"The body appears to be largely self-motivated and independent, yet it actually responds only to the intentions of the mind. If the mind wants to use it for attack in any form, it becomes prey to sickness, AGE AND DECAY. If the mind accepts the Holy Spirit's purpose for it instead, it becomes a useful way of communicating with others, invulnerable as long as it is needed, and to be gently laid by when its use is over. Of itself it is neutral, as is everything in the world of perception. Whether it is used for the goals of the ego or the Holy Spirit depends entirely on what the mind wants."

"How can I know who I am when I see myself as under constant attack? 3 Pain, illness, loss, AGE and death seem to threaten me."

"The mind that thinks it is a sin has but one purpose; that the body be the source of sin, to keep it in the prison house it chose and guards and holds itself at bay, a sleeping prisoner to the snarling dogs of hate and evil, sickness and attack; of pain and AGE, of grief and suffering."

" Is it not madness to think of life as being born, AGING, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

"The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is NOT LIMITED BY TIME, by weather or FATIGUE, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. 4 You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

"And yet a neutral thing does not see death, for thoughts of fear are not invested there, nor is a mockery of love bestowed upon it. 6 Its neutrality protects it while it has a use. 7 And afterwards, without a purpose, it is laid aside. 8 It is not sick NOR OLD nor hurt. 9 It is but functionless, unneeded and cast off."

Everything about the ego appears to present one way that you can win, and one way that you can lose. It always suggests there's some way to get away with something, to escape the effects of something. To be the victor, to get without giving or give without getting. To be free of problems which still exist, or to find a kind of loophole where, if you just play this game the right way, with skill and education and careful selection, then you'll escape from suffering and find salvation.

Of course it's a bullshit lie.

This world is setup with duality, in which there appear to be "opposites". This is because this world is made from the idea of "an opposite to love" or an opposite to heaven or God. "Earth and heaven are opposites in every way."

It therefore contains opposites. And those opposites *seem* to always be far distant from each other, having nothing in common with each other. Did you fall for that by the way? To the observer, we are blinded by "form", especially given how forms all appears to look different and unalike. Who would suspect an apple and an orange ARE the same thing.

But this is a vast illusion.

The whole point of these oppositions and differences is to get you to believe that there IS a difference, between choosing one thing or choosing another. That some choices are better than others. That if you take this side or that side you will be safer or richer or more successful or less threatened or happier or more spiritual or whatever.

It's a trap folks!

It's a trap because no matter which side you choose, no matter which option, no matter which pill the red one or the blue one, no matter which side of a war you take, no matter who seems to win or lose, no matter how clever you are or how intelligent or how successful you are at navigating the world and making "the best stuff happen", you are LOSING.

You always lose whenever you take any side, whenever you buy into the illusion of differences, whenever you think there is one thing you want in this world more than another. Whether it be that you adore the puppies and kittens and cute babies, moreso than the ugly dogs and cats and old people. Or whether it's that you like your state's teams to win and for the others to fail. Or whether it's that you are right in an argument and the other person is a loser. Or whether you are filthy rich or filthy poor.

ALL of these options are designed to get you to do one thing and one thing only.

To settle for some PART of the world, at the exclusion of the rest, so that you will make that part special (special love) and reject the rest (special hate).

The sole purpose of this to the ego, which has absolutely no concern for whether you choose A or B, is that you choose at all. That you differentiate between illusions. That you become selective and that you want to accept only some thing and not others. That you will take a side and be against something else.

The result of this "choosing between illusions" is that you choose separation. You emphasize the ways that one illusory form is better or worse than another. And this drives a rift inbetween the two. It makes one thing look like a horrible attacking enemy, and another look like a glorious savior or hero.

So we're left with the rather uncomfortable truth, that everything in this world has been designed by the ego to be a losing situation no matter what you choose. No matter which side you're on, or who wins or loses, you still lose. You lose because as soon as you believe the illusion of separations and differences and appearances and forms, you are buying into the ego. And that's an instant loss.

Whether you prefer sunsets or sunrises, the ego has some news for you. Whether you like cats more than dogs or democrats vs republicans, it doesn't matter. If you believe in the difference that appears to distinguish them as opposite to or not the same as each other, you are buying into the ego. And that means you are believing that accepting only part of the whole is better than accepting the whole. So now you've gone from wholeness to partiality, and that's a reduction in how much you there is left, so you just destroyed yourself.

The sorry fact is, this world was set up so that there is NOTHING here that's going to save you. And if you choose any of it, ANY of it at all, you will suffer. This is the deep meaning behind "this world holds nothing that I want". It's also why happy sunsets and kittens are just as much an ego temptation to want to keep some things and not others, to keep you in the dream, and to keep you from wanting God.

Could this world offer you anything that you want, if the TRUE CHOICE is not between crappy bullshit ego substance A, and crappy bullshit ego substance B.... but rather, between ALL of the crap, and God? That's the only real choice you can make. Do I want a world of opposites where nothing is wholly satisfying and you are guaranteed to lose because everything is a compromise/tradeoff, or do you want wholeness and fullness and satisfaction and completeness, with nothing missing and everything welcomed equally?

"Beyond this world there is a world that I want."

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"M-13.4. God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. 2 Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? 3 Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? 4 Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? 5 No one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. 6 Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice its values would demand of him. 7 To them he sacrifices all his peace. 8 To them he sacrifices all his freedom. 9 And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. 10 Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"

This includes the kittens and puppies and adorable farm animals and all the wild creatures of the earth, including the human bodies and aliens.

I would like to know if you find it difficult to let go of the idea that these "creatures" are real, that they are "alive", that they were somehow "made by God", or that they even exist, in terms of what the Course says?

For example "there is no world" and "there is no life outside of heaven" and "this is a dream of death" and so on. If this is true, all these things, these forms of matter, these objects which move around as if they are alive, being animated as illusions by the mind, they really do not exist or have "life".

As Jesus says even the human body is not alive. It doesn't really exist, it's not who you are, and it is an illusion. It is made of the idea of separation and death. So really it's more appropriate to say it's a "death form."

So now we have various creatures and plants and trees and so on which at times can appear to be lovely and all that. You can have love for them or be attached to them or want to protect them and save the environment etc. But... it's all an ego trap, right?

Over time my belief that physical objects are "alive" has had to come into question. There's two things being asserted and they can't both be true.

This is a cruel world which God did not create. If you go to youtube and watch some videos of wild animals maming and killing and eating each other, you can see that there is little "love" in that, and God couldn't possibly have created it. So is it life, or are these the creatures of hell?

What God creates lives forever. Is that true of anything in this world in particular? Pretty much nothing. "There is NO LIFE outside of heaven." So this world, which is the idea of being outside of heaven, is not life, right? So what is it? It's an illusion of nothing, depicting an idea of death.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." The whole world. All the matter, all the particles, all the separate things, all the creatures which feast on each other, all the beings that take away and must attack to continue living, and all the humans who must hunt and kill in order to avoid the ego dynamic of starvation.

Is this LIFE? here? ... this world? Is it ALIVE? really? Or is it simply a dream of death, where everything is MADE OF the idea of death and separation, masquerading as life and pretending to be alive? Is it not "the dry and dusty desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to die"? To "come to hate a while, wither and die"? A cruel world which LIFE could not possibly have created, which is part way between life and total death, and thus barely alive at all?

How about "this world holds NOTHING that I want"? Or "A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world"?

There may be some remaining semblance of life here. We cannot actually fully separate ourselves from God and even the illusions we make cannot be fully "outside the laws of God". Even these illusory forms must come from a mind which is alive enough to project them. They may have a little life left, but it isn't much. And it's nothing compared to heaven.

It's a sorry picture. But this world is really not what LIFE is like. It's not HOW life lives. It is not how life FUNCTIONS. It is run by ego laws of death, competition and destruction. We like to stick a bow on it and wrap the dogs in clothes and make little play houses for the cats but hey... they die, right?

Their bodies can't be real. And the humans... their bodies also can't be real.

Immortality is of the soul, which God created, in heaven. That is where life is. That's real life. Eternal life. Life which cannot be changed or killed or hurt in any way. That's reality. That's where the LIFE is.

Forms, all forms, are "the form of error". They are depictions of separateness. Every single one of them. Are they life forms, or are they LIE forms? What is LIFE really?

In the section below, Jesus writes about how God did not create a meaningless world, God only creates things which are meaningful, and the world we see (earth etc) is not meaningful, and therefore does not exist, because God did not create it. For example he even gives examples of things in this world which God did not create and are therefore not real:

"God did not create that war, and so it is not real.

God did not create that airplane crash, and so it is not real.

God did not create that disaster [specify], and so it is not real."

This means not only are your personal perceptions and interpretations of the world not real, it also means the stuff IN the world, the wars and airplanes and disasters and so on ARE NOT REAL, so they DO NOT EXIST AT ALL, regardless of how you are looking "at" them. Looking at a plane crash in a "happy way" is denial of the fact that there IS NO plane crash, and that isn't to do with your personal private perception, nor is it really to do with your interpretation of way of looking at the plane crash. It's on a much bigger scale, of the fact that there is no plane or crash whatsoever because it doesn't exist, and the plane and the crash are PART OF YOUR MISPERCEPTION.

He goes even further to tell us that the illusions we "see", some of them can be part of our "personal hell", while other illusions are "shared".

I think this is an important point because "perception" is not just about your own personal hell within your own mind. And accepting atonement is not just about you becoming happy with a horrifying world of death and destruction, sitting on a fence smiling at passers by who go about their torture. Some aspects of perception are also taking place on a shared level, outside your body, and in "forms" which are actually parts of your perception as a much larger being/mind, shared with other minds as part of the sonship who is dreaming this whole world.

Many people think the Course is only about fixing your "personal hell" ie the illusions or perception that are "inside your own mind". This is only PART of the truth. A big part of the illusions which need correcting are OUTSIDE your personal mind, in the larger mind which we collectively are contributing to, and which encompasses this whole universe. This is why Jesus says "this world IS perception".

Whenever Jesus talks about "the world you see" many people have interpreted it to mean he's referring to your personal private interpretation of the world, as though an imaginary world that you overlaid on top of the world. This correlates to many passages in the course about false perception and seems to give it credence. But it also misses the point that Jesus is quite plainly referring to THE PHYSICAL WORLD not just your personal interpretation of it. The world you see, this universe, does not exist. The world you see, this universe, which is not "inside" your little mind, but is part of a collective shared mind, needs to be "corrected" because IT is perception.

Objects and clouds and rocks and people and mountains and rivers and trees and dogs and cats are all part of this illusion, and all part of perception, and all part of your mind. Not just the stuff that seemed to be inside your personal space.

"God did not create a meaningless world.

The idea for today is, of course, the reason why a meaningless world is impossible. What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist. "

"This is your personal repertory of horrors at which you are looking. These things are part of the world you see. SOME OF THEM ARE SHARED ILLUSIONS, AND OTHERS ARE PART OF YOUR PERSONAL HELL. It does not matter. What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning. In recognition of this fact, conclude the practice periods by repeating today's idea:

God did not create a meaningless world."

In the beginning of the ACIM Workbook, we're instructed to look around the room and tell ourselves, indiscriminately, that this thing we're looking at doesn't mean anything. And we're asked not to be selective in what we apply it to, applying it to everything equally. This EQUALIZING is what's important.

I'm finding that this basic idea is core to the process of mind training in order to awaken from this world. Basically, our minds have become very used to fragmenting everything into separate boxes, with separate labels.

We become blinded by perception of form, and we take the form of something to determine its meaning. Yet we've given it all the meaning it has. Differences and shifts and changes all seem to stand out as separate and exclusive. One thing is not another etc. And before you know it we have 1000 different responses to 1000 different things and never are we simple unconditional.

But the mind is not supposed to be in this kind of viewpoint, with a massive complicated hierarchy of illusions, with multiple different reactions and responses, treating one thing differently to another, adapting and changing based on circumstances etc. These are all unnatural for the mind which must be unconditionally constant in order to be healthy.

As we peruse the room and identify that one different seeming object is really to be treated no differently than another, we're beginning the process of collapsing the hierarchy of illusions, undoing the belief in separation, dispelling the illusion that one thing is NOT the same as another, and are gradually reprogramming the mind to be less conditional.

For me a huge way this has recently come to light is in the idea of the death of a body. On the physical level the ego world says that a body has been utterly destroyed and irreversibly erased from existence. But on the spiritual level the person still persists in eternal life. And they can't both be true.

Given that God would never allow one of his immortal creations to ever be destroyed, and there is no power greater than God's to overthrow his will, death is an absolute lie. The body's demise means absolutely nothing. It does not mean a person is dead, it does not mean God's son is destroyed, and it does not imply anything. Death is ultimately meaningless.

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

So then if you look at this closely and see that death cannot have a meaning, it causes nothing and has no effect, it is completely meaningless. And this then means that it doesn't MEAN anything DIFFERENT to a living body. And both of those bodies do not really mean anything.

"Nothing I see means anything."

It's in this erasing of the MEANING of separation, whereby you isolate something and give it a different unique meaning compared to something else, that the mind begins to split and fragment. Believing in separation plays out as believing the seeming messages we get from separate different objects.

It's as though the whole of physical unreality is screaming constantly to tell you that this one thing IS NOT another thing, this thing is NOT the same, this thing has unique properties, this one's red and that one's green, this one's bigger, that one's smaller etc. All constantly tempting you to believe that EVERYTHING is separate. And this couldn't be more OPPOSITE to how the mind is supposed to function.

When we see objects meaning something unique we are deceived by illusion, blinded by form, deceived by temptation, lost in a dream, and find our mind to be imprisoned. When we EQUALIZE forms and give them the SAME meaning, recognizing they have NO meaning of their own, that's when mind is entering a state of unconditionality, which means love.

"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."

So then we look at a body that seems dead and we do not assign it any meaning. And we look at bodies which seem alive and we do not assign them any meaning. And we recognize that both types of bodies are not really different in their meaning, or in what they are. They are both illusions, both unreal, both in ONE category.

Consider then that the mind in this state is a very cohesive whole unified mind. It's not a mind that goes putting labels on everything, putting things in separate boxes, emphasizing differences, or thinking of the things of the physical world as unique.

It's a mind that has ONE state, one feeling, one undivided will, one power, one wholeness, one unconditional action. It treats everyone and everything with the same singular completely still peaceful loving relationship. It responds to everything in the same way, and sees no "orders of difficulty".

Such a mind is not deceived by forms. Such a mind does not really pay any special attention to things which seem different, more important, less important, more serious, less serious. It has learned to see that both living and dead bodies are the same one illusion, the same one lie.

On a way then, the waking mind is finding a way to be whole and unmoved by the world, always constant and honest, always peaceful and loving. It doesn't buy into any temptations, it doesn't fall for the appearance of something seeming easier or harder, bigger or heavier. It finds a way to transcend all differences. And it really is about psychological transcendence. Completely disregarding the appearance of any differences of form whatsoever.

Such a mind isn't finding a way to see that the forms are ONE, or that God is the forms. It isn't finding oneness in them as such. It's transcending them toward the oneness that is behind and beyond them, a oneness that the forms don't even touch or influence in any way.

Because mind becomes whole and unified and loving and disregards differences, it sees in a sense a "reflection of heaven" - a unified transcendental perception - looking upon the physical separate objects still but NOT believing them, NOT falling for their forms, NOT blinded, NOT regarding them as truly different or true at all. But seeing them with a unified mind can't help but see unity IN PLACE of the differences, reflected there.

Cars are still separately driving down separate roads. Bodies are still separately walking down separate streets. Dogs are still barking at separate cats. But the healed mind is not deceived by how any of these things look. The healed mind becomes transcendental of all separate forms, all separate labels, all separate distinctions and differences.

So really in the start of the Workbook we're basically in at the deep end, starting off running, because we're already practicing this simple idea - getting the mind to wean off interacting with the world from a complicated chaotic jumble of vantage points, and shifting toward a singular vantage point which pays no attention to form whatsoever.

Its an odd idea really. Adopting a state of mind which is centered on a singular oneness, and unchanging wholeness, an unconditional love, rather than being 1000 separate things to 1000 separate people. Just being you, knowing thyself, unmoved and unchanged and unaffected. Simple and unified. Ignoring all separations and divisons. Having no belief in the false illusion of the material world at all. A wholeness of mind from another world.

"And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God?"

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"The resurrection is the complete triumph of Christ over the ego, not by attack, but by transcendence. For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"Would you transcend YOUR prison and ascend to the Father?"

"Communion comes with peace, and peace MUST transcend the body."

"Then lay aside the body and quietly TRANSCEND it, rising to welcome what you REALLY want. And from His holy temple look you not back on what you have awakened FROM. For no illusions CAN attract the minds that have TRANSCENDED them, and left them far behind."

I used to be of the mindset, like most humans, that certain physical things were bad things, and others were good. I would use whatever form the thing took, to tell me what it meant.

Someone falling over and breaking a leg might be considered a bad thing, and someone laughing perhaps a good thing. Tigers are dangerous, butterflies are harmless. You can eat the good bread but don't eat the mouldy bread.

The sense of whether it's right or wrong was always based on what did the thing look like physically, what shape, what color, what behaviours, what forms. As though some physical things are evil, and other physical things are good.

And of course this elevated some physical things to being somehow more spiritual, acceptable, less guilt-laden than others. And other things to being more evil and bad, forms of sin and deserving of guilt. Crimes versus blessings.

But the truth is that looking at and dividing up the world this way, is based on an egoic false perception. The world is in fact not comprised of positives and negatives. It's a neutral world. It's chaotic yes, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciless, sometimes seems to take on an appearance of loveliness etc. But overall it's basically all the same.

Internally, in our minds, our degree of ego - mental illness - determines what we make of the world. Whether we judge some things are hellish, or some things as heavenly. Whether we think that certain acts are crimes while others are not. How much guilt we think something deserves versus how much special attention.

There is a whole internal landscape of meanings and interpretations, judgements and labels, categorisations and evaluations, which become projected onto the world. But they really have nothing to do with the world.

For example we could say that when bodies seem to die, that's very bad, especially if we are projecting the belief that people are entirely physical bodies. The bodies go and then there is loss and horror and crying and misery. But this is because the ego mind is deciding that such events mean this, based on the form that it takes. As though physical deaths are worse than mild headaches or a slight tiredness.

We're got all this meaning that we've put onto everything, binding it to it, and then believing that it is part of it. But the world doesn't inherently have any of this meaning. Physical deaths are not really that important, or any more significant, than someone going to the toilet or eating some cake. It's just another form of the same illusion.

Eventually we end up with an entire hierarchy of illusions in our minds, with things ranked and evaluated as being better and worse in varying degrees, more or less serious, more or less important, more or less harmful, more or less evil etc. But this is entirely all made up.

For sure, our internal egoic experience of the world is an entire layer of suffering induced by ourselves, which really has no actual connection to what goes on physically. We could be watching the very same scene, and either practically kill ourselves over the seeming horror of the form it takes, or laugh at it as another example of nothingness.

It's in this way that the course says "Earth can reflect heaven or hell." Earth itself is neutral, meaningless, and nothing. Just a dream of a world, a pretend world, a world of forms and changes. It has what seem to be some changes we might classify as positive in some way, and others that are not so great. And overall it's a pretty harsh and occasionally pleasant-seeming place.

But whether or not we choose to experience it in a hell-like manner, or a heaven-like manner, is entirely an internal thing. Whether we are coming from ego and mental illness, or coming from Holy Spirit and sanity, makes the entire contribution to whether or not we "read into" the world meaning one thing or another.

All physical forms are illusions, and the differences they take on is itself the illusion that ... being different makes something inherently not the same as something else. A different shape, color, size, style, movement, whatever, all seeming to suggest this is not part of that, there is a separation. Dogs are not cats and houses are not cars and boats are not airplanes and birds are not fish. That's the illusion, that there are many separate things, when in truth it's all one illusion morphing and changing in irrelevant ways.

A dead body, a living body, a broken body, a sick body, a healthy body, it's all still the same illusion. None of those states are better or worse than the others. Symbolically maybe, we'd prefer to see symbols of life and heath and harmlessness. And we'd prefer to not see symbols of death and destruction and murder. But ultimately it's all just spacetime dream-stuff moulded into different shapes.

So really there's no sort of inherent physical sin, or physical evil, or physical good. It's neutral and meaningless in and of itself. It's just stuff. Stuff designed to obscure the wholeness and shared nature of God, to make it seem like God is not fully anywhere and doesn't exist. What you make to it, use it for, see in it, or project onto it, is an entirely mental exercise.

Use it for ego and the ego will happily tell you you're suffering in hell and life is shit and everyone hates you and you might as well be dead. Use it for Holy Spirit and he'll happily tell you you're not of this world, you're safe in God, nothing in the world can affect you, and none of it really matters.

So is a dead body worse than a living one? Does it actually matter is there are crimes or well behaved individuals? Is it worse to murder than to support? Technically no. That doesn't mean it's justified or the kind of behaviour that would emerge from a loving mind. But in the grand scheme of things, life and death, seeming positives and negatives, truths and untruths, it's all the same stuff just in a different shape. And none of it is real.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

"The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams, once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs." UrM13A6