, and only what you see. Perception is consistent with your choice, and hell or Heaven comes to you as one."
"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be. And you who share God's Being with Him, could never be content WITHOUT reality."
"It is, then, only your WISH to change reality that is fearful, because, by your wish you think you have ACCOMPLISHED what you wish. This strange position, in a sense, ACKNOWLEDGES your power, yet by DISTORTING it, and devoting it to 'evil,' it also MAKES IT UNREAL."
"It is not my will to grope about in darkness, fearful of shadows and afraid of things unseen and unreal."
"We will attempt to leave the unreal and seek for the real. We will deny the world in favor of truth. We will not let the thoughts of the world hold us back, and we will not let the beliefs of the world tell us that what God would have us do is impossible."
"Then try to go past all the unreal thoughts which cover the truth in your mind, and reach to the eternal. Under all the senseless thoughts and mad ideas with which you have cluttered up your mind are the thoughts which you thought with God in the beginning."
"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and COULD not stem from his reality. For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."
"Temptation, then, is nothing more than this; - a prayer the miracle touch not some dreams, but KEEP their unreality obscure, and GIVE to them reality instead."
"Reality is changeless. Miracles but show what you have interposed BETWEEN reality and your awareness is unreal, and does not interfere at all."
"There is such a temptation to dismiss fear thoughts as unimportant, trivial, and not worth bothering about that it is essential you recognize them all as equally destructive but equally unreal."
"This is the corollary of the "original sin"; the belief that guilt is real and fully justified. It is therefore the psychotherapist's function to teach that guilt, being unreal, cannot be justified. But neither is it safe. And thus it must remain unwanted as well as unreal."
"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."
"When you try to bring TRUTH to illusions, you are trying to MAKE THEM REAL, and KEEP them by JUSTIFYING your belief in them. But to give illusions to Truth is to enable truth to teach that the ILLUSIONS are unreal, and thus enable you to ESCAPE from them."
"Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."
"God would not have His Son embattled, and so His Son's imagined "enemy," which he made, is TOTALLY unreal. You are but trying to escape a bitter war from which you HAVE escaped. The war is gone."
"Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."
"Forgiveness that is learned of ME does not use fear to UNDO fear. Nor does it make real the UNreal, and then destroy it."
"Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus KEEPING it unreal for you. Do not let any belief in its realness enter your minds AT ALL, or you will also believe that you must UNDO what you have made, in order to BE forgiven. What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent."
"Include all of the ego-based attributes which you ascribe to yourself, positive or negative, desirable or undesirable, grandiose or debased. All of them are equally unreal because you do not look upon yourself through the eyes of holiness."
"But you have not left open and unoccupied the altar where the gift belongs. Where THEY should be, YOU have set up your idols to something ELSE. This OTHER will, which seems to TELL you what must happen, you GAVE reality. And what would SHOW you otherwise must therefore seem unreal."
"Faith in the UNreal leads to ADJUSTMENTS of reality, to make it fit the goal of madness. The goal of sin induces the perception of a fearful world, to JUSTIFY its purpose. What you desire, you WILL see. And if its reality is false, you will UPHOLD it by NOT realizing all the adjustments YOU have introduced, to MAKE it so."
"But they have names which differ for a time, for time needs symbols, being itself unreal."
"Yet when peace is found, the war is meaningless. And it is conflict now that is perceived as non-existent and unreal."
"You can see yourselves as separated FROM your meaning only by EXPERIENCING YOURSELF AS UNREAL. This is WHY the ego is insane; it teaches that you are NOT what you ARE. This is so contradictory that it is clearly impossible."
"Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete. But if they perceive ANY of their brothers as anything OTHER than their perfect equals, the IDEA of competition HAS entered their minds. Do not underestimate your need to be vigilant AGAINST this idea, because ALL your conflicts come FROM it. It IS the belief that conflicting interests are possible, and therefore means that you have accepted the IMpossible as true. How is that different from saying that you are perceiving YOURSELF as unreal?"
"Is it harder to dispel the belief of the insane in a larger hallucination as opposed to a smaller one? Will he agree more quickly to the unreality of a louder voice he hears than to that of a softer one? Will he dismiss more easily a whispered demand to kill than a shout? And do the number of pitchforks the devils he sees carrying affect their credibility in his perception? His mind has categorized them as real, and so they are real to him. When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear."
"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."
"You cannot make the UNreal because the ABSENCE of reality is fearful, and fear cannot BE created. As long as you believe that fear is possible, YOU WILL NOT CREATE. Opposing orders of reality MAKE REALITY MEANINGLESS, and reality is MEANING."
"You cannot DISTORT reality and KNOW WHAT IT IS. And if you DO distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic, because you are trying to MAKE YOURSELF UNREAL."
"When you see a brother as a body, you are condemning him BECAUSE you have condemned yourself. But if ALL condemnation is unreal, and it MUST be unreal because it is a form of attack, then it can HAVE no results."
"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that."
"Pleasure and pain are EQUALLY unreal, because their purpose CANNOT be achieved. Thus are they means for nothing, for they have a goal without a meaning. And they share the lack of meaning that their PURPOSE has."
"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."
"There is nothing to prevent you from recognizing ALL calls for help as exactly what they are, EXCEPT YOUR OWN PERCEIVED NEED TO ATTACK. It is only THIS that makes you willing to engage in endless "battles" with reality, in which you DENY the reality of the need for healing by making IT unreal."
"Salvation is a paradox indeed! What could it be EXCEPT a happy dream? For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."
"Such is the ONLY rule for happy dreams. The gap is emptied of the toys of fear, and then its unreality is plain. Dreams are for nothing. And the Son of God CAN have no need of them."
"For you have believed that you can injure, and the right you have established for yourself can be now used against you, 'til you lay it down as valueless, unwanted and unreal."
"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."
"The special relationship is your DETERMINATION to keep your hold on unreality, and to PREVENT yourself from waking." "It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The WISH to make it IS incredible."
"How can faith in reality be yours, while you are bent on making it UNreal? And are you REALLY safer in maintaining the UNreality of what has happened, than you would be in joyously accepting it FOR WHAT IT IS, and giving thanks for it?"
"Nor could one mind think only for itself, unless the body WERE the mind. For ONLY bodies can be separate, and therefore UNREAL. The home of madness CANNOT be the home of reason. Yet it is easy to LEAVE the home of madness, if you see reason."
"We said before that, to limit love to PART of the Sonship, is to bring guilt into your relationships, and thus MAKE THEM UNREAL."
"It does not really matter, in the end, whether you judge right or wrong. Either way, you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it IMPLIES the belief that reality is yours to choose FROM."
"Only the timeless must remain unchanged. But everything in time can CHANGE with time. Yet, if the change be real and not IMAGINED, illusions MUST give way to truth, and not to other dreams which are but equally unreal."
"To you who still believe you live in time, and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past. Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth. Not one illusion still remains unanswered in your mind."
"And everything that points the way in the direction of the past but sets you on a mission whose accomplishment can ONLY be unreal."
"Every step taken in the making, the maintaining, and the breaking off of the unholy relationship, is a move toward further fragmentation and unreality."
"YOU have made the relationship unreal, and THEREFORE unholy, by seeing it WHERE it is not, and as it IS not. Give the past to Him Who can change YOUR mind about it, FOR you."
"The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that INTERFERES with truth. TRUTH IS. And can be neither lost, nor sought, nor found. It is there, wherever YOU are, being WITHIN you. But it CAN be recognized or unrecognized, real or false, to YOU. If you hide it, it becomes unreal to you, BECAUSE you hid it, and SURROUNDED IT WITH FEAR."
"The decision whether or not to listen to this course and follow it, is but the choice between truth and illusion. For here IS truth, SEPARATED from illusion, and NOT confused with it at all. How simple does this choice become when it is perceived as only what it is. For ONLY fantasies made confusion in choosing possible, and they are totally UNreal. "
"The miracle dissolves error because the Spiritual eye identifies error as false or unreal. This is the same as saying that by seeing light, darkness automatically disappears."
"Fantasies are distorted forms of thinking, because they always involve twisting perception into unreality. Fantasy is a debased form of vision."
"But Christ-control takes no account at all of the MAGNITUDE of the miracle itself, because the concept of size exists only in a plane that is itself unreal. Since the miracle aims at RESTORING reality, it would hardly be useful if it were bound by the laws of the same error it aims to correct."
Once upon a time, in heaven, there was a rebellion against the will of God. The children of God believed they were separate, and threw themselves into a nightmare world of magic and hell and death.
God saw this and, loving his Children, created the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was a divine idea in God's mind, a single perfect idea of healing the entire separation. A thought of miraculous power and of love. An expression, as though a voice, calling his children to return, and providing them with all he help and healing they would need.
The Holy Spirit was established as the single perfect solution to the thought of separation, the bringer of the atonement, the very idea of resurrection and healing. The miracle, which was given by God to completely and fully and successfully heal the entire sonship.
The Holy Spirit has been endowed with all of the power in heaven and earth. All of God has been given him and he is absolutely unlimited in his capabilities. He is the mechanism of miracles, because he alone is in a state of the transfer from hell to heaven.
He is your only appointed friend, he is your only teacher, your only qualified therapist, and your comforter. He has been given to you by God as the only help you need to return to heaven, to become a miracle worker, to act as a healer, and to resurrect the dead.
His healing capability is perfect and flawless and guaranteed to always work. He never fails. His healing is powerful and effective and there is absolutely nothing beyond his reach. There is no situation he cannot resolve and no sickness he cannot undo.
He is your guide through foreign lands and alien worlds. He is there for you. He has been created as a permanent part of reality, bridging your mind and God's mind like a bridge, guaranteeing your absolute success in returning to reality.
The Holy Spirit cannot fail. He is beyond all flaws, beyond weakness, and beyond death. There is nothing he cannot do, and nothing he cannot do through you when you are willing to let him. He can undo all the consequences of all wrong decisions, all faulty choices, all attempts to make yourself suffer, and all forms of sickness. The reversal of death is effortless to him.
He has been given to you by God as the single perfect solution to your desperate attempt to be separate. He is the answer to the questioning and the doubting and the fearing of God. He provides the vision for you to see, the power for you to heal, and the guidance and comfort to guarantee all outcomes.
Your mission is to align with him, follow his guidance, turn to him for all decisions, depend on him for healing, work with him to heal others, and help to facilitate and extend his perfect function in the world. Your destiny is to be a healer with the Holy Spirit. He is the power that works miracles through you. Utilizing his power is the natural expression of all the children of God for the good of all.
He is not of this world. He is of God and of heaven. He brings to you and to this world a power and a functioning which is in complete violation of all the world's laws. He stands for an opposite and alternative solution, a happier dream, and the only way home. He will guide you and strengthen you and support you and work through you. He will speak for you, see for you, decide for you, heal for you, and resurrect you. And he will guide you back to eternal life. With him you are unstoppable and all powerful. With him there is nothing your holiness cannot do as a miracle worker, the light of the world, a teacher of God, a physician of the Lord, and a representative of God.
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
"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."
"Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you THINK is friend obscures HIS grace and majesty from you, and keeps his friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take his place. There IS no other friend. What God appointed HAS no substitute. And what illusion CAN replace the truth?"
"Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."
"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."
"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."
"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."
"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."
"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."
"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."
"Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your minds. With this link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge. That is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it. Therefore, that is its function in truth."
"The Holy Spirit was God's answer to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating. The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound."
"The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion."
"Therefore, says reason, if escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as His purpose, and by One to Whom NOTHING He wills CAN BE impossible, the means for its attainment are MORE than possible. They must be THERE, and YOU must HAVE them."
"The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids."
"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."
"The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer is at last possible."
"The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracle-mindedness. It is the will to HEAL the separation by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly His will and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion or union of will between Father and Son."
"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. It is the call to return, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons. This the vocation of the mind."
"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge or thought-transfer of perception TO knowledge, so we CAN use the terms as if they were related, because in HIS mind they are. "
"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED. Being the call FOR God, it is also the idea OF God."
"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks."
"The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. It uses only what your minds ALREADY understand, to teach you that you do not understand it."
"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind."
"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own."
"The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad."
"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."
"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."
"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom. In Him they find what they have sought."
"The Holy Spirit IS the translator of the Laws of God to those who do NOT understand them."
"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."
"The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the Soul, mediating between them ALWAYS IN FAVOR OF THE SOUL."
"The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed."
"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."
"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER, not the question." "The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to UNITE with Him, and created by His joy, in union WITH you."
"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."
"The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium."
In A Course in Miracles, we are taught that we’ve tried to separate ourselves from God. We’re taught this is impossible, but within an idea of it being possible, we seem to experience it as if it’s happening.
To be separated from God, must mean logically that we no longer have access to what God is or what God provides. Cutting ourselves off from Him, cuts us off from the abundant supply of fulfillment that He was providing.
God provides eternal life, perfect safety, love, joy, peace of mind, strength, innocence, no reason to be afraid, certainty, happiness, etc. If we separate from Him, we are separating from all of these things.
***We cannot find any of those things anywhere else.***
God is the only source of love.
"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God."
"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct."
"God gives you only happiness."
"I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else"
"God is the Light in which I see. God is the mind with which I think. God is the Love in which I forgive. God is the strength in which I trust. There is nothing to fear."
"Love is a law without an opposite. There is no love but God's, and what He is, is everything there is."
Metaphysically, when we introduce a separation between us and God, we separate ourselves from everything God provides. And God is the ONLY SOURCE of these things. There is no cheap knock-off shop down the street selling God’s wares. You cannot find God anywhere else.
This means that once separated, isolated, alone, going off by ourselves in the darkness we made, we will LACK all of these things, WITH NO WAY to find them anywhere unless we go back to God. The prodigal son CANNOT find his father when he is away from Him. We will then try to find CRAPPY replacements for everything God was providing, to try to fill this sense of lack and emptiness.
False idols, toys, special relationships, fake meaning, a spiritualized ego, illusions of peace, a whole laundry list of stuff we "make do with" in God‘s absence, believing it’s befitting and worthy of who we are. Believing it is satisfying us when all it’s doing is maintaing a gaping emptiness. Or in other words, it’s all we think we deserve because we believe we‘re guiltly little sinners.
Lacking God, creates artificial NEEDS. These needs were being filled by Him automatically but if we refuse to receive from Him, we will invent needs which have gone unfulfilled. An unfulfilled need is a refusal to let the need by filled by the only possible source of supply.
We then will go searching externally in the world we made for some substitutes for the things God can only supply. And not find them. We made the world TO SUBSTITUTE for God. The world we made, which includes Earth, CANNOT SUPPLY that which only God can supply, because this world is entire founded in the LACK OF HIM. You will not ever find God in the world, not even if you see God in everything here. That is just a reflection. A reflection in a puddle is not the thing itself, and who would settle for that?
****This entire world is a picture of death - the absence of Life.****
We will come up empty handed. This is seeking and not finding. Looking for love, happiness, peace, truth, where it IS NOT, ensures we will not find it. Yet we’ll try intensely to prove that IT CAN be found there. That the truth is out there somewhere in the world, that a special love can satisfy our craving for God, and that we can ACTUALLY "do okay" without Him.
There will always be a state of lack and neediness UNTIL we return to God and become willing to RECEIVE what He is only capable of supplying. It is impossible to undo that sense of lack without Him. We can cover it up and deny it, but it will not go away. Only the presence of God SATISFIES your every need. Only God can give the love that you NEED in order to be free of neediness. Only God can fill the empty hole that you made when you rejected His presence.
"Everything in this world is little because it is a world made out of littleness." This directly describes how the physical FORM of this world is LITTLE, objects, people, little critters, atoms, are LITTLE, because they are MADE of littleness. Littleness is the idea of LIMITATION, lack, deprivation, loss, absence of wholeness, you name it. Everything NOT OF GOD. It is fundamentally a world you made that is UNLIKE HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY.
The symptoms and conditions of suffering in the world are DIRECTLY a consequence of shutting God out. They ARE the "shutting out" itself. Every problem, every suffering, every sickness, every fear, every question, every doubt, every confusion, every war, is all happening because of a rejection of God. It has produced a state of LACK which has given rise to all manner of despair and depravation.
Absolutely ALL OF IT is "about God"... about your relationship to God, or lack thereof. Every event, object, personal encounter, whatever, is about you and God and whether you accept or reject Him. The ego loves to distract us with problems which seem confined to the FORM of the problem, suggesting solutions which fix only one FORM of the problem, ignoring the CONTENT of the problem which is actually, a belief in separation from God. THAT is the ONLY problem in the entire world. And the world IS that problem.
It may seem the individual problems are nothing to do with God. It may seem you don’t really need God in order to solve them. You will try to solve them on your own, but fail. Little illusions of success tempt you to believe you CAN be successful at existing without God. Only up to a point.
Solve one isolated problem, the answer to which solves no other problem and cannot be generalized, and you will simply encounter MANY MORE problems in different forms. To the ego, the perfect answer to a problem is a FORM which exactly matches the form of a problem, that "perfect tool" from your toolbox which solves this one exact situation really well. But which ensures the solution is totally cut off from all other problems, and so you are literally just as stuck as you were.
Your rejection of Him has rejected your own power, your own strength, your own innocence, and your own ability to live peacefully. You cannot find a substitute for that anywhere. Beign without God is death. Being without God is the sole reason for all of the unhappiness and suffering in the world.
This applies to everyone, course student or not.
The only way to return to a life which works and is not broken and is happy and joyous and love-filled and satisfying and meaningful, is to get GOD back into your life. One problem, one solution. "The ONLY problem you need to correct is the sense of separation from God."
There IS no other cause of the problems in the world. There is no form of suffering that does not stem from a sense of separation from God. All sickness, all death, all lack and deprivation, all fear and guilt and sin, all of it is directly descending from the belief that God is not supplying your every need. Withought Him, it is not possible to live at all. Death is the very IDEA of escaping God’s life completely... the consequence of trying to prove that you exist entirely without any trace of God in you whatsoever. Good luck with that. You NEED God to live.
To separate from God IMPLEMENTS every form of suffering. It automatically guarantees that you will not be happy. The consequences of separation are unavoidable, unless you become willing to UNDO the separation. Going to God and having God be your source, your provider, your guide, your protector, your safe-house, your healer, your sustainer, and that which maintains your life forever, and gives you EVERYTHING you need, is the ONLY SOLUTION to all the problems of the world. And this applies to everyone no matter their state of awareness or whether they are into the course or not. As John Lennon sang, "All you need is love".
The world is literally a picture of the idea of God’s absence. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son." Meaning, by crucifying ourselves, by condemning ourselves with an idea of sin, which is belief in separation, we PRODUCED a picture of ourselves as deprived, damaged, lacking, unwhole, and unholy, isolated, suffering and dead. What the Son would LOOK LIKE *IF* God were absent from Him. That is THIS UNIVERSE. The "world".
This is the condition of existence we LIVE WITH if we do not let go and let God. Insisting on being right, not happy, keeps us from God. This is why we originally made the world, to have somewhere to live without God, as a substitute reality. And one which is not capable of providing that substitution at all. We have made sorry little bullshit scraps of SHITE for ourselves to make up for the loss of God. Fun times!
It is IMPOSSIBLE to live without God. To live without God is to die. God is life. No-one can live without life. God is the ONLY SOURCE of what you need. The ego will never be able to supply you with what you truly want. "The world holds nothing that I want". Literally, this world/picture of deprivation and lack that we invented, DOES NOT HOLD that which we want and need. Earth, this world, this universe, DOES NOT CONTAIN what we need. What we need, cannot be found in the world. Ever. "Love was never in the world."
It doesn’t matter if you think the Earth is real or not or whatever other interpreation you have. You WILL NOT FIND happiness, peace, joy, love, health, meaning, fulfillment, satisfation, safety, or anything else that God offers, IN the world. "There is no safety in the world." "It is the world you see that is IMPOSSIBLE." "There is no life outside of heaven."
"Seek ye FIRST (only) the Kingdom of Heaven because that is where the laws of God operate truly, and they can operate only truly since they are the laws of Truth. But seek this ONLY because you CAN FIND NOTHING ELSE. THERE IS NOTHING ELSE. God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him who is all Being. You are therefore in Him since your being is His."
God is the only one who can give you these things. And He is offering them to you right now. And always. It is only a matter of your willingness to RECEIVE FROM GOD, which means accepting His Truth, which means accepting the atonement, and ceasing to be the one who supplies yourself with satisfaction. Of yourself alone you are nothing. Without God, you cannot be happy.
Any time that I have tried personally to go it alone and solve problems myself and or deal with life’s stresses using my own abilities and decisions and so on, it has never been enough. It always leads to fear (relying on oneself alone), additional incapability, increased suffering and a failure to correct the issue. I cannot live without God.
I could not have gotten through the things I have gotten through without surrendering my ego fight to be separate and ACCEPTING HELP from outside of me. From God. That means DEVELOPING TRUST IN HIM that he can and will take care of everything. And letting Him do so. And seeing Him do so. I can’t tell you the number of times that I thought I was supposed to or would have to DO SOMETHING to fix problems, only to have Jesus tell me "let me". I had to let go and let God.
God is all we need. God is the answer to every problem. God is the cure for all suffering. God dissolves all questions and fears. God heals all sickness and death. God is the ANSWER to every problem. In God there is nothing to fear. There is only love. Your every need WILL, and can only, be met by God.
Rejecting Him makes no sense whatsoever. "A sick body makes no sense" ec. To do so is denial, and ensures you will continue to fail to find what you need, to live with absence and lack and emptiness, and with no hope of any solution whatsoever other than to return to Him.
Love is not separate from God. God is not separate from you. You are not separate from love. The love of God is all you want. It will make you happy and fill your heart with gladness that He HAS provided everything that you ARE and everything you could ever want.
Unconditionality, means that something applies the same way to many things. In a sense this is impersonal, in that it does not treat a given person differently from others. At the same time, if the treatment is TOTAL all inclusive love, then EACH person can be FULLY loved, provided that it means this love does not EXCLUDE ANYONE.
This means that you literally cannot unconditionally love only one other person. Nor can you unconditoinally love a million people. You can ONLY unconditionally love the ENTIRE WHOLE of creation. There cannot be any exceptions or conditions, otherwise it is not unconditional.
We might say well, I unconditionally love my kids or my parents etc, but this isn't really true. Because the same maximal love is not felt in relationship to EVERYONE. So it isn't unconditional in the broader sense. It may seen unconditional in that, the child or parent is loved quite fully or that they're loved regardless of what they do or say or believe or how they live. That's a form of unconditionality. But it isn't TOTAL unconditionality.
Total unconditionality requires that the entirety of existence be loved as one, and equally. You have to love EVERY person the same if you want to claim unconditional love. Similarly, you cannot claim holiness until you do this because conditions mean a lack of wholeness.
Holiness means wholeness. It recognizes that you are whole. It recognizes that other people are whole. But it also recognizes that the whole of you is the whole of them in truth. It is a holographic principle.
To be holy, ie whole, in and of yourself, you cannot be in need of anyone. It sounds like a paradox but to to love anyone in a holy way you have be whole in and of yourself so that you have wholeness to share with them. And by being whole, you do not NEED them. Moreso it means you HAVE them because you ARE them. All of them.
Holiness, and unconditoinal love, have to go hand in hand with a complete lack of limits or confinement of any kind. It can't just apply to you, or to your closest partner, or to only your friends and family. It has to be the same everywhere. To be whole is to be the whole of creation. You have to be the entire Kingdom of God to be holy. Which means you cannot have a holy relationship without EVERYONE being included.
No one can claim to unconditionally love only A PART of the totality. This is partial love. That love is not unconditional. It may be approaching it but so long as it remains applying ONLY to certain individuals it is NOT unconditional love.
Unconditional love is universal love. It has to apply to EVERYONE equally and all at the same time. Nor can it apply only to some person that is temporarily "nearby" while applying later to someone else who happens to be "nearby." It has to transcend time and space as well. It is unlimited in every way.
This means that a real holy relationship is one where you are whole in your soul, and you know intimately that EVERYONE is included in you. And therefore you love EVERYONE simultaneously. This is the only way for it to be holy, and the only way to be whole. There is no other unconditional love that is as fully unconditional as this.
What that means is, you cannot have a truly holy relationship which its just between TWO people. That is too confining. Any sense of walls, barriers, exclusiveness, limits of any kind, any way that it is not FULLY SHARED, is a limit on holiness and on love. The love has to totally transcend ALL FORMS of relationship. Like how Jesus loves everyone the same.
When a special relationship, which is really a lack of relationship, is taken and repurposed for a holy purpose, it is used as a framework to develop wholeness. Holiness is the goal so wholeness is the goal. To be whole, EACH person, as a soul, must individually attain THEIR OWN wholeness. And their wholeness cannot be held back by each other. To be whole, EACH individual has to be open to loving EVERYONE equally. And if I am whole, I am recognizing that I AM THE WHOLE OF YOU as well, so you cannot limit me.
At the highest level, this means that the specialness which began as "two" for practical or collaborative learning purposes, is transcended. Even if there are still seeming to be two bodies in proximity, or a marriage, or a friendship, or any other FORM of a relationship that seems to isolate individuals, even for those two people "relationship" has to transcend the boundaries of that container.
If it does not transcend the boundaries, it cannot be whole. It is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for a confined pair of individuals to be holy together while NOT being holy in relationship to EVERYONE. However, if they ARE holy towards everyone, they CAN be holy in relation to each other.
We need to perhaps then SEPARATE OUT, the difference between an arrangement of bodies, versus psychological relationship. If you decouple the two, it becomes more obvious how it works. In the atonement plan, TWO OR MORE individuals (tied to bodies) are orchestrated to meet and form a special connection. A time spent seemingly in proximity. This is not a relationship. This is just being near to each other for the sake of working on THEMSELVES in the company of each other and with each other's support. To learn to fully share themselves with everyone. They cannot fully share themselves with EACH OTHER because this excudes everyone else - UNTIL they can share with everyone.
While the two are together, they EACH may be becoming more unconditionally loving, which melts the specialness or form that holds the two of them in proximity. But at some point a threshold has to be reached, in which they cannot increase the love any further if the love is thought to have to be LIMITED to the two of them, or that it excludes anyone, or is switched off in certain encounters.
In order for the love to become IMPERSONALLY PERSONAL, which means total full love given in FULL to EACH of ALL individuals at once (this is ominpresence), the sense of two-ness has to be dissolved completely, BEFORE even getting close to total holiness. The twoness is just there as a repurposing of the device of physical closeness. It has nothing to do with relationship or holiness. It's just a way to focus on a project.
To go beyond this ceiling, EITHER of them has to decide to transcend their 'relationship' and love OTHERS in the same way. The only way TO love unconditionally and ALL the time, is to love everyone the same way all the time, no matter who they are, and no matter where they are. That means you are IN love, at all times, regardless of location. This has nothing then to do with whether you are with a particular person's body/mind or not.
At its absolute maximal expression, then, a holy relationship has gone BEYOND the necessity of two people, and now applies simultaneously to ONESELF, and to ALL SELVES. And ALL holy relationships MERGE INTO ONE. It is then not a question of whether a holy relationship requires ONE person OR TWO... which is an either/or reasoning, but actually in a holographic manner, it applies to ONE AND INFINITE.
Therefore I, as an individual soul, who God created in full love and completion, who is also sharing everything with all other souls, who in turn love EVERYONE, have the task of individually accepting atonement for MYSELF, so that it is SHARED, so that it is given to EVERYONE. THIS is holy relationship. It is one soul sharing all of itself wholly and fully in holiness with the entire sonship at once. This reflects this logical statement:
"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all, AND equally."
Total real relationship, in heaven, which a holy relationship is based on or becomes a reflection of, requires YOU to love everyone. It does NOT require everyone to be aware of loving you. In reality, yes, all souls love all souls. In the dream, where minds are blocked, it does not entail all minds being AWARE of that oneness. But ideally, everyone should eventually love everyone. This allows the ENTIRE sonship to unite in a single relationship of co-creation with God.
"Everyone should love everyone".
While it is possible for example for me to be in total love which means unconditionally loving the entire universe - universal love, this is because I am a free soul. I am in freedom and therefore NOT TIED to anyone in the sense of, no one can impede my freedom or require me to do anything in order to be FULLY myself. God established me perfect from the start. And that means i can go into holiness/wholeness and unconditionally love everyone, EVEN IF they do not reciprocate. Nor can their lack of love hold me in hell against my will. I am free to choose to love. "Heaven is a choice I must make."
If another person happens to also be in a very unconditional state of mind, then it is possible, that that person can connect with you and be AWARE OF sharing everything with you. BUT, this is NOT JUST personal. It is personal and impersonal. Everything is shared with YOU, BUT at the same time, it is also being shared with everyone. It is not exclusive to you. It is completely open. It is fully given to you, AND fully given to everyone equally. Such a person can fully love you, but ONLY because they are unconditionally loving the whole sonship at the same time. You receive the PERSONAL love, while the IMPERSONAL aspect is personally loving all the others. It's almost like, two people just happening to 'bump into each other'.
When two people consent to FULLY LOVE, the "each other" part does not enter into it. They happen to fully love EVERYONE. Two people, who fully love everyone, and who are in intimate relationship with EVERY SOUL as their own wholeness, "meet", and experience their mutual position of unconditional love. They fully embrace and express their shared nature in TOTAL holy relationship. But IT DOES NOT EXCLUDE ANYONE ELSE. It is not exclusive to them. An analogy might be one parent who equally loves all their children. They don't stop loving the OTHER kids just because they love you.
"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."The only requirement for you to enter heaven, is that you reflect heaven's relationship status. That is, I am in a relationship with EVERYONE EQUALLY. You "enter into real relationship" with ALL of God's children. And thus you "enter into reality" itself. This is the only requirement for entry to heaven by ANY INDIVIDUAL SOUL. That is, all you have to do is accept and love all of yourself which IS all of the sonship, loving every son of God equally.
No one can keep you from this. No partner can hold you back. No duo or pair or special relationship or repurposed relationship has a quality that causes any REQUIREMENT that TWO such people are doing this at the same time. The two-ness is part of specialness and it will always be. Two-ness has to be TOTALLY TRANSCENDED in order to have ANY holiness. EVERY person has to be loved equally otherwise NONE OF THEM ARE TRULY LOVED AT ALL.
To meet another person who is fully in christ, is a pleasure. And it is a total relationship with that person AND with everyone else. But it doesn't mean that you need that person's love, or that they are imprisoning you. You are completely free to come and go. You are the free willed soul that God created one with him. You have no needs and are not bound by any special rules other than God's law. You are under no laws but God's and God himself established you as holy forever.
In essence, first there is JUST ME. Then there is JUST ME AND YOU. Then there is US trying to transcend JUST US (a "holy relationship couple"). And then there is EVERYONE. That is the progression of relationship towards holiness. And anyone can go there WITHOUT a partner.
So really the requirement of having to have another "special person" to have a holy relationship with, is false. A repurposed special relationship goes THROUGH a purpose or goal of holiness, and DISSOLVES away, leaving only unconditional love for everyone. The two are no longer two, they are THE ENTIRE KINGDOM. Or maybe one of them went there and is the entire kingdom, and the other lagged behind still. Everyone is free to come and go.
Only then, when ONE PERSON has attained a state of unconditional universal love and equality, can that ONE person enter heaven. It does not require anyone else to do this. It's just that, in this world, the holy spirit is repurposing what we MADE (specialness) for a holy PURPOSE, so that it can be USED like a device or tool, to help us to move towards unconditionality. But this cannot mean that you ONLY learn to love another single person unconditionally. If you ONLY love them unconditionally you are NOT LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY. Walls cannot remain if it is to be universally applied and extended. Unconditional love MUST be impersonal as well as personal.
Therefore, any single person/soul CAN enter heaven WITHOUT the need for particular encounters, relations, conversations, physical proximities, lengths of time, or any other "requirement". They may in fact have enjoyed MULTIPLE relationships to get to that point. They may have had many partners, even simultaneously. They may have even had NO ONE ELSE. They might've even been sitting in a cave in a mountain and seeing no one since 50 years ago. It doesn't matter. If any one person attains holographic love, they are done and out of here, entering real relationship with the ENTIRE sonship.