Start off by believing that something will heal - that God will heal it. Maybe something in yourself that needs healing, or in someone else.
Get a sense of how 'much' you believe this. How much certainty do you have? How much do are you so convinced that you have absolutely unshakeable doubtless certainty and zero fear?
Now, push your sense of belief into a whole other ballpark by transforming it into expectation. Adopt a perception of EXPECTING that healing must occur. Expect as strongly as you can.
You should notice a sense of your belief changing from 'just a belief' tinged with uncertainty, to a very focused, intent, direct, piercingly certain kind of 'demand'. It transforms into power. It transforms into a sense of REQUIRING that the healing occur. Of commanding it to occur. That it MUST occur. Be as convinced of this as you can.
When I do this I feel a sense of some kind of focus or something come down through my upper body down into my belly area. This could be Holy Spirit or your own Spirit.
The closer you can get to absolute certainty the more likely it is that you will start to feel Holy Spirit start to move and flow. The stronger the sense of expectation the better. It's okay to be practically 'demanding'. This is "Authority".
You as a Child of God have authority over all illusions. Another word for this is "dominion" (biblically, we are told we have dominion over the Earth - this is what it means). You extend the Authority of Christ in a kind of 'legal' way. You legally have the right to command illusions. To command sickness to leave. To command ego to be undone.
As such when you enter a state of firm belief and expectation, you are also joining with Christ. Being One with Christ is an important aspect of miracle working, and is also why you need to ask Jesus what miracles to perform and for him to help you perform them. You need alignment with Christ/certainty in order to perform them.
You also need to remain in certainty regardless of what physical appearances seem to suggest, regardless of evidence or lack thereof that healing has occurred, regardless of any kind of illusions or any signals coming from the ego world that suggest anything contrary to this firm conviction. This is why you must believe it in your MIND, in cause, and the illusion/body must follow to demonstrate what the mind believes is true.
In the atonement, it becomes the privilege of the forgiven to forgive.
In the atonement, you gain the authority to forgive the sins of others, and not just your own sins.
This literally means you are able to heal others instantly through your forgiveness, because forgiveness leads to an authority over illusions.
It's not just a technicality, like you accept the atonement and you're done. The atonement puts you in the hot seat. It gives you the power of God. It empowers you with commanding authority. And what you then say, goes.
Claiming the atonement for yourself will grant you the ability to give the atonement to others. And that means the undoing of all signs and symptoms of separation, including the reversal of death.
Raising of the dead would not be possible if it had to mean that the other person somehow had to do something on their own in order to resurrect. Yet Jesus raised the dead, and others have also. The dead cannot raise themselves.
This demonstrates to you the miraculous power that the atonement offers you. The power to overcome all illusions for yourself AND for others. And if it be God's will, you too can restore your brother to life.
He who shares the authority of God knows no limitations. Unlock the key to salvation and open the door to the atonement, and you will step through Heaven's gates. And from there, the atonement of yourself and of the whole world is complete in your eyes. And now have dominion over all suffering and death.
Last night I was talking with Jesus about letting go, and I was thinking the words "I need to surrender" ....and Jesus interjected and changed the word 'surrender' to "let go" .... so then I repeated the modified words. ... I need to let go, except Jesus again interjected and added on some words.... "trying to be God".
And then I was stunned. The realization that I was trying to be God seemed to 'fit' my ego exactly, not just sending me off on some other ego tangent or train of thought, but actually kind of 'disabling' my entire ego for a moment. I felt like I had absolutely no come-back, and no defense. It was true. I felt in myself not just a kind of mental unmasking of myself, but even right down into my torso, as if I've just been stripped bare of all defenses and could do nothing but be stunned from head to toe.
It seemed brilliant, on Jesus's part, to make this observation. The ego - my ego - our egos - really are trying to be God. Our attempt to separate ourselves off form God and to then have various characteristics that would normally be God's characteristics, but without Him, is TOTALLY us trying to be God.
I believe I am God when I am in charge, in control, or having dominion over the world. I believe I'm God by making myself right about things. I believe I'm God by making decisions on my own. I believe I'm God by believing that I know stuff and am informed enough to direct outcomes. I believe I'm God when I think this is 'my own life' and that I am the one who is in charge of it. But it seems more fundamental than this even. It runs to the ego's core.
The ego is literally trying to 'take over' and 'take away from God' everything that God is. It wants to take away God's power, God's fullness, God's mind, God's reality, God's thought system, God's heart, God's eternal life, everything. It wants God not to have it, which means a choice for death, but at the same time, it wants to have all of this for itself without any of the 'conditions' that come with these things - the conditions of Heaven. Or real responsibility.
So I am trying to be God. Holy shit. This doesn't just speak to one portion of 'my life' but to ALL of it. I need to let go of trying to be God. We all do. Can you feel how much of your ego self just 'drops away' when you say this?
I let go of trying to be God.
All the uptight tension and control and fear and attack and manipulation and engagement with stories just falls away when we admit this. And when we do let go of trying to do this... in surrender, and allow God to be God, and allow ourselves to be His creation (not the other way around), the authority problem melts with it.
The authority problem is us attempting to be God, which causes us to be at war with God, and in constant struggles. Letting go of trying to be the one who is God lets go of all of that role-play... it is a heavenly surrender.
Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do.
Your holiness, then, can remove all pain, can end all sorrow, and can solve all problems. It can do so in connection with yourself and with anyone else. It is equal in its power to help anyone, because it is equal in its power to save anyone. If you are holy, so is everything God created. You are holy because all things He created are holy, and all things He created are holy because you are.
In today's exercises, we will apply the power of your holiness to all problems, difficulties, or suffering in any form that you happen to think of in yourself or someone else. We will make no distinctions because there are no distinctions.
In the four longer practice periods, each preferably to last a full five minutes, repeat the idea for today, close your eyes, and then search your mind for any sense of loss or unhappiness of any kind, as you see it. Try to make as little distinction as possible between a situation that is difficult for you and one that is difficult for someone else. Identify the situation specifically, and also name the person concerned. Use this form in applying the idea for today:
"In the situation involving ____ in which I see myself, there is nothing that my holiness cannot do."
"In the situation involving ____ in which ____ sees himself, there is nothing my holiness cannot do."
From time to time you may want to vary this procedure, and add some relevant thoughts of your own. You might like, for example, to include thoughts such as:
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it."
Introduce whatever variations appeal to you, but keep the exercises focused on the theme
"There is nothing your holiness cannot do."
The purpose of today's exercises is to begin to instill in you a sense that you have dominion over all things because of what you are.
In the frequent shorter applications, apply the idea in its original form unless a specific problem concerning you or someone else arises, or comes to mind. In that event, use the more specific form of application.
"That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to DO, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I know what to do. Only then will your MIND will to follow me."
"Without your will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are deciding against healing, and your veto of my will FOR you MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless our wills are joined you CANNOT be healed."
"Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION."
"My will cannot overcome yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal."
"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God’s Will for you."
"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we are alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching. How else can it be, if God’s Kingdom is freedom?"
"Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of all God’s Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God’s Sons are equal in will."
"Join then with me in praise of Him and you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with all His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. Because it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which is His Will for all His Sons."
"By offering freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God’s Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what He is."
"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do not love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him."
"Alone we can do nothing, but TOGTHER our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts."
"By NOT BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established in ours and as ours. This will is invincible because it is undivided. "
"But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to unite with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness is to recognize the Father."
"Glory be to the union of God and His Holy Sons, because all glory lies IN them because they ARE united."
"The miracles WE do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting with His Will FOR us. When you unite with me, you are uniting without the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore cannot unite with yours. Our union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in yourself."
"I bring His Peace back to all His Children, because I received it of Him for us all."
"The Holy Spirit has one direction for all minds, and the one He taught me IS yours."
"We begin the journey back by setting out TOGETHER, and gather in our brothers as we CONTINUE together."
There is a common trend towards trying to accept everything in the world. To allow it. To give it permission. To let it be whatever way it is.
There is one part of this which is beneficial. If you resist things, you make them real. If you control things, you make them real. If you judge and attack things, you make them real. It would imply that if you accept them "as they are", you can find some kind of peace, where you're not really attached to outcomes or conditions or situations or people. As if the world will just fluidly flow over your experience without triggering anything or upsetting you. Because you accept it. But this also can be a trap, and a massive justification for keeping suffering and death.
Because the fact is that this world is not real. It's an illusion, and everything in it is a lie. It's not supposed to be happening. It's not natural. Whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you. If you accept the world into your mind, you make it real. If you are in a position of "allowing" it, you are handing over causality and permission and power to it. If you are trying to simply be at peace with whatever happens, you are not owning the fact that you are making everything happen. If you focus on trying to transcend whatever's going on, which can bring a sense of peace, it does not necessarily bring into question whether things are happening or not.
The task at hand is more to do with learning to recognize that this world is NOT happening. There is not anything to really ACCEPT about it because it isn't really doing anything. You don't have to ADJUST TO conditions, or try to persuade yourself to be okay with suffering, sickness, unhappiness and death. You're not supposed to be having any of these things.
The only true acceptance, the only thing you should ever accept, and thus believe in fully, is THE ATONEMENT. God's truth. Reality. This world is not reality. In accepting the atonement you are accepting something that should be accepted. Something which will bring a cure. Something which will instill miracle mindedness and the ability to be invulnerable. Something which puts you in touch with the power of God, to have dominion over this fake world.
There is merit in not being in such a 'fight' with the world, not resisting it or taking sides against it or having this whole ego un-peaceful counter-attack scenario in your mind. Yes, so it's good to accept things on that basis, because it at least includes less conflict mentally. BUT, this also should not be on a basis that "the world is real" and "things are really happening" and "bodies are really sick" and so on. You should not be accepting that these things are true. You should not be "allowing" them as such. Otherwise you become a passive, miracle-less fence sitter with no power to do anything.
Detaching from the world is great. But it must include the *recognition* that the world is not real, it is entirely illusory, you should be not "agreeing with" it, you should not be justifying it, and you should not be confusing acceptance with authorizing death. It may seem paradoxical but accepting the TRUTH should entail the DENIAL OF the world, the rejection of death, and a demonstration of symbolic immortality in the body.
You are not supposed to just find a way to "let the world happen", you're supposed to become aware you are DREAMING IT and MAKING IT happen, and thus regain power OVER it to change it at will. That's a massively different position than merely trying to get comfortable with "real suffering" or "whatever happens that I did not cause." There is no causality in that kind of acceptance, it's a total passivity. Yes you can try to accept that you feel unhappy but you shouldn't be feeling unhappy. You can try to accept your body is sick but it is not supposed to be sick. Are you going to accept your death?
You might think well, if I am so at peace and accepting of what's SEEMING to happen in this illusory world, why would I bother changing it? Because if the body is sick, the mind is STILL sick. The body can't get healthy unless the mind is healthy. And the mind cannot get healthy while the body is being constantly bombarded with mind attack. "A broken body IS PROOF the MIND HAS NOT BEEN HEALED." So the body DOES have to get healed as well, which means the reversal of sickness and death. Death has to get UNDONE, not accepted. Otherwise there is no true resurrection of mind OR body.
ACIM does not teach to "accept everything that happens in a dream world". It teaches there IS no dream world and YOU are the dreamer who makes it be whatever you decide it is. And if you change your mind, THE WHOLE WORLD MUST CHANGE. This is a course in CAUSE, not being passive. "Members of my party are ACTIVE workers." Will you lay down and let death happen against your will, and try to "accept it"? You cannot be at peace with death. Death can only "happen" if you CONSENT to it, which means you CAUSE it, because you have an attacking unhealed mind that's not at peace.
If you want people, you must learn to undo the world and stop dreaming of nightmares. Not because otherwise you'd be at the effect of external causes of un-peace but because being at peace goes hand in hand with HAVING POWER AND BEING THE CAUSE.
When I first began with the Course's forgiveness, it was much more focused on taking back my projections. The particular projections to be taken back revolved around other people and what they seemed to be doing to me. If things were not going wrong necessarily, I would lapse and not do any forgiveness.
People would say you only have to forgive the stuff that upsets you. And that's more or less the mode that I'd been in for some years. It seemed some part of me wanted to just get on with "my life" and have those assholes just sort of go away as a result of my becoming more honest and less blaming. When people appeared to not disturb me, I wouldn't seem to have any reason to forgive.
The radicalness of the Course, however, asks that we recognize not just that we have psychological issues "about" the world, but that the world ITSELF is also an illusion. That's a really HUGE leap in terms of beliefs and perceptions. That's a seemingly far bigger challenge to even comprehend yet alone overcome.
It isn't just telling me to stop projecting my shit onto people. Ok yes that's part of it. That's a good start. It isn't just telling me that I need to heal my past and let go of blocks to love and so on. Again yes, that's part of it. But there is more.
The body itself is an illusion. The world itself is an illusion. Other people's bodies are illusions. All forms are illusions.
So now, this is a much bigger endeavor. This isn't just a matter of undoing small mistakes in perception so that I can see this world better and feast my eyes on its form with a more loving attitude.
We have to realize that because this world is an illusion, IF you are truly waking up from this illusion it HAS to mean that we're going to not only overlook the world but that HOW it looks is going to change radically. Also what it means is going to shift. A sense of belief in it, or the notion that it is even REAL, is going to change.
If we're moving toward the real truth of God, and if this world is an illusion, its illusory nature is going to start to become apparent. The sense of it being real is going to start to dissolve. The appearance of form as irreversible and causal is going to be radically turned on its head. Our mind is going to move into a very different, very ego-law-breakaing state of awareness.
So then at some point, we have to move out of the "forgive people" mode and into the "forgive everything" mode. And by forgiveness we mean, recognizing the truth and using that truth to overlook and not be deceived by illusions. We might not be recognizing just how deluded we are, and just how deceived we are, that this physical world is REAL, that bodies are real, or that we're really actually "living" here.
The truth is far more radical than this. The truth is that this world is not reality AT ALL. It is literally nothing. A total illusion from top to bottom. Everything in it, all supposed life "forms", all sickness, all death, all suffering, all of the weather, all of the ways that objects affect other objects, all of the laws of physics and chemistry and biology, every property of matter, ALL OF IT is an illusion.
Believing that this stuff is real is a problem. It's insanity. It is not true perception. And if you perceive that this world is real, then you will not be able to perform miracles. Miracles completely defy all of the laws of this universe, coming from outside of spacetime, sourced in God's infinite love. If you're believing the world is real, there is no way that you're going to be able to overthrow the laws of this world. Your wish for it to be "true" - a real world - holds it in place, disabling you from having power (dominion) over it.
So this is a huge shift. Take the next step. Be willing to be open to the idea that there is no REAL sickness, no REAL death, and that this world is not really real at all. Then you will start to sense the power of God to have authority over all illusions and to perform miracles. It's one thing to do little forgivenesses here and there, it's another to realize you have to forgive the entire universe. That then this forgiveness doesn't just mean to see 'a real universe' as innocent, it means to see CELARLY and CORRECTLY, which MUST show you that it is an ILLUSION, not a real world. Otherwise you are not seeing at all.
"While expressions like "think big" give some recognition to the power of thought, they still come nowhere near the truth. You do not expect to grow when you say it, because you don't really believe it. It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains." UrT2E10
"Why is it strange to you that faith can move mountains? This is indeed a little feat for such a power." UrT21D3
This is literal. Your mind, has the power, to move an entire physical mountain, from one location to another.
BEFORE DENYING THIS OR WRITING IT OFF ..... look at where your skepticism is coming from. Try to be open minded.
The mind is EXTREMELY POWERFUL.
"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will. " URT2E8
Not only can you move a mountain, you can invent entire worlds.
"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free." UrT9K9
Your mind has the power to CREATE WORLDS!
In fact, your mind ... YOUR mind .... made this entire universe of space and time and all the galaxies.
That is how powerful your mind is. And this is a small feat for such an INFINITE UNLIMITED POWER.
Because you have the power of God in you.
"Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do." UrW38L1
"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. " UrT14F7
If the POWER OF GOD, which is unlimited, engenders MIRACLES .... then surely MIRACLES (real ones) MUST be POWERFUL ACTS! A shift in perception is not a demonstration of INIFNITE POWER.
"The power of God IS limitless." UrT14F7
You, have a power in you, which is limiteless, infinite, without measure, so vast and so incredible, that it is capable of creating entire kingdoms. "I have a kingdom I must rule." UrW236L1
"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created. It has not ceased to create because your ego has set you on the road of perception." UrT4D3
You are an incredible powerful being, and the idea of you healing the sick and raising the dead IS A SMALL FEAT for the power that you have in you. It is the power OF God, but it is also given TO YOU TO USE, and IT IS YOURS, beause you SHARE IT with God.
"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power." UrM30A4
Why aren't people USING INFINITE POWER? Why are people profoundly skeptical of miracles that can MOVE MOUNTAINS, raise the dead, end physical suffering and heal minds?
"You still HAVE the power, but you have interposed so much between it and your AWARENESS of it, that you cannot use it. EVERYTHING you have taught yourselves has made your power more and more obscure to you. You know not WHAT it is, nor WHERE." UrT14G1
Just because your power is obscured does not mean you do not have it. And the goal here is to uncover and remember and re-access this power so that you can WORK MIRACLES WITH IT.
Because real miracle working - which CAN cause the moving of physical mountains - FOR WHATEVER REASON .... and not knowing the "purpose or sense" as to WHY you would do this is NOT an excuse for writing it off and rendering the power inept ..... is perfectly capable of wielding the unlimited power of God which has been GIVEN YOU in order to GIVE YOU THE POWER to work miracles. Not merely the power to "change your mind a bit" which is a TINY change.
"The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose." UrT1B23K
Notice that it says that you have a POWER to work miracles. This is not "the power to shift a perception" or "the power to only fix your mind" or "the power to change your thinking a bit". It is a POWER. A power which is potentailly unlimited and vast and unstoppable and capable of having dominion over the entire universe. Especially given that...
"My Self is ruler of the universe." --- It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept." UrW253
What happens is what you desire? You desire someone's arm to be healed? It's done. You deesire a mountain to be moved to another location? It is done. You desire to raise the dead or walk on water? It is done. UNLIMITED POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!
We are meant to be becoming EMPOWERED PEOPLE, as miracle workers, as children of God, beings with the power of God in us, a power so vast that it can create entire worlds, create living beings, can stop floods, can end wars, can do ANYTHING AT ALL.
"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it." UrW38L5
We are playing at being small and little, helpless victims, powerless little self-helpers, studying in a nice quiet corner, disturbing no-one, doing nothing, having no CAUSATION, demonstrating nothing, having no proof of the power of God, no evidenec that the Holy Spirit is working through us, nice and queit and safe and tidy. Where is the POWER? Where are the REAL MIRACLES? We are better than this, bigger than this, mightier than this. We are sons of God!
"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you." UrT11h4
"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made." UrT28C11
"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. " UrT6F9
"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." UrT11H3
Properly speaking, every mind which is split needs rehabilitation. The medical orientation emphasizes the body, and the vocational orientation stresses the ego. The team approach generally leads more to confusion than anything else, because it is too often misused as an expedient for sharing the ego's dominion with other ego's rather than as a real experiment in cooperation of minds.
The reason why Bill needs this experience is because he needs rehabilitating himself. How often have I answered "help him" when you asked me to help you? He, too, has asked for help, and he has been helped whenever he was truly helpful to you. He has also gained to whatever extent he could give. He will help YOU more truly by going, if he can remember all the time he is there that his ONLY reason for being there is to REPRESENT ME.
Rehabilitation, as a movement, has been an improvement over overt neglect, but it is often little more than a painful attempt on the part of the halt to lead the blind. Bill, you will see this at every meeting. But this is not why you were chosen to go. You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them. Your ego cannot tolerate ego-weakness, either, without ambivalence, because it is afraid of its own weakness and the weakness of its chosen home.
That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will. You withdraw to allow your ego to recover, and to regain enough strength to be helpful again on a basis limited enough NOT to threaten your ego, but also too limited to give YOU joy.
Those with broken bodies are often looked down on by the ego, because of its belief that nothing but a perfect body is worthy as its OWN temple. A mind that recoils from a hurt body is in great need of rehabilitation itself. A damaged brain is also hardly a danger. ALL symptoms of hurt need true helpfulness, and whenever they are met with this, the mind that so meets them heals ITSELF.
Rehabilitation is an attitude of praising God as He Himself knows praise. He offers praise to you, and you must offer it to others. The real limitations on clinical psychology, as it is evaluated by its followers at present, are not reflected by the attitudes of psychiatrists, or medical boards, or hospital administrators, even though most of them are sadly in need of rehabilitation themselves.
The real handicaps of the clinicians lie in their attitudes to those whom their egos perceive as weakened and damaged. By these evaluations, they have weakened and damaged their own helpfulness, and have thus set their own rehabilitation back. Rehabilitation is NOT concerned with the ego's fight for control, nor the ego's need to avoid and withdraw.
Bill, you can do much on behalf of your own rehabilitation AND Helen's, and much more universally as well, if you think of the Princeton meetings in this way:
I am here ONLY to be truly helpful.
I am here to represent Christ, who sent me.
I do not have to worry about what to say or what to do,
because the one who sent me will direct me.
I am content to be wherever He wishes, knowing he goes
there with me.
I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal.
A major mistake I keep making, or at least am starting to notice I'm making, is trying to find answers in the world.
Jesus is often hinting to me that I'm doing something wrong when I do this.
I'll be lost in the middle of trying to figure something out or decide between two things, or determine what the "real reason is", or find a cause, or basically find any sense of truth to do with anything in this world.
It's difficult because my mind is so used to thinking this way - looking outside of myself for truth, for salvation etc. I'm so accustomed to being in this "mode" of "is it this or that?"... when in fact BOTH of those things are not the answer.
It also happens any time I am in any amount of fear, which is often, whereby Jesus will poke me because I'm once again lost in doubt and trying to decide something. It's really a state of indecision and because of the presence of fear, there is literally no way I can see clearly or find a completely convincing truth.
It often takes several winks and nudges before I I might suddenly have enough awareness to even realize that "I'm doing it again". ... I'm basically trying to find some kind of truth or answer in the world.
A reason why someone is sick. A cause for why something happened. A truth that explains which path to take. Some evidence that shows me something is correct. A sense of certainty that cannot be found in uncertainty. A clear and obvious answer which is profoundly elusive in the presence of fear.
I get lost in all these ways, in what basically is a state of split ego mind, where I am just lost and looking in all the wrong places for a truth that isn't really there.
When I finally am nudged enough by Jesus to look at what I'm really doing, and I've run out of attempts to find answers to what it is that I am doing wrong (lol), and I have pretty much no other option left as to what it is that Jesus is trying to get at, THEN I might suddenly realize..... oh... I'm doing it again.... I'm trying to find truth in the world.
And so what has been really coming to me big time lately, totally unexpected, is this idea that... absolutely everything in this world is NOT THE TRUTH. And cannot be. And it is not real. No matter how it looks, no matter how convincing it is, no matter how well explained, no matter whose credentials are behind it, no matter how real it seems, no matter how I can pinpoint physical causes, no matter how explainable or understandable it seems to be, IT IS STILL NOT THE TRUTH.
It is not God's truth. And God's truth is the ONLY truth. There IS no truth in the world, EVER.
This is quite surprising to me given how much I've been used to finding answers (salvation) outside of myself. It's the totally automatic mode of the ego to find truth externally, or to explain situations, or diagnose sicknesses, or find the "real cause" of stuff. All that is doing is the ego is trying to give truth to its illusions, trying to make mistakes real, making sickness real, making the world real, and that is NOT forgiveness.
Forgiveness HAS to recognize that the ENTIRE WORLD and EVERYTHING IN IT is an illusion, is not the truth, has no truth to it, cannot provide an answer, is not the "final answer", an therefore there is ANOTHER TRUTH which goes beyond this world.
There is a truth which is of God. It is a truth which transcends the world. It is a truth of immortality, eternal life, absolute peace, total happiness, invulnerability, christ consciousness, oneness and love. This is THE ONLY TRUTH.
And so as I've been really really used to finding "some" of the truth outside of me, in the world, in explanations and what appears to be cause and effect in the illusion, where one thing appears to cause something else to happen, THAT is not truth. So I am now going into this process of quite literally becoming clearer and stronger in my discernment that EVERY attempt to find truth in the world will fail, and will only tell me something that is - in God's reality - not the REAL truth.
This is the foundation for miracle mindedness, because miracle mindedness completely defies the laws of physics, chemistry, biology. The laws of nature. The laws of what appears to be separate causes and effects. All rules. All results. All effects. All stuff that seems to "happen" in this world, it is all NOT the truth of God. And therefore, God has power OVER all of it!!!
This is why in order to perform MIRACLES (!!), we need to get our mind into a place where we're very clear about the fact that this world is NOT REAL, that there is NO truth to how it appears whatsoever, that sickness is just a fake image which can be easily changed, that the body is just a fake image which can be easily changed, and that, as ACIM says very early on, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do."
While I'm looking for truth in this world, in all the things I rely on and think are sources of certainty and reality, I am distracting myself from the truth of God. And that means I am not being miraculous. Miracles, the power of God's love, will flow IN SPITE of this world, and with DOMINION over this world, and with a POWER that this world has absolutely no idea about.
And therefore no matter what state or condition this world is in, and no matter how it appears, and what seems to be the "finality" of it, or bodily states which seem irreversible, or even DEATH as a statement of "you can't do anything about this because its real".. THATS BULLSHIT! God CAN do something about it, because God does not buy the lie that this world is reality. And that means miracles can happen, and people CAN be raised from the dead, temporarily or otherwise if its preferable, and you are NOT at the effect of this world.
A Course in Miracles thus makes no sense whatsoever UNLESS this world is an illusion, and unless this world has absolutely no truth to it whatsoever. Only then can it be possible that everything ACIM claims can be true, and only then is it possible that natural MIRACLES can happen, ALL THE TIME!
Hallelujah!
In ACIM, there is a central pillar which was not clear to me before. It is an unexpected strategy for acheiving salvation, which is pointed to and reinforced over and over again. And in effect is the ONLY way.
We may be familiar with the idea that ATONEMENT is the goal. Yes it is. The course also states that atonement, true perception, forgiveness, and salvation are all one, ie synonyms.
Atonement, as salvation, is a major goal. How do you find salvation, ie atonement? How are you saved from death and suffering? What power or ability is it that you have to get there?
Recognizing that salvation and atonement are the same thing, and salvation is "the ONLY way out of hell", the next key is to ask, how do you achieve salvation? Is there a secret to it perhaps?
Jesus refers to the "how", the key, as "the secret of salvation". Simply, "you are doing this to yourself." And to back this up, the supporting statement would be, "You can be affected by nothing but yourself."
This is similar to "Only the truth is true and nothing else is true". So let's say...
I am the one who causes ALL my suffering.
Nothing else causes ANY of my suffering.
If I so choose, I will not suffer.
This may seem unexpected, because we spend a huge amount of time lost in the ego, tangled up in other people, dramas, upsets and suffering. Our focus is pulled away from this idea constantly by ego temptations. And this builds confusing walls around this core idea.
Whenever it we've bought into the idea that someone else is causing us, we are affected by something, the world is upsetting us, things are happening against our will, we don't want something but don't see how we can stop it, etc... we're getting lost in FALSE causes, and losing sight of the forgiving truth that WE ARE CAUSING THIS. The cause is in OUR mind.
It is the movement AWAY from those confusions and untruths, TOWARD the STATE of salvation/atonement/forgiveness, that is "applying forgiveness". Undoing our false beliefs about WHO is causing us, is part of forgiving.
Becoming clear about how WE are causing OUR OWN suffering, is applying forgiveness. Our goal, to achieve the STATE of forgiveness, which is also true or corrected perception, we must "correct" the "errors" we are making in our discernment of what is true.
What is true is that WE ARE THE CAUSE of ALL of our own suffering. Becoming clear about this, seeing this accurately, recognizing it fully, is true perception. Perception "corrects" as you sift through and remove belief in "other causes" beyond yourself, which are FALSE causes. Illusions.
What I find surprising is that Jesus clearly is teaching us to simply CHOOSE NOT TO SUFFER. And that if we are suffering, we HAVE chosen to do so.. And there are NO EXCEPTIONS. Our mind causes all suffering, all sickness, and death in the body. There is NO OTHER CAUSE.
At its simplest, this means, you have free will and choose what you experience. At all times. In all cases. And there is NO POWER capable of interfering with this. There are NO OTHER CAUSES of you other than God. Anything that happens, YOU CHOOSE. Anything you feel, YOU CHOOSE. Any suffering, YOU CHOOSE. You do it to yourself.
Why is that? It's simply because you have been given TOTAL FREEDOM by God. Free will provides you the ability to CHOOSE what you want and thus what you value. You ARE free to deny God if you so choose, and "God does not coerce" you to do otherwise. It IS up to you to CHOOSE heaven and happiness.
"Heaven is a choice I must make."
Because you CAN CHOOSE, and there IS NO other cause of what you experience, you CAN CHOOSE NOT TO DIE. You can choose never to be sick. You can choose to always be happy. It does not take effort, it merely takes recognition, clarity, sanity, and decision.
You do not MAKE happiness or love or peace, those are shared with God who has created reality. But you DO choose whether to accept or reject them. You do not choose WHAT the choices are, but you do choose WHICH you elect to experience - real heaven or an illusory hell.
You can choose to go home. Nothing can stop you when you choose God. Death has no power over you. You are at the effect of NOTHING in this world.
The surprising, unexpected thing about this to me, is that I did not used to think this was the main focus. I did not think forgiveness would lead to this. I did not recognize that "forgiving" was about choosing, or that I HAD a choice, or WAS choosing. I did not think the secret of salvation was even necessarily the be-all and end-all of "how to get there."
But Jesus is clear. Atonement as salvation, is achieved ONLY through the total acceptance of your free will and the exercising of your CHOICE never to die, and thus to accept God and eternal life. You are free to come and go. You are free to make yourself suffer. And you are free to wake up at any time. Nothing can stop you.
The challenge then, in applying this idea, is examining WHAT you are doing, and then identifying not IF you are doing this to yourself, but HOW and WHY. A first step is to recognize you ARE doing to this to yourself, in all cases. The second step is identifying HOW you are doing this to yourself. The third step is identifying WHY you are doing this to yourself. And then finally the fourth step is CHOOSING OTHERWISE. ie, stop hurting yourself.
This reveals that really, this world is a world is suicide and death. Every person is attacking ONLY themselves. There are NO victims. Every person here is suicidal and self-attacking and hurting themselves. And we are all trying to learn how to LOVE OURSELVES. How NOT to hurt ourselves.
That entails RECLAIMING our power and freedom as CHRIST, a co-creator with God, capable of choosing whether to live or die, to come and go as we wish, and to become willing to choose ONLY LIFE. To choose God and go home. Not through coercion or force, not through wishful thinking, but simply by being in touch with the POWER of our decision to simply be ABLE to do so.
Jesus is telling us that NOTHING happens to us against our free will, as a result of someone else doing something to us, by accident, by acts of nature, by external laws, or by ANY CAUSE other than YOU. Your mind has TOTAL DOMINION OVER THE WORLD. You are the cause.
"This is a course in cause, not effect."
Being cause, is being empowered. Being cause is being strong. Being cause is being fearless. Being cause is being miraculous and creative. Being cause is being loving and whole. Being cause is freedom. Being cause, it is impossible that ANYTHING happen to you un-chosen by yourself.
This means TOTAL RESPONSIBILITY. You have the power to choose not to die. You have the power to choose never to suffer or be sick. Anything you ARE experiencing, you HAVE chosen, and you CAN change your mind. And this choice DOES NOT depend on anyone else. Nor is this choice made BY anyone else, nor is it limited by anyone else or any circumstance.
YOU have the power of God in you. You have His freedom.
"Nothing can affect you but yourself."
Atuning to this state of total responsibility and freedom and power of choice IS FORGIVENESS. It IS the atonement, and is your resurrection.
Cause and effect means that causes produce effects. Cause is a power and effects result from it. This is only has any meaning in terms of a dreamworld because outside the dream there is no dream and no dreamer.
Either you are identified with cause, or you are identified with effect. This means either you are dreaming the dreamworld, or the dreamworld is dreaming you. When the dreamworld is dreaming you, what this really means is the dreamer of the dream is dreaming of a world in which he himself becomes identified as part of the dream, so that it seems he is dreamed by the dream - ie dreamed by himself. This is the ego's entire concept of creation.
You come into the world through what appears to be the dream giving birth to you, originating in the parent's bodies and taking the form of a baby. If this is true, then the dream has dreamed you and you are its effect. If this is true, you were created by the ego/dream and not by God. But the truth is that you are not a body or a form of a part of a dream and God DID create you, but the dream will never testify to that. As God's creation, YOU are the cause of the dreamworld and you are the one who invented ALL bodies and all body-based relationships.
Cause and effect become reversed the moment that you identify with the dream and believe that you are a part of it, made from it, or created by it. The responsibility for causal power which was inside you, capable of dreaming, is now projected outside of you AS the dream, and the dream now seems to be the causal power. The dream IS your own causal power displaced away from you and disowned.
If the dream is causal, then it is indeed true that it would seem the dream has the power to both create you (birth) and destroy you (death) at its own whim, and in complete violation of any supposed rights or power you might have. When the dreamworld is causal, YOU become its effect. As an effect, you are powerless and are a VICTIM. Whatever the dreamworld wants to throw at you, whatever it wants to do to you, however it wants to REDEFINE who and what you are, you can do nothing to stop it.
When you are the effect of the world you see, therefore, you become 'affected by' the world. It does stuff to you. It seems to change you. It seems to be capable of eliciting a REACTION in you. This is what it means to be an effect. External causes decide who and what you are, you do not. You are then a passive victim and if the world decides to CHANGE YOU in any way, to redefine your identity, to treat you a certain way as if to say that this is how you should be treated because of what you are, you can do nothing to stop it. If you believe the dream is causal, then this is what will happen to you.
In childhood, then, when you have entered the dream through a 'doorway' of birth, after which you believe that the dream has created you, you have a mind which perceives this way. As a baby you are a passive victim. You receive. You soak everything in. You have no identity of your own but you start to develop one. You develop an identity based on what the DREAM tells you you are. This can come through the form of any person or experience that occurs, mainly through parents role-modeling or examples given by others. You "learn" an identity based on what the dream/ego tells you you are.
It goes further. Because now, anything that happens to you BY the dream, redefines not only the meaning of who you are (as anything other than powerful, unconditionally lovable, truth, God-Created, immortal etc). Since the dream is itself void of any truth it can only redefine you FALSELY, and however it treats you is like a statement telling you what is true of you. So if someone abuses you, that person represents a signal from the causal dream, as if it is an expression of TRUTH, telling you what you are.
If you are abused, and if the abuse is truth, then you MUST be something abuseable, you MUST have asked for it, there MUST be something wrong with you, and you simply ACCEPT and ALLOW this display of lies to enter your mind. It reconfigures your sense of who you ARE, which modifies your IDENTITY. And especially as a young person you have no memory of your true self and nobody is modeling unconditional love for you all the time, so you basically lose sight of the truth about you. You form a sense of self which is artificial, dictated by the world, and you actually believe it is true - it is what you are. You have been turned into an abused victim by the dream, not by the events that seemed to make this happen or by the people who were involved, but by the sheer fact that you believed and perceived the dream was your creator, it had power to define you, and that you are at its effect.
This can of course go on for years before you start to get a sense of discord within yourself, which may lead you to healing paths or exploring who you really are or trying to find out why these things happened. But ultimately, it all boils down to the reversal of cause and effect. All the ways the "dream dreams you", dictates your identity and defines what you are. If you allow that, accept it, believe it, or go along with it in any way, having abandoned your TRUE SELF, you become a powerless victim. Unconscious. The dream would kill you if you let it.
Correction is needed. Healing is called for. A reawakening to the TRUTH about you is absolutely required. You need to reverse cause and effect back to its proper orientation, which means learning that YOU are the cause and the dream is YOUR effect. You have command over it, dominion over it, power over it, and it extends solely from you. It never happens TO you, you are never victimized BY it, it is never responsible for turning you into an effect against your will, and essentially, it is nothing. Effects are nothing. They have no power, they do not make anything happen, they aren't real.
Recognize then that EVERY SINGLE TIME that you RE-ACT to the dreamworld, it must be that you believe the dream is dreaming you. You have become the effect of it, and the cause has been displaced outside of you. You are reacting TO it because of what it is doing TO you. You've disowned your power. You've got things back to front. You've forgotten that YOU are the cause, and have turned into a victim. You cannot be victimized when you take back your power and learn that you are the cause of the dream. You are the dreamer, not the other way around!
All reactions are reactions to the belief that cause is outside of you. All reactions are the responses that the `powerful dream` with an `alien will` has determined you are supposed to have. Its as if the dream is broadcasting a signal "this is what you are" and you are receiving it, and your experience of victimhood or upset is how it feels to receive that signal and to experience its power OVER you, changing you against your will. All reactions are the redefinition that the dream is trying to impose onto you, to change who you are and to affect you. All reactions are responses and retaliations that map to the stimuli that is being thrown at you.
Seemingly serious and important external causes seem to call forth seemingly larger reactions in you. This is the hierarchy of illusions. Big causes call for big effect. If you are constantly re-acting to the dreamworld, it is because you firmly believe that CAUSE is outside of you and that YOU are at its effect. Everything about the dream testifies to this. Every single thing that 'happens' is an attempt to affect you and redefine your identity as the ego. The ego is the dream fabric and the ego-dream wants you to be described AS a dream. It sees you only as a victim and as your own victimizer.
Because projection makes perception, and because perception could be likened to 'receiving' the dream into your senses (symbolically), it is perception which seems to trigger ALL reactions. You perceive something external has caused something, and now it has produced effects in you. These artificial effects attempt to mangle and distort you and throw you into chaos, with upset emotions and crazed thinking. All reactions are reactions to perceptions. What came before perception?
Before perception there is projection. And this is why you have to take responsibility for what you are projecting, in order to free yourself from your OWN reactions to your OWN STUFF. It is YOUR OWN CAUSALITY out there staring you back in the face and scaring the shit out of you, to which you then react as if it is NOT yours and is some other horror show made to upset you. YOU gave it its power, YOU gave it its causality, by disowning your own. It's YOU that is attacking you. It is YOU that has been projected AS the very dream that now attempts to dream you. You must move past the reactions by realizing you are reacting to your own projected power, AND TAKE BACK THAT POWER, so that you can admit that the cause is IN YOU. YOU are the dreamer of the dream. Get it straight! It takes orders from you. You're the boss.
What is life like when you are 100% the cause? When you are 100% cause there are no effects, no dream, no illusion, no suffering, no death. Immortality is a state of perfect causality, the 'effect' of which is the same thing as the cause, with no separation between them. You are not a victim of the world you see. Take another look at this with Holy Spirit and admit the truth. The truth shall set you free. You dreamed up all this shit, remember?
When the mind clearly recognizes that CAUSE is in the mind, and Cause is God, and that the mind extends God's will, God's Power can extend forth to enact miracles.
This means, that God has FULL power over illusions. Or in other words, God is not a victim of illusions and God does not pay any attention to what illusions say can or cannot occur.
Let's talk about it in terms of authority. God is the One Authority. When we are fully aware of and aligned with God, we too inherit Authority. We are now representatives of God, or you could say, a "Teacher of God" or "Advanced Teacher of God".
With authority, you have commanding authority over all illusions, all ego, and all deception. This includes all sickness, and death. If you say that something will happen, it MUST happen. If you command that something be healed, it MUST heal. It must fall into line with your authority.
Now, in this authority there is no sense of paying attention whatsoever to ANYTHING that illusions appear to say. It is as if being blind to illusions (overlooking them completely, which is true forgiveness), not listening to ego, giving absolutely no credit to any grounds for fear, and not even really paying attention to even what the eyes and ears are telling you is happening in the illusion.
None of the things of the illusion, world, body, sickness etc, none of them are important because none of them have CAUSAL POWER over God and His Son (you). The world is NOTHING but an effect. It MUST fall into line and be/do what YOU command it does. This is why there is "no order of difficulty in miracles". The authority you have as a representative of God/Christ, does not listen to the world of form in any way whatsoever, believes in no ego, and completely ignores appearances. Instead it simply ENFORCES GOD'S WILL (that there be healing etc). And there's nothing the ego illusion can do to stop it.
Now, when someone is a victim, what this means is there has been a great reversal of cause and effect. There is also a DIS-EMPOWERMENT. There is a listening to the ego, a paying attention to illusions, a making illusions real, a becoming afraid because of how frightening the illusion SEEMS to be, and a taking it seriously. This is all of course to do with listening to the ego, which means, listening to what the ILLUSION is telling you. What the world is telling you, what the body is telling you, what the sickness is telling you.
So for the victim, what this means is, their attention has stopped being fixated on God, and is now fixated on the world/ego/body and all of its reasons 'why' (justifications, rationalizations) something cannot be healed. All of those reasons are bullshit. They are all temptations. They are all deceptions. We are to NOT listen to them. But for the victim, in the victim's mind, they perceive causal power as outside of them, separate from them, inaccessible, and acting AGAINST them instead of for them. And as such, they perceive and believe, that form/illusions/ego has power over God. This is the reversal of cause and effect.
This is also the AUTHORITY PROBLEM, because the victim has a mistaken sense of who has authority over whom. The ego/victim having authority over God is POWERLESSNESS. Weakness. Fear. Failure. The ego's attempt to be God is its attempt to block God's authority (which some would call aligning with 'hell'). It is also an ignorance of YOUR real authority, which is extended to you by God. A victim is not AWARE of their authority, and that's why they experience themselves as being weak and vulnerable and victimized, and at the same time believe they have a false authority over God.
So, the entire point of waking up, as it were, is the transition from victimhood, where you are allowing the world to dictate "what is" (i.e. to dictate to God a resistance against God, the authority problem, which tries to assert that God has no authority here), to a state where you are ABSOLUTE CAUSE, recognizing the world is ONLY an effect, and therefore it is absolutely under your power and MUST absolutely comply with any change you choose to make to it. And yes, when you are in this mind of cause (Holy Spirit onwards), you CAN change the world/dream/illusion because you have total authority over its deceptions. You recognize the world is a LIE, and therefore it has no power over YOU.
When the Son of God commands with authority and firm conviction and lack of fear and with strong belief (all of which are required!), that the illusion MUST do something, the illusion WILL comply. But it won't comply if you do not have this unshakeable certainty. It won't comply if you are in doubt. It won't comply if you are listening to the ego and fearing that there is a level of difficulty here beyond what can be changed. It won't comply when you listen to your own uncertainties or when you start to 'change your tune', trying out different words and so on. This means you've allowed the illusion to start to encroach on your authority/territory and invade your mind and you're starting to listen to what it's saying and are taking it seriously. This is dis-empowerment. Victimhood.
Your word is your 'wand', and you need to speak to the illusion and command it to heal and so on. You need to exercise your authority over it. Reversing cause and effect back to their proper orientation (which is a correction of level confusion also), doesn't just mean, oh, now you realize cause is 'in' your mind and you're not at the effect of the world. It LITERALLY means, there is now ONLY cause in your mind, and the world is ONLY effect, and IT MUST OBEY. It doesn't just mean the world still has some kind of fixed nature or objectivity, and that your subjective perception is now unaffected yet still 'passive'. It means you are now in command, in charge, you have dominion over it, and you tell it what the fuck to do.
That is how it is possible to enforce God's will, to enact healing, to raise the dead, etc. People being dead bodies is an EGO ILLUSION, a part of the dream world that attempts to put on a really big 'show' about how this is more powerful or important than God. God has power OVER it, and when you are aligned with God's power, YOU have power over it, to literally reverse death. It means not believing a single shred of the ego illusions, appearances, any state of form, any reason 'why' something cannot be changed, or anything else that comes 'from' the illusion/form/ego/body. If you are listening to form, you are listening to the ego. If you are tempted by the severity of form's condition, you are listening to the ego.
This is why we must become single minded, one minded. Absolute certainty. We must have firm 'belief' i.e. conviction that it is TRUE, that healing can, must, and will occur... even in the sense that it HAS occurred and therefore the ego MUST represent this healing, e.g. by the body image 'demonstrating' that there has been no attack. Jesus instructs us many times to demonstrate our brother has had NO EFFECT ON US, which means anything outside of you has NO POWER to do anything to you whatsoever, YOU hold all the causal power, you are NOT at the effect of ANYTHING in the dream (and therefore must be 100% responsible and 100% free of victimhood). We are to demonstrate that the Son of God - you - are NOT at the effect of the dream, the world, sickness, death, the ego's forces, agents of hell, deceptions or lies.
This isn't just about getting our mind straightened out and getting things into their proper order. Once cause and effect are CORRECTED, all the powerlessness that you thought you had will be replaced with POWER. All of the fear that you had will be replaced with CERTAINTY. All of the victimhood you had will be placed with CONVICTION. And you will become CLEAR that everything in form, everything of 'level 1' of the dream, is UNDER YOUR COMMAND. This isn't passive. This means you are an agent of God, you extend God's power (because you stop resisting or blocking it), and your alignment with love produces CONSTANT NATURAL MIRACLES. Where do miracles occur? THEY CORRECT THE ILLUSION (world/body/dream), NOT just the inside of your private inner world.
Miracles are "miracles" because they are 'supernatural' acts which come from a place of inner causality, BEYOND the world, via a clear alignment to and experience of the 'metaphysics' of the truth, and which therefore ABOLISH all of the ego's laws and have absolute power over everything in this world. This means it can defy all sickness and death, it can defy the laws of physics (e.g. Jesus walking on water), it can defy all forms of lack (feeding the 5000), it can defy all disease (healing the blind, raising the dead etc), because we have POWER OVER ALL OF IT.
This is not a drill. This is for real folks. And it's going to be up to you, once you access that authority and power and certainty and clarity, experientially, to decide when and where you might 'exercise' your miracle-mindedness. Maybe you will perform no such miracles. Maybe you will perform many. But they will be natural and effortless and unlimited. Just look at Jesus as an example. He performed even more miracles than are mentioned in the bible. He performed miracles DAILY! And as Jesus tells us in the urtext, "each morning ask me what miracles you would have me perform today, and help me to perform them." Every day folks!
It's a Course in MIRACLES because it's a Course that will lead you to God and will set you free and miracles are your RIGHT!
Amen.
I wasn't intending for this post to be elaborate but I LOVE how this analogy unfolded to explain the body, sickness, death, miracles, and awakening.....I think that I might even write a whole book based on this analogy alone, it's so clear and exact.... Thanks to Holy Spirit for the nudges and corrections.
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Computers are strangely similar in their following of rules as we are in our responsibility for choice. And similarly, our bodies do exactly what we tell them to and nothing else.
A computer doesn't do anything whatsoever without a decision being made. When a decision is made, when the computer is told what you want, it produces exactly that result. The language used to tell it what to do is absolutely specific. And it only produces the exact result that was asked for. It is almost annoyingly specific in its requirement for precise instruction.
The computer doesn't really decide on its own to do anything else. It is very true to the programmer's instructions. If it seems to be doing something else, some illusion of a higher-level functioning has arisen. It's really still just processing binary data, 1's and 0s', yet produces what looks to be much more sophisticated results. Images on a screen, objects moving around, sounds happening, it's all an ILLUSION.
When the computer seems to do something it was not supposed to do, this is actually impossible. If there is a bug in the software, the computer still does what the bug tells it to do. It doesn't decide not to do bugs, and it doesn't decide to do bugs on its own. It faithfully follows instructions. That's all it can do. It has no real intelligence. It is just a machine. You get out what you put in.
The body is similar in that it is your faithful machine, and it literally only does what your mind tells it to do. It does not have a will of its own. It does not invent bugs on its own. It doesn't malfunction on its own. It only follows the program that is given to it. It is always 100% correct in carrying out orders. It does not complain or have an opinion or make judgement about rightness or wrongness of the program. It just EXECUTES.
It is a device, that you use for various purposes. Some of those purposes are malicious and as a result, they lead to the body seeming to produce malicious states of being. But regardless of these states looking like a high-level sophisticated problem, it is still just the body following orders. In this way, the body (like a computer) is completely neutral. It is your servant and you are the one operating it.
This is also exactly the same as the fact that, as Jesus tells us in the Course, you always get exactly what you ask for, you only ever get what you ask for, and you never get anything that you do not ask for. Therefore what you get and what happens is 100% your responsibility. If the body seems to go wrong or do bad things, it is because the programmer told it to.
Just as it is the responsibility of a computer programmer to give it the exact-right specific instructions for behavior, so too do you give your body exact instructions for behavior. This is why as Jesus says, if the body is exhibiting signs of sickness or disease, it must mean that the mind has given it a program where you've asked it to be sick and diseased. It is just following your request, to the letter. A sick body is a sign of a sick mind, because the programmer of the body has to be sick in order for sickness to show in the body.
This also shows us the way out of the illusion of stuff happening that allegedly shouldn't be happening. There is not ANYTHING happening in the entire world that has not been asked for by a mind. There is nothing happening in your body that you have not asked for in your mind. You put it there yourself through your instructions - your creative power and freedom. And you have received exactly what you asked for. It is a TOTALLY reliable system.
"Ask and you shall recieve" does not mean that sometimes you ask and sometimes you receive, it means you are always asking and you are always receiving and it is not even possible to not receive what you've asked for. There also therefore is never a situation where you might not receive what you've asked for, where you are in doubt, or thinking that you have asked the wrong question or don't know how to ask etc. You ask nevertheless, and everything you are experiencing right this very second, you have asked for. You can't blame the RESULTS for being something you do not want. YOU need to find out how and why you are programming the system to produce an output of suffering.
If stuff seems to be happening in the body which you don't prefer, you cannot blame the body for it, and you cannot look to outside causes to find out where the symptoms came from. There is only one program and you wrote it. Symptoms are just correct outputs, based on the program you have given the body and the request you have made.
Sickness is a correct output! Death is a correct output! If you ask for it, you shall receive it. If you say, body, you will die, it will die. If you say body you will live, it will live. This is why the illusion of things being right or wrong is 100% bullshit delusion, because there is nothing BROKEN about this system. You are giving it instructions unconsciously to produce HELL, and if that's not what you want, you need to program something else.
As explained in the Song of Prayer, you are constantly praying, constantly asking, and constantly receiving what you are asking for. Therefore, learn to pray a higher prayer. Prayer is PROGRAMMING! As Jesus says, prayer is the medium of miracles, because prayer is the act of CHANGING THE SOFTWARE! This also means that in the prayer you do not beg or request or have fear about what you are asking, you CHOOSE the results you would receive with total certainty that the system MUST produce what you have requested, and therefore you believe 100% that you MUST receive it, and YOU SHALL RECEIVE THE MIRACLE!
This also explains why really nothing has gone wrong and nothing is really happening at all. If the computer is just faithfully doing what you TOLD IT TO, nothing has gone wrong, even if what you told it to do (express a world of separation) was a pretty wacky idea for a program. This also shows why you have not gone off the path, plus there is no reason to be afraid that you cannot get back Home, because it is ALWAYS true that you are receiving what you're asking for and you can always choose again. Therefore, by choosing God's "program", you need not produce programs of suffering and death. NOTHING CAN STOP YOU FROM CHOOSING NOT TO PROGRAM DEATH! All death is a choice. All death is suicide.
This is why there is never anything out of place, there are no accidents, nobody dies without their own consent, and nothing happens without you making it happen. You are causal. You cause things. You produce. You direct. It is all extremely specific, 100% specific. Every single thing that seems to happen in illusions is put there on purpose. There are absolutely no victims whatsoever. Every notion of victimization, accidents, right/wrong, good/bad, should have happened or not, things unwanted, events you resist, etc.. it's all an effort by an unconscious programmer to fix the program by fighting with the output, instead of changing the program!
You have dominion over the body and over the Earth. You have power over all sickness and death because you MADE THEM with your programming, and you can UNMAKE them just as easily. If stuff is happening which, when you look at the results, you do not want, then you need to change your programming. You need to erase the instructions that you keep giving (false beliefs, delusions, ego), and replace it with a higher, more orderly program (Holy Spirit's mind, right-mindedness, sanity, truth).
Your body does not have bugs. Your programming of the body has bugs. Your life does not have bugs. Your programming of your life has bugs. You need to go fix your errors, your mistakes in thinking, which are producing exactly the correct output given the input. If you don't like the output, change the input, don't fight with the output like some victim that has no power to choose again.
You cannot keep looking at the output and saying, this output is not supposed to be happening, this output is wrong, this output is not what I asked for. That's a victim, which is a mind who has forgotten that they are the instructor and the INPUT to the system, and they are the ones who are causing the OUTPUT from the system, but they've forgotten that they're doing this. It's like they fed in a program (the script), walked away from the control system/terminal, and looked at the screen to see what results were coming out, saw something crazy coming out, and then having forgotten that they ASKED FOR IT, start freaking out and blaming the problem on 50 billion other reasons why the output is wrong.
The output is ALWAYS CORRECT based on the input, even if its an output of death. So who is really RESPONSIBLE for writing dodgy programs?! You are.
What you put in, you get out. If your mind is feeding input to your body and your life with unloving, unforgiving intentions, then you are going to be writing scripts which are filled with chosen suffering. You're going to be writing scripts, programs, which contain outputs that are unpleasant. You're going to even write scripts which create illusions that you're not the script-writer and that you did not ask for the output. You can even produce outputs which disguise the fact that there was ever a programmer!
So once you start getting SHIT come out of your printer, you probably can tell that shit was fed INTO the printer and you need to correct that. It's not the printer's fault. It's not the body-computer's fault. It's not other people's fault or life's fault or the environments fault or food's fault or anything's fault.
This is just a simple cause-and-effect system. It functions like a computer. There are decisions being made, there are inputs being given to the system, and it is producing exactly the output that was requested. There is not even a single interference with that. There is no corruption on the disk drive, there are no viruses infecting things, it's all running perfectly. EVERY prayer is being answered. EVERY request is being granted. You just keep making stupid-ass requests!
This is why if you really want to change the output, i.e. change the world or the body or any other effects, the ONLY real way to do that is to get back to the mind - to the programmer, get the programmer's mind corrected so they're not writing ridiculous programs, and then feed a new program into the system. A more truthful, orderly program. And this MUST (not sometimes, not maybe, but MUST) produce a corrected OUTPUT in the form of the "symptoms" or "effects" seen as the body. Remember Jesus's principle, "If miracles are not happening, something has gone wrong" - meaning, there is NEVER a wrong output given the input, so if you are not seeing a miracle, YOU CORRECTLY ASKED FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ASKING FOR! And you WILL receive it.
Even in the bible it says that if you ask, and believe that you have received it, you will receive it. This suggests it's possible to not receive if you do not believe enough, which is not true. The correction for this is to realize, YOU MUST and ARE receiving exactly what you actually are asking for, so if it "looks like" you are not receiving what you want, you MUST be the one who is out of touch with what you want, and you're asking for stuff unconsciously that your conscious mind is in denial of.
Attempting to mess with what output you got, or what your body state is, or what your life looks like, from the end of the system that is the output of instructions, you are hitting your head against a wall and are attempting to perform magic. Magic means that you are believing that the output came from a non-obvious source, that the system is broken, and that you need to "patch it up" with some kind of bypass that messes with the output and mangles it to make it look like what you thought should have come out. That, however, does not fix the faulty PROGRAM, or the programmer that's nuts who is writing the faulty program, and so it will likely still keep producing the same output eventually. You can actually remove the effects of "sin" but if the person continues to "sin", i.e. write programs of separation, they will keep reproducing the same effects and symptoms.
A miracle, is simply the mind choosing to cause a different output. Writing a different program. Fixing bugs in its own software. When these changes show up in the output, it's amazing, like someone just rewrote all the rules, all of the old rules were broken, and the design of the whole system has been overridden. We call this miraculous. Some "super-natural" power from outside of the entire "matrix" of the system has just flipped some switches and changed the INPUT, and therefor the output has to fall into line.
Another way this can show up as miracles is that the programmer of the system can decide to rearrange space or time, can insert and remove objects from the scenery, can manipulate any piece of 'data' in the system, can modify absolutely anything in the system, and can convert anything into anything else. These are the powers that Jesus has demonstrated through miracles. He got in touch with the programmer's chair, sat down and started rewriting the programs. Everyone has the freedom to do this, we just have to get back into the chair and write programs from love!
We are not getting anything out of this system that wasn't put in, or that wasn't asked for. The computer is not broken. The hardware is not broken. We have a software problem. We keep writing faulty software. Software is PERCEPTION. The content of spacetime is DATA. Software operates on the data. True perception means seeing the program clearly and being able to do anything to modify it at will, producing different data - a different output.
We need, therefore, to tap into the assistance of a superior software writer, aka Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, who are capable of not only writing or changing portions of our program for us (collapsing time, rearranging space, etc), but can also guide and assist us with "correction" of our programming expressions. Thus we gradually can write a happier dream, leading up to a final climax.
The ultimate release from this whole CLOSED SYSTEM (it's closed because it's all happening inside of God and there are no hidden rules or secret wills and everything is very exact), is when you decide to ERASE ALL PROGRAMS. A complete reboot. A total fresh start. A renewing of everything. Not just a correction of all software bugs, but a complete realignment of the state of the system with God's truth. When this happens, basically the hard drive (body) is erased, the memory (ego) is erased, and all that is left is the hardware.
Then, the only thing running is the operating system - GOD, who has programmed Christ - the perfect program, to produce the perfect output - Heaven.
Illusions are made as substitutes for truth, for which no substitutes are possible. Creator separate from creation was the first illusion, where all gifts of fear were born. For now creation could not be like its Creator, Who could never leave what He Himself created part of Him. Now must there be a substitute for love, which cannot have an opposite in truth and, being all, can have no substitute. So fear was made, and with it came the need for gifts to lend the substance to the dream in which there is no substance. Now the dream seems to have value, for its offerings appear as hope and strength and even love, if only for an instant. They content the frightened dreamer for a little while, and let him not remember the first dream which gifts of fear but offer him again.
The seeming solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking. For before he could awaken, he would first be forced to call to mind the first dream once again. It is not God Who asks a price of him, but having drawn a veil across the truth, he now must let the veil be drawn away so that its lack of substance can be seen. No one would hesitate to leave a dream of shock and terror, merciless decay and sickening contortions, with despair always in sight and death not far behind, if he believed that it was but a dream. Yet if he thinks that he must first go through a greater terror still, he must see hope in what will now appear the "better" dream.
And now he seeks within his dream to find what gifts it may contain. What can you get within its shadows? Who can save you now by giving you the love you threw away? What can you learn to do to make yourself a master over others? What is there that is your special gift within the dream? Find these and do not waken from the dream, for it can give you what you think you lack. And if you waken all its gifts will go, your armor and your sword will disappear, and vultures, always circling overhead, will claim you as their lawful prey at last.
Oh children of the Father you forgot, you have not put your idols in His place, nor made Him give the gifts of fear you made. Let me be Savior from illusions. Truth may be concealed from you by evil dreams, but it is only from the dreams that you have need of saving. Truth is still untouched by your deceptions. But you cannot go past that first dream without a Savior's hand in yours. Each gift of fear would hold you back unless you let me lift it from your mind by showing you that it is but a dream within a larger dream of hopelessness in which there is no hope. Take not its gifts, for they condemn you to a lasting hell which will endure when all the seeming joy the gifts appeared to give has passed away.
Do not be tempted. Do not fall away into the shadows, and a deeper sleep in which the waking seems to be the dream. Help me give you salvation. Let us share the strength of Christ, and look upon the dream in which illusions started, and which serves to keep their birthplace secret and apart from the illumination of the truth. Come unto me. There is no need to dream of an escape from dreaming. It will fail. For if the dream were real, escape would be impossible, and there would be no hope except illusions. Do not yield to this. It is not so. For I am not a dream that comes in mockery. Salvation needs your help as well as mine. Do not forget you do not answer for yourself alone.
My call to you is that you offer help from all the dreams the holy Son of God imagines, from the time that first of dreams was given false reality until all dreaming ends forever. Could a gift be holier than this? And could the need within a world of dreams be more acute or more compelling? Give me help in this, and not one gift the world may seek to give, or one illusion held against the truth, can bind you longer. Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me.
How joyful and how holy is our way when death has no dominion, and the dream of separation, agony and loss has been dispelled forever. Do not think that anything the gifts of fear hold out is worth an instant's hesitation, when the gate of Heaven stands before you and the Christ of God is waiting your return. Be still and hear Him, for His call to you could not be more insistent nor more dear, for it is but the call of Love Itself, Which will not cease to speak of God to you. You have forgot, but He is faithful still, because He is so like His Father He remembers Him forever in His Love. And He cannot forget creation is inseparable from Creator, so He understands that you are part of God and of the Son created like Himself.
How dear are you to Him, a part in which is every gift of God forever laid, without whom is Christ incomplete, Who is completion of His Father. Can a dream destroy a truth so holy and so pure that it encompasses all truth, and leaves nothing beyond Itself? Can you betray a love so perfect that its gifts become Itself in oneness, and this single gift is all there is to give and to receive? Oh come and let creation be again all that it always was and still will be forever and forever. Let the dream of time be given its appointed end, and let God's Son have mercy on himself.
There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based. Behind the dream, reaching to everything, embracing all, creation and Creator still remain in perfect harmony and perfect love.
This is beyond the gate at which we stand. And shall we stay to wait upon a dream? Your holiness is mine, and mine is His. Here is His gift, complete and undefiled. It is Himself He gives, and it is this that is the truth in you. How beautiful are you who stand beside me at the gate, and call with me that everyone may come and step aside from time. Put out your hand to touch eternity and disappear into its perfect rest. Here is the peace that God intended for the Child He loves. Enter with me and let its quietness cover the earth forever. It is done. Father, your Voice has called us home at last: gone is the dream. Awake, My Child, in love.
If God's Will for you is complete peace and joy, unless you experience ONLY this you MUST be refusing to acknowledge His Will. His Will does not vacillate, being changeless forever. When you are not at peace, it can only be because you do not believe you are IN HIM. Yet He is all in all. His peace IS complete, and you MUST be included in it. His laws govern you because they govern EVERYTHING. You cannot exempt yourself from His laws, although you CAN disobey them. But if you do, and ONLY if you do, you WILL feel lonely and helpless, because you ARE denying yourself everything.
I am come as a light into the world which DOES deny itself everything. It does this simply by dissociating itself FROM everything. It is therefore an illusion of isolation, MAINTAINED by fear of the same loneliness which IS its illusion. I have told you that I am with you always even to the end of the world. That is WHY I am the light of the world. If I am with you in the loneliness of the world, THE LONELINESS IS GONE. You CANNOT maintain the illusion of loneliness if you are NOT alone.
My purpose, then, IS to overcome the world. I do not attack it, but my light must dispel it because of WHAT IT IS. Light does not ATTACK darkness, but it DOES shine it away. If my light goes with you everywhere, YOU shine it away WITH ME. The light becomes OURS, and you CANNOT abide in darkness, any more than darkness can abide anywhere you go. The remembrance of me IS the remembrance of yourself and of Him Who sent me to you.
You WERE in darkness until God's Will was done completely by ANY part of the Sonship. When it was, it was perfectly accomplished by ALL. How else could it BE perfectly accomplished? My mission was simply to UNITE the Will of the Sonship WITH the Will of the Father by being aware of the Father's Will myself. This is the awareness I came to give YOU, and YOUR problem in accepting it IS the problem of this world. Dispelling it is salvation, and in this sense I AM the salvation of the world.
The world MUST despise and reject me, because the world IS the belief that love is impossible. YOUR reactions to me ARE the reactions of the world to God. If you will accept the fact that I am with you, you are DENYING the world and ACCEPTING GOD. My will IS His, and YOUR will to hear me IS the decision to hear His Voice and abide in His Will. As He sent me to you, so will I send you to others. But I will go to them WITH you, so we can teach them union and peace.
Do you not think the world needs peace as much as you do? Do you not want to give it to the world as much as you want to receive it? For unless you do, you will NOT receive it. If you will to have it of me, you MUST give it. Rehabilitation does not come from anyone ELSE. You can have GUIDANCE from without, but you must ACCEPT it from within. The guidance must become what YOU want, or else it will be meaningless to you. That is why rehabilitation is a collaborative venture. I can tell you what to DO, but this will not really help you unless you collaborate by believing that I KNOW what to do. Only then will your MIND will to follow me.
Without YOUR will, you cannot be rehabilitated. MOTIVATION TO BE HEALED is the crucial factor in rehabilitation. Without this, you are deciding AGAINST healing, and your veto of my will FOR you MAKES HEALING IMPOSSIBLE. If healing IS our joint will, unless our wills ARE joined you CANNOT be healed. This is obvious when you consider what healing is FOR.
Healing is the way in which the separation is overcome. Separation is overcome by UNION. It CANNOT be overcome by separating. The WILL to unite must be unequivocal, or the will ITSELF is separated or NOT WHOLE. Your will is the means by which you determine your own condition, because will is the MECHANISM OF DECISION. It is the power by which you separate or join, and experience pain or joy accordingly. My will cannot OVERCOME yours, because YOURS IS AS POWERFUL AS MINE. If it were not so, the Sons of God would be unequal.
All things BECOME possible through our joint will. But my will alone will not help you. Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it. I cannot will what God does not will. I CAN offer you my will to make yours invincible by this sharing, but I CANNOT oppose yours without competing with it and thereby violating God's Will for you. Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His.
If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true.
When your will is NOT mine, it is not Our Father's. This means that you have imprisoned YOURS, and have not LET it be free. Of yourselves you can do nothing, because of yourselves you ARE nothing. I am nothing without the Father, and YOU are nothing without me because by DENYING the Father you deny YOURSELF. I will ALWAYS remember you, and in MY remembrance OF you lies your remembrance of YOURSELF. In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him.
Join then with me in praise of Him AND you whom He created. This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is.
Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One.
The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One. If you exclude YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. You MUST be included in It, because It IS everything. Unless you take your place in It and fulfill your function AS part of It, It is as bereft as YOU are. No part of It can be imprisoned if Its Truth is to be known.
Can you be separated from your identification and be at peace? Dissociation is NOT a solution; it is a DELUSION. The delusional believe that truth will ASSAIL them, and so they DO NOT SEE IT because they prefer the delusion. Judging truth as something they do NOT want, they perceive deception and block knowledge. Help them by offering them YOUR unified will on their behalf, as I am offering you mine on YOURS. Alone we can do nothing, but TOGETHER our wills fuse into something whose power is far beyond the power of its separate parts.
By NOT BEING SEPARATE, the Will of God is established IN ours and AS ours. This will is invincible BECAUSE it is undivided. The UNDIVIDED will of the Sonship is the perfect creator, being wholly in the likeness of God, Whose Will it IS. YOU cannot be exempt from it, if you are to understand what it is and what YOU are. By separating your will from mine, you ARE exempting yourself from the Will of God which IS yourself.
But to heal is still to make whole. Therefore to heal is to UNITE with those who are LIKE you, because perceiving this likeness IS to recognize the Father. If YOUR perfection is in Him and ONLY in Him, how can you KNOW it WITHOUT recognizing Him? The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself. There IS no separation of God and His Creation. You will learn this as you learn that there is no separation of YOUR will and mine.
Let the love of God shine upon you by your acceptance of me. MY reality is yours and His. By joining YOUR will with mine, you are signifying your awareness that the Will of God is One. His Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness ENCOMPASSES ours. To join WITH me is to restore His power TO you BECAUSE we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies ALL truth. As WE unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His Holy Sons, because all glory lies IN them because they ARE united.
The miracles WE do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting WITH His Will FOR us. When you unite with me, you are uniting WITHOUT the ego, because I have renounced the ego in myself, and therefore CANNOT unite with yours. OUR union is therefore the way to renounce the ego in YOURSELVES. The truth in both of us is BEYOND the ego. By willing that, you HAVE gone beyond it toward truth.
Our success in transcending the ego is guaranteed by God, and I can share my perfect confidence IN His Promise because I know He gave me this confidence for both of us and ALL of us. I bring His Peace back to all His Children, because I received it of Him for us all. Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's. Would ye know the Will of God for YOU? Ask it of me, who knows it for you, and you will find it. I will deny YOU nothing, as God denies ME nothing.
Ours is simply the journey back to God Who is our home. Whenever fear intrudes anywhere along the road to peace, it is ALWAYS because the ego has attempted to JOIN the journey with us AND CANNOT DO SO. Sensing defeat and angered by it, it regards itself as rejected and becomes retaliative. You are invulnerable to its retaliation BECAUSE I AM WITH YOU. On this journey, you have chosen me as your companion INSTEAD of your ego. Do not try to hold on to both, or you will try to go in different directions and will lose the way.
The ego's way is not mine, but it is also NOT YOURS. The Holy Spirit has one direction for ALL minds, and the one He taught me IS yours. Let us not lose sight of His direction through illusions, for ONLY illusions of another direction can obscure the one for which God's Voice speaks in all of us. Never accord the ego the power to interfere with the journey, because it HAS none, and the journey is the way to what is TRUE. Leave ALL deception behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back.
I DO go before you, because I AM beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you WANT to transcend the ego. My will will NEVER be wanting, and if you want to share it YOU WILL. I give it willingly and gladly, because I need YOU as much as you need ME.
In A Course in Miracles there are hundreds of references to FREEDOM scattered throughout. Freedom is also contrasted against its opposite, which is imprisonment, enslavement, being bound to the ego, to the body, to darkness, suffering and death. The whole course is geared towards you reclaiming your freedom, and giving freedom to others. Through your miracles you are setting others free, and releasing them from the chains of imprisonment you held them in before.
"I am not a body I am free."
"Essentially, ALL healing is the release from fear."
"I have deluded myself into believing it is possible to imprison the Son of God. I was bitterly mistaken in this belief, which I no longer want."
"It is NOT your will to be imprisoned, BECAUSE your will is free."
"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom."
"I give you to the Holy Spirit, as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, UNLESS I WANT TO
USE YOU TO IMPRISON MYSELF."
"But their thought is so powerful that they can even imprison the mind of God's Son IF THEY SO CHOOSE."
"For you have taught yourselves HOW TO IMPRISON THE SON OF GOD, a lesson so unthinkable that only the insane, in deepest sleep, could even DREAM of it." "When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made."
"They release him from a prison in which he has imprisoned himself. By freeing his mind from illusions, they restore his sanity, and place him at the feet of Jesus."
The idea of freedom really goes back to your creation as a free-willed being by God. God has absolute freedom, being free from all limitation. God is unlimited. He who is unlimited can only give complete freedom, because he knows not of imprisonment. God does not create by imprisoning, he creates by giving freedom. All his children are not only free, they are fully free. It is because they are completely free ... in a sense, free from God .... though still sharing freely with him, that they are established as truly cooperative co-creators in heaven.
"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless."
"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His."
Any attempt you make to imprison another, to attack, to judge, to condemn, to blame, to project, to hurt, to destroy, to make guilty, to accuse of sin, to be victimized by, to victimize, to narrow to a body, to induce suffering of any kind, is actually an attempt to take away the freedom of others, AND to deny your own freedom. You cannot be a victim or suffer in ANY way if you acknowledge your total freedom. But in order to gain your own freedom, you MUST acknowledge that everyone else is also free from YOU, and you from them. You are not bound BY your brothers, any more than they are bound by you.
Dwell for a moment on the feeling of "keeping to yourself", in the sense that you ALLOW everyone to be free FROM YOU. Acknowledge that everyone is completely free. You are free from their tyranny over you. They are free from your tyranny over them. Let go of all manipulation, expectation, wanting others to be a certain way, or resisting their choices. Withdraw all your efforts to control and coerce, to blame and accuse. Let go of everyone. Let the whole world be itself. Settle back into your own inner freedom. You are free from enemies, free from attack, free from the choices of others, free from the body, and free from the world.
The course is in fact leading entirely to your TOTAL FREEDOM. Claiming your freedom is the restoration of your birth right. You cannot however claim your total freedom if you are imprisoning others, because the attempt to do so is an attempt to reinforce the idea that freedom doesn't exist. And thus you imprison yourself. It is said that your brother can set you free, or is the key to your salvation. By GIVING him total freedom, you give it to yourself. By recognizing he IS FREE, you recognize YOU are free. Try it.
Atonement is all about claiming freedom for yourself and the whole sonship. It is an act of setting everyone free from imprisonment. It releases you and everyone from slavery, bondage, body identification, death identification, and from all forms of suffering. You cannot BE affected by forces outside of you. The world cannot make you imprisoned or take your freedom away. No-one can deny your freedom for you. Not even God can decide whether you are free or not. He established you as free forever, and only you can deny your OWN freedom by denying it to the whole sonship.
When you acknowledge that you are COMPLETELY FREE FROM EVERYTHING, you settle back into your soul, you lift your hands away from the territory and lives of others and you set everyone free. In so doing you BECOME free yourself. You can feel it inside you, an acknowledgement of your own freedom, and it makes you feel happy and safe. You are safe from all attack because you are claiming your freedom. You are even save from suffering and death and from all the forces in the world. Nothing can imprison you or act against your will, but your will itself. When you stop imprisoning, you stop imprisoning yourself.
Below is an extensive collection of quotes from ACIM on the topic of freedom.
"How wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom's name."
"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free."
"And no-one walks upon the earth but must depend on YOUR decision, that he learn death HAS no power over him because he shares YOUR freedom, as he shares your will."
"No-one but yearns for freedom, and tries to find it, but he will seek for it where he believes it IS, and CAN be found."
"But be you, rather, grateful that YOU can be the means to serve His end. This is the ONLY service which leads to freedom. To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."
"Only in dreams is there a time when he appears to be in prison, and awaits a future freedom if it be at all. Yet in reality his dreams are gone, with truth established in their place. And now is freedom his already. Should I wait in chains which have been severed for release, when God is offering me freedom now?"
"I did not understand what made me free, nor what my freedom is, nor where to look to find it. Father, I have searched in vain until I heard Your Voice directing me. Now I would guide myself no more. For I have neither made nor understood the way to find my freedom. But I trust in You. You Who endowed me with my freedom as Your holy Son will not be lost to me. Your Voice directs me. And the way to You is opening and clear to me at last. Father, my freedom is in You alone. Father, it is my will that I return."
"How glad are we to find our freedom through the certain way our Father has established. And how sure is all the world's salvation, when we learn our freedom can be found in God alone."
"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."
"We sound the call of freedom 'round the world with this idea."
"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom."
"In conflict-free and unequivocal response to mind with but the thought of freedom as its goal, the body serves, and serves its purpose well. Without the power to enslave, it is a worthy servant of the freedom which the mind within the Holy Spirit seeks."
"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body."
"For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."
"Yet with forgiveness does the light shine through the dream of darkness, offering it hope, and giving it the means to realize the freedom that is its inheritance."
"For as we offer freedom it is given us. And we would not remain as prisoners, while You hold out our freedom unto us."
"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond EVERYTHING that would hold you back."
"That is the same as saying that He teaches you the difference between imprisonment and freedom"
"That is because you have taught YOURSELF that imprisonment IS freedom"
"The Holy Spirit's teaching takes only one direction, and has only one goal. His direction is freedom, and His goal is God."
"Will to BE without you. When you have learned that your will IS God's, you could no more will to be without Him than He could will to be without YOU. This IS freedom and this IS joy."
"Father, I thank You for today, and for the freedom I am certain it will bring. This day is holy, for today Your Son will be redeemed. His suffering is done."
"Thanks for today, my Father. I was born into this world but to achieve this day, and what it holds in joy and freedom for Your holy Son, and for the world he made, which is released along with him today."
"Remind yourself that you are making a declaration of independence in the name of your own freedom. And in your freedom lies the freedom of the world."
"Let us not worship idols, nor believe in any laws idolatry would make to hide the freedom of the Son of God. He is not bound except by his beliefs. Yet what he is is far beyond his faith in slavery or freedom."
"But those who are FOR freedom, even if they are misguided in HOW they defend it, are siding with the one thing in this world which IS true."
"And is it THIS that you would see within your Savior FROM insanity? He is as free from this as you are, and in the freedom that you see in HIM, you see your own."
"Those who choose freedom will experience only ITS results. Their power is of God."
"Nothing but this can touch them, for they see ONLY this, sharing their power according to the Will of God. And thus their freedom is established AND MAINTAINED. It is upheld through ALL temptations to imprison and to BE imprisoned. It is THEM, who learned of freedom, that you should ask what freedom IS."
"And where he rests a while, to forget imprisonment, and to remember freedom."
"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's." "I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."
"Forgiveness, truly given, is the only way in which your hope of freedom lies."
"Yet you must learn alternatives for choice, or you will not be able to attain your freedom."
"The level of your prayer depends on this, for here it waits its freedom to ascend above the world of chaos into peace."
"For thus is freedom given us from all we did not know and failed to understand."
"If you want to be LIKE me, I will help you, knowing that we ARE alike. If you want to be DIFFERENT, I will wait until you change your mind. I can TEACH you, but only you can choose to LISTEN to my teaching. How else can it be, if God's Kingdom IS freedom? Freedom cannot be learned by tyranny of ANY kind, and the perfect equality of ALL God's Sons cannot be recognized through the dominion of one will over another. God's Sons are equal in will, all being the Will of their Father. This is the ONLY lesson I can teach, knowing that it is true."
"In our remembrance of EACH OTHER lies our remembrance of God. And in this remembrance lies your freedom, because your freedom is in Him."
"This is our gift of gratitude to Him, which He will share with ALL His Creations, to whom He gives equally whatever is acceptable to Him. BECAUSE it is acceptable to Him, it is the gift of freedom, which IS His Will for all His Sons. By OFFERING freedom you will be free, because freedom is the only gift which you can offer to God's Sons, being an acknowledgment of what they are and what HE is."
"Freedom is creation because it is love. What you seek to imprison you do NOT love. Therefore, when you seek to imprison ANYONE, including YOURSELF, you do not love him and you cannot identify with him. When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father."
"Only the function God has given me
can offer freedom. Only this I seek,
and only this will I accept as mine."
"In this world the only remaining freedom is the freedom of choice; this choice is always between two choices or two voices. Will is not involved in perception at any level, and has nothing to do with choice."
"It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."
"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey. I will understand that peace, not war, abides in it. And I will perceive that peace also abides in the hearts of all who share this place with me."
"Can I lay limits on the Son of God, whose Father willed that he be limitless, and like Himself in freedom and in love?"
"So will YOU learn the freedom that I taught, by teaching freedom to each other, and so releasing me. I am within your holy relationship, yet you would imprison me behind the obstacles you RAISE to freedom, and bar my way to YOU."
"So would I liberate all things I see, and give to them the freedom that I seek. For thus do I obey the law of love, and give what I would find and make my own."
"Today's idea is one step we take in leading us from bondage to the state of perfect freedom."
"And you are free, and glad of freedom. You have sought to be both weak and bound, because you feared your strength and freedom. Yet salvation lies in them."
"All this lies in the Holy Spirit's plan to free you from the past, and open up the way to freedom FOR you."
"Accept this key to freedom, from the hands of Christ, Who gives it to you, that you may join Him in the holy task of bringing light to darkness. For, like your brothers, YOU do not realize the light has come, and freed you from the sleep of darkness."
"Behold your brothers in their freedom, and learn of them how to be FREE of darkness. The light in you will waken them, and they will not leave YOU asleep."
"His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER."
"You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it."
"Think what a happy world you walk, with truth beside you! Do not give up this world of freedom, for a little sigh of seeming sin, nor for a tiny stirring of guilt's attraction."
"How beautiful it is to walk, clean and redeemed and happy, through a world in bitter need of the redemption that your innocence bestows upon it! What can you value MORE than this? For here is YOUR salvation and YOUR freedom. And it MUST be complete, if YOU would recognize it."
"But You have offered freedom, and I choose to claim Your gift today."
"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me."
"The mind that is made willing to accept God's gifts has been restored to Spirit, and extends its freedom and its joy, as is the Will of God united with its own."
"Then are you free, for freedom is your gift, and you can now receive the gift you gave."
"Condemn and you are made a prisoner. Forgive and you are freed. Such is the law that rules perception. It is not a law that knowledge understands, for freedom is a part of knowledge."
"Today we practice letting freedom come to make its home with you."
"Thus do we lift the chains which bar the door to freedom from the world, and go beyond all little values and diminished goals."
"Peace and be still a little while, and see how far you rise above the world when you release your mind from chains, and let it seek the level where it finds itself at home. It will be grateful to be free a while. It knows where it belongs. But free its wings, and it will fly in sureness and in joy to join its holy purpose. Let it rest in its Creator, there to be restored to sanity, to freedom and to love.
"He would only have you learn your OWN will and follow it, not in the spirit of sacrifice and submission, but in the gladness of freedom."
"The freedom to leave behind everything that hurts you and humbles you and frightens you cannot be thrust upon you, but it CAN be offered you through the grace of God."
"It contains the foundation for the peace, relaxation and freedom from worry that we are trying to achieve."
"The happy dream about him takes the form of the appearance of his perfect health; his perfect freedom from all forms of lack; and safety from disaster of all kinds."
"LOVE IS FREEDOM. To look for it by placing yourself in BONDAGE, is to SEPARATE yourself from it. For the love of God, no longer seek for union in separation, nor for freedom in bondage! As you release, so will you BE released."
"The holy instant is His most helpful tool in protecting you from the attraction of guilt, the REAL lure in the special relationship. You do NOT recognize that this IS its REAL appeal, for the ego has taught you that FREEDOM lies in it."
"It is impossible to see two worlds.
Let me accept the strength God offers me
And see no value in this world, that I
May find my freedom and deliverance."
"It is impossible to see two worlds.
I seek my freedom and deliverance,
And this is not a part of what I want."
"And think how holy HE must be, when in him sleeps your OWN salvation, with HIS freedom joined."
"What hatred claimed is given up to love, and freedom lights up every living thing and lifts it into Heaven, where the lights grow ever brighter as each one comes home."
"It is no sacrifice that he be saved, for BY his freedom will you gain your own."
"He HAS no need but this; that you allow him freedom to complete the task God gave to him."
"But if he could but realize the war is between forces that are real and UNREAL powers, he could look upon himself, and SEE his freedom."
"The war is gone. For you have heard the hymn of freedom, rising unto Heaven. Gladness and joy belong to God for your release, because YOU made it not. But, as you made not freedom, so you made not a war that could ENDANGER freedom. Nothing destructive ever was, or will be. The war, the guilt, the past, are gone as one, into the unreality from whence they came."
"In the holy instant, in which you see yourself as bright with freedom, you WILL remember God. For remembering Him IS to remember freedom."
"Practice GIVING this blessed instant of freedom to all who are ENSLAVED by time, and thus make time their friend FOR them."
"Freedom is given you where you beheld but chains and iron doors. For you must change your mind about the purpose of the world, if you would find escape."
"Peace is the answer to conflicting goals, to senseless journeys, frantic vain pursuits and meaningless endeavors. Now the way is easy, sloping gently toward the bridge where freedom lies within the peace of God." "Be merciful today. The Son of God deserves your mercy. It is he who asks that you accept the way to freedom now. Deny him not. His Father's Love for him belongs to you."
"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."
"It is our statement of freedom from all danger and all tyranny. It is our acknowledgment that God is our Father, and that His Son is saved."
"The song of freedom, which sings the praises of ANOTHER world, brings to it hope of peace."
"Real freedom depends on welcoming REALITY, and of your guests only He IS real."
"But the experience of freedom and of peace that comes as you give up your tight control of what you see speaks for itself."
"The song of our rejoicing is the call to all the world that freedom is returned, that time is almost over, and God's Son has but an instant more to wait until his Father is remembered, dreams are done, eternity has shined away the world, and only Heaven now exists at all."
"For you have cause for freedom NOW. What profits freedom in a prisoner's form?"
"You have denied HIS freedom, and by so doing, you have denied the witness unto YOURS. You could as easily have FREED him from the past, and lifted from his mind the cloud of guilt that binds him TO it. And in HIS freedom would have been your OWN."
"Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation."
"There is ANOTHER vision and ANOTHER voice, in which your freedom lies, awaiting but your choice. And, if you place your faith in them, you will perceive ANOTHER Self in YOU."
"The time of Christ is the time appointed for the gift of freedom, offered to everyone."
"You will have to choose between TOTAL freedom and TOTAL bondage, for there are no alternatives but these."
"In the name of MY freedom, I WILL your release,
Because I recognize that we will be released TOGETHER.
So will the year begin in joy and freedom."
"For we would meet with our Reality in freedom and in peace."
"Let him be freed from all the thoughts you had of sin in him. And now you are prepared for freedom."
"A madman thinks the world he sees is real and does not doubt it. Nor can he be swayed by questioning his thoughts' effects. It is but when their source is raised to question that the hope of freedom comes to him at last." "Throughout the day, increase the freedom sent through your ideas to all the world"
"Where COULD his freedom lie but in himself, if he be free ALREADY? And who could bind him but HIMSELF, if he DENY his freedom?"
"Prisoners bound with heavy chains for years, starved and emaciated, weak and exhausted, and with eyes so long cast down in darkness they remember not the light, do not leap up in joy the instant they are made free. It takes a while for them to understand what freedom IS."
"Strengthen your hold, and raise your eyes unto your strong companion, in whom the meaning of your freedom lies."
"Freedom to choose is the same POWER as freedom to create, but its APPLICATION is different."
"Today escape from madness. You are set on freedom's road, and now today's idea brings wings to speed you on, and hope to go still faster to the waiting goal of peace."
"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true. This is a process of division only in the constructive sense, and reflects the true meaning of the Apocalypse."
"Give joyously to one another the freedom and the strength to lead you there. And come before each other's holy altar, where the strength and freedom wait, to offer and receive the bright awareness that leads you home."
"His is the Voice of God, and also yours. And thus He speaks of freedom and of truth."
"There is no death. The Son of God is free. And in His freedom is the end of fear."
"Whom you forgive is GIVEN power to forgive you your illusions. By your gift of freedom is it given unto YOU."
"Behold the gift of freedom that I gave the Holy Spirit, for BOTH of you. And be you free together, as you offer TO the Holy Spirit this SAME gift, and, giving it, receive it OF Him, in RETURN for what you gave."
"Offer each other freedom and complete release from sin, here in the garden of seeming agony and death. So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."
"Fear of escape makes it difficult to welcome freedom, and to make a jailer of an enemy seems to be safety."
"It is the Word of freedom and of peace, of unity of will and purpose, with no separation nor division in the single Mind of Father and of Son."
"There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom."
"Do not ALLOW him to belittle himself in YOUR mind, but give him freedom from his belief in littleness, and escape from YOURS."
"Freedom from illusions lies only in not BELIEVING them."
"Nor will you leave the prison house or claim your strength until guilt and salvation are not seen as one, and freedom and salvation are perceived as joined, with strength beside them, to be sought and claimed and found and fully recognized."
"And what they see upholds their freedom FROM imprisonment and death." "Those who would let illusions be lifted from their minds are this world's Saviors, walking the world with their Redeemer, and carrying His message of hope and freedom and RELEASE from suffering to everyone who NEEDS a miracle to save him."
"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom." "We bless the world as we behold it in the light in which our Savior looks on us, and offer it the freedom given us through His forgiving vision, now our own."
"Begin each day with time devoted to the preparation of your mind to learn what each idea you will review that day can offer you in freedom and in peace."
"Accept today's idea, and you have released the world from all imprisonment by loosening the heavy chains that locked the door to freedom on it."
"We offer thanks to God our Father that in us all things will find their freedom."
"What you have asked for cannot be denied. Your Savior has been waiting long for this. He would be free, and make his freedom yours."
"Above all else you want the freedom to remember who you really are."
"It is your special function to ensure the door be opened, that he may come forth to shine on you, and give you back the gift of freedom by receiving it of you"
"The special ones are all asleep, surrounded by a world of loveliness they do not see. Freedom and peace and joy stand there, beside the bier on which they sleep, and call them to come forth and waken from their dream of death."
"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom. "
"The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt."
"Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless."
"You who will yet work miracles, be sure you practice well the idea for today. Try to perceive the strength in what you say, for these are words in which your freedom lies. Your Father loves you."
"The possibility of freedom has been grasped and welcomed, and the means by which it can be gained can now be understood."
"I call you to fulfill your holy part in the plan that He has given to the world, for its release from littleness. God would have His host abide in perfect freedom."
"He cannot choose to change His Son, nor make your mind accept the perfect freedom He has given you." "Healing is freedom, for it demonstrates that dreams will not prevail against the truth."
"Your special relationships will remain, NOT as a source of pain and guilt, but as a source of joy and freedom. It will NOT be for you alone, for therein lay its misery."
"The ego is immobilized in the presence of God's grandeur, because HIS grandeur establishes YOUR freedom. Even the faintest hint of your reality literally drives the ego from your mind, because of the complete lack of investment in it."
"For faith can keep the Son of God in chains, as long as he believes he IS in chains. And, when he is RELEASED from them, it will be simply because he no longer BELIEVES in them, WITHDRAWING faith that they can hold him, and placing it in his freedom INSTEAD."
"Here it is given him to choose to spend this instant paying tribute to the body, or LET himself be given freedom from it."
"He may not yet have learned HOW to exchange his guilt for innocence, nor realize that ONLY in this exchange can freedom from pain be his."
"My role is only to unchain your will and make it free. Your egos cannot accept this freedom, and will oppose your free decision at every possible moment, and in every possible way."
"Free will MUST lead to freedom. Judgment always imprisons, because it separates segments of reality according to highly unstable scales of desire."
"Miracles need freedom from fear. Part of their Atonement value involves just that. Note that the word "atone" really means "undo."
"In this phase of learning, working miracles is more valuable because freedom from fear cannot be thrust upon you."
"Look on your brother, and behold in him the whole reversal of the laws that SEEM to rule this world. See in his freedom YOURS, for such it IS."
"To have faith is to heal. It is the sign that you HAVE accepted the Atonement for yourself, and would therefore share it. By faith, you OFFER the gift of freedom from the past, which you have RECEIVED." "Be not afraid to look upon the special hate relationship, for freedom lies here."
"For the body IS little and limited, and only those whom you would see WITHOUT the limits that the ego would impose on them, can offer YOU the gift of freedom."
"Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds."
"For you have chosen but the goal of God, from which your true intent was NEVER absent. Throughout the Sonship is the song of freedom heard, in joyous echo of your choice."
"The power of decision is your one remaining freedom as a prisoner of this world. YOU CAN DECIDE TO SEE IT RIGHT. What you MADE of it is NOT its reality, for its reality is only what you GAVE it."
"And you will carry its message of love and safety and freedom to everyone who draws nigh unto your temple, where healing waits for him."
"The belief in EGO autonomy is costing you the knowledge of your dependence on God, IN WHICH YOUR FREEDOM LIES."
"You could accept peace NOW, for everyone you meet, and offer them perfect freedom from ALL illusions, BECAUSE YOU HEARD. But have no other gods before Him, or you will NOT hear."
"Nothing of God will enslave His Son, whom He created free and whose freedom is protected by HIS Being."
"HIS slip (rivet) was an expression of a Soul gaining enough strength to request freedom from prison. It will ultimately DEMAND it."
"Because of his failure to accept his own perfect freedom FROM the past, Cayce could not really perceive others as similarly free."
"Freedom from fear can be achieved by BOTH teacher and pupil ONLY if they do not compare either their needs or their positions in regard to each other in terms of higher and lower."
"In the service of the "Right Mind", the denial of ERROR frees the mind and re-establishes the freedom of the will. When the will is REALLY free, it CANNOT miscreate, because it recognizes ONLY TRUTH.