"Exclude ANY part of the Kingdom FROM yourself, and you are NOT whole." Bodies suggest that you are exclusively isolated and separate from other bodies. That you are "only you", and "not them". This is the complete opposite of what is true and real.

In reality, your mind is supposed to include everyone as a part of yourself, you are supposed to be the entire whole of the Kingdom, and even host all of God within yourself.

This means that as you look at one person, you are literally looking at the entire kingdom of heaven and all beings within that one being. Each of us contains each other, and contains the whole.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

We need therefore to expand our sense of identity away from "I am only me", separated off and alone, to "I include everyone as part of myself." That WE are US. A shared union in which we each literally are one with everyone all at once.

Everyone is me. Everyone is you. The whole of God's creation exists in you, and also in me. All of the whole is in every part of the whole, and every part is the whole. This is the holographic structure of God's mind.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Mind naturally is designed to include everything and share everything. It is designed to be everywhere always. When mind identifies with a body is profoundly narrows itself and imprisons itself to a tiny speck in spacetime. This is incredible unnatural. It makes you think that you are separated off and alone in a body, walled in and kept away from others.

But in truth your mind is supposed to expand to include all others and to regard the interests of others as your own. They are part of you. What is good for them is good for you. Your healing heals them. Your awakening awakens them. We are all in this together.

"Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

As we shift from body identity to spirit identity, we are shifting from isolation to inclusion, from loneliness to togetherness, from believing that a person does not contain other people to recognizing that everyone is in each person. The whole of God is in every part of God. "The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

You are not just you. You are you and me and everyone. What is mine is everyone's. Everything is shared including our selves.

Something just popped into my mind on our lovely walk home from the cafe.... there are different LEVELS of forgiveness.

The dream was created through this process:

Separation idea > sin > guilt > fear of punishment > death.

At each of these 'stages' there are different kinds of perceptions and choices being made for different reasons. When we're in the world faced with something that seems upsetting, it's usually an experience somewhere between the last two stages - fear and death. When we apply forgiveness, we tend to work on undoing the projections of fear, and perhaps if we dig deeper we undo some of the projections of guilt as well.

But what I found myself noticing was, I don't often get even deeper into the undoing of sin, or deeper than that - the undoing of the idea of separation.

The idea of separation entails our CHOICE to be separate from God, which was a disowning of responsibility and a desire to be different. If I am to take 100% responsibility for what I've chosen, realizing I've only done this to myself, I have to take my forgiveness ALL the way to that original 'source point' in my mind - the decision to die - to be opposite of Life.

So if I'm mainly caught up in forgiving projections and blame, that's helpful but it's maybe confined to some of the 'lower levels' or more external levels of the mind. I need to go deeper. I need to get to where I can see that I CHOSE everything about this because I wanted to be separate. That's the 'root cause' in my mind. I need to admit that I wanted to deny God and wanted to be dead. That's the pivotal point. To get there I need to make sure I am undoing the layers of fear and guilt but also the layer of a belief in sin and come to realize that this is ALL something I chose to do to myself.

Undoing fear: Seems fairly simple, recognizing we're choosing to be afraid and are projecting causes for it outside of ourselves. I can take that back. But I might still believe someone is guilty, maybe myself.

Undoing guilt: I need to now see that I'm not guilty, or at least that guilt is stemming from a sense of sin. I'm afraid because I feel guilty. Well, I need to get past feeling guilty. And as I get past it I'm going to confront a deeper level - a sense of having sinned. The reason WHY I'm guilty. And that deeper level is going to seem even MORE upsetting to admit to. Layers of fear and guilt are weaker than the layer of sin, which is also weaker than the layer of separation. These surface layers were made to cover up the deeper layers and make them more palatable.

Undoing sin: Now I'm aware that I believe I really did something bad, that it cannot be healed, that it cannot be undone or reversed. Something I'm ashamed of and guilty for. Something that supposedly 'happened'. I need to undo that and get past this perception that it's permanent, unhealable, irreversible and has had a real serious effect. This is digging into the depths of 'what I've done' and the root of my guilt. And this should lead me to ask, why did I sin in the first place? It seems like I as I progress here I should be finding out that I am more innocent, but so far it seems I'm more to blame. But I'm moving past it. It's difficult to admit to guilt, but even harder to admit to sin. The ego says, see, you shouldn't have looked at the guilt because now you've uncovered a deeper darker layer of horror. But we can move past this - we have to. Because underneath the idea that 'we really did this' (sin) is an even darker idea - that we WANTED to be separate.

Undoing separation: Sin can only arise out of some kind of separation idea, which actually is a CHOICE and DECISION to be separate. I must've wanted to sin. I must've wanted to do this, to be sinful. So underneath the sin is a choice. It's the awareness that I DID THIS TO MYSELF ON PURPOSE, for a reason. And what is that reason? Why would I separate? I have to own up to this. I wanted to be separate because I wanted to deny that God exists so that I could have an ego. I wanted to be different. I wanted to be not loved. I wanted to die. If I can't get all the way to seeing that I made this choice, then I am not going to truly be ready to COMPLETELY RELINQUISH it. I need to admit to all of the sorrow that came from this choice, and that the choice was mine. Nobody else was to blame. No-one did this to me. I wanted it. And now I'm realizing it hasn't worked - because sin hasn't really worked - and I'm not guilty, and don't need to be afraid or get punished. I'd rather be happy. I might as well give up, surrender this choice, and CHOOSE AGAIN.

And it's at that point that you actually fully let go of the decision for separation, which dissolves the ego and unifies you with God.

So as I forgive now I plan to remind myself of this - exactly how deep am I willing to go in forgiving? Am I just giving up surface projections or am I willing to get all the way to the CORE IDEA - the death wish - the decision to be without God? And am I willing to let that go. Having let go of all the projections and blame and consequences of ALL the other levels, I should be ready to squarely admit to and own up to this decision, and subsequently choose differently. I'd rather choose Holy Spirit's truth at this point and join with His version of the truth and ACCEPT GOD instead of trying to deny God. ACCEPTING GOD is ACCEPTING THE ATONEMENT.

So it seems that as we dig deeper, we uncover darker and more vicious levels of disaster. First it was palatable fear, then some tolerable guilt, but now it's serious sin and hate, and beneath that - a death wish, a desire to be without God on purpose. That's not easy to want to look at or to admit to. And it can seem like the worst thing you could possibly admit - that I wanted this suffering - I wanted to not be with God. I wanted to get rid of God. Or even as some describe it - a murderous thought - the desire to kill God's son. Pretty heavy stuff! We need to come to admit to this so that we choose differently. If I can't own up to having made this CHOICE then I'm not going to be able to UNDO that choice and choose God/Atonement instead. And if I don't, I will continue to die. It IS a life-or-death decision, although we must remember death is an illusion.

So the choice is up to us. Do we want to accept God again and allow Him to love us, or do we want to keep choosing suffering and despair and lack and destruction? It's up to us.

I have almost as much trouble figuring out how to forgive something now as I did years ago when I started the Course.

When the ego comes up with some problem, it seems to be just as confusing and just as obscuring and distracting. I still seem to have to 'start out' the forgiveness process in a state of blindness and ego allegiance and in the midst of a learning difficulty.

Each time a new lesson comes along, you can bet it's just as 'new' to me as lessons that I learned a long time ago. As the next layer of the onion pops into my awareness, it's just as confounding and unobvious and difficult to deal with as the last one was to begin with. Its a new challenge. A new deception. And when this is happening, it seems that everything I have supposedly 'learned' about ACIM is thrown out the window and I can't even remember how to do a basic forgiveness.

This can make it seem as though I have made no progress whatsoever, because each time a new lesson pops up its back to square one. I can accumulate an intellectual understanding of the Course and evolve my grasp of the metaphysics over time, but when it really comes down to 'how well can I apply it', not a lot has progressed. I know I have gotten better 'skilled' at it if you will, but each challenge is still challenging.

I guess this is because there is simply a lot of 'work' to do, a lot of correction needed and a lot of stuff to sort out. The sorting out can take a long time, and just because you already sorted out 15 boxes of junk and 3 boxes of 'keepers' doesn't mean the next box of junk is any easier to decipher. Here I am, still shoveling shit.

Its not glamorous. It's not what the ego wants or expects, preferring to 'make a constant upward climb' in really noticeable ways. It's not something the ego can master like, some course you can take where you master a module and move on. You're having to constantly reapply the same learning and find ways, in seemingly very real new situations, how to transfer your learning to this new scenario. It's always difficult. And the ego is always resisting doing it just as much if not more than before. It's an ongoing struggle.

Someday I presume the pile of shit will reach the bottom and there won't be any more shit to shovel. Till then, you gotta keep on digging your way out and finding that extra ounce of willingness and extre desire to open up to Holy Spirit and develop more trust. It does get better over time, but it never fails to amaze me how each new lesson is just as much as hassle as the last. There's a lot of layers to the ego onion.

You start off believing that you are not the one responsible for this, that you're not the one doing it, and you're not doing it to yourself.

You need to transition to realizing that you in fact DO have power to choose this, you HAVE chosen it, and you ARE doing it to yourself.

What you thought was being done to you outside of your will, is in fact being done BY you with your will.

It's a taking back of the ownership of being the CAUSE of everything.

While you believe that you are not the cause of something, you WILL perceive that it is being done to you against your will.

But realize this. The only reason it LOOKS LIKE it is being done against your will, is because you have not OWNED UP to being the one who is doing it.

So it's like, you have these two ways of perceiving:

1) They're doing it to me, I'm not the one doing this.

2) I'm doing this to me, they're not the ones doing this.

And the ONLY way for you to gain freedom from fear and suffering, is to simply CHOOSE that #2 is the truth. That YOU are the one doing this to yourself, therefore you are powerful, and therefore you can STOP IT.

Nothing about #1 will allude to a way out or a way to get others to stop terrorizing you. It will seem true that its their fault, their cause and their responsibility.

While you're in that perception, nothing will look like it suggests otherwise.

You have to take a leap. Regardless of how everything seems, regardless of appearances, and even if there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to indicate that you are causing this or want this at all... even in spite of that, you MUST be willing to take a leap of faith into the POSSIBILITY that you may in fact be the cause of this.

It's like going from being underwater to being above water by just teleporting yourself there.

Only with a little willingness to question what SEEMS completely real and completely convincing, IN SPITE OF IT, can you have a hope of becoming free of it. You must be willing to QUESTION APPEARANCES. You must be willing to ask yourself, "is this real" or. .."is this true". ... or "do I REALLY have nothing to do with this?"

Only by questioning what, at the time, seems completely real and truth-filled, IN SPITE of it appearing real and truth-filled, do you have any hope of freeing yourself from the victim consciousness.

That willingness is an opening of awareness, a doorway into a higher realm of consciousness. It's the beginning of forgiveness. It's an act of faith in a POTENTIAL TRUTH beyond what you are currently experiencing. It's the beginning of a miracle.

I should be focusing on how we are all the same, deep down, all one, all perfect. But at the moment I'm finding it quite useful to look at our differences in a more accepting way.

Mainly because we actually have a lot of faulty beliefs surrounding differences - different bodies and personalities - which need to be "cleaned up".

In particular, in our denial of God we have attempted to endow the physical world with all kinds of properties of God. Such as that physical things are perfect, or equal, or eternal, or permanent, or reality, or the truth, or one etc.

For example, in this world, we've given everything all the meaning it has, because it's really a meaningless world. So we have looked at objects and have decided that some objects are sort of similar in some ways - vague ways, and have categorised them.

We've given the categories labels, such as based on materials, or genders, or hair colors, or whatever. All kinds of boxes which are made up. But in truth, on the physical level, NOTHING is exactly alike, nothing is purely equal, nothing is entirely identical.

Even atoms of the same material like gold or silver are not the same. Their subatomic particles are all over the place, their quantum states are fluctuating in different positions, the energy fields and forces are bouncing all over the place. When you get down to it, not a single speck of this world is TRULY identical to any other. Because it is a world of separation, differences and fundamental inequality.

So then that tells us that all these categories and labels we've made up are artificial, and often they serve to hurt people. We keep trying to squeeze everyone into a cookie-cutter box. So now we have all kinds of things like peer pressures and social pressures to fit into boxes. You have to label yourself to 'fit in'.

You have to be a this or a that, you're not allowed or supposed to do this or that, plus there is a huge expectation that we're "all humans" and therefore there is a "standard normal human" and we're all supposed to be like that. And if you're not, there's judgement and hate and insecurities.

So at the very least, if we TRULY acknowledge that all physical things ARE DIFFERENT in every way, including personalities, we might then start to let ourselves off the hook trying to be things that we can't be, to fit into boxes that we don't quite fit into at the physical or personality level.

For example there's a huge myth that everyone is the same. Sameness is a property of God, not a property of matter. Nothing physical is the same. Personalities are not the same. Men are not the same as women. Races and genders and sexualities are not the same. Nothing is the same here.

That means that although humans might be sort of similar in some major ways, sometimes, fundamentally the human being is TOTALLY UNIQUE in every instance. We are ALL INCOMPATIBLE on the physical and personality level in at least some if not a lot of areas. We are ALL fundamentally at war and contradictory, and your best bet usually is to find people who are "the least incompatible" - your besties and special chosen ones.

When you look at that, it's really surprising that anyone can communicate at all, that anyone ever has any common ground, that anyone can stay at peace, and that anyone can have a relationship. When it's based on the body and the personality, where people are identified with and AS those things, we're constantly all stepping on each other's toes. And we must not deny this. We're like square pegs going into round holes all the time, and the world is a minefield of crazy-shaped holes.

If we want to find TRUE equality and true communion and true relationship with anyone, we have to find it above and beyond the level of the physical and of the personality. We have to be operating at the mind level, and beyond. This is what holy relationships are for, with the goal of transcending the superficiality and incompatibilities of the human being - the flesh and bones and its personality traits.

This is also FUNDAMENTAL TO FORGIVENESS, in which we want to find a way to unconditionally love IN SPITE OF differences, in spite of everyone having clunky incompatible bodies, in spite of everyone's personalities rubbing each other the wrong way day and night, in spite of disagreement and conflict and contradiction. To see each other as spiritually equal in Christ.

And perhaps instead of trying to force people to get along, at the physical or personality levels, it would be healthier to acknowledge WE ARE NOT THE SAME on these levels. Perhaps we should be allowing each other to be different on these levels, because we ARE. And expecting people to BE LIKE US AT THIS LEVEL, is unhealthy.

It's indeed fun and wonderful when two or more individuals come together and do share what appear to be superficial "common grounds", can relate, can communicate, can share, can experience something similar together, go through things together, share a common history etc, all of those senses of being on the same page, of being equals and equally important etc. Even though most of this is an illusion of sameness.

But at the physical and personality level this is pretty much never perfect or complete. Even the best marriages have pitfalls and areas where the couple annoys each other. This is not "just you", it is INHERENT to the SYSTEM of space and time. It's part of the laws of physics. All physical things are incompatible at least some of the time, and nothing is ever fully compatible on this level.

Sometimes we might develop an artificial idea that we are all supposed to "love each other" ON this level, as in... gloss over our differences, denying that we have preferences, avoiding the fact that sometimes we like different things, and trying to produce a sort of artificial sense of relationship. A relationship of control and expectation, of demands and dependencies, of special love and special hate, where we try to force our differences to be not different.

This very much happens in special relationships where the two try to force each other to be like themselves, requiring sacrifices and compromises and self repression. This isn't really healthy. People are SO different, sometimes in very dramatic ways.

We can't expect everyone to be on the same page, interested in the same things, having the same values, same beliefs and all this, ticking boxes in every department. We are all kind of mutants at the physical and personality level, sort of distorted disfigured beings, special and lacking, clashing and incomplete.

What would be healthy would be to sort of - give unto caesar what is ceasars - allowing our physical and personality differences to BE different, because they are. ... while giving unto God what is God's - allowing our SOULS and MINDS to join in oneness, transcendent of the physical and personality conflicts.

As the course says, even advanced teachers of God have much the same physical appearance and superficial personalities they had before they even started the course. They may operate their bodies with greater love and gentleness, they might smile and be more relaxed, and have clearer minds, but their physicality and personality traits largely remain the same. Teachers of God still go to the toilet as needed.

We should stop this constant straightjacketing of trying to force everyone to fucking "get along" all the time at the physical and personality levels, and make it okay to NOT WANT TO. This is a form of level confusion otherwise. NO ONE is equal or alike at this level. But we should also focus on FINDING ways to recognize our sameness, our unity, our oneness, AT the level where it is actually possible - in the mind and soul.

This requires FORGIVENESS, precisely because the physical/personality level is somewhat "locked into a war", so has to be overlooked, transcended, given a wide berth, and not used against each other. Physical and personality traits have to be not "held against" people. Forgiveness tries to look PAST the physical and personality levels to find common psychological and spiritual ground, instead of artificially forced forms of fake relationship.

Through forgiveness - rising above the LIMITS of the physical and the personality/human levels, we can move beyond the battlefield, beyond the warzone, beyond the level at which there IS conflict and where conflict CANNOT be resolved except through pretence and sacrifice and discomfort.

People do not really want to be forced to "go along with" things they do not feel compatible with. To do things that clash with their body types, their nervous systems, their brain conditions. People don't want to be forced to experience everything the same, go everywhere, do everything others want to do.

We are NOT compatible beings at this level. We Are compatible beings mentally and spiritually, beyond the fake ego persona and the body and everything that comes with it. One in mind and soul, different in personality and flesh.

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

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means." UrT3C20

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

Oneness does NOT mean you do not have a self or free will.

ACIM quotes:

God, Who encompasses all being, created beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. (T-4.VII.5:1)

God created His Sons by extending His Thought, and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. All His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other. (T-6.II.8:1-2)

Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite. (W-pII.11.1:1)

God knows His children with perfect certainty. He created them by knowing them. (T-3.III.7:9-10)

In the creation, God extended Himself to His creations and imbued them with the same loving Will to create. (T-2.I.1:2)

The constant going out of His Love is blocked when His channels are closed, and He is lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him. (T-4.VII.6:7)

What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened." (T-6.V.1:5,7,8)

When the Atonement has been completed [and we are back in Heaven], all talents will be shared by all the Sons of God. (T-1.V.3:1)

When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy. (T-5.I.5:5,7)

The Holy Spirit promotes healing by looking beyond it to what the children of God were before healing was needed, and will be when they have been healed. (T-5.II.1:2)

God has but one Son, knowing them all as one. (T-9.VI.3:5)

It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts. However, this is obscured as long as any of its parts is missing. That is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all the parts of the Sonship have returned. (T-2.VII.6:1-5)

It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood.

One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth. Yet do these thoughts make clear the meaning of creation? Do these words bring perfect clarity with them to you? What can they seem to be but empty sounds; pretty, perhaps, correct in sentiment, yet fundamentally not understood nor understandable. The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all encompassing. We need to see a little, that we learn a lot. (W-pI.161.4:1 8)

When you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. (T-16.II.3:2-3)

In every conflict, it is not one side or another who is right or wins.

They are BOTH losers.

The only one winning is the ego.

If you knew that the ego has a secret agenda to pit you against others and make you become SEPARATE, you would realize there are no real grounds for conflict.

You would not argue with your enemy if you knew that that other person is not really the enemy in the situation. The enemy is the EGO, which wants you both to be fighting, and wants you both to separate.

It has pitted you against each other, because it believes in self attack. It doesn't care who wins. It knows that if you argue and fight, NEITHER of you will be at peace. You both lose.

It doesn't even matter if you think you have won or you are the one who is right. You still lose, because those beliefs are still a belief in attack and that attack will be enacted on you, BY you. Your belief in victory is a belief in your own defeat.

Would you be so quick to hate another person if you knew there was always a third party involved in the argument? How about if you knew that there was this secret ego lurking in the background always plotting for you to be separated from everyone else. And that it has this plan for both you AND that person that you dislike.

It wants both of you to be at war so that IT wins.

If you unite with your brother and recognize the COMMON ENEMY, which is the ego thought system - an idea of being SEPARATE from each other, you would not play the ego's game.

Each fight and argument you fall for the same ego trap and the same ILLUSION that it is possible to defeat another without hurting yourself. You both lose.

Only with what ACIM calls "shared interests" can there be a truly holy instant where you both agree to and recognize that you are on the same side, because you believe in the ONE TRUTH of God.

Only in the light of God's truth is it revealed that the ego's agenda is for you to be at war with this other person and they with you, and it doesn't care who wins just so long as you are fighting. It is an instigator of conflict.

Only when both of you recognize the ploy and the plot and the scheme which is underway to DESTROY YOU BOTH, might you recognize your shared interest of siding WITH each other and saying NO to the ego, instead of saying no to each other.

Then you unite in strength, you defy the ego, you reject conflict, you choose to surrender to peace, you accept each other with love, you support each other, you stop the war, and you completely disable the ego's only weapon - separation.

Come together in this vision of forgiveness. Be reunited with yourself.

"The recognition of the part as whole, as of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole."

This is a very key statement in ACIM. It is telling you that GOD THINKS ... in a holographic way. In that, each of his thoughts are of wholeness, and are whole. And therefore each PART of God's creation - his mind - his thought system - heaven - the sonship - your brothers - your creations - all of it is run per the holographic principle. The whole is in every part and every part is the whole. This is natural to God, and to you, in heaven. It is THE NATURE OF HEAVEN.

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded, if he would know the wholeness of his Father."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

EVERY aspect of heaven's reality MUST abide by this law, because all of it IS the thought SYSTEM or "order of reality" of God's mind. And everything IN it is God's system of thought, which functions per his WAY OF THINKING. He thinks holographically because he can only think of "sharing wholeness". This is why there are many sons who are parts of God, forming a sonship, in which EACH son is ALL the sons, and every son is the one son. Because each part of the Sonship IS the whole Sonship.

"Never forget that the Sonship is your salvation, for the Sonship is your Soul."

"WE are the joint will of the Sonship, whose wholeness is for all."

"If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES transcend the sum of its parts." (this happens only in a holographic system)

"Love is a law without an opposite. Its wholeness is the power holding everything as one, the link between the Father and the Son which holds them both forever as the same."

A holographic system arises in God's mind simply because God is WHOLE, and CAN ONLY create that which is whole. So each of his creations MUST be whole. And to be truly whole, it has to be one with God, sharing EVERYTHING with him and with all creations. This is why all the children of God are WHOLE beings and SHARE everything with each other. Wholes within wholes, which are still one whole.

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

"the holy Son whom God created whole"

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth."

"This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

"Sanity IS wholeness. And the sanity of your brothers IS yours."

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness."

"God WOULD be mocked if ANY of his creations lacked holiness. The Creation IS whole. The mark of Wholeness is Holiness, not holes. THE SONSHIP HAS NO HOLES ANYWHERE."

If you can understand this and accept it, it will make your grasp of the course material a LOT easier. But notice that the quote in the image says that we have hurt our minds so much, that it does in fact make it DIFFICULT for us to understand what reality is like.

This why a lot of people do not recognize OR understand the holographic structure of heaven. It is completely alien to life in this world. But he's also saying that if you can understand that the whole is every part, ie God/wholeness IS each of his children, and each child of God IS all the Children of God, then it should be easier to understand.

"You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness DOES transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved UNTIL all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."

In a holographic system, wholeness does not mean "there is a count of one thing". Or one son. Or just God. It means, that everything is shared by all creative beings. Every soul in the sonship IS all other souls. The whole sonship is ONE, because it shares the same whole. And the whole it shares is God.

Your relationships can turn from hate to holiness, if you will recognize that you have a common enemy.

Your relationship is not just you and the other person.

Your relationship is you, the other person, and the ego.

The two of you may seem to be in conflict, and you believe that there is no one else involved in this conflict. Just the two of you.

But there is always another third party involved in every conflict. The ego.

The ego is like this vicious little monster, sort of like how Christianity refers to the devil, which sits on the sidelines and attempts to COME BETWEEN people.

Its intentions are malicious and it tries to pit people against each other, to instigate fights and wars, and to get people to see each other as separate and different.

Since the ego is more or less invisible, people do not notice that it is part of the relationship. And since they do not realize that THEY have sided with the ego, they do not notice it standing out in contrast to who they are.

If you are in the middle of a fight, argument, conflict, war, tension, drama, toxic relationship etc, the two of you are being PLAYED by the ego.

It is helpful for you to both recognize and learn that you're not really upset with each other. You're upset because THE EGO is trying to make you against each other. IT is influencing you both. IT wants for you to attack each other and find each other guilty. IT wants you to be at war.

So now, in this 3-way relationship, recognize that there is an opportunity. The opportunity is for you and your enemy to decide to TEAM UP, against the ego.

It is only because of your mutual lack of RECOGNITION that the ego is involved at all, that you allow its influence to continue destroying your relationship.

Once you recognize the ego is a third party, now there comes a scenario where you have a new option. You can team up with your supposed enemy - the other person - by recognizing that you BOTH have a common, mutual enemy.

The ego is your common enemy, because it is attacking BOTH of you at the same time, it is pitting you both against each other, it is trying to SEPARATE you more, and is emphasizing all the ways that you are different from each other.

Its strategy is to split you apart and produce hatred. Really, to instigate murder. It wants you both dead, and does not CARE one iota who does it to whom. It would cheer you BOTH on as you attack each other, and would hope that you will destroy EACH OTHER.

This is its secret plan all along. As soon as you have started to fall for the ILLUSION that the ego is not involved, and that you really are an enemy of your brother or sister, you have actually bought into the EGO's TRICK that it wants you BOTH to fall for. You've bought into ITS plan for your mutual destruction.

It takes three to tango! It takes two to buy into the ego's conflict of separation. However, it takes a REUNION and therefore ONE in order to instigate a Holy Relationship.

When one person looks at the situation and realizes that the ego is a third party, and sees its ambitions to create war between you and your brother, you thus recognize the SHARED INTEREST that you and you brother have.

Your shared interest becomes that you are on each other's side and are in support of each other, because you recognize that each other is not really the enemy. The ego is. It is the ego mind that is really the culprit behind the conflict, and it is the ego mind that is trying to increase the flames of war between you.

When one person remembers this and recognizes that the ego is at play, and that you have fallen for its plot of separation, that *IT* is coming between you and your brother/sister, your UNWILLINGNESS to continue playing into ITS hands automatically disarms the conflict. Your perception of your brother changes from them being your "real enemy" to the ego being the "real enemy", and therefore your brother is now on your side.

If you will acknowledge that instead of you being right or the other person being right, you are BOTH losing out because the EGO is winning, and that IT wants you both to be separated, then you can JOIN with your brother and refuse to participate in the ego's game.

When you decide not to play the game, even if the other person is still playing the game, you cannot experience separation. You are having a holy relationship. Even if the other person is not aware of your perception of them as holy. And because it is holy, no real conflict can produce any real effects in the relationship. At least not to you. The other person may still be attacking themselves but your relationship to them is now forgiven.

If you can both join in holiness and return to ONENESS together, that is even more powerful. It is a decision to unite in saying no to the ego and yes to wholeness, yes to God and yes to peace. It is the end of war. It is first the end of the war for individual parts of the sonship and then it is the end of war for the entire sonship.

You don't have a beef with your enemies. The ego is using both of you. IT is the thing that you both need to be questioning together. Stop your fight. It's not about your brother at all.

This is a conclusion I've come to over time, and I'll explain why it makes sense to me.

God is whole. Everything God does is whole. When God creates he fully creates. What he creates is fully created and is whole.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

God is a creator and has many thoughts. Each of those many thoughts are also whole thoughts, and thoughts of wholeness. Each of those thoughts contains the other thoughts, because there is one wholeness shared by all of them - that's oneness.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

God has created many children, each of which therefore must be whole, and they all share the whole of God.

Now, in terms of relationship, God can ONLY relate fully. With each of those thoughts or created beings, God must have a full-on complete relationship. It is a whole relationship, in which God shares the whole of Himself. And all of Himself is received by his creations.

If you take a definition of "personal", to mean that you get the fullest most undivided attention, where someone totally commits to you and gives to you without any lack or limitation, ie you're getting "fully personal service", then God IS giving fully personal service. He is giving you ALL of the attention and service possible for anyone to ever receive. The best personal service you ever had.

God gives his full total whole attention and being to one child. That child receives the whole of God. God does not lack or limit or hold back anything he is sharing with that one child. The relationship they have is totally whole. Therefore as far as that child is concerned, God is being fully attentive, fully relating, fully present, fully focused and fully giving to them.

That is the MAXIMUM amount of personal service possible in any scenario. It's not even possible for God to be MORE personal, because he is meeting ALL of the needs of that child. He is giving them absolutely everything. There is no definition of getting fully personal attention from God than this.

The truth also is that EACH of the children of God are being given the FULL attention of God. God is wholly fully giving all of himself to child A, and to child B, and to child C. This is where God's abilities transcend ordinary states of spatial relationship, limitations, compartments and categories.

God is omnipresent. This not only means that God is everywhere but it also means that all of God is in every part of God fully, simultaneously, and without restriction or limit. God is actually capable of giving FULL attention to any given part, while also giving FULL attention to any other part.

All the parts of God, all of his creations, therefore individually experience a full, whole, completely, total, unlimited relationship with their creator. EACH of them experiences God as fully and wholly relating with them personally. Not that God is distracted with other children, or only has a short amount of time to spare.

God is entirely 100% personally attending to each child individually. Every child of God has God's full attention at all times, in a maximally personal relationship. And every child of God is receiving all of God at all times, without there being conflict, because they all share God's omnipresent transcendental nature.

This means that God is fully personal in relationship with each child. But God is also fully giving the same fullness to each child. This means there is no difference between what God is giving to one child, or what God is giving to another child. God is giving the same total wholeness to child A, and child B, and child C. They are all treated equally and fully.

Therefore, this means that God is truly being "impersonal", in the sense that none of his children are receiving SPECIAL FAVOR, and every one of them is receiving the fullness of his attention. Each child has a fully total personal whole relationship with ALL of God. While from God's perspective, he is having this full total relationship with EACH child simultaneously, and fully, without limit.

God therefore is impersonal because every single creation is related to in the SAME way, with the same wholeness and fullness and love. Nothing is given to one which is not given to another. EACH child of God has the WHOLE of God. Every child of God has EVERYTHING. All the children of God share ALL of God, and the same one whole is shared by them all. That is their oneness in holographic relationship with the whole, as whole parts.

This means, in conclusion, that God is fully entirely personal in relationship with EACH of his creations, and yet simultaneously is fully entirely personal in relationship to EVERY creation, and is therefore ALSO fully impersonal. Impersonal does not mean remote and distant and cold. It means not differentiating between any two persons, and not giving something different to one and not another.

Being impersonal is inclusive, but many people think that being personal is exclusive. And this is why many people think God cannot be personal. It is also why many people think God is COMPLETELY impersonal, without ANY "personal" (ie not fully attentive) relationship at all, which portrays God as some kind of remote uncaring generalized abstract blob that has no real personal relationship with ANYONE. That is not what God is like.

Similarly, because in the world of form and ego, people recognize that ego is selfish and exclusive, many of us also think that being personal is an ego thing. That it means exclusive, or something applies to one person and not another, or someone gets special treatment, or that someone is lacking something that another has. That is an earthly definition of "personal", based on separation, and rooted in the ego thought system. It is NOT the proper definition of personal as it applies to God.

God gives all of himself to every child, in a fully personal relationship, while also giving all of himself to the whole of creation at once, transcending earthly limits and seeming to do the impossible - being wholly in relationship with multiple beings at the same time without the slightest indication of loss or limitation or sacrifice or compromise or being distracted or special.

This is why I firmly believe God to be BOTH impersonal and personal. Fully personal, indeed MORE personal than any kind of ego-based specialness idea of personal, MORE personal than even a single person receiving something exclusively that others lack. MORE personal than the ego's definition of personal, which is a definition of lack and limitation and selfishness and hoarding. God is MORE personal than what most people think would be a maximal amount of "personal".

It is also why God is fully impersonal, in the MOST spiritual way. Impersonal not in a cold detached remote way, but in terms of absolute equality and fairness, totally treating every single person in the same way, relating with the same ONE unconditional love towards EVERYONE at the same time, and giving everything TO everyone simultaneously. This is far beyond the ego's definition of impersonal relationship, and is the guarantee that God fully personally relates to EACH AND EVERY child of God in exactly the same absolute way.

You can see these facts reflected in many statements from A Course in Miracles. For example Jesus speaks about revelations, which are communications FROM GOD, to an INDIVIDUAL soul, in which the soul experiences a HIGHLY PERSONAL relationship with God, which doesn't even entail the inclusion of others. This relationship moment reflects the original form of communication between God and ONE child, which continues to be a reflection of the PERSONAL aspect of God's relationship with EACH child.

God knows YOU personally, and fully. You have a full total whole relationship with God, personally. But at the same time, God has personal full relationships with your brothers. And his treatment of the whole Kingdom as one is his impersonal consistency and honesty with every creation. This is why I believe God to be A PERSON (or, an "impersonal fully-personal person"), why the Holy Spirit is A PERSON, why the children of God are PERSONS, and why being a person/being is completely natural. We all share everything with everyone.

"Revelation is intensely personal"

"He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it."

"Revelations induce complete but temporary suspension of doubt and fear. They represent the original form of communication between God and His Souls"

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you, but He cannot share His joy with you until you know it with your whole mind."

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

In ACIM we're often talking about "the separation", or being separate. This is a way to describe a divide between two things. But another way is to refer to two "opposites". Heaven and hell, life and death, reality and illusions, etc. The separation was an act of opposition against God, producing an opposite state of mind.

When we're in a "separated state", we're in a state of opposition. This means we have an opponent, which we are totally un-like. And it also means we are at war. And because we are un-like our opposition, we do not "like" it. And this produces great tension.

When there seems to be opposition, there is tremendous temptation. The more extremely opposite two things are, the more they contradict each other and are in conflict. They can be in a state of extreme disagreement. In this disagreement, there is a maximal likelihood or temptation that conflict will arise, given how much the two seem to be at-odds with each other.

Tension arising from arguments, disagreements, conflicts, debates, righteousness, defensiveness, denial, protection of one's truth, opposition to or disbelief in the enemy's view, is all very likely to induce a form of war. There will be fighting and bickering and hatred and weapons being thrown and a taking of separate sides.

It's very difficult to "stay out of" such a conflict, when faced with extreme opposition. And the more they oppose you the higher the temptation is. If someone is digging in their heels and does not want a single shred of what you are offering, for example, there will be a stand-off, rejection, a communication breakdown, and a high chance of attack. They may want death, while you want life, but it won't stop them from trying to destroy you.

In this world, things which seem more alike or have something in common, seem to also experience an illusion of less conflict. I found this to be true when, for example, a person who was highly obnoxious and aggressive decided to walk a road with me one day. This person would take up a very opposing position of rebellion and anger, and this would produce a high likelihood of temptation and a flare-up of aggression. He was easily triggered due to his unhealed pain.

I decided on this occasion to pretend to be like him. So I sort of acted like him and agreed with him and spoke things he might speak, even though what I was agreeing to was not what I believed. And strangely this person started to see me as a friend or ally. I was actually doing this to try to protect myself at the time, but it showed me that it's really the distance or contrast between opposites that incites violent reactions, and so long as I did not "oppose" overtly, this person didn't target me at all.

There is similar temptation in ACIM circles, on any forum or discussion. When someone believes something opposite, particularly if it is wildly or deeply opposite, this produces a great temptation. Someone who is very patient, forgiving and calm, can perhaps resist the temptation. That takes some profound mastery. Someone who can't keep their cool in the face of intense conflict and contraryism, however, will likely lose it. How do you not be tempted by extreme evil? "One ring to rule them all"?

There is the most temptation or "tension" when something is completely opposite and contradictory. This is as if to say, someone is 180 degrees from you across the table and going head-to-head. There is also tension from misunderstanding, when someone is at 90 degrees, whereby the two do not look at anything from the same angle, like they are talking entirely different languages. They conflict more on a basis of not even understanding what each other is saying.

You'll perhaps notice that all the wars in the world are generally based on two parties very strongly disagreeing. They oppose each other. One tries to suppress the other to protect their own truth. They don't see it possible that they can live together in peace or accept each other's extremism. And just the mere existence of the other seems enough justification to destroy their heinous hedonism.

"Tension" is that sensation of very strong discordant energy between two opposites, and as each party has a stand-off and doesn't want anything to do with each other, it intensifies the tension. It's as though they rip apart from each other and pull on the fabric of existence in an effort to put as much distance between them as possible. The sense of resistance and rejection of each other heightens the tension, until breaking point.

The opposite of that tension is peace and harmony. But this can only exist either when the two opposites are able to be totally at peace with other without trying to disagree with each other, or when there are no opposites. It should also be obvious that you can't really hold a position that disagrees with someone else and be at peace. Like "let's agree to disagree" is really just a standoff, not an agreement. Either you have to be inclusive or you will be exclusive. And the only way to truly agree is that both believe exactly the same thing.

This all seems to be the same basic temptation presented over and over again in many forms in this world. Groups of people disagreeing with other groups. Nemesis and enemies going at it all over again. People getting heated because they think their beliefs are under attack. The sense of offense and hurt from other people seeming to be against your ideals. Everyone trying to correct and destroy everyone else that is different to them. Conflicts based on different bodies and genders and so on. The whole world is riddled with such temptations.

"Everything the body sees is a form of conflict." - ACIM

Sometimes when there is less contrast between two things they seem to get along. ACIM refers to them as allies, where the two are still in subjective egotism, but because their egotism "matches" they become in a way blind to each other. Neither of them "stands out" in opposition so they seem to be in harmony. But it is an illusion of harmony between two equally insane individuals. And if one of them defects, the claws come out and they scream betrayal.

Atoms and molecules conflict with each other, just by being different. Difference IS disagreement. Bodies conflict with each other just by being different. The first law of chaos is that the truth is different for everyone, and everywhere, and for everything. Every single particle of matter is different to, therefore in conflict with, every other. Everywhere you look, everything the body sees, mountains and forests and oceans and cities, it is all conflicting in its form. To be unalike is to be discordant and at war.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

And so where there is conflict or difference of opposition, there is temptation, because there is extreme disagreement. Difference IS attack. And if you buy into the opposition or give it any power whatsoever, you set it up as an enemy in your mind. And then you will feel attacked by it, and will be attacking yourself, and will retaliate defensively, trying to preserve your sense of truth.

All special relationships demonstrate this. They're all founded on an illusion of peace, brought about by two conflicted individuals, who are at war with the world, finding an escape from the conflict seemingly with each other by having something in common. They hide from a mutual enemy together in the confines of an exclusive relationship prison.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

So you've got a world of differences which tempts war, and two people who are at war with the world, who "take sides" together because they see an absence of war in each other, because they both are warring in the same way. They both hate the same stuff, they both exclude the same stuff, and so they are narrow and closed off in a similar way. And this produces an illusion of love. The same happens when siding with political parties or sports teams or segments of society or religions.

But this love is very volatile and unstable and riddled with conditions and contradictions. And if any of those conditions are not met, it quickly devolves into the special hate that it's based on. If one person even decides to be more unconditionally loving, the other conditional person may see this as proof of defection, and that the other is against them and unwilling to hate with them. And then it's bye bye relationship.

I think its probably true of most people that we tend to avoid conflict and try to create an illusion of peace in life. A safe house to live in. A way to avoid sickness. An avoidance of bad people. Trying to eat the right food. Staying away from known threats and dangers. All to try to pretend that the world is not a world of conflict, to make a nice comfortable corner in the desert where you can hang out with a false sense of security. Until shit comes knocking.

True peace can only come from a transcendence of opposition. But it has to also come from "taking sides with God". That doesn't mean being against anything because in God there is no opposition. God is all encompassing and love has no opposite. It is really only the opposition to God that believes in opposites. This is why the ego attacks and hates the Holy Spirit but the Holy Spirit completely ignores it. He doesn't attack the ego at all, He just shows you that it is invalid.

To take sides with God is to be vigilant for his truth and his Kingdom. It means to believe only what God believes, if God had beliefs. To know what God knows. To be under no laws but his. To recognize that opposition is truly fiction and there is only one real world, one reality, one truth. This light then shines and shines away the darkness of rebellion and of sin and war. And in the final recognition that there is no opposite to love, conflict disappears forever.

"Separation" is an ACIM buzzword and yet often misunderstood. Most people associate separation with something unnatural, something to remove, and a sign of the ego. Separation is bad, oneness is good. Anything that even hints at a sign of separation is considered to be wrong, some kind of "duality" which is opposite to the truth. But this is actually incorrect in ACIM terms.

If you look deeply at the course you may eventually realize that heaven's reality is not the same as the world of space and time. Heaven entails the sharing of everything. Spacetime entails NOT sharing anything. As you look deeper, you discover that God in fact isn't "arranged" like objects in spacetime. His whole mind and system and creation are in fact more like a holgoram.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." The holographic principle is that there is a whole, and there are also parts. But each part isn't merely "a part of" the whole, lacking in some way. Each part in fact contains ALL of the whole. Every part is whole in and of itself, and is host to the whole. ACIM refers to this for example as "I am forever host to God." And "You had everything when you were created just as everyone did."

Each of the parts of a hologram experiences immense SHARING with the whole. And the whole includes all of God, and all other parts. This means that every part IS every other part, and is also host to God. This sharing, however, is not like sharing in spacetime. It does not mean that there are two separate things and something is transferred between them. Each part "houses" the whole, and therefore IS the same whole as the other parts. One part IS another part.

ACIM again expresses this in statements such as: "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth." This is not easy to understand in linear terms or by drawing analogies to spacetime objects, because in spacetime each object is "apart" from others, is NOT a whole, does NOT share anything, and is "separated off". This is not what it's like in a hologram. In the hologram, that which is in one part is located in all the other parts as well. It TRANSCENDS space and time, beyond spatial separations.

This also parallels very closely the idea of omnipresence, which is an attribute of God and everything he created. This doesn't just mean God is everywhere, it also means that THE WHOLE of God is in EVERY location. Not just one part of him over here, and another part of him over there. But ALL of him is simultaneously in multiple places. This again transcends the limits of space and time.

Now, in ACIM terms, the main whole is referred to as God, and the "whole parts" are referred to as souls, or God's children. There are a great many creations, which are many thoughts of God. Each thought of God IS whole, because God can only think wholly and in terms of wholeness. What he thinks of "creates another whole", which SHARES everything with the original whole and with all other wholes. Each whole is FUSED to all the others and effectively IS them.

This is the real meaning of oneness - a shared experience in which EACH wholly existing distinct "part" is united with and sharing everything with all the others. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been fully created." This is part of the miraculous nature of God, that a part of God is the whole of God, a creation of God contains all of God, and therefore every part "is one", and yet there are parts. These parts are not PARTIAL parts, or lacking what other parts have. Every part is A WHOLE.

Then we come to the idea of "the separation from God". This is where paople start to demonize the idea of separation or of "many things". When people don't recognize that heaven's natural state is one of TOTAL SHARING AND UNION, they may think of it more in terms of space-time objects. Such as the son of God is one "object". And then the only way to conceive of separation is to "split the object" so that there are now two or more objects. But this is NOT what happened in the separation, because heaven is not object-oriented or spatially separated.

In the separation, or "the fall of man", basically some of the WHOLE PARTS which were aspects of the hologram of God's thought, chose to STOP SHARING EVERYTHING. They wanted to become selfish. Their innate nature is to share everything with everyone. Everyone in heaven has everything. Everything belongs to everyone. Everyone IS everyone. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the sons of God." But "the ego" is actually the idea of trying NOT to share. And "the separation from God" was actually moreso an act of OPPOSING God's holographic family unit.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

The separation from God was a movement AWAY from sharing, towards selfishness. Selfishness goes by many names, all of which are efforts to "separate off", to withdraw, to hoard, and to move into a small isolated part which is NOT SHARED with the rest. This results in SPECIALNESS, which is the desire to have an exclusive special "something" true for you, which is not true for others.

Another way to view the separation is to say, individual whole parts of the hologram, rejected their union and shared totality with the whole, and tried to become "parts which do not share". They tried to orphan themselves. They did not want to be "part of" the collective sonship. They did not want to have the total holy relationship of sharing everything with everyone. They wanted to go of by themselves and have something special and exclusive just for them. "You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it."

It's important to note then, that in fact in the creation of God, in the hologram of the Kingdom, there were in fact MANY INDIVIDUAL BEINGS prior to "the separation." God had created the sonship which comprised many souls, who are permanently brothers, and who were joined and sharing everything happily. These were INDIVIDUALS, but at the same time each individual was ONE WITH all the other individuals. Each one, is one and many, because the truth of a holographic system is that the one is many and the many are one.

The existence of many individual beings DID NOT MEAN that there were many "separate people" standing around like disconencted objects sharing nothing. That is not what multitudes are like in heaven. In heaven, many beings are individually present, AND YET at the same time, they are so intimately joined to and ONE WITH all other beings, that they ALL ARE one thing at the same time.

The separation from God did not actually INVENT "many selves". Many selves existed before that, and is completely natural. Nor did the separation produce individuality. But it DID produce a SECOND SELF, which was the idea of being not yourself and unlike how God created you - the ego. The denial of your joined identity (in christ - every soul is christ), formed a false self image.

"God who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings (who SHARE, not who are isolated), who have everything individually and want **to share** it to increase their joy." "Nothing real can be increased except by sharing."

God had already created "many beings", not separate OBJECTS, or isolated cut-off individuals, but individuals who were ALSO joined together. They wanted to SHARE everything with each other, even their own souls. One soul IS another soul. There are many souls and each of them is an individual being, but also IS the other beings. The possibility of this is the "miraculousness" of the soul. You can see Jesus contrasting the WRONG way of thinking about the soul, here:

"Each Soul knows God completely (is the whole). This IS the miraculous power of the Soul (that it can be both a self and the whole at the same time). The fact that ***each Soul has this power*** completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

Indeed when we think in terms of spatially separated objects, we would conclude that if I have everything or am the whole, there is nothing ELSE for another soul to have. But in heaven, EACH individual being IS THE WHOLE. YOU are the whole sonship. "The Kingdom of Heaven IS you." I am the whole sonship. So are you. And WE are both there as brothers. Each PART of the sonship is the whole sonship. All the many children of God, which will always be many children of God and equal brothers, are the whole of heaven.

So in "the separation" event, some of the whole parts of the hologram rejected their SHARED nature, and wanted to ISOLATE. They didn't want to be included, they wanted to exclude. Thus they used denial and unwillingness and attack to reject the hologram. They were ALREADY individual beings, that have a total relationship of sharing with all others. But they tried to CUT OFF COMMUNICATION to end their shared relationships.

This turned them INTO "the separated ones." They BECAME separated, precicely because they existed in a NOT separated state before that. But this does NOT mean they didn't have an individual self before this. The only thing that changed was the loss of sharing (aka communication).

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING. The ego is thus AGAINST communication, except in so far as it is utilized to ESTABLISH separateness, rather than to abolish it."

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in COMMUNICATION."

Some of the beings, who existed as whole beings, who had everything, who shared and WERE everything, "cut themselves off" from sharing anything, and isolated themselves. They wanted to have something SPECIAL for themselves. They tried to end their RELATIONSHIP with God. They wanted God to treat them with special favor. They wanted to be different and have something of their own. They wanted to be SELFISH.

Selfishenss is the opposite of sharing. Separation means a desire to be exclusive and selfish and to NOT SHARE. Which is why JOINING is its correction. And joining does not mean undoing your SELF!

To "be separate" therefore really means to NOT JOIN, or to not share. Spacetime is very obviously a state of not sharing. Each object is separated off. One car does not share with another car. One thing does not exist in two places at onces. Two things are not one thing. You cannot be located in one place and another at the same time. No two objects can overlap, otherwise they'd destroy each other. Spacetime was an attack on the SHARING of the sonship, resulting in a realm in which everything is separated off and excluded.

The body arose from the idea that you wanted to be isolated from the collective. You wanted to have something exclusive to you which others did not have - your own body. You wanted to be different than everyone else and not like them - your own appearance. You wanted to have some small portion of heaven that you thought of as exclusively yours, locked up inside a fence, surrounded by a wall, to keep others out and to keep you in. And you wanted to inhabit this small area of existence as exclusively yours, so that ONLY YOU exist within it and everything else is outside. This is what the BODY is based on. It is a separation device. And within it you are lonely and isolated, unless you are willing to extend or join PAST it.

"The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built to separate parts of his Self (holographic shared self) from other parts (your brothers who ARE also you). It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love (wholeness/sharing)."

The UNDOING of separation, the atonement, healing, does NOT therefore necessarily mean ... ."let's get rid of anything that hints at separation". God had already created "separate beings" in heaven before the ego came along. They were separate in the sense that they were MANY, but they were ALSO JOINED. That which is BOTH many and one, is heaven's natural holographic condition. This is NATURAL. There is nothing wrong with it. It's perfectly legitimate that God has a family of souls. This has nothing to do with the ego.

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return."

Heaven means separate beings who are not separate. Whole parts which are parts but also the whole. There is an aspect of separation to that, because there ARE many beings. But they are not ISOLATED because they share everything. So the "attack on separateness" is NOT correct. The attempt to remove all sense of "separation" in all cases is NOT correct. We are not supposed to be removing the holographic aspects of reality. We are not supposed to be undoing the sonship. And we are NOT supposed to be getting rid of individuality!! You and your brothers all have permanent souls, created by God, which can never be destroyed.

What we ARE supposed to be doing, is realizing that we threw away what CONNECTS us. We threw away joining and sharing and RELATIONSHIP. We threw away holographic wholeness. We want to undo isolation, specialness, selfishness, possessiveness, ownership, exclusivity, localization, littleness, unwillingness to share etc. These are what being "separated off" really means. But we are not supposed to take it to the point of erasing ALL hints of "many things". God having many children is NOT a dualistic idea, because all of those many things ARE ONE as well.

Duality really means that there are many things which DO NOT SHARE. This is a false experience and is the basis for spacetime.

Nonduality is the idea that there are NOT many things. This is an attack upon heaven's creation and an attempt to claim that God is NOT holographic. It is ignorant and false and an ego conclusion.

Reality is in fact a kind of "trans-duality", a hologram, a paralogical and omnipresent system, in which many parts DO exist but they are NOT "separated off" parts like in spacetime. It is NOT duality to say that God has many sons, because while there are a count of many, they ALSO are fused together as one. They are WHOLE beings, who are each ALL the whole. And therefore each child of God is ALL children. This is why the sonship itself is united via the ONE MIND of christ, yet EACH INDIVIDUALLY is christ.

So we have to be careful when dealing with "undoing the separation" that we're not mistaken in trying to also undo the holographic aspects of creation. We can't just remove ALL trace of separation, because this undoes God's Kingdom. We can't just use a blanket statement to wipe out all notion of separateness because this kills off all the souls that God created. Separateness is therefore not really the PROBLEM. The problem is that the separate individuals are being selfish and don't want to SHARE THEMSELVES. It is a breakdown in communication and relationship that needs fixing, NOT individuality.

"Heaven includes all God's children and their creations." We can't just say "separation is a bad thing". It depends on whether or not the separate things are including or excluding each other. INCLUSIVE SEPARATION is perfectly normal. EXCLUSIVE SEPARATION is ego. The undoing of the ego is NOT the undoing of separation. It is the reversal of EXCLUDING OTHERS. This does not result in the erasing of individuality, nor of the undoing of multiple individuals. It results in a REUNION OF BROTHERHOOD in the sonship of God, in which all God's children are one big happy family who share everything with each other forever.

Through struggles with being shy and sensitive and antisocial and so on, I gradually have realized that there is something fundamentally "estranging" about people's bodies.

When I go out and I see people's physical bodies, there is a fundamental disconnect. There's my body over here and this big gap between and their body over there - it is just experienced when taken at face value as a separation - a gaping divide between individuals, making us seem remote and distant and unlike each other.

Just the mere fact that their body has "differences" or seems like a wall of solid flesh, all by itself, IS a "form" of MAKING it seem as though the person is different to me and therefore IS NOT ME, and therefore there is some kind of separation or rift between us.

People in bodies seem confined and isolated and cut off from each other. It's as if we are supposed to be joined and sharing in the same place together, but instead, there is a huge distance physically between us, yet alone the fact that they are imprisoned in a physical form which they wear like a suit of isolation, which keeps them in and keeps me out.

I always thought there was something majorly wrong with me that I could not relate or connect with people. That communication was fundamentally difficult. That I feared strangers and was put off by appearances. I thought that I just wasn't good at it or there was something I just wasn't cut out to do.

But now I see that in fact, bodies are part of the ego's DEVICE to try to ENFORCE separation, by identifying brothers as strangers, with significant illusions of differences in appearance, in order to portray us as UNRELATED and isolated from each other. It's written into the physical form ITSELF. This was the purpose of the body.

So now I can cut myself a bit of slack, that my difficulty connecting with people isn't just about me as such. The physicality of bodies is a severe limit imposed on communication by the belief in separation.

Brothers/souls are supposed to commune with each other fully and share space and overlap each other in unity. Bodies were made to isolate and to stop us from connecting with each other.

The challenge as I see it now isn't so much learning how to relate to bodies better, but how to see PAST bodies to the person WITHIN, to the soul, the christ, the real person hidden underneath the illusion of form, to connect with their MIND, and to share love with them that BYPASSES the physical in order to bring about healing and the UNDOING of bodies.

It entails learning that people are not bodies. Bodies are fundamentally AGAINST communication unless used PURELY for communication mind-to-mind (temporarily), and therefore I need to learn to interact with brothers/souls with love and really thoroughly learn to look PAST (forgive) all illusory appearances of body forms. To relate soul-to-soul and heart-to-heart and mind-to-mind, not form-to-form.

Bodies are illusions. They are not people. They are also not sick on their own. They are not the thing that needs healing as such. The body does seem sick but it's a *secondary* sickness - the "original" sickness (in mind) is hidden behind appearances. I had been targeting healing at body parts only for Jesus to remind me that the person is not a body... making me realize I was aiming the healing at entirely the wrong target, lol. People are not bodies. "I am not a body, I am free". Tough lesson. Long lesson. But I'm getting there.

What appears to be strangers, are in fact brothers in disguise.

There is a statement in A Course in Miracles which describes how God thinks. This is a very important statement because it gives us a strong idea of the workings of God's mind. And let's not forget that GOD IS REALITY, so how God functions is how reality functions...

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Notice that it says there are PARTS in God's mind. EACH of those parts, which are therefore MANY parts, contains the WHOLE. God thinks of "whole parts". God has many thoughts in his mind, in reality, which produce many parts, each of which contains the same ONE whole.

When you ponder what kind of relationships are going on between these parts, you may realize that this is THE SAME as the holographic principle. The principle states that there is a whole, and the whole also has parts, and the whole is in every part, and every part contains or IS the whole, and therefore every part is whole.

If you read up a bit on how true holograms work, and I don't mean hollywood's "projected images" which are NOT holograms, you find the same thing happening. In a holographic image, such as those on your credit cards, EACH PART of the image actually contains THE WHOLE image. All of the information is crammed into each speck of the picture. Every part is whole.

That is very different to how things usually work in the world. Usually a part of something does NOT contain the whole. Usually parts are only PART OF the whole, are limited, finite, and lacking some of the information. For example an apple lacks the qualities of a banana. Apples don't contain bananas parts, nor do bananas contain apple parts. But it's not like that in God.

In reality, according to ACIM, God's mind is unlike spacetime. God's mind HAS parts which DO contain the whole. EACH PART IS the whole. Notice that it does not say that there "are no parts" in God. It quite explicitly says that the whole of God is in EVERY PART. And therefore there are many parts in God. Yes, that means multiplicity, and no, that does not mean the same as duality.

There is a key difference between many whole parts in God, and duality. In duality, each of the parts is NOT the whole, and each of the parts does NOT contain the whole. The parts are all different and separate. They do not SHARE anything. Parts which do not share is duality, or illusion. But this does not mean that you have to get rid of parts, in general, in order to find the opposite of duality.

The opposite of "parts which do not share anything", is actually "parts which share everything." The TRUE opposite of duality, is not non-duality, it is a holographic system in which EVERYTHING IS SHARED by the parts.

To put it into other words, God is the whole, and God also contains parts, because God has a mind which has thoughts. God has many thoughts, not just one. Each of these thoughts is a part of God's mind. Each of these thoughts is alive, and is a thought of life, and is in fact a living being. Each thought is a thought of WHOLENESS, because God is whole and can only think in whole terms, so EVERY thought contains the whole of God.

Therefore, as God thinks a thought, a WHOLE BEING comes into existence, which is a PART OF God, AND which shares the whole of God. "I am forever host to God." Sharing the whole of God is what "your inheritance" means. Each part of God inherits the whole of God. Each part of God, each thought of God, is A SON OF GOD - a soul. Or one of God's creations.

"God created His Sons (plural in reality) by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they were created neither partially nor in part."

Notice how ACIM states clearly that God has many thoughts: "the extensions (plural)" "ALL His Thoughts (pural)". This is a fact of reality. God has many thoughts. There is a multiplicity of thoughts in God and this is completely natural and real.

Notice how ACIM also states that all of his thoughts (his parts), EACH of his parts, "are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other". EACH son of God, each thought of God, is WHOLE WITHIN ITSELF, AND it shares the whole with the other sons of God. There is one whole - God - which is shared FULLY, by each and every thought of God. All of them are united (whole, one) within themselves as WHOLE BEINGS, AND are united (whole, one) across their RELATIONSHIPS with each other as a SONSHIP.

Notice how ACIM also states that each of these many thought-creations are not created "in part", or "partially". They are fully created. Which causes them to be, in effect, "fully standalone whole beings". In effect, "separate beings". I know people don't like the word separation but, it does not always mean ego. If there are separate beings (thoughts of God) which are THE WHOLE, simultaneously "many and one", their separateness is there at the same time as their unity. And THAT is what most people find hard to get their head around.

This is where most ACIM students fall flat on their faces attempting to understand how it can be possible that something can be separate AND one at the same time. It is not possible on Earth, for example, so we are not used to this idea. When two objects are separate, they are not one. When you join them together, they become one, and are no longer two. So we think that nothing can be one AND two at the same time. This has become HOW WE THINK. But it is NOT how God thinks. And thinking that God thinks (that reality functions) in this way is an error.

God does NOT think in terms of "either this or that" or "this is not that" or "it can be this or that but not both". Those are ego thoughts based in a separation thought system. They are ideas of parts which do not share anything. They are ideas of a lack of unity and oneness. They are selfish egoic unsharing ideas. And they also lead to a majorly false conclusion, that you would have to get rid of the many in order to have the one. That oneness means "not two" and "non-dual" and "not many". That is completely false.

It's false because God's mind does not function in the same way that spacetime functions. God's mind does NOT follow laws of separation of objects. God DOES have many thoughts, DOES contain many parts, AND STILL maintains oneness at the same time. That's what's so hard for many people to get their heads around, to understand it logically and to make sense of it.

It will not make sense when you think of it in normal logical terms. It will not make sense when you try to ask yourself, "is it this, or that?" It will not make sense when you demand that everything within God has to put be into one box, or another box, and that nothing can span the boxes. It will also not make sense when you demand that it's not POSSIBLE for there to be one AND many at the same time, or have an ASSUMPTION that reality HAS to be "only one thing" in order to have oneness.

This is why many parts of ACIM seem to be "contradictions", when considered using normal egoic logic. It becomes apparent that they are NOT CONTRADICTIONS when you consider them in terms of the holgoraphic principle. Because the holographic principle allows there to be MANY AND ONE at the same time, through sharing of the same whole, which DEFIES the contradiction. And btw the proper term for this relationship is MIRACULOUSNESS, which is the true nature of God.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is."

"Each Soul knows God completely (each part is the whole). This IS the miraculous power of the Soul (holographic relationship = miraculous). The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking (separation-based logic), in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This statement for example contains two major claims. 1) That God has only one son, and 2) That God knows ALL of his sons - meaning there are many of them. And since they are his sons, they are his direct creations, and MUST therefore exist in reality together. It goes on to reinforce that "they are not less", meaning there is more than one.

So now YOUR mind is going to look at this, and it's going to look at it WITH SEPARATION (alienating thinking). You're going to think in terms of, "it has to be either this, or that, and it can't be both". You will PROJECT SEPARATION onto it. You don't realize you do this because you do it all the time and have not questioning how you think, and have not realized that you are NOT thinking like God, and that your insistence on separating everything is corrupting reality.

So what you'll end up doing is you're going to try to SEPARATE OUT the two parts in the statement. You will identify that "God has one son", and you'll put that in one separate box, which does not SHARE with anything else. And then you will identify the idea "God has many sons", which you will put into a second SEPARATE box. THEN you will reason WITH THE EGO, that they can't both be true. That it has to either be one or many. That the two boxes do not share anything.

The conclusion that you'll come to, which will seem to make sense to you, based on how you think, is that EITHER God has one son OR many sons. And you will probably steer towards the "one son" because you see it as larger or more encompassing. Then you will side with HALF OF THE TRUTH, and HALF of ACIM's statements of fact, and claim that God only has one Son, and will go look and find quotes abut God having only one son, which you'll think backs up this idea. It's true, but it's not the whole story.

The truth is that in a holographic system, there is many AND one, that BOTH parts are true, that God does indeed only have one son, BUT, at the same time, that one son IS MANY sons. And their manyness coexists with their oneness. Without any ego in a PRE-SEPARATION STATE. This is because they SHARE EVERYTHING and overlap. Each son HOSTS all of God. Each son HAS everything. The many sons of God ARE the one son of God. They all make up the sonship. God experiences them as individual wholes AND as one whole son.

Note that there is no "exclusion" in this. Reality runs on laws of inclusion. Being the one son does NOT stop the many sons from being many. And being many sons does NOT imply they they are not one. In a holographic system the rules are very different. It is OKAY AND NATURAL for "many parts" to exist, provided they are ALSO THE WHOLE. It is the sharing of the wholeness that is the true ACIM definition of "oneness", NOT a "count of one to the exclusion of many".

This is largely why A Course in Miracles is NOT a non-duality teaching. Or to put it more accurately, non-duality only touches on HALF the story, identifying that there is a oneness, but with complete disregard for the many. Thus it focuses on only the wholeness of the hologram and not its parts. You can just as easily pull up many quotes about God's MANY creations, children, beings, individuals, minds etc, all of which are JUST AS VALID AND EQUAL as the quotes about the one son, AND are on the same level.

One of the very unfortunate things which happens when people cannot understand that God's reality is holographic and not linear, is that they cannot accept "the many" as being part of and coexisting with "the one". So they instead see the many as a separation idea, and separation in general becomes taboo. To remove all separation becomes a goal, EVEN IF it means destroying all of God's creations in the process. Driving everything toward "oneness only" EXCLUDES creation and is blind to reality's nature.

And then the only way to logically seem to RESOLVE the conflict, to undo the contradiction in the statements, is to relegate the many to the realm of the ego, wihch people think is the only place that manyness can exist. This does "make perfect sense" when you think in EGO TERMS, using separation-based logical reasoning, but it DOES NOT make sense in holographic terms. In holographic terms, it is a total mangling of A Course in Miracles, taking the perfectly valid whole parts of God's creation, his many whole children, and shoving them into a box with the ego, to try to get rid of them. This is a horrible BANDAID, and it turns FACTS INTO METAPHORS and REALITIES INTO ILLUSIONS.

This all leads to non-sense notions, which SEEM LIKE logical sense, that 1) there is only one son of God, 2) this one son must have split apart to form many, 3) the many sons is an ego illusion and not part of reality, 4) there is no-one else to have a relationship with, 5) when you wake up everyone is awake so you should selfishly focus on your own atonement etc.. Notice any popularly held beliefs here? Commonly distributed ideas of what ACIM is saying? Non-duality based interpretations handed down from teacher to teacher all making the same logical error?

This has literally become an entire MISREPRESENTATION of A Course in Miracles, taught by very prominent teachers the world over. It is a horrible logical bandaid placed over ACIM's holographic metaphysics by people who think using the ego's rules and do not even realize they're doing it. It has led to a "version" of ACIM that does not allow for sons of God or souls, does not permit free will, does not include relationships, does not support co-creators, does not acknowledge the Holy Spirit or Jesus, does not support performing miracles to help others, and in general points solely towards the non-dualistic eradication of God's Kingdom and the death of the self. Literally, it is UPSIDE DOWN and destructive and an attempt to destroy reality and its contents.

All of this has arisen PURELY because of a faulty logical reasoning, based on a lack of comprehension of the subtle SYSTEM of God's mind and its properties. God is not just another "space". God is not like space or time. God is transcendental and holographic in his nature. All of God thinks at once, and when all of God thinks, EACH thought contains all of God, because it is a thought OF wholeness BY wholeness. And this produces WHOLE creations, which are FULLY created, which are inherently therefore "independent individuals", but WHO ALSO are STILL the whole.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit."

Thus we have this perfectly legitimate and perfectly accurately worded statement in the urtext AND in FIP 3rd edition:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings*** who have everything ***individually***, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you."

Notice a few things here. It is stating that God does encompass all being - he is the whole of being, all of existence. It is stating that regardless of this fact, GOD HAS CREATED. It is stating also that God has created many things, because he has created a PLURAL of beings as his many thoughts. Note also that while it uses the term "separate beings", which is ENTIRELY VALID, because each of these beings IS a WHOLE BEING, this does NOT imply that these beings are egos or that they do not share in oneness. It also states that EACH of these whole beings "has everything individually", which again reflects the holographic principle that the whole is in every part and every part (being/self) is whole. And this of course does mean that EACH being is an INDIVIDUAL, but NOT CUT OFF.

This again goes on to confirm not only that God created individual beings, but also that individuality and having a SELF is perfectly natural. "I am still as God created me." As in the first quote I gave, "what is natural to him is natural to you". YOU have a self that lives in heaven. You also have brothers in heaven who have selves, as individuals. This is because each of God's MANY thoughts are living beings, and you have relationships of wholeness with these selves making them PART OF YOU as well. The whole of God is shared by EACH brother, making your brother contain the SAME whole as you, and therefore each brother IS you also, and is part of God - while still being a separate distinct brother.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This again is a seemingly highly cryptic and contradictory statement WHEN you consider it in terms of separate boxes. When you think about it with the ego, you come to false conclusions. When one brother is all brothers, it DOES NOT mean that there is a single person standing alone. Or more to the point, there IS a oneness, but there also are still MANY brothers, many in number. They ARE brothers because they share the same parent - the same whole in the hologram. EACH brother is a brother (whole part), all the brothers are equals (share the same whole as one), and they each contain EACH OTHER. But they are still many!

Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. This again is a holographic principle, not a linear principle. It means that there are in fact many minds "(all the minds God created one with me)", and EACH of those minds contains ALL the minds. The fact that EACH mind contains the WHOLE of mind, does NOT eradicate the fact that there are many minds. The manyness, and the oneness, exist SIMULTANEOUSLY in a holographic system. And God's mind IS a holgoraphic system.

Unfortunately all of this is very rarely understood by ACIM students. It is not something I properly understood until recent years after a great deal of exploration. I rarely hear ACIM people talking about this, and I even more rarely hear ACIM people understanding it. Yet it is absolutely the CORE of A Course in Miracles's metaphysics. That God is not a solitary lonely figure, but in fact has many thoughts and many children, many co-creators who even themselves have many children. That REALITY in fact comprises ONE AND MANY, and NOT JUST ONE. That oneness is ALSO manyness.

Until there is a full grasp of this, ACIM students will continue to misunderstand and misrepresent A Course in Miracles. This isn't just something that a select few teachers have done, it is very widespread among teachers and students at all levels. The lack of recognition that the WAY YOU THINK is firmly rooted in separation, is the real culprit. The fact that we are all so used to thinking in terms of "separation of objects", because the physical world is set up this way and it works very well when describing SEPARATE THINGS. But it is HORRENDOUS when it is used to describe a state of reality which is nothing like "the separation" of space.

It is solely because everyone thinks in compartmentalizing terms of "either this or that" or "not that" or "not both", which is thinking WITH AND LIKE the ego, that we've resulted in these extraordinary skewings of the ACIM teachings. Especially in terms of trying to foce reality into a non-dualistic model, which is completely inappropriate and inaccurate. Also in terms of the very basic and wrong interpretation that "oneness" means "there's only God". Yes there is only God.... PLUS the many parts of God which God shares all of himself with, which are MANY in number, AND which are fully "separate" creations. Non-duality is only HALF of the story.

Even the term "separation" has become taboo because people think "the separation" is a bad thing and getting rid of separation is a good thing. This is a fallacy because God in fact does include many separate parts. It's just that those parts are ALSO joined. They are separate, AND they are joined. The true logical system of God's mind and thus reality is not "either this or that". It"s "this is BOTH this AND that." This is what the Golden Rule is based on - what is true of me is true of you. Either/or always means ego, and both/and always is true to God. Using any kind of either/or logic to describe reality is an ABSOLUTELY FAILURE.

Major teachers of ACIM never realized this. They came to faulty conclusions about the nature of reality and taught it to many people. They used the ego to reason as to what reality is like, and came to egoic conclusions about God's system of thought. This led them AUTOMATICALLY to the ONLY conclusions that an egoic thought process COULD come to, because their LOGIC drove them there. This results in these ideas of "only one son", "one dreamer", "fragmented son", "no others", "no free will", "no relationships", "no miracles", etc. This whole "model" of ACIM is completely false and has resulted PURELY form BAD THINKING. By people who do not understand the logic of God's mind.

This highly distorted and soul-destroying self-denying anti-creation version of ACIM needs to be pushed aside and replaced with a much more accurate holographic model. One which supports, is open to, allows for, and accounts for, the presence of many beings in heaven's reality. The fact even that you have real brothers, with real relationships, and that God has a real family, and that all of this is permanently real. That reality itself is not JUST oneneses, it is also an entire Kingdom of absolute creations.

This is the true form of A Course in Miracles. Not a non-dualistic flattening of God, not a creation-ignoring blob of singularity, but in fact a sort of "hybrid" idea which joins the one with the many in a perfectly natural system. Perhaps we can call it trans-duality. But it is definitely not non-duality. Yes duality is not real, yes bodies are not real, yes separate things are not real. But in God, there are also separate things which SHARE, and that guarantees they are still one. You DO have brothers, God DOES have children, and you ARE part of a divine family.

We have to open our minds to thinking WAY outside the box, and to stop thinking WITH boxes, if we want to understand what A Course in Miracles is really saying.

Becoming angry, blameful, accusing someone or believing someone is guilty, is really your secret attempt to get rid of a guilt that's inside yourself. A guilt which you put there. When you try to project it onto someone else, you are trying to dissociate from it and associate it with them. Like "pinning it" on them literally. You're trying to make them take a hit for you.

The purpose of this is really murder. By trying to destroy the other person you're believing that they are the solely guilty party and you are not. The more you can separate yourself from the projected guilt the more you think you're innocent. Which means your brother has to go down with the guilt so that you are spared.

The more they deserve destruction and hatred the more innocent you seem to be. But if you separate yourself off from them you have attacked yourself, because they are part of you. The more separate or dissociated you become, the more your mind is split and the sicker you are.

The separation from God was an act of dissociation. It was a way in which the sons of God, who shared everything with each other, could dis-associate themselves from each other and pull away into separate corners. Wanting nothing to do with each other, they rejected each other and did not want to share. Seeing themselves as separated off, they could not relate or communicate, and instead saw each other as strangers.

We CONTINUE to be in a separated state, and keep the separation going, by maintaining or even trying to increase the dissociation. By not seeing ourselves as one with each other, and instead focusing on taking sides and trying to pin the blame on others, we are keeping the separation going. The way to end the separation is therefore in your relationship with each other and with yourselves.

You have to learn to stop excluding others from yourself, stop using hate and anger and blame to increase the rift between you, stop projecting guilt in an effort to distance yourself from your brothers, and learn to share interests with everyone. Their interests are in your best interests when you recognize them as part of yourself. Without recognizing them as brothers or included in you, you'll keep seeing reasons to push them away.

Only when minds join can there be peace. That means you have to re-associate yourself with others. To be willing to be around them, intimate with them, love them, share with them, including them in your interests, side with them against no-one, unite with everyone, and return to the divine family of God, in and as his Kingdom. Only when dissociation ends, is the separation over.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous. So are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and IS dissociation, and also that once it had occurred, projection became its main defense, or the device which KEEPS IT GOING. The reason, however, may not be as clear to you as you think. What you project you disown, and therefore DO NOT BELIEVE IS YOURS. You are therefore EXCLUDING yourself from it, by the very statement you are making that you are DIFFERENT from someone else. Since you have also judged AGAINST what you project, you attack it because you have already attacked it BY rejecting it. By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

God is wholeness, or Holiness. He is the whole of everything, everywhere. There is no lack in Him. He is unlimited and infinite. He is omnipresent. He is the all in all.

"The mark of Wholeness is Holiness"

"God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him because He IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him because YOUR being IS His."

Every part of God contains all of God. All of God is everywhere. All of God is shared, within Himself, with all of Himself. All of God has access to all of God. And all of God is God.

"The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things."

God cannot access anywhere that He does not exist, and there is nothing outside of God. He already exists everywhere, so there is nowhere to be added, and no space to add into.

"Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

God cannot create an external space, nor can he add a separate thing outside of Himself. He cannot "tack on" any kind of a creation to the outside of Himself.

The internal nature of God, however, is one of sharing. God fully shares with Himself. He is fully open. He loves Himself, and therefore gives Himself to Himself.

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

Within God, within His mind, within His being, there is total unlimited sharing. This sharing is a transcendence of space and time and limitation. It enables God to be a host, and to share Himself by giving Himself.

"Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."

"You cannot separate your SELF from YOUR Creator, who created YOU by sharing HIS Being WITH you."

"I am forever host to God."

God wants to give Himself because it is His nature to share everything. This giving is what we call love, or life. It also leads to what we call projection, extension, or creation. Love loves itself.

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son"

"God shares His function with you in Heaven"

"Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him."

God is able to share Himself, within Himself, and can extend Himself as what we call Thoughts or Creations. These thought-creations can only occur provided they inherit the whole of God, and in turn share His will to share the whole of themselves.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." "ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father"

"the Children of the Father inherit from Him"

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

Any thought-creation of God can only share what they are given, and can only give what they inherit. They also must create by sharing, and can only create by sharing, by hosting within their own being.

"By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. YOU are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you ARE like Him."

"accept the Thought of God as its inheritance."

"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

Creation, therefore, really occurs as a kind of internal expansion, or a giving inward. God shares the whole of Himself, which produces creative thoughts, which must inherit the whole of God, and be wholly like God. "The Father and the Son are not identical, but you CAN say "Like Father, LIKE Son."

"GOD gave you the function to create in eternity."

"God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love"

"God GAVE you Heaven"

"God GAVE you all there is."

God also can only share wholly, or fully. He cannot only partially give, or partially create, or partially share. When He shares, He creates wholly, and creates only wholeness. And anything He creates must be completely whole. "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." "which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son." "God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

This means that any creation of God, any extension of God, MUST be a completely whole creation. It must be fully given, fully established, fully sharing, and fully created.

"This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

This leads to the FULL creation of living thought-beings, ideas of children, which are the living thoughts of God. Each is a miracle, and each inherits absolutely everything from God. Each HAS everything, and IS everything. "You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven"

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

Absolute wholeness is passed down and is SHARED by every creation. Therefore, two things become true. 1) Every thought-creation is a completely autonomous being who is a whole fully-created being, and 2) Each being shares AND IS the whole of creation.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

This results in a scenario where each Son of God literally IS God, and is PART of God, and IS EACH OTHER. There can only truly be one whole, which must be shared by EACH whole. And therefore each whole is the one whole. This is what oneness really means.

"The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

This means that each Son of God IS the other Sons of God, as well as being an individual Son of God. "Individual" does mean "undivided". And thus each brother is all brothers. And every soul is part of God. And every child of God is every other child of God. And all of them share the same whole - all of themselves - with all the rest.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself."

"to know your brother IS to know God."

This produces the Sonship, which is the family of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. And having inherited everything from God, as His perfect extensions, each Son of God is a fully created being and has SO much freedom and autonomy that they are established as TRUE co-creators - free-willed "separate" beings.

"the Sonship is your Soul"

"you are part of God, and the Sonship is one"

"in a relationship in which ALL the Sonship is together blessed"

"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." "If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

This doesn't merely mean that they just do God's bidding, or that he dangles them like puppets, or that they are slaves to His will. They have been WHOLLY created, and therefore do in fact have free independent will. But remember that, at the same time, this will is ALSO shared with everyone. And to remain free it has to be shared, yet still retain freedom.

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

Blessed with free will, in a sense "free from God", or as "separate beings", individuality has been established. They are individual because they are whole in and of themselves. Yet they are one because they share everything.

"For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us"

"every member of the family of God must return"

They now proceed to naturally share everything that they have, because this is their one nature. They can only share everything because it is by the sharing of everything that they exist at all.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

So in turn they create their own creations by sharing everything and hosting them within their own mind and being, just like and with God. And as such the Kingdom continues to expand internally as a continuous line of extension and creation.

"all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." "As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"YOUR creations belong in YOU, as YOU belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it DOES NOT STOP. It creates forever"

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN"

Wholeness, within wholeness, shared by the whole, in which each whole is the one whole, and all wholes are one. And yet at the same time, there are many wholes because God constantly shares itself. And all living beings therefore continually create and extend and think and give, and the increase of the Kingdom is endless.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son (your creations). Yet must this Son (your sons) have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed (by you and your brothers and God), nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them WITH you."

"for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you."

The simple fact that God, who is whole, gives the whole of himself, wholly, to wholly create whole beings, who share the whole of himself, alignes exactly with the holographic principle. That the whole is in every part, and every contains and IS the whole, and every part is the SAME whole. And therefore all the wholes are one.

This is why heaven is a truly holographic structure. Not holographic in the sense of 3d projected images - which have nothing to do with holograms. But in the sense that the whole of God is in every creation of God, and every creation of God IS the whole.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

This is what heaven is like. It is not some singular blob that sits there by itself. It is not just some kind of singular oneness which doesn't create or extend. It isn't populated by God alone. It is not devoid of individuality. Nor is it devoid of relationships or free will. It is host to an entire family of unlimited thought-beings, and every part of it is part of God, and part of you, and of your own spirit-children.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually"

"Each Soul knows God completely."

"By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM."

"God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it."

"TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING"

"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other."

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

This is why certain other conceptual models of reality are not a good fit. Traditional ideas of oneness don't quite cut it, because they fail to acknowledge that oneness MUST share itself, MUST extend, and MUST be given to create.

Ideas of non-duality don't cut it either, because God is a creator and HAS to create whole expressions of Himself, forming a divine family. He does not will to be alone, or that you be alone, or that you will beings that are alone. All of heaven is about creation and sharing and openness and inter-dependence.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"the Holy Family"

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"The Kingdom is forever extending, because it is in the Mind of God."

"Your gifts TO the Kingdom are like His to YOU."

"God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit."

"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created."

"I have a kingdom I must rule."

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you"

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal."

"For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

"My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself."

Everyone loses when there is separation. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence you fall on. It doesn’t matter which side you take. It doesn’t matter who wins the conflict. Everyone loses. Anyone participating in the ego’s game automatically loses.

If you can think of the ego like a third party, whose sole interest is to "come between", it has no real intention of acting for the benefit of either party. All it wants is to pit two people against each other, to reinforce division.

It couldn’t care less if you think you are the one who is right or not. It doesn’t care who is righteous or correct or better or worse. It has no allegiance to anyone. All it wants is to make two brothers separate.

As a third party, the ego schemes and plots to find ways to make two people fight. It does this when a person has a split mind, hoping to increase the split. It wants to intensify the division between that person and themselves, by intensifying the division between that person and another.

If you could see, that you and your enemy are both in the same boat, and you both have a common enemy - the ego - perhaps you will see the sense in uniting against IT, rather than against each other.

All it takes is to stop for a moment, and realize, you know what, "the ego" is trying to make us fight right now, to come between us and pit us against each other. "It" wants us to separate. It is playing us off against each other. Neither of us is going to be better off because if we become separate from each other, we both lose unity and wholeness.

The only sane option then is to unite against the ego, by stepping out of the argument and both brothers agreeing to a "shared interests", a common ground, in which they no longer see each other as the enemy, but simply recognize the ego is the "enemy".

When neither of you wants to allow the ego to get ITS way, you will side with each other and join as one. When you decide to do this, the ego has been completely disempowered. But if you do not decide to do this, you are feeding it.

I have found this useful in my own life in experiences of arguments with some people where, I stopped and said, you know what, the ego wants us to be arguing right now, it wants us to disagree, so that it can make us both unhappy.

And this totally cut through the whole argument because it reframed the entire thing in a fuller light, a broader picture, in which the ego was called out as that which was the "problem" and not either person. We were quickly able to then repair the damage seeing that we were in fact in the same boat with the same desire for "separating less".

The only war is a war in which everyone loses. There are no winners in the ego’s dream of death. If you play with the ego, you WILL lose. It is guaranteed. It’s the only rules of the game. Try to use the ego and you will suffer. The only way out of the trap is not to play it at all.

It is impossible to find a loophole, or a workaround, or some way you can find success, or a way to win, or a way to benefit more, or to be the one who comes away with no effects while the other suffers. It is absolutely impossible. The ego’s game is totally rigged against everyone involved.

As soon as you participate, you are guranteed suffering and loss. Even if you seem to "win", you still will suffer and lose.

Winning requires defeat. Success requires failure. To win is to lose, and to succeed is to fail. The only winners are those who have separated themselves from others, and that is a loss with far higher cost than any bounty can compensate you for. It requires you to be separate from yourself, and so now you are worse off, in the name of victory.

The only way out of this is to recognize the ego is a pointless, futile, hopeless, impossible mess of dead ends and failure and disaster. It simply does not work, ever. And therefore it is not working for you. It works only for itself and its own aims of separation.

Do not be fooled into thinking the ego can be your savior or your hero or your friend or protecting you or making you succeed or win. It will never do anything other than lead you away from God, away from your Home, away from yourself, and away from happiness.

The temptation to believe that you are smart enough to get way with using it and not pay the consequences, is a disaster for all concerned. There are no winners in the ego world. There is only loss. The only true gain is the return to God, to wholeness, to sharing, to shared interests, and to recognizing your brother as your equal and innocent counterpart.

Your brother is not your enemy. Your ego is. And its attacking you as much as your brothers when you separate from them. Separation is a double-edged sword. Both of you always suffer.

"Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms."

"How strange indeed becomes this war against yourself!"

The ego does not take one side. The ego takes all sides, and pits them all against each other. It pretends to be on one team, while simultaneously being on the other team. It plays the part of both victim and its own victimizer. It attacks itself.

The ego is the idea of self attack, self denial, inner conflict, a split-mindedness. It is a state of being "in two minds", undecided and certain of nothing. It is a state of disassociation, in which there literally seem to be two halves or selves, one against the other. It represents a divided will, where one part of mind wills against the other.

In all wars, all conflicts, all arguments, all political debates, all fights between teams and nations, every form of taking sides, and all the various ways that we buy into the illusion that one person is ego and another is not, the ego delights in playing both parties off against each other.

It does not care who wins anything. It does not care whether one side is victorious while the other suffers. All it cares about is that it is perpetuated and persists because it has attacked and destroyed part of self, leaving only part left as victor, who must therefore suffer being less than whole.

The ego will happily attack itself provided some portion of it remains. It will side with something which seems good, positive, uplifting and true, provided to side with it permits a sacrifice where the "rest" of what is denied, hated, repelled and rejected is regarded as not self.

The ego split mind is divided into persona and shadow. The person is the part that is kept in conscious awareness and seems to allow and accept only that which it thinks is good enough - and nothing is good enough. Systematically it strips away portions of your self, deeming them unworthy and imperfect, relegating them to the unconscious shadow portion of mind. It is never satisfied, prompting you to put on a facade of perfection in order to truly destroy everything about you that you cannot accept. That which seems so innocent and holy is murderous.

Self attack takes on many forms and all of them are deceptive. If you buy into one such appearance and think, this person is a hero or savior, while this other person is guilty and a sinner, you have fallen for the trick. The ego is BOTH OF THEM. And it has no problem attacking itself in order to perpetuate the illusion that there is a *separation* between the two. That they are not the same identity or the same self. That is its aim. To split the mind and emphasize the differences.

It does not want people forgiving each other and seeing each other as equals. It wants war not peace. It has no interest or care as to whether you win or someone else wins. It couldn't care less if you are right or someone else is. All it's interested in that that rift between the two is increased, differences are amplified, the gap increases, and equality is lost.

If you play the game, if you take sides, if you buy into the illusion that one is a sinner and another innocent, you have fallen for its tricks. You have bought into separation. Only when you can see you and your brother as being in the same boat, as both striving toward the same goal, and recognize that the EGO is the third party here, the enemy, who would come between you and drive you apart, then you can join forces to agree NOT to attack each other, so that the EGO will disappear and not each other.

The thought system of heaven and the thought system of the ego, both follow perfect logical reasoning. Impeccable logic in fact. The only difference is that God’s thought system begins with truth, and the ego’s system begins with what is false. From the premise, an entire creation arises. The outcome or result of each system is the only outcome possible according to its premise. God’s system produces eternal life. The ego’s system produces death. Both are logical conclusions that can be traced back to their origin.

Every step in the separation from God followed LOGICAL steps, concluding one false conclusion after another. And with each false conclusion, your STATE OF MIND changed to reflect that conclusion. Each reasoned progression of thought took you with it into hell. You didn’t merely think logically, you produced experiential states that are the "embodiment" of your false conclusions. Yet because the ego’s premise is false, and its entire system is based on untruth, we can also logically conclude that everything within it IS A LIE. And the recognition of that simple black and white fact is forgiveness and the atonement.

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth."

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

"Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic"

"And reason now can lead you to the logical conclusion of your union."

"Upside-down logic produces this kind of thinking."

"This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane."

Miracles, and "the miracle", being a reflection of heaven's laws, are also holographic in nature. In that, the whole is in every part, and every part is whole.

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

What this means for miracles is that THE miracle, the overall miracle or atonement, is the one whole. And at the same time, there are MANY miracles, each individually part of that whole, and each one containing the whole. Miracles are not BELOW "the miracle", they are WITHIN it.

Each ONE of them is part of the atonement, and is the whole atonement. There is one miracle, and many miracles. You can see this idea reflected in these statements:

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings ***the laws of another world to this one.***" (therefore the miracle and miracles are based on the laws of heaven, which are holographic)

"The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality." (Notice it says the ONE THING, because the miracle is a reflection of oneness or unity. It transcends differences, representing the whole of all miracles.)

"Miracles are NOT in competition, and the number you can do is LIMITLESS." (Notice that there are MANY miracles. Individual miracles. Yet, they do not COMPETE. All things in spacetime which are different and many DO compete. But miracles DON'T compete precisely because they are ALL THE SAME, because they are ALL WHOLE - and the same whole.)

"They can be simultaneous and legion." (multiple miracles exist together as concurrent wholes WITHIN "the miracle". They are alongside each other, just as souls/sons in the sonship are equal brothers. And they are legion in that they all work together because they are united by wholeness, and ARE each other.)

Then Jesus gets super-specific about the holographic nature of miracles:

"There is ONE miracle, as there is ONE reality. (refering to wholeness) And every miracle (there are simultaneously many miracles) you do ****contains them all**** (because each miracle is ALL miracles), as every aspect of reality you see blends quietly into the one reality of God."

It's clear here that Jesus is supporting the idea of there being ONE miracle, AND simultaneously supporting the idea of there being many miracles. EVERY individual miracle IS every other individual miracle, and all the miracles are ONE. AT the same time. Nor does the one miracle undo the many miracles, nor do the many miracles prevent the one miracle. Because miracles are all about SHARING, which is the law of God - that the one is many and the many are one.

Here is another way that Jesus refers to their holographic properties:

"Miracles are a part of an interlocking chain of forgiveness which, when completed, is the Atonement."

Here Jesus references how the miracle extends to all parts of itself. In that, one miracle is really a gift to the WHOLE sonship. Note that in ACIM, "miraculousness" or "miraculous" nature is really a term which, IMO, directly refers to the holographic nature of reality, and thus of all miracles. "Miraculousness" means the ability for one to be two and two to be one, while being simultaneously two and one. It transcends limitations.

"Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself? One ATTRIBUTE is no more difficult to understand than is the whole. If miracles ARE at all, their attributes would have to be miraculous, being PART of them."

All miracles are PART OF the one miracle, and thus all individual miracles are "the same". Also it is because they are all the same, that there is no order of difficulty. Here are some more quotes supporting this idea of the one being many and the many are one.

"Christ's vision is the miracle in which all miracles are born. It is their source, remaining with each miracle you give, and yet remaining yours."

"The miracle is A LESSON IN TOTAL PERCEPTION. By including ANY part of totality in the lesson, you HAVE included the whole."

"A little hindrance can seem large indeed to those who do not understand that miracles are all the same."

"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts."

"God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

"Every miracle you offer to the Son of God, is but the true perception of one ASPECT of the whole. Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light; and THEREFORE one."

"For in the miracle of YOUR relationship, WITHOUT this barrier, is EVERY miracle contained."

"Accept His Word and every miracle has been accomplished."

"In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one. And what is one to Him must BE the same. If you believe what is the same is different, you but deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

You can see this in stores, where people are standing looking at several shelves filled with basically the same product, wondering which one to pick. And this is also me ;-)

In ego metaphysical terms, what's happening is the ego presents a vast variety of FORMS, each of which presents the ILLUSION that these forms are unique and different. They distinguish themselves as being unrelated to and distinct from each other.

So instead of, you know, going to get the one headache pill, you go and have to wade through 5 different brands each of which has like 10 variations and subtleties, which you were not expecting.

So you enter into confusion. If it's true that these objects are unique and different, then this suggests a great degree of fragmentation. And in order to understand what you're faced with, your mind is going to be in so much conflict, trying to discern or balance the subtle differences as if they are important.

The more ego problems you are given, and the more they seem to present distinctly different options, the more you get lost in trying to find MEANING. Meaning only really comes from oneness, so the more fragmentation there is, the less sense it makes.

It's like being faced with a complicated puzzle, which your mind just doesn't know how to deal with. It scrambles your brain. You are completely befuddled trying to find 'clarity' or 'confidence' or 'certainty' in the face of so many conflicting viewpoints.

So commercialism, in this way, is the ego's way to get people to believe in separate problems. And the more options and choices and 'freedom of choice' there is, the LESS certain you become.

Stores are filled with thousands of brands, millions of products, all vying for attention, trying to prove to you that they are what you want and need, when you really need God. It is a huge ego distraction.

Commercialism and ever increasing choices builds up the ILLUSION that different forms have a different value, or different content. Like, exactly how many different varieties of something does anyone really need?

I work at a company that sells a certain type of product, and there are like over 30,000 products being sold, and honestly, for most people, you would've seen all the majorly 'unique' options within about 50 products.

Take a look at Amazon, millions upon millions of products. Each time I go on there, I can browse for ages and not find anything I want. I'm not too picky ;-)

Anyway, the whole point is, is not to get you to find exactly the perfect item that you really really want....it's to get you so conditioned to think that this is what you want that you end up NOT FINDING ANYTHING. It is another part of "seek and do not find".

Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

In God's Kingdom, each individual being is also all of the other beings. There is a shared oneness. Everyone is everyone.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds. Such is the truth." "The Sonship is your soul."

Each brother or Son of God actually IS the other brothers, while still being multiple brothers. It is correct to then say, you are the whole sonship. And also, that other person you know, they are also the whole sonship. And everyone in the world, is the whole sonship. And each one of them individually, is each other, as the whole sonship. This is the natural arrangement of the family of God, where every child of God is one with all other children of God.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

In the physical world however, bodies were constructed as separation devices. Their purpose was to SPLIT OFF each child of God and prevent them from being one with each other. The body then acts like a prison cell with walls, keeping the whole rest of the sonship out, and locking you inside in isolation. This denies that you share ANYTHING with anyone, and asserts that there is NO oneness.

To enter into the bodily state, you enter into the ego thought system of sin and death. And the body is an expression of the idea of sin and death. "The body is clearly a device for separation"

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

Once you're in a body, or have identified with a body, or see yourself as less than the whole sonship in any way, you confine yourself to a little tiny speck in space and time, wrapped and trapped in a body, kept apart from everyone else.

This makes you feel alone, and also as though you are the only person inhabiting your body. And everyone else's bodies are only their own bodies, and no-one shares bodies. And indeed there are vast distances between bodies, to ensure they never meet. And even when the two bodies meet, the two people are still alone and separate and do not really touch each other, inside-to-inside.

Such was the physical world made and arranged, so that bodies would act as separation devices to keep everyone apart. To exclude and isolate and make everyone seem different and unequal. The body was designed to always be different, unfamiliar, unalike, and unrecognizable. Such that they turn all brothers into seeming strangers.

Essentially bodies are expressions of the idea of having NO RELATIONSHIPS with others, no connection, no sharing, and no communication. You can't be related to something you're different from.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

You see a body that you don't remember and you think you never met them before, even though all brothers are part of God's original family. And then it seems like you have to "get to know" people, as if you are starting out with no knowledge of them and have no clue who they are. You ask their name and where they are from and what they do, only because you've been estranged from them for so long you don't even know anything about them.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

This is incredibly unnatural. This is the opposite of the nature of the sonship and the reality of heaven. Everyone's unity, everyone's shared nature, everyone's oneness, the fact the each son of God is all sons of God and the one son of God is hidden completely by bodies. Bodies pull the sonship apart and confine them in containment and limitation, isolate them away from each other and don't allow them to share anything.

This was the original intended purpose of the body, to produce slavery to the ego, to worship and exalt the very prison that keeps you bound, and to anchor you in spacetime so that you'll die along with it.

"What could the purpose of the body Be BUT specialness? And it is this that makes it frail and helpless in its own defense. It was CONCEIVED to make YOU frail and helpless. The goal of separation is its curse."

If you look at society in general you'll see that this is a prevalent experience. Everywhere you look there are expressions of individuality in the sense that, each person is their body, and is not another body. The law of the land looks to what one body does to another. You are held responsible for your body's actions, but not those of others. And everyone thinks in terms of "only me".

My house, my car, my food, my television shows, my toys, my bed, my kitchen, my toilet, my day, my life, my separate isolated experience, my unique loneliness, my exclusive specialness, my self-interests, my my me me my my me me. This is the selfishness of the ego thought system, physicalized as bodies. Bodies designed to prevent the sons of God from recognizing or sharing with each other.

We can, however, re-purpose the prisons that the we made in the separation, and use them to help us to transcend the prisons. We can use the body to increase communication, and that doesn't mean to increase talking it means to extend the mind beyond the body's limits and beyond limits of "a solitary identity", beyond exclusion and specialness, to a much broader inclusiveness of everyone.

We can use the body for a higher purpose, but note that the body IS STILL a prison no matter how you use it. It will always be a limit on love. It will always confine and separate and have limited senses. It cannot ever see reality through its eyes and it will not ever enter heaven. So we should be careful to think the body can turn into a physicalization of the freedom of spirit, or that it can be truly holy. But it can serve a holier purpose, within the limits of what it is capable of.

To transcend the body is the body's higher purpose. To use the body to learn that you are not a body. To use the body to render the body unnecessary. To use the very device of separation against itself, so that we move past the body's limits. In this view the body actually is recognized as having NO FUNCTION.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

In effect, the body and its limits needs to get out of the way. In fact a holy relationship should be a way of actually relating BEYOND the body, transcending its limits, mind-to-mind, soul-to-soul, and physicality shouldn't even enter into and need not even be a part of the relationship. The mind needs to learn to extend through the body to join with other minds, beyond their bodies. So that we can recognize again our shared oneness. This is why "miracles unite you with your brother."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished ONLY if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

Our challenge then is to learn how to ignore the body's imposed limits, transcend its boundaries through transcendental vision, move the mind through and beyond it to join with other minds, overlook all physical objects of spacetime which were designed to keep everyone separate, and rejoin the sonship. Not just to return to being a member of the collective mind, but to learn to recognize YOU ARE EVERYONE, and NOT just this one little tiny body self.

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself. Yet we have learned that the Holy Spirit has another use for all the illusions you have made, and therefore He sees another purpose in them. To the Holy Spirit, the world is a place where you learn to forgive yourself what you think of as your sins. In this perception, the physical appearance of temptation becomes the spiritual recognition of salvation."

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

"Everyone can use his body best by enlarging man's perception, so he can see the real VISION. THIS VISION is invisible to the physical eye. The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary. Learning to do this is the only real reason for its creation (the only re-purposing of it after it was made)."

"For everyone is seeking to escape from the prison he has made"

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

Unconditionality, means that something applies the same way to many things. In a sense this is impersonal, in that it does not treat a given person differently from others. At the same time, if the treatment is TOTAL all inclusive love, then EACH person can be FULLY loved, provided that it means this love does not EXCLUDE ANYONE.

This means that you literally cannot unconditionally love only one other person. Nor can you unconditoinally love a million people. You can ONLY unconditionally love the ENTIRE WHOLE of creation. There cannot be any exceptions or conditions, otherwise it is not unconditional.

We might say well, I unconditionally love my kids or my parents etc, but this isn't really true. Because the same maximal love is not felt in relationship to EVERYONE. So it isn't unconditional in the broader sense. It may seen unconditional in that, the child or parent is loved quite fully or that they're loved regardless of what they do or say or believe or how they live. That's a form of unconditionality. But it isn't TOTAL unconditionality.

Total unconditionality requires that the entirety of existence be loved as one, and equally. You have to love EVERY person the same if you want to claim unconditional love. Similarly, you cannot claim holiness until you do this because conditions mean a lack of wholeness.

Holiness means wholeness. It recognizes that you are whole. It recognizes that other people are whole. But it also recognizes that the whole of you is the whole of them in truth. It is a holographic principle.

To be holy, ie whole, in and of yourself, you cannot be in need of anyone. It sounds like a paradox but to to love anyone in a holy way you have be whole in and of yourself so that you have wholeness to share with them. And by being whole, you do not NEED them. Moreso it means you HAVE them because you ARE them. All of them.

Holiness, and unconditoinal love, have to go hand in hand with a complete lack of limits or confinement of any kind. It can't just apply to you, or to your closest partner, or to only your friends and family. It has to be the same everywhere. To be whole is to be the whole of creation. You have to be the entire Kingdom of God to be holy. Which means you cannot have a holy relationship without EVERYONE being included.

No one can claim to unconditionally love only A PART of the totality. This is partial love. That love is not unconditional. It may be approaching it but so long as it remains applying ONLY to certain individuals it is NOT unconditional love.

Unconditional love is universal love. It has to apply to EVERYONE equally and all at the same time. Nor can it apply only to some person that is temporarily "nearby" while applying later to someone else who happens to be "nearby." It has to transcend time and space as well. It is unlimited in every way.

This means that a real holy relationship is one where you are whole in your soul, and you know intimately that EVERYONE is included in you. And therefore you love EVERYONE simultaneously. This is the only way for it to be holy, and the only way to be whole. There is no other unconditional love that is as fully unconditional as this.

What that means is, you cannot have a truly holy relationship which its just between TWO people. That is too confining. Any sense of walls, barriers, exclusiveness, limits of any kind, any way that it is not FULLY SHARED, is a limit on holiness and on love. The love has to totally transcend ALL FORMS of relationship. Like how Jesus loves everyone the same.

When a special relationship, which is really a lack of relationship, is taken and repurposed for a holy purpose, it is used as a framework to develop wholeness. Holiness is the goal so wholeness is the goal. To be whole, EACH person, as a soul, must individually attain THEIR OWN wholeness. And their wholeness cannot be held back by each other. To be whole, EACH individual has to be open to loving EVERYONE equally. And if I am whole, I am recognizing that I AM THE WHOLE OF YOU as well, so you cannot limit me.

At the highest level, this means that the specialness which began as "two" for practical or collaborative learning purposes, is transcended. Even if there are still seeming to be two bodies in proximity, or a marriage, or a friendship, or any other FORM of a relationship that seems to isolate individuals, even for those two people "relationship" has to transcend the boundaries of that container.

If it does not transcend the boundaries, it cannot be whole. It is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for a confined pair of individuals to be holy together while NOT being holy in relationship to EVERYONE. However, if they ARE holy towards everyone, they CAN be holy in relation to each other.

We need to perhaps then SEPARATE OUT, the difference between an arrangement of bodies, versus psychological relationship. If you decouple the two, it becomes more obvious how it works. In the atonement plan, TWO OR MORE individuals (tied to bodies) are orchestrated to meet and form a special connection. A time spent seemingly in proximity. This is not a relationship. This is just being near to each other for the sake of working on THEMSELVES in the company of each other and with each other's support. To learn to fully share themselves with everyone. They cannot fully share themselves with EACH OTHER because this excudes everyone else - UNTIL they can share with everyone.

While the two are together, they EACH may be becoming more unconditionally loving, which melts the specialness or form that holds the two of them in proximity. But at some point a threshold has to be reached, in which they cannot increase the love any further if the love is thought to have to be LIMITED to the two of them, or that it excludes anyone, or is switched off in certain encounters.

In order for the love to become IMPERSONALLY PERSONAL, which means total full love given in FULL to EACH of ALL individuals at once (this is ominpresence), the sense of two-ness has to be dissolved completely, BEFORE even getting close to total holiness. The twoness is just there as a repurposing of the device of physical closeness. It has nothing to do with relationship or holiness. It's just a way to focus on a project.

To go beyond this ceiling, EITHER of them has to decide to transcend their 'relationship' and love OTHERS in the same way. The only way TO love unconditionally and ALL the time, is to love everyone the same way all the time, no matter who they are, and no matter where they are. That means you are IN love, at all times, regardless of location. This has nothing then to do with whether you are with a particular person's body/mind or not.

At its absolute maximal expression, then, a holy relationship has gone BEYOND the necessity of two people, and now applies simultaneously to ONESELF, and to ALL SELVES. And ALL holy relationships MERGE INTO ONE. It is then not a question of whether a holy relationship requires ONE person OR TWO... which is an either/or reasoning, but actually in a holographic manner, it applies to ONE AND INFINITE.

Therefore I, as an individual soul, who God created in full love and completion, who is also sharing everything with all other souls, who in turn love EVERYONE, have the task of individually accepting atonement for MYSELF, so that it is SHARED, so that it is given to EVERYONE. THIS is holy relationship. It is one soul sharing all of itself wholly and fully in holiness with the entire sonship at once. This reflects this logical statement:

"You cannot enter into real relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all, AND equally."

Total real relationship, in heaven, which a holy relationship is based on or becomes a reflection of, requires YOU to love everyone. It does NOT require everyone to be aware of loving you. In reality, yes, all souls love all souls. In the dream, where minds are blocked, it does not entail all minds being AWARE of that oneness. But ideally, everyone should eventually love everyone. This allows the ENTIRE sonship to unite in a single relationship of co-creation with God.

"Everyone should love everyone".

While it is possible for example for me to be in total love which means unconditionally loving the entire universe - universal love, this is because I am a free soul. I am in freedom and therefore NOT TIED to anyone in the sense of, no one can impede my freedom or require me to do anything in order to be FULLY myself. God established me perfect from the start. And that means i can go into holiness/wholeness and unconditionally love everyone, EVEN IF they do not reciprocate. Nor can their lack of love hold me in hell against my will. I am free to choose to love. "Heaven is a choice I must make."

If another person happens to also be in a very unconditional state of mind, then it is possible, that that person can connect with you and be AWARE OF sharing everything with you. BUT, this is NOT JUST personal. It is personal and impersonal. Everything is shared with YOU, BUT at the same time, it is also being shared with everyone. It is not exclusive to you. It is completely open. It is fully given to you, AND fully given to everyone equally. Such a person can fully love you, but ONLY because they are unconditionally loving the whole sonship at the same time. You receive the PERSONAL love, while the IMPERSONAL aspect is personally loving all the others. It's almost like, two people just happening to 'bump into each other'.

When two people consent to FULLY LOVE, the "each other" part does not enter into it. They happen to fully love EVERYONE. Two people, who fully love everyone, and who are in intimate relationship with EVERY SOUL as their own wholeness, "meet", and experience their mutual position of unconditional love. They fully embrace and express their shared nature in TOTAL holy relationship. But IT DOES NOT EXCLUDE ANYONE ELSE. It is not exclusive to them. An analogy might be one parent who equally loves all their children. They don't stop loving the OTHER kids just because they love you.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."The only requirement for you to enter heaven, is that you reflect heaven's relationship status. That is, I am in a relationship with EVERYONE EQUALLY. You "enter into real relationship" with ALL of God's children. And thus you "enter into reality" itself. This is the only requirement for entry to heaven by ANY INDIVIDUAL SOUL. That is, all you have to do is accept and love all of yourself which IS all of the sonship, loving every son of God equally.

No one can keep you from this. No partner can hold you back. No duo or pair or special relationship or repurposed relationship has a quality that causes any REQUIREMENT that TWO such people are doing this at the same time. The two-ness is part of specialness and it will always be. Two-ness has to be TOTALLY TRANSCENDED in order to have ANY holiness. EVERY person has to be loved equally otherwise NONE OF THEM ARE TRULY LOVED AT ALL.

To meet another person who is fully in christ, is a pleasure. And it is a total relationship with that person AND with everyone else. But it doesn't mean that you need that person's love, or that they are imprisoning you. You are completely free to come and go. You are the free willed soul that God created one with him. You have no needs and are not bound by any special rules other than God's law. You are under no laws but God's and God himself established you as holy forever.

In essence, first there is JUST ME. Then there is JUST ME AND YOU. Then there is US trying to transcend JUST US (a "holy relationship couple"). And then there is EVERYONE. That is the progression of relationship towards holiness. And anyone can go there WITHOUT a partner.

So really the requirement of having to have another "special person" to have a holy relationship with, is false. A repurposed special relationship goes THROUGH a purpose or goal of holiness, and DISSOLVES away, leaving only unconditional love for everyone. The two are no longer two, they are THE ENTIRE KINGDOM. Or maybe one of them went there and is the entire kingdom, and the other lagged behind still. Everyone is free to come and go.

Only then, when ONE PERSON has attained a state of unconditional universal love and equality, can that ONE person enter heaven. It does not require anyone else to do this. It's just that, in this world, the holy spirit is repurposing what we MADE (specialness) for a holy PURPOSE, so that it can be USED like a device or tool, to help us to move towards unconditionality. But this cannot mean that you ONLY learn to love another single person unconditionally. If you ONLY love them unconditionally you are NOT LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY. Walls cannot remain if it is to be universally applied and extended. Unconditional love MUST be impersonal as well as personal.

Therefore, any single person/soul CAN enter heaven WITHOUT the need for particular encounters, relations, conversations, physical proximities, lengths of time, or any other "requirement". They may in fact have enjoyed MULTIPLE relationships to get to that point. They may have had many partners, even simultaneously. They may have even had NO ONE ELSE. They might've even been sitting in a cave in a mountain and seeing no one since 50 years ago. It doesn't matter. If any one person attains holographic love, they are done and out of here, entering real relationship with the ENTIRE sonship.

Two fighters are in the boxing ring. They move around and jab at each other. As they become closer, they fight more. They punch and hurt each other, trying to defeat the other. There is no love here. It is anger and aggression and forcefulness gone wild. They seek revenge for what they see the other as having done to them.

This is representative of all ego confrontations, in which one person is trying to attack another, to justify the attack, to try to "win", and to hurt and destroy the other in order to achieve some kind of prize.

Now, the round ends and the boxers are required to go to their corners. Notice what happens. The fighting stops. There is temporary peace. There is relaxation and relief.

What also has happened, is "distance" has been put between the two. They have stopped lurching at each other, they are no longer trying to inflict pain on each other, and have recoiled into themselves.

This is symbolic of forgiveness. In forgiveness, what you want to do is look at the horizontal cause and effect relationship in which you are believing someone else did this to you, you plan to do that to them, etc... you need to cut all of that out and essentially "separate" the two fighters.

You do this by examining how you believe that you caused the other person, and how you believe they they caused you, and you STOP believing that. This collapses the horizontal causality.

So.... that person did not hit me. That person did not affect me. I am not caused by them. They have done nothing to me. I am not at the effect of that person. They have no power over me. I am responsible for everything I am experiencing. I must have done this to myself.

And.... I have not done anything to that person. I did not affect them. I did not cause them. I have not done anything to them. I have no power over them. They are responsible for what they are experiencing. They must have done this to themselves.

This is prying apart an ARTIFICIAL CAUSALITY which the ego has tried to establish between the two of you. You are withdrawing all blame and projection from them, and recognizing that their blame and projection onto you is nothing to do with you. This dismantles the entire ego thought system of believing that someone else is the cause of you, or affecting you, or that you have been affected in any way.

This breaks and reverses the ego's use of cause and effect. There is no cause outside of you. You are not at the effect of anything outside of you. You are returning to your "corner" and disconnecting from the other person and are ceasing to try to make them responsible for your experience.

So be like the fighters in their corners. Back off. Take back your projections. Stop trying to attack others. Stop believing they are attacking you. The ego has no defense against this because it literally lowers defenses and exposes you, which paradoxically makes you invulnerable.

The ONLY model for a correctly functioning family, is God's model of Heaven.

It is very simple.

God creates all children of God (Sons of God/Souls) simultaneously.

All of these children are perfectly equal and identical and loved equally. They all love each other equally.

NONE of the children are the CAUSE of each other. They are not Father OR Children to each other. There is NO CAUSALITY between them. They neither cause nor affect each other.

God is their only Father.

God's family has only these levels:

1. God

2. All of His children as equals

3. The children of each child

At all times, you and your brothers are ALWAYS the direct creation of God, and there is nothing else in-between you and God. You do not accrue a lineage of grandparents.

Each son of God also creates, and extends God's love, to produce additional beings who are the children OF children. These are the ONLY part of reality that are truly children of YOU - creations within your being. These children remain only in Heaven and do not incarnate into bodies.

The only correct functioning then is to recognize that ALL CHILDREN OF GOD share the same single Creator - the Holy Father/Mother - God.

This means that there is absolutely ZERO cause or effect between individual sons. Your brother does not cause you. You do not cause your brother. Therefore THERE IS NO horizontal causality between brothers. All you can do is share love with "others".

Anything else that seems to happen, any other dynamic of not being equal to others, any ARTIFICIAL relationship structure such as human parents vs human children, or bosses vs employees, or strangers doing something to you, or you being able to attack others, or some group having power over you, or laws which work against God's family structure, is DYSFUNCTIONAL.

It becomes inherently dysfunctional the instant that you believe your brother can or does do something to you. This is literally the belief that he is the cause of you, meaning you think he is your creator or father, and you are his child. You are positioning yourself as the effect of him. You are NOT the effect of any brother. You are only the effect of God.

Believing otherwise instantly leads to dysfunction where suddenly it seems possible that individual beings are able to attack each other. "Attack" in all its form is an attempt to implement HORIZONTAL CAUSALITY, which the Course refers to as "horizontal perception". Within this horizontal perception, it seems that one brother causes another, one object causes another to react, one cause on the SAME LEVEL causes effects on the SAME LEVEL.

Your brother is on the same level as you. There is no causality on the same level. This level you are on is the EFFECT of a higher level. To believe that your brother is the cause or effect of you is LEVEL CONFUSION.

How about this. How about you recognize that NEVER EVER has there EVER been a cause coming from ANY BROTHER EVER. All throughout history, all throughout your life, all of your experiences, even in childhood, NEVER has there been causality coming from other people toward you, and you have NEVER done anything to anyone else. And right now, you are 100% responsible for EVERYTHING YOU CHOOSE TO DO TO YOURSELF, an there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE that can happen to you against your will because there is NO OTHER CAUSE on the level of your brothers or the level of the world.

What if it is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE for any brother to cause or attack you EVER? And what if no-one has EVER done so? Where does that leave you? It leaves you in a position where you MUST acknowledge that ONLY YOU are the chooser who makes stuff happen to you. Anything you are experiencing YOU MUST HAVE PUT THERE. Anything you feel you want to feel. Any upset you have you choose. Any sickness is put there by yourself. And if you do not choose die nothing can cause you to die. This is the truth of the Course.

No-one else ever causes you anything. You are 100% responsible for everything. "You chose sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

There is no world.

The entire content of the physical world is happening within the split mind of the ego. It is all happening inside the one mind of the ego, shared collectively by all individuals within it.

Every event that takes place always has some form of separation involved, where there is a cause and a separate effect, a victim and victimizer, some kind of opponents, enemies, conflict.

Every role, every side, every persuasion of someone being for or against or right or wrong, all of them are part of the ego split mind.

The ego mind is a vast mind spanning this entire universe. It includes all planets and stars and galaxies. Every single event that transpires is an expression of self attack.

In self-attack, a single mind is at war with itself. It has divisions within itself which have split it apart and now, what used to be a single will has become multiple wills. And each of these wills is slightly different and has a different focus or goal. And none of them agree with each other, and so all of them are in competition. Chaos is the result (see the laws of chaos in the Course).

This gives rise to all manner of illusions across a vast spectrum throughout the world and throughout all history. In every war there appear to be two sides, the good and the bad, the oppressor and the oppressed, the attacker and the attacked. And yet both of those sides are happening inside the one ego mind. The one ego mind is playing against itself, is at war with itself, and is both its own attacker and its own victim.

When you do not see this and you fall for the illusion that one of the sides is better than the other side, one of the viewpoints is more justified or righteous, one of the parties is better or worse, or somehow there is an inbalance or difference between them, you have become fooled by the ego's illusions. You are misperceiving and are now experiencing the ego.

There is a line in the Course which says literally, "The world IS false perception." It does not say that the world is perceived falsely by individuals. It says there is one mind, the one ego mind, which contains the entire physical universe, within which there is a false perception happening. That means there are illusions appearing, there is misunderstanding, there is division and separation, there are multiple wills, and now there APPEARS to be many different sides all who do not quite agree with each other. And some of those sides now seem to be defending various positions or opinions, and yet ALL of those sides are part of the ego's state of misperception.

The world, the physical world, IS mis-perception taking place within the one ego mind. The world, the illusion of a world appearing, with all of its events and people, is actually a picture in a single large mind, where that mind is hallucinating, and is experiencing self-attack, and is having a major war with itself. This is why the Course says that the world is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's Son" - an envisioning within God's Son of what it would be like if He were destroying himself.

Everything in this physical universe is at war with everything else. For particles of matter to even appear to exist there has to be difference and conflict, to allow there to be a fluctuation of some kind, which creates a localized point in spacetime where something shows up to demonstrate that what is true there is not true elsewhere.

If we are in the business of correcting perception, which the Course very much advocates, then we need to realize that this correction of perception cannot JUST take place within your little ego mind within your little ego body. Your little ego mind is only a TINY part of the entire ego mind. There is vast mis-perception occuring in and AS the entire world itself. THAT MIND, that large mind, which is dreaming the whole world, is mis-perceiving and experiencing self-attack all the time. THAT MIND needs to receive perceptual correction, beyond your own little PIECE of that mind receiving correction.

There is no world, by the way.

When you wake up to the `limits` of your own personal separate ego little mind, confined to a body still and subject still to the laws of the world, such as death and physics and biological processes and so on, and also spacetime itself, you have corrected the perception of a PART of the ego mind, but you have not corrected the grander perception of the entire ego mind, which is still hallucinating a universe-scale war against itself. This is the difference between waking up in the dream and having the war still wage all around you, versus waking up FROM the dream and ENDING THE WAR WITH YOURSELF, which means ENDING THE ILLUSORY UNIVERSE.

If there is a leaf on a tree which is not receiving quite as much sunlight today because there is another leaf above it which is blocking the light, this is a WAR on that leaf and will "cause" it to die off more quickly. If you accelerate what takes place underground as tree roots look for food, you will see that they literally fight with each other and try to fend each other off to secure ownership of food sources. The trees are at war with each other. When there is a cloud in the sky, blocking the sun, that is a war on everything beneath the cloud. I'm not kidding.

This entire universe is a state of war, a state of conflict, a state of self-attack. The one mind is dreaming of what it is like to attack itself and kill itself. It is a dream of dying and death. It's a desert where starved and thirsty creatures come to DIE, having hated a while. Do not glorify one little part of this world over another - that's still part of the ego thought system.

You do not escape this dream of death until you are able to completely transcend all of the laws of this universe and become supernaturally miraculous. You do not escape it by taking a side or seeing one thing as better or worse than another. You do not escape it by falling for the oldest trick in the book, which is that one thing is more spiritual or worthy or special or better or worse or more righteous or more justified or more ego or less ego than something else. EVERYTHING IN THIS WORLD IS AN ILLUSION OF SEPARATION.

This entire world is a mis-perception, an hallucination, happening in the mind of the One Son of God. It is a vast ego delusion, where every single role or side that can be taken "against" another is taken, and all sides and all roles are played simultaneously by that one mind. NO-ONE is more justified than another, and no side that anyone takes is better or more righteous than another. All victims, all victimizers, all opposition, all enemies, those who appear innocent, those who appear guilty, it is ALL part of the same ONE MIND PRETENDING that it is multiple individual selves with different opinions. This is also why no-one's opinion matters to the truth.

Perpetrators of suffering and war and violence and murder and death are just as much a part of the ego dream as those who seem to receive those effects. Both sides are a team. Both of them need each other. Both of them depend on each other to exist. Both of them must exist together in order to exist at all. Look at the whole of the mind - the universal mind - the one mind. Look at what it is doing to itself, within itself. It's beating itself up. It's pretending to put on a performance where one part of itself attacks another part and pretends it doesn't know it's doing it. This is the illusion we need to learn to overlook. This is what forgiveness must teach us to see past and not fall for or be hemmed in by.

There is no world here. it's just one mind's dream of hurting itself. This is the CENTRAL THOUGHT the Course is attempting to teach. That there literally, right in your fucking face literally, IS NO WORLD. This world we seem to live in and on is NOT REALLY THERE. It's a lie. It's a big fat illusion floating in the one mind. It is mis-perception of Self, and mis-perception of God. It's an attempt to destroy who you are. It is the crucifixion of God's Son, of which Jesus's crucifixion on the cross was just a reflection or symbol within a symbol.

There is no world. Can you handle the truth?

llusions from the outside are not illusions at all. With the perspective of knowing everything about the illusion, the truth of it, you can't be deceived by it.

Being outside of an illusion is like knowing how the magic trick works. Or it's like solving a puzzle and never being able to go back and do the same puzzle again because you already know the trickery involved.

Once you've seen the truth, you can't go back. Once you know the answer, you can no longer pretend that the question is valid. Or even worse, it's like the joke that you heard several times already so it's just not funny any more.

This is also why the world is hell-bent on finding the next big illusion, because people keep wanting to be unconsciously absorbed into the trickery and deception of appearances. Once the 'show' has been experienced, it becomes 'old', and the ego keeps lusting after another illusion to replace it, in order to avoid the possibility that you might awaken.

Illusions can only be maintained while something is hidden from your awareness. And in fact what that means is, your awareness itself is hidden by something, because you can't see the whole picture - the answer eludes you. Only by being unaware of the whole truth can you be deceived by an illusion, so it requires your participation and willingness to become unconscious.

When some portion of your own awareness is unaware of what's really going on - you are in a state of semi-unconsciousness. And it's only in this state of unawareness that you can be deceived by an illusion. Only when some portion of your awareness has become hidden and blocked can something seem to make sense and yet be mistaken.

So let's say there are two characters standing on a stage in a play, doing their theatrical production. In the play, the two are enemies. The victim character has this big long story about how the perpetrator is against them, how they're so wrong and bad and guilty, and how they did this all to them. The perpetrator in the play sees the victim as some fake people-pleasing nutcase that needs to be taken down a peg or two, and they believe they are justified in attacking them. So the two are at war.

Now, in order for your awareness to believe the illusion of these characters, you have to have fallen for some kind of trick. The trick here is, that you believe both characters are being acted by two separate people. You also are somewhat absorbed into the story from each character's perspective and can see how each one seems justified in being enemies with the other. You see how they both are against each other, very much separate from each other, and want nothing really to do with each other. This entirely hinges around the appearance of SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES, and that a sense of IDENTITY has been associated with those differences. This reinforces the idea that these are two separate individuals, which is part of the power of the illusion.

What you suddenly find out, as the play ends, is that in fact, both characters have been acted by the same person, at the same time. Now, obviously this seems nonsense to the ego, impossible even. But to your mind this is perfectly possible. And when these two characters are actually inside your own mind, having a go at each other, your mind is in a state of unawareness - a split mind at war with itself with multiple artificial identities. The stories and the separate identities and the costumes and the drama and their relationship all goes towards painting this picture that each of them is separate. And given they are both characters in your mind, that means your mind has become split and is unconscious that it's actually playing both of them at once.

When it is revealed that in fact there are not two identities involved, but only one - and that this one is you - it then becomes impossible to believe in all of the illusions that suggest these two characters are two separate people. The cover is blown. The mask has come off. The truth is out. And now it becomes literally impossible, upon seeing that both characters are really one person, to believe any of the lies and stories that each was telling about the other. In fact their stories must be completely invalid and fictional and UNTRUE, because nothing that each one claims about the other can make sense if both of them are one person.

The victim can't possibly truthfully claim that the victimizer is out to get them, when the victimizer is the exact same person. Because then the victim would be literally attacking themselves through this person. And the victimizer can't be truthfully claiming that the victim deserves to die, because the victim is themselves also, and that means they'd have to believe about themselves what they believe about the other.

So when awareness comes, that there is a UNITY, a ONENESS, that spans what you THOUGHT was two separate things, illusions - obstacles to awareness - are blown and seen through and can no longer be believed. You only can have a single identity. There can only be one you. And if that one you has been pretending all this time to play out this drama with two identities who seem to be enemies, then admitting to having done BOTH of those roles has to reveal to you the truth. The truth is that you are one whole self, not two selves, and these two characters cannot be who you REALLY are, and their stories must be completely false.

So in order to step out of illusions we need to recognize where there is some sense of separation, or some story about how this is not that, or this person is not that person, or this person is separately doing something to that person without being affected by it, etc. That's the ego's illusion - that one part can be separate from another part and do stuff to them without any side effects. It's a total lie, because both parties are the same person attacking themselves. Once you admit to this and step outside of it, the bubble bursts, reality comes in and the lies are shown for what they are. You can no longer believe the story, or the joke, or the trick, or the question, or the puzzle, and now you SEE the truth. And you are whole.

This whole drama is going on inside you right now. There is a character in you which you think is all that there is to you - your persona self, which is trying to be all spiritual and special. And there is another character in you which you hate and want to be separate from and have nothing to do with, because it seems to victimize your little persona self, and you disassociate from that self and project it onto other people where you can keep attacking it to get rid of it. But it's really inside your mind and it's part of you. And all along, even if you block it out, YOU are playing the role of it at the same time as playing the role of this 'partial you'. And both are the same self.

When this truth comes to light and you accept it and recognize it, you can no longer believe the ILLUSION that someone else is doing stuff to you against your will. Or that someone else is victimizing you. Or that you are a victim in any way. Or even, that you are this small little persona self that's left over and separate from the other venomous hateful self that you tried to pretend was not you either. Neither of these selves are you, because they are both just illusory characters. Your ego - your persona self - is not you, and your 'alter ego', your shadow self, is also not you. And all along you've been pitting these two characters against themselves in your own mind and living out a nightmare. Wake up from that! You are one self, not two selves.

So illusions are just that, the illusion - the deception, the trickery, the appearance, the lie, the *seeming* truth, that what was one is two, and what is joined is separate, and that you are not your own enemy. And while you're inside of one or the other roles within that illusion, you will believe you are only that, and will be unaware, unconscious, of your whole self. Only when two become one will you snap out of the deception and become FULLY AWARE of who you really are, your whole self - your Holy Self, joined in Oneness with Holy Spirit. That's who you really are, behind the illusion of being unwhole and incomplete.

(If you are willing).

You [insert fucker’s name], are not the cause of me. You are not causing me. You are my equal brother and God is the cause of both of us.

You have not done anything to me against my will. I am not the victim of you that I’ve come to believe you are. I have been using you to be my victimizer so that I can be upset as a victim and use you to project my sin. I wanted to make out you are the cause of me so that I can asuage my guilt and pretend to be innocent. I am the one who needs healing.

You have never done anything to me. You have never hurt me. You have never upset me. You are not the cause of anything I am feeling or experiencing. You have not put reactions in me. You have not changed me or made me upset in any way.

Everything I am experiencing, I have chosen for myself. All of my feelings are my own. Nothing has happened that I did not want. I have done this to myself.

You did not do anything to me, you cannot do anything to me, and you never will. All we can do is share love. Because you have not done anything to me, you did not cause anything that I am experiencing, which means you must be innocent. My upset isn’t even about you. You have nothing to do with what I am experiencing whatsoever.

I have not done anything to you. I am not the cause of you. I have not attacked you, hurt you, made you upset, changed you, caused reactions in you, damaged you or affected you in any way. I have not victimized you. You are not the victim of me.

Everything you are experiencing and feeling is your own stuff that you chose for yourself. I am not the source of any of your upset, confusion, hurt or problems. I have never caused you because God is your only cause. Therefore I must be innocent because I have not done anything to you.

We are both equally innocent. Neither of us has done anything to each other. There is no causality between brothers. You are not the cause of me. I am not the cause of you. Anything I am experiencing I must have chosen myself and done to myself.

No-one else has the power to do anything to either of us against our will. The power that I thought you had over me is my own power. The power that you thought I had over you is your own power. Neither of us has power over each other. I take back my power from you and give you back your own power to choose your own experience.

I am fully responsible for everything I am experiencing. You are fully responsible for everything you are experiencing. I can choose to experience something else and there is nothing you or anyone can do to stop this. You have not willed against me and I have not willed against you. We are both in accord with God’s will that we be forever equals in love and innocence.

I am not vulnerable to your attacks. Your attacks are your attempt to attack yourself. You are not vulnerable to my attacks. My attacks are my own attempt to attack myself. I can stop attacking myself and be happy. You can stop attacking yourself and be happy. We cannot and have not attacked each other.

I am completely free from your choice and you are free from mine. I am free from your wishes and intentions. I do not grant you the power to upset me. I do not displace my own power onto you. Nothing happens to me that I do not choose. Nothing happens to you that you do not choose. Neither of us is a victim. There are no victims. We have not victimized each other. I am not a victim of you. You are not a victim of me.

We are both innocent because neither of us has done anything to each other. We are both innocent because we are both still as God created us. Neither of us has sinned. I have not sinned against you. You have not sinned against me. We have not sinned against God. There is no sin. Nothing has happened.

We are both perfectly equal in God. We are both God’s children. We are both holy and innocent and forgiven. You are my equal brother and I am your equal brother. We are identical in God. We are one in love. There is no separation between us. I share everything with you as you share everything with me. We can both be at peace together and join in love as equals.

God loves us equally. I forgive you and love you. You forgive me and love me. We love everyone as ourselves. Love is all there is.

Each thought system starts with a logical premise, which determines everything that comes from it, which are perfectly logical conclusions. This is true of both God’s creation and the EGO’s world, which are logical outcomes.

The separation from God followed NEAT, LOGICAL steps. The thought system of the ego is run by impeccable logic, just as God’s thought system is. The outcome of each system depends entirely on its logical premise. At the CORE of A Course in Miracle’s metaphysics is PURE LOGIC.

If you can understand the logical premise of each system, and if you can follow the progression of logical conclusions based on that premise - which is IMPECCABLE LOGICAL REASONING, you will correctly understand ALL of the metaphysics of the course. Where everything fits. The TRUTH about the entire separation from God, states of awareness, what is true and false, what is real or unreal, who created what, how the systems MUST function etc.

It is all TOTALLY LOGICAL. If you struggle with logical reasoning you may have difficulty SEEING the logic or following it.

This literally means, that states of mind, states of separation, the making of the body and the world, all of the mechanics of special relationships, sin and death, the nature of the physical universe and its laws, ALL OF IT, is a LOGICAL CONCLUSION. Correctly discerning what the logic IS, HOW it progressed, and WHY that makes SENSE, is the key to accessing the core metaphysics in the course. Once you do this, you can refer to this metaphysics as a cheat-sheet, a reference to TELL YOU, what ANY statement in the course MUST MEAN, where it fits, and what JESUS MEANS. GUARANTEED.

"T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a LOGICAL CONCLUSION; a valid STEP IN ORDERED THOUGHT. 3 The steps to chaos DO FOLLOW NEATLY from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the PROGRESSION of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one STEP is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The WHOLE DESCENT FROM HEAVEN LIES IN EACH ONE. 7 And WHERE YOUR THINKING STARTS, THERE MUST IT END."

"The ego's LOGIC is as IMPECCABLE as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."

"The Holy Spirit USES LOGIC as easily and as well AS DOES THE EGO, except that His CONCLUSIONS are not insane. 5 They take a direction EXACTLY OPPOSITE, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. 6 WE HAVE FOLLOWED MUCH OF THE EGO’S LOGIC, and have SEEN ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. 7 And having seen them, we have realized that they cannot be seen except in illusions, for there alone their seeming CLEARNESS seems to be clearly seen. 8 Let us now turn away from them, and follow the SIMPLE LOGIC BY WHICH THE HOLY SPIRIT TEACHES the SIMPLE CONCLUSIONS that speak for truth, and only truth."

"The Kingdom is the RESULT OF PREMISES, JUST AS THIS WORLD IS. 2 You may have carried THE EGO’S REASONING TO ITS LOGICAL CONCLUSION, which is total confusion about everything. 3 If you really saw this RESULT you could not want it. 4 The only reason you could possibly want any part of it is because you do not see the whole of it. 5 You are willing to look at the ego's PREMISES, but not at THEIR LOGICAL OUTCOME. 6 Is it not possible that you have done the same thing with the premises of God? 7 YOUR CREATIONS ARE THE LOGICAL OUTCOME OF HIS PREMISES. 8 His THINKING has established them for you. 9 They are exactly where they belong. 10 They belong in your mind as part of your identification with His, but your state of mind and your recognition of what is in it depend on what you believe about your mind. 11 Whatever these beliefs may be, they are the PREMISES that will determine what you accept into your mind."

"Look calmly at the LOGICAL CONCLUSION of the ego's thought system and judge whether its offering is really what you want, for this is what it offers you. 2 To obtain this you are willing to attack the Divinity of your brothers, and thus lose sight of yours. 3 And you are willing to keep it hidden, to protect an idol you think will save you from the dangers for which it stands, but which do not exist."

"In one sense the ego's fear of God IS AT LEAST LOGICAL, since the idea of Him does dispel the ego."

You are in a dream world. Everything here is symbolic. Nothing that appears visible is whole, because symbols are not the whole of something. Symbols represent something beyond themselves, and all physical matter is symbolic of something greater.

Physical matter, at all, is symbolic of the idea of separation and fragmentation. The multitude. The opposite of oneness.

The physical body is symbolic of the idea that you are separated from the whole and are only a part of it.

Outer space is symbolic of the unconscious mind in which anti-matter is unconscious guilt, and stars are all that's left of a light which was once everywhere.

All bodies, be they stars or planets or people or animals, are symbolic of the ego, individuate identities roaming around cut off from the rest.

Clouds, above which the sun shines, are symbolic of blocks to awareness, in which sunlight on a clear day is symbolic of seeing clearly.

Light and darkness, visibility and shadows, are symbolic of the polarization of good vs bad, persona and shadow, as well as symbolic of the light of truth vs the obstruction of darkness.

Even in the physical world, when light shines, it obliterates the darkness, being symbolic of the way that the light of truth shines away illusions.

Things that happen in the world are symbolic as well, being shifts in symbolism and psychological content, and this is also why most of your dreams at night become even more symbolic representations of what happened in the day.

Waking in the morning is symbolic of awakening from unconsciousness and sleep. Going to sleep at night is symbolic of going into unconsciousness and dreaming of a world that doesn't exist.

The people you meet are symbolic of other stuff in your life. Phases of life are symbolic. Certain events happening and significant life changes are symbolic.

The sky is symbolic of heaven, the Earth symbolic of hell.

Each time that you experience rejection or abandonment or separation, it is symbolic of the separation from God.

Each time that you experience a sense of loss and grief, it is symbolic of the loss of God.

Each time that something suddenly comes out of the blue and changes things for the worse, it is symbolic of the moment of the separation from God and the sudden entry into terror and sin.

Everytime something is born or dies, it symbolizes the limitation of form and the fact that it must have a beginning and and, making it inherently mortal.

Each time there is intense weather and storms, it is symbolic of stormy attitudes in the public and the threat of punishment.

Each time someone says a prayer, it is symbolic of commitment to God and an acknowledgement of reality.

Birth is symbolic of the separation from God. Death is symbolic of succeeding in separating from God.

Pretty much everything that you do in your so-called physical life is SYMBOLIC. Your body is MADE of a symbol. All of the events in your life are symbolic. It all represents ideas and concepts in the greater mind.

By not realizing that everything going on in your life is symbolic, and that this is entirely a DREAM, and that there is not ANYTHING that isnt symbolic, you instead focus on appearances of objects and events, as though you're seeing the entirety of what it is. This means you are turning symbols into 'things' in their own right, as though they don't allude to anything else and really have no symbolic meaning. You look at meaningless "form" in this way and then project other meanings onto it, but the only reason you think it is meaningless is because you are in denial that you're in a symbolic dream.

All around you everything that's happening right now is symbolic. All of the objects in your room are symbolic or representative of something. Every event that happened today was symbolic of the separation from God. Every time something "happened" in form it was symbolic of sin happening, proving your guilt.

This world is not a world of end results or finite objects or mortal bodies or stuff that is "complete" in its own right. Nothing is WHOLE here. Everything is a symbol, and is less than whole, and less than perfect. There is stuff missing that you do not see. There is more than meets the eye.

If you look into it, you might start to recognize some of the symbols in your life, that certain people are symbolic of other people, or that certain relationships are symbolic of certain ways that you are relating to God. You think this world is physically real and objective and final. It is not at all. It is a dream, and dreams are always made of symbols, meaning that there is always something ELSE that they're not showing you. To OVERLOOK the symbols, to forgive, and to shift awareness to the WHOLE MEANING, awakens you from the dream.

Sweet dreams.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT.

God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light."

In heaven, in God's mind, all of God is in all parts of God. Not just that his left hand is on one side and his right hand is on another, so to speak, but all parts of him are simultaneously in all places.... if we can speak of it in terms of space. This is God's omnipresence. Not just that He is everywhere, but ALL of Him is in EVERY location at once. In this sense, God is kind of a "blur".

Similarly, when God has a thought, this thought is alive. It is a living being. His thoughts produce souls. The thing is, since God is whole, absolute, and omnipresent, when He creates or has a thought, it produces something which is also WHOLE, complete, omnipresent. This leads to the interesting and mind-boggling situation, that there are now TWO WHOLE THINGS. God and His child.

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

His children are not partial children. They are not finite children. They are infinite, absolute, complete, whole, eternal, endless, unlimited beings. They are completely whole in and of themselves. Which means God, who is whole, and who is whole in every part of Himself, creates a part (a thought) which itself JUST AS WHOLE as God is. And now there are two wholes.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you." (this is holographic - the whole in every part!)

Now, logically speaking, to the ego, this is impossible. It makes no sense whatsoever. How can there be two wholes? But heaven's nature has an attribute unlike spacetime which makes it completely possible. That attribute is the fact that everything OVERLAPS AND IS SHARED.

An analogy in spacetime would be that you literally occupy the same space as another person's body. That your atoms occupy the same space. They literally are right on top of each other, overlaid like two layers in one. This isn't possible in spacetime because it would cause atoms to explode, ie death would occur. But in heaven it's opposite - and life occurs.

God and his children are one, in that they are each a whole in and of themselves, and yet are so united that they SHARE and OVERLAP everything. One soul has all of God, full access, total unlimited complete "ownership" of everything God has. AND so does another soul. And another. And another. Each soul has everything.

In this world it's not possible to share anything because everything is finite. If I give you some pizza I can only give you half otherwise I'll have none for myself. But in heaven this doesn't happen. Both can have the whole pizza simultaneously. This is possible because they truly SHARE everything. They both simultaneously have full total access to everything. We both get the same full pizza. This unlimited sharing is oneness.

This same dynamic is actually what Jesus is referring to as "miraculous". This is the miraculous nature of the soul. It's able to have everything, while also sharing everything with others. And therefore there IS EVERYTHING LEFT for another soul to have everything.

Similarly when God creates you he does not "run out of" himself. Since God gives you everything, ego would say there is no God left over at the end. This is nonsense. God gives everything AND retains everything. He does not diminish by creating, he increases creation. This defies ego logic but is completely true and miraculous.

Actually it's not even possible TO create anything real, generally speaking, because if reality is already whole and infinite you cannot ADD to it. BUT, God HAS added to it, miraculously, not by "tacking on" extra being, but by SHARING HIMSELF. Making room, so to speak, within his own being, that he SHARES WITH His creations, so that no "extra room" is needed.

"Nothing real can be increased, EXCEPT by sharing."

This is only possible in a system where all the creations are sharing fully with each other, therefore overlapping fully, one with each other and cooperative. It doesn't require the cessation of individuality, only the cessation of conflict. Or more to the point, the absence of selfishness, which is the opposite of sharing.

All things that are real, are permanently miraculous. They are miraculous because they defy the strict boundaries, exclusions, boxes, limits and selfishness of the ego's thought system. In heaven it is not a problem for multiple individuals to have everything for themselves at the same time. This is impossible in this world. It was the selfishness and exclusion and attempt to NOT SHARE, that produced the entire ego thought system and all of space and time.

What that means is, in God's holographic thought system, every part of God, every individual being, is just as totally whole as God is, at the same time, without there being any issues of "no room" or "private ownership" or "hoarding" or selfishness. It's all totally shared. Shared so much that you are literally one with all your brothers. You are literally THEM, in a sense, because you SHARE everything with them. Yet you are still two, and are still brothers. There are many children of God who are all one.

What some people are calling a paradox, is actually MIRACULOUS. It's paradoxical to say many individual beings can co-exist and have everything at once. But miraculously they can. God is a miracle worker. "You are a miracle." "God's miracles." "Miracle are a universal blessing from God". God is ENTIRELY MIRACULOUS AT ALL TIMES. And being miraculous - having this nature - of shared minds, equality, oneness with others, is completely natural. It's how we're supposed to be all the time. It's why being a miracle worker is permanent.

This is also why miracles are not mere shifts in perception because the fact is that you are uncovering your PERMANENTLY MIRACULOUS nature. Your soul is always miraculous. You are meant to be miraculous all the time, every day. This is why "miracles are natural, when they are not happening something has gone wrong" and "every day should be devoted to miracles." This is also why Jesus is STILL miraculous even after accepting atonement.

Miracles are not the healing EFFECTS that occur, or the shifts. They are a REMEDY, a cause of healing - a spark of life which resurrects. Healing or shifting is the effect. When you are done shifting, you are STILL miraculous. If shifts were miracles you would stop being miraculous when you reached the atonement. You don't. You are in the process of RETURNING TO being miraculous FOREVER, uncovering your miraculous nature, and resuming the nature of your soul. All beings of light are eternally miracles and eternally miraculous.

In heaven, you and your brother share everything. Not just as two beings who "trade", but as two beings who are one. You overlap, sharing the same space. You are in him and he is in you. He literally is you, while also being himself. The two of you share everything as the Christ mind or One Son/Sonship. Along with everyone else also.

There is therefore a part of your own self, which is in your brother and is your brother. It's like you live inside of each other. His own self is part of your own self. Therefore the wholeness of who and what you are is not just you, it's that you are also him, and you are also part of God.

In the separation, the aspect of you which is hosted inside your brother, and which is one with his mind, was "sectioned off" through the separation device of the body. The body seemed to "fence in" the part of you which seems to be "you alone", and "keep out" the part of you which is literally in your brother "as" your brother.

Part of your mind is now seemingly housed inside the body prison, while the other part of your mind is seemingly housed inside your brother's body. And since the two appear in the form of "being separated by physical distance", it creates the illusion of a "gap" between not only you and your brother, but between you and the rest of you, which is in him and as him.

The initial function of bodies as separation devices was to make it appear that you are not in your brother, you are not one with him, you share nothing with him, you are not equal to him, you are different to him in every way, he is a stranger to you, you do not know him, and you do not recognize him or yourself. And the body paints a picture of an identity which is not in any way what you or your brother are really like.

This egoic view of him confines him to a body, and therefore also denies that he is in you. And so it reduces him and yourself you being less than whole. Bodies isolate the "self" portion of you while rejecting the "shared" portion of you. So now you and your brother find yourself inside prison cells and trapped in brains and kept apart and not communicating.

The body makes it appear that there is NO relationship between you. It demonstrates the proof of sin that separation has occurred. The two bodies being unalike do not share the same truth, and so are in disagreement, and are therefore at war with each other, just by virtue of their different natures. Which in turn, when identified with as your self or as your brother's self, makes it appear that you are fundamentally in perpetual war and competition with everyone. And everyone lacks what everyone else has."There is nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone."

"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."

In this state, you are in special relationship. Which we really should call, no relationship. It is a breakdown in communication, it is a lack of sharing, it is a broken interaction. It really is a lack of relating at all. And in this relating, neither party is viewed as a whole being, because wholeness means sharing and the part of you that is seemingly separated off inside your brother is rejected as "him alone". So now you are not your whole self, and he is not his whole self. And neither of you are wholly relating.

"Yet the special relationship which the EGO seeks, does NOT include even ONE whole individual. For the ego WANTS but part of him, and sees ONLY this part, and nothing else."

"An altar is erected IN BETWEEN two separate people, on which each seeks to kill his self, and on his body, raise another self that TAKES HIS POWER FROM HIS DEATH."

"The special relationship is totally meaningless without a body. If you value it, you must also value the body."

When your mindset is one of being only the you that is in your body, as a body, you cannot help but relate to others in a dysfunctional way. And may struggle to relate at all. You may think, "I cannot relate to them because I am not physically like them."

The gap seen between you also produces justification for getting away with murder, a breakdown in cause and effect, and justified selfishness. Any attack you make upon another you do not realize is attacking the part of you which is shared with him. And the more you push him away in a lack of love, the less you accept yourself.

To have holy relationship doesn't merely mean that you love another person a lot. It doesn't mean, that you are still a separate person trapped in a body whose whole self is in that body, and who then relates lovingly with other people. This is still special love. To be truly loving and holy you have to be whole, which means you have to recognize that your identity is shared with your brother. That there is a part of you IN him and a part of him IN you. And that through your oneness you transcend the body boundaries, and therefore ARE NOT bodies.

You can't be all of yourself while isolated to space and time. You can't fully relate to anyone if you don't recognize that they are simultaneously you, and therefore that you see yourself in them and truly have something in common. You cannot treat anyone correctly unless you have a vested interest of treating yourself correctly, having recognized that you are in them, so that what you do to them you do to yourself.

To relate in holiness isn't two separate wholes relating, it is a relationship in which two are one. You are not just loving another, you are loving yourself AS another. And you are loving the self that is in you and the self that is in the other, as yourself. And the two of you as one together share everything.

"Miracles are a way of loving your neighbor (brother) as yourself."This must entail the shared/joined state of mind, which is more than just two minds sitting next to each other sending love vibes from afar. It is two minds FUSED together sharing everything to such a degree you cannot even tell where one begins and the other ends. Where the identity of both individuals is recognized as the same, being one in Christ. Two Christs, who are one Christ. Where what is theirs is yours and what is yours is theirs and both of you have everything simultaneously.

"Forgiveness is the healing of the perception of separation. Correct perception of EACH OTHER is necessary ONLY because minds have willed to see themselves AS separate beings. Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul."

Each soul also knows all other souls completely. And you are part of God. And you are the whole Sonship. And you are the One Son, and Christ, and a Soul. And you are all Souls. And you are all Creations and all of Creation. And you are part of God Himself.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The soul is the idea of self fullness."

To relate fully to your self, you have to relate to the whole of yourself. The whole of yourself includes the part you fenced off in your body, AND the part that is in literally in your brother. He has to be recognized as part of your self, in order for you to have shared interests with him. Because by recognizing that you are IN him, you recognize that how you treat him is how you treat yourself. You cannot "see the Christ in Him" without recognize that Christ SPANS the two of you and INCLUDES you both as one identity.

When you do not recognize yourself in your brother, a wall or gap starts to form between you, you lose recognition, you become blinded by form, you start to focus on the body, sickness arises, and you begin to attack. The formation of this "separation gap" in between you and your brother makes the world of bodies and sin. And it is there that you enter into illusions of suffering and death, war and competition, disagreement and hatred and fear.

When you re-embrace your brother AS yourself, recognizing that in actual factual truth this is how God created you - joined with everyone, you are putting aside that gap between you and are overflowing your body. You are now extending PAST the body and past the body of your brother. Because your full self transcends these imprisoning boundaries. You are everywhere. You are everything. And only by relating to yourself as that, can you be fully yourself and fully awake.

Two separate things bumping up against each other is no more relationship than two separate things being at a distance. But when the two separate things realize they are not separate and they fuse together and become one, in which each of them is in the other, like yin and yang, there is now a union and a harmony and an equality. To be equal with something means to BE IT, not just to be like it. a = b means a IS b, no just that a and b are alike.

Bodies present a picture which is a complete lie. It is totally opposite to the nature of reality. It is an attempt to pull deeply relating immersed beings away from each other and lock them up in little isolating prisons in the farthest corners of the earth. Kept apart, they believe they are their prisons, and that they have no relationship. And every way they relate is on a basis of a lack of self, the attempt to get self from the other, and the attempt to lose even more self in doing so through sacrifice and loss and bargaining.

When the body is your identity, and you think that the you that is solely within your body is all of yourself, and you have a "bodily identity" in your mind as a picture of who and what you are, you are cutting yourself off from yourself and from relationship. In order to become spirit identified, you need to identify with the spirit that is both in you AND in your brother. You cannot find yourself without sharing yourself. And you cannot accept atonement without sharing and extending it either. You have to give what you have received.

This is why the body has no part to play in a holy relationship. This is why focusing on the body is a rejection of health, because health comes from wholeness and from extension. When you do not allow your SELF or identity to extend past the body and past your brother's body to the SHARED identity that is the Christ in both of you, you cannot be healthy, because your mind is split BY the body. If you allow the body to separate you off from others, you have a split mind and are choosing death.

When you join with others, which does not mean ego joining or a special relationship joining or bodies joining or two separate selves remaining separate and hooking up, mind extends past limitation and separation. It transcends the gap. And now the two that were on either sides of the gap span across the gap and erase the gap. And there is no gap. And in this view the bodies actually become healed because the mind is healthy. In effect, mind has to adopt a state completely "alien" to the body in order for the body to be healthy, which overrides the body's laws with the laws of God.

Reunion with others is reunion with your self and with God. You are a "whole part" of the hologram of God's creation. What you are is what your brother is. Your minds are one. Your souls are connected. You both overlap with each other. You share the same space. You overflow bodies and transcend their limits. You are everywhere. You are infinite, immortal and unlimited. You are the whole Sonship and the whole Son of God. And you are part of God Himself. And what God has put together no man can put asudner. You are eternally married to all beings forever and ever.

Minds are not separate, they are joined. We are part of a collective, which is connected by the Christ Mind. My mind contains your mind, and your mind contains my mind.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

Because our minds are WITHIN each other, what I choose to do with MY mind, IS in fact a PART OF your mind choosing it also. What I seem to choose "for myself", I am choosing for BOTH of us. This reflects the course teaching that "nothing is for yourself alone."

If I choose to recognize the unity of our minds, while you are attempting to see our minds as disconnected/separate, you will not be able to do so because a unified view is stronger than a separating one. Thus I can prevent you from being sick.

If I agree that you are sick because I also want to be sick, then together we both consent to being separate and nothing prevents this separateness, so we both enter into sickness together.

Similarly if we have both entered into a sickness of mind together, we have entered into "vulnerability", and now it will appear that I can negatively influence your mind, but only by reinforcing and playing upon and amplifying what you already believe yourself. It's a kind of consenting to be affected.

It is also true that mind can express the power of God, which has the power to heal and to enlighten. You actually DO have the power to CAUSE mind to change. You can influence the minds of others, and they can influence your mind.

This is why when you are healed in some way, your healing also heals others to some degree, because they are part of you. And when you have healing thoughts, these thoughts go out to the whole sonship and give it healing, just as thoughts of attack attack the whole sonship - or try to.

It's because our minds are joined that there are no private thoughts. We are permanently in a kind of "mind-meld" where we are WITHIN each other's minds. And that means there is this kind of tug-of-war situation, or a link, whereby if I lift my mind up your mind will be dragged up as well.

When Jesus chose the resurrection and returned to heaven and holiness, his awakening INFLUENCED all of us. We are all effectively less insane because Jesus, who is a PART OF US, is now very sane. And his mind is giving our minds strength.

It is because your mind has POWER and IS part of other minds, that the responsible choices you make with YOUR mind is "on behalf of" the whole sonship. And influences everyone.

It is because our minds are joined that we have ACCESS to each other. It is because our minds are joined that we can INFLUENCE each other. It is because our minds are joined that we can HEAL each other, as well as try to reinforce each other's insanity. It is because our minds are joined that we HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY and are our brother's keeper.

While other minds, which are part of US, are not freed from ego, neither are we. This necessarily means that we cannot rest, and have work to do on behalf of the sonship and the atonement plane, which is NOT DONE, until EVERY single mind returns to the sharing of oneness in God.

The easiest analogy is that we are like SIAMESE TWINS, two beings whose brains are joined together for example. We therefore are DEPENDENT on each other, and what either one chooses affects the other. This is because of the law of God that everyone is one and everything is shared.

It is because of this that a MIRACLE can heal others and raise them from death!

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true."

"My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct."

"YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my seeing."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts."

"The idea for today is obviously the reason why your seeing does not affect you alone."

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

"But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."

"That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"Today we are again emphasizing the fact that minds are joined. This is rarely a wholly welcome idea at first, since it seems to carry with it an enormous sense of responsibility, and may even be regarded as an "invasion of privacy." Yet it is a fact that there are no private thoughts."

"Miracles seem unnatural to the ego, because it does not understand how SEPARATE minds can influence each other. Nor COULD they do so. But minds cannot BE separate. This other self is PERFECTLY aware of this. And thus it recognizes that miracles do NOT affect ANOTHER'S mind, only its OWN. They always change YOUR mind. There IS no other."

"No mind is sick until another mind AGREES that they are separate. And thus, it is their JOINT decision to be sick."

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"The reason why people are afraid of ESP, and so often react against it, is because they KNOW that thought can hurt them. Their OWN thoughts have made them vulnerable."

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others. The message which he then gives to others is the truth that THEIR MINDS are really similarly constructive, and that their own miscreations cannot hurt them. By affirming this, the miracle worker releases the mind from over-evaluating its own learning device (the body), and restores the mind to its true position as the learner."

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad."

"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

"However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"You are more than your brother's keeper."

"I miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself."

When there is conflict with someone, it may seem that one or the other person is wrong, but always both are wrong.

The ego takes two people and pits them against each other. It doesn't care who wins. In fact it will try to make both of them win, which maintains the conflict because it's impossible.

When you are in the ego conflict, you have to realize that it is not really personal. The ego is trying to come between both of you for ITS purposes of separation.

If you can stop and remember, wait a minute, NEITHER OF US is wrong, the ego is PLAYING us against each other and we are BOTH INNOCENT, then the entire foundation for the conflict has to dissolve.

This is the only way out of the ego. Either we are both innocent or we are both guilty and at war. We can never resolve situations by saying "I am right, you are wrong". That's unconsciousness. Until we are ON THE SAME SIDE, ie recognizing that the ego is acting on both of us in the same way and that we both want peace, we will continue to struggle.

So in this way it is helpful to think of the ego as a third party, an instigator, and a facilitator of conflict. It is better for us to 'side against it' together, by choosing not to play its game, than to continue to play it. Even if this means making out that the ego is a separate thing. Because as soon as we stop playing the game, the ego has to dissolve.

The ego IS the conflict. The ego IS the separation that comes between us. Its only aim is to increase separation. So let's not do that.

Let's forgive each other and be in the same boat and decide together that we're both innocent and reunite with shared interests.

It's very helpful for me to keep in mind the key fact, that every time I am upset about other people I am using them to get rid of my own sin.

Each time I become angry or upset or annoyed, or see myself as being attacked by someone, or they are just "wrong", it can SEEM as though I do not want them to be this way. BUT I DO!

I absolutely want them to attack me, hurt me, offend me, annoy me, be opposed to me, be wrong to me, etc.

Each time I SEE them as falling into this category, I will believe I am JUSTIFIED in being angry and upset about them. And my justification will tell me I SHOULD be upset.

But it's a lie. I'm lying to myself and them. I want them to hurt me so that I have a way to justify projecting my own sin and guilt onto them.

It's not that they are wrong, or sinful, or guilty, it's that I believe *I* am. I want to SEE them as the one who is sinful, at any opportunity, so that I can get rid of my shit.

Each time I find myself going into this justified reaction, if I can be honest and remember that I actually WANT them to be this way so that I can use them to scapegoat, it stops me in my tracks.

Seeing that my reaction is NOT justified, because the purpose and reason for my reaction is an dishonest attack on my part, it deflates the reaction and makes it easy to not pursue further.

The angry reaction just stops when the truth is introduced, because anger is a false reaction to a lie. Just this one simple little truth is leading me to give up every case of finding others guilty. Anger and blame was a TOOL I was using for a secret purpose.

It literally takes a step in the undoing of the ego, and marks the beginning of the end of all anger forever.

When I was trying to understand the true nature of oneness as given in ACIM, Jesus kept substituting the word "sharing". I didn't at first understand why that would be the same thing, but now I do.

We're told first of all that...

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it."

If you think on this, you'll realize why. God is infinite and unlimited. He is everywhere. He is the first cause and the first and only whole. He is the whole of everything. There is nowhere else unoccupied to put anything new. God cannot create anything unlike himself that we might call "different". And everything that exists already exists forever.

On those terms, it should be IMPOSSIBLE for God to create anything anywhere. He is already the "one whole". He is already perfect and complete. Nothing can be added to that, or can it?

There is a clause, you see, which Jesus gives - "EXCEPT by sharing it."

IF God were to SHARE himself, this bypasses the initial rules of reality and of wholeness, and allows an "increase" to occur. God can ADD something, provided that it obeys the rules of sharing, and doesn't violate any of the previously mention rules about everything existing already.

To be shared, something has to inherit ALL of what exists already. It cannot have anything new or anything unlike what already exists. What exists has to be entirely inherited as its own and as itself. What it has, it has to receive from God. It has to receive ALL of God. AND it has to give everything it has received.

In effect, God is capable of "adding sharers" within himself. These sharers MUST have a nature like his own of being fully wiling to SHARE everything they have and are.

They have FULL access to everything, at the same time as God does. How is THAT possible? You might think that if a created being has everything, this deprives God of everything. Or that only one of them can have everything at a given time. As if a son and a father are in competition. But in reality it is possible for this son to simultaneously have what the father has, and without limits, provided they SHARE IT WITH HIM.

Another way of describing this sharing is OVERLAP. The two of them are literally sharing the same space. They both have access to the same ONE WHOLE. Yet there are two of them. God has extended himself, giving all of himself fully, because that's the only way he can give. He gives ALL to FULLY create a son. And this son, IS a second being. BUT, this son can only exist so long as it SHARES all of God, sharing the SAME WHOLE at the same time.

This sharing between the two of them, is what oneness means. Oneness means direct simultaneous FULL access to the same one whole. This sharing does not allow the son of God to be "separate", in the sense of EXCLUSIVE, because any kind of exclusion is not an idea of sharing. The son is not excluded from God. The son is INCLUDED WITHIN God. He can exist BECAUSE God can share, and he can only exist SO LONG AS sharing is possible.

"real creation gives everything since it can only create like itself."

"In the state of being, the mind gives everything always."

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

If God can share himself once, ADDING a son within his own being, which shares and HOSTS him and has everything that God has, and shares the SAME ONENESS with him, there is no reason why God cannot share himself again and again and again. In fact God is unlimited in how much he can share. He can share himself INFINITELY.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

What has happened then is that God has created many "separate beings" who ARE many fully whole creations, whole and complete in and of themselves, but only because they ALSO SHARE THE ONE WHOLE. There IS one whole - which you could call oneness - but that whole IS SHARING, and HAS SHARED itself, producing many. We could almost say there are "many wholes", but each of these wholes shares the ONE whole.

This is precisely and exactly the definition of the holographic principle. In a true hologram, there are parts, and each of the parts contains THE WHOLE, and therefore IS fully whole in its own right - fully existing. But at the same time, there is only ONE ultimate whole, which each of the whole parts share and contain (host), and this produces a holographic relationship.

Holgorams SHARE a single whole with the same one whole, and yet are many. That is reality's nature. Because God is a creator and HAS created many wholes, who share the same whole. Each whole is a son of God - a soul, a member of the ONE SON, and thus the whole of the sonship - which is the whole kingdom. This is the truth in ACIM. That God has many sons who are simultaneously one because they are FULLY shared.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. "

This IS fundamentally different to the idea of "separate selves". A separate self is a part of the whole which DOES NOT SHARE with the rest of the whole. A separated off part. A part which does not want to share, and is therefore selfish. A part which was whole but decided to disconnect itself from wholeness. A part which now sees itself as only partly whole, partly existing, and APART from everything. This selfish self does not want to share because it is the idea of the OPPOSITE of sharing - the opposite of reality. That is what we call an ego.

God does therefore have separate sons, many creations, many minds, but at the same time they MUST share ALL of God, sharing the same one whole, which is why they are ONE. They are one AND many, just as in a hologram the many whole-containing parts are each THE same whole, even though they are many parts. This is a transcendental idea which ignores the rules of spatial separation.

These "separate sons" are not separate in the EGO sense because they are not separated by a lack of sharing. They are not SELFISH separate beings. They are SHARING separate beings. That is the ONLY difference between the nature of the Kingdom and the separation from God. In the separation all that happened was that individual SHARING beings who shared everything with each other and with God, became selfish, and tried NOT to share, thus "separating themselves off" - seemingly fragmenting away - from the holgoraphic shared union of the sonship.

Ending the separation, therefore, is actually a return to SHARING. "Atonement is a lesson in sharing." To resume relationship and communication is to return to a state in which EACH OF US SHARES EVERYTHING at the same time. Where we OVERLAP with each other. Where we return to being ONE WITH each other, sharing ONE identity as Christ, while still being many beings. It is the end of SELFISHNESS, not the end of SELF.

"The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

This is why the movement away from selfish egotism towards holy union and sharing, is a movement towards resumimg being a MEMBER of the sonship. It is also an EXPANSION of identity, because now a part of God which tried to see itself as NOT WHOLE, by denying the parts of itself it SHARES with others, now has to reintegrate OTHERS into itself and SHARE with them in oneness and equality. The sense of identity has to expand to INCLUDE OTHERS within itself, WITHOUT destroying the fact that God has many sons.

A return to your SOUL is a return to the sonship. "The sonship is your soul." The WHOLE sonship is your soul, while your soul is also YOUR soul. You are a part of God and all of God. You are a part of the sonship and all of the sonship. You are a part of the kingdom and all of the kingdom. You are part of heaven and all of heaven. That is the SHARED nature of reality. That is ONENESS in A Course in Miracles. It is not the end of yourself, but a return to BEING ONE WITH the father and with your brothers, SHARING everything with them forever.

"You who are host to God, are also host to THEM."

"I trust my brothers who are one with me."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self." "I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers, and my Self."

Reality, Heaven, the Kingdom of God, God's mind and thought system, real existence, Creation, your Divine Home, the Sonship, and the dwelling place of all the Creations of Light, is "structured" as a perfect hologram.

If you don't know how a hologram works, I'll try to simplify it. First of all we're not talking here about a projected 3D image like you see in the movies. Those are not holograms. They are just regular projected images.

First consider a photograph. A photograph contains a surface which has a number of locations on it. At each location there is a drop of color. When you view the entire surface you see a picture. But there is only one drop of color at each location. So when you move the 2D image in 3D, the image is still the same. Each part only contains part of the image.

Holograms are not like this. The difference is, a hologram stores an ENTIRE set of information, ir the whole picture, AT EACH location on the surface. So all of the picture is encoded in one tiny area, and another tiny area, and another. The entire surface is covered with "copies" of the entire image. The WHOLE image, is in each part of the image.

What this allows, in terms of images, is that you can encode "multiple viewpoints" of a 3D object, onto a single 2D surface. When you then move and tilt the surface, you actually see a DIFFERENT viewpoint. It's as if there are thousands of images all stored within one image, all at different angles, making the hologram appear to move in 3D.

This is based on the holographic principle that "the whole is in every part. and every part is whole".

The whole of whatever was the source object, is represented FULLY in EACH part of the second object. This also produces an interesting scenario in which, you can cut that surface in half with scissors and you don't actually LOSE any information, because the WHOLE of the image is stored in the remaining parts. And you can still see the "other sides" of the object as you move the surface, even if previously they were in the part of the image that was cut off. (But that's not really relevant to what we're talking about here.)

Now. In heaven, God is whole. God is everything, everywhere, unlimited. So God's fundamental nature is wholeness. He is the WHOLE of everything. All of it.

Then, God is a creator. "God did not will to be alone". "Divine abstraction takes joy in application". "God is first cause." Therefore, God creates by extending himself. This form of creation takes whatever is IN God, AS God, and places it into "another". God creates a second being, or what we call a Son of God, or soul.

Since God is whole, God can only create "wholly", and when He creates He FULLY creates (wholly), and gives EVERYTHING of Himself to his creation. The WHOLE of God is extended to the Son. This results in a situation where the SON is WHOLLY created, is FULLY created, is WHOLE in and of himself, HAS wholeness, AND shares the whole of God with God. The Son is a "standalone" entity but the Son is NOT CUT OFF from God - it is FUSED with God and SHARES what God has directly.

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

This relationship between God and His Son, is what we call INHERITANCE. The son, inherits everything he is, from God. In fact, God is IN the son. "You are forever host to God." The son is also given God's freedom, and given TOTAL freedom, and so this establishes the son as "free". Bound to God, in terms of oneness, but FREE "from God" in its own right, as an individual being. And since God is the WHOLE of being, God HOSTS this Son WITHIN himself by SHARING his wholeness with His Son. The Son is "separate", but ALSO joined.

"All loving creation is freely given."

"God who encompasses all being (the whole) nevertheless created separate beings (free whole beings) who have everything individually (shared with God) and want to share it (like whole beings do) to increase their joy."Now, SHARING becomes the fundamental attribute of all things in heaven, because God creates via a process of SHARING himself. "Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing." God hosts us within His being. So we SHARE what God HAS. e.g. "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

A son of God, who is a PART of God, and is also a WHOLE, SHARES all of itself with God, INHERITS everything from God, and therefore hosts the whole of God. Being a fully created free-willed being, this son of God is now established in a position of CO-CREATOR. This is because God is a creator, and the Son INHERITS fatherhood/creatorship/authorship. So the Son can now "do" what the Father did.

"God created the Sonship. You were created to add to the Sonship."

"It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

God does NOT stop at "only creating one child." "God did not will to be alone, and did not will that you be alone." Other Sons of God are also co-creators with God, and WITH YOU, and as such you AND God AND your REAL PERMANENT BROTHERS co-create together, because you SHARE EVERYTHING with each other as unified wholes.

"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

"Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-

If you are caught up in an emotional interaction with someone, upset by them or about them or struggling to forgive them, trying doing a forgiveness where you sever the connection of cause and effect between you.

By that I mean, make statements which completely cancel and undo all ideas about how the person is *causing* anything to happen to you whatsoever, and vice versa.

That person is not doing anything to me. That person has not upset me. That person isn't the cause of my upset. That person has not affected me. My feelings are not caused by that person. That person has no power over me. That person did not make me be this way. I am not dependent on that person to be happy. I don't need that person to treat me a certain way. I am not at the effect of that person.

Also, I have not done anything to that person. Everything they are experiencing is their own choice. I have not caused them to be upset. I am not responsible for their happiness. I have not made them be the way they are. I did not influence them. I have not hurt them. They are not at the effect of me.

Come up with as many statements like this as you can think of to reflect on how neither of you have caused the other anything whatsoever.

As you do this you should notice a sense of relief and also a growing clarity that you are both innocent, you are both powerful, you are both responsible for yourselves, and you are both free of the illusions relating to how you are doing stuff to each other.

The illusion that you are doing stuff to each other is entirely unreal. The ego can only attack itself. The ego in the other person can only attack itself. The ego in you can only attack yourself. Anywhere that it seems that something goes from one person to another is an illusion, just an appearance that both of you are doing something similar, or that you're each triggering off your own upsets. Neither of you are really causing the other to experience anything at all. You are both in your own ego's private worlds, interacting with your self.

Take full responsibility for everything you have done to yourself. Recognize they are responsible for everything they have done to themselves. Recognize that nothing has TRANSFERRED between you, neither of you has CAUSED the other to do or feel or experience anything, and both of you are entirely free of the ego influence of each other.

Whats mine is mine. What's theirs is theirs. This at least applies to the ego because egos are separate. What is OURS is OURS, which is love.

Only love is a shared experience. Only love can be joined in. Only love can be mutual and only love can be a real relationship in which two people are connected or communicating. All of the other stuff, all of the ego expressions, are not relationship or communication. They are just noise that each person is making from themselves about themselves to themselves.

No-one has ever done anything to anyone else. Everyone is doing everything to themselves. Nothing has really happened.

tl;dr ... but it's a forgivable mistake.

Heaven is an environment of spirit, of sharing and openness, of oneness and love. It permits the shared overlapping presence of many created beings. All of spirit PERMEATES each other and PASSES THROUGH each other.

Remember that "nothing real can be threatened." Heaven does not permit any part of the environment to act against any other part. It does not put up boundaries, there are no walls to keep things out or in.

Everything has access to everything at all times. There are no prisons, nothing to imprison, and nothing to attack the prison. There are no objects that are solid, with surfaces that collide, or which can attack or damage other objects.

In heaven, there is nothing acting against the freedom of will. There is nothing to oppose the will of God. There is no way to will against anyone. This produces an environment where there are no COLLISIONS between things, there are no hard surfaces that keep things out, there are no separate wills or forces which can act upon objects and cause them to change or move against their will.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of SIN. It's the idea that will can be used against will, that you can attack and affect something without be affected, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, that something can be hurt with no power to stop it. It's an idea of destruction and damage, of sickness and death.

This idea alone produced what we call SPACE TIME, a whole second order of "reality" rooted in the idea that one part can be separate from another, that one thing can act upon another without its consent, and real irreversible effects can be produced. Where one thing can act upon another thing against its will and change it forever.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

SPACE TIME is an environment, a system of thought in mind, completely dependent on the idea of sin. The idea of attack. That one thing can act against another. That there can be a war, a conflict, and a COLLISION. It is a world of attack on the will of God.

"The world (spacetime) was made as an attack on God."

This is why we have here physical matter, with objects which can act upon other objects without their consent. A rock can fall down a mountain and slam into a tree. The tree didn't ask for this. The tree is changed irreversibly. This is sin. Physical sin. One thing acting upon another without its consent.

It requires that there be solid surfaces. There has to be a resistance that is strong enough to REPEL something. This is why physical matter has atomic forces. The repulsion, a form of unwillingness, PUSHES AGAINST other things. It allows two objects to push against each other, thus affecting each other, moving each other, changing each other. Without solidity, sin is impossible. Without OPPOSING FORCES (wills) solid matter cannot exist and cannot have any properties.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. For without a body sin is impossible."

A body, a solid material physical object, be it human or animal or a mountain or a planet, is required in order to have sin. There has to be a separation, to keep the things apart. This takes the form of materials which seem to have mass and solidity. These two "separate" things can now act upon each other independently, not sharing a will, not sharing a mind, not sharing interests. They are in CONFLICT with each other constantly.

Conflict and war and murder and attack and sin are BUILT IN TO SPACE TIME. It is its fundamental nature. The entirety of spacetime is an hallucinated image, a PICTURE, of what it would look like if heaven (God's Son) were attacked against its will, complete with forces acting upon each other and opposing each other and conflicting and damaging and destroying.

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

One thing acting upon another thing against its will. That's the root of all of spacetime, the tiny mad idea, the violation of God's will, the attempt to oppose reality. The mere idea of FORCING something to happen TO something OTHER than (separate from) oneself. The idea of sin, of murder, and of death.

Because now if you can use power to cause/will a change in something else, and it changes, and the change is IRREVERSIBLE, that is the idea of sin. If I throw a brick through a glass window and the glass is broken and the brick is chipped, these are effectively PERMANENT changes. The broken window is now THE PROOF OF SIN, and testifies that someone DID throw a brick through the window. So long as the window remains broken, the proof is still there. And the window will never be the same again.

The ability to DAMAGE, to destroy, to attack, to rot and decay, to change anything at all, is the idea of sin. It's sort of like, we've tried to suggest that heaven can be attacked, hurt, changed, destroyed, and mangled into some new form. The entirety of spacetime is testifying to this at all times without end. Even when the objects are not touching. Even when they do. Even when the planets are far apart from each other. They are still at war.

It is an entire system of war, conflict, attack and death. The important thing to realize is that WITHOUT the idea that will can act against will, ALL of this is impossible. You cannot have WALLS, you cannot have OBJECTS, you cannot have BODIES, you cannot have PLANETS, you cannot have attack or murder or destruction, you cannot have MATTER, without the idea of sin.

Heaven is a system of total access. Spacetime is a system of denied access. Heaven is a system of everything being shared. Spacetime is a system of nothing being shared. Heaven is a system of nothing being separate or kept apart of unable to merge or overlap. Spacetime is a system where everything is kept apart and nothing ever joins or shares. They are TOTALLY OPPOSITE to each other in nature.

This also means that you CANNOT take Earth, bodies, space or time, INTO heaven, and keep it. They are absolutely incompatible. One denies the other. Sin is a "lack of love". You cannot take a lack of love INTO love and have it still BE a lack of love. Nothing about its LACK nature can be maintained if there is love. Just as light shines away darkness and REPLACES the darkness. You cannot take the darkness into the light and have it still retain its dark properties.

Earth, human bodies, space and time, are all ideas of sin and darkness and a lack of love. They will NEVER be that which they deny. They cannot be integrated into heaven because they ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE and DEPEND ON a LACK of heaven for their nature. As soon as you introduce the oneness, sharing, lack of walls, lack of hard surfaces, lack of collisions, lack of spatial separations, that is true of heaven's nature, there is nothing left to SUPPORT matter existing at all in ANY way. Earth DISSOLVES in the light and CEASES to exist. It is made of separateness.

You will not be able to "walk on the surface of the earth" in heaven's reality under heaven's laws. There are NO surfaces. There is NO gravity. There is no COLLISION between feet and ground. There is no SEPARATENESS to keep you from sinking into the planet. There is no POSSIBILITY of Earth or bodies whatsoever there.

What you CAN do, is you can adopt heaven's laws and viewpoint and look up the world of sin with forgiveness. It forgives the world BECAUSE of the world's limitations. It recognizes that the world (spacetime/earth) is not REAL sin, it is an ILLUSION of sin. And that really it is just A MISTAKE. Earth is a mistake. Spacetime is a mistake. It is FALSE. Not attacked, not condemned, simply nothing.

This is a key point which people need to really deeply realize. Spacetime is totally opposite to heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in EVERY way." There are no collideable solid material objects in heaven's reality. The world, earth, space and time, all bodies, must eventually be LET GO AND FORGOTTEN. Because they are nothing. And they cannot exist WITHOUT sin and death.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master. And this unholy instant SEEMS to be life. An instant of despair, a tiny island of dry sand, bereft of water, and set uncertainly upon oblivion. Here does the Son of God stop briefly by, to offer his devotion to death's idols, and then pass on."

"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise."

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

"From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"To see a SINLESS body is impossible. For holiness is POSITIVE, and the body is merely neutral. It is NOT sinful, but neither is it sinless."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings"

"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed? What disappears in light is NOT attacked. It merely vanishes, because it is not true."

"The body is NOT attacked, but merely PROPERLY PERCEIVED."

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

"The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The body is the symbol of the world. Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven."

"Forgiveness is this world's equivalent of Heaven's justice. It translates the world of sin into a simple world, where justice can be reflected from BEYOND the gate behind which total lack of limits lies."

"Forgiveness turns the world of sin into a world of glory, wonderful to see."

"Let us unite in bringing blessing to the world of sin and death."

"They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

God thinks in a holographic way, in that God who is whole can only wholly create whole beings who are themselves whole. And yet these whole beings must inherit and share their wholeness with their creator and with each other, because there is only one whole. This produces a dynamic in which many parts are themselves whole because they share and inherit their wholeness with the rest. God thus has many whole children who are part of Him and inherit all of Him, and who are co-creators with Him and with each other.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

What this then means is that God uses His mind to create additional minds which are, while whole minds in and of themselves, share a single mind. This singular mind is the Christ mind which is also their shared identity, and yet while being wholly Christ they are also simutaneously many individual souls. And each one of them has everything.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.""One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

Literally and without limitation or exception, you ARE ALL of your brothers. And EACH individual one of them, is themselves, and are also ALL of you. And together you are the Sonship, and in union you are the One Son, Christ.

Oneness does not ONLY mean that there is only one mind. Oneness does not ONLY mean that there are many separate minds who stay separate. Oneness means the many minds are one mind AND yet still many minds. Because this is how it works in a holographic system - which is the thought system of God.

The natural conclusion is therefore. ... every other person IS you, and you ARE them, and you are IN them, and you SHARE everything with everyone. You are literally IN their mind, and their mind literally IS your mind. And yet, at the same time, you have your own mind, because you have your own soul. That you can be fully yourself, and that this entails being also simultaneously fully all others, is miraculous.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

To recognize a shared interest requires that you recognize your brother - who temporarily seems to be in a body, is LITERALLY your shared self. If you were to recognize they are you, or part of you, your "interests" would be to look out for THEIR best interests as well as your own, and that it would serve you to support what is only in BOTH your best interests.

If they are you, it serves both your interests that you not attack yourself OR them, otherwise you are attacking both, and therefore yourself. This is where you begin to live by the Golden Rule, that the truth is the same for both of you. And it is by recognizing that they are literally one with you, that it becomes obvious that there is no sense in anything other than loving them.

As soon as a person recognizes in some way that other people ARE themselves, by which I do not mean there is ONLY you, but that we have a collective mind, in which you are you and they are them and yet you are both each other, this is the beginning of being a Teacher of God. It means that your mind is willing to transcend separation and recognize some degree of oneness with another, which is a unifying light, and therefore reflects God.

"A teacher of God is anyone who chooses to be one. His qualifications consist solely in this; somehow, somewhere he has made a deliberate choice in which he did not see his interests as apart from someone else's. Once he has done that, his road is established and his direction is sure. A light has entered the darkness.It may be a single light, but that is enough. He has entered an agreement with God even if he does not yet believe in Him. He has become a bringer of salvation. He has become a teacher of God."

It is wrong to merely say, "My brother is myself", as if to say that there is ONLY you. This is an ego standpoint. It also blinds you to the free will of others. It is also wrong to say "Me and my brother are SEPARATE". This also is an ego viewpoint, in which we are two and NOT one. Neither of these viewpoints are true and neither reflects God. What reflects God is what reflects His holographic nature, in which your brother IS you, and yet, they also have their own soul. Where it is simultaneously true, that you have a self with free will, and yet, you also share everything with other selves.

It's time to start being part of the living hologram of the mind of God. It is the BODY that hides this truth from all of us, acting as a separation device and presenting images of each other as different, unshared and unalike. Bodies are illusions. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured." But you can know your brother as yourself.

In the separation from God, we introduced an idea of "separateness" into wholeness. We believed it was possible for there to be a lack of wholeness. This produced the idea of "over here" and "over there", each distinct and different and seeming to lack the some part of the whole, setting them apart.

This laid the foundation for both space and time - notions that what is here is not there, or what is there lacks what is here. And so each seeming part of it seems to have a different form, a partial collection of attributes which sets them apart from each other. And neither has everything.

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness." And then we continued to subdivide and split the mind. We tried to assign certain collections of properties, aspects, characteristics, to some parts, and others to the rest. To break wholeness into seeming isolated chunks of form.

Each part took on a different form and meaning. Various forms or examples or versions of the same one error of separateness. This caused a multitude of differences to seem to appear, each held apart from the rest and separated out as if many things.

This inevitably produced an entire universe of many "forms of error", where each object or body is different to the rest. Each lacks what the others have, rooted in sacrifice and limitation. Not one is whole, and every one is partial.

And so each form appears to comprise different materials, shapes, structures, behaviors, colors, textures and appearances. From these scattered fragments of illusion, entire worlds seemed to arise, each unlike the others and unique in its appearance. Including every human body and every atom.

An illusion is the appearance that something is other than what it actually is - seeming to be something it is not. The single idea of separation, the one problem, shows up as multiple things and multiple problems. It is really one thing, but separateness leads to many forms. And every form is an illusion that the one error is many errors.

Each form says, "look at the ways I am not the same as the rest". And so as one form pulls itself away from sameness, another form does the same. And the two forms try to disguise the fact they are one thing.

And now each form seems to vie for attention. Every form is different, and therefore in conflict and competition. Some are larger, smaller, more or less important, more or less valuable, more or less serious, more or less difficult to deal with.

And now we have an entire hierarchy of illusions, from the gigantic to the tiny, and everything in between. The form that each form takes deceives by distracting you with its claim that it is not like the rest. My car is not a house. My boat is not an airplane. My trousers are not shoes. My ice cream is not a burger.

Every form is designed to assert a deception, a temptation, an illusion, that if its form is real and true, then it IS NOT the other things. This was founded in the simple premise that this world is NOT reality, or the negation of God, and so everything appears to be NOT the rest.

If you believe it, you are deceived. Because every form is a form of deception, an illusion that a singular idea of separation is many things.

One part says, I am not like the other part. Look at how I am different. Look at my different shape, color, size and makeup. Look at what sets me apart. Look at what I have which the other lacks. Look at our differences. Look how we are separate and not the same at all.

And to believe this is to be completely blinded to the the truth. Because if you fall for this and take sides, if you come to prefer one form over another, or think they are truthfully unique and valuable, then you have fallen for the ONE temptation of the world.

Every form is a lie. Every physical object and every body is a lie. Every planet and every star and galaxy is a lie. They are all designed to hide and disguise the one single illusion of separation.

So long as you are caught up in a life where the worshipping of DIFFERENCES prevails, where you prefer some forms over others, where you think that two things are not THE SAME, you are deceived and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as to fixate your vision on the perception of FORM, making the separation real.

The body's eyes look only upon the forms of error. Only the body makes the world seem real. Its fixation on differences, changes, inequalities and comparisons, blinds you to seeing any kind of singular truth. It sees a world of a billion truths, none making any sense or meaning anything at all. The whole message of ACIM is that we need to transition AWAY from a world of differences, towards wholeness. To repair the sense of fragmentation in the mind and restore singular oneness.

This requires seeing THROUGH the deception of form, and not believing it. Not believing that a car and a house are real differences. Not believing that a living body and a dead body are real differences. Not believing that some objects are more important or valuable than others. Realizing that we gave the world of forms ALL the meanings that they have.

To flatten the hierarchy of illusions is to recognize that ALL illusions are one illusion. A single error presents itself to you in every conceivable form of deception. If you buy into it, you think there is an order of difficulty, where some things are harder to deal with or change than others.

To recognize there IS no hierarchy, is to recognize that all forms are the SAME. That every form of suffering is the SAME. That every form of sickness and death and life is the SAME. That there is ONE thing here, not many. That the manyness and the differences are entirely untrue. That one thing is sneakily showing up as a massive multitude to HIDE its true nature of being just one thing.

This is why there is really only one lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, that ALL FORMS of suffering have a SINGLE cause. This is why the workbook lessons have us NOT be selective in which forms we apply things to, so that we will learn that forms are meaningless decoys. This is why we are to recognize there is ONE problem not many. And this is why there is ONE truth and ONE law and ONE atonement.

Every form that the world takes is a lie. Every time it says you should want this form or that form, it is trying to get you to take sides. Every time you take sides there is war. Every difference of form IS conflict. Everything you see with the body IS conflicted, with objects vying for attention, some nearer some further, some louder some quieter, some more "appealing" than others.

All of this is ONE thing, one effort, one scheme, to TEMPT you to believe in the differences so that you will not recognize they are ALL THE SAME. That this whole world is entirely unreal. That not one form is more real or important or valuable than another. That there aren't billions of choices, there is only one choice.

ALL illusory forms are like two characters who act and speak and present themselves differently to try to create the illusion that they are not ONE actor. The mind is ONE actor, taking on the role of multiple simultaneous parts, pitted against each other. So long as you do not recognize that ONE mind is playing ALL the roles, of both victim and victimizer, you will be deceived by form.

In a world of forms, all the forms are untrue. Not one of them IS reality. And none of them show you what is true. To see only physical form is to see nothing but error and sin. True vision will show you that their many appearances are lies, and that there is a singular truth behind them. We are addicted to a world of forms, believing in specialness and made-up values. Made-up worth. Made-up importance. Goals and toys and special jobs and relationships and things you want and things you don't want.

All designed to keep you locked into a hell of form and separation. To keep you tempted that the next big thing will save you. That the next form the illusion takes will be the one you've always wanted. So that you never realize NONE of them are true, NONE of them are real, and NONE of them are what you really want.

That without deception, lies, falsehood and temptation, there is NO WORLD HERE AT ALL. Without form, there is no planet and no body. And behind all forms is the one lie that started it all, which the world of forms was made to hide - that separation is even possibe.

"A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts."

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

"For how can one illusion differ from another but in attributes which have no substance, no reality, no core, and nothing that is truly different?"

"Today's idea is another giant stride in the perception of the same as the same, and the different as different. On one side stand all illusions. All truth stands on the other."

"Illusions battle ONLY with themselves. Being fragmented, they fragment."

"Illusions CAN conflict, because their forms ARE different. And they do battle ONLY to establish which FORM is true."

"The meeting of illusions leads to war."

"EVERY illusion is an assault on truth."

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

"The thought of sacrifice gives rise to all the forms that suffering appears to take."

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion."

"For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms."

"The dream is but illusion in the mind."

"The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing."

"Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

"You are so used to choosing between dreams, you do not see that you have made, at last, the choice between the truth and ALL ILLUSIONS."

"This course attempts to teach no more than that the power of decision cannot lie in choosing different forms of what is still the SAME illusion and the SAME mistake."

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized."

"Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."

"Those who are special MUST defend illusions against the truth."

"Guilt ASKS FOR punishment, and its request is granted. NOT in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions BUILT on sin."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent."

"Yet has God given Answer to the world of sickness, Which applies to ALL its forms."

"NO illusion has ANY truth in it. Yet it appears some are MORE true than others, although this clearly makes no sense at all. All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"What relevance has preference to the truth? Illusions are illusions, and are false."

"Illusions HAVE no witnesses, and no effects. Who looks on them is but deceived."

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

"For this establishes degrees of TRUTH among illusions, making it appear that some are HARDER to be overcome than others."

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"This illusion can take many forms."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""

"The strength of pardon is its honesty, which is so uncorrupted that it sees illusions as illusions, not as truth."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Though the dream itself takes many forms, and SEEMS to show a great variety of places and events wherein its "hero" finds itself, the dream has but ONE purpose, taught in many ways."

"Bring, then, all forms of suffering to Him Who knows that every one is like the rest. He sees NO differences where none exist, and He will teach you how each one is CAUSED. None has a DIFFERENT cause from all the rest, and ALL of them are easily undone by but a SINGLE lesson truly learned."

"Not once do the advanced teachers of God consider the forms of sickness in which their brother believes."

"The gap that is not there is filled with toys in countless forms."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"You are advancing to love's MEANING, and away from ALL illusions in which you have surrounded it."

"You who believe that God is fear made but ONE substitution. It has taken many forms, because it was the substitution of fragmentation for wholeness. It has become splintered and subdivided and divided again, over and over, that it is now almost impossible to perceive it once was one, and still IS what it was. That ONE error, which brought truth to illusion, infinity to time, and life to death, was all you ever made. Your whole world rests upon it. Everything you see reflects it. And every special relationship you ever made is PART of it."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs."

"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."

"Never foster this illusion in yourself, or encourage it in others. An "object" is incapable of release, because it is a concept which is deprived of creative power."

"What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it."

"All that a hierarchy of illusions can show is PREFERENCE, NOT reality."

"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning. ... Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured."

"Before a holy relationship, there IS no sin. The FORM of error is no longer seen."

We have many names for death. Headaches, cancer, diabetes, wounds, heartache, unhappiness, grief, lack, depression, insanity, all of it is really death. According to ACIM anything even slightly less than total immortality - eternal life - is a form of death.

"Death is a thought which takes on many forms, often unrecognized. It may appear as sadness, fear, anxiety or doubt; as anger, faithlessness and lack of trust; concern for bodies, envy, and all forms in which the wish to be as you are not may come to tempt you. All such thoughts are but reflections of the worshipping of death as savior and as giver of release."

We have categorized all these sicknesses as if to say there is an entire hierarchy of illusions, some more severe or more dangerous or more total. But they are all one thing, really. Fear of cancer is really fear of death. A cold is a small death. Being sad is death. Anything which moves us away from eternal life is attempted suicide. Any slight lack of absolute joy and worthiness is a sense of having died.

So it's not like, you've just got an issue with a certain kind of sickness, or an inherited specific problem, or a propensity to contract certain issues in certain situations. It's all really one thing. One illusion, all of it is death, and it has only one solution.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

Each time we are unhappy we're moving into death. Each time we're afraid of sicknesss we're moving closer to death. Each time we hold a grievance we want some death. Each time there's a slight twinge of annoyance we're going into death mode.

When we are as God created us, willing to be only that, we are immortal. "You are immortal and you cannot die." And that immortality is accompanied by God's will, joy, love, eternal life, peace, happiness, constant perfection, holiness, creation, etc. These are our natural birthright, given by God. When we move in any way against these things or reject or deny them we are attempting death.

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. "Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is JOINING."

Each time we move into unconsciousness in some way, into some kind of life-denying rejection of love and joining, a breakdown in our holy relationship, we are trying to bring about death by making ourselves UNAWARE of the truth. This unawareness, attempted unconsciousness, is attempted death and attempted murder. It's not in our best interests, although ultimately it's just a dream and not a reality. But dreams can be nightmares to those who don't want life.

A Course in Miracles is a course in life. A return to immortality. Resurrection from a state of death. We are literally coming back to life, coming home to eternity, and returning to immortality in God.

"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations).

The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom).

Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order."

Also...

"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."

When we have free will, and it’s really free (not under illusion) it creates like God creates, freely, independently. What we will is the same as what God would will. But it is still our free will which wills it. When we enter into illusions, the will becomes NOT free, because entering into separation is a denial of freedom and a denial of will. Therefore the ego does not have free will. The ego is the denial of freedom and will. The ego only has WISHFUL THINKING. And to wish is to not will at all. To have no will at all is to not will to live, which is the choice to die.

Because EACH SON has free will, each son INDEPENDENTLY gets the TOTAL FREEDOM to decide, whether or not to believe the ego and oppose God’s will, or to co-create with God. Blocking will means you are choosing to be against your own will. This creates the split ego mind, within which you have multiple conflicting wills. At the very least two (typically persona and shadow, or conscious and unconscious).

When your mind is split your will is split, and you will be in CONFLICT with yourself. At war with yourself. You will attempt to will one thing with a partial will, and another part of you will attempt to oppose it. Trying to oppose God’s will opposes your own will. This puts you into a tug of war between yourself and yourself. This cancels out the effects of your willing, because each time you will one thing, you also will to stop it and bring about an opposite. This puts a FREEZE on your will, making you POWERLESS, and incapable of willing anything at all. To use your free will against itself renders you impotent and UNWILLING. It also means you no longer will LIFE, and therefore make death as a statement of your unwillingness to live.

The ego has no will. It only has wishful thinking. Death is wishful thinking, because it is impossible to kill God’s son. The secret to salvation tells us we are doing this all to ourselves. That’s because we are the one WILLING against ourselves in a split mind. Willing against God’s will and against our own will produces an alien will which we fight against within ourselves.

When our will is split, we cannot perform miracles. When our will is WHOLE, we are SINGLE MINDED, with a single unified will which does not stop itself from expressing, and a whole mind is a miraculous mind. Miracles express from wholeness. Spit-minded people are anti-miraculous (anti christ). To be miraculous you must use your "whole heart", or whole will, not a partial will. Being "in two minds" (with two wills) means being in fear, and miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of fear. Whole mind has no limits to what it can create because when it wills, it does not oppose its own will, and therefore what it wills MUST be expressed and manifest.

Also since we all have our own FREE WILL, this does not mean we are necessarily contradicting each other. It does not mean we are willing against each other provided we all want the same thing. We are all willing the same thing. We all will to expand and create and share love and joy. It is ONLY when free will is used against ITSELF and against God, that we attack ourselves and go into a state of a split mind, where our will ceases to produce real effects.

This produces a private world of dreaming in which our will is divided and fragmented, along with our identity. We then seem to have a "separated will" which is attempting to implement the authority problem. It is an improper use of will. It is an attempt to will something that God would not will, a fiction or an idea of loss/lack/attack etc. Willing to "create death", is actually a will to create NOTHING, and so is an attempt not to will anything at all. This is why nothing real can be threatened - no opposing will can truly will anything.

Also because we have free will, this FAR MORE CLEARLY explains the workings of perception. In that, it is our task, each of us individually, to take full responsibility for what we are experiencing. It means as an individual son, *I* am responsible only for what *I* am doing to myself. It is not possible to do anything to other people against their will. It is not possible to be affected by anyone else’s will. Everyone’s will is equally powerful, which is why Jesus can’t force us to wake up. Whatever I am experiencing, I did it to myself.

Having free will means that I am responsible only for the INNER content of my mind, which is my state of self attack and conflict with myself, in which my own will is opposing itself. It also means I am responsible for my own mental and physical health. It also means therefore, because other souls have FREE WILL, the state of their mind and their body is NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY. Nor does the state of their mind or body have ANY POWER to cause me to be UNABLE to choose absolute atonement and awakening for myself as ONE SON in the sonship. Jesus has already proven this. We are not holding him back. If other people were part of his mind "lagging behind" he would not have been able to wake up because we would be holding him in hell "against his will."

No-one has the power to stop you from returning to God. No-one has the power to choose for you. No-one has the power to force you to be awake. No-one has the power to force you to heal. No-one has the power to make you be "not sick" if you want to be sick, and all sickness is the choice of THE INDIVIDUAL FREE WILL to select sickness for themselves. Each individual Son with free will DOES select and create THEIR OWN BODY. Bodies are not created en-masse like some kind of production line by a single "son" - EACH SON materializes their own body and they are responsible for it.

Other people’s sickness is NOT in my mind. The only thing in my mind is my additional layer of projected sin that I ADD to their pre-existing condition. Taking that projected sin OFF of them, which wasn’t even ON them to begin with because ideas do not leave my own mind, WILL NOT heal them. All it will do is it will allow me to PERCEIVE CORRECTLY and clearly, recognizing that THEY STILL are insisting, by their own free will, that THEY want to make themselves suffer. They also have to be willing, idependantly, to want to receive help and healing, otherwise there is nothing we can do. This is why every part of the sonship has to become WILLING to return to sanity on their own.

The idea that there is only one son, or no son, or the son is god, or there are not multiple sons, or no-one has free will, or there is only one free will, or the entire content of my perception includes all other people’s un-freely-chosen suffering, or that other people’s sickness is my sickness, or that other people are inside my mind, or that I cannot perceive other people’s free will choices (even the choice to be sick or dead), is ALL BULLSHIT.... derived from a basic fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge that God gave FREE WILL to every single Son/Soul he created, and He created multiple equal sons each of them ABSOLUTELY FREE to choose on their own, AND therefore each is 100% responsible for their own self, mind, choices, consequences, suffering, death, or choice to accept atonement.

Without free will it is impossible to properly explain the functioning of perception or the choice to be sick or how the mind works or what the course means on wide variety of topics. And without acceptance of multiple free wills, everything will just get lumped together into one big soupy MUSH ... which is the equivalent of putting the sonship in a blender.

YOU have free will. YOU are responsible for what you create. YOU are responsible for what you choose. YOU are responsible for what happens to you. YOU are responsible for accepting the atonement for YOURSELF. YOU are responsible for making yourself sick or well. YOU are responsible for extending God’s will or choosing to oppose it. YOU, one of many sons of God with free will, are NOT responsible for the FREE WILL CHOICES of other free-willing Sons of God. And their free will choices have nothing to do with you, nor can they do anything TO you, nor can you do anything TO them against their will.

You are NOT responsible for other people being sick. You are NOT responsible for other people choosing fear. You are NOT responsible for other people staying asleep when you wake up. You are NOT responsible for making others sick or well. You are NOT responsible for putting suffering into the world as though it is part of your own mind, when in fact it put there either by other people’s free will or as a collective decision. You are NOT responsible for fixing other people’s freely chosen suffering. You are NOT responsible for anyone else in any way, OTHER THAN.... to offer a SERVICE to them, by offering them miracles, and becoming open to SHARING WITH THEM.

Since you have free you can give miracles because you temporarily have more, and can give miracles to those who temporarily have less, to fulfill a lack - a lack which another brother HAS, but you DO NOT have. Their lack is NOT your lack. Their lack is NOT part of your mind. God created many sons, many free wills, and MANY MINDS. You must forgive and awaken IN SPITE OF the free will choices of others.

Here are some more statements about our free will which clearly tell us that we have free will as given by God:

"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 wonderful it is to do your will! For that IS freedom. There is nothing else that ever should be called by freedom’s name. Unless you do your will, you are not free. And would God leave His Son without what he has chosen for himself? God but ensured that you would never lose your will, when He gave you His perfect Answer. Hear It now, that you may be reminded of His Love, and learn your will. God would not have His Son made prisoner to what he does not want. He JOINS with you in willing you be free. And to oppose Him is to make a choice against YOURSELF, and choose that YOU be bound."

"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."

"The world awaits the freedom you will give, when you have recognized that YOU are free. But you will not forgive the world until you have forgiven Him Who gave your will to you. For it is BY your will the world is given freedom. Nor can you be free apart from Him Whose holy Will you share."

(Please note, when this part says you share God’s will, that DOES NOT mean that God takes over your freedom and you have no freedom to will. It means you AGREE with God’s will and extend His will which is the SAME as your will in its character or attitude. You have the same KIND of will that God has. God is free, and so are all of his children.)

Being separated in bodies, we have become accustomed to seeing ourselves as CONFINED. As though completely fenced in.

But this is utterly UNLIKE the way we really are.

It is far more accurate to say, you are everywhere, and in all people, and share everything with everyone. You overlap them, merge with them, join with them, part of you is in them and they in you. This is your natural state.

Bodies were made to isolate you and confine you and separate you off from the parts of you which are IN your brothers, to make it seem as though you have been disallowed to connect, join, communicate, or love each other.

The body is the idea of sin or separation. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards".

When studying ACIM then, from Jesus's perpsective, your true nature is that you are not confined to your body, you are unlimited, you are everywhere and in everyone, you share everything and literally are inside of other people.

In that context, you can better understand why he says so many things about the Golden Rule applying, about what you do to your brother being done to you, how you cannot attack without attacking yourself, how recognizing your brother's truth recognizes your own etc.

All healing therefore is actually the undoing of CONFINEMENT and ISOLATION, restoring the CONNECTION and COMMUNICATION with your brother, lifting away the separations that have been put in place BY BODIES to split you off from others, and restoring the wholeness and unity that is natural to you.

Health IS oneness with your brother. Healing IS the repair of the RELATIONSHIP between both of you. Separation and blocks to awareness do not just apply to YOU, they apply BETWEEN you and your brother. Your sickness is an attack on BOTH of you.

Just because you have BECOME ISOLATED by the separation idea, you think that in your confinement, anything the course is saying applies to your CONFINED SELF. As though it speaks only of your isolated "self' that is inside your body. IT DOES NOT. It is recognizing that you share fully with all brothers and that in your NATURAL condition you are everywhere and one with all people, actually literally IN THEM. And therefore, the idea of separation is not just something "inside" your mind, it is what MAKES YOU ISOLATED from others.

Holy relationships are therefore completely natural. They do not just mean two *separate* people being holy toward each other. They actually mean two individuals who have FULLY JOINED AND MERGED MINDS and are essentially sharing the same space! You are in your brother and your brother is in you. "One mind contains all minds. One brother is all brothers." You overlap with your brother and join with and share with them like a FUSION of individuals.

It's far more effective then to realize that every form of separation, every block to awareness, every form of sickness, every way you isolate or are in denial, is not simply something you "do to yourself', it is something you do TO BOTH OF YOU, IN-BETWEEN the two of you. Your bodies were made to imprison you AWAY from each other, and being set free from that imprisonment doesn't mean you remain NON-SHARING, it means you return TO OVERLAPPING WITH EACH OTHER, beyond the bodies.

The body when used as a communication device is therefore completely overlooked, it's form or attempted isolation is turned into a holy temple, and the light in your mind shines PAST it directly PAST the body of your brother and extends INTO their mind. Communication is direct mind-to-mind or soul-to-soul sharing. This produces the ERASING of separation and therefore the reversal of all sickness and death.

This is why Jesus says "no-one returns to God alone". You return to TOGETHERNESS. Unity. Sharing. Oneness. Mutual holiness. Joined minds. Shared interests. Overlapping experience. Equality. Blending into your brother as though they are yourself. Sharing space with all brothers. Collapsing separation and collapsing spacetime.

God and his Kingdom are a perfect hologram, in which the whole is in every part, and every part is the whole.

But then there was a separation. The separation was an event where we tried to deny the wholeness but keep the parts.

If another name for the wholeness is "non-duality" (or oneness), and another name for the parts is "duality", we tried to keep the duality and reject the non-duality. To "separate off" our selves from God, retaining only our separate selves without sharing anything.

This resulted in what we call seemingly spacetime - the dream of separation - which depicts "exclusive duality" as though it's ONLY duality with no oneness.

In spacetime we have perception. Perception can go to extremes of denial and acceptance of God. In false perception it rejects the oneness entirely, while in true perception it accepts it.

True perception shows you "the real world", which is another way of saying "the world as it is without the distortions of your insanity projected onto it".

This "real world"... has a quality of WHOLENESS. This wholeness is sort of like a dream version of oneness. It is also called the face of Christ. It's like the wholeness aspect of God's divine hologram but in dream form - as a "picture".

So as you reach the real-world level of perception, you're entering into a sort of holographic experience of spacetime. That is, you are accessing a sense of oneness and wholeness and unlimitedness, in which you expand to the size of the universe and seem to contain all of it within you.

In this view, you see that the whole is in every part. Every object's separateness no longer "means" or "tells you" that separation is true. Instead, you see the WHOLE reflected in every part. As though, all of the PICTURE of wholeness is present in every individual object.

This isn't merely the same as waking up and being more alert and seeing the same separate objects head-on with some kind of enhanced alertness. It's a mindset in which you have this greatly expanded wholeness, a sort of reflection of oneness, which is seen to TRANSCEND all boundaries and separations.

This transcendental experience shows you that the REFLECTION of God is in every part and speck of matter ("God is in everything I see"). All of God is pictured "in" every grain of sand. Not simply that God has squeezed himself into one grain, but that he is simultaneously in each and every individual grain, and not in any kind of compromising way either. ALL of him is in EVERY part.

Note however the main difference between the holographic experience of spacetime and heaven, is that heaven is an ACTUAL perfect hologram, whereas spacetime is an IMAGE OF a perfect hologram - a PICTURE. This is why it's also called the FACE of Christ and not Christ itself.

So in our waking up here in/from this world, we should expect to find that the seeming separate differences of objects matter less and mean less. Their forms don't tell us of a hierarchy. All differences become equal and irrelevant. We overlook them, which is forgiveness. And instead of focusing on letting the forms BLIND us to a oneness, we instead see a transcendental oneness pervading the forms and showing that the forms are a way of OBSCURING the hologram.

I have had an experience of God some years ago in which I came to this experience and saw very clearly this exact dynamic, in which the WHOLE was seen in every object, and each part contained ALL of God. And this revealed to me the way that when you focus on the separate objects and forms they OBSCURE the fact that God is all-in-all, and instead present a "broken picture" in which there is NO WHOLE IN ANY PART. And that's the difference between true perception and false perception.

I found a couple of segments in ACIM that speak to this sort of "holographic experience" of the world. Note here when it talks of a "picture" it is saying an image, not the ACTUAL thing but a PICTURE OF it - once removed from it.

"The Holy Spirit's Function is to take the broken picture of the Son of God, and put the pieces into place again. This holy picture, healed entirely, does He hold out to every separate piece that thinks it is a picture IN ITSELF. To each he offers his identity, which the WHOLE picture represents, instead of just a little, broken bit, which he insisted was himself. And when he sees THIS picture, he will RECOGNIZE himself. If you share not your brother's evil dreams, this IS the picture that the miracle will place within the little gap, left clean of all the seeds of sickness and of sin. And here the Father will receive His Son, because His Son was gracious to himself." URT28E7

"I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS." UrT28E8

When we typically experience the world from an ego viewpoint, we might encounter lessons and people and problems. And then we attempt to forgive these things. And we think we are then done with forgiveness. And then another one comes along. And then we do another forgiveness. And this gives you the impression that you are doing forgiveness.

But over time, you are really moving horizontally through the world, encountering obstacles, one at a time, and these obstacles always seem specific. The form of the obstacle is what deceives you. The problem with your mother, the problem with the plumbing, the problem with the sick brother, the problem with your boss. Each one seems specifically different and unrelated to the rest. And so you perform a string of seeming forgivenesses through time.

But as you perform each forgiveness and move towards truth, you are in fact moving UPWARDS, towards the light. And this upwards movement may seem to be more subtle and gradual, such that it isn't even specific and it may be difficult to realize whether you are making upwards progress. But over time, it will start to occur to you that each of the seemingly different "forms" that problems take, is itself an illusion.

You will start to see that each of these forgiveness opportunities have something in common. Common characteristics. There's always some problem with your belief in who is causing who. And there's always some issue of authority and power. And there's always fear and reaction involved. And there's always the same stresses. And as you progress you start to generalize the learning and start to transcend the forms and differences. And then it starts to occur to you that these are not all different situations.

What forgiveness reveals to you, is that you aren't really in fact having to deal with a multitude of totally different problems, but that in fact the whole world, ALL of the problems, are doing the same thing. And ALL of the problems have the same characteristics. And ALL of them are forgiven in the same way. And this starts to show you that it's not really a specific problem with specific people, or specific groups, or specific situations, it's a problem with THE WHOLE WORLD.

And then you start to question the nature of the whole world. Maybe the WHOLE world is a collection of attacks. Maybe all of it, regardless of the form it takes, is ONE problem. And now you are starting to not fall for the illusion of form or the shape that a problem takes. You are realizing that either you move downwards into the darkness of hell, or upwards into the light of heaven. And either you are lost in the battlefield of stress and misery, or you are above the WHOLE battlefield in light and happiness.

Forgiveness starts to now take on a different direction. Its not so much to do with having a DIFFERENT way of handling each situation, but of developing a SINGLE "way" of dealing with them all. And you start to see through the deception or form that each one presents. And you stop falling for the obvious temptations. And now forgiveness is seen as vertical, in which either you are moving into hell or out of it, as a whole. And the qualities of the whole WORLD are now being brought into question.

You are now asking yourself, whether ANY of the things that happen are real. Whether ANY problem is really happening. Whether ANY person's attack has anything to do with you. Whether there even IS anything specific or different about any of it. And as you broaden your horizons to learn very large abstract truths such as that there is no world, this is just a dream, NONE of it is happening to you, loving everyone equally is the way to holy relationship, unity is the truth, sharing with everyone is unconditional love, etc... you move away from the specific towards the abstract.

And now it boils down the real "root cause" of the WHOLE of suffering, the reason for EVERY reaction, the purpose behind EVERY sickness. And you discover there not only really is only one problem, there is also only one solution. One solution to rule them all. And only one lesson that the Holy Spirit is teaching. Either the world is real or its not. And if it is real, you will suffer. And if it's not, you are free. If it's a dream, you have no basis for reactions or fear. If it's not a dream, you cannot help but react in fear. This is a fundamental lesson in the generalization of the teaching. That every form the illusion takes is just as DECOY to distract you from realizing that it's ALL the same.

This causes you to also start realizing that the hierarchy of illusions is a lie. Some things are NOT harder or more difficult than another. The form of a problem lies about its severity. You start to question whether a giant cancer is really any more threatening than a headache. You see how the ego tries to correlate the seriousness of a cause with the appropriate level of reaction, and you stop falling for this lie. The hierarchy starts to flatten, and all of the deceptions that make it seem like a world-sized maze of confusing corridors and disjointed pieces, simply start to fuse into each other as they're all seen as ONE DREAM. One problem, one solution.

"Miracles entail a sudden shift into vertical perception".

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

"Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the same"

"We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told."

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

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

"You should truly give as you have truly received. The Golden Rule can work effectively only on this basis. "

"...This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)"

The Golden Rule is simply based on the fact that God creates in his own likeness. The sons he create are all identical to each other and are identical in nature to God. Being identical is what "being one" means.

This means that what applies to one son, applies to all sons. And what applies to any son, also applies to God. The same rules apply equally to all of God's creations, who are all treated equally with unconditional love.

This sets up God's "law" - the Golden Rule - that quite literally, whatever applies to you, applies to others, at all times.

The Golden Rule is always in effect because it is always true. It is even in effect when you go into ego denial and pretend that it doesn't apply.

For example, everything to do with the ego is the denial of the Golden Rule, in which it asserts something different applies to you than applies to others. The ego is the idea of "being different", which is the same thing as specialness.

Being different is of the ego. Being identical is of the soul.

When something seems to apply to one and not another, this sets up the ego's murderous thought system. This means that you believe there is a separation between cause (God) and effect (Sons). Therefore you believe you can cause without experiencing effects, or that there is a separation between giving and receiving. That the Golden Rule does not apply.

This belief is murderous because it means you are attempting to cause someone (who is really your equal), to produce effects in them, while being separated off from those effects, thus "getting way with" murder. This is why "what is not love is murder."

The Golden Rule is always applying, no matter where you are. Even in the dream. Even as the ego attempts to *pretend* that the Golden Rule is not applying, it is applying. And it thus suffers the consequences, because DENIAL of the law does not circumvent it.

That means that, for example, if you attempt to treat a specific brother in a way that is different to others, you are in denial of the law, and MUST experience that how you treat them you are treating yourself. But you will pretend that you are able to treat them a certain way while escaping the consequences. Yet you will NOT escape the consequences.

It is not just a matter of IF you do unto others they will do unto you. Nor is it an optional matter of "treat others as you would have them treat you". Others may not seem to comply or reciprocate. The fact is, you cannot NOT do this. As you treat others, you ARE treating yourself. Directly.

Acknowledgement of the Golden Rule also acknowledges the secret to salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. However you try to see or treat others, you will treat yourself, and so you are hurting yourself when you try to hurt another. And anything they seemed to do to you, you must've done to yourself, because everything is shared equally.

Being in denial of the law does not cause you to escape the law. You can never be outside of the Golden Rule. It is God's law. It is firmly rooted in reality. If you pretend that it doesn't apply to you, it STILL will apply and then you will likely hurt yourself.

Trying to deny the law and act as if it isn't operating, you will do something to others that you think you can get away with, but instead indirectly hurt yourself. You may not realize that you hurt yourself, but you do. Trying to deny the law leads to "karma", or rather, self-inflicted attack. All attack is self attack.

The only way to be happy is to comply with the law. When you do this, the law is really on your side. It treats you well, because it recognizes that you deserve to be treated just as equally as everyone else. It recognizes your divine equality with all beings and that you deserve to be loved UNCONDITIONALLY and fully at all times.

When you operating in alignment with the Golden Rule you are perfectly safe, perfectly loved, perfectly empowered and free from all suffering. It is the recognition that you are as God created you and that all brothers are your perfect equals.

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad."

You will be glad to recognize that what applies to you applies to your brother. You will be glad to recognize that the TWO of you are identical, and that each of you is equally treated with the same love by God. And you will be glad to see that you both SHARE everything together and have been given EACH OTHER to share WITH each other, that you not be alone, because God does not will to be alone.

And in that identicality, you are "one" - of one kind - with each other, and so recognize and know your brother as yourself.

The Golden Rule is littered throughout A Course in Miracles. It's embedded into and lays the foundation for so many concepts and ways of relating to others. The way that as you treat your brother you treat yourself. Your use of your body to demonstrate to your brother what you think of him. The sharing of minds. Seeing your oneness in him. It's all based on this fundamental principle, to love your brother as yourself.

Your main problem is one of identity. You've attempted to change your identity from Christ, to take on a new identity as an ego.

Your sense of your "Self" has become associated with, attached to, and confused with, an alternative model of identity.

The ego is nothing but a device, a contraption you invented like a vehicle. It's something for you to cling to and to try to model yourself on. It does absolutely nothing on its own. It is lifeless.

It's not until you attempt to become joined with the ego, as though becoming one with it, that it becomes a problem.

If you think of it as a costume (like the body), it's not until you actually wear it that it seems to change how you express yourself.

Or, like a pair of goggles, it's not until you put the goggles over your eyes that your perception is changed. You can put them down again at any time and immediately resume normal vision.

You, as a Child of God, bring your sense of Self with you wherever you go. Your Self is your identity. The ego has no real self at all. However, if you bring your sense of Self to the ego and merge with it, you combine your sense of Self with its way of filtering reality. You then see "through" it, and see in the way that it would see if it had its own ability to see.

It is only your own ability to see - awareness - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego perception. It is only your own ability to experience - being - that you combine with the ego, that seems to give the ego the ability to experience. It is only your own power which you share with the ego, which seems to give the ego power. It only shares any of this with you while you are joined with it, and as soon as you take it off, it would just drop to the floor lifelessly. Just like the body.

The problem is, when you've put your ability to experience and your sense of Self into the ego, trying to cling to it tightly as though making you become like it, you will now experience life through its eyes. Whatever it sees or how it looks at things or what it wants or how it values or what it believes, now becomes your experience. And you will see reality as very frightening when you look with the ego!

That's a problem because the ego's way of looking at reality is completely backwards. Seeing life through its eyes you will instantly reject God. God will suddenly seem to be an attacker, an enemy and a threat. The truth will suddenly seem like it is against you. The truth will come across as being the complete opposite of what you are, because it does not contain any separation, and the ego identifies with being made of separation. So the truth will then seem to be an affront, highly offensive, dangerous, hideous, and like some monster come to destroy the ego.

You, as immortal spirit, using and attached to the ego, ... if you attempt to become more spiritual while still wearing the ego identity, ie still joined with the ego mind and still looking through the ego goggles, will have a pretty interesting experience. You will not want to wake up. You will see any efforts to wake up as harmful and hurtful. You will interpret efforts to wake up as suicidal and sacrificial. And you will become afraid that the truth is coming along to destroy you. This can potentially provoke you to put up defenses against the truth, producing sickness and ultimately death.

This is precisely what you will experience each time you try to open up to more truth. Each time you let in some light. Each time you want to become closer to God. You, attached to the ego, inadvertently try to bring the ego into that light with you. It cannot go there and it won't go there. It will see it as you trying to destroy it. And it will put up a fight. Part of you which seems not to be in the ego gets closer to the light, and the part of you which does not want to let go of the ego - believing it is your Self - kicks and screams and resists and hates you for it.

This produces the ego rebound. Essentially, the ego rebound comes from trying to make the ego more spiritual, by attempting to bring it closer to its opponent. While you are identified with it, your attempt to go visit God without leaving the ego behind will create an elastic effect which will snap you back into the body and you will subsequently rage because of how you did such a horrible thing to your "self".

Waking up must entail the letting GO of the ego, recognizing that it is not your identity. Otherwise, each time you pull your "Self" into the light, and thus the ego with you, it's going to hurt. The ego cannot see the truth in any other way. It only sees the opposite of the truth as being true. It will never change. The ONLY way to be free of it is to let it go, to stop being it, stop wearing it, stop looking through it, and stop using it. We have to learn that the ego is NOT our "Self".

So this is purely a matter of identity. Are you made of ego? Is your Self really separate from God? Who are you? Are you Christ? Are you a body? Are you part of the ego thought system? Are you made of sin and guilt and fear? Do you believe in what the ego believes in? It's only because you have become CONFUSED about what really is YOU, and what is the ego, that you are having to go through this struggle of "awakening'. You literally believe, through the ego, that you are trying to destroy yourself by waking up.

Sometimes when you are exposing yourself to "too much truth" or "too much Course", you'll have these ego rebounds. You kind of can't help it. You are still holding on tightly to the very thing which is clouding your judgement, while simultaneously trying to be free of it. This makes you torn. Trying to be in two thought systems at once, or two canoes. There is part of you that sincerely believes you are the ego and you are the body. The suggestion that these things don't exist frightens you.

Letting go, letting go, letting go. Stopping being ego. Surrendering the false identity. Remembering who you really are. Accepting the truth that you are Christ. Relinquishing your belief in, trust in, faith in, confusion with, and reliance on a false self that isn't really a part of your identity. You literally believe the ego is who you are. It's not. Just some clarification needed. Some discernment. Is this really true about who I really am, or is this just a misperception caused by me using the ego goggles? Is this really who I am, or is this just a body I'm wearing temporarily?

Sorting out "who you are" is what this entire process is about. Each effort to "find out" will likely be partly fruitful and partly self destructive. Each time it will potentially offend you. Gradually you will inch towards awakening. Jesus says, "most of you will come in tears".

Each time you have a rebound, try to focus on LETTING GO. Just stop to recognize that you - part of your Self that's still identified with the ego or body, has become deeply hurt and offended by what the truth said about it. IT believes that the truth is vicious and mean and disrespectful. It is scared and freaking out because it doesn't understand what the truth really means or implies.

It, seeing through the ego, sees your efforts as blasphemous and an attack, and so it feels attacked and guilty. And that's what you'll feel like when you get a rebound - attacked and hurt and guilty. Recognize that in you and have compassion for that part of you. Try to get that part of you to let go of being ego.

Try to reassure your "self" that the truth doesn't mean YOU don't exist because YOU are not the ego. Be gentle with that part of you which is just like a confused wounded animal in the corner. Be kind to it. Don't push it too far too fast, that will just hurt more.

Likely you will have to feel the feelings of the hurt that was created by "its" mis-perception of what you did. Your attempt to wake up was like an abandonment of the ego self, like a self sacrifice. It doesn't have the ability to see any other way. So take your time and rest and recover and stop pushing yourself so hard.

Gradually and gently you need to learn to just LET GO of the ego because it is not who you really are. What you'll learn about your real identity is going to be quite a surprise!

When you're first starting to apply A Course in Miracle's idea of forgiveness, it begins with where you're at and what kind of a perception you have.

Most people will be starting out with a mind that is quite strongly convinced that everything external is real, that there are many very distinctly separate problems, that other people are very wrong and are the cause of all their problems.

With that way of perceiving, as you start learning to apply forgiveness it can be quite difficult. The idea that you've even been scapegoating at all is something of a revelation, or that blame is an attempt to project guilt, or that the person who is upset and accusing someone is actually the person who has the problem and not the person they're blaming.

Attempting to forgive when your mind is spending most of its time in that kind of a way of believing/looking at the world, seems like a big challenge and a big mess. It's hard to even remember the basics and harder still sometimes to get your mind out of the basic belief that you've been victimized by someone.

Taking back some sense of the projecting you've been doing at first appears to be the vast majority of what you "do" to forgive, because it at least is taking some steps to recognize that there may be more going on here than meets the eye. Appearances may not necessarily be true, and its possible there is another explanation for why it *seems* like someone else is guilty.

You can potentially spend some years just in that mode alone, learning each time you forgive that what you perceive happening has an explanation that's got something to do with you. That maybe you have some kind of perceptual or distorting problem going on in your mind which is changing how you see things. So then it seems that you go to town on your perception and learning to correct it.

After a while, because learning becomes generalized, and because correction of the mind becomes permanent, you gradually learn to form a clearer picture. You gradually peel away your conviction that problems are about other people. Each time each individual problem is forgiven, even if the forgiveness is not complete in its undoing (and early on it usually isn't), each example of you teaching yourself that there is a different way to look starts to turn into an overall different way of looking. It's like building a new way of perceiving one block at a time.

So eventually it's like, you've seen the same trick presented to you by the ego over and over again, and each time you've applied some kind of forgiveness, even if its a very sloppy inaccurate forgiveness riddled with mistakes, you gradually become clearer about what the truth is. And this gives you a firmer footing in the truth. You become less susceptible to being tricked by the *illusion* that there are many separate problems, or that the problems that show up are unlike each other.

Gradually it sinks in that "this" problem is actually pretty much the same scenario as "that" problem and you start to *transcend* the surface appearances. You at least begin to chisel away at the more obvious distractions and illusions, tending to fall mainly for the subtler ones or those that you didn't really tackle before. But you're still making progress and your mind is gradually learning to see *all* problems differently.

So with time, pretty soon you are not so easy to fool. You've seen the trick one too many times and have learned how it is not the truth. So it's kind of then like, you will notice the trick quicker and catch yourself and not fall into the trap so easily.

Also what happens over time then is you go "deeper" into your truth, which means your mind is waking up and you're examining and sorting out true from false at subtler or more abstract levels. Your refinement of "how" to forgive continues and you just keep collecting more and more insights. As you develop the right minded thought system and open up to Holy Spirit's truth, gradually it builds upon itself and lightbulbs go off more and more often. Things click together more and make more sense, and you get this sense that you are "getting it" with aha moments.

Some years later perhaps you might notice that you're no longer really fooled by the major surface appearances of problems and issues, but instead are operating at a much deeper level of forgiveness. What needs still to be undone are more fundamental beliefs, core values, major perceptual errors, profound beliefs about the basic nature of what is real or not real, etc.

When shit happens, most of it will not stick. The part that continues to stick continues to show you ways that you need to refine your grasp of the truth. But your forgiveness in general, the activity of what you need to do to correct your mind, dwells more often in the realm of what's going on within yourself. Having taken back a lot of your power and responsibility and owned up more to your part in what you experience, it becomes more a matter of just continually owning up to the truth rather than having to deal with lots of projections or blame or being heavily lost in stories and dramas.

It becomes more about what you are doing to yourself, what's happening in your own mind, recognizing that you've been inside your own private world and so have others, and also the growing awareness that intellectualizing the course does not lead to love. And yet, growing within you will also be an ever stronger sense that love, as simple as it sounds, is the key to everything. It is the truth that you want, it is the experience you want to have, it is what you want to share, and it becomes ever clear that simply love is the answer you've been homing in on this whole time.

It's all just a long process of refinement and clarification and chiseling away at beliefs in separation until your mind is returning to an awareness of wholeness and a truly forgiving attitude. Just being love.

With regards to your ego and the ego of your brother, everything about it is self inflicted and separate. What is in your ego is not in your brother's ego. They are two separate, private worlds. They do not connect or join or communicate or share.

Everything happening within your own ego is not happening because of or in connection with or caused by what's happening in someone else's ego. It's all happening entirely independently.

Therefore, where the ego is concerned, you need to be completely responsible for the self-contained world that your ego lives in, which is a closed world, closed to your brother. Everything about it, all of the ego experiences, feelings, reactions, perceptions, are all entirely within yourself and are yours. Own them.

You need to disconnect your ego from the egos of other people. You need to realize that two egos do not communicate. You need to realize that what another person's ego is doing (anything unloving) is not in any way shape or form a cause of anything happening in your own ego. And vice versa. You are not doing anything to their ego and their ego is not doing anything to you. Egos are separate. Egos are individuals.

However, there is something that you do share with your brother. The only thing you can share with your brother, is sharing itself. Sharing means love, joining, communication, openness, equality, freedom, truth. These things, you DO share with your brother. These things, happen to both of you at the same time. These things are mutual, shared interests. These things connect you to your brother and join you together.

So be clear about this. The parts of your experience that are ego, you need to become very clear that these are SEPARATE from your brother and have nothing to do with him. They are your own private hallucinatory world. Nothing goes outside of this world. Ideas leave not their source. Your brother's ego ideas do not leave your brother either. Neither of you causes anything in each other through the ego. Your egos are completely separate and disconnected. All they can do is make noises and postulate before each other, but it is up to each person to decide whether to use their ego or Holy Spirit in perceiving the activities of another.

If it's ego, its yours. If it's love, it's shared. Never do egos really communicate and never do egos really cause things to happen to each other. The idea of attack is entirely an illusion because attack is withdrawal into a private world. Nothing any ego says is ever about you. Nothing your ego says is ever about anyone else.

Only in the holy relationship is there any real sharing or real communication or real relationship because it is a relationship based in reality. Ego relationships are not relationships at all.

The ego's thought system resulted in this physical universe including the Earth. It is all based on separation and exclusion and difference. The ego's way of THINKING and reasoning logically, is completely consistent, yet based on "separating out" everything and comparing the parts to each other.

To make forms of matter or objects, the ego has separated things out, claimed that one thing is different to another, has given certain illusory properties to one object which another object does not share, and thus establishes that they are not only "different" from each other, but that because of these differences they must be SEPARATE. Not just a little separate, but COMPLETELY separate.

So for example because an apple looks very different and has different taste and structure and color to a banana, the ego reasons that the apple is different to the banana, not sharing the same qualities or characteristics, and therefore they cannot be ONE THING, and therefore must be TWO THINGS.

This is not merely a way of thinking ABOUT the world we made. It actually is the thinking BEHIND the world, the thought system which PRODUCED the world, and every part of physical matter in this universe proceeds according to these same rules.

Every atom is unlike the others, no two objects can share the same location, everything is different and changes, no two things are allowed to be seen as exactly identical, and because all things are different to each other this gives them a fragmented "identity". This is why regarding someone as a human body "identifies" the person AS being that body, because that body clearly does not overlap or share anyone else's body, and looks different and has different form, therefore is not the SAME, and therefore is SEPARATE.

So separation is BUILT IN to this entire universe's fundamental fabric. It's built into all matter. In fact, because differences mean that something applies to one thing and not another, another word for that is MURDER. From it has come the ego's laws of cause and effect which state that one object can affect another object WITHOUT receiving any consequences, which is exactly the same thing as "getting away with murder". This is because the ego's thought system is murderous, and all forms of INEQUALITY and competition or "not being identical" are forms of murder.

Sacrifice is also completely built into this universe. Because the ego has separated everything out into discrete separate parts, which are each different, its reasoning extends from this. And so it SEEMS logical to say, because oranges are orange and this banana is yellow, it can't be an orange. That seems to make perfect logical sense, except it is insane. It is insane because the banana and the orange are being KEPT APART by the separation idea, they are being made to look DIFFERENT to each other on purpose, and they are a PICTURE OF DEATH.

That means that for example if I eat the banana, there is only an orange left. And that means, the banana has now been sacrificed, because there is now a LACK of banana. Lack is fundamentally built into this universe. It's part of the laws of this world, the ego's laws of chaos. In this world, to give "matter" to someone means to LOSE IT, and therefore to decrease what you have. It's not merely your thoughts about the world that produce this kind of conclusion, it's literally BUILT INTO the way that this world's "reality" is set up. Therefore this universe is fundamentally DRIVEN by scarcity and LACK and ATTACK.

Then, whenever we think in terms of how we usually "reason out" something to do with this world, we actually have MAPPED our logical reasoning onto the way this world functions (or is an extension of it). So now it SEEMS to make sense to say, if Paul's body is not the same as Susan's body, then Paul is not Susan. This makes SENSE, but it is INSANE, because Paul and Susan are NOT SEPARATED by their bodies and the Holy Spirit recognizes that they SHARE MINDS and therefore they are IDENTICAL and NOT DIFFERENT and are NOT ENEMIES and therefore there IS NO SEPARATION between them as such.

So the Holy Spirit's thought system is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how the ego thinks, God's world is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how this universe functions and is structured, God's MIND thinks totally opposite to how this world thinks, and all of the logical conclusions that "make sense" to the ego are UTTER NONSENSE in God's eyes.

Yet we use and trust and rely on the ego's way of thinking to "learn the course" and to try to understand what Jesus means and what the nature of Heaven is and whether or not God has created many sons or minds, etc.... all producing FALSE conclusions that make SENSE to the ego. And because we TRUST that the ego's "sense" is actually sanity, or a sane conclusion, we are too quick to ACCEPT that these conclusions are the truth about God's creation, not realizing that we're totally overlooking and distorting His nature USING the ego as our guide to God.

In God's world, everything is essentially IDENTICAL In its nature, nothing is in competition, there aren't any "differences", one thing is not "separated from" another in the traditional ego sense of total isolation, and yet there are many individual beings which the EGO reasons cannot be possible. The ego sees separations where there are none, and sees singularity where there are distinctions. It cannot see how God could have "parts" or "creations" or "sons" without FALSELY concluding that this indicates isolation.

God and the ego do NOT communicate, so for the ego to think it can look at God "sanely" and make correct evaluations, is also insane. But we CAN learn to think like God and to share His mind and see what He sees, learning WHY it is possible for Him to Create the way He does, in violation of what makes sense to the ego.

In forgiveness, we usually start out the "fixing" of our mind by believing that someone ELSE is at fault. That the cause is external. It's usually a split minded state, riddled with dissociation, denial and projection. Scapegoating is happening and fingers are being pointed.

The general consensus is that you then work on unravelling this "confused" state of mind, recognizing your part in it, taking back the projecting, undoing the inner sin and guilt beliefs etc, to return to a state of love and peace.

What occurs to me though, is that over the much larger course of time, we are moving gradually out of "general false perception" towards "general true perception". And that entire process takes a considerable amount of effort. And there is a parallel to what we seem to do in our "little forgivenesses".

In effect, we all start out in quite heavy false perception, body identified, projecting often, filled with guilt and sin, fearful and blameful, confused and dissociated, in denial and scapegoating all over the place. We are "low" on the ladder.

Even if we do a forgiveness in that state, which may seem "complete" if done well, we still basically are quite low on the ladder. There is much more to be corrected and undone than can be done in one little forgiveness effort.

Over time we sort of "accumulate" the effects of all these forgivenesses and gradually move our mind, in general, up the ladder towards the atonement. Or towards "consistent forgiveness".

It takes a lot of purification work, dealing with life lessons, working through our personal curriculum, meeting people, forming and breaking relationships etc, to move all the way up to the forgiveness state of atonement.

In effect what we're really doing is just one BIG LONG forgiveness, in bite sized chunks, based on specific seeming situations, taking small steps gradually up the ladder each time.

As a result of this, I think, we start to "in general" lift up out of the darkness, so that overall, or most of the time, we're not quite as low and dark as we used to be. And as we chisel away at the granite block of sin, we gradually lift up higher. We're really moving slowly away from false perception - the starting point of unforgiveness - towards true perception - the final climax of TOTAL forgiveness.

So we can say, forgiveness is really not "finished" per se until your mind is in a complete forgiveness state, which would mean accepting the atonement IN FULL. And each forgiveness we do, tends to be in little pockets or bite sized chunks. We take each as far as we can shifting from false to true perception, but there is still a lot of baggage in the background - more stuff to be forgiven, before we can consistently live in an elevated state.

If you do a particularly strong and deep forgiveness, you can in fact take it all the way to atonement truth, in which sinlessness is recognized, innocence is accepted, healing is received and God's love is welcomed. This can be quite intense and profound and curative. But most likely it's not the end of your work, because there's a lot of other stuff buried in the mind, like layers of an onion, the next one being lined up for you to start working on right away.

Gradually we move up towards total forgiveness, just as in EACH forgiveness effort we're trying to get OUT of false perceptions into TRUE perceptions. If we REALLY did a really powerful super-deep thoroughly extensive forgiveness, we would perhaps wipe out all our ego in one swoop. But is that really likely for most of us? Not really. We take bites out of it. We deal with the current "form" of the overall one lesson, and we gradually generalize the learning.

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

So really, until we reach total complete and unconditional forgiveness as a constant state, we have not really finished forgiving, and have not really completely moved out of our false perceptions. Mind correction can be a long road and take a lot of time, depending on where you're at. But eventually, gradually, we inch closer to the whole truth and each forgiveness effort we undertake helps to boost us a little more further towards it.

We could say, honestly, that the notion of doing a TOTAL forgiveness, fully successfully, having just forgiven one person or one problem or one form, is highly unlikely. Even if you feel that you forgave someone and let go, there's likely plenty more in your mind to forgive yet. In all truth, forgiveness is a gradual and unfolding process of many bursts of correction in many areas, until the whole thing culminates in a climax of perfection.

Probably the notion that "you're done" when you feel good about ONE problem, is really based on the blocks to awareness, whereby the conscious mind is not yet aware that there's a shitload more to work on yet buried behind denial. Just because you clear out your conscious mind at this time, doesn't mean you have dealt with your entire psychological baggage, or the totality of the ego thought system. There's plenty more where that came from!

In time, we are gradually brightening our light, sharpening our reason, clearing our mind, and ascending upwards towards heaven.

ACIM is not really non-duality, or duality. It's sort of both. ACIM makes this clear statement about the nature of God and reality:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you" UrT16C3

This is the holographic principle. There is a whole (God) which has parts (sons of God), and each part contains the whole (oneness with God). The one whole is shared by the whole and the parts (brothers, inheritance etc).

Most people think of reality as sort of "one thing". Like one large area or an expanse or some kind of bigness. But that's more or less the same as the idea of spacetime or the universe. God is not actually like that. God is holographic.

In a holographic system there is a singular wholeness, which we call God. But there is also a characteristic of this wholeness - the entire wholeness is in every part. Every part of God contains the whole of God. ALL of God pays FULL attention to EVERY part simultaneously - because God is infinitely transcendental and can do this even if it sounds impossible.

God is also a creator and is capable of fully absolutely creating secondary beings who are like himself. But he cannot add-on anything outside of himself, so instead he adds on INSIDE of himself.

He does this by SHARING himself entirely with that which he creates, and that means that his creation has to also SHARE all of itself with everything. This is a kind of "internal expansion" of the Kingdom. It does not involve creating OUTSIDE the kingdom or beyond be pre-existing totality of God.

This sharing produces fully-created beings who inherit everything from God and share everything with God. They have a oneness with God. But they ARE fully created individual beings. They are completely full in every sense of the word. They contain everything like God does. Which means they absolutely exist, and yet at the same time are one with the absolute.

This results in a holographic system in which God is the main whole who creates "additional wholes" that share everything with him and with each other. Each part of God has the whole of God in it. Each son of God contains the whole of God and everyone else. We are all unified and merged and fused together.

This doesn't mean we lose our duality. It doesn't mean we lose individuality, or that we can't tell where we end and God begins. We DO have a discrete independent existence as absolute beings. But we ALSO have total oneness with the whole.

This seems like a paradox to most people. But it is actually miraculous.

Because a holographic system has wholeness to it, we identify that wholeness as "oneness" and might call it "non-duality". However, a holographic system ALSO has parts to it - whole parts, which share the whole and yet are whole in their own right. These "parts" might be called "duality".

This means that IN REALITY, the nature of God as a holographic system comprises BOTH ... non-duality AND duality, fused together as one. Everything is God, but God has parts which are living beings in their own right.

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. And it means that there is material which in a certain CONTEXT is focusing on the non-dual aspects of the hologram, such as the oneness and the "God is" and "there is no opposite" and all that. But in other contexts it also speaks of God's infinite creations, the many sons of God, your own creations, your own kingdom, permanent brothers and so on.

ALL of these aspects of the course are simultaneously true. Even if they sound contradictory. If God's reality was NOT holographic they would indeed be contradictory and you'd have to resolve that by separating off some parts as "ego" or "separation" or "illusions". That's what many people do, in error. Because they don't realize reality actually is a holographic system not a "blob".

Ultimately then ACIM is not non-duality, or duality. But it is PARTLY non-duality and PARTLY duality. The two are fused together in a kind of "trans-duality". Transcendent of both exclusive-oneness and exclusive-separateness. God is not EXCLUSIVE anything - God is INCLUSIVE. Which is why the "non-duality" INCLUDES "the duality".

By duality here I do not mean spacetime. Spacetime is duality WITHOUT the non-duality, ie exclusively dual. That's not the same as the trans-duality of God in which every part is the whole. In space time, every part is PARTIAL and incomplete. The opposite of duality is not-nonduality, it's transcendental of the whole "either this or that" mindset.

"The whole does define the part, but the part does NOT define the whole. This is as true of knowledge as it is of perception." UrT8H2

"There IS no difference between the whole and the part where change is impossible." UrT8H2

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." UrT9E5

"Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole." UrW320W113

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him, and nothing contradictory to His Will is either great or small." UrT10G10

"It shines in every part of Him, as in the Whole." UrT17E16

"Every loving thought held in ANY part (of the Sonship) belongs to every part. It is shared BECAUSE it is loving. Sharing is God's way of creating, and also YOURS." URT5F9

"The creations of every Son of God are yours, because every creation belongs to everyone, being created for the Sonship as a whole." UrT7J6

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness." UrT6B13

The Course uses the term "Sons" 82 times.

The Course uses the term "children" to refer to the "children of God" 42 times.

The term "Sonship" is used 104 times.

The course also uses the term "parts", "minds", "aspects", "extensions", "channels", "brothers", "God's thoughts", "souls", and more, on multiple occasions.

All of these are plural. There are HUNDREDS of references to the fact that God created MANY SONS. Many extensions, many minds, many souls, many parts/aspects of the sonship.

The sonship having multiple parts does NOT mean the parts are separate, or separated by bodies, or estranged from each other by illusions of ego, or illusions of multiplicity, or any other form of separation that we would recognize as separation.

The sonship, in Heaven, in its entirety, experienced all simultaneously by God, is often referred to as "THE Son of God" or the "One Son". This does NOT erase or cancel out the fact that God created MANY Sons. It is simply talking about how ALL of the Sons are capable of SHARING equally, how they experience a Oneness with all parts of God's creation.

Oneness does not mean... one big blob. If it did, God would not have ANY SONS. Not even ONE. If God is oneness, then there is not even a Son of God. Clearly that would be severely against the Course's teaching. It does not teach that there is "no son". In fact, it teaches that because of what it is, LOVE MUST EXTEND and be shared, and it must CREATE, and the natural result of that is the creation of AT LEAST one Son. And the Course has explained that there are MANY, MANY, MANY Sons, many minds, many souls, which GOD CREATED, and which are whole in and of themselves.

The problem our ego minds have, is that we can't get our head around this idea:

There are many sons, who are simultaneously ONE, and who experience oneness, and are each a whole, and yet also are part of a combined whole, yet each is still an individual will free will. .... The ego has NO WAY to understand how that makes sense or is possible, especially when it considers any HINT of "separation" or "multiple" to mean... some kind of ego concept.

That we can't understand logically HOW this makes sense, or how it is possible, or what it means, does not mean it is lying to us. The Course is not lying to us. This is simply one area that the ego cannot easily get its head around. The ego cannot understand oneness. So to dismiss is on grounds of EGO LOGIC, which arrives at a false conclusion here, is a mistake.

"But how can God have multiple Sons if Oneness is a single thing" ..... this is the same question as, "How could the tiny mad idea happen". The ego is asking. The ego wants to figure it out. The ego thinks that it is capable of seeing WITHOUT separation, and that when it LOOKS AT the Sonship - the multiple Sons of God one with each other, it is CAPABLE of seeing the truth. It can't. When the ego looks at Oneness, ALL IT SEES IS SEPARATION. It will never be able to SEE the oneness of the sonship at the same time as recognizing that God created MANY SONS WITH FREE WILL.

To then base an entire theological understanding of what the Course says and means, on the idea that there are NOT multiple sons, and none of them have free will, and any way that they are distinct is "separation" and therefore illusion, WILL RESULT IN a very warped interpretation of the Course's metaphysics.

When there is no room in the ego's grasp of the Course to accept multiple sons, there is no way to explain properly how perception works or how minds work or what illusions are or how people have free will or who is dreaming what or who is responsible for what sickness or who is making what body appear. It ALL becomes confused in one big blur.

While persona ego self, within our body, is firm in the belief that our shadow self, projected outside of our body, is 'not me', there is a sense of separation between the two and there is war and conflict.

In this condition, the in-here self will not want to claim ownership of the projected shadow content (guilt etc) because it *appears* unwanted. The persona does not like to accept things that it does not want, it focuses on rejection in order to include selectively.

So while we're in this state, with stuff projected, it will APPEAR to us that what we projected is terrible, bad, unwanted, hated, unforgiveable, evil etc. And because it appears that way, nobody in their 'right mind' would want to claim ownership of it.

However, it ONLY looks that way BECAUSE the persona is trying to reject it, condemn it, judge it, and get rid of it. If the persona in our mind, in our body, was not perceiving our 'self' as being intensely opposed to the projected 'out there' self that is our shadow content (guilt etc), then this IMPRESSION that the shadow is an evil external enemy would not be perceived. But this would also mean the inner persona self would not be able to see itself as a separate limited identity of 'goodness and innocence'. And it doesn't want to give up that facade.

So it's really only because the persona and shadow are kept SEPARATE and (as in a split mind) are war with each other, that it seems they appear to each other as enemies. If they were NOT kept apart, but instead came together as a unified, ONE SELF, the separation would dissolve, the impression of evil enemies would disappear, and we would not see that projected self as evil or attacking us.

In other words, the secret here is.... your enemy only seems to be an enemy while you choose to PERCEIVE them as an enemy, and if you weren't doing that, and you weren't putting walls up between you, and you weren't attacking 'them', you would simultaneously realize that they are no longer seeming to attack you. And this is how the two become one, and the persona and shadow then dissolve into each other and are undone (which means the whole ego is undone, because the ego is a split mind), and what is LEFT is the personality which is your real self.

What seems like a scary monster behind the door only seems that way while the light is off. Turn on the light, the light of truth, the light of awareness that you are BOTH the persona and shadow and that really you cannot be against yourself, and the fear and horror and conflict must melt away. Instead you find peace.

I hope I am clearly conveying what the ego's TRICK is here.... it is only an illusion that your enemy is your enemy.... it's really the separation BETWEEN the two of you that is the problem, and it's making them seem like an enemy. 'They' are really the other half of yourself. The two need to come together and stop being separate and against each other, which means the persona has to stop rejecting and attacking and being conditional, and the shadow has to stop doing the same. Then you are of one mind, a whole mind, which is at peace, realizing it was the war that made everyone look like enemies, and really both sides were innocent all along.

You can't be attacked by someone else without attacking them first. You have to believe you are attackable, otherwise you'd be invulnerable. By seeing yourself as attackable, which is an attack on yourself, you are also attacking others. Whatever you believe about you is shared with everyone, and so you believe everyone else is just as attacked. You cannot attack yourself with something and believe it affects only you.

Each sickness is attack on yourself and everyone else. Each injury is an attack on yourself and everyone else. Each bad mood is an attack on yourself and everyone else.

Then, holding a focus on self-attack, you radiate and 'call for' attack, which expresses itself outwardly as a kind of invitation, energetically and mentally, which is sort of like laying a trap and sending an invitation.

It's very easy for people to come along and fall into that trap because it's a temptation. If they are not really clear about who they are and the certainty of their own innocence, they will likely buy into what you're selling and go along with it, proceeding to launch a "counter-attack" ie to give you what you want. You'll think it's not a counter attack but an initial attack because you don't recognize you attacked first. And then you'll blame them for attacking you because you don't want to admit that you attacked yourself before this all happened.

It's especially easy if you are more sensitive to energy/emotion in others ie more empathic, to 'sense' when someone has a certain attitude about themselves. I feel this particularly with many people who are overweight who actually 'call themselves' "fat", on an energetic level. They actively are walking around 'tempting' others to agree with them and to hate WITH them, in hopes of proving that they are worthless. It's really a test, and choosing not to buy into that temptation and to overlook how they see themselves is forgiveness.

We all know that it's very controversial among more dualistically-minded people to suggest that anyone "asks for it", especially when seemingly serious things happen to some people. But Jesus would counter that nothing happens without your consent, and this takes a huge amount of honesty and willingness to look at yet alone admit to.

Without admitting it you truly are powerless because if you did not choose this, you cannot choose against it either. But if you did choose this, yes, it is painful to acknowledge you did this to yourself or wanted it in any way whatsoever, but at the same time, this owning up gives you back power and gives you hope for being able to overcome it. Without this self empowerment there is truly no hope for recovery.

So what are you broadcasting today? Do you have a big sign on your head saying "loser" or "reject me" or "hate me" or "don't love me?". What are you asking for? Or rather, what truth would you have apply to you and everyone else equally?

There is only one trap. The ego has only one tool. Do you know what it is?

Separation. The ego wants to come between you and God, between you and yourself, between you and others.

It has one devious way of doing this, which in all its forms is exactly the same trap.

As soon as you believe in separation, you perceive a difference between you and God, between you and your real self, or between you and others, you have fallen for it.

As soon as you see difference, you will see a different meaning for each party, and will award each of them a different label. One will be more good, one more bad. Or one will be more right, one more wrong. Or one is better looking, or one is more spiritual, or one is more mature, or one is a better friend, or whatever. Conditionality.

To put it even more simply:

The ego wants you to TAKE SIDES.

By taking sides, it gets you to believe that one of the two SEPARATE CHOICES are better than the other in some way, more preferable, more desirable, more true, more credible or worthy or real.

The instant you do this, you COME BETWEEN yourself and God, yourself and your real self, and yourself and others.

Let's be clear about the ego's motives.

The ego does not give a shit who wins the war.

The ego does not give a shit who is better or worse.

The ego does not give a shit who is good or bad.

The ego does not give a shit who is more evil or holy.

The ego does not give a shit who is right or wrong.

The ego does not give a shit who is winning.

ALL it wants to do is SEPARATE what once was one, into separate parts, to distinguish what it is that keeps those parts separate, and to emphasize that difference as much as possible.

IT DOES NOT MATTER which side you take, where you fall, who you align with, or what you think is a better option. If you are choosing darkness and evil, you are just as much falling for the trap as if you are choosing to try to make out your are "good" and well behaved. If you are the winner of the war or the one that gets destroyed, it doesn't matter. The ego doesn't give a shit. All it wants to do is COME BETWEEN, to keep apart, to separate out and to stop there being unity or oneness or wholeness.

So don't fall for the primary trap, the only trap, of believing that you are escaping the ego by going into one of two sides or one of two possibilities. Or that you're more spiritual by siding with appearances of spirituality (the spiritual ego). Or that you're less spiritual if you're siding with appearances of darkness and rebellion.

BOTH the dark (the shadow self) and the `light` (the persona) are parts of the EGO SPLIT MIND. And both of them are dependent on each other. And both of them are attacked by each other. And both of them are doing things which are mistaken. They both uphold the separation.

It doesn't matter what side you pick. IF you pick a side, that is what matters. IF you go along with the illusion that one party is better than another, or one choice is better than another, you are fucked.

The ego's major weapon with illusions is to get you to be convinced that how something APPEARS tells you what IT IS, and therefore its FORM tells you of its inherent qualities. This is totally deceptive. It makes it APPEAR as though some things in the world are innocent victims and other things are victimizers. Some things are good/light, some things are dark/bad. And then if you start to defend the good stuff against the bad stuff, or feel sorry for the victims, or go along with this whole charade of separate enemies, YOU HAVE fallen for the ego.

BOTH sides of every argument lose. BOTH victimizer and victim lose. BOTH sides of every war lose. As soon as you enter into separation and conflict you're losing yourself, losing God, and losing your brother. You cannot fight and win and be free of this fact. The ego's lie is that you CAN fight and win and be free of this fact - that you can get away with it, or one side can actually conquer the other, or that someone can "win" at this game of life.

THERE ARE NO WINNERS IN THE EGO'S DREAM OF DEATH!

Anyone who plays the game LOSES. Anyone who plays the game or goes along with the game comes to believe in separation, and DIES. The only way out is not to play the game at all.

The idea of separation from God MUST ALWAYS lead to a physical universe, bodies which suffer, and death.

Physical matter is the CONSEQUENCE of believing in separation, causing there to be illusions of separation, which gradually intensify and become more extreme and differentiated, to the point where it turns into what WE call physical matter.

Physical matter is the solidification of the idea of separation. It is the idea taken to its extreme, yet completely logical conclusion. If there is separation from God, there is sin. If there is sin, there must be death. Death will be expressed as the pursuit of making the illusions ever more heavy, dense, attacking, unlike each other, at war with each other, and eventually will produce an entire universe of physical matter.

The objects in this physical universe will also not have completed the ego's "thought" of separation, until they have coalesced further to produce physical bodies, which will then be used to bind the Son of God to the body, and to then attack the body to kill it to try to COMPLETELY DESTROY the Life of the Son of God. That was the purpose of the whole idea of separation to begin with, and death - physical death in a physical world - is the completion or enactment of that idea.

A physical universe HAD to arise from the tiny mad idea. Illusions HAD to continue to fight with each other, because the establishment of sin demanded that there be punishment. The conflict produced by the idea of separation was automatically a state of WAR, and this war HAD to play out, and in doing so it led to a huge fragmentation of the mind, a diversification of illusions, and eventually a THOUGHT FORM which we regard as physical matter. The entire physical universe is a NATURAL RESULT of the idea of separation, and is all that COULD come from it.

Physical matter is nothing more than a very strong illusion. It is a "thought form". It is a very BIG thought of separation appearing in the mind of the Son of God. In all its ways, it is designed to cover up awareness of God and to block sight of the truth. Bodies are a specific outcome of the logical conclusion of the ego thought system, demanding a concentrated target to receive punishment in the dream, and their destruction is the "success" or final statement that attempts to make the illusion COMPLETELY REAL. Or more succinctly, it is the nail in the coffin.

All of this is illusion. All of it is thought. It is just an IDEA. It's an idea of being separate, and therefore dead. As dead as death could ever possibly show up or seem to happen in illusions. The most intense, believable, seemingly real death possible. To use it seems very real, but it is not.

This is the metaphysical truth of A Course in Miracles. Separation from God results in the eventual, inevitable "manifestation" of a physical universe, a universe of death and destruction, simply as the most extreme expression of an illusion of being separate possible. Regardless of whether the Course text itself has used the term "physical universe", this is still the truth about this place we inhabit. It is the lower end of the dream of death, and physical matter is a death thought.

And yet, none of it is really happening because separation was never really possible to begin with.

The physical universe is an ILLUSION. God did not create it or make it. OUR idea of separation made it.

God makes room within his own being to SHARE his being, and then places thoughts within his mind/being which are His Holy Children. These are within his being, but He in a sense steps aside to "allow" them to be free. These thought-creations, children of God, do not leave God’s mind. God "hosts" us.

Then, within the individual minds of each of these creations, we each have our own creations. We share and extend and create beings "within" the scope of our own being and mind, which do not leave our minds. We make room for them within our being and share ourselves with them as "host" to our children.

In this way, nothing real ever leaves the mind of God or the mind of the Sons of God. Everything is created INSIDE the being of what is already created. Since these LIVING BEIGNS are "ideas" or "thoughts", these ideas do not leave their source. They do not live "outside" of their host-mind.

In this way, real ideas do not leave their source. Thoughts must always occur WITHIN the mind that thinks them, just as all creation takes place WITHIN the creator. We are host to our creations just as God is host to us. Similarly, because God has made room to share Himself with us, we therefore co-create our children WITH Him, and share equally with all our brothers who are equally existing within the realm of God’s being.

We have not left our source.

You may not realize it, but almost everyone in the world has adopted a very unnatural way of thinking. It is based entirely on separation. And this thinking massively distorts A Course in Miracles.

It starts with very simple logic. That "EITHER" this is true, "OR" that is true, but "NOT BOTH". Another way to put this is "this is NOT that", "they are not the same".

This is what we call EXCLUSIVE logic. This thing excludes that thing. One thing is not another thing. Two things are kept apart, excluded from each other. The whole ego thought system runs on exclusive logic, because it was the attempt to EXCLUDE (deny, separate, shut out).

Another way of putting this is the idea that "nothing is shared", as if everything has to be kept in separate isolated boxes, like prisons. What is one thing, must be kept apart from another thing. And this produces what we call "duality".

So then we think along the lines of, "either this is true or that is true, but they can't both be true." Or that "I can choose this or that but not both."

We use this pattern of thinking all over the place. It maps very well to the physical world. Physical objects are a projection of the ego idea of separation, that all things are separate and everything is different. This is really the logical idea of "GOD IS NOT" .. the negation of heaven's reality - opposite to "GOD IS".

For example, I can turn left or right, but not both. A banana is not blue. My body is not your body. I can move up or down. A car is not a house. I can park in the first space or the second space. I will eat the red apple or the green apple. I choose between a vacation in Florida or California. An apple is not an orange. A dog is not a cat.

This seems to work fine in this world. The world itself is a system of exclusion and separation, because it is a projection of the idea of separation. It has produced a world where everything is different. And where it seems that one thing is not another thing. This is the illusion of form. The problem is that we now use this way of thinking about EVERYTHING. Even when thinking about things which are NOT part of the separation, such as God's reality.

The really big problem is that heaven, God's Kingdom, the Sonship, DOES NOT comply with an "either/or" kind of system. Heaven is about INCLUSION, not exclusion. It is about sharing, not isolation. It is a system which runs on a VERY different logical basis.

Heaven operates on a "BOTH/AND" kind of structure. Where BOTH are true. Where the truth applies to one thing AND another. Where two things can SHARE everything. This even means that one thing can be two things simultaneously, and two things can be one thing simultaneously. Nothing is required to "stay in a box by itself."

The notion of separate boxes does not apply to the Kingdom. It is not divided up by SPACE, because there is no space or time. Things in heaven are not limited, or required to exclude each other. They are not isolated to separate prisons, kept apart, or separated off.

EVERYTHING in reality abides by an entirely different system of logic. This system of logic is part of the thought system of God. It is how God himself thinks and creates. It is totally opposite to the idea of "either this or that". It TRANSCENDS boundaries.

For example, what is true of God is true of the Son. The truth is the SAME for both of them. What is true of one son, is true of another. This forms the Golden Rule. There is ONE truth, which ALL things share. And sharing is a fundamental property of reality.

True sharing means, that the whole of something, transcends all separations and walls, and is fully present in ALL locations. It's not a matter of "is it this or that". It's more a matter of it being BOTH this AND that. BOTH/AND is the system of heaven, and "NOT BOTH" or "NEITHER" is the system of the separation.

For example in the course we're told that ideas can be shared and both the giver and the receiver can have the same idea, leading to an increase. That by sharing, or joining, two beings can both have everything. That by giving, you in fact receive, rather than lose.

In an either/or system, EITHER you can have something, OR the other person can have it. This is true of spacetime, but it is NOT true of heaven. In heaven, even if you give everything away, you KEEP it. This is how God was able to create you, by giving ALL of himself, and yet still retains all of himself. In ego terms, God should've ceased to exist if he truly gave all of himself.

The only way to understand how it is POSSIBLE, for both me AND you to have everything, is to think in terms of both/and. This is called paralogical reasoning - you can google it. If I give everything to you, we can BOTH have all of it. We now both share the entirety of it.

This obviously transcends boundaries because, the ego would reason that whatever I give away I lose. If I give you half my pizza, I only have half a pizza left. But in heaven, this does not apply. We can BOTH have the WHOLE pizza at the same time.

In A Course in Miracles, every subject and discussion related to the ego's realm of separation, can be thought of USING exclusive reasoning. Because it is a system of separation. However, as soon as you start to think about anything PRE-separation, about heaven or reality or God or the Sonship, or real relationships between created beings, you CANNOT USE IT.

If you do, you in fact will end up with two things happening. 1) You will project "required separations" where they do NOT exist. 2) You will fail to acknowledge separations where they DO exist. An either/or process of reasoning does NOT map to heaven, and is completely distorting of it and blind to its nature. They are INCOMPATIBLE.

This especially happens for example when people try to understand the idea of the "one son". There ARE indeed many statements that God has only one son. But, there ALSO are many statements that God directly created many sons. In reality, permanently, as brothers. This is the full scope of the course material. Jesus says BOTH things are true.

So then what happens is, people start to think WITH the ego about this. They start looking for separate boxes. They want to put things into one box, OR another box, but not both. So they'll think, ok, it seems more whole to say there is only ONE BOX, and so the "one son" statements must be true. And since TWO boxes seems to be "a separation", the idea of many sons must be false.

This is however a complete logical failure. Heaven is not structured by boxes or separations like this. One son, is in fact, another son. EACH individual being God created, is in fact, ALSO, the other beings.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth." (urtext W161L4)

So we see a lot of SEEMINGLY contradictory statements, which in a both/and system are NOT contradictions. Like this:

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One." (urtext T9E3)

What is going to happen to this if someone uses either/or reasoning? You'll say, EITHER, God has one son, OR, God has many sons. And that they can't BOTH be true. You will likely side with the one son part, and relegate the "them all" to some other realm of separation, such as part of the ego or dream or split mind. This is an error.

It is in fact true, that God has one son, which IS MADE UP OF, many sons, which is the Sonship. And these many beings ARE many in number. BUT, they are not JUST many, like in duality. They are in fact SIMULTANEOUSLY ONE. EVERY son of God, is THE ONE son of God. EACH son of God, is Christ. They all SHARE themselves, so fully and completely, that they ARE each other, while STILL also being many individuals. THAT is what A Course in Miracles clearly states.

What you have to then do is recognize the limitations of how you think, and realize that you need to adopt a HUGELY different way of thinking, if you are to understand anything to do with reality. Any subject to do with pre or post separation, cannot be thought of in either/or terms. If you do, you will DISTORT IT.

This distortion has led to all manner of completely false conclusions. Such as, that the one son split into many parts in the separation. This is not true at all. God created many children BEFORE the separation even happened, and each of those children IS the rest. They all share each other. This sharing is their oneness and unity.

This has also led to the distorted conclusion that there is only one son at all, and therefore that this only child has dreamed of being separate. This is NOT TRUE. "Christ has never slept". The one son DID NOT go into the separation. Only some of the individual parts did - some of the sons of God. This is explicitly stated in the course.

The wrong kind of thought process also leads to the false conclusion that you, in this world, are the only son of God, and everyone else is just "you". As if they don't really exist as independent beings. This is FALSE. This is not what A Course in Miracles teaches. It seems to make sense to those who think with the ego. In truth, the dream of separation is a collaborative dream by many sons of God, who were brothers BEFORE this even happened. And other people DO have free will.

So you have to beware. Watch your thought process. Look at the kind of reasoning you're doing. ANY time that you are in the "either this or that" mode, you are prone to massive errors. Because it is an unnatural, separation-based way of thinking. You are in fact thinking WITH THE EGO when you do that. Thinking with the ego, about NON-EGO things, is going to totally destroy the true nature of those things.

This is the sole reason, in my opinion, why so many people are so confused about ACIM and its teaching. Everyone is assuming that heaven is an either/or state, like spacetime. That's its sort of a second spacetime, with the same reasoning and logic and thought process. It is NOTHING LIKE IT. It is totally alien to this world and how this world thinks.

The world simply thinks backwards and with the ego, and we have to learn another way to think. Human thinking is ALIEN TO the way God thinks, the way heaven is formed, the way the sons of God relate to each other, and how reality is structured. Using an ALIEN thought process to think about what is NATURAL, is going to show you thinks seeming to make sense which are totally nonsense. What makes sense to the ego is nonsense in truth. And the ego's truths about heaven are totally nonsense.

The course is trying to get you to think in a way that is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to how the world thinks.

"This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." (urtext T3G15)

"This is not the way the world thinks, but you must learn that it is the way you think." (urtext W17L1)

"There is only one way out of the world's thinking, just as there was only one way INTO it. Understand totally by understanding TOTALITY." (urtext T7H12)

"This is the first idea we have had which is related to a major phase of the correction process; the reversal of the thinking of the world." (urtext W11L1)

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." (urtext M29A2)

"Yet it is the final lesson in which Unity is restored. It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven." (urtext M15A3)

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about." (urtext W126L1)

"This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum." (urtext M5H1)

"To give up all problems to one Answer is to reverse the thinking of the world entirely." (urtext M5J1)

"The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed." (urtext M15A4)

The thing about the body is that it's a limitation. You as a spirit are unlimited, infinite, everywhere. You are omnipresent like God. To seemingly "enter" a body you have to massively confine yourself to one location, separated off from the rest. It's like having your hands tied. Huge amounts of awareness have to be shut out. Not to mention that your intimate expansive unified relationships with the entire Sonship are shut out.

You are squeezed into this tiny little space that you then seem to inhabit. The body forms this fence around a part of the mind and seems to keep it inside, protected and separate from the rest of the mind which is outside. Large distances are placed between bodies to ensure they are kept separate. This is all the ego's design for isolating and imprisoning God's children.

Then the ego goes one step further and says, ok, now that you are in this body, wouldn't it be great if you could connect with other people? How about we bring your body closer to other bodies? How about we have your bodies try to join with other bodies? Maybe you'll feel wonderful things as you merge and feel close to others. And the usual response to this temptation is that is sounds great, it seems like an improvement, we don't have to be so alone and isolated.

The problem here is that we're accepting a massive artificial limitation as though it can never be changed, we're deliberately confining ourselves to being trapped in a little body, acting from littleness. We're handicapping ourselves, and then pretending that to bring bodies together is going to somehow "undo" this. But so long as the handicapping nature of the body is maintained, so long as we are isolated in space and time, anything the ego offers as a special relationship is a ridiculous substitute for true joining.

Two spirits should share, join, merge, connect, be one, and access each other fully and completely and in a truly unlimited way. You are in your brother's minds. You share everything with them. To do that, you need to not be restricted and limited. Trying to first accept massive limitation and to then try to continue to join, is like two people with a ball and chain around their ankles, chained up to separate prison cells, trying to reach out to be closer to each other. They can't leave the prisons or get past the bars.

It's also a simple fact that nothing in spacetime can truly join. Quantum particles are designed to be separated off. If atoms were to truly occupy the same space they would annihilate each other in a nuclear explosion. Forces repel the particles and keep them separated. Even what seems to be a physical collision or sensation of touch is really what it feels like to bump up against these force fields. Atoms don't ever really touch each other at all. So right off the bat the ego has made this scenario where even if it looks as though you are as physically close to something as possible, you still aren't actually making real contact. All sensations of touch are sensations of two forcefields repelling each other.

To try to join with another spirit while having a body is next to impossible. Someone who knows they are spirit would also find it pointless and very limiting to try to make this connection via the body. Why, when you can experience direct mind-to-mind communication ("minds need not bodies to communicate"), would you first filter all communication through your body, then through another body, in attempting to share something? Why not just go mind-to-mind?

When two bodies attempt to join in sexual acts it also really is an attempt to identify with your own body, to identify the other person with their body, to bring the two bodies together in an attempt to believe that the two persons/spirits are actually joining. This is a body delusion. The physical bodies are all that are coming together, and even their sensations of contact are illusions. Forms, matter, energy, keep individuals separated off at all levels and at all times.

Trying to relate to another brother, a spirit, by trying to relate TO or WITH the body, is almost like you're having a relationship with someone's clothing. If you were to fall in love with someone's jacket and trousers and completely ignore the person wearing them, this would indeed be very strange and somewhat insane. But this is what we do when we relate to people as bodies, completely failing to overlook the illusion of the body, failing to see the real person beyond it.

The ego first established a state of massive lack and deprivation. Its isolating of us made us lonely and in need. It built compulsions to try to join physically, not in an effort to bring us closer together, but in an effort to reinforce and emphasize the reality of the body. Pleasure and pain accomplish the same goal of making the body and illusions of sensations the primary focus. "To sense is not to know", and by focusing on sensations we become blinded by perception of form.

In efforts to bring two bodies together in a special, body-worshipping relationship, we actually necessarily exclude vast quantities of individuals. More is left out than is taken in. Due to the separating and localizing nature of spacetime, bringing 2 bodies together must entail excluding billions. The attempt to make two bodies extra special, psychologically, requires the downplaying and attack upon other bodies. A special body cannot be elevated and idol worshipped without condemning all the rest.

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

What appears on the surface to be an attempt to join, is ACTUALLY an attempt to separate. And so the ego's promise of body union in fact leads to an increase in separation, unconsciousness, loss, lack, loneliness, isolation and imprisonment. The supposed freedom produced by sexual union actually produces an increased state of exclusion and illness. With the body as the main focus, the mind is shut out and true joining based in real love becomes impossible.

You could say, in fact, that the attempt of two bodies to come together to join to make a baby, is actual a death ritual. The bodies celebrate their triumph over all other bodies, they worship the idol of death, separation ensues and now there are three bodies. Illusions have given birth to illusions. And while this is much celebrated in the world, the ego does have these underpinnings in its mechanics of what is actually happening.

It's possible, for a time, to still use the body for a holier purpose. Love can be extended through it to others, it can be used to teach, to make the body less real, and to overlook form. To the Holy Spirit, the body actually is seen as having NO function.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself."

"When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

"Healing IS the Holy Spirit's form of communication, and the ONLY one He knows."

Trying to make bodies real, to use them as exclusion devices, emphasizing and believing in and falling into the temptation of the flesh, being deceived by physical sensations not recognized as illusions, believing your brother is a body, etc are all ways that the ego uses the body to keep you from what it promises will be the outcome. The ego guarantees separation, while the Holy Spirit guarantees union.

For a time we can use the body with the Holy Spirit, but not to emphasize bodies. Not to use it as a way to focus on the body or believe it can give us anything. Not to use it to get from others. And not to use it as a symbolic act of exclusion. We are to love everyone equally, and this is impossible at the physical level.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with any of God's Sons unless you are willing to love them all AND equally."

"Think not that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

The entire world of bodies has to be more or less "overlooked". "To forgive is to OVERLOOK." To overlook means to "bypass seeing", to see past and beyond. If we stop to dwell on the physical, our sight is blinded. If we stop to focus on the body, the mind stops extending past it. This produces various forms of illness. If we truly want to have a real relationship with anyone, it has to be a real relationship with everyone, at the level of unconditional love, through mind and spirit.

You may not realize this, but physical matter was designed to completely obscure God and make it seem like he does not exist.

You won't realize this unless you also realize what God's nature is, because then the sheer contrast becomes obvious.

We most often think about God like a physical object, covering some amount of space. As if to say, God is a very large person, with his arms spanning different parts of the world, even different solar systems, and his legs reaching between galaxies.

But we are so used to thinking in terms of the limitations of space, that we would have to say that if his left arm is stretched out over the earth, his left arm can't be anywhere else. His right arm could stretch elsewhere, but he's one got one pair of arms.

That's how people think about God. But God is not like this at all. God is not a physical object, God is not limited by space or time, God is not confined to spatial relationships or sizes or distances or issues of location.

For God, the entirety of God can be fully present in EVERY location simultaneously. This involves absolutely no compromise. It's not that only part of God can pay attention to one part, while a different part of God pays attention to another. It's not like God has to switch back and forth, or can only give his "all" to one thing at a time.

God is capable of being FULLY present, in his entirety, in one location, while also being FULLY present, in his entirety, in another location. At the same time. He stretches across spatial boundaries and transcends limitations. This is his omnipresence. ALL of God can be present in ALL locations simultaneously. Full localisation in all locations, beyond trillions, beyond count, all at once.

If you can feel into that and get a sense of that, you might begin to get an idea of what God is like. God is not just some big cloud or some large expanse or a big container. God is transcendental of ALL known spatial limits, boxes, and rules about having to be in one place and not another. God TOTALLY transcends all known limits of space and time, and all rules about where things can exist and how.

So all of God, is in all parts of God, at all times. No matter where you are, no matter what location you're in, GOD IS THERE IN FULL. And yet he is also in all other places in full as well. He is like a giant kind of "blur" which is simultaneously massively spread out and massively localised. God is in-finite.

When you then look at what spacetime is ... this "universe" ... SPACE itself is completely based on the idea that "what is over here is not over there". A SEPARATION between locations, with walls of distance and time. In which what is in one location IS NOT IN ANY OTHER location. In which what exists here, does not exist there.

In spacetime there is no transcendental omnipresence. There is a strict requirement that every single object is local only, anchored to one fixed spot. And that object IS NOT anywhere else. It's not even really connected to anything else, rendering all objects separate. Not one single speck of spacetime houses the whole.

And this is where you get the massive contrast between God's reality and the illusion of spacetime. God is omnipresent. Spacetime says, there is NOWHERE that THE WHOLE exists. Whatever is in one place, IS NOWHERE else. Whatever exists is not whole, and is only partial, and is not joined to anything.

Effectively, space means GOD DOES NOT EXIST ANYWHERE. It is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to God's nature.

God is of a nature in which all of God is in all locations at all times.

Spacetime's nature is that NONE of God is ANYWHERE EVER!

Considering that we made spacetime in order to ATTACK GOD'S NATURE, you can then see that PHYSICAL MATTER has a nature NOTHING like God. In fact, it disguises, hides, shuts out, blocks, and presents a PICTURE which is so obscure and unlike God that, if you look at this picture and believe it, you are COMPLETELY BLINDED by matter. If there was ever a need for a perfect disguise, the physical world is it.

So now here we have the major issue. When you look at an object, you look at a single independent separate object. You look at its properties, its shape, its forms, its texture, its materials, its color etc. And while you are busy looking at those things, you are seeing the outside surface of an illusion.

All your attention is put onto this narrow, isolated, extremely confined limitation. And while you are busy looking at the object, be it a house or a car or a body or an apple or whatever, you are effectively DISTRACTED from the nature of God.

If you are not seeing ALL OF GOD in each speck of that object, you are not seeing. If you are not experiencing that what you see IN each object, no matter where you look, is the same ONE WHOLENESS, you are blinded by perception of form.

In essence, God's nature is to be fully present everywhere, and matter's essence is to OBSCURE that completely so that it appears that NOTHING is whole, THERE IS NO WHOLE, and what is seen "in" the object is NOT THE SAME as what is "in" the other objects.

So long as you focus on the ways that an object is DIFFERENT to another object, you are focusing on FORM. And that includes using perception to judge, using the mind to narrow and select, looking at bodies and cars and houses, judging anything at all on your own with anything less than wholeness. If you do not look from wholeness you do not SEE the wholeness of God.

What you have to then realize is that you are not going to be transitioning from looking at the same separate objects "one way", and looking at the same separate objects "another way". That's not a change. God is not like this. If you want to see differently, you have to look for the OMNIPRESENT NATURE. This nature TRANSCENDS ALL FORMS, transcends all differences, transcends all object boundaries. And in particular it is a vision which sees ALL OF GOD, in EACH PART, holographically.

So "vision", or "true perception", which is also salvation and forgiveness, is a way of seeing WITH an omnipresent mind, based on wholeness - not just wholeness as in "a big inclusive thing" but wholeness that INTERNALLY also features ALL of it in EACH part. To see a reflection of God - or to see God in everything you see, you are not looking for an OBJECT, or a finite limited thing, or a large blob, you're looking for a transcendental omnipresent holographic space-defying blur of love.

Essentially then, false perception, ego perception, judgement, making things a sin, focusing on form, seeing bodies and all that, is a way of narrowing perception down so that you are particularly CONVINCED that physical separateness IS TRUE, and that the omnipresent wholeness of God is NOWHERE to be seen.

As we rise up out of false perception and awaken, we are not just trying to find a way to forgive specific small things, or finite limited scenarios, or particular people. It's all leading up to a UNIVERSAL FORGIVENESS, which sees with the Holy Spirit's WHOLENESS, which is also omnipresent and transcendent. And we're trying to see that wholeness - ALL OF the Holy Spirit, in EACH thing, everywhere. Because he IS IN everyone just a God is.

To gloss over the differences of forms, to not focus on picking out "oh that's a separate body", to not dwell on appearances, or be DECEIVED BY one object saying "Hey look at me, I'm different to that other object, so we're NOT the same, so sameness is obscured and doesn't exist", is to be forgiving. It's about overlooking space and time itself! Overlooking all limits and all ways that the things in front of you say "we're not one."

The world was made as an attack on God, to shut him out, and to cover him over with a veil of illusions, in order to make it seem that God did not exist. We believed in this illusory world in our egoic perception, and we're learning to transcend and rise above it with the Holy Spirit. Eventually we'll see the REFLECTION of wholeness "in" everything we see materially, but this forgiving sight will also go so far BEYOND separateness that it will eventually lead to a grand exit from spacetime entirely, after a short stop-off in the "real world".

The real world is just another term for you becoming able to see a reflected transcendental omnipresence in spacetime, seen from wholeness with total forgiveness. And this is also why Workbook lesson 1 begins with us looking around us and having the SAME view of each DIFFERENT object. Because we have to now train our minds to stop paying attention to the DECEPTION OF FORM, and focus on finding a way to see the reflection of oneness - a sameness - in all things.

Not as a "big object", but toward ALL OF GOD ... IS EVERYWHERE I LOOK.

"Nothing I see in this room (on this street, from this window, in this place) means anything." URW1

"Notice that these statements are not arranged in any order, and make no allowance for differences in the kinds of things to which they are applied." UrW1

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone." UrW240W32

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees." UrW158L7

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's GOAL, but not to see? For THIS the body's eyes are perfect means. But NOT for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning." UrT22D6

"I thank you, Father, knowing you will come to close each little gap that lies between the broken pieces of Your holy Son. Your Holiness, complete and perfect, lies in every one of them. And they ARE joined, because what is in one IS in them all. How holy is the smallest grain of sand, when it is recognized as being part of the completed picture of God's Son. The forms the broken pieces seem to take mean nothing. For the Whole is in each one. And every aspect of the Son of God is just the same as every other part. Join not your brother's dream, but join with HIM, and where you join His Son, the Father IS." UrT28E8

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?" UrT22D7

Every time I see a body, I am tempted to believe I'm seeing a person. The person seems separate from me, they are not me at all, their body belongs exclusively to them, it's not my body, we are not in any way connected to each other. What applies to them does not apply to me at all.

That is the horrendous lie that bodies present to us. The temptation that your brother, who in truth is literally one with and a part of your self, is somehow cut off from you. On the basis of assuming that people are "not me", we then proceed with an entire culture and way of relating that revolves around "I am separate from you."

Ultimately this boils down to a question of, are you living by God's law of the Golden Rule, or are you denying it and trying to break God's law? First let's be clear that the Golden Rule is not some optional thing, it's fundamental to the nature of reality and all creations. We are all one with each other, part of each other, joined together and sharing, like a collective consciousness hive mind. In that arrangement we are still individual beings but we also share everything.

Within that thought system of sharing, overlap and oneness, the natural way to relate to someone is to regard them as YOURSELF. They are thus your brother, an equal, as perfect and whole as you, and literally part of yourself. This produces shared interests and an automatic motivation to ONLY treat them with love so that you are directly treating yourself - the part of you that's in them - with love. Everything belongs to everyone, everyone has everything, and everything is mutual.

In the ego's rendition, the body is a separation device. And make no mistake that the body literally symbolically CUTS YOU OFF from the hive mind. It represents the idea of being separate, disconnected, not sharing, not joined, not a part of anyone else, and completely alone. It is absolutely the opposite of the true nature of our collective sonship and brotherhood, and is totally unnatural.

This means that if you are in a body being identified with a body, believing bodies are separate people, you are literally LOOKING AT the denial of the laws of God. You are looking at the opposite of the golden rule, manifested as images of forms walking around, testifying that separation is real. The body ITSELF is nothing less than a demonstration of the idea of being completely separate.

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind"

"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. Yet what this symbol REPRESENTS is but your wish to BE apart and separate."

Therefore just the mere sight of a body is enough to tempt you into the belief that God's law has been broken, the Golden Rule does not apply to anyone, and you are NOT in any way sharing anything with your brothers. You don't even have to act or relate to people or treat people a certain way for God's law to be broken by the mere appearance of the body.

Therefore, as the course is teaching, if you see a body, you are seeing WITH specialness, with selfishness, and thus with the ego. And the result is false perception, which fixates on physical form and makes bodies real to you. Upon seeing this, you have already believed in separation, and now the body is lit up and appears to you as a separation device, anchoring and fixing your brother into a prison within space and time, and cutting you off from them.

As soon as you are relating on a basis of "I am not you", ie your body is separate from my body, and I see you AS a body, and regard myself as my body, and we are NOT each other, we are in a state of special relationship. And that literally means we are at war. We have withdrawn the shared part of ourselves from each other and have gone to our separate corners, ready to fight.

We are at war merely by the very fact that we are identifying who and what we are with a device for separation, and have therefore believed that we ARE separate, and therefore are different, and thus not equals, and thus competitors.

Any time that I associate anything at all exclusively with a body, whether it be my own or that of another, I am in the ego and at war. I am having a special relationship, taking sides, judging, projecting guilt, attacking, accusing, and trying to destroy. Just by seeing a body and regarding it as the anchor and prison wall which is surrounding and sectioning off you or another, you are taking sides.

Once you've taken sides, you will not be able to help but relate to the other person AS a body, ie as a separated off, exclusive, isolated, distinctly separate being. One with whom you are NOT sharing, are not one, and they are NOT seen OR recognized as being a part of yourself. The entire vision of recognition and enlightenment which would show you that your brother IS part of you, is obscured by the body.

"the BODY of the other, ALREADY a severely limited perception of him"

"For sin is the IDEA you are alone, and separated OFF from what is whole."

Then you will proceed to go to war. You will find it effortless to accuse someone of being, doing, having, making, causing something, which ONLY they are doing, and you are not. You will now be into the realm of "getting away with murder", because it now seems that what applies to the other does NOT apply to you. What applies to what their body is doing, is not what your body is doing. Their separated-off will is now disconnected from your own, and you are not sharing or cooperating or willing in accord. Therefore you are against each other.

The loss of the awareness that you are one with your brother has devastating consequences. As soon as you have slipped away from unity ie holy relationship even slightly, you've pulled away from being joined to the other and have identified yourself as exclusive. That exclusivity is selfish and special, and will manifest as a body, which will show up in the mind to testify HOW you are separated off from the other. The body literally symbolizes your separateness.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. And both are nothing more than attempts to LIMIT communication, and thereby TO MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE."

By believing that you are not your brother, you are not a part of him and he is not a part of you, you cannot help but see yourself and your brother as separated off by a body. This identifies both of you with your bodies, and holds you apart from each other like inmates in separate prison cells. This is a breakdown in communication and an attack on love. It is a lack of relationship and a disconnect from each other.

It doesn't matter if the other person is someone you are allegedly married to, a spouse or partner, a lover, a sibling or child or parent, some stranger or neighbor, a boss or remote stranger, any time that we are unaware of our oneness with each other we have moved inside an entirely separate thought system of separation, in which the ONLY culture is "me not you".

Nor will you be able to sufficiently repair the relationship and bring it to a state of holiness WITHOUT questioning whether or not you and your brother are a body. The belief that they ARE their body, automatically cuts them off from you, and your believing this is HOW you imprison them.

"The special relationship is a device for limiting YOUR self to a body, and for limiting your perception of others to THEIRS."

"For the ego would limit everyone TO a body for ITS purposes, and, while you think it HAS a purpose, you will choose to utilize the means by which IT tries to turn its purpose into accomplishment."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

No matter what you think your relationship is, regardless of how close or intimate you seem to be with another body-person, you are NOT intimate if you are not one. You are also not happily married if you are married to a body. Nor are you head over heels in love if what you're in love with is a body. To love a body is to separate yourself from the other person, to NOT SEE them, and to keep them at arm's length, pun intended.

If you want to overcome the conflict, the war, the fighting, the disagreements, the arguments, the special hate, the special love, the lack of communication and connection, your only choice is to transcend bodies. You have to get your mind out of the separation-oriented culture and resume an entirely opposite culture based on the Golden Rule. You have to learn that you ARE part of the other person, neither of you is separated off BY a body, and the bodies are not even there. You have to see yourself INCLUDED in them as you look upon them, and NOT look to their bodies to identify them.

If you are heavily into the association that the person IS their body, and you've bound their identity to it, and every time you see the body you think that's them, you have a lot of work to do. And it could take some considerable time to undo all the ways that you've taught yourself to separate people off, bind them to physical objects, identify them by those objects, and therefore stay separate from them.

The ego culture of exclusivity and separateness is completely opposite to God's natural culture of sharing and unity. Bodies cannot and will not ever depict or accomplish God's culture. They have to be bypassed and transcended and overlooked. Your whole sense of who and what you are has to expand to INCLUDE others. And then how you relate to them, WHO you are defending, WHAT you are relating with and to, radically changes.

"Minds need not bodies to communicate."

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

If you have relationship issues which, guaranteed, every body-to-body relationship HAS, the real problem is THE BODY. Allowing, supporting, and facilitating the use of the body as a separation device, anchoring people TO bodies, is the whole foundation of your relationship woes. Nor can you overcome those woes and KEEP the body. You have to be willing to stop identifying people with bodies, including yourself, and including your "loved ones."

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

Any time that you fall for the trap of believing "that person is not me", because you've seen their body and have witnessed to the belief that their body IS SEPARATE FROM YOU, you have gone into the ego culture of separation and war. Any time that you do not recognize your brother as yourself, you will fall into a special relationship. Any time that you can see PAST the bodies, and identify the person with a SHARED IDENTITY in Christ, which is part of your own identity as Christ, you have moved into holiness and union.

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of ***loving your neighbor as yourself***. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

"***It is impossible for a Child of God to love his neighbor EXCEPT as himself.*** That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

If you want to perform miracles, you have to transcend the entire mindset, thought system and culture of "separate me versus them". You have to join minds with the other so that your mind can share its light with the other mind and heal it. You cannot save or be saved without doing this, and bodies will always interfere with this.

If you pay any attention to the body AT ALL, you are looking at and emphasizing the separation. The body is separation's symbol. It is the wall around the mind that keeps it separated off from other minds. As long as you are having relationships WITH BODIES, you are not having real relationships with your brothers as God created them.

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds NEED not the body to communicate. ***The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship***. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have NOT been brought in line."

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, ***keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time***, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"The urgency is only in dislodging your minds from their FIXED POSITION here."

"The special relationship is totally without meaning WITHOUT A BODY. And, if you VALUE it, you must also VALUE THE BODY."

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"The ego's fundamental wish is to replace God. In fact, the ego is the physical embodiment of this wish. For it is this wish which seems to surround the mind with a body, keeping it separate and alone, and unable to reach other minds except through the body which was made to imprison it."

"And BOTH of you stand there before Him now, to let HIM draw aside the veil that SEEMS to keep you separate and apart."

"If you WITHHOLD agreement, and accept the part YOU play in making sickness real, the other mind cannot project its guilt without your aid in LETTING it perceive itself as separate and apart from YOU. Thus is the body NOT perceived as sick by BOTH your minds, from SEPARATE points of view. UNITING with a brother's mind prevents the CAUSE of sickness, and perceived effects."

The big secret behind the ego's illusions, is that the ego is entirely a mode of SELF-attack. And this exactly ties into the revelation that "the secret to salvation is that you are but doing this to yourself."

The ego mind and its entire thought system is not just a separate chunk of regular mind that is split off from God. The ego's only weapon is separation. The purpose of the ego mind is to attempt to destroy the Son of God.

To the ego it is not enough to simply separate from God and be some kind of "self-contained identity", like a whole individual.

The ego mind is a state of mind of constant self-attack. It is a mind of division, separation, fragmentation and splits. Within itself it attempts to break down the Son of God by constantly dividing and separating the mind into as many disjointed pieces as possible.

That means, this ego mind is in a constant state of self-attack. Within itself, there is a war waging, between various aspects of the ego mind. It is not just at war with God, it is at war with itself.

The ego mind doesn't just set out to attack you or be your enemy. It is actually attacking only itself.

When there is a war in the world, whereby some group of people seem to be the evil attackers and some group of people seem to be the helpless victims, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an argument happening in a special relationship, where both people believe they are right and that the other person is wrong, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

When there is an apparent victimizer doing something terribly abusive to someone and the victim seems to be innocent, even then, BOTH sets of people are the ego attacking itself.

Simply by virtue of the fact that the ego split mind is riddled with multiple separations, these separations produce the ILLUSION that there is opposition. Based on appearances, it then seems that one part of the ego mind is one identity and the other part is another identity, usually identified by some kind of "difference" between them, or a difference in form.

These differences make it SEEM like there are two separate individuals, at least, and these individuals will inherently be against each other. This is why people identified with separate and different bodies are INHERENTLY racist and sexist. To not be so would threaten their identity as a separate individual.

So take a look at the world and you'll see various examples of parts of it which seem like its "good" and parts that seem "bad", and you might only think the ego is the bad parts. The ego is all parts of this world.

The ego takes both sides of every argument. It takes both sides in every war. It is rooting for both people to be destroyed in every conflict and delights in the fight. It wants both victims and victimizers to hate each other. It believes in all its parts and identities that it is right and all others are wrong, even though those others are part of itself.

The ego has this very "sick" twisted mixture of self-attack and violence against itself. It actually tries to hurt and destroy itself, while at the same time enjoying doing so. It takes "pleasure" in producing "pain" within itself, which is why both pleasure and pain are a part of the same self-attacking mind. It is both the sick person who seems to prey on the innocent, and also is the "innocent victim" of such attacks.

It does not care whether one particular side of any situation is better or worse than another. Its only aim is to get all split parts of the fragmented ego mind to be separate from each other, different from each other, at war with each other, and wanting to destroy each other. Its plan of attack is that by destroying "Self". .. which really does mean "itself", it will destroy the Son of God.

This is simply because the ego IS the Son of God's attempt to destroy His Self. This is self attack. This is how the Son of God is doing everything to Himself, and why underneath ALL of his claims to be an innocent victim He is always secretly wanting it.

It is why behind all fear there is a choice and a desire to be punished. It is why behind all sickness there is a decision to be sick and to use it as both a defense and an attack. It is why victims are also victimizers, why the weak would seek to destroy, why death is both feared and welcomed, and why people are perverted and sadistic.

You are not looking at a world where some parts are pure and some parts are impure. You are not looking at a world where the "good guys" are trying to genuinely be free of the "bad guys". You are only looking at an ego world, which is INSIDE the shared collective ego group mind, the entire ego dream of death, which is RIDDLED with self attack all over the place in every way imaginable.

It always LOOKS like there are many separate individuals operating independently, when in fact it is ONE ego mind operating against ITSELF.

The ego loves to hate Self. The ego loves to destroy Self. The ego loves to pit self against self and be against itself. It should be fairly obvious how this is INSANITY, to be both for and against oneself and to be actively trying to destroy yourself. This is why the ego is suicidal and this is also why all death is a choice to die, in which your "ego self" will both avoid it and cause it, and both want it and be terrified of it.

It is ONLY your own self-attack and desire to destroy yourself that makes you afraid of anything. You are not afraid because of what others might do to you, but because of what YOU plan to do to you through your belief in your deserving of punishment. You are your own attacker and you plot your own death, even if you are kicking and screaming to escape it at the same time.

A split mind is having a battle of wills, because there are multiple conflicting wills operating against each other within it. It wants one thing but also wants another. It always wants everything that it does not want, and does not want everything that it wants. It cannot make up its mind or be decisive or make a genuine decision at all, being an attempt to STOP being decisive and certain or committed to wholeness in any way.

Taking sides is falling for the ego's lie. Participating in an "argument" is separating yourself off from your brother. Your brother is simply another part of your Self as Christ. Christ is the non-split, non-fragmented, non-self-destructive Real Mind of which we are all really a part, and not "apart".

So be careful not to fall for the ego's LIE, the ILLUSION, that one side of a story is right and another wrong, or one part of the world is spiritual and good and another is evil. The ego does not care whether you support the good guys or the bad guys. You are not winning against it by siding with only the good and positive. You are also not winning against it by siding only with the dark and negative.

The ego has no preference for whether you choose to believe that a "cause" is righteous or that your hated political party is "wrong" or that your opinion matters. Your opinion does not matter whatsoever because opinions are a symptom of ego insanity, in rejection of the One Shared Truth. The ego couldn't give a shit who wins an argument or what side of a war is victorious, because those things are NOT what drives the ego.

The ego is driven by SEPARATION. Its ONLY tool is separation. It seems only to separate, within itself. It seems only to split the Son of God up and make him be multiple selves - multiple personalities, and multiple personalities within personalities.

Think not that a regular human being has a "single mind". ... a regular human being has a large COLLECTION of pieces of mind, of sub-personalities, often which are actually in CONFLICT with each other. The ego mind is very complicated and self-contradictory. Even within one person there are countless separated aspects of identity which are not even consistent from second to second. People are different in different scenarios, experiencing constant shifts in persona based on the situation.

Only a whole mind is a sane mind, and a whole mind means Christ mind, which is not a mind that has won or a mind that defeated an opponent, but is a mind in which OPPOSITION does not exist. It is a mind free for a war with itself. It is a mind that has recognized that, this whole time, it has ONLY ever been at war within itself.

The secret to salvation is that you are doing this to yourself. Your own mind, as ego mind, is attacking itself. It is in conflict within itself. It has been split up into parts and different parts of it are opposed to each other and are not even communicating well. Many parts of your mind are in the dark, many are experienced by other parts of you as an "enemy", and you actively fight with your own hallucinated demons and opponents within your own sense of fragmented self.

It is this state of self-attack and self-conflict and self-war and self-denial that we are healing from, so that we can return the mind to a state of PEACE. Peace is only possible when you are not playing ANY of the ego's games, you are not falling for the illusions or appearance of differences, you are not taking sides, you are not buying into good/bad or right/wrong, and you do not believe any longer in a SEPARATION between victims and victimizers.

You are doing this all to yourself. The whole world is doing this to itself. All wars are self attack, by the one "human race". This is the condition of the ego. The world is destroying itself and always has been and always will be until it disappears, having been recognized as unreal. This is why peace on earth is not possible, because peace would reveal that the earth is not a "real separate thing". Even the idea of separate planets is an ego idea of self conflict.

Beware the ego's intention to get you to fight with someone else, which is really the temptation to fight with yourself. This is all about what you're doing to yourself, and has nothing to do with what anyone else is doing to you. Wake up and see the ego for what it is. It is nothing more than a mind at war with itself, and in that war it is playing every side, because it is a mind of self-destruction.

In the ego's war, nobody wins. There are no survivors. There are no victors. It is always the "Self" that dies. It is always sanity and wholeness that is sacrificed. It is always the ego mind that wins and loses. It is always both parties who suffer. Anyone who plays the game of opposition or righteousness or judgement or rebellion or justification or revenge or any other ego modality, has already FAILED to recognize the ego's diabolical plan. It couldn't care less for winning or losing because in its perception, EVERY part of itself loses. In a war with yourself, YOU MUST LOSE YOUR SELF!

The only way to escape this is to return the mind to wholeness, overlook the ego's illusion of self-attack, own up to the fact that your mind IS attacking itself and that there has not BEEN any other form of attack, and that therefore you have another CHOICE. A better way. A way to be free from your own self destructive dream. A way to be permanently free of the ego, and of all symptoms of suffering and sickness and death, which are merely expressions of self attack.

If you cease attacking yourself, you cannot die. There are no other causes of death but this.

Be free.

In heaven we are one with God, with each other and with our shared self in Christ. We are everything.

In the separation, our egotism is an attempt to become one with something not God, and less than everything.

Things that are not God, are generally not whole, and tend to be very limited, such as physical forms, objects, places, other people's bodies, the planet, etc.

It can also be ego thoughts which are thought-forms, limited thoughts, attack thoughts etc.

The attempt to become one with these things is the attempt to give them the properties of God. Such as to think of these things are what you want, valuable, meaningful, life, reality, truth.

We even want "self" or identity to become one with these things to try to turn them INTO an identity. To make our self BE one of these things.

Mind is unlimited, expansive, infinite, and whole. It is everywhere. Your real self is the same. When you try to identify with things which are not unlimited, you narrow your mind, and make it sick. It's like putting it into a prison and stopping it from functioning fully.

We literally try to "attach to" things which are not God, by trying to merge with them, to be one with them, to literally make them a part of ourselves.

Attachment, identification, oneness, it is all the same thing. You can become identified with your car, if you value it and give it reality. Your attempt to merge with it, love it, want it, value it, see it as truth, judge its importance etc, is you trying to become it.

So that whatever its qualities are, they reflect upon you and define you and become part of you. Then you can say that you are better and more important and more valuable because of the car you have that is part of you.

The same can apply to food, to places, to your house, your money, your job, your role as mother or father, your role as victim or victimiser, your egoic thoughts, your fantasies, your body, the whole planet even. You can literally try to be one with the planet which is an attempt to make it a part of yourself.

The ego takes a lot of credit for being something that it is not, or for you having something that you did not create. Such as to steal away a part of heaven and call it your own, or to say that the qualities you have which are God-given did not come from God.

Similarly it takes on credit for and vain reflection for things which are not yourself, such as that you are a better person if you have a flashy house, or your hair is improved, or you have the nicer clothes, or whatever. It thinks of these things as defining itself and as part of itself, one with it, its identity.

This is why it's important to unravel all the fake selves that you're making, all the attempts you make to be one with things which are not one, all the false identifies that you fabricate by trying to "wear" parts of the world like clothing, and then thinking that your clothing changes your self image.

And it's important to then realize that you need to re-identify with your real soul self, in heaven, as Christ. The son of God. Which means, simply, being one with it, merging with it, seeing it as true and valuable and real and meaningful and wanting it. Taking it on as the definition of what you are, and regarding it as you. Just as the ego does with illusions.

It should be clear that the ego is insane in what it does, because essentially it is trying to find oneness or wholeness... with things which are not one or whole. This is a contradiction. You can't be whole and complete by being something limited and small, like a body or an object.

The ego really wants to narrow down oneness and wholeness while pretending to want oneness and wholeness wholeheartedly, because it is two-faced and a lie. It wants the impossible. You can't really be one with anything other than God, and you can't really be anything other than what God created you to be.

"The world you see (with the physical eyes, earth, bodies physicality, spacetime) is based on SACRIFICE of oneness. It is a picture of a COMPLETE disunity and total LACK of joining. Around each entity is built a wall so seeming solid that it looks as if what is inside can never reach without, and what is out can never reach and join with what is locked away within the wall. Each part must SACRIFICE the other part to keep itself complete. For if they joined, each one would LOSE its own identity, and BY their separation are their selves maintained. The little that the body fences off BECOMES the self, preserved through sacrifice of all the rest. And all the rest must LOSE this little part, remaining incomplete to keep its own identity intact." UrT26B1

"Let me remember I am one with God." UrW124

It's possible to rationalize and justify ANY viewpoint you want to take. If you look, you will find all kinds of reasons in support of your opinion. The thing is, you won't think it's your opinion because you'll justify how your opinion is 'reality' by saying, look, look at the truth, look at the evidence I found.

But what you don't realize is, you can flip-flop your opinion and change your mind about what you're trying to prove is true, and then you'll start to see all kinds of evidence supporting THAT viewpoint as well. And again you'll probably tell yourself, well, look over there, that proves that this viewpoint is true.

And again you've fallen for the same ILLUSION.

The world does not have a meaning of its own. There is no truth in the world. It does not contain facts or proof. It is not objectively real. But we keep looking to it to TELL US what the truth is. And each time we find some evidence we fall into this blindness about how this proves what is real or true. And if that evidence supports our case, which it usually does because beliefs create evidence, we'll keep believing that the world contains some truth.

The trick is to realize we are always CHOOSING the meaning that everything has, we are always GIVING meaning to stuff in the world, we are SELECTING the evidence that we resonate with to support whatever our belief is, and we are always being SUBJECTIVE.

What if I told you there IS NO TRUTH in the world? At all? And that every time you are 'sure' that something is proven in the world, it's actually still just you making it up as you go along, projecting belief into the neutral world and giving it meaning? And each time you say, see, this proves it, these are all the external reasons 'why', regardless of whether it's for or against, you fall into the same ego trap of not realizing it's a blank canvas.

You literally hallucinate the meaning you want to see in the world to justify the viewpoint you are CHOOSING to see SO THAT you will see evidence to prove its truth and to have faith in it. And then you switch to some other belief and do the same. And each time you think, see, I'm seeing the factual real world. You're not. You're only ever seeing your MIND CONTENT. Your fiction. You make up the story as you go along and the world never proves anything on your behalf. You RATIONALIZE why various things you pick out support your case and point to them as proof to support your view, not realizing you view is entirely your choice.

Ever had one of those times where you get all excited about something and you find all these reasons why it's the best thing you can do and why, when you do it, things are going to be better, and all this, and you find all these explanations to support it. Then some time passes and... this delusion starts to occur to you as maybe being flawed, and you start shifting to the opposite viewpoint... maybe this is not the thing you should do, bla bla bla, and then you start to justify why it is NOT the thing you should do, finding evidence to support that as well. But it was never that the world proved in favor or against either viewpoint - you're making it all up as you go along!!

So each time you look OUTSIDE YOURSELF for answers, for truth, for proof, for evidence, to determine some kind of inherent meaning or inherent objective factual truth, you are kidding yourself.

Your mind is NOT able to separately 'observe' what it perceives without interfering with what it perceives, because what you perceive is IN THE MIND that is perceiving it. Even quantum physics points to this. You can't look at something and say, I'm looking at this objectively and I'm only seeing what 'is really there', and then use that to explain why you should or shouldn't do something, or why something is right or wrong or good or bad or whatever. Each time you observe you MAKE ILLUSIONS and hallucinate. In that hallucination you dream-up rationalizations and justifications, and as you project what you WANT to see, you see it - projection makes perception.

So don't be fooled thinking you have a faculty for neutrally observing the world or neutrally finding evidence outside you that is there all on its own with no involvement from you. That's a victim viewpoint. YOU PUT IT THERE. And you will dream up whatever you want to in support of whatever you happen to be deciding is what you will dream is true today. There are no neutral thoughts - there are no neutral perceptions.

Ok, so today I will dream that it's a great idea to move to live in Hawaii, and I'll screen out everything that tells me its not a good idea and focus in on what tells me its a good idea, and that'll make it seem like its a really good thing to do. And then by convincing myself that its a good thing to do, I'll then say, well, I didn't have anything to do with deciding this - look at the objective evidence, it's clearly what I should do because of this and that and the other.

And then you'll be like, ok I will move to Hawaii because the external evidence shows me its the best thing. ie the situation or the world outside me is 'telling me I should' go there (which is a victim standpoint and disowning of power and responsibility). And then you move and its crap and you don't like it or its too expensive and you want to go home because you're living a DELUSION.

You're not being authentic and honest with yourself about the HUGE part you play in what you are perceiving and choosing, and how you are PRETENDING that you are not choosing so that you can blame it on external circumstances and BE A VICTIM. So long as we keep looking outside of ourselves to the world to 'ask it to tell us' what is out there, we're going to be victims.

So where will you turn for truth and facts? Truth and facts are of God, learned through Holy Spirit. He is the only one who can be 'objective' and not contribute hallucinations to your decision making.

The Kingdom of God has the interesting property of having to be shared and extended in order to exist. And the Course teaches that in order to truly 'have' something, you must give it away, because giving it proves that you must have had it and you can only give what you have. It also tells us that in order to experience anything you must SHARE in it because it is available to all and is not for your private possession.

"To have all, give all to all".

This is also reflected in "giving and receiving are one".

What it means is, things of God don't just sit there idle doing nothing. God isn't just "being God" without any increase or creation. If you are not sharing and extending love, love is not being love. This is why definitions of 'oneness' and 'non-duality' fall far short of the creative, extending, loving qualities of God.

We are also told that miracles which come from love will "go out because of what they are", but that "you are needed that they can begin." What that means is, love simply automatically radiates and extends by its own nature, but in order to allow it to extend through you you have to remove your blocks to it first. Then it moves through you without you having to make it do so.

Everything about God's Kingdom shares this nature. Something is not real unless it is shared, open, extending, increasing. This sharing and extending is like a RADIANCE or a radiation, or radiating outward. This produces LIGHT and PRESENCE. In a sense "God said, let there be light", speaks to God's creative ability to shine and create and extend.

Remember that in God's Kingdom everything is increased by being given, and giving something does not mean there is a loss (an ego idea). Instead, giving anything real increases it because giving does the opposite of losing.

Jesus talks about this in terms of everything being an idea. When you share an idea it is increased and it becomes stronger the more people believe in it. It does not diminish and the person having the idea does not lose anything.

The Course also says, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing". It is also the nature of love to extend and increase, because it has absolutely no reservations or limits or reasons to withhold itself from "shining" and radiating and going out everywhere.

Jesus talks about this in how the children of God contain the same "inner radiance" as the Father, and this is the source of all extension and creation.

Creation and extension and sharing are the same thing. To share to the ego means both parties have less than the whole. To share in Heaven means that both parties SHARE the WHOLE, and there is no decrease, and in fact there is an increase. The total is greater than the sum of the parts.

This is also true of the Sonship - "the combined total of the Sonship is greater than the sum of its parts". This is because each Son in the Sonship is not just a finite unit. Instead, each son SHARES and extends and increases and amplifies the rest of the Sonship. So it's not just like 500 sons lined up alongside each other, it's more like 500 sons overlapping and increasing with each other, creating a wholeness which is far larger than their individual contributions. This is also part of the holographic nature of creation.

Everything about God, His Kingdom, Creation, Extension, Sharing, Reality, Truth, Love, it all has this property of increase and sharing and going out and radiating and illuminating. And if this radiating and extending were not occurring, none of this stuff would be able to exist.

Love could not be love unless love loved to love and radiated love and extended and increased love's presence. Creation would not be possible at all (since nothing real can increase unless it shares) if it weren't for this sharing, giving, increasing.

There would be no light without the ability for it to shine, which means to "project" or extend outward beyond its source. God would have no Sons or Sonship and Heaven could not exist without it being in a constant state of radiance and increase.

Also therefore you cannot have or enjoy or share in anything real unless you also are willing for it to be given and extended. This is because, if you think about it, in order to receive something of God, you cannot just take it and possess it and diminish God's supply of it. Instead you have to be open to receive, to SHARE it, ie both you and God are experiencing the same thing, which also means this openness makes you willing to GIVE it as much as you receive it - giving and receiving are one, and therefore to experience love requires the willingness to share, receive, and give love, which automatically increases it.

God's act of CREATION, which we also possess since God shared it with us and created us capable of creating like Him, is an act of RETAINING your own light and love and yet 'projecting' it outward so that you shine, and this shining produces an increase, and manifests a "new creation" which itself possesses the ability to create and extend to exactly the same degree as yourself and God, and so now there is the whole of God + the whole of you + the whole of your own creations, and nothing is lost, and so there has only been an INCREASE. This is why Heaven rejoices as each Son of God returns Home to increase its light, and why joy increases, and everything just keeps on "growing" infinitely.

As love is received, shared, and extended, it increases because you are now acting like an amplifier or a relay which boosts the signal as it passes through. By giving it, by sharing it, you can 'have it', but you can't 'have' it by claiming it in isolation for yourself (which is ego). And so anything that is real cannot be possessed it has to be shared, and so anything real automatically has this sharing/increasing quality to its "terms and conditions". To exist (to have), it MUST extend. This is also why God creates and why every child of God is imbued with the same will to create. It is NATURAL to extend and create and to increase the presence of love. Nothing can exist without sharing and extension and equal giving and receiving.

If I get my love from God, and you get your love from God, we can love each other as ourselves.

But this doesn't mean you are getting your love from me, or that I am getting my love from you. I do not need to get love from you, if I am getting it from God. And you do not need to get love from me, if you are getting it from God.

God is the only source of love. We can share God's love with each other, but ONLY IF we are willing to share it with God first.

Otherwise if I lack a connection of love with God, I will see myself as in need of love, and will look to you to provide it, because I don't want to look to God to provide it. And then I will attempt to take it from you, or manipulate you into giving it to me.

Similarly, if you are lacking in your connection of love with God, you will see yourself as in need, and will try to get love from me to fulfill your perceived need, which will never work.

The only solution is to plug ourselves back into the source of love, God, and to get our love from God, so that we can share IN it, be a part OF it, and EXTEND IT. Not extending it because there is a need that has to be filled in another, but extending it SO THAT there IS NO LACK OF LOVE.

Paradoxically then, love is given not because it is needed, but because it is not. Or rather, it is given so that it is not needed, because it is provided.

God's Son is huge. Infinite, unlimited, eternal, omnipresent. He is everywhere at all times and beyond. There is no edge to His being and no limits to His Self.

Think of the Son of God like a huge canvas or giant blanket spanning the entire universe and beyond. Written all over this blanket it the word "Self".

Then, if you were to cover up your vision and narrow down your perception so that you only see one little piece of the blanket, obviously you're not going to be aware of the entire blanket. So you might now only be seeing a little tiny bit of the corner of the letter "E". Then, because your awareness stops at the edges of this little confined space, you will think, this is all that there is to my Self, this is the limit of who I am. And you will also think, that the full scope of this Self is the whole of you, and therefore you are whole.

Now, within that little limited sense of Self, it could be a very clear vision of that limited Self or it could be covered over with lots of false beliefs and a false sense of identity - the ego. You could then work to undo this ego and when it disappears it would reveal the full scope of your Self, WITHIN the confines of what seems to be your identity, ie within the limited scope of one body or one self. This is like a fully realized individual Self. This is "waking up in the dream" but still being confined by it.

But this Self isn't as large as or as aware of the entire scope of the huge blanket of Self that spans the whole universe. It does not experience all of time and space at once. It still sees limited objects and is limited by what the body can do and where it can go. It does not identify Self as the entire universe and beyond and is not experiencing that. It is the fullest experience of a limited self that's possible, within the scope of being an individual son in the sonship.

But there is more. There is more Self outside of the bounds of what you think is yourself. So like, if you are in a body, and are confined to what the body can do or where it can show up, everything outside the body you will regard as not yourself. But what if, the very edges of your sense of identity suddenly expanded out past the body and you became aware of the entire universe all at once? What if you suddenly were aware that you were everyone all at once, and all of the plants and animals and planets and stars? And then what if even beyond that, you knew that you were a single whole immensely unlimited Self - Christ - the Son of God - who is dreaming this whole universe into being?

That's quite a shift, away from being one of many selves, to being the only One Self. It means you are the entire sonship combined. It means the universe is inside of yourself, being a thought in your mind. This is the state of the Christ Self, and experiencing it constantly is what is required in order to realize it and identify with it. Or in other words, your sense of identity must grow way beyond what your perception shows you (all perception is limited) and must correlate to a FULL awareness of ALL that really does exist. Perfect complete awareness of God and His Creation.

What we might not realize has happened, is that Christ split Himself up into many many individual pieces, and each of those pieces has become an individual "soul", and each soul has found its way into a separate body. And each soul in each body now thinks that it is the whole of "Self". You can become fully aware of your individual Self as one of many Sons in the sonship, which awakens you inside the dream, but it doesn't put you in the awareness of being the one who is literally directly making the universe. You actually have to lift away the boundaries of your identity to a really huge degree in order to become larger than the universe itself, aware that you made it, identified as its dreamer and as God's One Son. This is what Jesus has accomplished.

We are all these little pieces of mind believing they are wholly independent, individual and autonomous. There is Self outside the extreme limits of the edges of our awareness. There is Self beyond the body. There is Self which spans the entire universe. There is Self so vast and endless that it knows no ends of any kind. It is a shared collective consciousness which becomes a singular consciousness and eventually is the end of consciousness, replaced with awareness of the whole of what is.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach in all its forms wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you be this if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this: Choose once again if you would take your place among the saviors of the world, or would remain in hell and hold your brothers there." - ACIM

When we talk of duality, non-duality, pure-non-duality, we're talking concepts.

Duality means polar opposites (good/bad, right/wring, up/down etc)

Non-duality usually means both opposites are one thing. This also usually means the opposites still exist, ie the world is real, but it's all one thing. Close to a Buddhist teaching for example.

Pure-non-duality typically means the world doesn't exist at all, ie neither opposites exists. Instead, it's contrasted against "God". ie, only God exists.

While the Course DOES teach "there is no world", there is a problem with saying it's pure-non-duality.

If we're being really, really pure about it, if it's logically true that only God exists, it is impossible for God to create, impossible for God to have a son or to create heaven, its impossible for there to be a sonship, there could not even have been a dream of death, and if there were a dream of death God would now have to be the one dreaming it.

That also means, if there is only God, that God is dreaming of death, God is dying, God is stuck in a body, God is "learning" (ie lacking), God is not whole, and God is an illusion.

That's a pretty big problem.

That's what pure nonduality really indicates if you are being REALLY pure about it.

At times Jesus does say things in the course which could imply otherwise but you have to be careful to discern what level he's talking at. When he says, "God is, and then we cease to speak".... he's not saying, God is... and there is nothing else... he's saying WE as individual creations cease to speak and we become one with - sharing with - the allness of God, but still retaining our individual free will.

It's useful up to a point to say, there is no world, only God exists. But if that's the scope of your grasp of the logic, then you're falling short. It puts God in a box, all by himself. And in that box, there is no creation, there is no expression or extension, there is no son.

Pure-non-duality means God does not even have one son, yet alone many. That's a problem. Without a son God is the one dreaming and dying, which is ridiculous. Without a son, God is a sinner and a separator, which is ridiculous. Without a son, God has no effects, therefore he is not causal, therefore he is not permanent, therefore he does not exist. That's a completely logical conclusion that you should come to if you really purely believe in pure-non-duality. What started out seeming to say only God exists, MUST mean God does not exist at all.

In order for God to have in any way at all a "son" or a "creation", something which is technically not 100% equated with Himself, it has to be possible that what God is does not stay inside a nice theoretical box. For God to create, and for God to cause an effect, and produce even one son, there has to be what the course calls a "natural grand division."

A "world", as ACIM defines it, is a natural grand division, or a projection outward, from God. God is complete in and of himself, but when he extends Himself to create, He creates something which is - in a sense - "outside of His own completeness" - an "addition" to what exists. Reality is increased by creating/sharing. ie It's talking about heaven/creation. It is "divided" from God in a natural way, which is normal and healthy. It all hinges around cause-effect.

God is cause. God produces effects. Effects of God are creations, which are expressions/extensions. The course says, "nothing real can be increased except by sharing." God has to share, meaning, there is some room here, or some freedom. It also says, that God gave his sons (plural) free will, which was necessary in order to allow them to create freely. The aim was that naturally the sons would create more love and joy and the kingdom would expand. It's only when sons mis-create that they go into separation dreams.

Since God is causing the Son, and the Son is an effect, and the Son is not causing God, there is a "natural" division in terms of roles or functions between God and His Sonship. It is natural. "Separation", in course terms, is an un-natural division. Division between God and Sonship is natural. It does not mean the same thing as separation. It does not mean there are walls up between each son or between sons and God. It means there are many individual free-willed souls each sharing fully and freely and openly with each other and with God.

Getting off topic slightly. But you can see that in order to allow for God to be alive, to be creative, to express and extend, to share, what God is MUST be more than a self-contained box. There is nothing "outside" of Him as such but souls still have free will within the scope of God, and share God. You can't really technically call this "pure non duality", because there isn't a duality but there ARE MANY SONS, and many creations, and many thoughts of God, and the sonship has many parts. There are more than 250 statements in the course pertaining to God directly creating multiple sons.

A multiplicity of sons is hardly in keeping with the idea of pure non-duality. It's not the same thing. It's not a state of "there is only God". It's a state of "there is god and god's creations." It's not a singularity. It's not a concept or a theoretical box. It's alive. It's creative. It's expressive. It's more than ego logic can describe or understand.

This is why the course is really not pure-non-duality. In a general broad sense, yes, it is, up to the point where you really take a look at heaven and God and creation and the sonship, and find out that there are in fact many parts to it. It's not just one big "blob". And each soul IS endowed with free will. Will is free when it chooses to extend freedom and love. It becomes blocked when we will against God's will and therefore will against our own will. That's what victimhood is all about - attacking ourselves with our own will. It's also the secret to salvation.

If you want ACIM to be pure-non-duality, you're not looking closely enough at the facts. God and Son are not one single thing pretending to be two. God does not dream. God has not separated from Himself. We are the ones who are responsible for dreaming of impossibilities.

There is one other big problem with trying to fit the course into a pure-non-duality model. The fact that in pure-non-duality there are no individuals and no individual free will. In pure-non-duality there are no souls. There is no permanent "self" distinct in some way from others, or naturally divided. That means, the pure-non-dual teachers constantly tell you that you do not have a self, or that you are not an individual. It is BULL SHIT. God created many sons and gave all of them free individual will.

Quote: "In the creation, God projected His creative ability from Himself to the Souls He created, and He also imbued them with the same loving will to create. The Soul has not only been fully created but has also been created perfect." - ACIM

Quote: "The world (heaven), in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man (souls/sons) by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind (his own free-will creations). The latter (the son’s ability to create) required the endowment of man by God with FREE WILL because all loving creation is freely given (God gave us freedom). Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement (no separation)or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects (each aspect being a son of God with free will) are of the same order." - ACIM

You DO have a soul. You ARE an "free individual". You may not have an EGO. Having a separating ego is not the same thing as being a free-willed soul. Ego means putting up walls and unnatural divisions between you and others. Absence of walls does not destroy your independent freedom, it simply allows you to share fully and freely with others. To be one with them, without losing your own soul.

The peddlers of pure-non-duality peddle "you do not exist" paradigm, which leads many course people to believe they are supposed to deny themselves. It in fact produces censorship of the soul and leads you to believe you are supposed to be getting rid of yourself. It actually results in a belief that the soul is supposed to DIE ie not exist. That to be in God, you cannot be a self in any way. That to be awake, you must not have any sense of existing individually.

Also if there are no souls and no individual freedoms, then you are literally responsible for the shitty choices that everyone else makes, they are literally you, and you are just as dead as the person who just died. It's ridiculous. It IS true that you share a oneness but you simultaneously have independence. This is possible in a holographic model of heaven in which the all is in every part, ie God is in every soul, and yet each soul is distinct and whole and complete in and of itself. This produces a state of simultaneous sharing with the whole AND independence. This is not in any way a pure-non-duality teaching.

There are two thought systems, and each has its own way of thinking. Each has its own logic and reason.

The ego’s system, which is also the physical world ("the world is false perception"), is based on separation. It completely rejects any kind of sharing. It’s reasoning follows a simple rule, which is at the root of consciousness:

This... is separate from that. Therefore, this is not that.

This is how the entire physicality of the world is mapped. An apple is not an orange. You are either at home or at the mall but never both at once. My body is not your body. I am not you.

Most of the world believes in the world, believes that the way that physical objects are separate is "natural and normal", and learns to think along these lines.

We then think of another as "not myself". We think of one object as separate from another object. We think if we give something we have to physically lose it. We think we are in one location and not another.

Our entire "way of thinking" adapts to the illusory world of false perception and thinks along ego lines. Separate this, separate that. Either this, or that. Not both. Nothing is shared. Everything is kept apart.

Its main thought construct is "either this or that". For example, if you put the apple in the left bucket, the apple is not in the right bucket. Either the apple is in the left bucket, or the right bucket.

This seems natural as a way of thinking because it seems to map to how the world is physically arranged. Objects seem to "prove" that this is how things are, so we think in the same way. We reason logically, based on evidence and physical experience, that "the apple can’t be in both buckets at once."

The thought system of God, is COMPLETELY opposite to this. It BREAKS all of the egos laws, both physically and in terms of reasoning. God’s system is NOT broken out based on separation. It isn’t rooted in something being "not" something else. And there are no differences to keep things apart.

When you want to wake up, to develop spiritually or to approach God, your mind has to actually learn to stop thinking like a physical object, and think like spirit. This is not easy because it’s so completely alien to how the world is set up.

For example, Jesus talks about how if you give away an idea, you keep the idea, and now both you and the other have the idea. And now the idea is strengthened. To the ego this is a violation of its laws.

The ego would say, it is not possible for one thing to be in two places at once. And that it is not possible for two people to have the same thing at the same time. It wants sacrifice. It wants lack. It wants finite limited resources. It wants exclusive ownership.

The ego can’t comprehend the idea of sharing. True sharing doesn’t mean compromise, or that each person gets half. True sharing means two individuals have everything at the same time. This is utterly nonsense to how the ego-minded thinker thinks.

The ego would say, It is utterly impossible for one thing to be two things and still be one thing. But God would say, that’s completely natural and entirely possible. God thus creates many children of God who are each other. Effectively, one son of God, an apple, is in both buckets at once. He is in his own bucket, and in the bucket of his brother. But the ego says this is impossible.

Becoming able to think in terms of sharing, or what is very often called "oneness", you have to drop notions of separation. To comprehend how you and your brother are one, and yet still brothers, you can’t think about it in terms of how the ego thinks about it.

The ego will conclude, either there is one son of God, or many sons of God, not both. To suggest both is true simultaneously seems like utter nonsense. But God’s laws break the ego’s laws. And God’s logic and laws of reason pay no attention to the limitations the ego imposes.

Thinking like and with God is nothing like thinking with the ego. The suggestion that you ARE your brother, and the two of you are joined, transcends the ego’s idea of separation. But until you "love your neighbor as yourself", your mind is not truly in a state of love, or recognizing who you are.

Part of you is in your brother. Your mind is also part of their mind. "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This in no way means that, when the two brothers become "one", there are no longer two brothers. The twoness doesn’t go away. Ego says it has to. God says the ego makes no sense. The two are brothers precicely because they are two in number. And just because they are BOTH each other, doesn’t mean they are not also themselves. This makes TOTAL sense in terms of how GOD thinks.

When you think about anything to do with God’s Kingdom, creation, sons, sonship, christ, souls, holy spirit, creations, etc... anything pre-separation.... you CANNOT think of it with the ego’s way of thinking. Because God’s system of thought is NOT spacetime. It is not broken out into separate things that share nothing with each other. It isn’t a system of lack or difference or exclusive compartmentalization.

EVERYONE who thinks about these topics using earth-bound separation-based ego reasoning, comes to FALSE conclusions about what ACIM is saying.

We can’t even really understand how it’s possible that you are one with your brother, or how God has more than one son in reality, or how we share minds, or how joined minds are healed, etc.... if you can’t also get your head around how to think TOTALLY OUTSIDE of the ego’s box.

The Golden rule states that what is true of one is true of another. There is one truth applicable equally to everyone. This is because god’s nature is singular and is shared by everyone. This then means that if something is true of your brother it must also be true of you. But the ego will say no, it’s no possible for you and your brother to be IDENTICAL... you have to be different.

Since the Golden Rule is God’s law, ego’s thought system breaks God’s law. It is an attempt to ignore the rule of equality of truth, which results in "the truth is different for everyone" - the first law of chaos. And chaos - total disorder - arises from there. And the ego calls this disorder - nature. Physical nature. As if it is completely natural. Yet it could not be more unnatural.

So if you want to understand the higher truth that ACIM is trying to teach, the dynamics of holy relationship, the sharing of minds, how miracles work, the relationship you have as brothers, the laws of God that you are under, and all the other things which are OUTSIDE of the ego’s way of thinking... you CANNOT USE the ego’s way of thinking to think about them. If you do, you will come to false conclusions, absolutely guaranteed. Because ego thought REJECTS the fundamental basis for God’s thinking, which is that everything is shared.

Sharing vs separation, is the two thought systems. And they DO NOT think alike. And they do not reason alike. And they do not conclude alike. There are TWO WAYS of thinking. One is false, and one is true. This higher way of thinking is everything written in the course talking about anything above "false perception", ego, body, or physical states.

Everything of true perception, christ, God, Sonship, heaven, healing, miracles etc.... is NOT OF THIS WORLD. And you cannot think about it correctly by thinking in the way that this world thinks about itself. You have to learn a NEW way to think, to reason, to perform logic, and to draw conclusions. And it has to break the laws of what you have always thought makes SENSE. The world does NOT make sense because it is a system of insanity and separation. So it’s "sense" is actually nonsense. And what you think is nonsense about God, is true.

In your whole mind, there is a split mind. It's kind of an artificial mind. It's made of illusions. It's a mental construct which blocks awareness by fooling you into thinking it is not all the same identity.

This split mind comprises two parts. One of the parts you are conscious of and you think is your entire self. You've identified with it.

The other part you are mostly unconscious of, having shut it out and pushed it out of awareness. You think that part is not yourself. You do not recognize it as you. And you project it onto/as 'others' to disown it.

The illusion is maintained so long as you are convinced that these two parts are separate, different, unrelated, and not one self. That means you fall for the illusion, the appearance, and the stories each has, that seems to suggest they're not `one`.

The best way to create that illusion is to set them against each other in a war of conflict, which makes them seem like enemies, or opposed to each other, as though they have absolutely nothing in common. This is a deception.

When you do not realize the two selves are part of one self, you are inside the illusion. You've bought into it. And you've identified with one part as your 'self'.

Awakening happens when you look more closely at the illusions which make it seem like these two selves are in fact separate.

Those illusions include any idea of victimhood or victimization, any idea of denial or blame or scapegoating, any irresponsibility or disowning of responsibility, any way in which you reject or judge or abandon yourself, etc. All forms of separation and attack. All of these attack ideas must be questioned.

What then happens is you realize that the 'other' that you thought was not you, IS a part of you. Anything you are experiencing IS chosen by you. And therefore, since you are the 'other' as well as the 'self', you have been doing all of these attacks to yourself. This is the key to salvation/awakening.

You have to get to where you can see that you are playing both sides of the experience. You are both the victim and the victimizer. You are both the attacker and the attacked. You are both the person running away and the person chasing.

And then you will see that both of these 'identities' both have a story. One of them (persona) has a sob-story about how it's just trying to be good and how the other (shadow) keeps attacking it. And the shadow has a story about how it's got nothing to do with the persona and wants to destroy its fake image. You need to look at both stories and realize, both stories are an illusion. The entire purpose of the notion that these two identities are 'separate' is to convince you that your Self - your identity - does not encompass both of them.

You are both of the parts of the split mind. Both of the false identities are within you. And this is where you have an aha moment of awakening. If both of these selves are within you, and if you are literally doing stuff to your 'self' ie you are making the shadow self do stuff to the persona self and vice versa, then you will realize that it is an ILLUSION that they are two separate identities. They are not separate selves. They are part of your ONE self.

Once your sense of self encompasses and is responsible for both of them, the illusion and story of each will be blown. You will see through it and recognize it is a deception. They're not really separate enemies after all, they're both you! And that means you see the sameness and oneness and unity of your identity. Your one self, rather than your dualistic selves. And overlooking (forgiving) these illusions of separation leads you directly to seeing your singularity, your wholeness. The oneness - singleness - of your identity. This is where you awaken.

You awake to a sense of self which encompasses all of the parts that you used to think were separate selves. And you therefore transcend all of those separate selves. You transcend the persona and the shadow. You see through the illusion that you were 'only' one small part of the contents of your mind - the illusion that you were the construct of a separate portion of mind (e.g. intellect). Seeing the oneness of the two becoming one, unifies you and reveals to you the true self.

You are whole, you are inclusive, you are unified, you are one self, you are not a split mind, you are not multiple personalities, you are not at war with your own self, you are not attacking yourself, you are singular, you are 'individual' not multiplicative, you are innocent and holy. Holiness means whole. Simply, awareness of this - experiencing it, is awakening. Letting go of separate selves and returning to one self.

The holy spirit is not a metaphor, or an idea, or a concept, or a fiction, or just part of your own mind. He is an eternal, immortal spirit being. He is also a creator. Just as much real as you are.

"The Holy Spirit, being a creation of the one Creator, creating with Him and in His likeness or spirit, is eternal and has never changed."

In fact, Jesus tells us that we are part of the Holy Spirit, as much as He is part of us. He shares himself with each of us just as much as we each share ourselves with each other. This does not make him literally "our own self".

"This form is not His reality, which God alone knows along with Christ, His real Son, Who is part of Him."

The holy spirit existed before Jesus accepted atonement and exists forever.

"He has established Jesus as the leader in carrying out His plan."

"The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion."

The holy spirit is a bridge across the gap of separation who remains permanently aware of God and permanently aware of your connection to him. He is the answer to separation and the bringer of salvation.

"The Holy Spirit is described as the remaining Communication Link between God and His separated Sons. In order to fulfill this special function the Holy Spirit has assumed a dual function. He knows because He is part of God; He perceives because He was sent to save humanity. He is the great correction principle; the bringer of true perception, the inherent power of the vision of Christ. He is the light in which the forgiven world is perceived; in which the face of Christ alone is seen. He never forgets the Creator or His creation. He never forgets the Son of God. He never forgets you. And He brings the Love of your Father to you in an eternal shining that will never be obliterated because God has put it there."

Jesus further clarifies that the Holy Spirit "abides" in your mind, but this does not mean he is literally you or "your right mind". He is IN your right mind and the right minds of all souls, and yet has his own being or spirit and his own mind. He *represents* your self - that doesn't mean He IS your self. He is alike your self, and alike God. He proves you and your father are one, ie, of like kind. The part of your mind that joins with the whole sonship in "christ" is where He lives.

"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with Both. And therefore it is He Who proves Them One."

After the atonement plan is complete, and after resurrection of all sons, Holy Spirit will remain as a permanent real creation of God. His function of perception will disappear and He will remain holy. His return to the formlessness of God does not mean He ceases to exist.

"And you will be with him when time is over and no trace remains of dreams of spite in which you dance to death's thin melody. For in its place the hymn to God is heard a little while. And then the Voice is gone, no longer to take form but to return to the eternal formlessness of God."

"When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

In this world it's becoming increasingly popular to regard "all bodies" as equal. This is a good step towards the recognition of true equality, but right now it's still heavily focused on making bodies real and then trying to equalize them and be more accepting of them. To accept a body as real is to make sin real.

The whole purpose of the body, to the ego, is to create an image of difference. Difference is an attack on the equality of God's children. Bodies show images of how we are not the same, live by different rules, have different values, and are imprisoned by forms.

So you get for example social movements to treat men and women equally. And you get the feminists and whatever the male counterpart of that is. And then you get the people with certain sexual orientations and gender identities having their say. And then it all gradually moves toward attempting to KEEP all of these different bodies, but somehow regard them as equal to each other.

The ideal is to have no racism, no sexism, no gender discrimination, no abuse of people who are different. But the ego wants to keep the differences and find a way to accept the differences. That is insanity and it is impossible, but it does show that on a deeper level, mentally, we're trying to move towards the truth.

What should and will eventually happen, is that we all *recognize* each other as immortal spirit, as beings of light, as completely identical children of God, who have no differences, are equal in *every* possible way, and this will completely ERASE the body which is a separation device. The body only shows up when minds believe in separation and differences.

So the goal shouldn't really be to find ways to "accept other bodies as they are", although that's a good step in the right direction. At least if we try to accept bodies as neutral or indifferent or that form doesn't matter, we're starting to foster the right kind of thinking towards a sane mind.

But at some point we have to admit, bodies come between people, bodies are illusions, you are not a body you are free, and the body is not the person at all. Bodies are nothing, bodies are not important, and if we're TRULY interested in equality then it has to go completely beyond bodies to the recognition of perfect identical christhood in each of us. And that means overlooking the body in a state of forgiveness.

Until then I guess we'll continue to see the stepping stones, the social movements and the mens/womens rights and the appreciation of the minorities and all the rest of it. It's just that, ultimately, that's limited and can only go so far before you realize bodies themselves are the problem.

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

You know sometimes when you're doing something on a computer and there's a progress bar, and sometimes there are actually two progress bars - overall progress and the progress of one of many smaller tasks? Well I think it's kind of like that with forgiveness too.

There is an overall progress which slowly evolves along similar steps to how each individual forgiveness progresses, but it goes a lot slower. This means that in general, you will start out really strongly believing that forgiveness has something to do with other people, that it's their fault, that you have to forgive them in some way.

Then gradually you will pull away from that and start to realize that it's not really about other people, it's about you. Each time something happens, over time you are a little less convinced that you're starting out with someone else being the problem. So you sort of start a little further along the process.

Each time you do a small forgiveness, each time you tackle some individual issue, and you take it all the way to it being forgiven, you are sort of practicing. You wear away at the rock of sin. And then you do another one, and another one.

What I've seen is that as a result of all these practices, all these forgiveness of individual events and people and situations, in the big long-term picture my mind seems to be gradually moving its 'starting position' away from others and more toward myself.

Instead of falling for some of the more obvious ego traps that convince and tempt me to believe that it's all someone else's fault, there's been a progression where I at least don't fall for those basic starting illusions as easily. I start my forgivenesses a bit further along the process.

Lately I've been encroaching more closely on the idea that forgiveness has nothing at all to do with other people. Instead I'm seeing that there is stuff going on in my own mind, a conflict between two parts of my own split mind, and that I play both the role of victim and victimizer. Whatever way I am using my mind to judge or attack others, I see that this is just my own mind content playing out, there's activity in my own mind about myself, and I'm doing this to myself. I am sort of learning that I can completely ignore any suggestion that this upset has anything to do with other people.

So I think gradually we erode this overall attitude of unforgiveness, we gradually chop down trees and the forest starts to clear. We keep winning little battles and gradually we're winning the war, so to speak. I am much quicker now to recognize that my issues have nothing to do with other people, and can quickly jump over the whole emotional drama tangle of "they are doing this to me", "I'm a victim of them", "I don't want this etc". I've had to take that illusion, that perceptual fault, so many times that I guess I've learned, overall, or have become able to generalize that learning, so that I just kind of 'know it' now.

I think this is really how things progress. I can well imagine that as time continues to unfold I will just keep having fewer reactions, less belief in victimhood, less fear, that I will fall for illusions less, that I will inevitably gradually be sustaining a certain level of 'awareness' and 'wakefulness' which acts as the starting point for any further corrections that are needed.

We wake up gradually. We make progress. And once we've done enough of the undoing of the grosser, more ego-extreme aspects of our mistaken perceptions, we will learn and won't be so easily fooled by them. Then it will come down to the subtler aspects of what's happening, what I'm doing to myself, how my mind is functioning, as we gradually 'home in' on revealing to our awareness what the simple truth really is about us.

And someday we'll realize, there is nothing left to forgive, and forgiveness isn't even needed, because now we are in a permanently forgiving attitude with Holy Spirit that shows us a forgiven world all the time. Ultimately there is nothing to forgive when you get to that point because you're seeing clearly, and really you were only ever forgiving your mistaken belief that there was something wrong that needed to be undone. Nothing has really happened. We're all doing fine. Congratulations on your progress.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

What this means is that God, who is Himself WHOLE, when He creates, He must create another WHOLE. The Son of God, or Sons of God, must be whole, in and of themselves, because they are created in the likeness and image of God. God only creates wholeness, he only creates fully (wholly), and whatever He creates MUST be whole.

This means that by creating a Son, God has added a second "whole" to the first whole. There are now at least two wholes in reality. The whole which is the Son, is a PART OF, the whole that is God, and yet the whole that is the Son, is in and of Himself, a WHOLE. He is complete, not lacking. This also continues on with the creation of all God's children, AND their creations.

The presence of multiple wholes in reality, wherein each whole is in and of itself a full complete whole, and yet also therefore MUST share with all other wholes in order to BE whole (oneness), is the natural state of the Kingdom of God. A wholeness of being, which encompasses additional whole beings.

If the idea of "many wholes" sounds like it makes no sense, it is because it makes no sense to THE EGO, who cannot comprehend whatsoever that there can ever be more than one whole. But what makes sense to the ego is nonsense, and when the ego sees nonsense it is truly sensible.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (are whole as individuals) and want to share it to increase their joy".

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

"The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE. "

"Holiness created me whole."

"Because the Sonship MUST create as one, you remember creation whenever you recognize part of creation. Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole. Wholeness"

"Every Soul God created is part of you, and shares His glory WITH you."

"He was created that YOU might be whole, for only the complete can be a part of God's Completion, Which created you."

"And God has NEVER forgotten what makes Him whole."

"Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

"And perception WILL last until the Sonship knows itself as whole."

"If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships."

"You will be made whole as you MAKE whole"

In God, you are eternal life. You are immortal. You are given life by God, and you are made of life. Your gift of life allows you to give life. And so you can create life just as God gave life to you. And so on Earth you also can give life, to resurrect the lifeless and raise the dead, to restore minds to life and to re-empower those who are trying not to live.

To perform a miracle is to express life, which is also love and power and light. You provide life to those who lack life and they return to life. Miracle working is life-giving. Miracles give life to the dead and resurrect the sonship. As a miracle worker you are a life worker. You work on behalf of life and on behalf of all that lives in God.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life."

"As fear is witness unto death, so is the miracle the witness unto Life. It is a witness no-one can deny, for it is the EFFECTS of life it brings. The dying live, the dead arise, and pain has vanished."

"The miracle of life is ageless, born in time, but nourished in eternity. Behold this infant, to whom you gave a resting place by your forgiveness of EACH OTHER, and see in it the Will of God. Here is the babe of Bethlehem reborn. And everyone who gives him shelter will follow him, NOT to the cross, but to the Resurrection and the Life."

"The sick are healed as you let go all thoughts of sickness, and the dead arise when you let thoughts of life replace all thoughts you ever held of death."

"The gift of life IS yours to give, because it was given YOU."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

"He sends a witness to your Life in Him Who knows no death. Each miracle He brings is witness that the body is NOT real. Its pains and pleasures does He heal alike, for ALL sin's witnesses do His replace."

"Its life and power are its believer's gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what HAS life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace."

"Life is given you, to give the dying world."

"And we see it in the dying and the dead as well, restoring them to life."

"EVERYTHING is accomplished through life, and life is of the mind and in the Mind. If we share the same mind, YOU CAN OVERCOME DEATH BECAUSE I DID."

"he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone."

"But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to Resurrection."

"Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death."

"So will we prepare TOGETHER the way unto the Resurrection of God's Son."

"God has one Son, and he is the resurrection and the life. His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"YOUR resurrection is your re-awakening."

"It has also promised that there is no death; that resurrection must occur, and that rebirth is man's inheritance."

What if when you become healed, the whole world is transformed in some way and is a little lighter?

This may sound radical, but it does appear to be supported in the course in various ways.

Jesus speaks of how when you are healed, others cannot be omitted from your healing.

Jesus speaks of how if you change your mind the WHOLE world must change. This isn't because its ONLY your world, but because you are joined with everyone.

Jesus speaks of how if you join minds with another person and deny/reject their denial of health, they will become healed, and cannot stay sick unless you support their belief.

Jesus also says that you are your brother's keeper. Meaning that HIS condition is YOUR responsibility.

How is this possible? It seems it is only possible if somehow, you and other people are actually connected together and SHARE something. Some part of your self is their self and vice versa. Meaning that if something applies to you, it also applies to them.

In the biggest picture this is the Golden Rule, that what is true of you is true of others. And this rule is God's law which is always in effect everywhere on all levels at all times, even if we deny it.

Let's frame it this way. Let's say there is a kind of collective consciousness. There's this vast sea of being, in which there are concentrations of self, sufficiently organized as to be "individuals", yet intimately joined to the tapestry of everyone else's existence. Sort of like we're all one big joined entity with multiple heads. A bit like siamese twins.

This is actually a vague and not accurate enough description but just for analogy's sake... this would mean that if someone chooses to rise up, they tend to "drag" others up with them. If someone opens their mind to truth, there is sort of a ripple effect that propagates to ALL others.

What that must mean is, any work you to do heal or love yourself, MUST overflow and affect others.

Jesus similarly talks about how you are the light of the world.

Jesus also talks about how it only takes ONE teacher of God to save the world.

Jesus also talks about how the light into your mind can shine into another mind and enlighten it.

Given the fact that then that there is a SHARING component to all of us, there is some part of us that is ONE, joined, connected, it becomes not only impossible to do anything truly in isolation, but also anything you do DOES affect everyone else.

This would be reflected in statements like "There are no private thoughts" for example.

Now, this might sound radical. In fact it will. But this leads to the conclusion that its possible for you to HEAL ANOTHER PERSON, if you will apply an appropriate attitude. Certainly the person still has free will and can choose to resist, to stay anchored down in the darkness. But you can at the very least offer love.

Love has such healing power it can dislodge even the resistance to truth in another. As Jesus says, "the task of the miracle worker is to deny the denial of truth." And also that there is not really any point in miracles at all unless they are able to affect someone who NEEDS healing, and thus is in a state of resistance. Healing of the person would not be possible otherwise.

For this to be "ok", there must be some aspect of another person that IS LITERALLY YOU. Or that is so intimately shared with you as to be essentially your self. If you love someone "against their will", it can still overthrow their unloving nature and heal them, to the degree it can be accepted.

What's radical is, this means that the condition of the body of another person, is not entirely "up to them". You have an influence as well. For example "Forgiveness is not complete unless it has brought a healing to both your brother and yourself." "He is healed along with you." "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver" etc.

There is something about miracles that is based on sharing, and on returning to the state where you SHARE everything with others. That return to sharing is "joining". In a shared state, your brother's health is yours. In fact "YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health."

Jesus even says that when YOU heal your mind and body and it now represents and symbolizes the absence of attack, the presence of innocence and love etc, the state of YOUR healing AFFECTS your brother, exonerates him, lifts sin from his mind, heals him, and thus heals HIS body as well.

At the level of the ego and the physical world, the ego suggests that there is total separation between you and others due to bodies. And thus changes in you have NO effect on anyone. That your mind can change is perceptions of the world WITHOUT changing the world. This is not what Jesus says is possible, because its not true that there is absolute separation. Even the world's separation is slightly joined, as proven by quantum entanglement and the holographic universe theory etc. Even duality is not quite fully duality.

This means that we ARE all ALWAYS at least slightly joined. We are always part of the experience of others. And this reflects our status as co-creators. So if someone has a sickness, this means there IS something I can do about it, because their sickness is not ENTIRELY their own sickness. Moreso, sickness arises from the belief in separation BETWEEN brothers, and is a two-sided sword which attempts to accuse both.

The sense of separation that it is based on cannot be sustained if I choose to acknowledge that we are JOINED and SHARING. If I do not AGREE to the separation-based sickness, and do not uphold my end of keeping the division between us maintained, it cannot be there and the person must be healed.

If I float my mind to a high level of love and light, I also become far more powerful in my ability to "affect" others. Or rather, to extend and share my healed state and the healing agent of spirit WITH the other person, lifting them up also. This is how it becomes possible to raise the dead for example, to GIVE life to others that they seem to lack, because you have it. This is only possible if we truly are joined together in some way, whereby a person fundamentally has "access" to the being and mind of another.

Total unconditional absolute sharing is the natural state of the Kingdom of God, which all of His children (as brothers) share forever. It is completely natural and real. "One mind is all minds, one brother is all brothers, such is the truth." While I have a self, a soul, it is STILL true that I am "one with" all other brothers, and their souls are joined to mine in such intimacy that we literally are FUSED together in some way. And that fused sharing "network" between us is what Jesus calls the Christ Mind.

So truly, we are not separate people. We are in fact totally the opposite. And that means that we can't consider ourselves to be totally incapable of healing others. Whatever we do, however we focus, whatever we feel, it's going to influence everyone in the universe. This is how holographic reality works. Each individual is a whole in and of themselves but shares the whole with all the rest. I am you and you are me and we are brothers eternally.

It then isn't a question of whether you can heal another person or by what mechanism this happens. It's more a fact that you can't AVOID influencing them. You share everything. If you have a bad day you drag everyone down. If you have a good day you are the light of the world and lift everyone up. People are literally lightened and healed when you bring the light. "you ARE your brother's keeper."

This is perhaps why there the "great awakening" happening. It's because there are contributions from an increasing number of awakening individuals whose influence is more powerful than those who sleep. "Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength." And so the entire world is going through a spiritual transformation.

Each time that you have a loving thought, each time that you recognize joining and sharing, each time that you forgive, you are healing the entire sonship. Because every single child of God shares itself with you. You are part of a vast network of interconnected parts that depend on each other. You are responsible thus for your brother because what you choose either blesses or curses him, either heals him or compounds his sickness.

This ties further into holy relationships, in that when you are holy towards another, and they thus become more holy, the shared state of joined consenting minds transcends their individual contributions. The fact that there are two souls sharing everything is more powerful than any sense of "one in isolation". To be joined is to share and to share is to love and to love is to wield God's miraculous power.

You do have the authority, power, and ability, connections, and access, to heal other people if you so choose. Shining your light of love into their minds cannot help but offer healing. Your prayers of love can lift others up from despair. And through you the Holy Spirit can move mountains.

"HOW MANY TEACHERS OF GOD ARE NEEDED TO SAVE THE WORLD?

The answer to this question is - one.One wholly perfect teacher, whose learning is complete, suffices. This one, sanctified and redeemed, becomes the Self Who is the Son of God.He who was always wholly spirit now no longer sees himself as a body, or even as in a body.Therefore he is limitless.And being limitless, his thoughts are joined with God's forever and ever. His perception of himself is based upon God's Judgment, not his own.Thus does he share God's Will, and bring His thoughts to still deluded minds. He is forever one, because he is as God created him. He has accepted Christ, and he is saved."

---

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? What does it matter if they then appear in many forms? Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as one, for that is what they are."

There is a subtle form of ego projection which may go unnoticed.

Sometimes other people are arguing or upset. It may not necessarily have anything to do with you and you might not be actively a part of the argument.

But the ego in you can start to experience a kind of "delight" that others are suffering or in conflict. It's almost like saying, I don't even need to project sin to make others guilty because they're doing a great job of being guilty on their own.

The ego then kind of sits back in glee, in a kind of sick way, excited that someone else is receiving the punishment.

I've seen this rise up in myself on occasion when other people are having arguments in front of me. The ego becomes a kind of spectator, feeding off the situation by "enjoying" the conflict.

The ego is sadistic, and false beliefs always lean toward welcoming suffering. The ego loves to suffer, to be both victim and victimizer. So when both external parties are victimizing and being victims of each other, the ego is having a field day.

I have to watch this in myself and notice it. When I notice it, it seems to collapse and disappear immediately if I recognize that this is me being ego. Just because I don't seem to be involved doesn't mean my ego stays quiet. It gets involved passively.

This is also the source of people gossiping about each other or backstabbing or creating drama indirectly about the behaviors of others. Using them as virtual scapegoats. Taking advantage of the opportunity to be "right" about others being "wrong" because of how other people dug their own grave.

A year or so ago, someone close to me was sick. We weren’t sure what really happened. It was very strange. It seemed to come out of nowhere overnight, had no apparent cause, and seemed impossible to diagnose.

The person seemed to turn into a bit of a monster, was confused and paranoid, suddenly dropped a whole bunch of longheld beliefs, and seemed to turn into another person. This was baffling and very upsetting.

I took it upon myself to try to "figure out" what was happening. So I started to research. I went online and was googling like a madman. Sometimes I ran across something which seemed it "might" explain what’s happening. Some things seeemd to fit.

Each time I found something, I started to exclaim "this is what it is", or "this is what is causing it!" I started driving the person nuts with my explanations and ideas of what I thought the problem was. Each time that I found something, it seeemd like the true cause. But later, it turned out to be, maybe not "it". Something about it, didn’t quite fully explain all the symptoms.

Did that stop me? Nope. I thought that this meant I should seek even harder to find the truth. That I should have the "ability" to find the truth out there somewhere. I was convinced at the time that the truth IS out there somewhere. That if I just try hard enough, I will find it. That "cause" is out there somewhere. Identifying the cause would seem to suggest what is happening, to explain it, and that this would lead to a SOLUTION.

It never happened. Each time I went seeking, I felt more desperate. Each time I searched, I came up more and more empty handed. I felt exasperated and frustrated. It became obsessive. Surely the truth was there somewhere, and dealing with this person being the way there were was intolerable. I wanted to find the truth. But I was looking for it "out there", and could not find it. The more I sought and did not find, the more upset I became, the more desperate I felt, and the more I then felt COMPELLED to search even harder.

This turned out to be a good thing after a while, because I FAILED. I totally failed to find the truth out there. I "exhausted" all efforts to search externally. So my mind gradually was using up its last vestige of a sense of "possibility", that the truth was out there. I started to notice something. The truth does not seem to be out there! Anywhere! I lost faith in the world and SAW THROUGH the illusion that the world contains the truth. Any kind of truth. Anywhere.

It was a very short hop from this perception to realizing, bringing into question, that perhaps.... THE TRUTH IS NOT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. That it literally cannot be found. That seeking is a EGO TRAP. The more you seek for truth out there, the LESS you find it. And that’s because, in truth, the truth is INSIDE YOU. Each time I basically "left my inner truth", believing I "did not have the truth", I went searching for it in the world. I really believed strongly, the world HAD the truth in it SOMEWHERE. But it did not. I inadvertently proved it to myself.

So I failed, and that was great, because this idea suddenly popped in, that there is no truth in the world at all. NOTHING in the world is true. This was quite eye opening. It meant that, for example, the sickness which I’d been trying to diagnose and fix this whole time, ALSO wasn’t the truth. It also meant, it wasn’t being caused BY anything out there. The truth was NOT out there. There must have been another cause, an inner cause.

And so began a whole new phase for me, of withdrawing my belief from the world, learning to recognize it is COMPLETELY FALSE, that it is not true in any way, and that also sickness is entirely fake. These were important steps in the direction of forgiveness, and completely shifted the way I was looking at the sick person 180 degrees. Clearly, it wasn’t a question of "what out there is causing it". It was a matter of, "It is NOT being caused".

Gradually as I’ve been practicing this and growing stronger in the recognition that this is true, that earth is 100% false, and nothing in it is true, my miracle-working has gone up. It is my job now not to figure out, "what caused that", but to learn to NOT BELIEVE that it is caused by anything other than the mind. That there is no truth IN what I’m perceiving. People showing up with sickness, are trying to assert a lie. Sickness is recognize more and more as FALSE, an illusion, with no truth to it.

Miracle working **ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES** NOT BELIEVING THIS WORLD IS THE TRUTH. If we believe it is the truth, we will keep it, lock in its form, have no will to heal it, and be convinced by illusions. The truth is not in the world or in form. "Never was love in the world." It is not out there. It’s inside. IT comes from God. God is the only cause, not this world. Mind is the only cause of what’s out there.

What appear to be causes in this world are LIES. Fiction. Fantasy. Illusions. Dreams. Make-believe cause that suggest, yes, the world has truth in it because the world has a causal power. The world causes nothing. It is nothing but effect. Cause, therefore truth, is somewhere else. Truth is always equated with REALITY. Since there is NO truth in this world, not in false perception or in true perception, THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. And therefore it is NOT THERE, and whatever is showing up as "sickness happening" IS NOT HAPPENING.

What is not a CAUSE, is nothing but an EFFECT, and therefore has no reality of its own. Because the world is an effect, and has no truth/cause in it, IT IS NOT THERE. It is not happening. Separation never happened.

Jesus:

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you perceive is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of your inward condition."

"The cause of healing is the only Cause of everything. 4 It has but one Effect. 5 And in that recognition, causelessness is given no effects and none is seen."

"There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect."

"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects."

"what you made has no cause and no effects at all."

"But it also shows that, having no effects, it is not cause because the function of causation is to have effects"

"The world is but an effect, it is not a cause at all."

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less"

"The world you see does not exist."

"Nothing the world believes is true."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams."

"The world you see has nothing to do with reality."

"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness."

"The world you see does nothing. It has no effects at all."

"Salvation is no more than a reminder this world is not your home."

"There is a place in you where this whole world has been forgotten."

"The world has never been at all. Eternity remains a constant state."

In terms of how you as an individual being "relate" or are related to other beings, there is more than one aspect to it.

1) You have a relationship directly with God who is your creator above you. God created you and established everything which is true of you. You are his holy and divine, immortal and innocent child. The causation that establishes these facts of you is his alone and there is nothing and no-one that can undermine it not even yourself.

2) You have a relationship sideways with your equal brothers/siblings in the sonship. This is also the same as the sonship, the christ and the one son, when you also include our creations. Your brother has no causality toward you whatsoever. They share with you equally and stand at your side but they cannot cause you to be what you are, or cause you not to be.

3) You have a relationship directly with your creations and the creations of your brothers. These are below you. You entirely cause your creations to be what they are, similar to how God causes you. They are your effects, created with your brothers. Similarly you also co-create your brother's children with them.

4) You have a relationship with yourself.

There are therefore established certain dynamics and roles which cannot be intruded upon or changed. For example, you cannot have awe of your brothers. They are your equals at the same level. They cannot induce awe in you and you cannot awe each other. No matter how one you are with your brother it isn't "enough" to establish awe.

The only way you can experience awe is by including God in the relationship. Once you are relating to God, vertically, to your own source, you can experience awe of him. And your brother can kneel at your side facing the same direction and experience awe of God as well. But neither of you can cause the awe in each other, or remove it.

What you are, how you are established, what you have, what is innate to you, your inheritance from God, everything you share with Him, is given to you by him. It is not given you by your brothers or even by yourself. You can be with God at any time simply by virtue of the fact that he has bound you to him forever. All you have to do is accept this individually and it is yours. You are free to come and go as you wish. Union with him is your birthright and is completely free. You can think of this as a vertical axis with you below God.

There is also a horizontal axis with your brothers in relationship to them as equals. They are next to you, not above you. They have no power over you. They cannot cause you to be what you are, or to have what you have, or determine whether or not you can go home. All they can do is be like you and remind you that you are like them and of a nature given by God.They can point you towards God, for example, but they cannot do what only God can do. They cannot establish your holiness or cause you to be loving against your will. The freedom of your will is vertically aligned with God and comes from/is shared with Him.

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it."Their role in relation to you is the role God assigned to them. Their function is really co-creation with you, extending forward to your mutual creations. You are supposed to be "spiritual parents" together, sharing children with each other as a family. All the sons of God are co-parents of all the children, along with God. You align with each other and create together but you do not create each other.

This means that on the vertical axis, whether you are in heaven or not is a matter between you and God. It's your God-given right to go home at any time you choose. You do this by accepting atonement individually for yourself. Then you move on to sharing it and bringing it to others in the great crusade. Whether you go up or down is up to you.

You moving up or down the vertical axis can be aided by your horizontal relationships. The vertical relationship is primary and the horizontal relationships are secondary, in the divine order. Your brothers can form horizontal relationships with you, special relationships which turn into holy relationships. But they cannot exceed their function or position in creation. They have no say in where you are positioned in relation to God or whether you can access God.

A holy relationship can be used to remind you of what you are, to reflect to you what it's like to be true to yourself, to recognize you for your true nature, to point you in the direction of what God established about you, and to help you to heal/recover from the separation. It can be used to heal together, which is a reflection of your function of creating together in heaven.

Two beings can join to any degree of intimacy in horizontal sharing, which assists both of them to find themselves and God. But the relationship between each of them and God is their own personal experience, as reflected in revelations.

Revelation symbolizes the original form of communication or relationship between God and a given son. It isn't shared with the horizontal brothers. This is because the revelation is coming down the vertical axis along the channel between God and YOUR soul and includes only you and God and doesn't go past this point. It reflects and is similar to how God specifically created you, and is "prior to" secondary relationships with any brothers.

This is why your brothers are not a part of it. Nor can your brother cause you to have this relationship or force you to experience a revelation.It's also written in the course that miracles unite you with your brother, while revelation unites you with God. These are essentially the two relationship axis. Your brother can assist you in producing miracles which are a MEANS to end, but they cannot cause you to experience revelation which symbolizes "the end" itself. Therefore the "most" your brother can do is help you to unite with THEM, but they cannot induce or cause you to unite with God. That's God's business and is deeply personal at the inner altar of the soul.

Whether a person moves vertically toward God or not is up to them, and it may be prompted, guided, helped, and supported, by any number of other individual brothers. Or maybe even none of them at all. It doesn't matter because this fundamental freedom to come and go from heaven is a key that YOU hold, as per the secret of salvation, being fully empowered, and doesn't require any external conditions. It is you who left God and you who have the key to open heaven's gate.

It is however possible that in addition (because there are 2 axis) to moving vertically, you can also move horizontally. When you do this your brother becomes more included in your shared experience. You can join minds with none, one, two, or more individuals. Even with all of them. It perhaps depends on where you are vertically, as to how "far out" you can spread your unconditionality to your brothers. Unconditional love moves you toward God, while simultaneously moving you outward to include everyone equally. At least potentially.

We can say that, you can become unconditional vertically without necessarily having to include anyone horizontally, because your relationship to God is primary. But more likely, you'll have various holy relationships horizontally which are purer and more full as you go higher. Whether you go higher or not doesn't depend on these horizontal relationships, because they are a means, but these relationships are raised up and improved as you go higher. They can help you TO go higher as well, but they cannot give you what you already have, or deny it to you.

Eventually everyone individually goes vertical far enough either with or without horizontal support, to the point where they become inclusive of all horizontal components of the sonship as well. The brotherhood does not cause this all inclusiveness, because that would be like saying you are beneath your brother. But the higher you go the more you must expand to include everyone in your love.

If you return home to the Kingdom, then you reunite with God and with the sonship as a whole, as an individual soul. This is what Jesus did. He united with God's will in full and therefore also became fully inclusive of the whole sonship. This was his mission and is something he was able to do alone, not because he was in any way different to you but because it was equally God-given right. No son of God is treated differently and none of anything the others cannot have.

"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."

Jesus essentially entered into 'holy relationship' with every son of God, regardless of whether they were aware of it or not, because he became so vertical. He gave more than he was being given. And he became the savior of all those who were not joining with him. He thus became the first and as yet only true witness/link to God. He went higher than anyone else, even higher than his holy relationship partner Mary who was left behind.

"I am the only true witness for God."

As we each awaken and move up the ladder to atonement, we join ourselves with him in holy relationship. Just as we may (or not) join with other individuals on the road towards the atonement. We might enter into it two by two, if that is in the atonement plan, or we might go there solo. But even those going there solo are entering into horizontal holy relationship with Jesus. But it's worth mentioning that being holy is something established by God and can only EXTEND into your relationships with your brother. By you BEING holy, you can relate in a holy way with others.

You can go all the way vertically on your own, but it helps to have helpers support you along the way. And you can't go all the way vertically without acknowledging all your brothers in the sonship as one with you. They may not be aware of this, but you're uniting at the level of the soul, not the mind. So a blockage in their minds doesn't impact whether you can unite with their souls or not.

Either way, we all go home eventually, because we never really left.

The way the ego thinks about oneness is fraught with massive mistakes and assumptions and faulty conclusions. And a lot of people do this.

It seems simple enough to aim to "become oneness". But the way the ego thinks causes this to mean some things that it does not really mean.

And the aim often tends to be to get rid of the ego, but this is also then lumped in with self as though we are to have no self at all. And being one seems to imply that you cannot have a self, which is false.

There are numerous things wrong with this because not only does it erase the self that God created, it equates you with being entirely the same thing as God.

Now, in truth you actually are the same thing as God, up to a point, because you have all of God in you and are part of him. But God created you and you did not create him, so you are not his equal, and he IS greater than you.

This might imply you cannot be one with God, therefore, because if you are not totally the same as him how can you be one? But this isn't true either. You can be entirely fully one with God and still be secondary in creation. You can still be entirely one with God and still have a self.

I know it sounds paradoxical and nonsense but anything that is true sounds nonsense to the ego, just as anything the ego believes IS nonsense. And the egos beliefs ABOUT oneness are completely nonsense.

God is a holographic system of creation in which the whole is in every part and every part contains the whole. What oneness means in such a system is not the same as what it would mean in spacetime. The whole of God is in each of us, and each us of is whole and contains the whole - a shared whole. In this system, we DO have a self, AND we are one, and we are not, and we are.

What often happens is many people conclude that in order to gain oneness they have to give up self, so then there is this whole drive to destroy the self. This can only lead to more depression because self-repression is not natural. It's not natural because God created you to have a self. "I am still as God created me."

But we have to then reconcile how we can be one and still have a self. And that's easily explained by the fact that God's reality follows the holographic principle. Each individual part of God contains all of God.

"The whole power of God is in every part of Him"

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

So we don't actually want to be trying to get rid of self, but we also don't want our sense of "type" of self to be getting in the way of being able to be united with, one with, in communion with, the whole of God and creation.

We can be a part and a whole at the same time. That's the truth. It's only when we try to be a part that is NOT the whole that we move into ego. A partial part is a selfish part which is trying not to share with the rest. It's rejecting wholeness.

All we have to thus do to become one, is to reclaim and own and unite with the wholeness, while still being a part. We remove the egotism which is the idea of being apart-from the whole, which is the walls we surround ourselves with to shut it out. But we do not get rid of the prisoner in the prison cell - only the cell walls need removing, and then the sense or type of self is purified.

If we aim to be one with everything and have "no self at all", we're only getting half of the story. We are supposed to be full of self, not having no self. But some people teach and practice a non-dual view of having no self at all. This obliterates God's creations. Just because you're not an exclusive self doesn't mean you're not an inclusive self, and the opposite of false self is not no self - it's true self.

We don't want selfishness, but selfishness is an attitude problem, not a problem of what you are.

Trying to see yourself as "one", as the whole, as the entirety of everything, TO THE EXCLUSION OF selves, will result in further insanity twisted around to make it seem like there is a spiritual awakening while continuing to deny God's creation.

Being ONLY oneness is not the answer. You have to be oneness AND twoness. A self that shares, a self that unites, a self that gives, a self that relates, a self that includes, a self that loves. A self that knows it is one with and like its creator, but also knows its been given the freedom to be its own self, with free will, which is a gift from God. We are not supposed to be throwing the gift of having been created away.

So there is risk in focusing entirely on oneness, or on non-duality, because it can deny the self to such an extent that you end up with a sense of having none at all, which is not what God wills. You do have a self, it's just a very open shared self that includes others within it.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth.

"Your brother is your Friend BECAUSE his Father created him like you. There IS no difference. You have been GIVEN to each other that love might be extended, NOT cut off from one another."

"Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

In A Course in Miracles, we are taught in many ways that we are all one. By this we mean, that God created an entire family, a sonship, comprising many individual beings, who simultaneously are individual and one. Each Son of God is all the Sons of God, as the One Son. "One brother is all brothers."

This means we have a kind of collective consciousness or "hive mind". The Christ Mind is this shared mind, which each individual mind created by God is merged and identified with. This means that anything in one mind, is also in another. Any form of healing is experienced by everyone. And everything you give or do affects everyone.

It also means you are not really an isolated, separated off stranger, who stands alone and has private personal experiences. This is why there are no private thoughts. The body is the idea that you are disconnected from everyone. But relationship re-establishes that you share and are joined, with the whole sonship. In fact you ARE the whole sonship. Part of you is in EVERY child of God.

In truth then, it is not possible for you to do or think or feel anything without it in some way influencing or being shared by THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Every attitude you have affects everyone. Every thought is heard by all. We are all plugged into a giant psychological web, sort of like a holographic internet. And everyone has access all the time to everything.

When Jesus accomplished the resurrection and ascension, he DID IN fact accomplish it for and with ALL of us. We could not be excluded from it, and all of us are a part of it. The atonement IS about sharing and is a collective relationship between an individual and THE WHOLE.

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT. The Holy Spirit merely reminds you of what is your NATURAL ability."

When Jesus resurrected and ascended, a "part of" all of us MUST have done this as well. The part of Jesus that is IN you, which IS you, accomplished this. Jesus had to basically plug into and accept the parts of him that are in all of us, shared with and one with us, knowing us AS himself, in order to accept atonement fully. Therefore his awakening did in fact wake all of us up, to some degree. He plugged us ALL back into God.

Each individual mind in the collective has its own will. So what does that mean when someone chooses to rise into the light? It means everyone else must be pulled upward at least a little, even if they themselves are pulling the whole sonship down. Some light MUST enter their minds, because the light in Jesus's mind is in ALL minds.

When Jesus accomplished this, we were ALL illuminated and enlightened to some degree, and some part of us knows this. And each time YOU heal or resurrect or think well of yourself and others, you ARE resurrecting the whole sonship. Part of you IS Jesus, and IS already awake in heaven. And as each person chooses the atonement, it is being chosen on behalf of everyone.

"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."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone. And you were with him then, as you are now."

"I ask for your forgiveness, for if YOU are guilty, so must I be. And if I surmounted guilt and overcame the world, you were WITH me."

"A miracle is never lost. It touches many people you may not even know, and sometimes produces undreamed of changes in forces of which you are not even aware."

"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"To heal, or to make joyous, is therefore the same as to integrate and MAKE ONE. That is why it makes no difference TO what part or BY what part of the Sonship the healing is done. EVERY part benefits, and benefits equally. YOU are being blessed by every beneficent thought of any of your brothers anywhere. You should want to bless them in return, out of gratitude."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone.

And I would share my healing with the world"

"I am in charge of the process of Atonement, which I undertook to begin. My Atonement was for the canceling out of all sins (i.e., lack of love) which human beings could not otherwise correct. That is what the Biblical statement "underneath are the Everlasting Arms" means. (Helen Schucman explanation: This means that He will backstop whenever human miracles will not suffice for atonement purposes. However, it is perfectly clear that when a person can atone by miracles, both giver and receiver are atoning. It is better to atone this way because of the mutual benefits involved.)"Inasmuch as you do it unto the least of these, my children" really ends with "you do it unto yourself and ME." The reason why YOU come before me is because I do not need miracles for my own Atonement, but I stand at the end in case YOU fail temporarily."

"It is impossible that anyone be healed alone. In sickness must he be apart and separate. But healing is his own decision to be one again, and to accept his Self with all its parts intact and unassailed. In sickness does his Self appear to be dismembered and without the unity which gives It life. But healing is accomplished as he sees the body has no power to attack the universal Oneness of God's Son."

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."

"No-one is healed alone. This is the joyous song salvation sings to all who hear its Voice."

"I can help because the world is illusion, and I have overcome the world. Look past the tomb, the body, the illusion. Have faith in nothing but the spirit and the guidance God gives you. He could not have created the body because it is a limit. He must have created the spirit because it is immortal."

I asked myself yesterday, when was the list time I actually "did a forgiveness" ... perhaps because I know that forgiveness is very important - its the core of ACIM practice - but was I actually DOING it?

What came to mind wasn't the typical answer, you know, thinking back to how many times I 'did something'.

Instead, what I recognized is, forgiveness or 'being forgiving' is a constant state that Holy Spirit represents, in which all is seen as already forgiven and that there is nothing 'to' forgive - because forgiveness fore-gives in order NOT to judge.

So this led to recognizing and acknowledging, that perhaps in some way I am 'being forgiving' all the time, to some degree, as a constant thing rather than as one-off events of sudden correction.

See, there's a difference between being forgiving and applying a correction. Correction is there to undo faulty perceptions so that you can RETURN to a forgiving attitude. Yet in the past I used to think forgiveness is the part where you correct the attitude - the process.

So I stopped to get a sense of... am I, in general, having a more forgiving attitude than I used to have.... am I carrying around with me a constantly more forgiving way of perceiving, regardless of whether it's punctuated with "Oh I gotta do something" procedures and techniques. And in general, I don't really know.. but I think I'd have to say yes, I'm generally more forgiving.

In other words, each time a correction is made, I become more forgiving in general and my 'level' of forgiving attitude raises. It's a constant, not a one-off. I'm less judgemental. I'm not as attached. I'm less reactive. I'm generally "stronger in the truth" (Jesus's words to me). That seems like a step in the right direction.

So no need to beat ourselves up for how many linear times we've 'done a forgiveness'... all the benefits of prior efforts stay with us. Each choice for Holy Spirit is a permanent step toward Heaven. And you definitely aren't 'guilty' for not taking enough of them.

The ego only comes about when there is an emphasis of DIFFERENCES between any two things.

If two holy beings are relating to each other, recognizing their equality, there is no egotism involved. Their equality makes it impossible for them to be different or to have different interests or for different rules to apply to each.

Without differences there cannot be a difference of opinion, therefore there cannot be conflict. Without conflict there is no ego. The ego is made of illusory differences or the idea of inequality. When there is equality there is no ego.

Therefore, recognize that "having an ego" does NOT necessarily equate with "having a self", nor does it equate with "being an individual".

The only way in which a self could turn into an ego is if that self is DIFFERENT to other selves in some way - a different appearance, a different opinion, a different form, a different nature, a different interest etc.

The only way that individuality turns into ego is when a person attempts to DIFFERENTIATE their individuality from others by trying to make their self SPECIAL. Jesus says that the separation (creation of ego) occurred only when we sought "special favor". We already had our own self and individuality BEFORE we tried to be "better than" or "different to" others. Before that, we were equals with all of God’s Children - our "brothers" in Heaven.

Ego is NOT the idea of "being separate", as in, there being many individuals. The only way that individuals become separate in an egotistical way, is when they aim to be SPECIAL and thus in COMPETITION with others. That is egocentric, because the individual is then seeking special exclusive treatment that they would deny to others.

This also ties into "what is not love is murder", in which when one thing applies to one person that does not apply to another, cause and effect are separate and it seems you can escape the consequences of trying to attack a brother - thus getting away with murder. What is the opposite? The opposite is not to have NO brothers, it is to treat your brother as an EQUAL. LOVE, therefore, recognizes EQUALITY. Love does not have to mean "one self", when those selves are cooperating lovingly.

The same is true of free will, which each Child of God is granted. You would think that if everyone had free will there would be ego chaos. Not necessarily. If everyone wills IN THE SAME WAY or with the same GOAL, there is no disagreement and therefore no ego. When all wills are "united" or "in accord" with God’s Will, there is HARMONY.

Harmonious, ego-free relationships arise from mutual recognition of holiness and equality. Therefore every child can have their own free will and be co-creators, provided they are always desiring to share joy and love. When their interests are not different, there is no war, and thus no ego.

We need to be careful to recognize then that EGOTISM means SELFISHNESS, and being selfish isn’t inherent to you having a SELF - it’s just a bad attitude. Selfishness means self-interest or in some way believing that something applies to you which others should not be a part of. It is a lack of SHARING or willingness to be equal and share everything with others. When there IS a willingness to share everything equally, there can STILL be selves, but now these selves are holy and innocent.

The idea therefore that ego means "any kind of separation" is not true! It’s okay for MANY BEINGS to be LOVING. For brothers to be loving, equal, identical and to share everything. The fact that brothers are getting along in a NOT-SELFISH way, lacking ego, does not mean they have to stop being separate beings. You getting along with your neighbor doesn’t entail you having to destroy them.

Jesus says that the ego entails selfishness, while the SOUL entails SELF-FULLNESS. If you think about it, when you are being selfish you actually WITHDRAW part of yourself from sharing with your brothers. Therefore you are no longer being the fullness of yourself. To be ego is to be NOT YOURSELF. It is a withdrawal of yourself from your brother and an attempt ISOLATE so that you stop SHARING. Egotism is simply lack of sharing, not being a "separate being". When you isolate yourself you become UNNATURALLY SEPARATE, but your inherent "self" which is "separate" from other selves is NOT unnatural.

Although it looks like being self-oriented, ego is actually the ABSENCE OF SELF, because self is naturally open and sharing. Ego is confinement, imprisonment, limitation, lack and a loss of identity. This is why being in the ego ends in death of the self. Self denial, self attack, self abuse and self sabotage are attempts to UNDO the Holy Self that God created you as. Death is a denial that you are a free-willed individual who lives forever.

Becoming "more ego" does not make you MORE SELF, it makes you less self. And the more you TRY to emphasize your "self" the more you LOSE IT. This is also why waking up means returning TO BEING YOURSELF, and is NOT a loss of self but a GAINING of self. It is only the LACK of yourself that disappears!

Being FULL of self is the opposite of being "full of yourself". Being full of yourself really means PRETENDING to be someone you are not. It is a lack of authenticity. Being your authentic SELF means being the Child of God that God created. "I am still as God created ME" means you are still the holy child which God created as ONE of his holy children.

Egotism or having an ego does not mean having a self or being an individual. It means HIDING YOUR SELF behind a facade of lies. You DO exist. You have a Holy Self with your own Holy Mind. There is nothing WRONG with that. It is not ego to say that God created many children. Ego does not equate with all forms of separation! It’s OKAY for God to have created "separate beings", provided those beings are loving, equal, and have no egotism or specialness. It’s only when they COMPETE that there is a separation problem.

"God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share tit to increase their joy."

That is a recipe for harmony, happiness, joy and peace. There is no ego in that. God creating a Kingdom with many things in it, doesn’t mean there is any EGO in it. It’s okay for WHAT IS REAL to be a living world filled with light beings who love each other equally. Being one of many children of God does not man that you are fundamentally in competition with or attacking other children of God. Love brings order to God’s divine creaion.

Each time, and in each way, that we perceive that someone else is meant to change, that there is something wrong with them, that they have caused us to be upset or changed in any way whatsoever, or that anything outside of us can do something to us, we are being irresponsible for our lives.

This means we are not owning up to the full responsibility we have to be the causal power of everything that we experience. It means we're shoveling off our sense of Self and responsibility for our life onto someone else. We're wanting them to change in order to INDIRECTLY cause us to be happy or in a preferred state, and if they don't comply we get upset.

It is not anyone else's responsibility to live our life for us, to wake up for us, to change to suit us, to match our opinion, to be corrected on our behalf, or to be any way 'for us' in order for us to get what we want.

If you look you'll notice yourself being 'riddled' with this situation, where in small ways and in various relationships, you truly believe that someone else (or reality, or the world) is not meant to be the way it is. This is irresponsibility. It means you are not being responsible for what you are, and so you see everything outside of you reflecting that - that it too should not be what it is.

So when there is irresponsibility in your mind and perception, where you are not squarely owning and being centered in the acceptance of what you actually are, you are going to experience that outside of you in everything you look at. Other people and places and events are going to start to show up to you as being 'wrong' for being what they, that they should be something else, that they SHOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE for being what they are.

This is why the acceptance of ourselves is an act of responsibility, and is then reflected outside us as the world appearing to be accepted for what it is, also. You can't accept the world if you can't accept yourself.

ACIM uses the term "sons" referring to God's many directly-created REAL sons, 82 times. Here are some of the quotes which are so blatant in their statement that God has created MORE THAN ONE SON.

"*PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him. Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."

"*It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

"*The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

"*Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin. And we who are His Sons are like each other, and alike to Him."

"*God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"*All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS."

"*Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons?"

"*We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"*Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION."

"*Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than YOU can establish God's. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know all Creation."

"*You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"*God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other."

"*Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete."

"*The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons."

"*When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy."

"* If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship."

"*If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

"*The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

You can either be selfish, or you can share. The entire separation from God is about becoming selfish. The atonement is entirely about learning how to share again. The entire problem in this world is that everyone is selfish, and we all need to learn to stop being selfish.

The ego is entirely the idea of being selfish. That means trying to be exclusive, to get only what you want, self-interest, denying and rejecting others, separating off, being autonomous, identifying with the body, believing you are special, relating to others through specialness, having a sense of neediness and lack, etc.

When we were in heaven before "the fall of man", the separation, we were all sharing everything. Everyone had everything, all the brothers in the sonship overlapped with each other and enjoyed being one. We were part of each other.

Everyone had simultaneous access to absolutely everything all at once without any sense of limits or greed or compromise or lack or finite amounts or special favor or favoritism or anything that could suggest inequality.

We already each had a self, a soul, which shared everything with all. But in the separation we each decided that we didn't want to share anymore. We wanted special favor from God, we wanted to have something exclusively our own, we wanted to regard ourselves as more important, we sought to become orphaned and to have our own world and our own separate something.

In essence we became selfish. We sought to think only of our own interests and not shared interests. We wanted a separate will and to make choices and to be tyrannical and get whatever we wanted in competition with everyone else. We wanted it all, but we didn't want anyone else to have it all. We became like little islands, cut off from each other and alone and concerned only with ourselves.

So now selfishness is really the entire problem. We have forgotten how to share and be one. We have become expert in various ways of being selfish little children. We see ourselves as lacking and lost and alone, and desperately in need.

This neediness fuels all kinds of manipulative special relationships, puts terms and conditions on love, seeks to get something to profit from everything, and is always thinking of what it means to me or what it does to me. Whether I stand to profit or lose. Relationships turn into bargaining transactions and covert exploitation. And all of our experiences of what happens revolves around me me me.

Ego is nothing more than this idea of being selfish, ie of not sharing. The mind sees itself as cut off and separate, isolated in a body, excluding the whole from its little patch of existence. In our selfishness we grovel in the dark for scraps and are in a kind of survival mode, desperate to get more and searching everywhere for what we've lost.

So the real issue is very close to home, because it's not really about the world or about what other people are doing to you. It's not about the body. It's about you being selfish. And that selfishness goes to the very "core" of the ego and the core of your sense of who and what you are. It's YOU that is the problem in your life. It's your sense of me me me me me that drives the entire ego thought system.

Your selfishness is the cause of all your suffering. It is the cause of all broken relationships, broken communication, loss and grief, all hurt and despair, all desperation and fear and neediness, all offense and defence and justifications for anger and attack. It all revolves around me me me, what they did or didn't do to me, what's happening to me without my permission, what I'm lacking, how I'm put out, what someone's taken from me. Me versus the world.

It's hard to look at because it's very much rooted deep inside you. This selfishness is right at the core of your sense of self, the ego self that your mind as identified with and as. It's you being selfish that's the problem, your desire not to share, your desire to have everything and lose nothing, your competition with everyone, your self interest and tyrannical disregard for the interests of others.

You being selfish is the cause of all your suffering. That includes grief and loss, sickness and death, loneliness and isolation, pain and misery, unhappiness and sadness, all of it revolves around this idea of.... there's a me that is like a forgotten lost little child crying alone in the desert... that just wants to get what it wants and doesn't care about anyone or anything else. That's where the problem is and that's what has to be undone if you want to return to heaven.

This is why in the course Jesus's is basically teaching us to SHARE again. That means opening up the sense of self to be more inclusive of others, joining with others in love and openness, developing trust again, overcoming boundaries, transcending limits, allowing yourself to receive love, extending the mind, etc, it' all about you coming out of your ego shell, out of your prison, out of your body, out of your separateness and rejoining the sonship in a holy communion of love and sharing and oneness.

In truth we need to learn to have a self that is whole. A self that includes the whole sonship. A self that is united and one. And this same self, the soul, is full of self, full of the identity of wholeness/Christ. And being full of this shared self is not at all selfish.

When someone is "full of themselves" it means that they are full of ONLY themselves and NOT of others. They lack the sharing and oneness. In their arrogance they reject everyone and think highly of themselves as more important and special. And so the ego counsels to not think of yourself at all otherwise you are selfish, while simultaneously thinking only of itself. And this leads to self-sacrifice which is martyrdom or greed, and not spiritual.

But you have to include yourself in everything if you want to be selfless, which means you are equal and a part of what is shared. And being selfless does NOT mean that you do not have a self, it means you actually have MORE self, because your self is shared with everyone and you are a whole self. It just means not being exclusively ONLY yourself. To be truly selfless is to gain the selves of everyone and to not be self-ish.

To be your true self is to be all self, one with all selves, and one with God. To know yourself as God created you is to know that you are the entire Kingdom of Heaven. And yet you are still you, yet you are all. To have the all you give the all to the all. That is sharing and extension per God's will and design. You can only be yourself by being everyone. Only when others are included in who and what you are do you have the basis and motivation to have truly shared interests. And those who have shared interests are Teachers of God.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

"The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"The Atonement is a lesson in sharing, which is given you because YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO DO IT."

"The miracle therefore is a lesson in WHAT JOY IS. Being a lesson in SHARING, it is a lesson in love, which IS joy."

"The goal of the curriculum, regardless of the teacher you choose, is KNOW THYSELF. There is nothing else to learn. Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost. Whenever you are with anyone ELSE, you have another opportunity to find them. Your power and glory are in HIM BECAUSE they are yours. The ego tries to find them in YOURSELF, because he does not know where to look. But the Holy Spirit teaches you that if you look only at yourself you CANNOT find yourself because that is NOT what you are."

Sorry this is a bit longish... it's hard to explain.

The physical world is a holographic dream. But the way that it is holographic isn't very obvious. And most people do not believe it is a dream!

Firstly, a hologram is not a projected 3D image. It is not the hollywoodized concept of an artificial three-dimensional object projected in space that you can view from any angle. That very loosely is tied to the idea of a hologram and they just ran with it and turned it into a marketing exercise.

Holograms have some interesting properties which describe the way that this world is put together, and the reason why it is a dream.

You will see a hologram on most credit cards. It's the little shiny symbol in the corner which, if you look at it from different angles, appears to let you see a virtual object suspended in space. You actually seem to be able to look at it from different angles, even though it's a flat image. They use this on cards because they are hard to manufacture, requiring precise laser technology, so this offers a certain level of protection against fraudulent cards.

The idea of a hologram is that information about the whole of something is present in all of the parts. On your credit card, information about the image of an object as viewed from countless different angles, is embedded into each tiny particle of the image. It's as though there were thousands of cameras recording images of the object from different angles, and then all of these images were overlaid on top of each other. Therefore each part of the image contains a ton of information, much more than just one particle of image.

One way to produce a hologram like this is to create tiny 3-dimensional bumps which you project different images onto from a specific direction. When your viewing angle changes, you see a different side of the bumps thus forming a different image. That's a very loose approximation of how a hologram works.

One of the properties of a hologram, therefore, is that if you remove a physical portion of the holographic image, it does not lose a specific portion of the information stored in it. That's because the same information is present in all of the other parts of the image. It's like storing the same piece of data a thousand times scattered across the surface. Chopping off a part of the object does not lose information stored in that part, it only reduces the overall sum total of occurrences of the information.

In the book, The Holographic Universe, it was described for example that a person had a portion of their brain removed. It was believed by science that certain memories were stored in that part of the brain, and that removing it would definitely produce a memory loss. However, afterwards, the person still could recall the memory, it was just a little fuzzy. That's because the memory was actually stored throughout the brain in a holographic manner, meaning that "all" of the memory was stored in "every part" of the brain. Removing one part of the brain did not remove a specific portion of the memory. The memory could still be recalled and reassembled because all of it was stored in all parts. Just with a little less clarity. The brain is holographic.

So in a hologram, each specific part of an object isn't JUST that part of the object, it is also connected to and shares information with all of the other parts. This is also similar to the scientific theory that matter is energy which exists as a kind of field of potentiality, which, when you look at it with consciousness, it condenses the field into a tight point and shows up as a particle. The particle then seems to be the only part visible so you think that that's all there is to it, but the particle actually is still intimately connected to and extends into the field. Thus there is an extension beyond the form of matter.

Another word that describes this extension beyond the form, and the idea that the part contains the whole, is a "symbol". Symbols are representations of something greater beyond themselves. They are not the thing, but they're sort of a condensed representation of the core qualities of the thing. They allude to something beyond themselves, and they point in the direction of the whole of the thing they represent. They don't show up as the thing in its entirety, only as a small image which "symbolizes" the thing. And what is it that we know of that are built from symbols? Dreams.

Now, the reason that we can't usually tell this physical universe is a holographic dream, is because as much evidence as possible that each part (particle) is connected to the "all" has been squeezed out. The matter that shows up, as form and objects and bodies and worlds, are symbols representing energies that are far bigger than the objects themselves, and which connect the objects together. In other words, there is a lot of SHARING going on behind the scenes, but by the time the energy field coalesces into tight concentrations - as matter - you only see the concentrations ie forms, and you don't realize that these forms are symbolic of something more beyond them. You fixate on the form of what is visible and think that this is all there is, as though the symbol is not really a symbol but is actually the whole 'thing' in completeness.

So at the most extremely spread out end of the hologram, which is the physical universe, it APPEARS that there is no sharing. Particles do not seem to share the same space. They do not seem to be connected. Everything seems to be separated out. Objects do not really touch each other, but are held at a distance by forces. And so this makes us believe that each object does not share anything with other objects, particularly if you fixate on the object's form and appearance. This is an ILLUSION. It's an illusion composed of SYMBOLS, which you have interpreted incorrectly to be NOT symbolic, and instead see only the condensed form of the hologram, which makes you think that physical matter is entirely fixed and is showing you all of what exists.

This illusion, then, that matter is all separate and that there is no sharing going on, deceives you to believe this world is not a hologram, because you don't SEE the ways that the particles are joined together, or joined to the whole. You also don't see the ways that the whole is present in every part. You don't recognize, and your body can't show you, that this so-called reality is actually just a SYMBOLIC collection of temporary images, not a final end-state in its own right but a place that points beyond itself.

Just as your dreams at night are highly symbolic, so too the physical world is completely symbolic. There are established massive symbols in this world which represent all kinds of aspects of the separation idea. For example, outer space, empty and black and cold, symbolizes the unconscious mind, whereby instead of there being light everywhere, light is denied and reduced to tiny concentrations - which you call stars, which are symbols of the ego and the conscious mind as separated selves. If you go into it, there area many many symbols in this world representing the structure of the ego and its interpretation of the truth. The body is a symbol of the idea of separation from the whole environment, for example. It is not just a form and a finite thing in its own right, it REPRESENTS the idea in the mind that you are separate from the whole. It is a symbol with a hidden background.

Most people do not think they are inside a dream. They think that there are no symbols anywhere. Yet they might loosely say from time to that that something seems symbolic. When you have synchronicities and things seem to correlate and be "connected", that's you starting to realize and tap into the hologram, into the field of energy, which is diffused beyond just physical appearances. You're sensing and noticing that, uncannily, two seemingly separate symbols are actually related. ie you start to realize that there is something CONNECTING things together in a semi-meaningful way (synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence"), and coincidence means co-incidence, ie two things correlating, because they share a holographic background.

Dreams at night occur at what you could call a higher level of the hologram. As such, in a night dream, the seemingly concrete, fixed quality of matter is not as "dense" as in the physical universe. Therefore the reality of the dreams are much more highly and obviously symbolic, not just that the objects and events in them symbolize things you experienced in the daytime or whatever, but that they actually represent things. Dream interpretation isn't just an attempt to derive meaning from something that has no meaning, it is actually based on the fact that dreams are entirely composed of SYMBOLS, and those symbols are the structure of "dream reality" because dream reality is holographic, objects and events are representations and not things in their own right, and everything is joined together beyond just the appearance of its form.

Sometimes you will notice that you have dreams which are far more symbolic than others. Sometimes you'll have a dream where it seems effortless for objects to transform bizarrely into other objects. I remember having a dream where I walked out the front door and there was like a dog barking and something changed in my mind and the dog turned into a small child and started to talk to me and then something else happened and the child turned into an adult. This is possible because in these dreams, the "form" or the fixed condensed material quality of the reality experience, the holographic reality, is not as dense and not as concrete. Abstract weird stuff happens.

It's much easier at that level, where matter has not concentrated so tightly, for forms to SHIFT and change quite naturally and normally. Forms that shift and change, by the way, is the foundation of all "life forms" that GROW and change over time, demonstrating that their reality is not actually fully fixed. And symbols can more easily transition into other symbols at the deeper level of the abstract hologram. The very form of objects can convert into other objects, as symbols shift around.

I also had a dream once which explicitly explained to me the holographic nature of dreams. In this dream I stood on a small bridge. There was nothing else in the scene. Then around me in all directions were apparently images, but each of these images was a symbol. It wasn't that I took the appearance of the image at face value, but instead, I recognized that the images were symbolic and therefore they "led" to something that they REPRESENTED. I could literally FEEL and sense that these symbolic images were not only connected to "other realities", but that the way the image was showing up wasn't "the whole" of what existed. It was just one finite expression of what it represented.

So it was possible to actually sort of "go into" the image, into the symbol, which caused it to expand as I moved closer to the environment that the symbol represented. I was able to travel through holograms this way. And it was then possible to take some other part of the environment, and go into it in similar fashion, upon which it would also expand out or elaborate into an entire scene based on that chosen focus. This showed me that the dream reality is highly holographic and fluid and symbolic and that everything is connected together behind the appearance of the symbols.

The physical world is less obviously symbolic and holographic because it is more DENSE, and that means the shared energy field - the all - has been very strongly broken out, to create the ILLUSION that each part barely has any trace of a connection to any other part. The extreme of separation is so strong between parts that you would be forgiven for being convinced not only that each object is not a symbol at all, but that there is nothing "beyond" the form of each object, nothing is shared, nothing is connected, and there is no reality beyond appearances. This is the lowest "level" of the hologram, where the unfied field, the shared symbolic nature of this dream, has become so cemented and "physicalized" that it barely seems possible to you that it is a dream at all. So extreme is the degree of concentration and contraction o the energy here, that it's almost undetectable to sense or tell that everything is joined.

That is, perhaps, unless you are an "empath", which is someone whose mind is able to sense where the symbols lead, and can expand upon what lies beyond them as though tuning into the hologram's symbolism and travelling in Spirit to its source. This is also why empaths are able to actually tune into "real people" that show up on television recordings or in movies, because even though the recording was done in the past, there is STILL a symbolic holographic connection between that IMAGE and the actually thing it represents. The mind can go into that image and sense and explore things about what the image shows, navigating through the symbolic hologram.

This highly obscuring, difficult to discern, God-blocking, reality covering, immense illusory dream, which seems to have solidified into a consistent solid world, is precisely what you wanted! This is why you used a holographic dream to create a world of separation, an illusion, where the illusion IS that the world is NOT symbolic, it is NOT a dream, and it APPEARS to be solid and real with everything separate.

We've pushed the hologram to the limits of physical density, causing particles to remain very fixed-seeming in their arrangements, which has created the ILLUSION of a place of form where consistency is very very sustained over long period of time. Objects don't apparently change into other objects, and you as a limited mind do not SEEM to have hardly a trace of power to change objects into other objects, because they're being held in a physicalized state very strongly, unlike the conditions in a nighttime dream which is much more maleable. Unless you're Jesus ;-) Events mostly do not seem to be symbolic. Bodies seem to function based on non-holographic laws. And nothing seems to be connected to a greater whole.

Then you are left only with the appearance of the physical matter, you make up laws about it based on its behavior, and then you justify that your science is correct based on its illusion of consistency, and have moved into the "linear" perspective. But the truth is lateral, vertical, because if you move out of the physicalized EFFECT and back towards the abstract CAUSE, you become able to modify the physicalization of matter to take on a different form. And this would be considered miraculous.

This therefore shuts out the idea of GOD, which is a reality where everything is shared. This is because the world was made as a defense against God and as a way to OBSCURE the truth that God is omnipresent, that ALL of Him is fully present in all parts. In physical matter, this could not be more obscured as an illusion that the all is NOT in ANY part, and therefore that the all does not exist. That was the PURPOSE of the physical world. To hide God from awareness.

So just because you think this world is an objective, verbatim kind of reality, it's not. It's a holographic dream. And sometimes this holographic dream actually does shift and change in symbolic ways that defy all logic and scientific explanation. Quite literally, sometimes, people report cases where an entire building which did not exist the day before, suddenly materializes in a known location that simply was not there. Somehow, it simply shows up in the dream hologram because of some kind of shift in the energy focus.

Also quantum physics is starting to reveal how objects at a distance can share the same reality - that a particle of light can be in two places at once, and that changes to the particle in one location AUTOMATICALLY changes the particle in the other location with NO TIME DELAY. This is "physically" impossible, in terms of a fixed dense world of form and matter, but in terms of holographic dreams, it is TOTALLY NORMAL! In fact, that this isn't happening more often is very abnormal, and shows you the extent to which we have designed this "world" (which is nothing more than an illusory dream) to APPEAR to be very fixed and separated.

In higher, more symbolic night dreams, it's possible to do things to bend reality, modify objects, transcend physical laws, transform one thing into another etc... all quite naturally, because that's what's possible when you know that everything is ONE, and everything is joined together. Form, matter, objects and appearances, including bodies and worlds, are nothing more than SYMBOLS, and those symbols can easily shift and change "form".

Having mastery over this dream illusion gives you the ability and mastery to defy all of the so-called "physical" laws, which are merely laws based on visible concentrations of the one field, and to do things like walking on water, changing objects into other objects, disappearing sickness, reversing death, etc. The miracles Jesus demonstrated merely shows us that this dream is a holographic illusion which is completely malleable, its form is nothing more than a temporary expression of an idea, and everything can be modified.

This world isn't real. It is a dream. It's an illusion of a world. It's a temporary concentration of an idea of separation, an idea that "the all" does not exist, and the idea that nothing is shared. It takes the form of a hologram which goes from a state where everything is one, to a state where nothing is one, and every level in between. The all IS in every part, because every part is not the WHOLE, it's just a portion of the whole. You are not seeing the whole picture! And if you believe solely based on "appearances" that physical matter is all that there is, you are completely falling for the holographic illusion that nothing is connected.

Everything is connected. All is One. At at the very peak of the hologram, everything is shared everywhere. God is omnipresent. All of God is in all parts fully, and this completely defies all physical laws. The physical laws do not apply to MIRACLES because miracles are expressions of the abstract source of the hologram, from the field of mind and energy which transcends particles and concentrations of matter, and which all of the symbols POINT TO.

So yes, you're dreaming. You're inside a symbolic dream right now, right where you are, as you read this, with your holographic dream body. All is not what it seems. There is reality beyond this apparent world, and appearances are not reality. Thus there is no real world here. At most, this world is a SYMBOL, and not a finite concrete objective wholeness. And yet even as a symbol it is just a symbol in a dream, and this dream is not real, because DREAMS ARE NOT REAL. That is why there is no real world here, no real death, and no real sickness or suffering.

We are meant to wake up from the entire holographic projection and return to the abstract source of truth where ALL IS ONE.

A slight omission from the Course...

From the urtext beginning:

"It is crucial to say first that A Course In Miracles is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all.

You will see miracles thru your hands thru me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today.")"

The same introduction in the FIP version:

"This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. .............. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

Do you notice the complete removal of the text:

"You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today""

????????????!!

MIRACLES THROUGH YOUR HANDS THROUGH ME!!

Why was this removed? You think someone had an issue with the idea that we are asked to lay hands on people and perform miracles on a daily basis?

Everything in the Course makes so much more sense to me now that I see there are MANY INDIVIDUALS in God's creation.

1) Recognizing that you and your BROTHER each have your own mind and your own free will

2) Recognizing that bodies were made to ISOLATE you from your brother

3) Recognizing that healing and miracles take place when you JOIN with your brother

4) Recognizing that what you thought applied only to yourself applies to BOTH of you (golden rule)

5) Recognizing that atonement is chosen be EACH brother individually and you therefore become PART OF the atonement plan to help OTHER brothers

6) Recognizing that miracles are a maximal service you can render A BROTHER, because there are others

7) Recognizing that there is not just one dreamer of the dream and therefore you can wake up while others sleep.

8) Recognizing that you have a self - a soul, which DOES exist, and you DO have a self, and your self IS NOT the ego.

9) Recognizing Holy Relationships - you have to HAVE a brother to have a relationship WITH.

10) Recognizing that YOU have a choice for which you are 100% responsible and to whom nothing happens without your choosing.

So many of the course's teachings RELY on the recognition or multiple brothers. It's got NOTHING to do with the illusion of multiplicity of egos or the separation of bodies. Every teaching becomes FAR clearer and makes much more sense when it very naturally acknowledges that OTHER PEOPLE have their own soul, mind, will, freedom, choice, path, awakening, atonement, lessons, etc.

How we ever could have taken on board the idea of us all being just one big blob with multiple personality disorder is quite bizarre really, and we did it in the name of thinking this was more spiritual.

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

"What YOU have "given" life is NOT alive, and symbolizes but your wish to be alive APART from life, alive in death, with death perceived as life, and living, death."

"If death is real for anything, there is no life. Death denies life. But if there is reality in life, death is denied. No compromise in this is possible. There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

In heaven, cause or creation produces an effect. This effect is not just an "end-result", but also a beginning. Ends and beginnings are one. A creation inherits from its creator all of the creators abilities. The creation is FULLY given, endowing the creation itself with the same exact capability of creating freely in the likeness of its own creator. Nothing is lost and the "child" creation is not in any way less creative or capable than the "parent" creator. The child can in turn create, and so too its children, with no loss or reduction in the creative ability passed on to each generation. This continues endlessly and immortally in "one continuous line of creation".

On Earth, the story is very different. When we try to create something here, we endow it with a very limited ability of its own to create in turn or in its own likeness. We can build machines which build machines, but only up to a point. Creation here produces effects, but the effect is practically a dead-end. Sometimes we can create things which seem, in turn, to have some limited ability to create other things. But very quickly, the creative flexibility and freedom is diminished down to nothing. After hardly any time at all, all creative ability is lost, we end up with a dead end, and in fact this produces death itself. This world was made as an idea of bringing an end, or putting a stop, to everlasting life.

We're quite proud of being able to reproduce human bodies which pass on traits and give similar potentials to their offspring. This is about as close as we come to any kind of "lineage" or unlimited line of creation. But it still falls far short of the unlimited creative potential of Heaven. Each body eventually typically meets death, because it is limited and most minds in bodies attack their bodies, producing aging and sickness and death, which is the choking-off of creation. With each death, the line of creation comes to a close. This is symbolic of nothing short of the "end of creation" and the end of extension, in which the lineage dies off. To the ego, beginnings and endings are not united, and endings bring a stop to extension. Creating something which cannot itself create, leads to death.

This is why death is so unnatural. It is an attempt to stop creation entirely, to halt the extension of heaven, to cease to do God's will, to stop the flow of life-giving forces from God, to stand in the way of love's expression, to limit and retard the father-son cause-effect relationship, to produce effects which are nothing like their cause, to put a stop to life, to strangle the son of God until there is no life left in Him, and to squeeze every last drop of life from Him. And because death is SO far against the nature of God, SO antithetical to eternal life and constant extension, and so limiting to the unlimited expression of immortality, that anyone exhibiting death in this world cannot be carrying out God's will, nor following the laws of Heaven.

If we are to truly be demonstrations of God's Will, of eternal life, of endlessness, of permanent constancy, of continuation and the total freedom from limitation or reduction, we simply have to overcome death in all its forms so that absolute life can perpetually flow freely and without hindrance through us and as us. We are to become living demonstrations of immortality, a shining light in a dream of death, demonstrating that it is God's will that there be no end to existence, and proving that there IS no death or need for death in the creative life of a Son of God.

1) Whatever God creates must EXTEND who and what he is and be LIKE him in every way. Whatever comes from him must be God-like, and eternal, and immortal. Anything that does not last FOREVER, cannot come out of an immortal creator.

2) Whatever God creates is PART OF HIM, and so he IS his creation. Which means that if you suggest that dogshit and explosions and machine guns and atomic bombs and supernova are God's creation, you are saying that GOD IS all of these murderous things.

3) Whatever God creates is REALITY. If this world is reality, God has to BE it, live it, will it, condone it. He literally has to PERSONALLY cause it. And he has to BE that which IT IS. So now any form of attack is God attacking himself, any murder is God killing himself, any death is God punishing himself and making himself suffer to try to kill himself, which makes God suicidal and insane.

4) God can only create that which extends himself and he endows his creations with the ability to extend themselves. They are co-creators. The line of creation MUST NOT STOP. There must be no dead ends, or a lack of inheritance of ability to create forever. Every creation must be a powerful creator. Cars and machine guns and gravestones and dirt and bricks CANNOT CREATE. They are dead ends and cannot be of God because they CANNOT EXTEND. Failing to extend eternal life is DEATH.

5) Whatever God creates shares his immortality and cannot be attacked or hurt or ever die. "Nothing real can be threatened. If it can be threatened, IT IS NOT REAL. Threats include attack, damage, decay, murder, aging, explosions, war, etc. None of these things can be God's creation otherwise he has created MORTALITY. Mortality cannot come from an immortal creator who can only share his own immortality with his creations.

6) God is absolute perfection without a single flaw or thing missing or malfunction or breakage. Anything that is NOT perfect is NOT of God and cannot come out of him in creation. That includes broken down rusted cars, crashed airplanes, sick bodies, warzones, rotten food and corpses. God could not even think of such things yet alone make them.

7) God can ONLY conceive of that which is innocent, holy, pure, good, happy, loving, peaceful, gentle, beautiful, permanent, immortal, joyful and alive forever. If anything does not have these properties it is NOT created by God. A gentle benevolent God cannot even THINK OF or imagine or dream up machine guns, tanks, dangerous crevices, barren dry deserts, frozen tundras, black holes, or supernova that destroy entire solar systems.

8 ) God being of one nature can only produce one kind of outcome because he always gives everything fully and excludes nothing. This means he can only create ONE KIND of creation, not two. Given that Earth is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to heaven in EVERY way, as the course clearly states, it would REQUIRE God to be split minded and have a divided will and be indecisive in fear and unsure whether he would have one kind or output or another. God cannot contradict himself or produce contradictory worlds. Earth and heaven are OPPOSITES.

9) God only causes and condones and wills POSSIBILITIES that are in total alignment with his loving gentle happy nature. His kingdom is HIS MIND. He creates WITHIN himself. He does not allow there to be even the POSSIBILITY of "bad things happening", murder, death, suffering of any kind, things that break down, decay and rot, bad smells, separations and walls, weapons, or any such thing which could IN ANY WAY suggest it's even POSSIBLE for such things to exist. His laws DO NOT ALLOW there to be even the slightest real possibility that a "real weapon" could ever exist whatsoever. Any such things, any world that supports such things, IS NOT POSSIBLE.

10) God is one, and is oneness, and is unified and whole. He has absolutely no separation in him. No ego. No walls. No divisions. No things which are opposite to each other, or against each other, or hidden from each other, or different to each other. It is all one nature. He cannot even IMAGINE bodies separating off his creations. He cannot even imagine walls, solid objects, space or time. All physical objects ABSOLUTELY REQUIRE SEPARATION in order for there to even be SPACE whatsoever. Space in which some things exist over here, and some things exist over there, and nothing is everywhere. Space in which the very idea of physical matter is an attempt to SEPARATE OFF, and without the idea of separation IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THERE TO BE SPATIAL OBJECTS. All bodies, all planets, all galaxies, all matter entirely, with any label attached or not, perceived in ANY way, is a form of an idea of separation and DOES NOT exist in God's creation.

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

1. DUALITY - is the idea of "real opposites". That there really is good and evil, black and white, up and down, male and female etc. The differences of objects are believed to be "real" and a first-hand reality. That when you see these things you are looking at reality. They I really am my body, that you really are your body. That there is no unity at all, no connection, no joining, everything really is separate. In the Course, this is equated with "false perception." And in fact Jesus says "the world is false perception", meaning that the physical objects/forms themselves ARE the idea of separation, without which they would not exist at all.

2. NON-DUALITY - the original form of the non-duality idea is that all of the objects present in duality "are there" still, but there is an underlying oneness/unity which joins them all together. It's as if to say, God is a limitless being who is "expressing as" various objects. As if a clock and a chair are "really" one thing, as if joined by a hidden energy field of field of mind. That "all things are one".

In this view, the world, bodies, Earth etc are actually "kept" and still show up and move around seemingly independently etc, but are thought to be all part of one overall single Mind's thinking, or its self expression. As if God is animating the world. As if God Himself is the world or is "in it", like in the background, pulling the strings. In this view, the world is retained but is reinterpreted as "one thing", wherein its various parts and shapes seem only to be separate things when the mind is unaware of the unity it springs from.

That you might in some way "experience it all at once" if an experience of oneness, a kind of transcendent unity in which "you are the airplane" "you are the car" "you are the house". Here, God seems to be in everything you see. This idea is actually not really in ACIM at all. Some people believe it is. But ACIM actually teaches that reality is BEYOND the forms, not AS them, regarding the forms themselves to be illusions regardless of how they are experienced - that even experience as "all one thing" is an illusion. This is often confused with "true perception" which is similar but not the same - in true perception see reality beyond forms, not as "their true nature".

3. PURE NON-DUALITY - as touted by several others, is a progressive form of non-duality, takes the aspect of non-duality that seems to still be "a world" with things happening, and says that all of these worldly things are literally 100% not there. Not even that they are reinterpreted or experienced as "one thing". Not even that you are "experiencing them all at once" - it separates the "oneness" from the "things" entirely and labels the things as absolutely nothing - non-experiencable. In pure non-duality, the idea is that there is "only God", and nothing else. Only the oneness. Seemingly the oneness alluded to by non-duality but dispensing entirely with the world of forms and all objects and bodies and happenings. This does tie in with the Course teaching that "there is no world". Not simply that "the world is one thing" but that it is NOTHING.

A pure state of "only God". Just an expansive eternity is sameness, no change, no movement, no creating, no increase, no individuals, no objects, no forms whatsoever, no differences, no appearances of any kind, just rock solid God on his own. In this view, logically, it should also mean that there is no Son of God and no Holy Spirit. Some people sometimes actually "go there". That we are God. That only mind exists. That even the Son doesn't really exist as anything other than God's radiance, still solely God.

Some have used this to justify that the Holy Spirit does not exist, that Jesus does not exist, etc. It's often associated with the idea of "Oneness". That there is only "one thing". Literally a count of "one". One box, one entity, one being, just God all by Himself. This view ignores creation, sonship, free will, souls etc. This view is really not in ACIM **AT ALL**, but many think it is. It's actually the result of the ego's reasoning, believing that if you remove all separations and get down "one" thing, it must be the final answer about what exists. This essentially boils down to the idea that God is alone and is dead because he is not extending, creating, sharing or loving. He just "is" ("God is"), WITHOUT anything having been created (no sonship, no souls, no creations). It logically becomes the idea that God is dead, because love has to be shared and has to create in order to exist.

4. TRANS-DUALITY - I don't know if there is really a word for this. It takes the idea of pure non-duality, in which there is NO WORLD (only Heaven exists and Earth is not it) but then acknowledges that "God did not will to be alone". That God is a creator. That God loves to ADD to His "solo" reality. That God has in fact created, not just one thing, but a great many things. That the Holy Trinity is real, there really are three parts, and the Sonship (as one of them) actually contains many souls that God created to freely create WITH him. This is much more closely aligned with Christianity.

All of these creations, together "the one son" in ACIM, aka "sonship", are extensions of His mind and being and have been fully created as essentially autonomous entities, with their own minds. However, this is not the same as in duality. In duality these individuals would be cut off from each other, ie separate. In "trans-duality", these entities share everything with each other. AND YET, do not lose their individuality. They share such extensive oneness with each other, you would think there is nothing defining their "self", and yet there is. God has fully created souls. It defies ego thinking. It is miraculous.

In this model, which is really the model of God being a creator who has created a Sonship (and the Holy Spirit) as eternal beings, "The Kingdom of God contains all his children and their creations", these beings are co-creators with God, and have their own creations, which are shared and celebrated by the whole. This is an extraordinary state where everyone shares absolutely everything with everyone else, including God. Total access. Total openness. No selfishness, no exclusion, no ego, no separation ideas, no thoughts of imprisonment or unwillingness or denial.

A family of God, sharing in love endlessly, celebrating and being thankful for having been created, joining with all brothers in a union which seems to transcend their self yet allows them to still have one. "The ego is the idea of selfishness, the soul is the idea of self fullness." It is the miraculousness of the soul that allows it to share everything without ceasing to exist. God created many children who are permanent brothers to each other.

God is a holographic thinker and creator - every part is a whole in its own right. He has created beings, "in number infinite". THIS IS THE TRUE MODEL OF A COURSE IN MIRACLES. It acknowledges God as Father and you as A SON, one of many. This is not non-duality, it is not pure non-duality, it is not duality. It is a state of "many and one" at the same time. It is God's family.

God's system is a system of inclusiveness, which is why all beings He created share everything. It's a system of AND/BOTH rather than the ego's system of EITHER/OR. All children of God are equal, per the Golden Rule, and are brothers. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds." This does not in any way mean there is only one mind or only one brother. Nor does it mean they are not joined as if one. It is a fusion of oneness and many-ness, without contradiction, and with no ego involved whatsoever. It is not a separation idea, is not duality, or non-duality. It is the Creation of an omni-present being who is fully present in all things He creates without limit, making each creation a whole in itself. It is a system of "many wholes", which defies all ego thinking.

This is what A Course in Miracles is teaching. This is reality.

One of the worst and most generalizing interpretations of ACIM's teaching, is that "there is no separation". This has framed any kind of separateness as wrong. It has associated all separation with duality, and has stripped oneness of any possibility of being many things.

So now we have in our minds this idea that oneness must be the total absence of separation. This even seems to make logical sense. But it's not the truth. How do we even know that reality has to be oneness? Where did we learn that crap? We've also taken it further to mean that, separation equates with duality, and a lack of separation equates with oneness. As if, there literally is "only one thing", a count of one, as reality. And obviously that must be God, so there is only God. God being alone all by himself. But that's not the truth etiher.

For a start, just as a cursory glance, ACIM has all kinds of material talking about God having a son. A what now? How can God have a son if there is no separation? If you are being strict about this it's impossible for God to have a son at all. Surely that implies there are separations in reality? Surely it's not true that reality has separate parts to it? Surely it has to be all one thing?

Who came up with this notion that reality HAS TO be all one thing with no parts? That is a gross preconception. So many of us keep projecting this idea onto what the course is saying, insisting that reality HAS to be one thing. It HAS to be oneness. We all want that lovely shiny oneness, and it absolutely cannot have any separations in it, because separation is ego, right? Well no.

How about, it would be okay for there to be a kind of separation, where even though there is a separation, it isn't a complete severance? How about if a single environment can contain two things, which are indeed two fully distinctly and wholly created things, but those two things ALSO are unified and share everything with each other? Is it still separation or ego if they are completely open to sharing everything without any selfishness?

The kind of separation that exists in reality is not the same kind of separation that exists in the ego world. The thing that you really need to get your head around is this. One thing can also be many things while still being one thing. Does that sound too radical or difficult to understand? Is such a thing impossible, and why does it have to be "not the truth"?

Wouldn't such a scenario where something is one thing, but is also two things, and the two things are still two things, but are also one thing, be somewhat transcendental? It would have to warp and transcend every notion we have about how everything is supposed to be in a nice tidy box of its own, wouldn't it. It would be some kind of weird thing where something can be one thing and two things at the same time. It might even have to be described as miraculous.

If God cannot create, God cannot live. If God cannot share, God cannot give. If God is devoid of any kind of separation, God can never create a son. Not even one. Not a single son of God can exist in God if God is this very vague idea of "oneness". Some people seem to not be comfortable with the idea of God having TWO sons, but they seem to be okay with him having ONE son, even though that's still a logical contradiction. Why is ONE SEPARATION okay?

Just on the general jist of it, ACIM is saying a whole lot of stuff about God having a son. Now, I don't know about you but if it were to be meaning that he DOES NOT have any sons AT ALL, then I would say Jesus is a terribly misleading author. Just on the basis of how often and how much "the son of God" is referenced, either Jesus is full of shit, or Jesus is deceptive, or the ENTIRE course is metaphorical.

Now, sometimes people actually do opt to believe that the whole thing is metaphorical, because that seems to put a nice bandaid on it and COVER UP the truth. It sort of ties up some loose ends. Those nasty little loose ends that keep saying God has a son. It would be great to just say, well it's all a metaphor, there isn't really a son of God, and to then go onto say that Jesus is just placating your little pretend ego self because it can't handle the truth. Where have you heard that before?

It would be quite convenient IF Jesus actually were only talking in riddles, and the entire course was a lie, and the whole thing was just playing to your ego's need for specialness, and if only "the special advanced students" will get and accept the fact that there really is NO SON AT ALL.

This is the kind of of mad thinking that some people have adopted to try to justify and explain away the very intensely radical truths in the course, to make themselves feel better and to try to understand what the heck it's saying. But it's simply wrong.

God absolutely does have a son. You're going to have to deal with that. If you think he does not have a son, then there is only God. What are the implications of this idea? If there is only God, then you are God entirely, God is dreaming of exile from God, God is insane and believes in death, God has special relationships, God creates poop, and God kills people. Hmm... Is that going to jive with your spiritual goals? It doesn't exactly sound very loving, but it is perfectly logical.

For God NOT to have participated in this madness of a hellhole we're in, he MUST be distinct from you in SOME way. There has to be some kind of freedom that you have "from him" that allows YOUR insanity to not affect him. Otherwise any madness you go into would instantly infect him, and then we'd all be lost forever. God did NOT enter "the separation", did not buy into the mad idea, and did not dream of hell. So who did? And the obvious answer is of course that you - as the Son of God - or at least ONE OF the sons of God did.

The kind of warped bandaids that a person has to come up with to try to mangle the course's meaning to make certain untruths "fit" is quite incredible. We've got people saying that God has no son at all, people saying that one separation is acceptable but not two, and we've got people saying that God can't have many sons because that mean separation. It doesn't, but that's what they think.

And mainly it's because people just cannot seem to conceive of something that TRANSCENDS "either this or that". They just can't seem to envision what a reality is like where one thing is also two things, or even many things, while still being one thing. There is NO parallel to that in the physical world. There are NO examples in your environment that you've ever encountered where one thing is also two things, or two things are one thing, or two things entirely overlap and share the same space. It seems impossible. But THIS world is impossible, so don't you think that means "one as two" is entirely possible?

What some people then don't like is the seeming SIMILARITY between this idea of God being "one and many", and their idea of duality. Oooh... it's a little bit too much like duality isn't it, that must be an ego thing, that must be a bad thing, let's get rid of it. But duality is NOT the same thing as the transcendental multiplicities of reality.

Duality really means, things are separate, AND they do not share anything. The lack of sharing is a vital part of it. It's not just that there's a separation, it's that the two things are kept apart and do not join or connect. So then you might ask what is the opposite of that? Is it oneness? NOT NECESSARILY. How about the opposite of duality, is a reality in which there are STILL many things, BUT at the same time, they SHARE EVERYTHING? What would that be like? Because that's what reality IS like.

That's exactly what Jesus describes over and over again in ACIM. A reality in which there are many parts, and where each part is the whole, and each part shares everything with all the other parts, yet is STILL a part. You being one with God, while STILL being yourself. You having your own soul, while ALSO sharing the soul of others. You being christ, while OTHERS are also christ. You having many brothers, yet each brother BEING the other brothers. That's all over the course in hundreds of ways and that's what you have to come to realize about reality.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

Reality IS NOT ONENESS. It is not the kind of "opposite of separation" that you think it is. It IS oneness, but it's not ONLY that. It is a oneness which has expressed infinite power to CREATE additional ones. It is a wholeness which has FULLY created additional WHOLE beings. It's an entire constellation of creations, where each INDIVIDUAL creation is also so joined to the others that they are ALSO one. Oh my God, did he just say that we have an INDIVIDUAL SELF IN REALITY? How can that be?!!!

"We share our life because we have one Source, a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the holy minds which He created perfect."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

Now I can hear the thoughts in your mind trying to whirl around to visualize this. And you're probably thinking well, how do these many separate things be joined, to the extent that they are one, without DISAPPEARING? Because in spacetime we only have analogies where, as two things become one thing, the separation vanishes and you can't tell them apart any more. But that's NOT the case in reality. The two things are FULLY two things, AND fully one thing, at the same time. That's what you have to come to accept. The dynamics of heaven's reality is NOT the same as the laws of physics.

God is one, and has many children, who are one, who have many creations of their own, which are one. And every one creates with every other one. And the whole sonship, which is a collection of ones, creates as one, to create many additional ones, with God, who is one with them all. Oneness extends itself, to produce more onenesses, which are each oneness, and each gives oneness, creating more onenesses, which are in turn still the same oneness. One thing, creating separate things, which are one thing still.

This cannot be understood by separating things into separate boxes. It cannot be understood by insisting that reality be a count of one. It cannot be understand by projecting ego ideas of the "lack of separations" onto it. It cannot be understood by trying to get rid of all the sons of God and all your brothers and turning the world into a solo-gameshow of you vs yourself. There ARE other people here, there are other dreamers here, there are other free willed beings here, and you DO have relationships.

The course has been smushed, crushed, distorted, twisted, mangled, bent, upheaved and shattered, by well-meaning but mistaken individuals who THINK they know that heaven has to be a singularity of God. ACIM if you read it carefully does not support this idea. Even when it says "God is". Even when it says "God has but one son". Even then it STILL ALSO SAYS that God has many sons and a family and even grandchildren. Your creations are his grandchildren. That's all in A Course in Miracles, whether a person likes it or not, or whether it makes sense or not.

Can we just let the course be what it is and say what it does and try to FIND A WAY TO ACCEPT IT, instead of keep trying to CONVERT IT INTO the models and concepts and theories and theologies that WE think it has to be? Because it is not like them. ACIM is not non-duality, it is not adviata vedanta, it is not about oneness in the traditional sense, and it doesn't teach that there is only God.

Let it be itself and let it tell you what the whole truth is. Take ALL of what Jesus says and recognize that he does NOT contradict himself, and if he says two things which SOUND contradictory, it does not mean they are. What it means is YOUR THOUGHT SYSTEM contradicts itself when it is exposed to a truth that trancends it. It isn't the course that's confused, it's you. Jesus knows what he's talking about. "We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself."

"God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you" "God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

"And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it."

"Sins are in bodies. They are not perceived in minds. They are not seen as purposes, but ACTIONS. Bodies act, and minds do not."

"It takes the central place in every dream, which tells the story of how it was made by OTHER bodies, born into the world OUTSIDE the body, lives a little while, and dies, to be united in the dust with other bodies, dying like itself."

"In the brief time allotted it to live, it seeks for other bodies as its friends and enemies."

"It hires OTHER bodies, that they may protect it, and collect more senseless things that it can call its own."

"It looks about for special bodies which can SHARE its dream. Sometimes it dreams it is a conqueror of bodies weaker than itself. But in some phases of the dream, it is the slave of bodies which would hurt and torture it."

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers."

"For all the hurt that war has sought to bring; the broken bodies and the shattered limbs, the screaming dying and the silent dead, are gently lifted up and comforted. There IS no sadness, where a miracle has come to heal."

"YOU SEE THE WORLD YOU VALUE. On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

"Within the dream of bodies and of death, is yet one theme of truth; no more, perhaps, than just a tiny spark, a space of light created in the dark, where God shines still."

"Homeless, the ego seeks as many bodies as it can collect, to place its idols in, and so establish them as temples to itself."

"The Holy Spirit's purpose lies safe in your relationship, and not your bodies. You have ESCAPED the body. Where you are now, the body cannot enter, for the Holy Spirit has set HIS temple there."

"The unholy instant IS the time of bodies."

"You have a fear of broken bodies, because your ego cannot tolerate them."

"Those who call upon the Name of God can not mistake the nameless for the Name, nor sin for grace, nor bodies for the holy Son of God."

"And sight of bodies becomes the sign that sacrifice IS limited, and something still remains for you alone."

"A mind within a body, and a world of other bodies, each with SEPARATE minds"

"Some idea of bodies MUST have entered, for minds can NOT attack."

"The thought of bodies IS a sign of faithlessness, for bodies CANNOT solve anything. And it is their INTRUSION on the relationship, an error in YOUR thoughts ABOUT the situation, that then became the JUSTIFICATION for your lack of faith."

"You do not perceive your brothers as the Holy Spirit does because you do not interpret their bodies AND YOURS solely as a means of JOINING THEIR MINDS and uniting them with yours and mine."

"But if you use it ONLY to reach the minds of those who believe they ARE bodies and teach them THROUGH the body that THIS IS NOT SO, you will begin to understand the power of the mind that is in both of you."

"For only bodies can be separate, and therefore unreal. The home of madness cannot be the home of reason."

"It sees NOT through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification."

"Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."

"18. A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

This touches on the essence of A Course in Miracles and the Golden Rule. Jesus is literally telling us that YOU ARE ONE WITH OTHERS. This means you are literally IN THEM. And therefore the way that you treat them is the SAME as the way you treat yourself.

There is no exception to this. You treat BOTH yourself and others the same way at the same time. To recoil for another is to recoil from yourself. To not love another is to not love yourself. To hate another is to hate yourself. There is no escaping this because fundamentally, by the Law of God, you ARE them.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."

So per the Golden Rule, that means that every person you encounter, you should love them, IF you want to be loved and if you love yourself. You should SEE YOUR SELF in them. Because both you AND them are Christ. And your love of them IS your love of yourself, directly. What you give to them you receive. What you transmit to them, you transmit to the part of you that is in them.

The "part of you" that is "in them" is the target of everything you give to them, so you have a VESTED INTEREST - a shared interest, in treating them well in order for YOU to be treated well. This is not a play on words or an option. This is how minds share and relate. This is how they were created. This is the dynamics of the laws of God which are always applying.

It is always the ego that suggests, the way you treat another is NOT the way you are treating yourself. Or that you can attack without being attacked. Or you can be murderous without experiencing the consequences. Or you can judge without being judged. Or you can hate without being hated. Or you can be right and they can be wrong and there is no equality between you.

These are all LIES because they fly in the face of the inescapable LAW. It can SEEM as if you can treat someone differently to how you treat yourself, but all of that MUST be an illusion. Because the only truth is that ALL of God's children are perfect EQUALS. Making them perfect brothers in the sonship. And this is permanent fact.

Any kind of inequality is an illusion. And that not only means that you and your brother are SEPARATELY EQUAL as individuals, like two identical twins standing next to each other. It in fact means that you SHARE EVERYTHING, which means you OVERLAP with each other, are ONE with each other, JOINED with each other, IN each other. You literally are in your brother's mind with him. Even if that means part of you seems to be "over there" in another person, from a separated point of view.

This is really the only thing to be learned. How to love yourself AND others equally. How to recognize that you are ONE with all people. To realize that, you cannot GET AWAY WITH anything. You cannot hurt without being hurt. You cannot attack without being attacked. Scapegoating and blame are delusional and denial. When you attack anyone you are hurting yourself, and you have to ask yourself, do you want to keep hurting yourself?

Anger and attack towards "others" drives a RIFT into your mind between the part of your mind which seems to be isolated to "inside your body" and the part of you which seems to be "inside other people's bodies". The more you attack what you THINK is a "separate them", the more you are SPLITTING OFF part of you which is in "you" (as a body identified self) and the part of you which is ONE WITH THEM. Which means you are directly attacking yourself and splitting your mind.

The split mind is divided by bodily boundaries, and as you focus on the ways in which you are NOT ONE, by emphasizing the solidity and reality and restriction of bodily obstacles, it simply SPLITS your mind and causes you to disassociate from yourself. And now you think you are literally two selves, with one part of you trapped in your body and the other part of you trapped in another person's body. You've now made an ego for both of you. And now you want to attack another to steal back from them the part of your SELF that you believe they have kept from you. As discussed in "the laws of chaos", everyone is looking for the self they think they lost.

So this seems to be a catch. The catch is, that if you choose to attack someone, you WILL be attacked, and you will suffer consequences, directly inflicted BY YOURSELF upon yourself. This is the secret of salvation, that you are doing it to yourself. And the only way to alleviate this suffering is to LOVE the other person. If you love them you will be loved. If you hate them you will be hated. By yourself. You cannot escape this "clause". It is the law of God. It is the Golden Rule. It is both a curse if ignored, and a clue to how to be happy if embraced.

The Golden Rule doesn't just mean that if you might treat someone as you would have them treat you, they MIGHT elect to treat you in a similar fashion. If there is any possibility that cause and effect breaks down and they MIGHT NOT treat you how you are treating them, then the law is breakable, and it is not a law, and it has devolved to the level of physical behaviors. The true nature of the Golden Rule is the oneness you always have with everyone in the mind, whereby you LITERALLY are DIRECTLY treating yourself the way you are treating them, because you are IN THEM.

"Do unto others because you ARE doing unto yourself." is what it should say.

If there is a person you hate, you will drive a separation between you. In this separation you will believe that person is completely separate from you, and you want to have as much distance and dis-association between you as possible. You do not want to be associated with them. You want to destroy them and have them not exist. And in this intensity of hatred and rage and attack and anger, you believe THEY ARE NOT YOU. And as such you can hurl as much blame and condemnation upon them as you can muster, and it seems to be 100% about their faults, and 0% about yours. This is a state of insanity.

This is a great way to split your mind, leading to states of personal suffering, unlove, a total lack of peace, and literal self destruction. Those who murder are trying to kill themselves. And those who attack are undermining their own integrity. And those who hate do not love themselves. Just as those who are sick have made themselves sick in an attempt to accuse OTHERS of sin as well as themselves.

"You but accuse your brothers of your own sin."

"Damaged bodies remain accusers."

The only solution, and the only option, and the only law which you HAVE to abide by, and cannot escape, is the law of God, that how you DO treat others IS how you are treating yourself, because YOU ARE ONE WITH THEM. And being literally part of that person, anything you hurl at them you are hurling at yourself. And you WILL experience the consequences. So really, your hands are tied and you do not have any loopholes or ways to get out of it.

Either you love BOTH you and your brother, or you hate both you and your brother. Either you love both you and your brother, or you attack both you and your brother. Either you attempt to make both you and your brother sick, or you HEAL both you and your brother. When you suffer you suffer along with him. The truth that applies to you applies to them equally and to the same degree. And not simply because they are your equal, but because THEY ARE YOU.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."When this is recognized as true, when cause and effect are reunited so that anything you cause you also experience the effects of instantly, and when there is no way to attack without attacking yourself, you now have shared interests and the only option is to love. The only sane choice is to love. If you don't love you will hurt yourself and others. If you do love you will uplift and heal yourself and others. And "when I heal I am not healed alone."

It is by recognizing that you have a vested interest in loving others, because it allows you to be loved, that you will automatically steer clear of attack upon yourself. You will realize that you CANNOT attack another person WITHOUT suffering the consequences. And there is no way to hurt them without being hurt. So your only sane choice is to love unconditionally, so that you will be loved. Otherwise a failure to recognize your oneness leads to it seeming plausible, justifiable and warranted, that you can attack without consequence. And then you are on the slippery slope to hell.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, ***and one for everyone he perceives***, which is equally variable." UrT4C2

Did you know you've made an ego for other people, just as much as you've put an ego inside yourself? That's what he's saying. You have invented an ego for other people and you interact WITH that ego rendition of the person rather than seeing them for who they are. And we're not talking here about just seeing them as a body, but even overlaying their body with another layer of modification.

He's also goes on to say that as your ego and the ego you made for another interact, they change and affect each other.

"Their interaction IS a process which literally alters both, because they were not made either BY or WITH the unalterable.

"It is particularly important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place IN THE MIND as when it involves physical presence. THINKING about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is their physical interaction." UrT4C2

For me I was quite shocked to realize that I had made an ego for a particular person, and I was interacting with it. And this ego was a very reduced view of that person. It focused on their body only, seeing their body as though it was all there was to the person. In fact, strangely even seeing the person as if they had NO mind at all and were entirely physical. All sense of them even being there or having a presence or personality was mostly gone, replaced by a seemingly empty shell of an appearance.

It was also shocking to see that I was interacting with that ego and not with the person. I was not giving them any credit and was not seeing past their body form. I had taken their body form to be them almost entirely and was very blind to anything else. I now had a special relationship that had stripped that person down so much that it felt like I was interacting with a small child who was regarded as defective and weak and very sinful and treacherous.

It was strange to realize I was even doing this. And when I realized I was doing this I also realized I could step back from that version of them and get outside of it, to take a look at the person more directly and with more presence. It wasn't just "my ego" that was causing a clouding of how I see. It was the fact that I had also produced a kind of "mirror" ego that was projected onto that person and had substituted for them. That ego or "image" of a self was now masquerading as them to my awareness, and I was relating only to it. I was in a relationship with a fantasy character.

I then thought to myself, I don't even know how I got into this state. How did this happen? How could I have built up such a false view of a person that was so out of touch with them it made it seem like the person wasn't even barely there any more. That the person seemed to be so different from how they used to be that I barely recognized them, as if I thought that person was not even really there anymore, and yet they were.

So now begins the task of dismantling the egos we've made not just for ourselves but even for other people. These are narrow, condemned, faulty, dysfunctional, guilty senses of identity which have become counterfit selves standing-in for other people. It's now not simply just a matter of my finding out what my own real identity is, it's also a matter of finding out what is the true identity of others. Have I even seen them really? Do I even know what they're really like? It's not just that I'm not my thoughts or emotions or body, they're not theirs either, and they're not the version of them that I made up.

For sure my ego has a dominating tyrannical overpowering and attacking view of others. But in fact its view of what I think is them is in fact a view of further egos that my mind believes exists. Its relationship is with these artificial figures that aren't even the actual persons. It has special relationships with these "dream figures" like in a private world, subjectively interpreting that these make-believe fictional entities are actually out there to be interacted with, and that this is all that's there.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE. He can but be IMAGINED in the darkness, and it is here that the illusions you hold about him are NOT held up to his reality. Here are illusions and reality kept SEPARATED. Here are illusions NEVER brought to truth, and ALWAYS hidden from it. And here, in darkness, is your brother's reality IMAGINED as a body, in unholy relationships with other bodies, serving the cause of sin an instant, before he dies." UrT20H6

"Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son." UrT10F17

"The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL illusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them.

Each one peoples his world with figures from his INDIVIDUAL past, and it is because of this that private worlds DO differ. But the figures that he sees were NEVER real, for they are made up ONLY of his REACTIONS to his brothers, and do NOT include their reactions to HIM. Therefore he does not see that he made them, and that they ARE NOT WHOLE. For these figures HAVE NO WITNESSES, being perceived in one SEPARATE mind only.

It is THROUGH these strange and shadowy figures that the insane relate to their insane world. For they SEE only those who remind them of these images, and it is to THEM that they relate. Thus do they communicate with those who ARE NOT THERE, and it is THEY who answer them. And no-one hears their answer save him who called upon them, and he ALONE believes they answered him. Projection MAKES perception, and you CANNOT see beyond it. Again and again have men attacked each other, because they saw IN THEM a shadow figure in their private world." UrT12E1

Jesus said this:

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind."

Here we’re told that God created "man’ (souls) and gave man (souls) the ability to create, when in his right mind (as God intended). All of this is taking place within God’s realm, the Kingdom of Heaven. Heaven also IS God’s Creation and everything in it including the souls.

The souls together comprise "the sonship" and since they share oneness with all of Creation, they are all "the One Son" ie the one/united creation. At this point it has absolutely nothing to do with physicality or planet Earth or separation.

"The latter (man’s ability to create in his right mind) required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given."

So we know that it is natural to have free will, for each "individual soul", who is part of oneness, and who is also christ. Each individual soul is therefore "free" to independently dream or not.

At this point, pre-separation, in my opinion all of this is encompassed within God’s Kingdom, Heaven, which IS the sonship and IS creation and INCLUDES all souls. All as one Sonship, one creation, on being, on sense of identity yet still many parts. (I know I know, suspend disbelief).

All of this content, is what the Course originally refers to as WORLD. This was God’s world, God’s creation. What really exists. (Not the "real world"). This is the same thing as "the universe" of God.

God gave a world to His Son, spoken of here:

"The statement ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life’ needs only slight correction to be meaningful in this context; ‘He gave it to His only begotten Son.’"

I believe, the world referred to is simply the Kingdom of God, heaven. It is the only place where there is everlasting life. This is true in both versions - that "God gave His Son" = world (God’s created universe, not earth, God expressed/gave the Sonship), and that "God gave the world to His Son" = God’s creation, heaven, given "to" his Son to SHARE and be a part of as God’s Kingdom/expression. This has nothing to do with the physical universe, a world made by separation, or planet Earth in any way.

At this Level, Heaven, Creation, God, Sonship, The Son, The Sonship, Souls, Reality, Universe, World, Eternity, Oneness, Christ, Children of God, and Christ’s Creations, and the creations from Souls, are essentially all part of a single experiential realm or state of mind/being in which there is perfect sharing, multiple minds, yet all sharing and reflections of God’s mind as well.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as one."

"It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts."

ie, "the son" IS the sonship, which contains multiple sons of God, all equal, and perhaps there is no single "first begotten son" kind of identity. Just the multitude souls? Yet every soul is fully one with the whole sonship, sort of implying two levels or aspects to identity? "Soul-self" and "shared-self’? And that when the "sharing" is severed, what’s left is the soul estranged as a separated son, still having its own identity but seemingly disconnected from the whole.

Then there was the separation...

"All fear is ultimately reducible to the basic misperception that man has the ability to usurp the power of God."

Or to put it another way, each soul can choose to sleep (or they all slept at once?), and "dreaming" (authority problem, separation, sin, level confusion, fear) is the mis-creation of each soul’s free will. Each soul tried to "withdraw" from the unity of the whole sonship, going into a state of isolation with artificial walls around it (later to become bodies), seeming to no longer be part of oneness, no longer sharing, no longer connected.

Jesus says this:

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

Notice it says "the son of God". Given all souls form the sonship and together they are collectively "the son of God", along with whatever else God created (angels etc?), does this not mean that all (or some of?) God’s "Creation" collectively had the tiny mad idea? Ie we’re not just talking about a single son, but many sons "falling" together?

We’re also told this:

"What God does know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His children are wholly joyous….God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thought, "My children sleep and must be awakened."

So we’re told there that when some parts of the sonship (souls) are blocking, the entire sonship is affected and so God then knows he needs to create the Holy Spirit.

Here is the version from the urtext, which is more clarifying:

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. The Sonship in its Oneness does transcend the sum of its parts. However, it loses this special state as long as any of its parts are missing. This is why the conflict cannot ultimately be resolved until all of the individual parts of the Sonship have returned. Only then, in the true sense, can the meaning of wholeness be understood."

When the sonship, or even one part of it, still believes in separation, is dreaming, unaware of the whole, or rejecting the sonship, the sonship is incomplete. In this state, what the sonship experiences now is the "fall" into, and the dreaming OF, collectively, the "second world".... the world of death and separation.

This second world comprises everything that is "inside" the tiny mad idea, all thoughts of sin and death, the entire physical universe which was made a "place" (actually a state of mind) in which God seems not to exist. This second "world" is the world in which we experience perception (of all kinds). This "world" is the entire physical universe. It may additionally comprise further fake universes in higher dimensions because the separation from God progressed through various stages.

So then there are two worlds. God’s universe/creation/heaven, and the illusory universe/what we made/physical universe which is artificial ("Earth is opposite to heaven in every way"). We typically think of world as the planet, but it means the entire realm in which we seem to exist. All of the "universe" we think is the universe, all planets and stars, all galaxies and nebula and civilizations. And all of the massive expanses of space and time. All of this is "the world" - the world WE MADE, which God DID NOT CREATE. A world of separation. And within this world, this realm, planet Earth is just one of many illusory locations.

There is a series of workbook lessons, I posted about this recently, which tell us 1) we’re experiencing a hell of false perception laid on top of the world we made, 2) true perception is then introduced as an alternative way to view "this world" (this fake universe), 3) we’re guided to experiment with discerning true from false, 4) we’re then told about how HEAVEN is ANOTHER world (a 3rd experience, beyond false and true perception) reachable when "this world" is left behind (the world/realm/universe we made).

The lesson "No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth" specifically describes us leaving this "world" and returning to Heaven, to the realm of Creation, to God’s universe. Which is not the Earth or even the physical universe.

This also means that, the collective "Son of God" dreamed the fictional "world" which houses the fictional planet earth (there is no world). This also means then that if true perception shows you the "accurate perception" of the world YOU MADE (physical universe), to see accurately/truly the world you made is to see what THE SON projected. Since this "world", the physical universe, is the "One Son’s dream" or, the collective dream of the Sonship, which we all made together, and since the course says "The world IS perception", seeing this world with true perception is us perceiving PERCEPTION. Perception twice removed!

As individual souls we’re looking upon what the One Son projected as a fake universe. Within this context alone, we EACH have a false perception OF the One Son’s perception. A false perception of "the world" (and you can include Earth in that world). False perception ADDS a "personal layer" on top of the world we made, true perception removes that layer and reveals what is "there" without distortion. Yet this world we’ll see, the "real world", is STILL within perception. It is STILL the 2nd world, the one WE MADE, not the one God created.

We will disappear this 2nd world. This 2nd world is one we made up, invented, it is a DREAM. An illusory universe. It doesn’t really even exist at all. IT is the opposite to the nature of heaven in EVERY WAY. It is not a part of heaven now, and it will never be. Being an illusion, it must disappear entirely. Being literally NOTHING, it never was, does not exist NOW, and never will. It simply will vanish when recognized in the light of truth. The light will shine it away. It will be no more because it never was. We don’t need it.

God has created a "world" - Heaven - a "place" (as much as any, though different to the physical experience), "fit for a King" ... a realm of permanent joy and love and eternal life. It is EVERTHING, where the "world" we made is nothing. The world we made is not real. "There is no world" is a direct statement speaking to this - this world we made, which includes planet Earth and more, does not exist. "The world holds nothing that I want" ... not just the world of false perception, OR the world of true perception. The world we made, to replace God’s world, holds nothing that I want. The "real world" is an illusion, not a reality. God’s reality is the REAL, real world.

These are, to me, essentially the two worlds. And within the world we made, because perception is selective and has degrees, there is a really screwed up state of false perception (hell), and a much more preferable and closer-to-reality state of "true" perception. As clear a state of perception as we can possibly have while still being OUTSIDE of heaven. And "there is no life outside of heaven", because the world we made is not life.

I guess I’m just putting this out there. FInding my way to a clarity about this which makes sense to me. Take what you like leave the rest.

I see now that giving love is giving life. It uplifts and heals, restores and purifies. It's almost like putting someone up on a pedestal, not to worship them but to acknowledge their perfection and lovability as one of God's children. A child of God that God loves.

If someone is an enemy, your task is to heal them. It is to love them, to express toward them the perfection and beauty and holiness that they are, and which they deserve. Even if they themselves do not believe it.

Giving this love to them and reinforcing God's truth about them, is the same thing as forgiving them, and as performing a miracle. It's like they are damaged and your job is to repair the damage. To patch it up. To cure it and heal it and restore the wholeness.

I used to think of forgiveness more in terms of what I am doing within, how I am seeing, what I believe, what I'm projecting, trying to take it all back within. But now I'm seeing that forgiveness is also an outward expression of love. As the light within is uncovered, it radiates outward. You shine a light which dispels the darkness.

If you have an enemy and you are at war with them, you may not want to love them. You may want to keep them imprisoned in a box or kept separate. You may want to exclude them from love and only let the good people receive the love. But clearly as you learn to love and resurrect even one person, it becomes apparent that you really should be doing this for everyone, all the time.

I think a lot of ACIM focus in on the processes we individually perform for ourselves, the attempt to find peace, to be healed, to lighten up, to receive love etc. But a huge part of it is also in the giving, because giving and receiving are one.

You in fact HAVE to extend (give) love in order to receive it. It's the only way it can work. If you don't give the love, you will lose out on the love. Which means if you don't love your enemy, you are depriving yourself of love.

To give light and life to everyone is very simple. I can well imagine the likes of Jesus walking around just being very loving, very uplifting, very encouraging and healing, shining into people, lifting them up, raising their spirits, strengthening them and reinforcing their health and wholeness. Just being a loving person and loving people. Resurrecting them with love.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life."

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

"I am YOUR resurrection and YOUR life. You live in me because you live in God. And everyone lives in YOU, as YOU live in everyone."

"Believe in the resurrection because it has BEEN accomplished, and it has been accomplished IN YOU. This is as true now as it will ever be, for the resurrection is the Will of God, Which knows no time and no exceptions."

"Hold him not back with thorns and nails, when his redemption is so near. But let the whiteness of your shining gift of lilies speed him on his way to Resurrection."

"Let us give redemption to each other, and SHARE in it, that we may rise as one in resurrection, and not SEPARATE in death."

"But the Resurrection IS the symbol of sharing, because the re-awakening of every Son of God is necessary to enable the Sonship to know its wholeness."

"The resurrection of the world awaits YOUR healing and YOUR happiness, that you may DEMONSTRATE the healing of the world."

"And you will see within today's idea the light of resurrection, looking past all thoughts of crucifixion and of death to thoughts of liberation and of life."

"My resurrection comes again each time I lead a brother safely to the place at which the journey ends and is forgot. I am renewed each time a brother learns there is a way from misery and pain."

"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness. "

"This is why the healer is part of the Resurrection and the LIFE."

What we think passes for a special love relationship on Earth, is typically the exact opposite of how relationship should be in heaven. This is not something that the people of the world want to look at or hear about.

The special relationship is the ego's way of relating. The ego's thought system is insane and deeply rooted in separation, specialness and exclusion. It rejects wholeness in favor of some special part which is different and unique to all the rest. It uses its worshipping of these little parts as idols to shut out and reject everything else. It is not really a device for relationship, it is a device for shutting relationship down and reducing it to almost nothing.

The physical world, which is a projecting out of the insane thought system of the ego, is founded on the same thinking, on the rejection of wholeness and the emphasis of separations and differences. Special relationships then become ways for the ego to use physicality to serve ego purposes, because now bodies can be used to section off and isolate and exclude, to narrow the field down to the ultra-special chosen one, to the exclusion of all others.

As the ego pursues what it tells you is the most treasured relationship, it promises that this relationship will give you total freedom, liberation, a savior who will fulfill all your needs, will give you everything you want, do things to you that you prefer, and together you will join in triuph over everyone and everything. A power-couple, exclusive in every way, fighting against the whole universe.

Such a special relationship is founded on exclusivity, with special rights and permissions granted, commitment to the other held up with the condition that you be uncommitted to anyone else, loyalty it seen as defending and siding with the other against everyone else, and nothing is allowed to occur outside the boundaries of the relationship. Especially not the intimate sharing of the body, which is really the exclusive target of the sense of special love, in which the other is held up as an idol to be worshipped, so that you'll stay away from God.

The truth however is that by pursuing relationship on the basis of how exclusive it is, also guarantees that the relationship is a prison. Two come together to share a prison, bound by chains, and commiting to fight together against the hoards of the universe who are left outside. There are limits on what you can, where you can, who you can be with, what you can say and to whom. Break the terms and conditions and you are violating the trust and the commitment of this meeting of minds, this joining of bodies, and this attempt to merge into oneness.

In effect such a relationship is not a releationship. It is a way of using a tiny speck of relationship focused around a single exclusive separation-device body, in order to keep everyone else away. The more exclusivity is given to the pair, the less there is for others to share in. In the strictest and most controlling of examples this can turn into highly abusive "love" situations where every little act is controlled and monitored and inspected for violations. And of course this can lead to abuse and violence and all manner of anti-relationship, all masquerading as a relationship. A relationship made in hell, where rotting together in death passes for love. And how cute it is that the corpses die in each other's arms.

The ego thus attempts to merge with one special other, exclusively and only that one other, and not even the whoel of them, in order to in some way commit fully to identifying with your body and with their body. And by doing so the ego uses the body and sex to try to bind the mind to matter, to make the body out to be the mind, and to believe in the allure of the body itself. All designed to place so much focus on the physical that the relationship becomes mindless and love doesn't enter into it. The relationship can then be all about sex and no real love, no real sharing or communication, and simply the using of each other's form.

But the ego clings to this because it's like it's rock in the storm, the stronger it can bind to bodies the more it can stay away from God and define itself in terms of what the body is, separating self off from others and therefore forming a sense of identity and of existing as something unique and special. Thus the more the relationship becomes exclusively special the more the ego increases and sees this temporary ally as joining it in its fight against all others.

This results in a dependency on an external savior, a seeking outside of yourself for love, an attempt to find yourself in the other person by denying yourself, a giving away of power, all manner of sacrifices and compromises and people pleasing, losing yourself, and a high degree of dishonesty. It is a closed-off relationship based on a prison, in which the two are chained to each other in "monogomy" and "marriage" and this is held up as holy any good and God's will. A holy and unquestionale institution, which is really founded on the lie that as the two come together there will be love, when really there is love's prison.

What the ego will never tell you is that each person is never supposed to be in a dedicated exclusive relationship with only one other, in which being with them is a tool to exclude everyone else. To do this is to place someone in a prison and call it freedom, to say you love them all the wihle keeping them captive and making sure they have no life beyond what you allow. Everyone is supposed to love everyone, and equally. It is completely unnatural that a person be kept so isolated and exclusive and separated off that they're not allowed even the slightest relationship with anyone, lest there be jealousy and grounds for revenge.

That means it is completely natural in God that everyone would experience full and total unconditional love towards absolutely everyone simultaneously. That is the total opposite of exclusivity and specialness because it's based on inclusivity and openness and sharing. It is true freedom and it applies to all souls. This is what all souls want and know and trust and enjoy. You are one with everyone, not just one little individual, whose specialness is there to tempt you and keep you away from everyone else.

On Earth therefore bodies are not only separation devices and prisons, they are also used by the ego to bring exclusive bodies together on exclusive terms so that the body can essentially be used to keep both persons away from God. And in their specialness they will think they are being holy and better and rightous and above all others, whom them look down upon together.

This belief that we are all supposed to find one single person and "love them" but in such a way that this relationship excludes others and is not the same as what is shared with others, is an ego device to separate and destroy relationship. It also leads to madness, in the belief that you are completely dependent on this one other person for your salvation, and if they are gone or if they stop giving you what you want, you are desperate like some kind of stalker that just can't let go or grant freedom. The belief that you can only get your needs met by that one person is a recipe for disaster and for endless torment. You don't even really have any needs.

In order to be free from that turmoil, which is largely also the root cause of grief and loss when a person leaves or dies, the sense of exclusivity must be dismantled. The person can only be "let go" by giving them freedom and allowing the exclusive rules to be broken. And indeed when they are broken it will not horrify, but instead bring great relief. Relief from the sense of isolation, from the straight-jacked of special terms, from the obedience and worship and codependency, and from the sense of not being able to live or do anything without their approval. No more burden, no more distorting yourself with sacrifices to please them, and no more putting them on a pedestal in order to cut them down.

If the person were to for example "cheat" or go outside the bounds of the agreement, or in some way withdraw what they were giving, or the grounds of the relationship are attacked and undermined, leading to a breakdown in the specialness and the romance, then perhaps this is a good thing. Because then it can open the doorway to actually transcending the ego's attempt at imprisonment, the glorifying of the body, the desire to merge with the body, and the sense that only this one person in all the world can ever be good enough for you.

"I want you and nobody else", as many-a-song goes, becomes the ego's mantra for exclusive specialness. The special one, the chosen one, the other half of yourself, the perfect one, the ideal one, the one who does only what you want and gives you none of what you don't want, the seeming savior and oasis in the desert to keep you from the madness of others, that special someone who who can side with an gel with and connect with by way of proving how everyone else is wrong, that's the ego's goal. To use separation to masquerade as relationship, to use a reduction in communication with the whole sonship under the guise of increasing communication, and using body contact to substitute for the true intimacy of oneness and to keep it away from heaven. And yet the ego thinks this is heaven on earth.

None of this is easy stuff to look at because everyone's doing it and everyone wants this feeling that you get when you look into the eyes of that special chosen one, and how they seem to offend you the least, justifying your murderous attitude toward everyone outside the special inner circle. Relationship can be far far higher than this, much more unconditional, and far more open and sharing, but not on the egos terms, and not really in terms of bodies - only up to a point.

But let it be known that, as you grant freedom to your partner, you are also giving it to yourself. And the special relationship therefore has to be converted into a holy relationship, where the terms and conditions are no longer the ego's, but the Holy Spirit's. And where the loving becomes equal and unconditional, there isn't a foundation of neediness and dependency, and both parties attain wholeness within themselves as well as with each other. There is a way out of the ego's chains and its little prisons of isolation, but it will require a dismantling of everything you ever thought specialness was good for.

Ultiamately it means giving up the entirely egocentric belief, in the ego itself, that you or another can be everything, exlusively and alone, to the exclusion of all else. That there can be this one sole person that is capable of being so limited, isolated, controlled and imprisoned, that they are somehow made permanent and constant and always the same to you. A person who will obey your every wish, do everything you want, be everything you want them to be, and never leave you. An idol to merge with in oneness, to posses and to own and control. Setting the other free from this punishing demand sets you also free form the LIE, that anyone could ever be, or is ever meant to be, the only one you could ever love.

Allowing their love to overflow to others, begins the dissolving of specialness, and therefore also of the ego itself. It is the beginning of letting go, the giving of freedom, the allowing of the other to be with anyone and everyone they so please. So that you can also be free to be unrestricted and unlimited in your relationship to all whom God has created equal.

"You cannot enter into REAL relationship with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

"Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

"In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."

"The special relationship is a strange and unnatural ego device for joining hell and Heaven, and making them indistinguishable. And the attempt to find the imagined "best" of BOTH worlds, has merely led to FANTASIES of both, and to the inability to perceive either one AS IT IS. The special relationship is the triumph of this confusion. It is a kind of union from which UNION IS EXCLUDED, and the BASIS for the ATTEMPT at union RESTS on exclusion. What better example could there be of the ego's maxim, "Seek, and do NOT find?"

THE OMNIPRESENCE OF GOD (and why many sons)

Understand omnipresence and you will understand how God created many sons.

The course appears here to contradict itself, saying there is only one son, and yet that there are many sons, in the same paragraph. But it is not contradictory...

"It should especially be noted that God has only one Son. If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship. The Sonship in its oneness transcends the sum of its parts."

Here it is further clarified that God has one son AND many sons (souls) all of whom make up the sonship....

"It should be noted that God has begotten only one Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship. You do not find the concept that the whole is greater than its parts difficult to understand. You should therefore not have too great difficulty with this. "

-----------------

The question is, how it is possible for God to have one son AND many sons and for both facts to be true at the same time, without contradicting?

God is omnipresent. What does that mean? It means God is fully present everywhere. But let's draw some analogies to what the ego thinks that means, to show why it is not what the ego thinks it means.

A cloud .... may seem to be the same everywhere. Today here the sky is overcast and gray, as if one cloud. But there are particles of cloud "over there" which are not "over here". All of the particles are separated out and cut off from each other. It is an illusion of oneness, simply a gathering of many separate parts huddled together. This is not what omnipresence means.

A human body - may seem to be "one body", joined together with its arms and legs. But the arms are not the legs. The hands and feet are separate. A hand is not a foot or vice versa. All of the parts are separated out. They seem to share to some degree but there are clear separations between parts. What is in the hand is not in the foot. What is in the eye is not in the knee. This is an illusion of a "blob", or semi-oneness. A collection of parts again huddled together to make an illusion of a whole or sharing, but where there is no sharing at all. All of the body's cells and particles are separate. It is a collections of separate parts. This is ego.

Omnipresence is not like this. Omnipresence defies every single property of matter. It transcends space time. The laws of omnipresence totally ignore every single law of physicality and physical limitation.

In omnipresence, it is possible, for the entirety of God, to be entirely present in one location. This sounds reasonable to the ego so far. But what does not sound reasonable is this additional fact: While God is being fully and completely present in one location, showing up with all of his being and all of his attention in that location, He is ALSO SIMULTANEOUSLY fully showing up and fully present in another location. ALL of His presence and attention and being are in that other location AT THE SAME TIME.

To the ego, this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It can only think in terms of finite amounts or volumes. To it, if God is fully present over here, there is nothing left to be present over there. Or rather, this is the idea of conditional love, in that there is only so much "amount" of love to go around, so if all the love is showing up in one place or given to one person, it must be exclusive, and there is no love left for anyone else. This is not what God is like.

God loves unconditionally. A part of unconditionality means that God can FULLY LOVE every single PART of existence. Without reservation. This does not mean He is spread thin, either. He has no limitation. It does not mean He has a really great big huge amount of love, like a 10 gallon container of water, and happens to be so much "bigger' than a row of glasses that he can fill all of them and have some left over. That's more ego logic. What really happens is, God puts ALL of Himself into every glass, to the point where there should to the ego be nothing left to put in another. And yet, there's God, fully present in the other glass. And all the rest equally. ALL OF HIM, IN ALL LOCATIONS, SIMULTANEOUSLY. This concept is completely alien to the ego.

If you can get a sense of this in your mind, it will help you to understand the metaphysics of God's creation, and will allow you to make sense of HOW it is possible that God has MANY SONS, and how all of them are also simultaneously one.

If God shares ALL of Himself, in order to create "the first son", the ego will then say, well, God just used up all of what he has, and now there is nothing left to share with any other son or to create again. But this is not true. God has not reduced whatsoever by sharing Himself. He has in fact increased. "Creation is increased only by sharing". AND, his omnipresent nature means He is perfectly capable of putting ALL of Himself into A BILLION SONS, without diminishing in any way, and without lacking anything, and without "running out" of Himself. Every single one of them has ALL of Him.

And here is the crucial point, as to why God creates MANY Sons and not just one...

When God shares all of Himself to create the first son, this in no way - due to his omnipresent nature - confines him or limits Him. He is able to be FULLY PRESENT and to create wholeness, EVERYWHERE, simultaneously. The creation of one son is merely the radiation of God in "one location", and... there are a lot of other locations! Other locations can simultaneously express all of God, to create a Son, in EVERY location. Simultaneously.

Here is an analogy.

A single point of light may seem to create a single photon. That photon is one created son. However, if the light source spans a large volume of space, such as a fluorescent tube, or an array of LED's, then it is capable of producing, simultaneously, an extraordinary number of photons i.e. creations. This is completely NATURAL to the nature of God, to simultaneously create MANY instances/wholes, because God is actually INFINITE in His ability to be present fully in every location. It is totally natural to God to create INFINITE SONS and to create each of them unlimited.

It is not natural for God, to claim that He can only therefore "create one son" and, be confined to that. That's as if to say, He uses all His creative juice, because the fullness of him is a limited "amount" (ego logic) and therefore if He puts all of Himself into ONE son, there is nothing left. BUT THERE IS. Not only is there something left, EVERYTHING IS LEFT. God has not reduced AT ALL. And as such, God goes on CREATING MULTIPLE SONS... perhaps INFINITE SONS.

That is his Omnipresent nature. To create many children, not just one. If there will be creation at all, given the massive expanse of God, and given that God will create in ALL locations simultaneously, and that He will give ALL of Himself in EVERY location, he will create WHOLE SONS in every single location.

Each son is a WHOLE, because ALL of the Father is shared with Him. Not just some parts. Not just a little bit of God. ALL of God is shared with every created soul. And every single soul has EVERYTHING, lacking nothing, because it does not lack ANY of God. The fullness of God is in every part of His Sonship. His entire creation thus contains many, many, many sons, each one of them is experiencing ALL OF GOD, simultaneously, and yet each one is therefore a WHOLE in and of itself. It must be, because God is a whole and can only create more wholes. Again, this makes NO SENSE to the ego's way of thinking, but it makes perfect sense holographically. The all is in every part and every part is a whole.

There is no "unnatural division" in this (ego separation). There is only "natural division".

The so-called "one son", aka Christ, is simply the entire "sum total" of all the individual free-willed Sons that God created. Yet it is more than just a sum of its parts. Again this is to do with holographic creation. Since ALL of God is in EVERY Son, adding up the number of Sons does not tell you what is there. The sum total of all Sons is not the totality. Since every sons SHARES ALL OF GOD, there is MORE to each Son than just "himself". He is SHARING GOD. So the Sonship, is more than the sum of its parts, because they are all sharing and extending a wholeness which is far bigger than any of them - the One Father.

To God, since he is IN all of the sons fully, shared with them, one with them, yet they are distinct, his experience of "all the sons" is simultaneous. As such he experiences the total as "one son" or "one unified experience". Another word for this one son is Christ. It is a sense of, every son sharing one parent. Of every son having ALL of God in them. That unity, that, connectedness, is "christ". But the christ is not just "one son", it is the immediate shared experience of the fact that ALL of God is in every son. Every son experiences and shares the whole of creation.

So it then is true to say, that each individual son, is in fact

1) A distinct son, a whole, containing the whole of God or made from the whole of God

and

2) Also intimately connected to and sharing God with every other son, as christ.

Therefore every son is christ. He is both "the whole sonship" AND "one son" simultaneously. The all, and the part, simultaneously.

Every creation of God also inherits God's omnipresent nature. Every single son, every being of light, every angel, every son of a son of a son, is OMNIPRESENT as well. It can be everywhere. And it can manifest multiple occurrences of images of an identity simultaneously, at any point in time or space, if needed. For example, angels are capable of being with MANY people simultaneously. This is only possible because they are omnipresent, otherwise they'd be jumping all over the place trying to keep up. This is true of them and it is also true of every Son.

Jesus is able to appear to MANY people individually, simultaneously, because he is EVERYWHERE, and is OMNIPRESENT, and is not limited in these finite ego-logical ways. Jesus can be FULLY present here with me right now, and be FULLY present with you right now wherever you are. This is NATURAL for all creations of God. This is part of our divine nature.

It is only this world of FORM and matter and time and objects and bodies, that APPEARS totally the opposite of this. In form, it is suggested that what is in one location IS NOT in any other location AT ALL. Matter also suggests that there *IS* no "all" in ANY of the parts. That all parts are separate, all parts are NOT JOINED, none of the parts are SHARING at all, and there is NO ONENESS. That was the POINT of making this universe of illusion, to be the TOTAL OPPOSITE of the nature of Heaven, God, and the Sonship.

Every single object in this world testifies that there is no God and that every son is separated. Every single body demonstrates this. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards". The planet itself, Earth, is a physical expression of the idea of separation, in which it is "OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY", because it does not demonstrate ANY omnipresence whatsoever. It does not appear to be a hologram (though it is), it does not show that the all is in any of the parts, no two parts share anything, there is no true joining, nothing overlaps, and basically every single physical particle of matter says "God is not here".

This is why this world is a bullshit lie, and no matter HOW you look at it or perceive it, its FORM is fundamentally in opposition to the nature of Heaven and God and the Sonship. It is NOT divine. It opposes divinity in every way. Every single particle of matter or energy is an expression of the idea of separation. Every subatomic particle. Every wave. Every quantum. However you deep you want to go, this universes is the OPPOSITE of omnipresence. And that was on purpose. The ego MADE THIS on purpose to try to create a picture of SHUTTING OUT GOD.

This is also the meaning of "this world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son". In every way, the separateness of matter is an attempt to claim that the son is CUT OFF from his father, because he no longer shares anything with the whole and no part contains ANY of God. That is an idea of the DEATH of God's Son, portrayed as physical particles which make up a demonstration of the Son being so completely devoid of God's presence that he must not be alive at all.

This is why we are not to make this world SPECIAL, or to worship it, or to want to keep it, or to try to have it somehow turn into heaven, or to put it on a pedestal, or to suggest God created it, or that it will be a permanent part of Creation. It CANNOT BE, because ALL that it is made of is this suggested idea of being UNLIKE HEAVEN. So there is no way that it can BECOME like heaven and still exist. Its entire NATURE is to be OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN. It exists AS "what God is not like". ... so it can't be IN what God is like and still exist. It cannot enter heaven or be part of it. This is why ... "THERE IS NO WORLD."

God's creation is one of holographic omnipresence. Every one of his MANY sons is a holographic omnipresent creation. Every single part of God's creation is the same everywhere and fully present in all parts. This is utterly IMPOSSIBLE to be expressed in form or matter, although any of God's children DOES have the ability to materialize illusory forms in any and MANY simultaneous locations if they choose to do so.

ACIM has many statements which really don't make any sense. For example:

"To have all, give all to all."

Let's look at this closely.

In this world, let's say you have a chocolate cake. You follow Jesus's advice. You are attempting to have ALL the cake. So you give ALL the cake to everyone else. The question then is, having done this, and now that everyone else is smiling and full of cake, do YOU have any cake?

The answer is no. If you have given ALL the cake, there is NO cake left.

This is really quite simple and hopefully makes sense to you. In terms of spacetime and all its physical contents, anything that you give you lose. You cannot really share anything. We can't both have the whole pizza. If I want you to have the whole pizza, I'm going to go hungry. If I give you the whole pizza, there will be nothing left. I cannot have ANY of the pizza, if I give ALL of the pizza.

Take another look at what Jesus said: "To have all, give all to all."

Now we have to admit something here. There are two possibilities.

1) Either Jesus is lying and is completely mistaken, because giving all of something leaves you with nothing.

2) Or, Jesus is correct, and knows what he's talking about, and SOMEHOW the LOGIC that we're using isn't working correctly. Or it breaks down and is invalid for use in reference to anything real.

Either Jesus is wrong or the logic is wrong, they can't both be true because they're making opposite claims. So, when you give ALL, do you truly GET all, or do you LOSE all? Is Jesus right or wrong?

What he's implying is that, somehow, when you give EVERYTHING away, you still have everything. How is that even POSSIBLE? Let's say that Jesus is very wise and knows what he's talking about. Let's say that his claim is true and we'll trust it. What does that mean? It means that if HE is right, the LOGIC must be wrong.

Something is wrong with the way the logic proceeds. There is something fundamentally broken about "normal logical reasoning" that is incompatible with what HE says is the truth.

What it implies is that the entire way that we think about things has something wrong with it. The reasoning that we use has something wrong with it. It's somehow fundamentally OPPOSITE to some kind of logic that is needed to properly handle Jesus's claims.

We can't continue to use the same way of thinking, if we hope to understand why or how his claim is true. It can't be true that when you give everything away you end up with nothing. But that's what the logic says. So the logic is faulty. We need some other way to "reason" things out that follows some other kinds of rules.

The truth is that our normal logic is actually based on SEPARATION. It was in the separation that we introduced the idea of "separate parts". And with that, the idea of "many separate things." We think that removing the separation is a matter of removing the many things, but in fact undoing separation really means undoing the entire SYSTEM of logic.

What people doing ACIM may not realize is that we continue to use a logic system of separation when trying to study what ACIM says. And this produces faulty conclusions. Even when you attempt to remove (disguise) the separation by getting rid of all the separations between things, to end up with a count of 1, we are still actually squarely WITHIN the thought system of separation. We've just reduced the number of boxes, instead of transcending the system of boxes.

ACIM presents another kind of thinking and reasoning, which is not compatible with the way we normally think about things. It's based on paralogical reasoning. It's worth your while looking that up and learning about it. In paralogical reasoning it's possible for one thing to be two things, and for two things to be one thing. It's possible for something to be in multiple places at once, and for all of something to be in all places at once. It is a transcendental model of logic.

It is only through transcendental logic that it becomes possible for Jesus's statement to be true. If I give ALL to everyone else, the only way I can still have all of it is if I am INCLUDED in the "everyone else". I have to BE the everyone else in some way, which means I have to transcend the box that separates me off from others. And there has to still BE others in order to "give to all."

So now my sense of who and what I am has to become transcendental. It can't just be that EITHER I am me OR not. It has to be that I am me and I am also something else. I am others and also myself, at the same time. This has to melt borders and transcend boxes. When I ... who am also everything, give all to all, I am giving all to myself, and therefore end up with all. So I do not sacrifice or lose, and OTHERS, who are also part of the all, now gain what I gave them. And now everyone is sharing everything.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

This is another of those impossible statements. If I were to have everything, normal logic would say that YOU cannot have ANYTHING. There is nothing LEFT for you to have if I have it all. e.g.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

So here Jesus himself is even tipping us off, that in normal logic, if we are to say that one soul/son has everything, for itself, there cannot be anything LEFT for anyone else to have. And he's saying this is NOT the case - that in fact the soul has a miraculous - transcendental quality, which makes is possible for EACH individual soul to have ALL. At the same time. And that is a matter of sharing.

I can have all of God. You can have all of God. We both can have all of God all at once, without contradiction or compromise or sacrifice or loss or taking turns. That makes NO sense in normal logic. But it makes total sense in paralogical reasoning, in which something can be true of two things at once without being a contradiction.

A logic system based on sharing is needed in order to understand Jesus's statements about the nature of reality. You CANNOT use normal logic because it will just polarize and separate and project separation onto reality. The result will be that you'll claim either God is alone or he has a separate son, and neither of those is really true.

It's mind-bending to us because we have to find a way to accept that, it's possible, for two things to be true at once. For God to have an actual real son who is real and individual, but who simultaneously is not separate from God. That you can be one with God ie the father, but that this oneness does NOT mean you are God. That you are still his creation. To be one, and yet to be also two, at the same time, that is the true quality of reality. And that is what Jesus's statements are pointing to.

What makes no sense to the ego, or to separation-based logic, makes total sense in reality. That's because the ego is really nonsense, and its whole logic system is nonsense. It has to be possible that when we give all to all, we still have all. It has to be possible that when ideas are given away and shared, they increase, and are accessed by both persons.

It has to be possible that when I have everything, you can also have everything. It has to be possible that I am myself and I also am the whole Kingdom of God, and all my brothers. It has to be possible that you have brothers permanently, but are also one. And that you can be one with God, without losing yourself. Otherwise Jesus is telling a whole bunch of lies. Like he says, the father is GREATER than you, so you ARE NOT his equal, so you cannot just disappear into him at the loss of your soul. You have to be able to be one with God AND be yourself. Two, AND one.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND.""

Reality's true nature is that it is one and many at the same time. This is not something that a lot of people are comfortable with. The EGO's way of thinking has told them that reality has to be ONLY one thing, with no parts or aspects or divisions or separations, which might hint at "bad evil separation" happening. But the presence of divisions at the SAME TIME AS the presence of oneness, is entirely natural. It is only when you remove the oneness aspect of that, that you end up with "only many", which is duality.

God is a creator with many parts and every part of God is one with all of God. And each of God's creations is a son of God, a member of the sonship and part of his Kingdom. Each of them is a co-creator and has their own creations, who in turn are co-creators with them. Heaven therefore includes a great many created things, all of which are "many in number", while simultaneously being ONE in number. BOTH one AND many. That is paralogical reasoning. That is what ACIM is based on and it's what we have to learn if we want to understand how it makes any sense at all.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"The Kingdom of God includes all his children and their creations."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

WHAT ARE THE LEVELS?

1. God is the primary level of reality. God "causes" the 2nd level.

2. Creation, heaven, Holy Spirit, Sonship. This is a permanent pre-separation state where many children of God live in harmony. Each child has a mind, and some of those minds chose to believe in mis-creating another level.

3. This universe, including Earth and all human bodies. The "purest" way to experience this level is in true perception, a reflection of heaven, the face of Christ, once-removed from Heaven. Being in this world you still have a choice whether to be in true perception or false perception. The making of this level introduced or came from "level confusion".

4. False perception produces hallucinations and distortions of imagined worlds laid on top of or as a "perception of" the world. This is the experience of hell on earth. The world itself is still an illusion shared by the many sons of God, so now there's illusions on top of illusions.

In ACIM Jesus is NOT always talking about the same level. Each level is a different CONTEXT, and each is kind of "inside" the one above it. So if he's talking e.g. about your perception of the world, he's talking about you being in false perception and transitioning to true perception. If he talks about "the world IS perception" he's now talking at a higher level than that - level 3. If he talks about "there is no world" he's talking even higher than that, at level 2.

If you read ACIM believing that there is "only one level" or that everything it says is "true everywhere" or in all contexts, you WILL become confused and mistaken. All kinds of false conclusions come from this.

Another very common mistake is "hopping around the levels" during mid-sentence in order to try to justify or justify-against something being true. We've all done this ;-) For example "the body isn't real so why bother healing it" or "the world doesn't exist so why perform miracles". That's an intellectual straddling of two simultaneous levels and trying to make the truth of one override the other. That is an error in logical reasoning. Some people aim straight for higher level non-duality kind of truth being the only valid level, which produces profound denial and level confusion.

WHAT IS LEVEL CONFUSION

The first level confusion occurred when we as God's "effect" (creation) turned around and pretended that we, on a "lower level" could be the CAUSE of the higher level that caused us. Our attempt to "cause God", or to will against God, or affect God (sin), is the authority problem, and it is also level confusion.

So level confusion means that someone is confused about which level causes which other level. What is cause, and what is effect. A common way this plays out is someone takes something Jesus says at some higher level, and then attempts to "apply it to" a lower level context, in order to "explain away" there being any relevance to anything said about the lower level. This is a classic intellectual defense, and an error in reasoning.

An example might be, the course says I am not a body so I will stop eating. Or, the course says my hobbies are not real so I am not going to do them. Or the course says I'm not a body I am free, so when anyone says anything about bodies I'm going to overrule them and trump their claims by *switching context*, ignoring the context of the conversation, and pretending that the higher truth is the only one that applies here - this is intellectual arrogance.

Confusing cause and effect leads to the belief in magic, which is the belief that something which is actually an effect, is causing you, and producing effects in you. It also means you have turned yourself from "cause" into an effect. It also relates to how you see God, believing you are the cause of Him and therefore can produce effects in Him (sin) - which leads to the death wish.

And as Jesus says, "all sickness comes from a confusion of the levels." Which means, ALL forms of sickness (body or otherwise) show up when you believe that you are NOT the cause, and instead something BELOW you is the cause of you, making you its effect. It's the same thing as believing the BODY causes the MIND and can make itself sick against your will. It's as if you have switched the higher and lower levels around. Jesus also talks about how MIRACLES restore the "order of the levels". Ie, they put causality where it belongs (e.g. in the mind) and effect where it belongs (e.g. the body/world).

Fixing a faulty perception of cause-effect rearranges the levels into their natural order and prevents you from seeing yourself as "at the effect of the world I see." It places you back in the driving seat of recognizing that nothing happens to you against your will. Your mind is on one level, your body is on another. Similarly, your mind is on a level BELOW or WITHIN God's level. Your mind is also below the level of your soul (the soul never leaves the sight of God, each soul has their own mind which can choose whether to accept God's will or not).

So level confusion began with the separation idea. And it will continue until you are in the atonement. Until then, you likely will continue confusing levels and seeing things "backwards".

This is why we have to learn to discern WHEN Jesus is talking at one level, and when He is talking at another.

It can SEEM as if Jesus is contradicting Himself if He says one thing and then later says another. But these two things would ONLY contradict if they were on the SAME level. When you realize they are NOT on the same level, it makes more sense. For example when He says the body is not real and God did not create it, that is a higher level truth. When he says the body can be used as a communication device to extend love, that IS on a LOWER level. And therefore it IS confined to and limited to the context of having a body, and all the truths Jesus teaches about the body's unreality/inimportance/nothingness are STILL true. So you have to beware of which level he's talking at and when.

Just even realizing that the course HAS levels was really eye opening for me a few years ago. Until then I just lumped everything together. When you realize Jesus is teaching at and talking in different contexts, it really really clarifies a lot of things. Many people struggle with this, and it's why a lot of the course didn't seem to add up for me for many years.

One final note. When we use higher level concepts to "dismiss" the validity of anything at a lower level, that too is level confusion, and a form of denial. e.g. "there is no world, why bother healing people" is level confusion. Within the context of the world, WHILE there is a world, we ARE to heal people. UNTIL there is no world level, it's not our experiential truth that there is no world. AFTER the world has disappeared, there will be no more need for these miracles. You have to remember what is happening WHEN and where you actually ARE in the context of levels. Otherwise the result of this is just more split mindedness and denial.

To be awake in the atonement is to have NO level confusion. That means you realize you are the CAUSE of everything you experience. It means you know NOTHING can happen to you against your will, and never has. It is the secret to salvation - that you must have done it all to yourself, and you now choose again. It also means you now have POWER OVER THE LOWER LEVEL, which makes you a MIRACLE WORKER who can now break and override ALL of the ego's laws, including laws of physics, time, space, biology, etc.

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God."

First of all, the use of "OR" here means there are two ways of saying this. A natural grand division is the same thing as a "projecting outward". Which is the same thing also as extension and creation. When God projected outward from Himself he Created "the world". This is the world of heaven, having nothing to do with the physical universe.

"That is why everything that He created is like Him."

So we know that everything God creates is LIKE Him. Like a copy. "Heaven and Earth are opposites in every way" - so we know God did not create Earth.

"Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

The clarification here is that what God is, internally, is "distinct" in a NATURAL way, from the "projecting out" (creating) that God performs. His CREATION, is "naturally divided" from Him. This reflects in the idea that God is the FATHER, and His Creation is HIS SON. He is Cause, His creation is Effect.

This is considered a NATURAL division. Because it is natural, it is not alien, it is not an attack, it is not ego, it is not separation, it is not a dream, it is not artificial, it is NATURAL and normal and healthy.

All of God's children (plural - many) inherit this same ability to create which is the ability to radiate outward from their being, to create things which are NATURALLY DIVIDED from themselves, in terms of the relationship of cause to effect. All children are CAUSE of their Creations, which are their effects.

The natural division between Father and Son tells us Father creates the Son, but the Son does not create the father. If there was no "division", the Son would indeed create the father. The Son is INCAPABLE of doing that, because He is the EFFECT of the Father, so He is "divided off" from being able to BE the "Cause of God'. But he Himself inherits Fatherhood abilities, meaning He can "father" (create) His own creations.

To create His own creations he MUST be given free will. God is freedom and God only creates that which is free. If the Father has even ONE Son, that son MUST have FREEDOM. A free will. Bestowing complete freedom upon the Son is basically a MIRACLE, because in a way it means the Son is DISTINCT in His own ability/independence/individuality to Will either WITH the father or to try to will against Him. FREEDOM gives Him that "right" or ability.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order."

There is nothing UNNATURAL about these divisions. Effect is not cause. However God creates so fully and so freely and gives so unconditionally that He gives ALL of His abilities to His Son, endowing Him with both FREEDOM and the ability to CREATE FREELY. As the quote says, this is all in one continuous LINE OF CREATION, in that, the SonS (plural) and THEIR creations (and the creations of their creations etc) are all one simultaneous timeless eternal creation. It has all always been.

That there are NATURAL DIVISIONS, particularly between cause and effect or Father and Son, doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything blocking the Son from being completely equal to and "one with" the Father. There is no "difference" that comes between them. But they are still distinct. They are as close to each other as close can be, to the point where they practically disappear into each other. But they are still divided! Like, they can HUG!

An UNNATURAL division, is what the course refers to as SEPARATION. An unnatural division is unhealthy and incorrect and is an error. It's an artificial division that isn't supposed to be inherent to the nature of Creation. It is a wall, a block, a barricade which attempts to cut off some portion of Creation and keep it in the dark. This is the ego's separations. Divisions in heaven do not keep anyone from SHARING with each other. Ego separations BLOCK SHARING. Every ILLUSION of multiplicity, every ego form of attack, every wall or block or unnatural separation, these are UNNATURAL. This is not the same thing as a NATURAL division.

Heaven has NATURAL divisions. There is a kind of hierarchy of cause and effect: God > Many Sons > Son's Creations > Creations of Son's Creations etc.

Even the idea of God having ONE Son suggests a hierarchy: God > Son. Yet the ego would say, noooooo... can't have heirarchies or any concept of separations or multitudes in Heaven. YES YOU CAN. And they are NATURAL, meaning they are not WRONG to be there, and they are not attacks, and they are not ego.

God's omnipresence doesn't mean that He is located at each location in SPACE. Space itself is a lie. It's an illusion of separation. It's easy to believe God is some great big huge thing so vast that he covers the whole universe, and so, your little spot on planet Earth is... a hair on his knee.

God isn't like that. It's not that PART of God is in one place, while another PART of God is in another. God defies spacetime.

All of God is over here. And, all of God is over there.

There is no compromise in this. It's not that the parts of God over here can't also be over there. It's not that most of Him is over here, with leftover parts over there. This would be true of objects in this world, but it's not true of God. God is not limited in a finite way.

This is what makes God's nature a little difficult to get your head around, because it defies all laws of space and time, separation of locations, boundaries, limits, etc.

The entire 'personality' of God is over here, in this location, fully present, completely fully located there with no lack or limitation or partiality. And to the ego that means, there is no God left to be anywhere else. But God defies the ego. God is ALSO over there, fully, completely, totally present, ALL of Him is over there, as well as over here. Simultaneously.

God transcends spacetime limits. If you were to think of Him in terms of space, you'd have to imagine an extraordinary warping of space, the likes of which you might only conceive of happening in a wormhole or black hole perhaps, there space itself becomes distorted, or two locations share the same space or overlap.

God's foundation of omnipresence is the root reality behind all things. In the "separation from God", we introduced the idea that SOME of what was "over here" was perhaps "not over there". Or that only PART of reality is present. Or that what is in one location, is missing from another location. THAT is what the ego thought system is based on - the OPPOSITE of omnipresence. The idea that there is limitation, lack, an inability to share, isolation, confinement, exclusion, partiality, loss of wholeness, locality and so on.

Particles of matter, including formations as the human body, are merely ideas of this breakdown in omnipresence. They are "localizations" which EXCLUDE what is outside in order to define something exclusive to the inside. "A little fence the Son of God has surrounding himself with" (paraphrase).

The body is an attempt to REJECT a vast majority of what exists, while simultaneously taking EXCLUSIVE possession of one little tiny part - which is the idea of specialness. And this is also why "special relationships" revolve around the body and keeping the body real. The body "disconnects" you from sharing the whole. It asserts that only a tiny PART of yourself is here, while the rest of you is forgotten. Or that there are special things here which are not present anywhere else - uniqueness. And it is this uniqueness that the ego loves to worship. Something that makes you seem DIFFERENT, something about your self that no-one else has. Something that SEPARATES YOU OUT.

This is why the body is always fundamentally a device for separation, even in its most spiritualized form of being used by the mind to try to extend love in the world. The body must go, because it is the "concentration" of "omnipresent-space" which attempts to SHUT OUT the whole in order to focus on the part. The whole (God) and the part (Son/soul) has to be fully united in omnipresence in order that they SHARE fully everything everywhere with each other. Separation from God is merely the attempt to separate part from whole and identify yourself as partial. This is why it has only affected a PART of your mind.

This is also why there cannot be a body of ANY KIND in omnipresent reality, because this would isolate and separate us from each other. We would not be able to SHARE, because bodies are devices that PREVENT sharing.

The unique thing we need to realize, is that while we are very used to living in ISOLATION, trapped in a body, fenced off and kept apart from the rest, this is HIGHLY UNNATURAL. In our natural state, WE ARE EVERYWHERE, we share ALL of creation, WE ARE OMNIPRESENT LIKE GOD. This follows also the law of God which is the Golden Rule. You are IN your brother. Your brother is IN you. God is in everyone. We are all everywhere.

This is why miracles unite you with your brother, and restore the omnipresent reality. You don't merely join or connect or 'touch', your MERGE and OVERLAP and SHARE SPACE. You exist in the same exact location as everyone else, sharing infinity forever.

Here are some quote which speak to miracles or miraculousness being something that does not depend on perception, suggesting that miracles are not "shifts in perception", but rather that miracles are creative expressions of love which can *produce* shifts in perception.

This is because MIND and PERCEPTION are two different levels. Mind was mind before perception was introduced. Perception is a layer of interpretation on top of the mind. Miracles come through the mind from God's mind, as expressions of MAXIMAL LOVE, and CAUSE perception to change to line up with the mind. "Miracles are a corrective device introduced into the MIND by me." But the miracle is occurring and coming FROM the mind-level of love, producing secondary EFFECTS in the perceptual realm.

Decoupling miracle mindedness from perceptual shifts, and seeing the shifts as "effects" of miracles, allows us to see that you can be consistently miraculous when your perception has nothing left to shift. Simply because miracles originate BEYOND PERCEPTION, which is why they can CORRECT it.

This is also why we become MORE miracle minded and more miraculous and more able to constantly perform miracles, as we uncover love and our mind lines up with God's will and power. Being miraculous isn't temporary. We are a PERMANENT MIRACLE and miraculous creation is our nature. Which is why "Miracles are supposed to be happening all the time. When they aren't, something has gone wrong."

"12a. Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

"23 ... YOU are a miracle. God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit". Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

"Prayer is the medium of miracles, not because God created perceptions, but because God created YOU. At the beginning of this course, we said that YOU are a miracle. Therefore, the miracle worker is a miracle NOT of his own creation."

"Each *Soul* knows God completely. This IS the miraculousness of the *Soul*. The fact that every each *Soul* has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"9. Miracles are a kind of exchange. Like all expressions of love, which are ALWAYS miraculous in the true sense, the exchange reverses the physical laws."

"4. All miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

"27. A miracle is a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

"38 - The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

"43 - Miracles arise FROM a miraculous state of mind, or a state of miracle-readiness."

"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED."

In the past couple of weeks, I've been having some hatred coming out for release. It's from deep in the past. But I did not recognize it as hatred. I was too "in it", feeling it. I had no idea what it was, only that everyone seemed responsible for it.

I kept flip-flopping between what it felt like and how it was making me perceive, and what was more of my "current" way of perceiving. But it was hard to maintain this. I kept falling back into it.

It felt like an intense form of separation, and of accusation. It seemed sharper and stronger than just anger. It felt vicious and hurt and blameful. It took several days of going through it before Jesus clued me in that it was even hate, because I couldn't tell what it was.

When you're angry at some person you're trying to make them guilty, yet there's some form of desiring that they stop being "wrong" mixed in with that. Hatred on the other hand is a bit more like just pure despising. It's almost like the reason why you were angry gets buried and all you're left with is a concentrated hatred of a person. It's almost like sin's reflection.

Each time that waves of this stuff came up, I would feel extremely scapegoaty. Just really convinced that the person was just evil and wrong and bad. Just like a passive observation, but quite strong in actively condemning them. This then started to overflow into how I was relating to everyone. There was just this constant forceful pushing of blame all the time regardless of who I was relating with.

You might have noticed that I made several posts recently where I was sounding fed up with people, accusing people, tired of people, resentful of idiots, annoyed at people not being willing to listen or learn, angry at their fixed nature and stubbornness etc. This isn't really like me, but I couldn't help but keep moving into blame because the feeling of hate coming up was so accusatory. It was making me see everyone as wrong.

The hate was seemingly based on what I saw as what someone did to me, seeming to inspire revenge or a justification for "why" I should hate them. A viciousness that seemed to make sense. It felt like an extreme form of dissociation and ego and specialness, as well. It was driven by unhealed "hurt" and a definite "you did this to me" kind of mentality of victimhood.

I'm glad to say that now that this is mostly cleared out, my perceptions and evaluations are returning to a much more forgiving place. But it was a pretty deep dip in the road. Jesus talks in the course about just how intense our "hidden hates" really are, how much we blame and accuse. What we don't realize is that it's really ourselves that we're hating, at the same time. I certainly found it extremely difficult to feel loving or forgiving while feeling hate. It is just not possible to remain in a peaceful or happy state of mind with such things going on.

"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

"Let me not think that I can find the way to God if I have hatred in my heart."

"Your hatred is not real, But it is real to you. IT HIDES WHAT YOU REALLY WANT."

"If hatred finds a place within your heart, you will perceive a fearful world, held cruelly in death's sharp-pointed, bony fingers."

"It is in the special relationship, born of the hidden wish for special love from God, that the ego's hatred triumphs. "Look once again upon your enemy, the one you chose to hate instead of love. For thus was hatred born into the world, and thus the rule of fear established here."

"When hatred rests upon a thing, it calls for death as surely as God's Voice proclaims there is no death."

"It fears and it attacks and hates itself, and darkness covers everything it sees, leaving it dreams as fearful as itself. No miracles are here, but only hate. It separates itself from what it sees, while light and strength perceive themselves as one."

"And thus will all the vestiges of hell, the secret sins and hidden hates be gone, and all the loveliness which they concealed appear like lawns of Heaven to our sight, to lift us high above the thorny roads we travelled on before the Christ appeared."

"This level cannot be attained until there is no hatred in your heart, and no desire to attack the Son of God."

"The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."

"What hatred has released to love becomes the brightest light in Heaven's radiance."

"Do not let your hatred stand in the way of love, for NOTHING can withstand the love of Christ for His Father, or His Father's love for Him."

"You have projected outward what IS antagonistic to what is inward, and therefore you would HAVE to perceive it this way. That is why you MUST realize that your hatred IS in your mind, and NOT OUTSIDE IT, before you can get rid of it. And why you MUST get rid of it, BEFORE you can perceive the world as it really is."

The great lie of the world is that we are all separate. Each of our bodies testifies to this. I have my own body, my own feelings, my own mind, my own thoughts, my own beliefs. It seems that you have your own as well, and mine is separate from yours. We don't seem to really share anything. And any changes I make seem not to affect you.

This is what bodies were designed to do. They were meant to be "separation devices", to separate me off from you, to isolate each of us in our own little prisons, keeping us apart. They were made to imply that nothing is shared, what is mine is not yours, I am not like you, we are not the same in any way, I am unique and so are you. We're cut off and different. What I have you lack. What you have I lack. And thus we have no oneness.

But this is utterly completely opposite to the nature of spirit and mind as God created it. It's utterly opposite to your true nature, and mine as well. We're not meant to think of ourselves as separate from each other, sharing nothing, not overlapping, or kept at arm's length. We have to transcend the limits of the body entirely.

The truth is that there is a part of you which is shared by me. And there is a part of me that is shared by you. Kind of like one thing which has two people controlling it simultaneously. Kind of like siamese twins, with two heads and one torso. There is actually some of you in me and vice versa. There are actually aspects of your self which is what I am, and aspects of my own self which is you.

In truth we are joined together as one. In truth we share everything. And this is not in any way the same thing as sharing between two separate people, where they remain separate but there is some kind of transfer between them to bridge the gap. It's a real sharing where I literally am overlapping with where you are located, and vice versa. Where we are literally fused together as one thing, but from two vantage points. One mind, with two focal points.

Because of this, we are actually part of a collective consciousness. And the really big thing is this. Everything that I do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. And everything you do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. If I lift myself up, it must lift you up in some way as well because I am a part of your self. If you lift yourself up, I must be lifted up in some way because part of me is you.

We are NOT isolated, alone, separate, cut-off, imprisoned, separated, orphaned, divorced, abandoned, relegated, split apart or confined. Everything that we each do, affects us both. And even affects the whole sonship beyond us. What that means is that there are no private thoughts. Not simply from the vantage point of there being two separate people who send thought transmissions across the gap between them which they pick up on, but where my mind and your mind are literally welded together such that when I think something YOU think it with me. Part of your thought process is taking place in my mind and vice versa.

Jesus teaches similarly that if I am healed, I am never healed alone. If some kind of healing takes place for me, it is also on behalf of the whole universe, which is the sonship (not spacetime). Jesus also tells us that we are not alone in experiencing the effects of our thoughts. That if I have a thought, both me and you are affected by it. And your thoughts affect me. Not in terms of you sending them over to me across a brick wall but in terms of part of me BEING you and vice versa, SHARING those effects as one, transcendentally of space of time.

Jesus is even telling us that vision transcends all spatial limitations, depends not on any thing physical, can see and experience without regard for distance or seeming remoteness. Simply because you can BE everywhere, in everyone. This is the true nature of mind, that it is not really naturally limited to any one location at a time. Or to any one person at a time.

What this also leads to is a matter of responsibility. Anything that I think affects the whole world. Anything you think affects the whole world. In that sense, and given that these thoughts are never private or isolated from anyone, everyone experiences the effects of our thoughts, and therefore I have to consider that I need to "think responsibly", and without guilt, because my thoughts are actually affecting everyone.

I think on behalf of everyone, just as you do, and just as everyone does. And all our minds are joined. Which means that we're sort of like this one tapestry where each of us seems anchored to the fabric of it in different places, but if I pull upwards I'm pulling you all with me. And if you pull down you're going to drag a lot of others down with you. Unless of course they are pulling up at the same time. This means that we really are all a TEAM. Because we have to now consider that EACH PART of the sonship INFLUENCES THE WHOLE.

You ARE part of a holographic system and since you are the whole of the sonship at the same time as being part of it, your relationship INCLUDES everyone. It affects everyone. Every thought is offered to everyone. Every healing brings peace to everyone. Maybe in ways they might not entirely be aware of but in some way on some level, everyone affects everyone.

This also brings me to the proper understanding of why joined minds produce the healing of sickness in others. A part of your mind is actually my mind. And my mind is part of your mind. We are NOT separated off with entirely isolated minds. Our minds overlap and are shared. I actually manipulate part of your mind, so to speak, and you manipulate part of mine. Our minds are actually one and shared. Mutual minds. Like two people driving the same bus.

So let's say you believe in your part of the mind that you are sick, which is really an attempt to believe the whole sonship is sick. And then let's say that normally this belief would attempt to weaken me and others. But then let's say that I'm in a particularly loving space in my mind which is more powerful than your assertion of weakness.

If I choose to believe that there is nothing wrong with you, while you are believing there is something wrong with you, I override your belief. The part of your mind which is shared with me, which is my mind, changes your belief FOR you. Part of your mind is in me. If I change my mind, I am literally changing a part of your mind. And that actually influences what you might think of as the rest of your own mind.

As Jesus says, when you do not believe the falsehoods that your brother believes about himself, you weaken his own belief in being faulty. And so you weaken his sickness. If your mind, which is part of his, and his as part of yours, asserts strongly that your brother and you are not sick, then you are actually taking a part of HIS mind (as yours) and are causing it to not believe in sickness. And so he cannot get "his" mind to project sickness onto his body because YOU, as part of his mind, are not allowing it.

This is why Jesus says that you are your brother's keeper. This is why he says you should not allow your brother to be sick. This is why you are in a sense responsible for everyone, because your contribution to their experience is part of the fact that your minds are shared.

It's not simply that you are joining minds, because God actually joined all minds together in the creation. But moving away from the belief in being separate/isolated and returning to an awareness that your minds ARE joined, naturally, lets you tap into the ability to influence the minds of others more consciously. And naturally this openness to sharing is rooted in love, so can only be used for good.

So instead of seeing ourselves as separate people, living separate lives in separate bodies, as if everything we think and do is utterly isolated and affects no-one else, we need to really think of ourselves as part of a combined mind-mesh, part of a team, part of a collective hive mind, and there isn't anything we can think without it being shared by everyone in that collective. And any effects which those thoughts might produce are going to be shared by everyone.

This is also of course the foundation for shared interests. Because if mind is really yours AND your brother's, then what you use it for is being used on his behalf as well as your own. As per the golden rule, whatever applies to him applies to you equally. This is also why Jesus says that forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to both your brother and yourself. Your healing IS HIS healing. When you heal, HE ALSO is healed along with you in a very direct way - because he is part of your self.

And further, this also tells us that forgiveness is not just a gift of healing you give to yourself, it is also something that extends and is given to everyone. If you are healed you become an instrument of healing. If you are the light you shed light into other's minds and enlighten them. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can fill others with the Holy Spirit. If you are whole you can make others whole. And atonement is a lesson in sharing, not a lesson in isolated enlightenment.

When you forgive, you actually do heal both yourself and the mind of your brother. When you forgive and undo your belief in someone being sick, you do actually in fact undo some of their belief in being sick. This is sort of tied into the idea of "holding them in the light", not through some wishful thinking that the light might rub off on them but much moreso the fact that since you ARE them, you being the light "forces" them to be the light also.

Your mind influences other people! Your mind is not JUST your mind. It is yours AND it belongs to others. You are thinking on behalf of everyone. Your whole resurrection is for the benefit of the entire sonship. This is why Jesus's resurrection reconnected the ENTIRE sonship to God, and why in his awakening YOU woke up in some way to some degree as well. How could the whole world not be affected by such an event? Jesus did in fact "save you" from the belief in sin, through his own atonement.

I am you and you are me and we are one and everyone is us and we are all the collective sonship family of God. If I choose the light, you're coming with me.

"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."

"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. "

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself."

"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him. The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition."

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."

"Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth."

"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."

"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed. Let THIS be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and NOT apart."

"Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his. For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours. To love yourself is to HEAL yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your OWN goal. Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together."

"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

"You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper." "Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"

Lesson 54: ""I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." ... I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

You might ask what does miraculousness mean, because God is also miraculous and all living beings in reality are miraculous in nature. There are references to "God's miracles" and "You are a miracle" for example, referring to creations in heaven. There is of course other context to do with miracles "in this world" or on this level, used for healing and such.

But miraculousness itself is a little trickier to describe. It has something to do with the golden rule relationship between multiple beings in a holographic system. It's the way by which for example God can create multiple sons and each of the sons contains the whole of God and is whole in and of itself and shares the same whole, yet is still a created thing absolutely created in its own right. That it can be one and many simultaneously - there is a transcendental nature to that which goes beyond non-duality and duality. It's what most people would describe as a paradoxical thing - seemingly impossible.

For example there is this line which mentions the miraculous power of the soul:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

This is talking about a transcendental holographic ability of the soul in which even if it were to have literally everything for itself, there WOULD STILL be absolutely everything accessible to everyone else at the same time. Its possible for the soul to be the whole and have the whole and give and share the whole, and each soul can have the whole all at once simultaneously, without any sense of compromise or taking turns or lack or whatever else. The soul transcends these ideas because it's part of the holographic principle in the mind of God, in which the whole is in every part and every part is whole.

To boil that down, if you ask yourself about what makes it possible for God who is everything to create another whole being, whereby that being IS distinct and a whole being in its own right, yet STILL is 100% one with God and sharing everything with God, WITHOUT losing its distinctiveness. .... how those two things can be true at once - oneness and manyness. .... trying to put your finger on what that quality is, that possibility, that nature of God that allows this to happen, it is quite literally MIRACULOUS, and it defies absolutely all explanation.

Personally I believe it to be somehow related to the INFINITE nature of God which makes everything possible, such as in the will of God being able to do anything, even things which seem utterly impossible to us. The creation of many sons of God IS a miracle and is made possibly BY miraculousness - the miraculous nature of God. God is literally miraculous - and the miraculous-ness is driven by the holographic inter-relationships and symbiotic harmony of God and his creations, which are living thoughts, who are many and one at the same time.

Another aspect to this is that it's all about LIFE. Pure life. God is pure life. Life without the slightest notion of death or change or suffering of any kind. Pure immortality. God's eternal nature. Totally 100% life forever. The essence of life itself. THAT is GIVEN in the creation whereby God literally creates his children simply by WILLING IT, through an act of GIVING LIFE. He thus extends and creates literal beings that are ALIVE - souls, that are so immortal and alive that they live forever.

"ALL miracles mean Life, and God is the giver of Life."

On Earth, what we call miracles reflects that, something that kind of emanates out of the mind from a state of LOVE, in which there is unconditional giving - maximal service - where a person who is "more alive" or whose mind is more aware of being purely immortal, gives LIFE ITSELF to those who seem to be trying to play dead or who are in darkness or suffering. That giving of LIFE (could call it love, light, power etc), literally resurrects and heals and returns people to life, and can do the same to their bodies as well. Because there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do, literally.

Here from the CoA edition or Notes... "Remember a miracle is a spark of Life. It shines through the darkness and brings in the light. You must begin to forget and remember."

Don't think of miracles as a STATE therefore. There is a state of miracle mindedness and miracle readiness, but that is not MIRACLE DOING or MIRACLE WORKING. Working a miracle HAS to be an act of GIVING TO ANOTHER, or to CREATE ANOTHER. A spark of LIFE has to come out of you and enter another to enlighten their mind and heal it. It's the most open loving unconditional pure blessing that you can give to anyone. It literally reverses death and sickness and makes them impossible, REPLACING them with life itself. There is massive power in this because it uses the power of God.

You being in darkness and shifting your perception up to a greater level of "being alive" is in a sense a miracle that you work for yourself, but the purpose of doing that is purification so that you can become able to GIVE miracles to others.

"He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

You can only give the miracles you have received, meaning that as you heal you become an instrument for healing, because you become more alive and more loving and more able to GIVE what you have received. The more you give the more you receive also and miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver by increase the total amount of love - which is through a similar mechanism to how the kingdom of God increases and how ideas of love strengthen when they are given away - giving and receiving are one - thats part of what miraculousness means.

Ultimately the performing of miracles CREATES LIFE that has eternal life and lives forever. You create your creations in heaven with God and your brothers through miraculous acts of life-giving power. On earth you can't use it to create because of the separation/ego etc, but you can use it to restore and heal which is a similar use of giving life. And this is what RESURRECTION is all about.

Recall this about miracles GIVING LIFE:

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."

What you have to give, what is within you, is LIFE ITSELF. Pure essence of livingness, shared with and given by God. Awareness, presence, being, vision, creative power etc. You GIVE YOURSELF. You GIVE GOD. You GIVE LIFE to others. That is miracle working as a "creative energiser", which you become able to do when you have done sufficient purification through "working a miracle for yourself" ie focusing on resurrecting your mind and moving yourself back closer to identification with your immortal spirit.

The so-called "shift in perception" is a SIDE EFFECT of temporary changes in the mind, it is in and of itself not a miracle. "Those who speak of "the miracle OF healing" are combining two orders of reality inappropriately. Healing is NOT a miracle. The Atonement, or the final miracle, is a REMEDY. It is purely a means, while any type of healing is a result."

A shift in perception may be called an EFFECT of a miracle, a healing result, it itself is not a miracle. A miracle is a spark of life from the power of God extended through you from God which has the power to extend to others through you, CAUSING perception to shift IF it is needed. Miracles have a whole lot to do with CAUSATION, not passive states of perception.

"Salvation must reverse the mad belief in separate thoughts and separate bodies which lead separate lives and go their separate ways."

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real."

On the one hand, it seems that people are not the same. That is, if you look at their bodies, their seemingly different personalities, they're all quite different. That's what we think makes everyone unique. But there is really no equality on this level. This is the level of differences, of disagreement, of conflict. Just the mere fact that two bodies are not alike is war.

We then look to higher morals and try to treat everyone the same, with some kind of unconditional love or equality of rights. That someone who is a certain race or sexual persuasion or gender etc might be treated in the same way as any other person. But the fact is that in order to lift up out of the realm of differences into the realm of equality, you HAVE to transcend the body.

We can't be saying that, on the one hand, we are bodies that are for sure all different, while on the other hand trying to find some kind of moral equality, or equal rights, democracy, or whatever. These higher ideals MUST transcend the very fact of the body's variation. It must in fact overlook and defy the very things that make the bodies stand out as unlike each other.

This is why for example if we are to be kind to people who have bodies that seem overweight, then we have to really be looking past the overweightness. And we can't honestly do that if we're looking at the body still, trying to make the body special or sacred or holy or more important or equally important or anything else is really a kind of denial.

You cannot find equality at the physical level. Physical things are NOT equal and never will be. So when we start talking about treating a person of a certain "type" in a fair and equal way to other bodies of other types, we're really trying to have our cake and eat it.

To keep the bodies and identify people as separate objects, while simultaneously deciding that they all deserve the same rights. But this is impossible. The separate and the same cannot be reconciled, nor can the different and the equal. But isn't variety and difference and uniqueness a wonderful celebration of individuality? No it's not.

So then we set about this confused mixture of trying to make all the special separate bodies special in their own ways, exalting them, having marches to support them, rallying to get certain kinds of bodies the same rights as other kinds, but all still entirely focused on bodies and identifying people with physically different objects. And there is simply a total inherent tug of war in that, you cannot be maintaining belief in separate things while claiming to be a proponent of equalism.

The ONLY way that makes any sense and which can produce TRUE unconditionality, is to entirely transcend ALL conditions, all differences, all forms, all shapes and sizes and colors, and every definition of a person as a physical object. You can't keep being a man or a woman and claim to be interested in equal rights. The ONLY way there is equality between the two genders is for them to NOT be two genders. For gender to not matter at all, you can't KEEP gender on the table. You have to look past it.

This means the only way to find any sense of unconditoinality towards anyone, you MUST not regard them as a physical body in any way, to any degree. You cannot make their body extra special, or put the bodies alongside each other and say they are all the same - which is a lie, and you cannot make out that certain bodies are deserving of what other bodies have. That's total insanity.

Only if we are NOT bodies is there equality. Only if we are all identical in every way, created by the same one creator, in the same design, with the same will, sharing the same mind, sharing the same everything together, united singularly under one purpose and one function, can there be equality. This is why there is only true equality in heaven, where the differences of separation and form and conflict and war do not exist.

You CAN "embody" that reality here, to an extent, which is what forgiveness is about. It's about living like you are in heaven while you're on earth, seeing with loving eyes instead of the physical eyes, and using the mind as primal cause instead of the body. And to do that you cannot put any emphasis on the body whatsoever.

You cannot be confused that people are their bodies because this fundamentally denies their soul. You cannot say that somoene is a certain shape or form because now you're separating them out which is in fact an attack. To say that anyone is a body is an attempt to bring them down, to isolate, to condemn, and to accuse of sin. You can't be doing that if you are interested in equality and unconditionality.

Bodies are utterly incompatible with love. They are utterly incompatible with treating everyone the same. The only way to treat everyone the same is to NOT treat them like they are a body, or have a body, or that their body means anything whatsoever. The body is NOTHING. It has no real value or meaning and isn't even real.

To regard a person as a body is to believe a fantasy about them and to NOT see them. Bodies are disguises, a form of camouflage, which people who want to hide from God wear to pretend they are physical objects. You won't find any true sense of trust or meaning or purpose or function or value or reality by regarding people as human bodies, or by trying to reconcile their utter incompatibilities by pretending they're all the same.

Bodies will never be the same, every single one of them is unlike the rest. And if you believe people are their bodies, you are literally denying them equality. Gay bodies, straight bodies, male bodies, female bodies, trans bodies, autistic bodies, tall bodies, skinny bodies, large bodies, short bodies, they are NOT the same, and they are NOT TRUE OF ANYONE.

"While you believe that BODIES can unite, you will find guilt attractive, and believe that sin is precious."

"He will, in fact, be unable to recognize his brother at all, for his Father did not create bodies, and so he is seeing in a brother only the unreal."

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

"Communication MUST have been restored to those that join, for this they COULD not do through bodies."

"On this side of the bridge, you see the world of separate bodies, seeking to join each other in SEPARATE UNIONS, and to become one BY LOSING. When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

I think that I recently reached a turning point. It's particularly to do with the sense of being a "separate person". This seemed to come into question, particularly in terms of relationships with others, how I see them, who I think they are etc. And it also very much involved questioning the reality of my body and the bodies of others.

I seemed to be opening up to an idea of oneness, a sense of sharing, of joining minds, and that others are a part of myself. I could see how I had been trapped inside a kind of prison of isolation for a long time, identified with my body and with being "not others". As if everything I did and how I thought about people all revolved around this sense of me being separate from them. I found myself apologizing a lot in my mind for all the ways I'd been wrongly separating myself off through various forms of conflict and scapegoating.

As I embraced more the idea that my brothers are part of myself, this began to transcend bodily boundaries. It also began to open up a sense of inclusion and shared interests. I started experimenting with the idea of "being" other people, and trying to include them in myself as I related to them. It changes the energy dynamics completely and totally deflates all sense of going to war. I realized this was a major part of the golden rule, the atonement, the idea of sharing, and deeply connected to true miracle-working.

Since that turning point, and as this sense of joining continues to expand, I've been noticing a few things that are changing. I feel as though I am stepping outside of a box that I've been in. As if there's been a little circle drawn on the floor around my feet and I've never before stepped outside the circle. Everywhere I've gone, I've still been inside the circle, cut off from people. And as I now step outside of it, it makes me realize all the more that the body is a device for separation.

In particular I feel that I've been just stuck in the idea of "I am a body" my whole life, and that the body has served as a way to remain separated off. I suddenly started seeing how every way I related to people was a special relationship, based on them being "not me", and all revolving around the body being the thing that separates me off. Seeing other people as confined to their bodies. Seeing myself as only that which is inside this body.

This boundary, which has been there, is now recognized as being the "cause of" a great deal of struggle, conflict, loss and unhappiness. Being identified and anchored to this body and "excluding" others, has formed the basis of all scapegoating, justifying all finger-pointing, all blame, all sense that something applies to others and not me. I see the body now as the core of what keeps me apart from others. And if I separate them off based on their body being separate from my body, that's the whole trap.

Suddenly I find myself stepping outside of this entire dynamic. Transcending bodies. Including people as a part of myself. Developing a sense of shared identity. I realize that peace is only possible by sharing and joining, because only in oneness is there no separation or war. And that it is ONLY through joining of mind and sharing an identity that you can actually work true miracles. It literally requires the two minds to have a shared sense of oneness and identity which transcends bodies. It is that mystical, psychological, joining of two beings as one, that literally undoes the separation, and therefore sickness and death.

I see now much more clearly the "road home", as being a movement away from being separated off, and towards being reunited with others. Of finding more ways to include others in myself. And I see that this truly is the only way to end the war, the conflict, the arguments, the projections, and all the ego activities. We came from a state of union and we have to return to it.

It is quite startling in fact to recognize that, in truth, we are supposed to be basically everywhere, united with everyone, sharing everything, one with all minds, being a part of all beings, and that in contrast, bodies are doing the absolute extreme opposite of that. They are serving as ways to keep people apart, promote conflict, imprison and trap, produce loneliness and isolation, and breed sickness.

I can see now in fact that it is my belief in being separate that fuels sickness in myself and others. It is the very sense of the rift or split in my mind - our mind - a sense of us not being one with each other, that manifests as illness. I have been producing illness between myself and others as a projected form of the idea of being at war with them.

Pictures of crucifixion have arisen as psychological images of dream-weapons held up to support the idea of "not being each other". Of being in a state of attack and special relationship. A state of separating off and being an enemy. It breeds a dream of death that I've been doing to myself. And always whenever the body is involved as a separation device, the relationship is always one of specialness and conflict and hatred.

It feels like coming out of a shell, out of hiding. It feels like realizing that you've been living in a prison cell all your life, anchored inside the body, and suddenly are realizing that this has hemmed you in and has tended to make you withdraw to your isolation as a way to solve problems. Now that I suddenly realize I don't have to be trapped in the body, I can spread my wings and encompass others, be more inclusive and share more.

It's strange but this seems also be precisely what it means to truly forgive. Because forgiveness isn't just about recognizing people's innocence. Forgiveness is atonement, atonement is sharing, and that means joining of minds. Forgiveness literally entails and requires minds to be inclusive of each other. It's not just a state of truer perceptions and more accurate judgements, it's actually a state of union and sharing. A return to shared identity and being.

As a result, and without deliberately attempting to do so, I suddenly am noticing myself giving people far more credit, benefit of the doubt, charity, etc. Just as I found myself doing in certain forgiveness meditations, such as in lesson 121 in the course - forgiveness is the key to happiness, in which you are guided to see light in an enemy and find ways to credit them with the good they've done rather than focus on their shortcomings.

I find myself seeming to put my arms around people psychologically, my mind keeps taking an automatic step away from holding things against people and has this sort of "space" between where they're at and what I credit them with. I seem to be transcending their bodies and their egos along with my own. And that means, what I feel to be, true forgiveness is happening. I'm actually taking a vantage point, generalized and widespread, in which I am literally being more forgiving all the time, more loving, more inclusive, and more sharing.

I've been finding myself suddenly opening up to people more, connecting with people, serving people, helping people more than ever. It is diminishing and removing fears about relating to strangers, and seems to be powering me, not with some kind of bravado or arrogance but with gentleness and connection. I seem to be opening up. And to me that means that, living as a separated off body-identified self means being closed down. It means being cut off from others.

The simple truth is that bodies have been lying to us this whole time. We've bought into being bodies hook line and sinker. And that means being separated from each other, because bodies are literally never joined. The more we are a body the less we share. The more we are a body the more we are at war. The more we are a body the more confined we become to one little spot in the world, which becomes the center of the ego universe, and everyone else becomes an enemy.

Getting away from being a body is the key. It's like opening a door that I never realized was shut all this time. I've been doing this same thing over and over and over forever. Everything I've said and thought and done and related has been still within the confines of this prison cell. Still from a vantage point of being a separated self, a self that is not shared with other selves. A self that isn't united or whole or one or part of a sonship. The unhealed healer that is suffering from "separation sickness" and thinks they have something that others lack - ie that they lack me.

That's been the one common denominator this whole time, and now I'm learning to open the door and step outside. To expand my sense of self, to include myself in others, and to become a part of life. To restore relationship and connection, as well as to uphold health and wholeness. And I knew, it's not going to be long, as this continues to develop and increase, the movement towards being able to truly join minds and perform miracles of union.

Sharing is the key. Joining is everything. The oneness is our true nature. Not in rejection of our individual souls, but joining them together as a collective. We are still a holographic family, many yet one, each other yet ourselves. This means still being "me", but it also means being "more than just myself" and including others in what I am. I've focused too much on the "separate me" part and not enough on the "oneness" part. And it was the "oneness" part of that that I was missing out on. Not any more.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"Be free today, and carry freedom as your gift to those who still believe they are enslaved within a body. Be you free, so that the Holy Spirit can make use of your escape from bondage to set free the many who perceive themselves as bound and helpless and afraid. Let love replace their fears through you. Accept salvation now, and give your mind to Him Who calls to you to make this gift to Him. For He would give you perfect freedom, perfect joy, and hope that finds its full accomplishment in God."

"Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself." It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it yours."

There are two thought systems, one is God’s system, the other is of the ego’s system. God’s thought system produces Creation/Heaven, the ego’s thought system produces hell/earth. Both systems run on impeccable logic based on a logical premise, and are systems of thought. They both start with a premise and follow through to a logical and natural conclusion. The conclusion of Heaven’s thought system is eternal life, the conclusion of the ego’s thought system is death. Both are arrived at through perfectly logical reasoning. As Jesus describes:

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit"

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."

The two systems THINK differently. The ego’s system is entirely founded on separation and exclusion. Everything in the system obeys the premise of exclusivity. God’s system is totally opposite, and is founded on INCLUSION and sharing. Jesus tasks us to learn to "think like God", which does not merely mean to use EGO thinking to think about God, or to use exclusive logic at all when considering the nature of Heaven.

One of the biggest fundamental errors in ACIM circles is USING the ego’s thought system to THINK ABOUT the thought system of God. God’s system is SO unlike the ego’s, that doing so automatically produces two effects: a) what seems to make sense is nonsense, b) what seems like nonsense is actually true sense.

The ego always thinks in terms of separations and exclusions. And this maps directly onto objects in SPACE. You can say for example, if bananas are yellow, and this fruit is purple, it is not a banana. Or if my car is parked in the first space, it is not parked in the last space. Or if I have the whole pizza, you do not have any. Everything is put into a contained, confined box (body) and what is inside the box is considered separate from what is outside. What is outside is *excluded*, and there is no SHARING between the two regions.

This kind of thinking is based entirely in separation thought, a way of thinking that excludes, isolates, separates off, and "reasons" based on whether something is fully in or out of a box. You think about objcts in the world this way because the world ITSELF is the ego thought system, based on the same reasoning, the same logic, the same functioning and the same relationships of separation.

This WAY of thinking, exclusive logical reasoning, is EXTREMEY POOR at evaluating the nature of God’s thought system. When it looks at God’s system (everything in Heaven), it tries to put everything into nice tidy boxes. It separates things out. IT excludes. It has no regard for ANY form of sharing, oneness, Union, or anything that transcends boundaries.

It cannot SEE or comprehend how it makes SENSE, that something can be in more than one box at once, that the inside and outside of the box are joined, that something can be in more than one place at the same time, that two entities can have full access to share the same thing at the same time without compromise, or that two seemingly opposite statements can be NOT contradictory.

For example, when ACIM says something like "God has one son", the ego is delighted, because it gets to put God’s system into a nice confined box. When ACIM then says something like "We are creation, we, the sons of God", it now concludes either a) they can’t both be true, b) the statement about the one son is true and the statement about multiple sons is false, or c) God has many sons and not one son. These are the ONLY ways that can seem to "make sense" to ego thinking. NONE OF THEM ARE CORRECT.

The correct truth about God’s system,is that God has one Son AND many sons. The truth is also that each son has full unlimited access to share ALL of God, WITHOUT excluding anyone else from doing the same at the same time. The truth is also that as you give, you do not lose anything, and you keep what you had, and now BOTH of you have it. This sounds like absolute nonsense to the ego thinker. It does not conform to boxes. If there were pizza in heaven, you and I both would be able to eat the entire pizza. That sounds ABSURD to the ego. It is the way God’s system works!

His thought system is entirely run by INCLUSIVE logic. This is based entirely on sharing. Logically it means, we BOTH share things. Everything applies to me AND you. This is what the Golden Rule is based on. Equality. Whatever is true of me, is true of you. So if I have the whole of something, and I share it with you, we BOTH have the WHOLE of it. We share space. We overlap. We commune. We share . We are united. We are one. All things real COMPLETELY DEFY exclusive boxes. If you are thinking about Heaven, God, sonship, sons, creation etc WITH exclusivity in your logical reasoning, you HAVE TO come to a false conclusion.

For example, "I and my father are one". What does the EGO make of it? It thinks ok, it said me and my father , that’s two things, two boxes. So now we have two boxes. It then says "are one". So now..... there are two seemingly contradictory things happening (to the ego). Is it two boxes, or one box? And usually this is where an ego thinker wil THROW OUT the first half of the statement or forget it entirely, and home in on the second part., in an attempt to RESOLVE the contradiction. This is BULLSHIT. Total failure. Trying to MAKE it make sense, by butchering it.

The ONLY correct way to grasp what is said, is to literally think outside the box. You have to THINK differently. Use inclusivity. Inclusivity says, two things can SHARE. It says two things can JOIN. It says two things can be mutual in their likeness and nature. And it even says that two things can be TWO THINGS, while simultaneously SHARING EVERYTHING. And so here, being one with God does NOT end the TWO-ness. Two distinct things are SHARING with each other.

Jesus: "This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

And so oneness, being one-with, are-one, DOES NOT mean "one box". In fact Jesus even says you can "be one with your self". It means BOX DEFYING sharing and singularity of NATURE, in which the two ARE STILL TWO, while ALSO being as if one. They are two AND one. Oneness to THE EGO means "one thing". Oneness to God means OF LIKE KIND. And here also SHARING does not mean "only has one" like a single identity, it means TWO THINGS are joined in their NATURE while still retaining their two-ness and INDIVIDUALITY! AND THIS IS NOT DUALITY. NOR IS IT NONDUALITY!

Similarly when Jesus says something hyper cryptic like "one brother is all brothers, one mind is all minds" or "healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad", IT DOES NOT mean that "the one box" is true, NOR does it mean the "two boxes" is true. It is not oneness (as in a count of one) OR duality. THEY ARE BOTH TRUE. There is simultaneously INDIVIDUALITY AND ONENESS. This is why you have a self AND are one. This is why you are one of many sons of God AND part of THE son of God. And this is also why the idea of many sons is NOT a separation idea. It is NOT an idea of "many boxes". It is more like the idea of many boxes which share the same space and overlap each other and share their contents.

The Kingdom of God, the sonship, creation, the relationship of souls, the nature of reality, the way God thinks, Heaven’s functioning, the Holy Spirit, extension, giving and receiving being one, the golden rule, sharing, communication, multiple minds, etc are all GROSSLY misunderstood, because anyone USING ego logic to think ABOUT them is blind, making no sense, using faulty tools, and coming to automatically false conclusions, putting stuff in boxes that is not in a box, and just creates confusion upon confusion.

You have to THINK LIKE GOD if you want to understand these things correctly. And the Holy Spirit’s thought system is based on this inclusive logic. And you are supposed to be learning HOW to think this way, as part of true perception. You have to let go of thought processes that follow the LAWS OF SEPARATION AND EXCLUSION. Otherwise you will think in terms of boxes and shutting everything out. You cannot INCLUDE your brother with that kind of thought process. And you cannot grasp oneness by locking it in a prison cell and falsely concluding "there is only one thing" or "its all one thing" or "there is only god" or "only one son". All of that is ego bullshit.

Creation is one and many. The "one" sonship has many perrmanent parts. You have brothers who are one with you. God has many children who are a united family. Not one or two. Many AND one. And that is natural.

"The whole power of God's Son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because He does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him. Our creations are as holy as we are, and we are the Sons of God Himself, and therefore as holy as He is. Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity."

"You can do anything I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it clear that miracles are natural, corrective, healing and universal. There is nothing they cannot do, but they cannot be performed in the spirit of doubt or fear.

When you are afraid of anything, you are acknowledging its power to hurt you. Remember that where your heart is, there is your treasure also. You believe in what you value. If you are afraid, you will inevitably value wrongly, and by endowing all thoughts with equal power will inevitably destroy peace." - ACIM

I am quoting this not so much for the "tip" that miracle-working requires you to not be in a state of fear, and that miracles can do literally anything, but to reinforce the theme of my posts today that when you believe something outside of you has power over you, it WILL produce a state of fear.

You can diffuse this fear simply be affirming the ways in which you are NOT at the effect of what is outside of you.

I am not affected by that person.

That person has no power over me.

They are not doing anything to do.

I am not doing anything to them.

They are not the cause of what I am experiencing.

I am not causing them to experience anything.

Neither of us are affecting each other in any way.

I am not a victim of that person.

That person is not a victim of me.

I am not being victimized by that person.

I am not victimizing that person.

I am completely unaffected by that person.

That person is completely unaffected by me.

I am completely free from the influence of that person.

That person is completely free from being influenced by me.

That person has no power over me.

I have no power against that person.

We are both equally innocent and holy.

Neither of us has done anything to each other.

They have not done anything to me at all.

I have not done anything to them at all.

etc.

Guaranteed, this will deflate your fear in a very short space of time because it will change your perception away from the ego-dependency of "something out there is causing me", and put the focus of where the cause is back into your own mind.

You are not a victim of the world you see.

You are not at the effect of the world you see.

You CANNOT BE AFRAID if you do not perceive yourself as being at the effect of the world. To be affected by the world is to be punished by the world, due to you being guilty. You have no reason to be afraid if you are NOT guilty.

In the Kingdom of God, His creations and all of their creations are fully open to each other and share everything lovingly. Each of these beings is made of love and it is through love the they have full access to each other, to join and commune intimately.

In this way, communication is sharing and joining and oneness or kinship, whereby you can merge with others, overlap with them, share space with them, and directly connect with what they are. To communicate soul-to-soul or mind-to-mind is full communication.

Love is required in order to accomplish this communication or communion, because only in love is there a full openness to communicate fully. Only by communicating lovingly can you communicate at all.

When love is lacking, which occurs through an attempt to attack rather than love, communication breaks down. What would appear to be an outward attack is actually a withdrawal away from others and away from God and from yourself. This is what happens when you become "selfish".

Jesus says this of your soul, in contrast to your ego:

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

God therefore created souls/sons to be FULL of Self, meaning expressing fully as a being in an unlimited way, and therefore able to be open to and gain access to the rest of Creation, to connect with it and intimately share with it.

Therefore when you are not being fully loving, you actually are attempting to withdraw yourself from creation, to isolate yourself from Heaven, to contract yourself down in fear to a single point in space, to put a wall between you and everyone else (the body), and to confine yourself to the body. This is how you become body-identified instead of spirit-identified.

Attack and withdrawal are the same thing. As soon as you have an attack thought you are having a "withdrawal thought". It's a thought of no longer sharing everything openly with everyone. It's an attempt to shut yourself off and be excluded. The ego is all about being exclusive and therefore special. It focuses on SELFISHNESS, which means prioritizing your own self OVER or in a different way to other selves.

Ego is an emphasizing of how you seem to be not equal to others and how you therefore have something that they do not have. And by emphasizing that you have something they do not, you also simultaneously emphasize that they have something that YOU do not, and therefore you are automatically lacking. Moving into exclusivity you move into isolation, lack, limitation, partiality, and not having everything. The promise that an exclusive PART of existence is more desirable than ALL of it, is the ego's game, through which it robs you of all joy.

So basically this is an automatic law that the only way you can actually communicate with anyone or anything else, is to be fully open in a loving way. Since other beings ARE love, you can only communicate with them through the LANGUAGE of love, at their level. If love is absent, communication breaks down, you arrest the extension of your mind through the arresting of love, and therefore hold yourself back. This holding back isolates you to a point in space and binds you to the body. This is withdrawal away from wholeness, and is you not allowing yourself to express.

Therefore when you isolate into the egotism of selfishness or specialness, you are taking yourself away from life and from others. You are trying to steal yourself from God. This withdrawal guarantees that no matter how attacking you think you are, your attack IS withdrawal and therefore you have NOT advanced TOWARDS God in your attacking efforts, it is caused you to go AWAY from God and away from your brothers.

Either you communicate with other beings through openness and love, or you will withdraw away into a breakdown in communication, a failure to express, a giving up of life, a cessation of extension, and basically you become paralyzed. That IS mental illness because in order to withdraw from others, given that your SELF is IN them sharing with them, you must split yourself off from the part of you that is in them and now you have a split mind.

A split mind is an insane mind at war with itself, and now it is attacking itself. And in this SELF-ATTACK, it will harm only itself. It is not POSSIBLE to attack another because another person is LOVE. Love can only be accessed THROUGH love. Lack of love stops communication and denies access. Indeed, denial of your brother's love DENIES YOU your own abilities, and thus shuts down any ability for you to join or connect TO them, preventing your unloving attacks to REACH them in any way.

This is why you cannot sin. It is literally 100% impossible to hurt anyone. It is literally impossible to hurt God. Any attempts to do so result in a self-imposed imprisonment and isolation away from the thing you are trying to attack. THEY do not suffer as a result, YOU do. You have hurt your own self, and it is then ONLY YOU who needs to forgive yourself.

Nothing real can be threatened. God and His Sons cannot be threatened. They are perfectly safe because they are wholeness and love, and anything that is not wholeness or love CANNOT COMMUNICATE with them, and therefore cannot ACCESS them, and therefore cannot transfer anything TO them, and therefore CANNOT ATTACK THEM.

The idea of there being an ABILITY TO ATTACK LOVE, is the notion that communication channels can remain OPEN, while transferring a message of BEING CLOSED through the channel. This is an obvious contradiction and impossibility. You cannot communicate "lack of communication". You cannot transfer attack to another, because attack causes the communication channel ITSELF to become closed off. Either you express love to your brother which He CAN receive, OR you isolate yourself and are fighting your way out of paper bag. YOU CANNOT ATTACK.

The kingdom of God is PERFECTLY PROTECTED and does not even NEED a defense. If you try to defend yourself you are attacking yourself, proving you are vulnerable and in need of the defense, and therefore affirming that you are under attack. Defenses do what they would defend against. God's Kingdom - you in reality - do not need to be defended at all. Love is automatically invulnerable! No illusion can do anything to reality.

No part of the ego can wage war against God in any real way. You need ONLY to be real, to be love, and you are immediately off-limits to the ego. The ego can only attack itself. This is evident in all wars where one side seems different to another and they attack each other. This is the ego on BOTH sides, attacking itself, as evidence of a split mind. The ego is NOT attacking God. The ego is attacking the ego.

The ego cannot leave its own domain. It cannot leave the state of mind that is lives in. It HAS to remain in darkness otherwise it will disappear. If it were to try to step into the light to reach where the light IS, in order to attack the light, it would disappear instantly because light dispels darkness. Light shines darkness away. Light thus is perfectly protected FROM darkness because it has power OVER darkness and cannot be "made dark" by it.

The belief that darkness can hide is an ego belief that darkness can cause light to be blocked, and therefore can conceal the light. This is the ego's belief. This is how we try to hide from the light of God by pretending we CAN be in darkness and therefore that darkness has power over light to stop it from reaching us. In the ego, darkness can attack light and only through darkness can there be communication. In truth this is completely backwards. Only in light is there communication of any kind and darkness will NEVER be able to approach light or do anything to it at all.

Therefore you do not need defenses because, as love, you simply cannot be appraoched by darknesss or attack. This may seem counter-intuitive at first but each time you defend yourself or resist another or try to make something go away or use withdrawal to attack, you WILL notice that you become worse off and it doesn't help - in fact it makes you sicker.

Only by ALLOWING in the face of what appears to be attack, can you have the strength that comes from UN-ARRESTED EXTENSION, because only through extending love does it confirm you HAVE love and are therefore invulnerable. It is in your innocence that you are invulerable and strong, not weak. The ego says innocence is vulnerability and proves it with every bodily child. But this is 100% fiction. Innocence is powerful and cannot be hurt. It needs no defenses to keep it safe. What does it need to be kept safe from? An illusion of darkness?

You cannot be threatened. Only if you identify yourself with the ego, meaning you HAVE attacked yourself, and have withdrawn from your brother, does it indicate that you are trying to USE separation as a defense. Separation will always hurt you, it cannot defend you. It is the lack of defenses that makes you invulnerable. Standing in the strength of light and truth in the face of "danger" dispells the danger and makes you impervious.

Defenses lead to death. Death is nothing other than an attempt to withdraw from life and imprison yourself in darkness. It is the ultimate sacrifice of yourself. It arises from a complete breakdown in communication, using the body for attack instead of for communication and joining. Without withdrawing from life there can be no death. Death becomes IMPOSSIBLE when you are fully open to love and have identified with SPIRIT - with the fullness of sharing, the openness to all brothers, the lack of attack and the presence of love.

In love, there is no death. In love, death does not exist. In love, death is impossible. It must be, otherwise God would die. Life does not die. Life has eternal life. Only through the illusion of being able to sin, or the attempt to sin, which is really a failure to sin, can you produce a state of what seems like death. And yet as Jesus says, swear not to die, because you have made a bargain you cannot keep. The bargain is that you WILL be able to die because of having been able to sin. This is actually literally impossible. Even in dying it is only denial and illusion, and your spirit is utterly unaffected.

You cannot die, any more than you can sin. Sin and death are IMPOSSIBLE AT ALL TIMES. Even those who seem to sin and die ARE NOT DOING SO. No-one can die because it is not God's will. You can only have eternal life. Attack and death are only attempts to DENY that you have eternal life, and denial can only HIDE the truth, not change it.

You cannot be attacked any more than you have attacked God. Nothing real can be threatened. You are safe forever in God's love. "Spirit is in a state of grace forever."

God is not like anything else. God is constant. God doesn't change. God is unwavering. God isn't variable. God isn't partial. God doesn't have favorites.

God is always the same. God is always coming from the same place. He doesn't have different responses for different situations. He doesn't treat different people in different ways. He is not conditional. He doesn't pay attention to details of a situation or how the form is different or what sickness a person has or whatever.

He addresses everything the same. Unconditional love. Unconditional response.

As I was thinking about this and about how God was always the same, I had this brief experience of God as 'love'... just love... strong, bright love, shining, constant, always the same. Made me cry.

What also occurred to me is how everything in this world is confusing. It's confusing because everything is different, people have different approaches to different problems. We dwell on trying to figure out what's going on with a particular special 'case' and diagnosing that 'case' and then trying to apply a specific 'form' of treatment to it or whatever. And by this I mean medically but also in any situation.

We treat people different. We react and respond to situations differently. We provide different resources. We think problems are not all the same. There are so many viewpoints and so many opinions. Nobody quite knows what the hell the whole truth is. And so this is the way that I and most others have learned to respond to the world - differently each time.

With God, things are not different each time. He has one response, unconditional love. If a person has cancer, his response is to heal it. If a person has a headache, his response is to heal it. If a person has a broken leg, his response is to heal it. He makes whole. He doesn't just fix specific thing using specific methods. He has one method: 'extend love', and it works in all cases.

He doesn't diagnose. He doesn't have different forms of healing for different people. He doesn't fix one person and ignore another. He doesn't single some out as worthy and others as unworthy. He is just always all the same. Always loving. Always giving. Always healing. Always true to everyone the same.

The contrast between His way and the way of the ego world is immense.

Being in God means being the same all the time. That's very different to how most of us live our lives, addicted to differences and 'new' and 'never before seen'. In God it's all the same, all the time.

One problem, separation. One solution, reunion with God.

We each, as spirit, are capable of manifesting any form that we like, and of showing up or appearing to take form in any particular form imaginable. We are not really confined to any one form and can change them at will.

When we decide to incarnate 'as' a body, we seem to take on a particular form, which btw is constantly changing, and gradually steer the manifestation of that body in various directions of growth and change. This is all done in the mind.

It is possible for some individuals with greater awareness to shift the form of the body from one state to another more readily utilizing mind power and miracles, for example. Health can turn into sickness, and sickness into health. These are shifts in physicality which you would think are not really shifts of a singular globular 'blob' of matter, but it really is.

Similarly, all shapeshifter are capable of morphing into any number of forms, even beyond the human form.

Now, the interesting thing also with shapeshifter is that there is a 'pool' or 'ocean' of unifies, blended-together shape shifters who are in what you could call a non-manifest or non-specific form. This is very nicely illustrated in the Star Trek Deep Space Nine series btw where Odo, a significant character, is a shapeshifter who can become any form and can return to a lake filled with other shape shifters who are all blended together. On a physical level this is representative, symbolically, of what we are capable of, and in fact we are also capable of these physical shifts.

The point to be made here, is that it is natural and normal for us to co-exist in a unified pool of 'oneness' where we are not any specific form and where we are all the same, sharing everything with each other. This is our home. The Spirit of God.

So really we are not locked into forms, but we come to believe we are, and act like our body is rigid and changes slowly and is very hard to adjust at will. But we can. And this ability can strengthen as we transcend the body in its limiting awareness, and return to an awareness that we are spiritual shape-shifters, or rather, shape-transcendent. Form is not who we are and it is not our true identity, or our natural home. It is just something we become imprisoned in for a while.

Ego is a device for separation. It is like a stained glass window made of many fragments and different types of filters. Each colored panel obscures and distorts the light behind it and changes it, filtering out what it does not want to see.

When the ego attempts to hold itself up to the light of God, to heaven, to creation, and attempts to look at it, it looks through this stained glass window. It CAN ONLY see separations. It is INCAPABLE of seeing unity. It thinks it is objective and impartial and unbiased but it is absolutely incapable of ever seeing and recognizing the nature of Oneness correctly.

All it sees are separations, partial truths, information which is left out and distortions that have been added. It is literally impossible for it see oneness, wholeness, truth, or consistency.

When the truth of Heaven is that God creates and has many sons and they each have individual free will, the ego looks at this through its stained glass window. All it sees is, oh look, there seems to be a correlation between the different pieces of glass and the idea of "many sons".

You can be sure that, if the ego ever looks at Oneness and sees something CORRELATING to its way of looking, that it is seeing separations, you know that something is UNTRUE. The ego cannot see God and understand it. If it is seeing something "in" God and saying, that it matches up to how the ego sees in fragments, IT IS NOT SEEING the truth.

All we can say for sure is, the ego can never see God correctly, cannot understand Oneness correctly, cannot comprehend how God has many sons without it being a separation, and therefore we need to TRUST and have FAITH that God's many sons is a truth the ego will never accept.

We are to accept the truth as it is presented. The course is telling us God has many Sons. Jesus is not a liar. Therefore, it's telling the truth. And somehow, all of those sons are "one", yet still distinct with individual free will. We have to simply accept this is true even if our egos don't understand how.

"To know reality is not to see the ego and its thoughts, its works, its acts, its laws and its beliefs, its dreams, its hopes, its plans for its salvation, and the cost belief in it entails."

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God’s Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

A brother is an equal sibling of a shared parent.

God is the Father, the shared parent. God created more than one child, more than one son, IN REALITY. Those children are brothers to each other. It takes at least two children to be brothers. The state of being a brother is a permanent reality and relationship, in Heaven, which has always been and always will be. We are permanently brothers. Being a brother has nothing to do with the ego or with separation ideas. The ego is not your father. All references to "brother" in ACIM are talking about the GOD-CREATED EQUAL BEING that is your brother in REALITY. This is A Course in Miracles.

"Heaven is the home of perfect purity. And God created it for YOU. Look at your ***HOLY BROTHER, SINLESS AS YOURSELF*** (having NO ego at all), and let him lead you there."

"I trust my brothers, ***WHO ARE ONE WITH ME***."

"You, ***MY CHILDREN***, are afraid of ***YOUR BROTHERS***, and of ***YOUR (shared) FATHER***, and of YOURSELVES. "

"Perceiving ***THE MAJESTY OF GOD AS YOUR BROTHER*** is to accept your own inheritance. "

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know ***YOUR BROTHERS WHO CREATED THEM WITH YOU***."

"Whenever you heal a brother by recognizing his worth, you are acknowledging ***HIS POWER TO CREATE AND YOURS***. HE cannot have lost what you recognize, and you MUST have the glory you see in HIM. ***HE IS A CO-CREATOR WITH GOD WITH YOU***. Deny his creative power and you are denying yours and that of God Who created you."

"***ALL YOUR BROTHERS*** must enter WITH you, for until you have accepted them, YOU cannot enter. "

"No-one who condemns a brother, can see HIMSELF as guiltless in the peace of God. "

"Brothers can misperceive one another, but they rarely maintain that they do not ***KNOW*** (knowledge is of heaven) each other. This is possible only if they maintain that they are NOT really brothers." (beleiving your brother is not REALLY a brother is not ACIM).

"By guiding your BROTHERS home (home of both of you), you are but following HIM."

"For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER (to go home together as many)"

"Release your brothers from the slavery of THEIR illusions, by forgiving them for the illusions which YOU perceive in them."

"And as they rest, the face of Christ shines on them, and they remember the laws of God, forgetting all the rest, and yearning only to have ***HIS LAWS PERFECTLY FULFILLED IN THEM AND ALL THEIR BROTHERS***. "

"If you would hear me (Jesus, at the level of Heaven), ***HEAR MY BROTHERS*** (who are still his brothers at the level of Heaven), ***IN WHOM GOD'S VOICE SPEAKS***."

"The name of Jesus, is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ ***IN ALL HIS BROTHERS*** and remembered God."

"Your relationship with them IS without guilt, and THIS enables you to look on ***ALL YOUR BROTHERS*** with gratitude, because ***YOUR CREATIONS WERE CREATED IN UNION WITH THEM***." (in heaven!)

It needs war in order to exist, because the ego is a state of conflict.

On the one hand, it would intensify the sense of trying to get rid of a perceived enemy completely, but on the other hand, if it were to actually have "no enemies" the entire ego thought system would disappear.

The ego is in need of "unresolvable war", which stems from a state of separation which can never be resolved.

It needs a split mind and it needs the mind to be against itself. It will encourage an increase in the split, which means an increase in how much two sets of enemies seem to be at war with each other, but at the same time this separation between them acts to keep them apart.

They become like vicious animals barking at each other from behind a fence.

The ego doesn't want to use war in order to destroy its enemies. It is its own enemy, and its war is taking place within itself, by itself, to itself. But it does want "constant war without end", which requires that in some way, it wants to NOT destroy its enemies.

War without end does NOT mean it wants the total 100% destruction of the opposition, it means it wants to PRETEND that it does, only to hold back just enough to maintain the separation and keep the war going. It would even allow concessions to its enemies in secret to allow them to gain an upper hand at times, in order to preserve the split mind.

For the ego to attempt to destroy its enemies at the same time as keeping them, is testament to how IMPOSSIBLE the ego is and how INSANE it is. It is trying to achieve two completely opposite goals at once. That is because the ego is a belief in an opposite to love - the possibility of real love and real death existing simultaneously.

While the ego fixates on death, and death seems to be an end, it is but a way to continue illusions and is quickly followed up with birth. If the ego really wanted death to be "the end" there would be no births.

The ego simply wants to always be in a state of conflict, a tug of war, where it is complete confused about what it wants, where it believes that two completely opposite goals are coexisting and achievable, and wants to keep its enemies as much as it wants to get rid of them, meaning, it wants to keep SUFFERING for as long as possible.

This is also why in special relationships, where there is special hate and special love, where you attempt to steal love from the other and destroy them because of what they have which you lack, and yet you want them to keep that special something so you can idol worship them. Impossible opposing goals.

This is why the world is just spinning its wheels. A little death here, a little birth there, and generally lots of suffering, tension and conflict all the time. Perpetual war without end, a war not too severe as to wipe out the ego entirely, but just enough to make it seem like this is what the ego wants. It's no wonder this world is insane and disappears up its own arse.

Ok. Think about all the ways that people try to understand ACIM. All the opinions. All the "figuring out" what it means. All the discussion, debate, arguments and disagreements. And still it seems no-one quite knows the whole picture.

Well none of that is necessary. In fact, behind all of the words of ACIM there is a purely logical metaphysical structure and progression of thought, which if followed precisely will automatically reveal the components of separation, why bodies show up, what the world is, aspects of creation etc. All of it follows IMPECCABLE LOGIC.

All you need to do therefore is discern, from a completely sane and logically-sound starting point (God), what is the progression of logical outcomes or consequences. All of God's creation and everything about it proceeds according to perfectly logical rules. Additionally the separation from God, the ego, the ego thought system, sin and death, all proceed according to perfect logic.

For example, the idea of an "opposite" to reality, which is the separation idea, is a logical argument suggesting that something *COMPLETELY* opposite to God's nature can exist. And this for example is reflected "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way". .. because Earth is the logical outcome of the separation thought system and must be opposite to God's conclusion.

It is a "black and white", very clearly defined "state". And as the ego progresses in its thought system, it produces states of MIND, which correspond to logical conclusions and consequences.

All you need to do is learn this logical structure, what specifically MUST be the outcome and logical conditions that arise based on each step towards death, and the entire picture of existence is revealed, with everything in its right place and everything understood in its relationship to the rest.

This then forms "the metaphysics" of the course, which is kind of a living experiential description of the "states" of mind which have arisen, what they are based on, and how they are corrected. Once you get this underlying structure, which is deeper and less removed than words, you can take any statement in the course and fit it into the picture accurately and understand it far better than any other "random" or disjointed attempt to form an opinion.

You don't then even need an opinion. All you need is to comprehend the logical basis for things. This circumvents all discussions, debates, arguments and misinterpretations. You can also then USE the logical basis to evaluate any new statements, or to base expressions on that structure in order to "extrapolate" the course or say things about it which are completely in accord with the Course's teaching.

Jesus in the Course is extremely logical and clear. For example:

"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."

This is a progression of pure logic. There are many many other examples. Below, Jesus talks about LOGIC and how everything proceeds according to logic...

"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And, HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. "

"In one sense, the ego’s fear of the idea of God is at least logical."

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth’s reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."

"Upside-down logic produces this kind of thinking."

"Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him."

"You HAVE carried the ego’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

"Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic: If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and

If you have been forgiven

Then you have everything else.

This happens to be the simplest of all propositions.

IF P then Q

P

Therefore, Q

The real question is, is P true. If you will review the evidence, I think you will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely True Witness for God."

"This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimical to its existence FOR its existence."

So if you have a "question" about something in the Course and you're sure where it fits in relation to something else, or what it means, or how it's structured, or whether something is on a certain level or another level etc... once you get a visual of the logical layout in your mind, you can quite easily determine where things go and what they MUST mean, due to logical conclusions that are sound.

But of course to do this you HAVE to develop a very clear sense of what logic IS, and be very careful to discern when you are making logical errors. This means you have to be careful with reasoning, be aware of skipping around in levels, beware of trying to make "glue" that ties stuff together that doesn't go together, etc. There doesn't have to be any fuzzy boundaries or blurry conclusions that you're not quite sure about. It all makes SENSE.

I see now that forgiveness of another must entail an appreciation of how we are joined in oneness, sharing everything. We have to realize that we ARE each other, and that we are included in everything. There has to be awareness of the golden rule and the fact that giving and receiving are one. Whatever applies to me must be seen to apply to the other. And there must be shared interests. Without this there is not forgiveness.

It used to seem as though forgiveness was some act performed by one separate person towards or with regard to another separate person. There was something that the separate person did to the the other separate person, and now the separate person had to do something to forgive them. This is clearly not in accord with ACIM’s teaching on forgiveness because forgiveness requires the two minds to be one. You have to love your brother as yourself.

When your brother is seen from the perspective that they are included in who and what you are, and are thus part of you, sharing everything with you, everything now applies to both of you equally and simultaneously. You ARE each other. In that light, any unforgiveness is an attempt to separate from one another, while forgiveness is a reunion. The two become one in forgiveness.

The same applies to atonement, true perception, salvation, and miracle mindedness. It is not just some separated-off state, it’s an entirely shared state. It’s just a tiny bit short of total oneness. Communication means immersion and union and sharing everything as one, and miracles raise the level of communication and sharing. Miracles make minds one in God. Miracles unite you with your brother. Being IN the miracle is to be IN a united shared state.

More and more now it is becoming extremely clear that, very simply, “being separate” is the entire problem, and “being joined” is the entire solution. There is nothing else. Either you’re separating off of you are one with each other. Oneness isn’t two separate people bumping bodies. It’s literally a fusing, melding, merging, unifying, sharing of everything. True connection. True opening and trust. True communion.

You can’t see forgivingly without that shared union because it is literally the light in which you see. It is the way to recognize your brother’s attempts to separate as untrue and as a call for love. It the proper framing of your holy relationship. Without the union there is a breakdown in forgiveness. To be completely forgiving is to recognize that everything applies to both of you equally at once, as one, together, as the whole. Wholeness is inclusive, and wholeness is the perceptual content of miracles.

Either you live in such a way as to always regard your brothers as a fundamental part of your own self, in which you are literally one and two, sharing the same spark of life, in the same light, or you are moving into separation and grievance and war. It’s very simple. Separate or join, fear or love, die or live forever. Atonement is a lesson in sharing, because we’re forgotten how to do it.

All miracle mindedness requires a shared state of mind and identity. You have to BE the other person to join with their mind and share light with them. We can’t do any of this correctly if we remain separate. There is no miracle without sharing, there is no love without sharing. There is no atonement without sharing, there is no salvation without sharing. Your brother is your savior because he is your self.

“Your Father is as close to you as is your brother. Yet what is there that could be nearer you, than is your Self?” “This state, and only this, must YOU attain with God beside you. For until you do, you will still think that you are separate FROM Him. You can feel His Presence NEXT TO you, but CANNOT know that you are one with Him.”

“And He will speak to you, reminding you that you are Spirit, one with Him and God, your brothers and your Self.”

“He must see someone ELSE as NOT a body, one with him, without the wall the world has built to keep apart all living things who know not that they live.”

“Forgive him now his sins, and you will see that you are one with him.”

“Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours?”

“Your brother's holiness shows you that God is One with him AND you; that what he has is yours BECAUSE you are not separate from him OR from his Father.”

“No-one unites with enemies, nor is at one with them in purpose.”

“Then let him offer you the light you see in him, and let your "enemy" and Friend unite in blessing you with what you gave. Now are you one with them, and they with you. Now have you been forgiven by yourself.”

“I trust my brothers, who are one with me.”

"I heard one voice because I had learned that learning is attained BY teaching. I understood that I COULD NOT ATONE FOR MYSELF ALONE."On the one hand, we're asked to accept atonement for ourselves. This is because our own mind needs to accept God's truth and become sane, in and of itself. But the fact is that you also share everything with others. Your mind is plugged into other minds. So that now means that you can't accept your own atonement, unless you're also willing accept other people's atonement.

I could say, well, I find myself to be innocent and holy. But if I can't also have that same perspective about EVERYONE, then I can't really claim it either. This is due to the Golden Rule, that what is true of me is true of the whole sonship. Either both of us are innocent, or both of us are guilty.

"Now need you but to learn that BOTH of you are innocent OR guilty."It's not possible to see myself as innocent while seeing someone else as guilty. This means that secretly I find myself to be guilty as well, and am now projecting sin onto another in order to deny that I find myself sinful. I now see the guilt seemingly outside myself in another as if it applies to them and not me. This is how the ego always thinks in a dissociated way.

Nothing true can apply ONLY to myself. Truth has to apply to everyone at once. The truth is that whatever applies to me applies to everyone, because we were all created equal in God. If I believe in guilt I will find both myself and others to be guilty and will see a guilty world. If I truly and genuinely believe in my own innocence, it can't be that I simultaneously hate others and find them to be sinners. No one can love and hate at the same time. So you can't accept atonement just for yourself and leave everyone out of it. Just as you can't be in holy relationship while excluding anyone.

Even though I'm tasked with accepting atonement "for myself", being responsible for using my own free will to choose it, this actually means that I have to be willing to let it APPLY to everyone simultaneously. I cannot in fact accept it for MYSELF at all, if I am not willing for this same truth to be true everywhere. If I fail to recognize its universal application, I have not learned it. Only by SHARING the atonement with the ENTIRE sonship, can I accept it for myself.

This means I have to find EVERYONE to be innocent and accept the atonement FOR everyone. I can't JUST find myself to be innocent and leave others dangling. The truth I claim for myself HAS to be also claimed for everyone. I have to see the holiness of christ in everyone at the same time otherwise I can't see it in myself. And I cannot be true to or know myself without being true to the known reality of everyone's true nature. Only ego would think it can accept atonement exclusively, because it wants everything at the expense of everyone else.

"Atonement as a Lesson in Sharing. Atonement is for all, because it is the way to UNDO the belief that ANYTHING is for you ALONE."

"Holiness MUST be shared, for therein lies everything that makes it holy."

"To the Holy Spirit, it is the fundamental law of sharing, by which you give what you value in order to keep it in your OWN minds."

"Redemption is recognized ONLY by sharing it."

So yes on the one hand, since we "rule" our own mind, which God created in us individually along with our soul, our natural condition is that we are ALSO fused intimately with every child of God. You CANNOT accept the atonement "just for" yourself. It is absolutely impossible and runs completely opposite to the nature of love and of all things God.

The atonement is a reflection of heaven, and of heaven's laws. Those laws are laws of absolute sharing, equality and union. You are literally in and like all your brothers, and thus there is an aspect of you which is completely shared with them all. The entire sonship is your self, just as you are the christ along with everyone. For YOU to accept atonement means, in effect, that you AS THE SONSHIP is accepting it FOR the sonship.

"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."

"Peace be unto you who rest in God, and in whom the whole Sonship rests."

"Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of."

"What you give through Him is for the whole Sonship, NOT FOR PART OF IT."

"To heal, then, is to correct perception in your brother AND yourself by SHARING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITH HIM. This places you both WITHIN the Kingdom and restores ITS wholeness in your minds."

"The Kingdom of Heaven (the sonship/one son/christ) IS you. What else BUT you did the Creator create, and what else but you IS His Kingdom? This is the whole message of the Atonement"

You see, you are not just you. You are also everyone else. All your siblings in the sonship are part of you and you of them. We are all together a collection of individual souls who share absolutely everything with each other openly. And so what applies to you applies to everyone and includes everyone. Everyone is included in your self and in your mind, just as you are included in them. And so you CANNOT do anything alone!

The ego is the idea of being alone, separated off, independent of or isolated from others. It's the idea of being "only you" and "not others". It's the rejection of your union with your brothers and an attempt to confine and limited yourself to ONLY what appears to be your individual self. It's an attempt not to share anything with anyone. And it is OUT of this state of exclusivity and imprisonment that you are rising INTO a state of TOTAL sharing and inclusion. So you have to learn that you ARE the whole sonship and everything you do is for everyone.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

This doesn't in a any way violate the free will of others. You accepting atonement for "yourself" does in SOME WAY and in some part, accept it FOR others and gives it to them. It lifts them up to the degree they're willing to allow it. You becoming lighter lightens everyone's load. "When I am healed I am not healed alone."

Just as Jesus accepted the atonement for himself AND FOR everyone, this did lift everyone into light, but each individual was only lifted to the degree they allowed themselves to be included in it. Not that Jesus didn't GIVE it to everyone through unlimited sharing, just that they did not full RECEIVE it.

As EACH of us accepts atonement truth for ourselves, we ARE radiating it throughout the sonship and every mind is illuminated by it. This is the same thing that happens when you work miracles. They can touch people far beyond your awareness because we are all joined. We're sort of like a network of individuals. We each can raise up to the highest heights which pulls everyone upward as well, but each has to also be willing to be pulled to fully embrace what is offered them.

So while your "only responsibility" is to accept atonement for yourself, YOUR SELF is not JUST yours. You must accept it for everyone otherwise you cannot have it. "To have all, give all to all." The way by which you share atonement with everyone reflects the holographic nature of the Kingdom, in which everyone has everything simultaneously because every individual is the whole. Atonement, just like miracles, are holographically connected and must be shared in order to be experienced for yourself.

"The purpose of the Atonement is to restore everything TO you. (That is, to restore the awareness. Later clarification.) You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did. Having been restored to your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. You now share MY inability to tolerate the lack of love in yourself and in everyone else, and MUST join the GREAT CRUSADE to correct it. The slogan for this Crusade is "Listen, Learn, and DO."

"As peace extends from deep inside yourself to embrace all the Sonship and give it rest"

"For it is the complete equality of the Atonement in which salvation lies."

"My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF. The will for this decision is the will to SHARE it, because the decision itself IS the decision to share. It is MADE BY GIVING, and is therefore the one act of mind that resembles true creation."

"Let the Holy Spirit remind you always of His fairness, and let me teach you how to share it with your brothers. How else can the chance to claim it for yourself be given you?"

"You who share His Life must share it to KNOW it, for sharing IS knowing."

"He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him"

"I desire this holy instant for myself that I may SHARE it with my brother, whom I love. It is not possible that I can have it WITHOUT him, nor he without me. Yet it is WHOLLY possible for us to SHARE it NOW."

"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.""Salvation IS His Will BECAUSE you share it. NOT for you alone, but for the Self which IS the Son of God."

"This is the light which brings your peace of mind to other minds, to share it and be glad that they are one with you and with themselves."

"Such is your mission now. For God entrusts the giving of His gifts to all who have received them. He has shared His joy with you. And now you go to share it with the world."

"Forgiveness shows us that Godʹs Will is one, and that we share It.""And I accept this vision in its name, both for myself and for the world as well."

"And I, who would be saved, would make it mine, to be the way I live within a world that needs salvation, and that will be saved as I accept Atonement for myself"

(this will be a fairly long post, so please bare with me)

The ego thought system is based on separation. Separation resulted in space and time. In space, spatial relations are HOW the ego thinks. The physical universe IS its thought system.

This includes physical objects, which are separated out, where an object is EITHER HERE OR THERE, (but not in both places). This is a "natural" ego thought process. One thing seems to exist in one location only and not all locations. One thing is NOT something else, and all things are DIFFERENT, separate, and kept apart.

The entire physical universe is arranged according to this WAY that the ego thinks. It regards the entire thing as structured by SEPARATIONS. One object versus another. One location versus another. And then it draws comparisons, and has reasoning, and finds conclusions, based WITHIN the framework of separation.

So you, in your ego thought processes, then start to THINK this way. You think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. And this seems to make SENSE to you because it maps directly to how the world is arranged. It then becomes "second nature" to think of anything in the world in SEPARATE terms.

For example, I parked my car in the first spot, not the second. I ordered the fries instead of the onion rings. My car is red, not blue. This is my body, not your body. Earth is not Mars. etc.

Our whole WAY of thinking runs according to these rules, based on SEPARATING things out, sectioning them off, isolating them, keeping them APART, emphasizing their differences, and locking them up in little prison boxes. And we think this is a natural way to think, to relate, to communicate, to reason.

Then we go about USING this way of thinking, to think about EVERYTHING. Not just to think about things which ARE based on a thought system of separation, but even to think about things which are completely BEYOND the ego thought system.

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

This may not seem to present any problems when you use SEPARATION-BASED reasoning to discuss the things of space and time, but it COMPLETELY misses the mark when you think this way about heaven, God, creation, sonships, sons, souls, etc.

The Kingdom of God is a thought system, and God similarly has a WAY of thinking. His WAY of thinking is NOT based in the idea of separation. It is NOT based on the limitations of space or time or spatial relations. It does NOT separate things off, make them different, put them in SEPARATE BOXES, or keep them apart.

God's thought system/reality also does not demand that something HAS to be separate from something else. It does not require something to be EXCLUSIVE to one box and not another. Nor does it assert that everything that exists MUST be partitioned off into EITHER one state OR another. God simply does not THINK in terms of "either this or that".

God's mind, his creation, his way of THINKING, is actually based on a totally different kind of reasoning. This reasoning is INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive. It also completely embraces the idea of SHARING. The ego's thought system completely blots out ALL suggestions of sharing, overlap, simultaneity, unity or oneness.

In God's system, it is NATURAL for there to be one thing, which SHARES all of itself with another. It is natural for one thing to GIVE all of itself and STILL RETAIN all of itself without loss. It is natural for TWO things to BE one thing. It is natural for one thing to be in ALL locations simultaneously. It is natural for one thing to be in one box, AND in another box, at the same time. It is natural for something to SPAN and TRANSCEND separations.

The Golden Rule, the law of God and of equality, simply states that what is true of one thing is true of another. Whatever is true of God is true of His Sons. Whatever is true or me is true of you. This is equality. God treats all his creations the same way. The Golden Rule reflects this, because it is a rule based on INCLUSION. We are both included in the same truth. The ego however is COMPLETELY AGAINST sharing and inclusion. And so is this world.

In reality, God THINKS in a holographic way. In a hologram, the whole is in every part, and every part is a whole in its own right, and every part shares the entirety of the whole with the whole. ACIM confirms that this is the way by which God thinks, and NOT through a process of separation:

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

This means for example that GOD IS WHOLE, being infinite. And God as a creator therefore extends and creates ANOTHER WHOLE. His Son, is a WHOLE SON. A full creation. As described here:

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

"There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

However, for God to BE whole, and to CREATE wholly, and thus to create another WHOLE.... becomes TOTAL NONSENSE to the way that the EGO thinks. And if you think in the same separation-based way that the ego thinks, this FACT registers to you as total nonsense. You will reason, "how can it be possible that there are TWO wholes, that makes no sense!". It makes no sense to a thought system of separation, yes. But God's reality is NOT based on that kind of system. God is not limited by separation or spacetime.

In order to recognize AND accept, that God's mind and creation DO NOT follow the ego's rules, and that God does not THINK or create like the ego would, and God's Kingdom is NOT spatially separated out like the physical world is, you will have to become willing to think massively outside the box. You CANNOT use separation-based logical reasoning to evaluate the truths or falseties of reality.

Let's look at what happens when you try to shove God into a box-based thought system. God for example gives ALL of Himself when he creates. His Son inherits EVERYTHING. But... if you are thinking with the ego, you SHOULD conclude that by God giving all of Himself AWAY, there SHOULD be nothing left. Thus God should snuff out of existence and only His Son should remain. This is LOGICAL to the ego because the ego believes in SACRIFICE AND LOSS, which is inherent to a box-based world. But it is complete nonsense.

Similarly, you could suggest that if God gives EVERYTHING to ONE SON, there is NOTHING LEFT to give to another Son. This is how the ego would think in finite terms. However, God has ALL of Himself left to give again to ANOTHER son, and another, and another, without any reduction at all in Himself. And this is how the Kingdom INCREASES. And by giving ALL of himself away, reality is increased. As stated here:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"To have all, give all to all."

You can see that if you think in exclusive, separating terms, you WILL come to FALSE conclusions about what's happening in reality. You'll conclude that if I have everything, you have nothing. But in reality, as Jesus describes in ACIM, me having everything DOES NOT prevent you from having everything also. How is it possible that we BOTH simultaneously have everything? Because we SHARE IT. And this sharing does NOT mean compromise or that we each only get half.

Sharing is the way by which God's Kingdom INCREASES. Because if it weren't for the ability to share, there would be no logical way for God to ever create anything more than just God, because he is already unlimited and everywhere. As this states:

"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."

If SHARING, INCLUSION, BOTH/AND is the natural thought SYSTEM of Heaven's reality, and it follows that thought PROCESS when it reasons anything, then SELFISHNESS, EXCLUSION, EITHER/OR, SEPARATION is the natural thought system of spacetime. And they are TOTALLY opposite. They are opposite because "this not that" is a direct reflection of the separation idea of "ego not God" or "death not life" or "non-existence not existence." The ego thought system is the NEGATION of reality.

If God creates two sons, who are brothers, and both are whole beings who have and share everything, co-creating with God, and then we look at this fact WITH THE EGO, we will see false conclusions. For example we'll say that there can't BE two sons. Or that if there are two sons, that's "duality", because now the two sons are KEPT APART in separate boxes meaning duality.

But this is not how it works at all. The fact that there are two, WHO SHARE, violates the boundaries of those boxes. One son is IN the other son and vice versa because they share everything. So there are two sons, who are ALSO each other.

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."This also extends to the relationship you have with God. Those who think LIKE the ego, will reason that EITHER.... God is all there is, OR there is a separation. Or similarly, EITHER God and I are one thing, OR we are two things. Or that, if you get rid of all separations, you will end up with oneness.

There is a major flaw in that reasoning. The ego first establishes that you MUST think in a separating way, in which there is duality, and all things are kept apart. THEN it has you DESTROY all of the other parts except for one of them, by getting rid of the idea of separations between the parts. But it will not have you get rid of the ego thought process. Then it concludes falsely, that when you remove the separations, you end up with ONE THING. And this one thing is thought to mean "oneness", or to represent God.

This however is a false conclusion, because now "separate boxes" have been mapped onto God, and God has been shoved into a separate box, all by himself, and there is no creation and no sonship and NO SHARING. And the ego rejoices that it has imprisoned God this way, in the name of freedom.

When you look at what ACIM says, Jesus DOES NOT say that God is alone, or that he is separated off from creation, or that he has no creations. Instead it tells you in fact that God has a huge family and is simultaneously one with them. And that His oneness DOES NOT ERASE their manyness.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Children and their creations."

This does not mean the Kingdom is duality or that it contains separate boxes. It means it contains overlapping shared beings who ALL have everything and ARE everything, seemingly as OPEN boxes who are not in any way confined, yet are still many things. HOW that's possible, is due to heaven's miraculous nature.

Ego thought processes do not allow this to be true. Nor does ego thinking allow it to be possible that when you are "one with God", you still have an individual self. EGOS then become AVERSE to any notion of individuality, which is self destructive, which the ego loves. You being one with God, DOES NOT ERASE your individuality.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

There ARE STILL "separate parts" in the statement, AND in some ways God is NOT totally like His sons, in terms of function or role. Meaning, YOU still exist as a distinct entity, AND God exists as a distinct entity. And what you SHARE between you, is your oneness with each other, AS TWO BEINGS. That is what ACIM teaches. And its definition of oneness is not "one thing being alone", it is EQUALITY. Being of THE SAME KIND. And an equality which is more than just two separate boxes next to each other - an equality where you SPAN the boxes.

Similarly, the ego will falsely conclude that if God and His Son are TWO things, this is duality. It is not, because we're again jumping the gun and projecting separate boxes onto heaven. Just because they are TWO, does NOT mean they do not share, and does NOT mean there is no unity. The Father and the Son are one, but there is still a Father and a Son. Just as WE will ALWAYS be brothers even in heaven.

In fact, the way by which God is everything, AND YET, His children are also FULLY created beings, who are also everything, is the course's definition of MIRACULOUSNESS. This miraculousness is completely alien to the ego thought system and all separation-based reasoning. The ego has NO CLUE, how it is possible, that God could have even created ANYTHING, yet alone multiple beings who somehow have been added-on to an already infinite reality. Nevertheless:

"MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human (ego) thinking"

"Miraculousness", is the nature of God's reality. UN-miraculousness is the nature of spacetime. Everything in God's MIND and reality is permanently miraculous. It is miraculous because it makes possible what the ego says is IMPOSSIBLE. Just as the ego is the idea of impossibility.

For one soul to be a whole being, that shares everything with another whole being, as brothers, and with God, without a loss of self or individuality, and without ceasing to be "separate", and without being CONFINED to separate boxes, is miraculous.

This miraculousness is also reflected in THE MIRACLE. And in true perception. And in learning to THINK LIKE GOD, which the course asks you to do. In order to think like God, you have to TRANSCEND the "separating off and putting in boxes" nature of the ego and its thoughts. And that includes thinking of souls as separate bodies.

This entails overlooking separations and seeing unity beyond it. It requires you to not be blinded by perception of form, because form is anchored in separation. Your whole perception has to become similar to heaven's reality, which breaks all the ego laws. And this is also why miracles break all the laws of space and time AND of ego reasoning.

Becoming able to THINK LIKE GOD, requires you to align with the truth of the Golden Rule, in holy relationship, where what is true of you is true of all others. Where differences are completely ignored. Where no-one is IMPRISONED in a box. And where your whole way of REASONING is LIKE God's.... that is, based on "paralogical reasoning" - or AND/BOTH reasoning, rather than either/or.

We could say, THE ENTIRE COURSE is geared towards developing this BOTH/AND kind of perception, thought and experience, for all students. We are supposed to stop thinking with the ego, OR LIKE the ego. And we are supposed to learn that we are undo no laws but God's, and HIS laws are NOT laws of separation, exclusion, spatial relations, or limitations.

In order to fully grasp ANYTHING that ACIM says about the pre-separation state, God, the Kingdom, oneness, sonship, sons, souls, creation, extension, holy spirit, etc..... any of that non-ego stuff, you CANNOT USE the ego-based reasoning method. If you do, you will fail. Guaranteed. And you will see truth that is false, and what is really true will appear false to you. That's how BACKWARDS the ego thought system is.

Any conclusions you come to about God or oneness etc, if it's rooted in "either this or that", IS WRONG. Guaranteed 100%. Only when you start to think in terms of BOTH.... me AND you.... WE.... only then do you start to approach the NATURAL way of thinking like God, which is a miraculous state of mind. And ONLY by thinking that way will you understand and grasp the metaphysical facts of God's nature.

Non-duality for example is complete bullshit. It is bullshit because it is the result of an EGO thought process. The ego reasons, well, I believe all things are separate, so if we attack all the parts and end up with one victor, this ONE THING that's leftover, which is practically nothing, but is a single thing, symbolizes God. Because to the ego "less separation" is equated with spirituality or simplicity. So it will then map this "one thing" idea of oneness onto God and claim God is one thing - that there is NOTHING ELSE other than God. That God is SEPARATED OFF. That is NOT what ACIM teaches at all!

God is not only a creator and a father, God has a HUGE family of whole beings, all of whom are co-creators with each other. You and your brother co-create your creations. You and God and your brother co-create together. Even the holy spirit is a co-creator. And we all have this HUGE family of created beings in heaven. This is utterly incompatible with both the traditional idea of "oneness" and the idea of "non-duality".

And ALL of those beings are of ONE KIND, and SHARE EVERYTHING, and yet ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY. Because that is HOW GOD THINKS. A holographic thought system in which the whole has created many parts and each part shares the whole with the whole of the rest. That is what ACIM says! And in order to INCLUDE all of what ACIM says, WITHOUT EXCLUDING any material or any factual statements, you will ONLY be able to accept ALL of what it says if you think in a non-separating way.

As soon as you get the simple idea that heaven's reality is based on BOTH/AND, rather than either/or, it will all fit into place and become clear. Because everything real is based on a both/and system of reason and thought processes. Creation ITSELF is based on sharing between two. God SHARES HIMSELF, in order to create, and He does not will to be alone. The natural logical outcome of that is that WE, as many permanent brothers, in the sonship which God DIRECTLY created, are all "one" (equal/sharing) because we share everything.

If this does not make sense to you, it is because you are thinking with the ego. If it seems like nonsense, it is because the ego is projecting its separation ideals onto it. If you cannot follow it, either I explained it poorly or you can't get past your ego thinking. But either way, God's entire reality is NOT LIKE EARTH, and you have to learn to RADICALLY think WAAAAAAY outside the realm of boxes if you want to recognize its true nature. Heaven is not spacetime!

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

This is more than just another way to think or use the intellect. This ties into how you should PERCEIVE, how you experience the real world, how you tune into the miraculous state of mind, the nature of the miracle and the atonement, all holy relationships, living by the golden rule, holy spirit's thought system etc.. It's all based on heaven's nature which is NOT based on a world of separate boxes.

"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation."

"Exclusion and separation are synonymous."

"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."

"To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. 2 And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. 3 The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. 4 Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. 5 And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity."

"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. "

"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded,"

"the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole"

"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth.""If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.""Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "

Jesus merely asks us to choose again. To keep choosing again until we make the correct choice.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I am not at peace. I made the decision myself but I can choose otherwise."

He tells us that whenever we are not at peace, ie suffering in any form, it is because we have chosen to do so, and this resulted from making a wrong decision. We chose to suffer, and this was a mistake. He now invites us to try again to choose heaven, heaven being a choice I must make.

"Trials are but lessons which you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one, and thus escape all pain which what you chose before has brought to you. In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again.""

We are exercising our free will at all times, our ability to choose freely. Anything that we experience other than peace and joy and love is because we chose it. We can only attack ourselves and are the only one able to seem to hurt ourselves through a mistaken choice. And we have just as much power to choose otherwise.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Mind is the mechanism of decision."

At all times, we are simply deciding. We are simply choosing. Do I want to accept that I am as God created me still, and therefore accept the whole Atonement principle and return to awareness of my soul, or do I want to continue choosing to suffer in various ways. It is up to me.

"God does not coerce."

"Learn of His happiness, which is yours. But to accomplish this, all your dark lessons MUST be brought willingly to truth, and joyously laid down, by hands open to receive, not closed to take. Every dark lesson that you bring to Him Who teaches light, He will accept FROM you, BECAUSE YOU DO NOT WANT IT. And He will gladly EXCHANGE each one for the bright lesson He has learned FOR you."

Lessons are nothing other than choices. By choosing that you want something, you put yourself into a psychological position. You have taught yourself that something seems to be true which is not, through a mistaken choice. Now the lesson is that you must unlearn this mistaken choice and re-learn or remember what the truth really is.

All lessons have the same outcome of re-accessing God's truth, because the only universal curriculum (which is mandatory) is the same for everyone - learning the single simple truth of God and awakening to acceptance of it.

What seem to be trials are simply present conditions that have been chosen, or scenarios arranged, offering an opportunity to change your mind about what you want, to learn to forgive and overlook rather than to use these mistaken selections to hurt yourself.

Always it is simply a matter of, what do I want. Do I want the world more than I want God? What do I value? What do I accept as true? What am I willing to do and accept? Do I want heaven today or do I want hell? It's up to you, you have the freedom always to come and go as you wish. And God waits patiently for you to freely choose to return Home to Him.

If you are suffering, you chose to. If you are experiencing unlove, you chose not to love yourself. If you are sick, you wanted to be for a reason. If you are happy, you chose only happiness for yourself. If you feel attacked, you decided to feel attacked. If you are in pain, the pain is serving your wishes. Only if this is true is the secret of salvation true without exception, and only if this is true is there any kind of hope for escape from hell by your own choice.

"In every difficulty, all distress, and each perplexity you face, Christ calls to you, and gently says, "My brother, choose again.""

"Be never fearful of temptation, then, but see it as it is; another chance to choose again, and let Christ's strength prevail in every circumstance and every place you raised an image of yourself before. For what appears to hide the Face of Christ is powerless before His Majesty, and disappears before His holy sight."

"For you WILL hear, and you WILL choose again. And in this choice is everyone made free."

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

"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. For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

When we try to make sense of things, we use logical reasoning. You do this all the time even if you don't realize it. You take what you "know is true" and build a conclusion from it.

Everyone tries to make sense of things. Whatever seems to make sense, you accept as true. When something doesn't make sense, you feel confused or regard it as false. This actually means you are HEAVILY dependent on whatever the logical process produces as a result, and usually don't question the process itself.

Everyone has a sense of what is true and what is false. What is true for you is the result of your reasoning. Your reasoning might be very accurate, or it could be very confused, but either way you end up with a conclusion.

The main way that people reason is based on a simple SEPARATION BASED method. It's based in separation because it defines whether or not something IS OR IS NOT something. A similar way we do this is trying to determine that something is EITHER THIS OR THAT. But with the clause that "it cannot be both". ie ... it's a model of NOT BOTH. SO it is "exclusive" and AGAINST equality.

Because the physical world itself, spacetime, is built from the separation idea, physical objects appear to be "separate" from each other. And being NOT equal, they are all DIFFERENT. This arrangement of "separate and different" objects lends itself very well to this kind of "either/or" reasoning.

So you can use this logic to say, my car is either in the garage or parked up front. Or, I will have the ham sandwich not the turkey sandwich. Or, my body is male not female. Or, this is my house not yours.

This kind of thinking maps exactly and very well to the arrangement of the physical world, because the physical world was MADE in an idea of separation. It has separation infused into it. And so Object A and Object B seem to be separate options. Either A, or B.

What this world, and this kind of reasoning, is EXTREMELY poor at, is dealing with matters of SHARING. It has no way to deal with the notion that something applies to BOTH, or to A AND B at the same time. It works very well when things are kept in separate boxes, sectioned off. But it has no way to deal with the idea that something is in two places at once, or that the truth applies equally to two things, or that two things are also one thing.

So in this world we can't usually say, I am sitting in my car AND I'm sitting in my house. Or that I am a human and a fish. Or that both me and my wife each get 100% of the pizza. These kind of ideas seem like nonsense or "not possible". We'd say, they are false.

The thing is, while THIS world is based on separation logic, as a THOUGHT SYSTEM founded on the idea of things being completely separate, God's reality is TOTALLY UNLIKE this.

God doesn't think in terms of separation. He doesn't think in terms of separate boxes. He also doesn't think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. He doesn't draw contrasts between things in this way. He isn't exclusive or special or isolated or one-sided or treating one thing differently than another.

Also, given that God is whole and perfect, when God creates, God creates wholly and perfectly. This means that whatever God creates, has properties which are fully inherited from Himself and his nature. Like father like Son. But this means that, what is true of the father is true of the son. It means they are BOTH something. e.g. they are both holy, both innocent, both have everything, both are creators, etc. In fact this goes to such as an extent as to say they are ONE, and yet they are two, because they BOTH exist even though they share everything.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

Similarly the Golden Rule, which is God's law, which is based on the idea that what is true of one thing is true of another and all things are treated equally, DEPENDS ON the idea that what is true of me is true of me AND YOU. That BOTH of us get to have everything.

That ME AND YOU are exactly alike. That what is true of me, is true of you, and vice versa. This is perfect equality. And it even goes so far as to mean that there is no compromise, lack, scarcity, or competition, because everyone has FULL access to everything simultaneously. This is true sharing.

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

However, this kind of equality, with a single truth applying to all things, where the truth is SHARED, and where BOTH elements are "as one", cannot be handled by the either/or logical process. In truth, for example, any thought of God contains all the thoughts of God. Any son of God is all the sons of God. This DOES NOT COMPUTE to the separation-based reasoning.

The ego, using separation thinking, would say, a son of God HAS TO BE EITHER, here, or there. He has to be in this box, or that box. He cannot be in both. God would say, that is totally untrue, that one son of God shares all of himself with another son of God, and BOTH of them are in BOTH boxes at the same time. That you are LITERALLY IN your brother, one with Him, as though he is part of you. This is absolutely sensible, rational, logical, and perfectly impeccable based on HOW GOD THINKS.

What you'll find is that, anything to do with God, his creation, his mind, heaven, reality, the sonship, sons/souls, holy spirit etc, absolutely anything that existed before the separation and without ego. .. is governed NOT by laws of "either this or that", but by laws of "both and". Laws of equality. Laws of identicality. Laws of oneness, which TRANSCEND BOUDARIES.

Therefore, whenever you think of any of these TOPICS, and you start trying to draw conclusions about these topics, IF you use either/or separation based logic to do so, you WILL come to COMPLETELY FALSE conclusions, but these conclusions will seem to make sense. They seem to have consistency, but they are based on a false premise (separation), and so are not sound or valid.

For example, God has created a sonship which comprises many sons. But it is also true that each of these sons IS the other sons. For example "one brother is all brothers. one mind is all minds". A son isn't just a "separate son", it's a son who IS ALSO the other sons. And there are many sons who are each other as well. And this is not in any way a contradiction nor is it anything to do with separation in the ego sense.

But if you use EITHER/OR based reasoning, and you look at heaven, you'll tell yourself, EITHER .... a) God has one son or b) God has many sons. And you'll tell yourself that it would not MAKE SENSE unless it were ONE OR THE OTHER. That the answer must be "not both". But "not both" is a TOTAL DENIAL of the fact that everything in heaven IS BOTH. It's a system founded on "both", on "and", on "sharing and inclusion."

The ego's way of thinking is EXCLUSION BASED. One object is excluded from another object. One boxes content is exclusive to that box and not the other box. This is how 99% of the world population thinks about EVERYTHING.

God's way of thinking is INCLUSION BASED. One object is also in another object. One object is in multiple locations. One object IS the other object. Two boxes contain one object. This is INCLUSIVE reasoning. This is how God thinks, and how his entire thought system functions. Because God is not BOUND by the LIMITATIONS of separation or a separation based system. God DEFIES separation.

So when you think "exclusively" about God's reality and creation, you are MAKING AN ERROR. Because you are using a logic system NOT designed to accommodate a system that overflows boundaries. So you are trying to FORCE boundaries onto that system, are trying to FORCE things into separate boxes that they are not restricted to, and are attempting to PROJECT SEPARATION onto heaven.

It is quite funny but almost everyone does this with regards to course topics. In other words, using an ego-based logic process to think about NON-ego topics, IN an ego way. The result is FALSE conclusions, which masquerade as "making total sense." But in truth, what makes sense to the ego, is totally nonsense, and what makes sense to God, is totally nonsense to the ego. Because the ego is insane.

That means that separation-based reasoning IS INSANITY. And trying to shove God's creations into finite boxes IS ISANITY. And trying to claim that God HAS to have only one son in one box IS INSANITY. And claiming that God can't have ONE son AND many sons AT THE SAME TIME, which is "perfectly legal" in God's system, is INSANITY.

The problem isn't so much that people are drawing false conclusions, it's more that people DO NOT realize that they are USING an ego-affirming thought process to FILTER and JUDGE a NON-egoic system. And so they SEE separations where they don't exist, AND they OVERLOOK separations where they DO exist as well. Such as here:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings who have everything individually***, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

It would seem "logical" to most to say God EITHER has to have one son OR many sons, and it can't be both. And it seems logical to say that IF God only has one son HE CANNOT have many sons. And it seems logical to say that therefore those sons must be part of "separation" because "the absence of separations" is more spiritual. BUT ALL OF THIS IS A FALSE CONCLUSION, projected onto a divine system of logic, BY a BACKWARDS system of logic based on separation and exclusion.

We just don't realize that we do this. We do this all the time. Like literally EVERY conversation in this forum about the course uses separation-based reasoning. We think that reasoning in terms of either/or is totally normal, natural, and the ONLY way to think. It is TOTALLY not how God thinks and it is actually extremely unnatural. It is what leads to false perception in fact.

If your whole mindset and thought process is always proceeding along the lines of "this or that" "either or" ..... you are literally enforcing separation. You are being EXCLUSIVE, which means you are EXCLUDING others. And this is precisely what separation means - exclusion from the whole, exclusion from relationship, exclusion from communication and sharing.

If you THINK this way, about everything, all the time, you are thinking WITH the ego, even if you think you are being spiritual or thinking about spirit. This forces you into BODY identification because the body symbolizes a SEPARATE BOX, kept apart and exclusive from the other boxes. Exclusive reasoning anchors you into space and time and bodies. It is a thought system of death and isolation. This is NOT how God thinks and it is NOT how his thought system operates.

And anyone wanting to do the course will need to learn to grasp paralogical reasoning. Otherwise you can't possibly comprehend how your brother is yourself, or how you can have a holy relationship, or how you can be one with something without losing your identity.

Oneness with others is an INCLUSIVE idea, not an idea of exclusion, and you can't USE exclusive thinking to understand it. But you CAN use inclusive logic, which is holographic as well. Because God thinks holographically not linearly. We have to INCLUDE if we want to awaken, not shove God's creation into prison cells with only room for "one".

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you. "

It is not JUST true that God has one Son. It IS true that God has one son. AND it is true that he has many sons. And his many sons are direct creations of his, while also the one son encapsulates them all, without removing them from him even slightly as a direct parent. To suggest God's SONSHIP - which is a collection of sons - is "an ego thing", is a COMPLETE LOGICAL FAILURE. To suggest that the presence of many sons is "separation", is a complete logical failure as well.

When there is BOTH AND ..... me AND you .... US as one ..... united and together as brothers forever..... THAT is reality. A system of total equality, sharing and simultaneous union. You exist, AND I exist. WE are one and many.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

While we talk of non-duality and whether ACIM is non-dualistic, many people also make mention of duality as if knowing what duality is. But duality is not what you think it is.

We very loosly and vaguely describe duality as there being "two or more things". That these things are "separate". This seems to be easy to put into words. But the language isn't accurate enough here. Are they TOTALLY separate things?

When you look at it closer, for example, we could say there are two cars, they are separate from each other in space, and therefore there are two separate objects. But if you look even closer you'll have to admit that they in fact do share something. They both exist in the same realm. They share spacetime.

Then, ask yourself, what would total complete separateness be like? Well, it would have to be the difference between existence and total non-existence. To make something TRULY separate from something else, it could not exist in the same realm. Just as existence and non-existence are TOTALLY separate and complete opposites, and they do NOT SHARE the same realm otherwise they would share something.

So what we have are actually two concepts. One is "absolute separation" and one is "relative separation". For something to be "totally" something, it has to be absolutely that. For an object to be totally separate, it has to be ABSOLUTELY separate. But to be absolutely separate, it cannot share ANYTHING at all with the other, not even existing in the same realm. If one car existed in "existence", another car would have to be in "non-existence" in order for them to be ABSOLUTELY separate. Totally and utterly cut off from each other at all levels.

Since the two cars actually share the same realm, they cannot be absolutely separate. In fact you can easily prove that by the fact you can SEE both of them simultaneously. They can sit next to each other, they can even touch each other. So they are not absolutely separate. You can even crash the two cars and insert some pieces of one car into the other. They are not absolutely separate from each other. You can even melt one of them down and make body parts for the other one. They are not totally kept aprt.

But the cars are relatively separate. There is a degree of seeming separation. The degree also can vary from "none" to "some" or even to what might seem "mostly", but they can never reach "absolutely separate." So they are not really absolutely in a state of "duality", ever. Duality is not, therefore, really a state of absolute separation. Duality really means RELATIVE SEPARATION. Which means, at best, PARTIAL separation. And if something is only partly separate, it is not really separate at all.

This also gives rise to the idea that if they are only RELATIVELY separate, they must be PARTLY connected. They must share something. They do at least share spacetime. And at most, they could share the same materials. But this idea of relative separation indicates both that they are neither TOTALLY joined, OR totally separate. They are partly joined, and partly separate, because all illusions are contradictory. This is also beause spacetime was made as an attempt to believe that BOTH sharing and separation exist in the same place.

Science has also been proving this. Recent quantum theories suggest that an object isn't really anything in its own right, it is only something in relation to something else. Like, objects depend on other objects for their identity. Or rather, what something is, as an illusory object, is inferred or is indirect or "shared with" or implied by something else. That some of its identity is in another thing, because they share a little. And since no object is totally separate, no object has an entire absolute identity of its own. Which makes all objects symbols and not ends in themselves.

This is reflected in ACIM in terms like "at no time does the body really exist" "it is either anticipated for remembered". And "the body is not an end in itself". And "the body is a symbol". Symbols, which are what dreams are made of, ("the body is a dream"), are something which does not get its identity or nature from itself, but rather inherits it from something else that it points to or represents. Just as the body can be a symbol of eternal life, or a symbol of death/picture of crucifixion. And just as "Earth can reflect (symbolize) heaven or hell." It has no inherent absolute properties of its own, which is why we sometimes refer to it as a neutral mirror.

Also courtesy of spacetime science, there is the principle of quantum entanglement. This tells us that it does seem possible here, in this illusory world of relative separation, that one thing can be in two places at once. "Spooky action at a distance" reveals that this world is SORT OF a hologram, or at least is a devolved hologram, where the parts do not contain ALL of the whole, but do contain some of it. And so you cannot easily recognize the wholeness by focusing on the form of the parts. And the wholeness in the parts is so limited that they all appear to be unlike each other and not a hologram at all.

The idea that one particle or photon etc can seem to have entangled, ie shared, influence in total transcendence of spatial distance, tells you that the objects here are not QUITE separate. They DO share something. They ARE all connected in some underlying way. It's just that their connectedness is SO distorted and extremely de-emphasized by the forms of difference, that it seems very un-obvious and hard to recognize. This is part of the temptation of illusions. Quantum entanglement does indicate that duality is not really absolute duality, it's only a state of "relative separation". And if you look deeply enough (e.g. at quantum levels) you start to see a holographic kind of sharing that transcends spatial separation.

People go on to talk about non-duality or the seeming total absolute lack of separateness. As if non-duality is diametrically opposite to duality. In technical terms, absolute non-existence is the diametric opposite of absolute existence. But duality isn't absolute non-existence. It's only relative. ACIM confirms this here:

"The opposite of (eternal) life can only be another form of life (not totally absolute no-life). As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not (absolutely) opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind awake or sleeping. It is **not its opposite** in anything created, nor in what it ***seems to make*** when it believes it sleeps."

This would sound totally cryptic and confusing unless you recognized that duality is not really what people think of as duality. It isn't a state of absolute separation, it's only a state of the illusion of trying to be separate, or of partial/relative separation. It's just a BELIEF IN separation, in a state of the DENIAL that everything is shared. So it is still WITHIN the confines of mind which can NEVER be separate in truth. All it can do is deny (hide, obscure, disguise) unity. And without this disguise (which is death), it is nothing.

"Without the idea of death (denial of unity) there is no world."Which means that duality is still housed within the mind as a mis-creative use of mind, a lower-order reality, and a system of thought within that same mind. Duality is NOT "actually outside of God". Outside of God is total non-existence, and it doesn't exist at all, not even as an illusion. In this world, you are NOT in non-existence. You are still in existence, pretending not to be.

The "dualistic world" is simply a mis-created devolved level of thought within the one mind, which attempts to use mind against itself or freedom against freedom or will against will, to present an illusion of relative separation, symbolizing separation and opposition. It is still something the Son of God is "making" in his mind, dreaming of, inventing, but it is an attempt to reject the sane true nature of the mind. So it results in illusions of separateness, which are not really separateness.

I like to think of this world as a kind of "last truck stop" on the way to leaving God. We never really get outside of God's envelope. But the world is the "last dying breath", as it were, in the effort to absolutely leave God and go outside of God to be "separate from Him". And physical death is just how it appears as you try to "remove all life" from something so that it can be "empty of life" and devoid of God. Trying to leave God, produces death, as a symptom of "the rejection of existence."

If you could be absolutely separate from God you would leave God entirely and enter "non-existence". This is what death of the body symbolizes, the attempt to LEAVE and actually separate from existence. As if you can go to oblivion and finally be totally without God, in absolute separation. Of course, that is impossible because non-existence doesn't exist and God is everywhere.

We never really leave God or get outside of Him, or go beyond the mind, but we do invent illusions of - lies about - symbols of - the idea of not being IN him. Of being exiled from or outside of heaven.

And this world of "duality" that we made is not so much ACTUAL duality, as it is just a state of PARTIAL duality. Of attempted separation, that fails. And of impossibilities believed to be possible while still being impossible.

So duality does not really mean what people usually think it means. It's not just about "separate things" or "a count of two or more". These are based on very loose separations that aren't really total separations. My apple and my orange are not REALLY totally separate, nor are they really part of a duality. They just appear to be separate things based on form and appearances, which are deceptive. The apple and the orange are connected together by the fabric of spacetime.

String theory and the notion that something exists as a "quantum field" which coalesces into a "concentration" of energy showing up as a particle, is just another extension of this. It's just how everything is part of a giant pool of energy, as it were, in this world, in the background, which seems to become more focused as consciousness (mind) interacts with it, producing physical matter. Ultimately everything in the world dwells "unfocused" in the quantum field which is a more shared state. This is also why subatomic particles are not actual "absolute particles", they are "probabilities".

Duality's "partialness" and relativity is also why this is possible:"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

The hidden beauty is in seeing the connectedness of things which would otherwise seem mostly separate. And thus the world, earth, can be seen as a forgiven world which symbolizes heaven, a reflection of heaven, "a sign (symbolic representation) of God's perfection" etc. The forgiven world is what you see when you look beyond the illusions of partial duality and see an underlying singular background... the one dream. The one illusion. The face of christ, seen through perception. Even in supposed separation we are not really outside of God.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without ***some link that kept it still within the laws of God***; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has."

We ARE still within God. We ARE still within God's holographic thought system. And we ARE still always creating. And we ARE always still joined together. The physical world is just an attempt to make it SEEM as if that's not true, using the clay of creation to form appearances of the opposite of creation. But creation HAS no opposite, and even what we made or asserted in our mis-creating is still WITHIN our mind and USING its power. Even a sleeping mind is STILL a powerful mind. "The mind is always creating, it never sleeps". Even a dream of death still has a thread of connectivity running through it. This is also why death is not an end and is just pretend death.

When you redefine duality as "attempted partial separation" or "relative separation", it has to acknowledge that even duality is still INSIDE OF the dreaming mind of Sons of God. And that means you are still in heaven. "You are safe in heaven, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of waking to reality." This doesn't mean the dualistic world is TRUE REALITY, because its forms are an illusion of opposition to reality, but they are MADE OF mind-stuff.

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

Spacetime is the empty shell, an attempt to create nothing, which produces an actual creation of a seeming lack of content, produces form. And then we project illusions into this emptiness or "idea of lack and limitation" (mortality) as we dream. Because even in your dreaming, you are using your mind's power TO dream, TO make illusions, and TO deceive yourself.

Never do you go outside of mind. And never do you leave God or heaven. It's just that this world cannot BE heaven because it symbolizes its absence. Even as a reflection of heaven it only symbolizes heaven. Because it's a perceptual realm and "perception is a separated state." - a state of an illusion of being separate. Illusions of separation ARE NOT absolute separation.

Only God's Kingdom is true absolute permanent reality. Your dream world is temporary and relatively partially created. And what is not absolutely created is not FULLY created at all. And so it remains just a state of temporary instanity, hallucination, wishful thinking and fiction.

In Heaven, God's thought system entails profound sharing. Each part of the system contains the whole of the system. It is holographic. This is how God thinks.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."

"The whole power of God's son lies in all of us, but not in any of us alone. God would not have us be alone because God does not will to be alone."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for everyone mind is one. Such is the truth."

"Every part is a container of the whole."

In that system, each child God created as a whole, producing multiple wholes, SHARES the whole of creation. That means, you have total access to *everything*, to experience it fully as if it were your own, while simultaneously EVERY other child is doing the same.

The key principle of Heaven, and Creation, is sharing. And so multiple children of God SHARE one mind, and that one mind is the "one son of God". Yet there are many children. Sharing is like "overlapping", literally co-existing in the same space. Your mind is plugged into the whole like how your computer is plugged into the internet and shares the internet with everyone else.

Before the separation idea there were ALREADY multiple individuals. There were already multiple children, who were so UN-SELFISH, that they were willing to SHARE everything with everyone. No-one wanted to be special or to have exclusive access to anything. Everyone was willing to ALLOW all of the others to share everything, themselves, and all that exists. It is the total absence of ownership. It is communal.

When the separation idea occurred, these pre-existing, eternally existing beings, decided to try to seek special favor from God. The idea was that they wanted to have something EXCLUSIVE, just for them, which the others did not have. They wanted to be SPECIAL. They wanted God to give them something which ONLY they had, and which others lacked. They wanted to be better than others. They wanted to be SELFISH. They wanted to find a way to shut out everyone else, to NOT SHARE ANYTHING, and to have something to call "just my own".

This produced a state in which souls, who were many prior to this, surrounded themselves with walls and barricades to try to "shut out" and EXCLUDE, "access", which all other souls had shared with them up to that point. Because even your own soul is something to be shared, you tried to not allow yourself to be shared WITH others. You put up a fence around your mind, to serve two functions: to keep them out, and to keep you in. This way you could fence off a tiny part of yourself and regard it as "exclusively mine", and stop everyone else from SHARING it directly.

In so doing, you withdrew from the collective shared experience of the sonship, you STOPPED SHARING, you went off into a corner and pouted by yourself, you attacked God and your brothers to try to keep them from sharing with you, and you created this illusion that you occupy a little space where NO OTHERS share with you, some kind of autonomous self-owned, self-run, isolated, personal PIECE of the whole, that you wanted to call your own SPECIAL self.

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply sharing."

Doing this made you "alone". By trying to not share with anyone else, you stopped the RELATIONSHIPS that come with sharing, you closed the doors on your mind, you prevented access, and you said to the rest of the sonship "stay away, this is my castle and you can't come in." So then you find yourself pulling away from infinity, narrowing down, confining, withdrawing, isolating, imprisoning yourself, into a small tiny area of littleness, and that manifests as the condensing of thought into a BODY. A human body. Which is "a device for separation."

This body will then represent the idea that because you HAVE something exclusive that your BROTHERS do not have, you are now DIFFERENT to them. And this is also why every body is NOT THE SAME, on purpose. It's the idea of being UNLIKE anyone else, not equal, and unlike God. The body keeps all of creation OUT, and traps you IN, so that you can pretend there is some part of existence that is EXCLUSIVELY YOURS.

*THIS*.... is what it means, to have a separate self. It's got NOTHING to do with you being a self or not. It's got nothing to do with the fact that God created MANY SONS prior to the separation, which will CONTINUE after the atonement. It's got nothing to do with you being an individual. It's ONLY got to do with you attempting to NOT SHARE ANYTHING, within a realm where the total sharing of eveything is completely natural for all beings.

"The ego is the idea of selfishness. The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

So by trying to be SELFISH, in the midsts of a SHARED COMMUNITY, to stop communion, to stop communication, to take up arms against your brother, to PUSH OTHERS AWAY, and to try to EJECT them from your own shared experience, so that all that seems to be LEFT is you, THAT is the ego. That is what it means to be "separate". That is the separation IDEA. That's what the course means BY separation.

"Separation", as a word or term, does NOT MEAN, "there are many". It does NOT MEAN, "The presence of multiple brothers is an ego idea." It does NOT MEAN "there can only be one son." The fact there are many WHOLES who are HOLY, is NOT a problem whatsoever in reality. It is NATURAL. It's is God's Will. That you have a self, an individuality, is NATURAL. This has NOTHING to do with the tiny mad idea or separation from God. The separation is ONLY to do with you trying to STOP SHARING, in a realm where sharing is totally natural, prevalent, and something that everyone is doing.

It is not the creation of "a separate self", as if there was NO SELF before. You already HAD a self prior to the separation. The separation from God has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the invention or creation of "a self", or multiple selves. The separation ONLY has to do with your *RELATIONSHIP* to others, your willingness NOT TO SHARE WITH THEM, and your attempt to EVICT THEM from sharing with you, so that all you end up with is YOUR SELF, in isolation, sharing with no-one. That's what the separation from God is all about.

The reversal of the separation from God will reconnect you to the sonship, restore your willingness to share everything with everyone that exists forever, join your mind back to other people's minds, make you willing to share your SELF with others and theirs with you, and to return to this state of Oneness, in which there is ONE MIND, but MULTIPLE BEINGS. Many souls, who are all alike and who share *everything* with each other without a single ounce of selfishness or possessiveness. THAT is heaven. That is natural. The end of separation and ego is NOT the annihilation of God's children, OR the end of your brothers.

So the separation from God merely means the rejection of a shared experience, and the attempt to bring an end to sharing, so that you can claim exclusive rights to some little piece of the whole that you don't want to share with others.

Having a separate self merely means your ACTUAL self is trying to pretend that it no longer SHARES anything with others, and so is "outside of" the shared communal experience AS IF it were "separate from it".

The ego, as the separate self, is nothing other than the rejection of the fact that you are PART OF everyone and are part of the WHOLE, as a SELFISH attempt to OWN part of the whole and call it your own, at the expense of others. It's your attempt to BLOCK ACCESS to your mind, from other minds, so that you SEEM not to be part of the whole anymore. When the ego ends, you simply stop being selfish and LEARN TO SHARE AGAIN. That's not the end of your SELF, ever. You in fact REGAIN more of yourself than you even have now, you expand your self, and you return to the WHOLE of yourself. "The soul is the idea of self-fullness."

So when we're talking about there being many sons in heaven, or many children, or "separate beings", we're NOT in any way talking about anything unnatural or against God's will. We're not even talking about the ego, or the separation idea, or the tiny mad idea. It's not until the MANY REAL BEINGS, the MANY PERMANENT BROTHERS, trying to compete with each other and vie for attention and be SPECIAL, that we start talking about the descent into ego, and the making of an illusory experience of "being separate". To be cut off in a body is to be ALONE, having disallowed anyone else to SHARE YOU. That's all it means to "be a separate self." A seeming outsider or stranger, cut off from the rest and having no relationships with anyone.

God's creation is perfectly natural containing multiple wholes, multiple individuals, multiple selves, multiple brothers, multiple beings, multiple minds. Because they all are willing to SHARE unconditionally and 100% with each other, coexisting in a communal state of total joining and freedom. It's only when someone starts trying to be special or selfish that we run into a problem. The end of the ego is the end of isolation, the end of exclusion, the end of selfishness, and a return to STILL EXISTING but SHARING EVERYTHING with everyone forever. The regaining of your natural inheritance, which is all of Heaven and all beings.

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also has been created perfect. There is no emptiness in him."

"There can be no disinherited parts of the sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like him."

"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which no part is complete, nor is the whole completed without your part."

"Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you see that every aspect is the same, perceived in the same light, and therefore one."

As humans with egos, we are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as "separate people." This is because of the ego. We have identified "self" with an individual body, and not the bodies of others, and thus perceive that we are ISOLATED and SEPARATE.

It is from that perspective of being an isolated, cut-off, separated being, that we interpret what ACIM seems to be saying about your perception, your mind, exactly what is inside your mind and what seems not to be. This has led to a great deal of misunderstanding of Jesus's teachings about perception and correction because it's all being viewed FROM a state of EGO.

"What is the Body? The body is a fence the Son of God imagines he has built, to separate parts of his Self from other parts. It is within this fence he thinks he lives, to die as it decays and crumbles. For within this fence he thinks that he is safe from love. Identifying with his safety, he regards himself as what his safety is."

You have to recognize that the Sonship, which contains all souls God created, are not just a sum total of many individuals. It's not simply "7 billion humans" all lined up next to each other. There is an essential part to the nature of God's holographic creation, which is SHARING.

The minds of each Son, WHEN in His right mind, is very much shared with other minds. Or let's say, "open to" or "joined with" or "connected to". Each Son is one PART of the holographic creation of God, and each PART contains the WHOLE. So while each Son seems to be an individual, and there are many individuals in Heaven, each individual is ALSO a "container" or medium through which the WHOLE also expresses. It's like being plugged into God.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"The mind that taught itself to think specifically can no longer grasp abstraction in the sense that it is all-encompassing."

The ONLY parts of this that turns into the ego, is when you unplug yourself from God, unplug yourself from the collective shared mindset, disconnect yourself from the Sonship, and see yourself as ISOLATED.

See, people think that you cannot be an individual and be in Heaven or that individuality is ego. This is because, as a starting point, they think that the individual is "separate" from others, and that this separation is therefore ego. But this is starting from a false premise. In God, the natural state of things is that everyone SHARES and is JOINED WITH everyone else, is open to them and shares and extends love with them. It is the reduction of the SHARING which brings about the ego, NOT their individuality. You could say, ego makes a person "more individual", it does not establish their individuality.

So if you can picture a soul in its natural state, it is an individual BUT IT IS ALSO sharing all of itself with the WHOLE of all creation, the entire sonship, and all of God. It is a part, but totally joined to the whole. And there are many parts, joined to the whole. As though everyone is sharing a collective experience, which is what we call oneness. But this oneness or sharing does not obliterate the wholeness of each individual soul.

It is ONLY when a soul unplugs itself from the whole, stops sharing God's mind, stops being one with the sonship, and "withdraws itself" from the collective, that it becomes ISOLATED. It seems isolated now because it seems cut off and separated off and DISCONNECTED from the whole. This state of isolation requires "walls" to be erected around the individual. Or to put it another way, we stop sharing with others and recoil into a defensive position of suspicion and conflict instead of lovingly embracing others. These are not walls which define the individuality ITSELF. They are walls which BLOCK SHARING. As if putting a blindfold on someone, or preventing them from ever touching anyone else.

These artificial "blocks to awareness" ARE the ego. They are what keep you CUT OFF from others, versus being JOINED WITH others. These walls are NOT what make you an individual. Your individuality is a state of being individual AND JOINED. What makes you an ego is ceasing to be joined, so that ONLY your individuality remains, as though you are now orphaned or blocked from sharing anything with the collective. It is an attempt to leave the Sonship and go off on your own.

The result of this isolation is that you end up seeming to STILL be an individual, but without a sense of being connected to the whole. Since it is normal and natural to be joined with the whole, when you are NOT joined with the whole there must be some kind of BLOCK in the way which is "separating you off", rather than allowing you to join. Joining DOES NOT UNDO YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. It SHARES IT. This makes total sense in a holographic model of heaven but not the ego's thinking.

Now, you as a "human" in "a body", this is an idea of you being separated off. As though in prison, or not allowed to share with anyone. Isolated, alone, separate, unable to join. That is what makes for an EGO. The ego is the idea of being separated from unity, but the ego is NOT the idea of having an individuality. Individuality actually is an OPENNESS TO LOVE, like a loving individual, whereas ego is an unloving individual. You can still be individual and love your family, or you can be an individual and hate your family. The hate is the ego, not the self, but the hate forms a FICTIONAL IDENTITY which you overlay on top of yourself. That fake self is a SUBSTITUTE for your real individuality, not the antithesis of existing as a self.

So you then think, ok, I am one of many separated humans in one human body. What's inside my body seems to be me. I've become separated from all others BY my body, and whatever is outside my body is not me. So that leads you to perceive, that you have a "personal mind", which is your own separate mind. You actually DO have an individual mind which God created, but it is not supposed to be isolated. It is kept in a box when it is kept inside the walls of the body. The body is a device for LIMITATION.

So you get used to this. And then you think to yourself, ok, here is A Course in Miracles, it's talking about "my perception", so it must be talking about what is INSIDE MY BOX, within my limited mind. And therefore, I need to change my limited isolated mind, my personal perception, in order to change my personal hell, and accept a personal atonement just for myself. No. That's not what the Course is telling you.

The Course completely acknowledges in fact that you SHARE illusions with other people just as much as that you have a personal set of illusions trapped in your own little box. It teaches that the content of this "world", physical objects, wars, bodies, death, sickness, lack, conflict, murder, etc, IS PART OF the illusions which are taking place in a JOINT ENDEAVOR of wrongful thinking, on the part of many many individual souls who COLLECTIVELY are DREAMING this entire universe.

So what appears to be just your personal mind, or your personal thoughts, or your personal ego illusions, which you are working on, and which the course DOES tell you to correct and heal.... that is only PART OF YOUR PERCEPTION. That is only part of your MIND. Because your mind, in its natural state, is not just that which is "isolated" within yourself like a separate cut off mind. You are not supposed to be applying the course ONLY to the part of mind which you've sectioned off and called your own.

The purpose of the course is to remove the LIMITS you placed on your mind, to undo the BLOCKS TO AWARENESS OF LOVE (awareness of the whole) which you placed on your mind, and to lift away the artificial barriers which made you think your mind was "separated off" in the first place. That means, that your mind is actually not JUST your personal private hell within your "little self". Your mind is ALSO OUT THERE, very large, very powerful, very spacious, SHARED WITH and joined with all other minds.

This is because you as part of the Sonship which God created, are not just a separate individual in a box. You RADIATE LIGHT AND LOVE outside of yourself, you extend love, and you SHARE LOVE AND MIND with all other minds. So that means, that "your perceptions" are not just limited to your boxed-in perceptions. Your perceptions ALSO INCLUDE perceptions being had by the parts of your mind which are more WHOLE, and the parts of your mind which are SHARING with other minds.

That then means, you have to look at what it is that the COLLECTIVE SONSHIP is dreaming, what the WHOLE is imagining, and recognize that this entire physical universe is actually an IDEA OF SEPARATION, within the SHARED MIND of the Sonship. And your mind IS PART OF THAT. So that means your mind also encompasses this entire universe, your mind is part of that which is dreaming this entire universe, all of the physical objects in this universe are IMAGES IN YOUR MIND, this entire world IS PART OF YOUR PERCEPTION, and the forms which are showing up are actually THOUGHTS AND IDEAS that you are having. Not just you, but many souls, collectively contributing to this mass visualization of hell.

So as you remember, ok, you are not a boxed-in separated mind, you are a JOINED connected mind, which is SHARING mind and will with the whole sonship, you are FAR LARGER than this universe and everything taking place in it even on what SEEMS LIKE a physical level,is actually happening WITHIN YOUR MIND - within all our minds. Not all illusions are totally "cut off and isolated" inside your head. There are illusions outside your head also. And even your head is an illusion. Your body is a separation device to make it seem like your mind is not part of the mind that's dreaming the world.

So if you think, ok, all I need to do is fix my own personal mind and claim atonement for myself, you are falling short. You're forgetting that you are an aspect of something much larger. And because PART OF the process of correction IS to do with correcting "your thoughts" and "your perceptions" and "your beliefs", you can find many many parts of the Course which support doing that. But if it's considered to be entirely within a context of "my separate self", you are missing additional parts of the picture.

You are MORE THAN the separate isolated self that you have come to think of as you. You are MORE THAN the self which thinks "about" this world as though it exists without your doing. You are MORE THAN the self that perceives itself to be so isolated and separated by its body, from what is "out there", that it thinks its mind is not even out there at all and is entirely housed within a box.

You are MORE THAN a perceiver OF forms which show up out there as if by magic. Who put them there? Who made bodies appear? Who invented planet Earth? YOU DID, along with many others, in a collective shared idea. Jesus says even ideas of separation have to be SHARED otherwise they cannot be ideas at all.

Separation is not just something you did alone, and it is not something that you will just undo alone. The acceptance of the atonement is NOT JUST FOR YOU. That is the selfish ego making itself special and trying to keep your mind from sharing itself with other minds. Your responsibility is to accept the atonement for yourself BUT ALSO SO THAT you accept it for others so that you can help them join you. It is not a selfish act. It merely means you must accept atonement so that you can GIVE IT because you are PART OF THE PLAN of atonement and need to become a miracle worker so that you can HELP OTHERS. This is spelled out in several quotes, like those below:

"The sole responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. This means you recognize that mind is the only creative level, and that its errors are healed by the Atonement. Once you accept this, your mind can only HEAL (others). By denying your mind any destructive potential and reinstating its purely constructive powers, you place yourself in a position to undo the level confusion of OTHERS."

"The unforgiven have no mercy to bestow upon another. That is why your sole responsibility must be to take forgiveness for yourself. The miracle that you receive [into your own mind], you give [to others]."

"This is what is really meant by the statement that the one responsibility of the miracle worker is to accept the Atonement for himself. The teacher of God is a miracle worker because he gives the gifts he has received. Yet he must first accept them."

"When you have been restored to the recognition of your original state, you naturally become part of the Atonement yourself. 6 As you share my unwillingness to accept error in yourself and others, you must join the great crusade to correct it; listen to my voice, learn to undo error and act to correct it. 7 The power to work miracles belongs to you."

"The forgiven are the means of the Atonement. 2 Being filled with spirit, they forgive in return. 3 Those who are released must join in releasing their brothers, for this is the plan of the Atonement. 4 Miracles are the way in which minds that serve the Holy Spirit unite with me for the salvation or release of all of God's creations."

So open your mind and eyes to recognize that the course is not a selfish course, it's not about your separate selfish ego doing the course for itself. It's not about maintaining isolation. It's not about you choosing something in isolation which has no effect on anyone else.

It's about you taking up your NATURAL FUNCTION as the light of the world, to share and extend the truth to others through miracles, to learn to give as you receive, to reclaim the role of being part of the WHOLE MIND which dreamed the world, to purify the perception that IS THE WORLD, and to therefore UNDO THE UNIVERSE by recognizing it is an illusion, even in its physicality, because it is nothing but a mistaken idea shared by the Sonship of which you are a PART AND WHOLE. Being "a part" does not mean "being apart".

The world is perception. Forms are ideas and thoughts. Objects are visualizations. Matter is an hallucination. Your mind is dreaming this entire universe along with other minds. The mind that needs correction is far broader than just your isolated little human self, yet it includes your separate self which needs to have its limitations lifted away to realize and recognize that YOU ARE THE WHOLE. You are the ONE SON OF GOD as much as you are ONE OF MANY sons of God.

Reclaiming your IDENTITY as the One Son of God is also part of recognizing your function in the Sonship and the part you play as one of many equal sons. To go from believing you are ONLY a part of God, to realizing you are part of God AND share the whole of God and his creation, is the identity shift that needs to take place. This is not a course in fixing up your ego identity, or making your isolated self happier or more at peace with an external world that you have no power over and no responsibility for and did not put there. This is a course is GOING BEYOND your identity to reconnect with the whole, the oneness, the sharing of love, which is far larger and more encompassing than you think.

Your mind IS responsible for the physical world showing up. It IS responsible for making wars happen. It IS responsible for producing mountains and deserts and forests. It DOES have that power. Not in isolation, but as part of its shared power with the Sonship. This course is not just about you. Nor is it about the ending of your individuality. It is about taking your separated-off individuality and plugging it back into the SHARED MINDS of the Sonship, and also into the collective unity of the One Son which is one with God's mind also.

That means your perception and your perceptual errors INCLUDE the world ITSELF, not just your isolated view OF the world, and not just the content of your individual isolated mind. Bodies were made by the ONE SON of God to separate "Himself" apart and make believe He is many separated parts. The One Son of God includes the Sonship, which ARE PARTS, but also are not separated off like the ego is. Instead they are JOINED NATURALLY and yet divided NATURALLY. Unnatural division is ego, not whether or not you are individual. In-dividual means 'cannot be divided', because it is A WHOLE. And wholeness means SHARING. So any whole must be shared with any other whole, and therefore all individuals must be part of a whole. This is the nature of God's creation.

A fear years ago, I was at an ACIM retreat and we were doing a breathing exercise. I became filled up with some kind of energy, which lifted my "vibration" very high. My mind started to see past the physical and reach out and started to see God BEYOND the veil. In that moment I would've left the entire world behind to be with Him.

I'll skip some details but after that, I was seeing with true perception. The amount of awareness and wakefulness I had was off the charts. Everywhere I looked, still seeing physical objects with my eyes, I saw God. God was in everything I saw and God was in my mind. My mind had expanded in some way, moving up the hologram, to where my ego self seemed dissipated and diffused into the back of my awareness, as though I had no center. My mind somehow pulled back away from the world and I began to feel like I was melting into the background, one with it. I felt like I was becoming Christ.

My awareness for some days after, entailed the ability to see a profound gentleness in everything. Everywhere I looked there was unconditional love, in all things. This love seemed so whole and complete, no matter where I looked, that I felt I had no need to look anywhere else to go find anything. I saw it in a chair leg. In a water bottle. In the shadows on a wall.

People were still going about their business doing exactly everything in the same egoic way as before - nothing changed there, because the body's eyes can ONLY see the physical form of things. But at the same time, there was awareness of a love and presence. I was aware of something that it seemed no-one knew was there, even though it seemed obvious. I became so soft. God was so gentle, so soft and joyous. And he was very, very intimate, which was shocking at first because I had previously always put God far away in the sky and here he was well under my skin.

I also became aware of the higher levels of the hologram, an experience of unity, in which the whole was in each part. All of God was in each object I saw. I therefore recognized for the first time in experience, that even though physical objects seemed to assert that "nothing is the same anywhere" or "there is nothing that is whole" or "the whole is not in any of the parts", here in my awareness I could still see this forms and yet, simultaneously, my mind was aware that a single consistent unified whole was present in all parts, fully, transcending their limitations and differences. This taught me the way in which physical matter is a lie, a deception designed to shut out awareness of God's nature.

I was in an altered state for a couple of weeks. I was very ungrounded. I could barely do tasks because my mind was quite expanded and out of body. Yet each time I did something "grounding", this energy that was in me started to funnel down, and this produced immense joy. Joy would beam out of my face toward others as I started at them very directly, something I had shy'd away from before, recognizing I had no needs, no lack, and that there was only outward extension. Nothing could "come in" to me from the outside. I felt so safe and protected and free from needs. I didn't even want to eat food, it felt so alien.

Gradually as I grounded back into my body my expanded awareness narrowed down, became more focused into and through the body, and I became more immersed in the physical body again. This was like receiving some kind of brain damage. My awareness diminished greatly and it felt like being greatly subdued and suppressed, shut down and locked inside a prison suit. This also stripped away most of the intense wakefulness that I had, which felt like "leaving God", which was VERY upsetting.

This made it impossible for me to have God in my mind, and thus I stopped seeing God outside of me in all things. It seemed God left. I kept trying to find God outside of me because I thought that He was out there, having seen Him there, but I couldn't find Him because I was no longer aware of Him WITHIN my mind. And for weeks this was depressing and infuriating, although gradually I adjusted and was reassured by a few momentary glimpses that God was still with me. Returning to my body felt like a huge isolation. As my eye sight returned to looking out solely through the body's eyes, it was like building a brick wall "behind" me such that I could no longer have any sense of what was there. The body cut me off from awareness of God, and so I got to see first hand just how limiting bodies are.

What I later came to realize was this was an experience of true perception. A state of seeing a forgiven world. It was as though layer upon layer of thick "judgement" had been scraped off the surface of the world revealing an extremely gently held picture of something very lovable. And yet at the same time, the physicality was the same. The appearance physically to my eyes was the same. It was what I saw IN it, in SPITE of the physicality, that I longed to reconnect with.

This is why, for me personally, I know that this physical world is not real. I know how much the body lies. I know how the body's sense are massively limiting. I know how matter lies to try to obscure the holographic nature of God and his omnipresence. I've seen it and experienced the transition back and forth. God gave me a glimpse of awakening and it was the most profoundly directly educational experience of my entire life.

This is why I know first hand that there is something very much beyond this world, a reality which is completely obscured by forms and trapped by bodies. This world is not my home. I have grieved for the "loss of God" and gradually over time use this as incentive, a taste of what's to come, to find my way back to God again.

The attraction to Him was SO STRONG that I would've leapt into His arms in an instant without so much as a consideration for anything else in all the world. We have protected ourselves from remembering just how appealing God is, and why NOTHING else means anything even remotely close to Him. We only block awareness in order to hide this extreme attraction. Otherwise we would awaken in a heartbeat.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which sets him off from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable, and therefore true. And each establishes this for himself, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified because the values differ, and those who hold them seem to be unlike, and therefore enemies."

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The truth is not something that we make up, decide upon, invent, have to "believe in", or have as a kind of personal preference. The truth does not come in a billion forms. There is only one truth, and that truth is set in stone forever by God. God is the creator of actual reality and no-one else. Not even His creations, his souls/sons, have the ability to change reality or to define what the truth is.

This means that when we are in the business of accepting the truth, we must also be in the business of putting aside personal opinion, a desire for a special or different or exclusive viewpoint, and in fact even the ownership of "this is my view". Beliefs only take you so far and are too personalized.

In this ego world, we are very accustomed to everyone seeming to have their own opinion. This is because everyone with an ego stands like a gatekeeper in between the truth, acting like a filter or go-between or authority, with a need to "approve" of anything being claimed. This is because the false ego authority wants to constantly define the truth, invent it, change it, decide what it is, author it, distort it and basically make-believe whatever it wants to.

As we move towards atonement, what HAS to happen is the relinquishment of this egocentric ownership of opinion making. The truth is true all by itself. We cannot define it, our only options are to either a) accept it or b) deny it. When we deny it we attempt to invent the truth ourselves, to reinforce it through beliefs, and to play at being God. This is egotism. But as we SURRENDER the ego, we are also becoming willing to give up on being the AUTHOR of the truth.

What this then leads to is that you become wiling to "take on" the "off the shelf" truth that God has established, to accept it, to allow it, to align with it, and to integrate it as "your own". Without changing it, we give up trying to fight with reality and instead settle in to accepting it. The reality as God has defined it, that is - the nature of the Kingdom.

This absolutely means that as we become more attuned with the real truth, the entire idea of "having an opinion" is being dissolved. Personalized, "everyone has their own truth" bullshit is dissolved. We become representatives of a truth that we did not invent. We become spokespersons for a truth that isn't an "interpretation". We allow the one truth to function through us and to organize our mind.

That means that over time, as we continue to awaken, the things that we express, the words we use, the statements we make, the documents we write, the various expressions that we perform, cannot be logically attributed to ourselves. When we express something we can no longer say that this is our own opinion. The truth, God's truth, is ONE truth, and it is FACTUAL REALITY. It cannot be argued with, it cannot be changed. As this truth becomes our truth, we stop being the "sole owner" of truth, of a personal opinion, and we instead become a reflection of God's truth.

So we then start to express things which are factually true, which are not an opinion, and which others can also either accept or deny. In many cases people will mistake your expressions for you having an opinion, it being just your beliefs, just your interpretations. They will argue that you are trying to be ego or right just because you have a sense of certainty. But the fact is that when you get with the facts, which HAS to be possible, and you are in accord with God's truth, you ARE CORRECT. Because you have accepted correction.

Some people will not like this especially when they have an ego and especially when they do not understand how any kind of truth could be "impersonal". The truth is something to be shared and joined with, not something to possess and control. As representatives of God, teachers of God act almost in the same way as the Holy Spirit who is the Voice for God. He speaks FOR God because He is "the same" as God and has no "different" opinion of His own. We listen to Him because we trust that the truth for Him matches God's truth. As a corrected individual, we too become voices for God, correctly representative of what is true.

It's important to then realize that because we are surrendering artificial truths, interpretations, opinions, beliefs, playing God, authority problems, false exclusive ownership etc, being spiritual does not remain a "personal" exercise. Moreso it means that you are becoming a salesperson for God, peddling His wares, sharing His contributions, relaying His messages, being His eyes and ears. You take on the eyes of Christ and cease to have "your own" separate viewpoint.

So when we are evaluating whether someone is just having a belief, or whether to listen to them, or whether it's all just opinion, or whether everyone's truth is different, we should remember also that those who DO have alignment with ACTUAL TRUTH, will appear to the ego to be egos claiming total righteousness, when in fact all they are doing is being a medium through which a truth BEYOND themselves is being expressed.

In the factual truth there ARE no opinions. There is no wiggle room. There are no exceptions. There are no loopholes. There is no uncertainty. There is nowhere that some kind of "maybe" comes into it. There's no room for interpretation or opinion. The truth is either true or it's not.

The entire realm of having opinions is founded on the idea that something is open ended and doesn't make sense and is not factual. Which leaves everything open to interpretation. And where there is interpretation, there is hallucination and insanity and a complete breakdown of any kind of factual consistency.

There is no room for having a different viewpoint in God's Kingdom. We are to accept the truth that God has GIVEN and to make it our own, and to then express that same truth without distortion. This erases the ego and leaves no doors through which it can mangle and distort and personalize the facts. In God's logical system of thought there is no error and everyone is in perfect agreement. There is one truth, and we are to accept the Holy Spirit's message, in accord with it, without question.

It is obvious that in this world there is very little agreement. Everyone sees to still have an ego and an opinion. We can barely agree to what the course says and means. Each person has their own interpretation and viewpoint. There is a tremendous amount of mistakenness. Yet Jesus states that teachers of God truly should all share ONE truth and agree on EVERYTHING. There should be a single reflection coming through all such persons which is the same in all of them, not thousands of different versions. One truth, one voice.

"God's teachers appear to be many, for that is what is the world's need.Yet being joined in one purpose, and one they share with God, how could they be separate from each other? "

"As they advance in their profession, they become more and more certain that the body's function is but to let God's Voice speak through it to human ears. And these ears will carry to the mind of the hearer messages that are not of this world, and the mind will understand because of their Source."

Being abused is not fun. Being punished or victimized or attacked is not fun. Being hurt by others, or by anything, is not fun. Being in pain and sickness is not fun. All forms of suffering suck bad.

Every episode of being hurt by the world always looks like you being victimized, against your will. You seeming not to choose it, not wanting it, and doing nothing to ask for it, yet alone deserving it. It always appears unsought and unfair.

When you look only at appearances, every abusive situation looks completely awful. Children being abused. Babies born with disabilities. Parents killed in a car crash. Someone being shot. Murder and rape and all manner of horrors.

However, when you read A Course in Miracles, we're told something which may not seem possible, yet alone true - that you are always doing this to yourself. Not matter who seems to be doing what to whom.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true."

(Urtext T27I10)

In all seemingly un-asked for scenarios of suffering, it always seems that the problem began with attack by another. You were apparently doing nothing and minding your own business. Then along came the horror out of nowhere. You seemed to not even remotely choose it. You did nothing on the physical level to ask for it or to make it happen. You are a genuine victim.

However, such attacks in fact begin long before they ever manifest. And to realize this will take a lot of willingness and healing. Just even getting past the misery could take a lifetime. But hiding behind every experience of punishment is a secret decision, which happened in your mind long before the punishment happened.

Everyone who has believed in separation from God, attacked themselves first. They believed in their own sin and guilt. They tried to crucify themselves. Long before any abuser came along. each of us was responsible for deciding that we deserve to suffer and be punished. We chose to insist on a willingness to allow ourselves to be hurt. We literally wanted to be hurt. Or even worse, to die, because the belief in sin demands death.

"They do not realize that, to deny God, is to deny their own identity, and in this sense, the wages of sin IS death. The sense is very literal; -- denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

Having decided you are sinful - the original sin, for trying to attack God, you quickly believe you no longer deserve love. Or even to live. You believe you should suffer and die to atone through the ego. To pay the consequences for what you did. And NOW you start to seek out ways to suffer.

Deciding you should suffer, you now attract, choose, hire, coerce, opt for and want, various people, scenarios and problems to bring the penalty to you. You elect freely and seemingly unconsciously to incarnate into defective bodies, broken families, abusive relationships and all manner of tortures. You arrange it all.

As each form of suffering comes to you, as you asked, and looking solely at the physical way by which it happens, it gives no hint that you asked for it. Especially not that you want it. Each blow is enacted by another body. Each attack appears unasked for. Stuff goes wrong seemingly chaotically and at random. Then the world seems to decide it's your time to die. Sucks to be you.

Who would suspect that you asked for this? That you consented to death, no matter how it came? Who would see the secret wish to suffer hidden behind the face of innocence?

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

No-one, not even the person suffering, thinks that they started all this. It always seems to begin outside of you, beyond your will. And then you can point fingers of blame and say, you abused me, you hit me, you hurt me, you punished me, you screwed up my life, you did this and I didn't choose it. Its all your fault.

And now the other is a scapegoat. Secretly someone you hired to hurt you on your behalf, they now take the blame for being the one who did it to you, so no-one notices the contract you signed. Ands so long as the projection of blame remains, it completely hides what you are doing to yourself. All power and responsibility is projected onto anyone except you.

You won't want to ever look at the fact you asked for this, so long as you don't see one key fact: You believed you deserved to suffer BEFORE you suffered. Before you were attacked, you attacked yourself. You believed it as soon as you left God. The denial of God was the denial of entitlement to forgiveness, happiness, health and life. You threw it all away and wanted life to suck.

And THEN you masterminded a lifestyle of awful things seeming to happen to you, inducing suffering while trying to achieve an illusion of redemption. You think if you suffer enough you'll pay off the debt. How much is enough? Only permanent suffering and death is an acceptable fee for your ego.

You chose everyone in your life. You hired them to not love you. You wanted to be sick. You wanted to be attacked, hurt and abused. Terrible lack of self love and respect happened before you brought a ton of bricks down upon yourself. You hated yourself.

Every hurt, every punishment, every abuse, every attack, IS in fact the working of your psyche to guarantee that you get what you think you desreve. It always appears that other agents are doing this to you, so that you can hide your death wish. But it is ALWAYS you that is deciding to orchestrate ALL forms of suffering. Your mind makes it happen.

"For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

(Urtext T27I10)

The ONLY WAY to be set free from ALL forms of suffering, is to recognize that in every case, the power of your decision begins the whole process. You decide you deserve to suffer, then you project abusers and punishers and prison guards, all of whome you hate and blame, in order to to hide how YOU feel about yourself.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

You can only suffer by choosing to. If you do not choose to, you CANNOT SUFFER OR DIE. Giving away your power to another to be the fall guy to disguise your self hate, is the only cause of ALL your problems. Choose to love yourself, and you will reclaim immortality.

All abusers, attackers, haters, hurters, punishers, terrorists, murderers and enemies must be forgiven. And to forgive them is a recognition that they were NEVER the starting point of any suffering. Spacetime began and ends with your decision. Nothing EVER happens without your consent.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. ***I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die.*** I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself."

"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to ***change your mind about yourself***. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die. His Son HAS BEEN redeemed ***from his own crucifixion***, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given eternal life."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys.

God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him.

He did not make two minds, with HEAVEN as the glad effect of one, and EARTH the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

This clearly tells us that God did not create the Earth because to do so would've required he be in TWO minds with TWO effects, which is impossible. Since Earth is opposite to Heaven in EVERY way, God would've had to have created two DIFFERENT creations, unlike each other in every way. This is impossible because everything God creates is the same in every way and like Him in every way.

God could only create ONE EFFECT coming from ONE MIND. He could only create ONE WORLD. And that world must be heaven. It MUST be heaven because love has no opposite, and only the creations of love (God) are real, and therefore the only WORLD that is real is the one God did create, which is Heaven.

Take your pick. Heaven or Earth. Which is your home? Do you REALLY want Earth when you could have Heaven?

Earth is nothing. Heaven is everything. Leaving the Earth behind and going to heaven you will gain everything and lose nothing. This world holds nothing that you want! A teacher of God will gladly give up all the pleasures of the world! This world is not your home! How can a place which does not even EXIST be your home?

As Jesus says:

"Go on to meet them gladly, and learn how much awaits you, for the simple willingness to give up nothing, BECAUSE it is nothing. The new perspective you will gain, from crossing over, will be the understanding of WHERE HEAVEN IS. From HERE, it seems to be outside, and ACROSS the bridge. But, as you cross to JOIN it, IT will JOIN WITH YOU, and BECOME ONE with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this, YOU GAVE UP NOTHING! The joy of Heaven, which HAS no limit, is INCREASED with each light that returns, to take its rightful place within it."

Jesus also says we will watch the world (earth) disappear, together.

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death. This is the message of the crucifixion: there is no order of difficulty in miracles. This is the message of the resurrection. Illusion are illusions. Truth is true. Illusions vanish. Only truth remains."

Earth is illusion. It disappears. ONLY TRUTH remains. Earth does not become part of the truth. IT VANISHES. IT NEVER EXISTED TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!!!!

Earth does not exist. There is no world.

If you take a look back at your life, or even your life right now.... if you examine all the things that ever happened that you were UPSET about, you will find that every single one of them was because some form of SEPARATION was happening.

Grief and loss from the death of someone you know, arose because of a sense of separation or ending.

Being in a panic over losing a job, entering into fear, was a condition of separation from safety and abundance.

Fighting with a coworker over some stupid power struggle, was all to do with you seeing each other as having separate interests.

All sense of unworthiness that came from rejection or abandonment, was all to do with you seeming to be separate from value or separate from that which values (God).

In every case, EVERY case, every single 'form' of upset, although they all look very different and you have many many different words to describe the 'specifics' of a situation, ALL of them were forms of separation in one way or another.

That is because the ONLY problem is separation. And it is only ONE problem. And it has one solution: healing/unity/atonement.

So really, each time we get upset, we need to realize, this isn't really an isolated upset. This isn't a unique upset that is unlike all the others. In fact, it's just another form of the same problem. It's just one more disguised, distorted variation of the same single problem, the same single temptation, the same single puzzle, which is being presented to you by the ego. It only has this one tool to use against you, so it dresses it up in different 'forms and specifics' to try to get you to believe that this isn't the same problem that you encountered last time. It's very deceptive that way. Appearances are very deceptive.

Look deeper. This upset about money is the same as the upset about your parents, the same as the upset about someone dying, the same as the upset about lacking friends, the same as the upset about becoming sick, the same as the upset about something you saw on the news etc. We are so deceived by the ILLUSION of appearances... based on forms ("nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM), that we do not see the similarities. We do not see the generalization of the lesson. We do not realize.. ..."its all the same trick". It's the same single trick, just one problem showing up in different disguises.

If you can latch onto that, which the ego DOES NOT want you to realize, which is the whole point of why it uses ILLUSIONS to create the ILLUSION that there are many many many completely separate problems, then you are homing in on the underlying single 'issue' that needs to be RECOGNIZED as the same single issue. The single CORE of the ego. The one problem of separation from God, from which AAAAAAALL other suffering stems. ALL of it. And thus you need but one solution. IF you can recognize all problems as one problem, then you will become willing to surrender them all in favor of the ONE SOLUTION, which is Holy Spirit.

The truth is quite abstract. Don't be fooled by a world of illusions!

If we are really trying not to be racist, then we really need to recognize that people are equal regardless of their body shapes or sizes or colors right? And this means regarding people as NOT bodies. Because the only way to say that all skin colors are equal is to say that people are not their skin colors. Which leads to recognizing that people are not their bodies. We can't be claiming to be less racist by locking people into their bodies, making their skin color real and important, and then trying to transcend these differences. Coexisting differences is an illusion of peace, and skin color should not matter at all.

The only way that life matters, that all lives matter, is when life is recognized as not a body. Only by recognizing that people are spirit, not bodies, can there be equality. Bodies were made specifically to mis-represent every single person who has one, and to set them apart, and make them look different, and therefore make them fundamentally at war with each other. Only when there are no bodies or when bodies are completely overlooked and not part of what a person is, can there be a true respect for every person.

We should not be aiming for trying to isolate a group of persons based on body types, in the name of trying to make those body types matter. No body types matter. The body is nothing. It is an illusion in a dream. Confusing people with their bodies is mental illness, given that they are not bodies at all. Failing to look past a skin color is a faulty perception based on an unforgiving attitude. To really see a person you have to look past the body entirely.

The body was made to imprison people and to make them out to be something they are not. It was made to attack with. It was made for separating people off based on appearances. All of that has to be overlooked if there is to be true justice and recognition of people's sacredness as spiritual beings. Making certain kinds of bodies matter is really just another ego protest, protesting against its own attacks, having made bodies to make people not matter in the first place, to try to convince us that bodies are important. So long as bodies are the focus, no lives matter at all.

Unforgiving police officers or unforgiving rioters or unforgiving onlookers are all part of the same ego equation of believing mistakenly that people are physical objects. Seeing people that way can only inspire conflict because all physical objects conflict. Spacetime itself was made for that purpose. Racism will not ever end so long as people see each other as physical objects and therefore make the differences real and make it impossible to overlook them. You cannot see difference and equality at the same time.

Only beyond bodies is it possible that we all be totally equal and one and united and whole and recognized and respected. Don't fall for the illusion that upholding certain body types is spiritual. Identifying people as any kind of body is an attack on their true nature, regardless of the skin color or shape or size or persuasion or gender. Bodies are not real. People matter, bodies do not.

"At no time does the body really exist."

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"The body is a dream."

"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"God did not create the body."

"The world goes against your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable. "

Ok. First of all you need to realize the nature of God, in order to realize why this world is totally opposite to his nature.

God is omnipresent. That means "god is everywhere" or present everywhere. But if you think of God perhaps in terms of taking up "space", you might be tempted to think God is a giant object the size of the universe. And from that you might think, PART of God is over there on that side of the galaxy, and another PART of God is over here on this side. But this is not how God is.

All of God, his entire being, all of his mind, all of his self, every part of his entire existence, is FULLY PRESENT, right here in this specific location. AND YET.... at the same time, simultaneously, ALL OF GOD, his entire being, all his mind and self and existence, is "over there" in that other specific location. And in fact in all locations. God defies the limits of spacetime.

He does not compromise. He does not lack. He does not exist based on rules where if part of him is in one place, that part cannot be in another place. That's not his law or nature. God transcends every kind of limit and way in which you think all of Him couldn't possibly be showing up in multiple locations at once. He is totally unlike anything you know in this world.

Now. Let's contrast that against the physical world and the nature of physical matter.

In this world, I think you'll agree, that when an object is in one location, it is not in another location. If I am sitting on my chair, I am not sitting on the couch. If you are driving down Main street, you are not driving down Washington street.

In this world, there is compromise everywhere. There is limitation everywhere. Nothing is shared. No two people can have the same thing at the same time. There isn't anything that can be both FULLY here, and FULLY there. Everything is forced to be partial, limited, finite, restricted to ONE location, and SEPARATED OFF from all other locations.

Here in this world, I cannot give you the contents of my wallet, without lacking it. Here, to give is to sacrifice. Giving here is loss. And by this I mean, at a PHYSICAL LEVEL. Physical sacrifice and loss. It's taking place at the material level regardless of your perception. I cannot give you 100% of my bottle of cocacola and have anything LEFT to drink myself. There is no REAL SHARING. There is no state in which we BOTH can have EVERYTHING at the same time.

And what this produces is a world where the DIFFERENCES OF FORM paint a picture of scarcity, sacrifice, competition, lack, loss, incompleteness, un-wholeness, limitation, contradiction, attack, an inability to share, disconnection and disassociation between particles of matter, nothing ever being in the same place at the same time, nothing overlapping, nothing being joined, nothing being ONE.

Physical matter is a picture of "what is it like, to be TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the nature of God". What is it like, if God were to be NOT fully present anywhere. What would it be like, if limitations were placed on omnipresence so that if all of something is in one place, there is NOTHING LEFT to be in another place. This runs totally contrary to God's nature.

So then the physical forms themselves, are MADE OF, and are locked into, a representation of something UNNATURAL, a system or a state of existence where there are separations everywhere, everything is fundamentally different, forms do not share anything, everything is isolated and excluded. Trying to get any piece of matter to SHARE, would result in an atomic explosion and death.

"The world was made as an attack on God."

The attack is accomplished by making a world which DENIES Him, "the world was made as a place where God could not enter", which shuts out his nature, and which paints a PICTURE of THE TOTAL OPPOSITE to heaven. It is a picture of the annihilation of God's nature. It is a picture of the attempt to murder LIFE, by splitting everything apart, sharing NOTHING. Sharing is LIFE, because life extends and is one. Without any sharing, there is no life. Physical matter is DEATH. It is the picture of crucifixion of God's sin, it is made of the idea of the absence of reality, the absence of life, the absence of innocence, the absence of holiness.

It is a world of sin. PHYSICAL SIN. A picture of what SIN looks like, in form. Forms of error. Every physical object is an ERROR. Every physical object, in its form, in what you think is its "natural" state, which is 100% unnatural, is depicting a MISTAKE, an error, a sin. The idea of death and separation. The idea of differences being reality, and coming between God and himself, and splitting him up into fragments.

This is what sin IS. It's the idea that nothing is one. That death has replaced life. That omnipresence does not exist. That God's nature is NOT the nature of existence. That there is an outcome, a result, which is UNLIKE GOD. That it is natural for forms to murder each other. That just even an apple sitting on a table "not hurting anyone", IS SINNING. Its very FORM, is sin. It's shape, attacks other shapes. It lacks what other shapes have. All the fruits in a fruit bowl are a state of ATTACK and rejection and denial. They are all DIFFERENT, competing with each other, failing to be whole, failing to be holy, failing to be complete or full or identical to anything else. They all hate each other and do not want to join.

In Heaven, everything is created in the image and likeness of God's nature. All of his sons are identical in their nature. No-one has anything that the others don't have. There is SHARING, and overlap, and co-existence, and total oneness and intimacy. All things are JOINED. There is communion and communication. Real connection. Access. Everyone is everywhere. Everyone shares everything with everyone else. It is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the physical world of forms where every single spec of matter is SEPARATED OFF and isolated. Isolation is attack, attack is sin.

In this world, everything OPPOSES everything else. No two physical objects agree. There is no identicality. Even just a pile of stones sitting on the ground, are depicting SIN. They seem harmless but they are showing an image of "what is it like if the nature of God is totally opposed." They are nOT NATURAL. They are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. The stones are split apart from each other. They share nothing. There is a total communication breakdown.

When the Son of God put a fence around a part of his mind, he isolated off a part of the mind and tried to exclude it from SHARING WITH the whole rest of existence. He formed a body to SHUT OUT all other participants in the sharing of heaven, to not share anything WITH them, to stop them from sharing HIMSELF, and to stop himself from sharing THEM. This created a kind of isolated bubble in which he seems to be the only one who exists, and a nothing else exists within him. All others are excluded. God is excluded. And this produces a state of being SEPARATE - a separate self, which is ALONE and imprisoned by form.

ALL PHYSICAL OBJECTS DEPICT THIS STATE, whereby even an apple is the idea of "something existing all by itself cut off from everything else and sharing with no-one." No other object is allowed INSIDE the apple's space. Everything else is kept outside. There is no SHARING. The apple is a picture of isolation and loneliness. Of a separate self. Every PARTICLE of physical matter, every atom, every subatomic particle or quark or quantum or whatever, is an idea of SEPARATION. Separation seeming to have taken on a FORM. The form of sin and error. MATTER IS SIN. And it's sin because it's INSIDE YOUR MIND, because your mind is BIGGER THAN THE UNIVERSE having an idea WITHIN itself of a dreamworld made of death.

Even spacetime itself is the idea of sin. That there could be a space, or a container, in which some of what exists is in one place, but not in another. That something is withheld from sharing. That there is SELFISHNESS. Every physical form is selfish. It is a picture of being alone. Every form is lonely. Every BODY is a fence surrounding part of the mind, put there to shut it off from the rest and keep it isolated. Every single body, including humans and animals and insects and rocks and planets.

Time is the idea that something is different and separate now from what it was a moment ago. This is a total attack on God's nature. God is always the same. "Reality is a constant state." Anything which changes through time is an attack on eternity. It is sin. Time and space are ideas of sin being real.

If we boil it down, sin is the idea that cause and effect have been reversed. It's the idea that you are not an effect of God. It's the idea that you can cause real effects in reality against God's will, effects which are so permanent that they seem "solid". Jesus refers to "the granite block of sin" which the body's eyes CANNOT SEE PAST. All physical forms are blocks of sin.

So if sin is cause-effect reversal, the WORLD, which is a DREAM, is the idea that you are not the dreamer and the dream is dreaming you. When you believe that the world is the cause of you, you WILL perceive it as "real sin". Only when you do not BELIEVE what your EYES are showing you, recognize all FORMS as illusions and errors, and look PAST them to the truth with REASON, only then do you stop being tempted to believe the dream is the cause of you, or that the world is not "really sin". This is forgiveness. It's the recognition that in truth, at the level of true perception, the world is just a MISTAKE, not a real sin.

We made the world from sin, in sin, as sin. Its physicalness is sin. We made it to tempt us to believe in sin. We made the body to fixate on sin and SEE IT as if its real all around us. "The world is false perception." The body's eyes see WITH permanent false perception. IF you believe the eyes, you WILL line up your perception with the eye's images and believe what you see is REAL. And now sin is real to you. If you DON'T believe your eyes, and you stop believing in sin, you will STOP seeing the eye's images as reality. This takes you out of false perception. You now recognize the world, which was made to depict sin and death and crucifixion, is "just a mistake". Forgiven. The forgiven world is the world of sin recognized as just a mistake.

This recognition doesn't stop the world from LOOKING LIKE FORMS, however. It doesn't stop the world being run by ego rules of separation and sacrifice. It doesn't stop objects from not sharing with each other. It doesn't stop an apple from "resisting" being one with an orange. It doesn't stop the picture of crucifixion from still holding the FORM of the idea that God's nature is a lie. The body's eyes CAN ONLY look at sin and error as if real. Physical forms, while they seem to exist, WILL ALWAYS be a picture of crucifixion and sin! Their very NATURE runs contrary to God's nature.

But to see a picture of Christ instead of a picture of hell and sin, our MIND has to learn not to believe the APPEARANCE OF FORMS. To realize that physical matter is LYING. Physical matter is attempting to claim that God is not here and does not exist. It is trying to shut God's nature out so that you do not SEE God as he really is. So you have to learn, this PHYSICAL FORM, IS NOT TRUTH. It is sin and death. A picture of death. And all forms are forms of death, not life. They are death forms. Jesus talks of how they SEEM LIKE LIFE. But they are not. Animal's bodies are NOT REAL LIFE. Human bodies are not real life either.

This world is an illusion, based on sin. "You cannot behold the world and know God." If you are seeing FORMS, and if you are believing they are really there, you are not with God. Or at least, you are partially blocked from awareness of God. But Jesus would be more total... that either you are fully aware of God, or you are not aware at all. All expressions of love are maximal. What is not love, is murder.

This is a murderous world. Or more precisely, it is the contents of a murderous THOUGHT SYSTEM. This world is a SYSTEM of thinking, in which sin is greatly emphasized as true. And you SEE SIN with your eyes, everywhere you look in it. Its a dream of death. Only upon awakening in which there is no world and the world has disappeared, can you finally KNOW GOD and his omnipresent nature, which is TOTALLY UNLIKE THIS WORLD AND OPPOSITE IN EVERY WAY.

A few quotes about working miracles for others...

"In time, you have been told to offer miracles as I direct, and let the Holy Spirit bring to you those who are seeking you. (T-15.V.10:7)

And you will offer miracles because you are one with God. (W-pI.77.1:3)

No one can ask another to be healed. But he can let himself be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. (T-27.V.1:6-7)

Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead. (W-pII.349.Heading)

Offer Christ's gift to everyone and everywhere, for miracles, offered the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, attune you to reality. (T-13.VIII.7:2)"

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

Every anger, every attack, every blame, every scapegoating, every projection, every accusation, all of them do ONE thing. They all emphasize that you are SEPARATE from another. They all say, "I am not you." "We are different" "We are not the same" "What applies to you doesn't apply to me."

The form that these expressions can take are extremely varied. The justifications for them are all over the place. They seem to depend on what the other person is doing, how they behave, what they look like, or whatever. As if this makes your expressions different, or valid for different reasons.

But the underlying truth is, that ALL of these expressions are ALWAYS designed to do one thing - emphasize the separation. They all are attempts to widen the rift between you and another. They are all designed to deepen the pits of hell and cut you off and make you isolated, so that you can pin all the sin and blame on someone "totally not myself." To abolish the idea of sharing and oneness completely.

Separation is really the ONLY gameplan the ego has. It does whatever it can in a million different ways to INCREASE the separation. The separation increases between you and other people. In every relationship, every conflict, every war, the SOLE PURPOSE is to attack, so that you are pushing someone away, and increasing the SPACE AND TIME between you. So that "the world" of spacetime is given greater weight.

Without separation there is no ego. Ego IS separation. It is the inequality and difference which comes about when some part of existence is split off and pitted against another. "You are not my self" it exclaims. "I am not part of you" it exclaims. "We are not one" it claims. And the more it hates another the more dissociated you become from that other and from yourself.

Every attack is an attempt to separate. Every anger is an attempt to claim you are not equals. Every hurt is an attempt to prove someone else did this and not you. Every wound testifies to the separation between wills. In every way, all sickness, all death, all war and murder, is all the ego attempting to increase separation. That is all it does. That is all it can ever do. Because its entire existence is rooted in the idea of being separate.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Everyone in this world seems to have his own special problems. Yet they are all the same, and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

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

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

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

I've been finding lately that turning to love is a problem solving solution. That being in a state of love can in fact solve anything. And this has to mean unconditional love, in terms of it solving any problem in any situation, regardless of the circumstances.

Just feeling a sense of love inside myself, actually has the corrective power to keep me out of fear. It provides a feeling of safety. But it even goes further to influence others and my relationship to them positively. It's like being in a state of prayer. Praying to send love to others, to solve problems.

It seems so simple but it also seems so difficult to consistently trust that turning to love will solve every problem. We're so used to trying to solve problems through so many varied means, so many different forms, different approaches, ways of relating, actions and reactions, that the one thing which solves them all equally becomes obscured.

The ultimate lesson seems to be learning to trust that love can and will solve everything, if we would just turn to it for everything, depend on it for everything, and trust it in all situations to be the solution. After all, God who is love gave the Holy Spirit who is love, to solve the one problem, which led to the illusion of many problems. And in His love all problems are solved equally with the same loving response.

Love simply works, and corrects every error in every way necessary. It is miraculous in its unconditionality and complete denial of the many varied forms of suffering.

A few quotes...

"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."

"This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are not alone. No one who calls on Him can call in vain. Whatever troubles you, be certain that He has the answer, and will gladly give it to you if you simply turn to Him and ask it of Him. He will not withhold all answers that you need for anything that seems to trouble you. He knows the way to solve all problems and resolve all doubts. His certainty is yours. You need but ask it of him, and it will be given you."

"It is NOT difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems for you. HE has not a greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the SAME to Him, because each one is solved in just the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach. The aspects that NEED solving do not change, whatever FORM the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a SPECIAL form. It WILL recur, and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for ALL time, and will not rise again in ANY form. And ONLY then are you RELEASED from it."

"The Holy Spirit offers you release from EVERY problem that you think you have. They are the SAME to Him, because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss, and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And, when the situation is worked out so NO-ONE loses, is the problem gone, because it was an error in perception, which now has been corrected. One mistake is NOT more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there IS but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and COULD result in gain for anyone. If THIS were true, then God WOULD be unfair; sin WOULD be possible, attack be justified, and vengeance fair. This ONE mistake, in ANY form, has ONE correction. There IS no loss; to think there IS, is a mistake."

"Here is the answer to every problem that confronts you today and tomorrow and throughout time. In this world, you believe you are sustained by everything but God. Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."

"In quietness are all things answered, and is every problem quietly resolved. In conflict there can BE no answer and no resolution. For its PURPOSE is to make NO resolution possible, and to ensure NO answer will be plain. A problem set in conflict HAS no answer, for it is seen in different ways. And what would be an answer from one point of view is NOT an answer in another light. You ARE in conflict. Thus it must be clear you cannot answer anything at all, for conflict HAS no limited effects. Yet, if God gave an Answer, there MUST be a way in which your problems are resolved, for what He wills already has been done."

"The one remaining problem that you have is that you see an interval between the TIME when you forgive, and will receive the benefits of trust. This but reflects the little you would keep between YOURSELVES, that you might be a LITTLE separate. For time and space are ONE illusion, which takes different forms. If it has been projected BEYOND your minds, you think of it as time. The nearer it is brought to where it IS, the more you think of it in terms of space. There is a DISTANCE you would keep apart from one another. And this space you see as time, because you still believe you are EXTERNAL to each other. This makes trust impossible. And you can NOT believe that trust would settle every problem NOW."

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

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

Of course it's a bullshit lie.

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

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

But this is a vast illusion.

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

It's a trap folks!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This world holds nothing that I want."

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

A Course in Miracles has some basic structure to it. The very simplest of these is the contrast between reality and illusions. e.g.

God, reality, awakening, light, creation, eternity, wholeness, permanence, heaven, truth, the Kingdom of God, etc... these all represent THE ONE TRUTH. This is "really big picture stuff". Only the Holy Trinity is real.

Illusions, separation, ego, denial, unconsciousness, death, dreaming, attack, murder, sickness, suffering, unawareness, darkness etc... these all represent THE EXACT OPPOSITE TO that one truth.

This produces what you could either think of as "two boxes", or as a container within a container.

Box A: Heaven, God, Creation etc

Box B: World you made, illusions, ego etc

as in "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way"

or

Larger container: Heaven, God, Reality etc

Smaller container inside it: ego, illusions etc

as in "you are safe in God, dreaming of exile"

You as a being, with a mind, are able to seem to "be in" either one of these two states. You can be in reality, or in illusions. You can be in heaven, or on Earth. You can be out of a body, or in a body. You can be having eternal life, or seeming to suffer and die.

In every case, there is a clear distinction between the "box" of reality and the box of illusions. Because in truth, the box of illusions does not really exist. There really IS only reality, and the "illusory fearful world" isn't real.

"Life has no opposite, for it is God."

Jesus describes this:

"If perfect love casts out fear, and if fear exists, then there is NOT perfect love. But only perfect love really exists. Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist"

Your experience of "where you are" and "what you are", is determined by whether you believe that Actual Reality is REAL, or whether an ILLUSION is real. If you believe illusions are real, you will substitute reality for it, BLOCKING your awareness of reality, and you will believe that illusions are reality. This is the ego at work. Being deceived by things which don't exist.

When this happens, you seem to find yourself WITHIN the "context of" which of the two boxes you believe is reality. Either heaven seems real, or earth seems real. Either God's Kingdom is reality, or "the world you made in dreaming" seems real. And if the world you made is your reality, you will believe you are LOCATED inside of it.

Now, there are things which ACIM states about reality, which is true in the biggest possible picture. For example, "Reality is a constant state", "Nothing real can be threatened", "Nothing unreal exists." In this CONTEXT, it might correctly identify that, from the perspective of reality, "the body is a dream" - "the body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist" - "God did not create the body."

These are statements made FROM the context of reality. BUT, in the same Course, Jesus might go on to start talking about the body. He might talk about your USE of it. He might talk about what it pictures or symbolizes. He might talk about how to heal it, and about sickness of the body. These statements are made WITHIN or inside of the context of assuming that "the illusory body seems to exist."

So Jesus then is dipping inside of the "illusions" box, and starting to talk about the body as if it matters. But then later he might jump out of that box again and talk about it as though it is nothing and doesn't exist. He might say "The mind, being sane, heals the body." This is squarely within the context or box of "IF the body exists." We are ASSUMING here that we're talking about the body AS IF it is real. And so now Jesus talks about how to heal or change its condition.

But then Jesus might go on to say, "The body cannot stay without illusions" - "the body is a limit" "therefore it does not exist" etc. And this means he has stepped OUT of the context of the illusion box, into the BIGGER truth. The big truth now reveals that sick bodies and healthy bodies are EQUALLY ILLUSIONS.

What happens then is, if people don't RECOGNIZE which box Jesus is speaking FROM, what the CONTEXT is, what is assumed or accepted for the sake of description, mistaken conclusions will be drawn.

If you don't realize that there even ARE these two "levels" or contexts, you might read the entire course thinking it is describing ONE single context or state. And this will produce significant confusion and contradiction, because he isn't talking that way. What this then means is that you are "confusing the levels" because you are not clearly recognizing the context he's talking in.

So you might say, as if on the same level, "Jesus says sick bodies are the same as healthy bodies"... and "therefore, there's no point healing them." Do you see the subtle shift between contexts? It suddenly went from a "big picture" context, took that "level" of truth, and then shifted into the small picture context, and tried to make the big-picture truth apply equally at that level. This is a mistake in reasoning.

It leads to things like "there's no point changing the world", "there's no point healing bodies", "there's no point working miracles for others" etc. It also leads to "I'm not really a body so I should stop eating", "the world is not real so why bother having relationships", and all kinds of other nonsense. Confusing the levels leads to false conclusions. It also leads to sickness.

There are times where Jesus speaks highly of the world. In its forgiven state, He suggests it is the loveliest thing you'll ever see. How there is nothing but holiness reflected in it. That it's practically like heaven on earth. This is within the context of "inside the illusion box". It's under the ASSUMPTION that we're accepting that "the world seems to exist."

But Jesus then goes on to talk about how the world is NOTHING, the "sorry outcome" of a split mind, a world made by minds driven mad by guilt, an attack on God, a picture of the crucifixion of God's son. That eternity will shine away the world, and even the forgiven world will spin into nothingness. He even goes so far to as imply that in comparison to Heaven's reality, IT IS UGLY.

"This little step, so small it has escaped your notice, is a stride through time into eternity, and beyond all **ugliness**, into beauty that will enchant you, and will never cease to cause you wonderment at its perfection."

So at one moment he is speaking seemingly very highly of this world. Speaking of the highest possible way that you can look upon whatever it is, as if he's putting it on a pedestal and worshipping it. Then the next, he jumps OUT of that context of "the illusory world forgiven" and reminds us of how in the BIG picture, everything he just said so amorously about he world is dashed to the rocks and thrown into oblivion.

Because in the bigger picture, in that CONTEXT, there literally IS NO WORLD. Describing the world then as an illusion, false, unreal, hell, temptation, lack, darkness, the world of sin etc, is a CORRECT and truthful perspective when regarding the world from the LARGER perspective of reality. And this SEEMS now to be a "negative" tone, not at all praising the world or "sounding loving". Yet it is true.

This could cause a lot of confusion if you think that there are no levels or "structure" in the course. Many people, me included, read the course thinking that everything it says is all one ONE level and applies to everything. But believing this, one must be fundamentally confused by what it says. Jesus must sound contradictory. And what He says is likely to be only PARTIALLY accepted.

In this way, we will gravitate towards parts that we find acceptable or "sounding" more lovely, and will likely reject the parts that "sound negative". One part of the course will be pitted against another part and held up as defense against what the other part says.

It is vital to realize that there ARE levels because there IS a significant difference, TOTAL OPPOSITION, between reality and illusions. Which means effectively there are TWO WORLDS. The Kingdom God created, and the one you made to OPPOSE it. And the one you made in dreaming is totally opposite to God's.

"Earth, heaven's OPPOSITE in EVERY way."

You find yourself on earth in a body because of the fact you don't want to be IN the CONTEXT of heaven. Each of these two major contexts are not just concepts. Each one is a thought system. Each has produced an entire REALM of existence. And each is its own WORLD.

When you are IN the context of reality, you are NOT in this world. When you are IN the context of illusions, you are in THIS world. You cannot be in THIS world, this context, and be free of illusions. "The body cannot stay without illusions." "Indeed, you cannot remain in the world with this knowledge." "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "Those who perceive still need healing". etc.

So there are two major contexts, two worlds, two realms in which to find yourself, two thought systems, two "universes", and only one of them is totally true. The other seems true ONLY WITHIN its own context of "it seems to exist." If the world is accepted as existing, there IS something to be done to help others in the world. There is a curriculum to learn. There are miracles to perform. Bodies and minds need healing.

"The Soul never loses its communion with God. ***Only the mind and body need Atonement.*** The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors."

Outside of the context of "I am in this world", being OUTSIDE the illusion box, you exist in Heaven with God. In Heaven there is absolute reality, permanence, truth, certainty, communion, creation, eternal life, holiness, omnipresence, immortality, constancy. "Outside" heaven in the dream world, none of these things are possible because the illusory world DENIES all of them.

So beware when you read ANYTHING in the Course, try to discern WHAT level it's on. What context is it being said within. And watch even for shifts in context/levels mid-sentence. Creating in your mind a crystal clear distinction between the two levels, assigning appropriate things to EACH BOX, will go a really long way to clarifying what Jesus MEANS and what he's referring to.

There are some extremely lofty beautiful things He says which are STILL squarely within the realm of illusions. And there are things which don't sound beautiful at all which are actually coming from a HIGHER level. "There is no world" isn't a damning condemnation of this world. It's just being honest about this illusion, from the perspective of the big picture. It actually should be cause for celebration.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer. The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

"You are NOT limited by the body, and thought CANNOT be made flesh. But mind can be manifested through the body if it goes beyond it and DOES NOT INTERPRET IT AS LIMITATION. Whenever you see another as limited TO or BY the body, you are imposing this limit ON YOURSELF. Are you willing to ACCEPT this, when your whole purpose for learning should be to escape FROM limitations?" UrT8G16

Bodies don't really matter in a relationship. The soul is androgynous and perfect. It isn't male or female. It has no limits and loves unconditionally.

It uses a body temporarily and then moves on. It might've had lifetimes as men and women, children and the elderly, as parents or alone. It could've had a gay body or a straight body, an overweight body or a skinny body. Whatever. Across its experience of so many different types of bodies, it cannot help but generalise the learning and detach from the specifics of each of them. It learns again to love regardless of form.

There could be a lifetime where two souls meet and they have certain types of bodies. They may or may not even be attracted to each other's bodies, or be compatible physically. Perhaps they are man and woman but one of them is gay. Perhaps they are from different cultures or races. It doesn't matter.

The body really is just a kind of tool that the soul uses. The body has its severe limitations and its limited scope of expression, which means that as the soul uses it, it has to work with what it's got. If it wants to talk, the words are likely to come out sounding the way that the body instrument allows to happen. If it wants to have intercourse, it has to work with whatever appendages or holes are available. If it wants to hug it has to deal with its length of arms and its roundness of belly.

If the soul is not heavily body identified, its view of the body is very detached and transcendental. The body doesn't really matter to it, nor does the bodies of others. When the soul is more identified with and lost in its current body, taking it to define itself and to be itself, this narrow perspective will inhibit relationship and make it more conditional. The bodies of others then matter more, relationships have more criteria, and everything has to be acceptable within limits. There is also more hell to pay when the rules are broken.

Ultimately we're meant to learn to love ourselves and everyone equally and fully, regardless of their bodies. We are to use the body as best we can to relate though and beyond, without placing so much emphasis on the body itself of what appear to be very limited categorisations of types.

Jesus suggests in the course for example that everyone should love everyone regardless of specific bodily appendages. A soul-to-soul communication is more important than cutting off a brother because their body is a certain type or style. This even applies to people having disabilities and sicknesses, learning to love them regardless of what their bodies are doing, and looking past the body to the immortal spirit within.

In my marriage for example, I was a male-gendered body person married to a female-gendered body person. She was 18 years older than me, which didn't matter. I had some attractions towards men as well, which didn't matter to her. She was from a different country thousands of miles away, which didn't matter. She grew up in a different culture, which didn't matter either.

Regardless of the sense of specialness and exclusivity in the relationship, there was also a more transcendental and unconditional element. I had some attractions to men for example, which she knew about, and she found it interesting and a curiosity instead of judging against it. She was willing even to encourage me toward it even if it meant her and I possibly not being together. Just as she at times wanted to be with other men.

We still had intimate relations which entailed a biological compatibility, even if in some way we might not have been entirely on the same page. We used what we had and made it work, because it was really more important that we were together and loving each other. A love that transcended the physical. A love between souls that spanned many lifetimes and many bodies. We could've been even more extremely different on the physical level and I think we would still have had a deep soul connection.

Ultimately what this has taught me is that the physicality of the body is not really that important. It is much more important to love a person and be open and honest and trusting. To share deeply and intimately, emotionally and psychologically. This can happen even if the bodies appear to be what the world would consider thoroughly incompatible. We turned heads with our weirdness and our age gap, for example. This can happen for gay or straight people, for people with any kind of body and any kind of persuasion. Every relationship has the potential to be holy.

What I realise now is that for any future relationship, it doesn't really matter if the person is male or female, or looks a certain way. It doesn't have to be a 'mr right' or a 'mrs right', or some kind of ideal model of perfection. The person is more important, the mind-to-mind is more important. If it comes with a certain type of body, and even if that body has certain limitations, it doesn't really matter.

Having a full whole relationship is more important than just some physical sexual hookup that's empty and cold and full of ego. If the person has certain genetalia, or types thereof, what does it matter, really, if the love transcends it? The two souls potentially relating on a higher and more whole level is what's important. This can even take place without any physical interaction or proximity or anything that the world might think of as a relationship. It can happen with strangers. It can happen anywhere, and beyond any type of body.

Looking past the body to the soul/mind is what's really important. The holy spirit's home is in our relationship to the christ in ourselves and others, which overlooks bodies and regards them as nothing but tools. If you still use them to interact then so be it, within the limits and specifics that the body allows. Sex is a limitation just as gender is but you can still use it while the mind is in a higher state. We're supposed to learn to love people as beings, as children of God, regardless of what their bodies are doing. Because ultimately no-one is really a body anyway.

"I could not atone for MYSELF ALONE. Listening to one Voice implies the decision to share It in order to hear It yourself. The Mind that was in me is still irresistibly drawn to EVERY MIND CREATED BY GOD, because God's Wholeness is the Wholeness of His Son. You cannot be hurt, and do not want to show YOUR BROTHER anything except your wholeness. Show him that he cannot hurt you and hold nothing against him, or you hold it against yourself. This is the meaning of turning the other cheek."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being, He encompasses all things. NO MIND (implying there are many) holds anything but Him (therefore he created many minds)."

"Miracles make MINDS one in God. They depend on cooperation because the SONSHIP is the SUM OF ALL THAT GOD CREATED. Miracles therefore reflect the laws of eternity, not of time."

"God speaks for you in answering your question with these words: I walk with God in perfect holiness. I light the world, I light my mind and ALL THE MINDS WHICH GOD CREATED ONE WITH ME"

"ONE CHILD OF GOD (implying there are many) is the only teacher sufficiently worthy to teach ANOTHER (there are many!). One Teacher is in ALL YOUR MINDS, and He teaches the same lesson TO ALL. He always teaches you (one such mind) the inestimable worth of EVERY SON OF GOD, teaching it with infinite patience born of the infinite love for which he speaks."

"The Holy Spirit is the spirit of joy. He is the Call to return which God blessed THE MINDS OF HIS SEPARATED SONS. This is the vocation of the mind."

"Let us not wander into temptation, for the temptation of the Son of God is not Your Will. And let us receive only what You have given, and accept but this INTO THE MINDS WHICH YOU CREATED AND WHICH YOU LOVE. Amen."

-----------------

I don't know about you guys-n-gals but it sounds to me very clearly that there are MULTIPLE SONS and MULTIPLE MINDS. And that the presence of multiple minds is completely natural and normal because God CREATED THEM. Therefore EACH ONE has its "own mind". Each mind may well be "one" or in harmony with other minds, but there are still many minds, and each still has its own potential to choose whether to do God's will or not.

This is why some parts of the Course refer on ONE LEVEL to the ONE SON OF GOD, and on another level to the MANY INDIVIDUAL SONS (or souls).

------------------

References to BROTHERS who are one with God:

"You are afraid of God because you fear your BROTHER. This BROTHER who stands beside you still seems to be a stranger."

"Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only BROTHER to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a BROTHER he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."

"To know your BROTHER is to know God."

"Miracles unite you directly with your BROTHER."

"One moment of real recognition makes everyone your BROTHER."

"Any BROTHER with whom you have a limited relationship, you hate."

"Don't deny yourself the message of relief that every BROTHER offers you now."

"It is not up to you to change your BROTHER, but merely to accept him as he is."

"In your BROTHER is the light. See him as sinless, and there can be no fear in you."

"The miracle enables you to see your BROTHER without his past, and so perceive him as born again."

"Your BROTHER does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for the miracle to occur."

"What you acknowledge in your BROTHER you are acknowledging in yourself, and what you share you strengthen."

"The miracle acknowledges everyone as your BROTHER and mine. It is a way of perceiving the universal mark of God."

"Because the miracle worker has heard God's Voice, he strengthens It in a sick BROTHER by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does not share." (again confirmation that your brother can refuse healing even if you are healed)

"Where there is love, your BROTHER must give it to you because of what it is. But where there is a call for love, you must give it because of what you are." (similarly again, you give love to those who lack it)

"How willing are you to forgive your BROTHER? How much do you desire peace instead of endless strife and misery and pain? These questions are the same, in different form."

"Trials are but lessons you failed to learn presented once again, so where you made a faulty choice before you now can make a better one. In every difficulty Christ calls to you and gently says, My BROTHER, choose again."

"If you attack error in another, you will hurt yourself. You cannot know your BROTHER when you attack him. Attack is always made upon a stranger. You are making him a stranger by misperceiving him, and so you cannot know him. It is because you have made him a stranger that you are afraid of him. There are no strangers in God's creation."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your BROTHER did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in that view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin, except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is the will of God."

"Not one does Christ forget. Not one He fails to give you to remember, that your home may be complete and perfect as it was established. He has not forgotten you. But you will not remember Him until you look on all as He does. Who denies his BROTHER is denying Him, and thus refusing to accept the gift of sight by which his Self is clearly recognized, his home remembered and salvation come."

---------------

It seems to me what the One Son of God, as Christ, is considered a BROTHER to the MANY SONS, who were also created (souls?) as extensions of him/god, ... and that at times the course refers to them on an equal footing because they are made of God-stuff equally, even though Christ appears to be a "larger" identity than the individual sons. But Christ+the individual sons make up "the sonship". So the sonship is not just the individual sons, it also includes the one son, and all are considered equal brothers in that sonship.

Resurrecetion and salvation is all about finding freedom from GUILT. Which means reclaiming your INNOCENCE. Guilt is the subtrate of the ego, of all sickness, all forms of suffering, the world, and even death. Without guilt there is no separation, no misery, no spacetime and no ego. Guilt is death just as innocence is life. The attraction of guilt is the opposite to the attraction of God. Guilt is hell, innocence is heaven. We must purge ALL GUILT from our minds and reclaim the innocence that was hidden!

"****Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing.****" "And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time."

"Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered to the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation."

"His real escape from guilt can lie only in the recognition that the guilt has gone. And how can this be recognized as long as he hides it in another, and does not see it as his own?"

"From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end."

"Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness." "With everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice." "The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct, if it is understood."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is NOT its goal, and the ESCAPE from guilt becomes its aim."

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."

"Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt."

"In the crystal cleanness of the release you GIVE, is YOUR INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You MUST be holy, if you OFFER holiness."

"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack MAKES GUILT REAL, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been."

"Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released"

"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well."

"God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt."

"The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

There is a clear teaching in ACIM that there are TWO worlds, and you can ONLY see one of the two in its entirety at any given time. Seeing one, REQUIRES you NOT TO SEE the other. You CANNOT see both of them in full simultaneously. And each of them uses a different KIND of vision, designed ONLY to see one kind of world.

One of these two worlds is Earth and its environment - all galaxies etc. The other is the real world/heaven - God's creation. You can ONLY see ONE of the two in full. If you shift your vision to true perception you can see God's world. If you shift your vision to false perception you can see the physical world. But you CANNOT DO BOTH AT ONCE.

So there is a dynamic, whereby the MORE that you see the real world, the LESS you see the physical world. As the real world "phases in", the physical world "fades out". You cannot see both at once, and in order to see one or the other you have to sacrifice the ability to see its opposite.

To the DEGREE that you value one of the worlds, that is how much you will see it, and inversely, this valuing of it causes you NOT TO VALUE the opposite world, which causes you to SEE IT LESS. This is a basic function of perception, that you see what you value, because you believe in it, and thus want to see it. You do NOT SEE what you DO NOT VALUE. And any world you consider "false" due to its opposite being "true", becomes invisible to you.

This is a very core teaching. You are choosing between heaven or hell.

"The world is false perception" and relies on physical sight of photons using the biological apparatus of the eyeballs an nerves etc.

The real world is true perception/christ vision and relies on the spiritual eye, which in turn DOES NOT rely on the body, and is direct mind-seeing.

Two types of perception. Two ways of seeing. Two worlds resulting. "The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear"

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

""The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten"

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

"When the thought of separation has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear."

There are many ACIM myths circulating and one of them is an improper idea of what the Holy Spirit is. Some people will say "he is just your right mind". This isn't accurate enough and can be misleading, greatly diminishing the Holy Spirit's function and power.

When you were created by God, you were created complete and lacking nothing. You are a whole being, a son of God, extended from wholeness. At this point, the Holy Spirit did not exist, and was not needed.

It was only in the separation from God, which was the "fall of man" or the attempt to BELIEVE that separation was possible, which has happened. .... that God created the Holy Spirit. God ADDED the Holy Spirit to the mind in order to protect the connection between all parts of mind, and to guarantee the healing of the belief in separation. He is "God's Voice" calling you to return to sanity.

So the Holy Spirit is actually ADDITIONAL. This means that originally there wasn't a holy trinity, there was in effect a holy duality. But when the Holy Spirit was ADDED to creation, as an eternal and permanent being, with a mind and with creative power, the holy duality became a holy trinity.

The Holy Spirit is to be thought of as in addition to you. Something extra. This is why the course tells you that he is actually your "appointed friend". He is in parallel to you, another alongside you, a helper, a supporter, a healer, a teacher, a comforter, and the answer to the question of separation.

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together. For God's answer to the separation added more to you than you tried to TAKE AWAY."

Since the dynamics of heaven are holographic, in which there is a shared oneness, you can say for example that each son of God shares everything with all the others. They are brothers to each other as individuals but they still are one with and united with each other, as though part of each other.

In the same way, the Holy Spirit was ADDED as another created being to be shared with, to be one with, and to be part of you. But when you say he is part of you, you must be careful not to be thinking in separating terms. This doesn't mean he is ONLY a part of you, or exclusive to your mind, or just another name for some pre-existing part of your mind.

The Holy Spirit is shared with all minds and is like an extra layer of mind added on top of the christ mind. Being united in oneness with you, he does share everything with you, which in the holographic sense means you share the same wholeness that he shares with God. Which makes him literally part of you - as the collective sonship/kingdom, but he is STILL a distinct created individual entity.

ACIM actually tells us that the holy spirit is a co-creator with God, is an eternal creation, will always exist even after the atonement, implies that he has his own creations, is a very firm third entity in the trinity of God-Sonship-HolySpirit, and that there ARE "three" components to that. To deny this is to deny that the TRINITY is real.

The Holy Spirit is not your higher self. He is not just some piece of your mind that remained sane while the rest of it went nuts. He is actually a third party. He is an entity, an actual spirit being. He has eternal life. He has mind and thought. He can create as well as heal. He is a living being. And he was given to creation as part of creation to keep all the seemingly separated parts of mind connected and to act as a savior and healer of the mind's insanity.

Your higher self is your soul, which is a son of God, which God created originally. Your higher self is your ONLY real self, and it's what and who you are. The Holy Spirit having been added to creation has become part of you, just as God is part of you and your brothers are part of you and your creations are part of you. That doesn't mean he's some kind of little compartment that's in your mind that was always there since the start. He is secondary and additional to your mind. Him being "part you" doesn't mean he is "just a part of you". He spans beyond you and includes others as well.

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time. Before that, there was no need for healing and no-one was comfortless."

Here for example there is a suggestion that the Holy Spirit is "nothing more than" the christ mind, as if to say that he is a synonym for christ. But that is not an appropriate interpretation because christ is the second part of the trinity, and the Holy Spirit is actually a distinct third part. He symbolizes God and he symbolizes christ, having a somewhat symbolic function, but that doesn't mean he isn't a fully created being in his own right.

As it says, the Holy Spirit came into being along with the separation (tiny mad idea) as God's answer to that idea, his guarantee of its undoing. He should rightly be thought of as your friend and helper because he literally is an additional being that God added to creation.

When we say the Holy Spirit is some kind of "synonym" for "my right mind", we're stripping him of all his life and his eternal nature, his power and his creative ability. We're trying to then exclude him from existing as a standalone third party, and are trying to REDUCE him to being "just" some little part of our mind that remembers God. He isn't "your memory of God", but he does remember/know God FOR you until you can remember and know God for yourself.

The attempt to think of him as "only my right mind" or "my true self" is really an attempt to limit what he is and pretend he doesn't exist. This was part of the teaching of certain individuals who did not like the idea of the Holy Spirit actually existing. It's something you should be wary of because the Holy Spirit is there for you, is there to help you and heal you and guide you, to teach you and decide for you, to give you the eyes of christ, and to resurrect you from death. To say he is just some part of your own mind is self-centered as if you can "save yourself". Which is a usurping of his function.

He must be acknowledged as something that God did in fact deliberately create and ADD as a response, as a purposeful act of creation, and one which is eternal. You tried to take something away from God and God ADDED even more than you took away by creating the Holy Spirit. He is MORE THAN just you. He is also partly God. He also has functions that you do not have. He is due proper acknowledgement and recognition as a truly fully created being in his own right.

It is once again "separatist thinking", based on exclusive either/or logic, that leads people to conclude the Holy Spirit is EITHER part of me own self or EXCLUDED from me. And since the course says he is part of you, people then think that he is EXCLUSIVELY part of you and does not exist beyond you. That is the fallacy of this kind of thinking. In truth the Holy Spirit is you AND is others AND is God. He is more than just you and more than just a part of you. He is the third entity in the trinity of God's creation and always will be.

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD's."

"The Holy Spirit abides in the part of your mind that is part of the Christ Mind. He represents your Self and your Creator, Who are One. He speaks for God and also for you, being joined with both."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

In this world, all things lead to death. It's as though a missile has been fired, flying through the sky, and hurtling toward the ground. There is a sense of inevitability of decay, that everything will just gradually erode and age and suffer and die eventually. As though this is the way of the world.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its powers decline if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

When you look at the world in this way you can't really help but notice this is the case, except if you are denial of this fact. And while in that denial you might be thinking the world isn't so bad, except that eventually it proves itself. "Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer.

ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

I recognize that when I am looking with my ego, or my worldly earthly body-identified 'normal view', this is the view I am adopting. I am going along with this "plan" of the world that everything before my eyes will wither and die. "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

This is just how the world functions. It's how we set it up. It's what we call "natural". So when the leaves fall from the trees we think this is totally normal. When the bodies lay in the graves we think this is totally normal. But this entire system is entirely unnatural and not at all like God's reality.

"Without the idea of death there is no world." When you are aligning yourself with God's reality, with heaven's true nature, you are in support of life. In fact you support eternal longevity. You reject all notions of decay, degradation and death. In fact you not only move away from the downward "arc" of death's direction, you move UPWARD in a direction towards God. In this direction there is an arrow pointing toward the sky, as things which were death come back to life, and life is restored, and things are working out, and there is healing and miracles and reasons for happiness.

After a while of trying to recognize that God's ways are upward-bound, and earth's ways spiral into the dirt, the two "systems" of thinking become more clearly distinguished. And they are very much opposed to each other. The contrast between the two "modes of perception" becomes more intense and obivous.

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

The world might be giving a message like "this is just going to get worse until there is death". But a God-aligned mind is asserting life, saying "This is going to get better and better until there is immortality." The two paths or viewpoints do not meet in the middle, they do not converge or agree with each other at all. They point in totally different directions - toward heaven or hell, towards life or death.

If you look at something happening and you say to yourself, this is real, and it's true, and this is natural, and this is how it's just going to be, and there is no hope and no future and eventually there's going to be death, then you're in the ego. You're falling for TEMPTATION. You're getting lost in the world and doing nothing to counteract its lies. Because the world is NOTHING like heaven and all its efforts are attempts to prove that sin is real and death is justified.

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true. In Heaven, where the meaning of love is known, love is the same as UNION. Here, where the ILLUSION of love is accepted IN ITS PLACE, love is perceived as separation and EXCLUSION."

To be in this world but OF ANOTHER WORLD, to be of God and heaven and yet with your feed on the earth, is to be UNNATURAL in terms of what the world thinks is natural. But in fact it is to be ABOVE the nature of the world - which means super-natural. It is the world that is unnatural. It is the world that is false and a lie. To recognize it for what it is, one has to adopt the upward-pointing resurrective miraculous path. Otherwise you are simply heading for the grave.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego's logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. For there alone their SEEMING clearness SEEMS TO BE CLEARLY SEEN. Let us now turn AWAY from them, and follow the simple logic, by which the Holy Spirit teaches you the simple conclusions that speak for truth, and ONLY truth."

WHAT IS TIME? IS IT ETERNITY? IS TIME REALITY? GOD's CREATION?

There have been a couple of posts here talking about time, and speculating with wishful-thinking that time is eternal or a creation of God. This is not true. The course is very clear on this.

"Time and Eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other." - ACIM

"For place (space) has gone as well, along with time." - ACIM

"It is this fact which demonstrates that time is an illusion." -ACIM

So what is time anyway? And what is eternity? And why does Jesus state that they CONTRADICT each other?

Eternity means, everything always exists forever. There is no beginning, there is no end. There is also no change. There are not temporary one-off events. There is no transition, no adjustment, no becoming, no growth, nothing gradually progressing. There is no decay, no distortion, and no death. Eternity is a PERMANENT state of PERPETUAL SAMENESS.

"Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

"Reality is a constant state."

"And what He knows exists forever, changelessly."

Now, in this state of eternity, prior to the separation, there was NO SUCH THING as time or space. Reason being that both time and space are illusions which COMPLETELY OPPOSE the idea of eternal life. Not just a little. They are diametrically opposite and completely contradictory.

In eternity, everything exists everywhere. Everything is shared by everything. Every son of God shares all of himself with every other son of God. God is one with everyone. You are united with your brothers. But not only this, but in "spatial terms", what exists in one location exists fully in all locations. This is the idea of omnipresence and is the divine nature of everything that exists in God.

In the separation idea, we wanted to DENY eternity, and to DENY that everything is everywhere, and DENY that everything is shared by everyone, and DENY omnipresence. We wanted a TOTAL OPPOSITE to this condition of abstract unity. The result of this was SPACE.

Space is a false belief, based entirely on the notion of an opposite to spacelessness, ie an opposite to omnipresence. It's the idea that God, who is everywhere, does not exist anywhere. By virtue of the fact that in space, no two things share the same space, and by virtue of the fact that in space any particular location contains only PART OF what exists and not the whole, space is literally the idea that "nothing exists everywhere" and "everything exists nowhere." This could not be more of an attack on God's nature.

"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."

"The world was made as an attack on God."

Time is similarly blasphemous. In eternity, where everything is always the same, everything has eternal immortal life, nothing changes, and everything is permanent. What exists has always existed and always will, without the need for time.

Time is nothing short of the idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to eternity. It's founded on the false belief that everything changes, nothing is EVER the same as it was, what exists now DID NOT exist before, and what exists now WILL CEASE to exist in the near future. It is the idea of IMpermanence, the idea of MORTALITY, and the idea of DEATH. Time, is the symbolic notion that *everything always changes* and therefore *nothing exists forever*. This could BE MORE opposed to the nature of God and the divine continuity of reality.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

So make no mistake, both space and time were EGO FABRICATIONS based in the tiny made idea, made as ATTACKS upon God, designed to SHUT OUT God's nature, to depict a world or state so completely opposite to the omnipresent everlasting nature of God, that if you behold the world you are BLINDED to God.

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

Space was an attack on God's nature. Time was an attack on God's nature. NEITHER of them are holy, spiritual, virtuous, constant, permanent, truthful, or real. Space and time, all of "space time", the entire "space time continuum", is A LIE. It is fiction. Everything within it is AN ILLUSION. The world, the planets, the galaxies, all of it, ANYTHING that RELIES UPON three dimensional spatial relations is an illusion. You cannot have a three dimensional planet earth WITHOUT space, and it cannot "evolve" WITHOUT time. And every moment of "evolution" is a moment of DEVOLUTION, a proof that eternity has ended and something has come to replace it. Change is only possible in hell, not heaven.

Without space or time, the world that we made CANNOT EXIST. Without space, there is no way to have 3D physical objects, yet alone planets. JEsus says this here:

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone ****what more remains to keep a separated world in place?**** ****For place has gone as well, along with time.**** Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

Without place and time, ie spacetime, it is NOT POSSIBLE to have planet earth. In any form. And without guilt, there is no belief in spacetime. So when guilt is gone, the world MUST vanish.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as **nothing more than just a fragile veil**, so easily dispelled that it can ***last no longer than an instant.*** It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it ***cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant ****is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."****

The fact is, space and time are ego illusions. They do not really exist. They are NOT God's creations. And they absolutely are not holy or real or spiritual. They are literally nothing, mere illusions, a thin veil of smoke and mirrors, designed to deceive. And as Jesus says in the quote I opened with, time and eternity are CONTRADICTORY. Totally opposites to each other. Time is not a "misinterpretation" of eternity. It's a total fiction. We have not "misunderstood time's reality". Time is NOT reality. Ever. Never. If time has ANY reality, God would have an end.

Do not fall for the wishful level-confused thinking of some ACIM students who want to keep the world and find ways to spiritualize it. They are not ready to accept that this world is not real, or that space and time aren't even real at all. You don't NEED space or time to exist, any more than you need a fictional body.

Time is an illusion. There is no time. Only eternity is real.

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally"

In the separation from God, each of us has condemned ourselves. We've accused ourselves of sin, and condemned ourselves to suffer. We want ourselves to be punished, murdered, and destroyed. Ultimately this is a death wish, in which we have become suicidal because we don't believe we deserve to live or to be loved by God. You might be thinking, suicidal? I'm not suicidal. Well think again.

At the same time as trying to destroy yourself to prove you don't exist in God, your true self is utterly sinless, guiltless, innocent, holy and pure. You have never sinned or hurt or commit a crime or broke a law. You have never done anything to anyone, and no-one has ever attacked you. You are immortal and eternal and endless and permanent. And no harm can come to you because God himself protects you.

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you"

The problem is, there is a seeming "gap" between what is really true of you, and what you currently BELIEVE. And if you are not in touch with your utter immaculate sinlessness, then some part of you DOES believe you are condemned to hell. God isn't doing this condemnation, nor are your brothers.

It's all an inside job of your own self attack. It is your self destruction. And this is suicidal. Even though death isn't real, this needs to be undone because the belief in your non-existence keeps you from being happy.

Looking at what you are doing to yourself is not pretty. If you are not accepting your sinlessness, it means you are believing you are sinful. It means you don't love yourself. It means you actively attack yourself and are trying to destroy yourself. Such as in "my attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." It means you don't really like yourself, yet alone love yourself with the love of God.

So now if you think about it in terms of the "relationship" that you have "with yourself", as if you could relate to yourself like a third party, how do you really feel about yourself? What is your honest current attitude towards yourself? If it's not one of total unconditional perfect love, then it isn't a very healthy relationship.

If there is a belief in being sinful, or evil, or a monster, or unworthy, or not good enough, or you resent yourself, or are angry at yourself, or keep judging yourself, or see yourself as weak, or hurt yourself emotionally or physically, or keep being abusive towards yourself, there are all signs of a breakdown in relationship.

And what that ultimately means is that you have not forgiven yourself. You're in this relationship with someone that you don't want to be with. And that is going to split your mind and hurt your mind. If you don't love yourself and embrace yourself with acceptance then how can you possibly relate to yourself at all?

Think of yourself as in the shoes of a person that you don't like in a similar way. If you don't like that person you don't want to be near them. You don't want to give them things. You don't want to share with them or spend time with them. You don't want them to exist. You don't care if they get hurt or suffer. You want them to suffer. And you may even feel so bitter towards them that you wish they were dead. Is that the relationship you are having with YOURSELF?

You have to look deep within yourself with much honesty to find this out. And it's probably going to be somewhat painful or even scary. You may not actually even realize or recognize that you have it in for yourself, or want yourself to suffer, because you may be so used to a general level of background destructiveness that you think it's totally normal. You might not have even seen how much you hate yourself.

"You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves. YOU HATE YOUR MINDS, for guilt has entered into them, and they would remain separate, which they CANNOT DO."

"You HATE the prison that you made, and would destroy it."

"You are afraid of Him, and do not see you hate and fear your Self as enemy."

"And why do you attack them anywhere except you hate yourself?"

"But if you hate part of your own Soul, ALL your understanding is lost, because you are looking on what God creates AS YOURSELF without love."

"You do not realize how much you hate each other. You will not get rid of this until you DO realize it, for UNTIL then, you will think you want to get rid of EACH OTHER and KEEP THE HATRED. "

So you have to look at this stuff. And typically you need a strong contrast in order to recognize it. Get in touch with what it means to be sinless. That your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Get a feel for total pure innocence and the complete absence of all attack, even slight annoyances. And then in that light, look at how you feel about yourself.

Do you still feel like attacking? Do you still feel a need or requirement to judge and blame? Do you condemn others to hide your self condemnation? Are you constantly fighting with people? Do you feel unhappy most of the time? If you have any of the "symptoms" of the ego, which is anything not of God, then certainly there is room for improvement in your relationship with yourself.

First you need to recognize that you even DO hate yourself, before you can be willing to take steps to heal that relationship. And you can't see that unless you have some kind of higher truth about you to compare it to. Your utter pure sinlessness in God, your immortal innocence, the guarantee of eternal life, can act as a contrast and at reality-tester to find out just how you really do feel about yourself. And once you find that out, you have healing work to be done upon yourself. You need correction and forgiveness. You need to FORGIVE YOURSELF, in order to recognize you are sinless and free.

"You have condemned yourself, but condemnation is not of God."

"You who believe you have condemned the Son of God"

"But in the dream of judgment, you attack and ARE condemned."

"And unless He had given you a way to remember, you would have condemned yourselves to oblivion."

"Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find."

"If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice."

"Guilt is ALWAYS in your OWN mind, WHICH HAS CONDEMNED ITSELF. Project it not, for while you do, it cannot BE undone."

"The delusional can be very destructive, for they do not recognize they have condemned THEMSELVES."

"It is not God Who has condemned His Son. But ONLY you, to save his specialness, and kill his Self."

"Remember, then, that whenever you look without and react unfavorably to what you see, you have judged yourself unworthy, and have condemned yourself to death."

"You have handled this wish TO KILL YOURSELF by NOT KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, and identifying with something ELSE. You have projected guilt blindly and indiscriminately, but you have NOT uncovered its source. For the ego DOES want to kill you, and if you identify WITH it, you MUST believe ITS GOAL IS YOURS."

You don't need to die. You need to forgive yourself.

There are really only two modes of functioning of which you are capable. It really does boil down to a simple "this or that" decision. Either you are in love, or you are in fear. Love has only one nature, but fear masquerades as an untold number of illusions. All of them are fearful and they represent egotism. But they are all essentially a withdrawal away from love.

To love is an outward expression. It is extension. Love shines and radiates out of you towards others. This love seeks to uplift, empower, heal, nurture, strengthen, join, share, communicate, connect, give, supply, support, make whole. Love is always given/extended through you from God and goes out to your brothers and to the world. It is an outward transfer which entails you loving and joining with everything.

Love, and all expressions of love, are miraculous and healing. Love is powerful, it is happy and joyful, and it is peaceful. It is meaningful. Love is sanity. Love heals and resurrects. And love can reverse all forms of suffering. Love shines like a bright light, and as you give it, you receive it because it is shared and for all. As you give it, you shine, and in this shining you illuminate both yourself and others, and in this light you can see, and what you look upon is illuminated with love and is lovable.

The opposite of this is fear. Fear is separation, contraction, withdrawal, and inward focus. Fear is selfish, victimizing and victimized. In fear you feel afraid, angry, upset, hurt, weakened, sick, tired, stressed and damaged. In fear you pull way from others and the world, you hate and attack, you feel imposed upon and controlled, and eventually die. Fear is an attempt not to extend love, not to give life, and to be alone. In fear you will feel alone, cut off, isolated, imprisoned.

In fear you will feel like you've been taken hostage, all the happenings around you will seem like they are against you with no escape, all problems will seem insurmountable and unfair and cruel, and you will feel like you're in a dark pit of hellish despair that you can't get out of. It's as if you've been taken hostage by a tyrannical ruler who has imprisoned you and kept you in a dark hole in the ground. And everywhere you turn there will be enemies and haters and attackers and prison guards.

What it boils down to is a very, very simple difference between the two approaches to life. Each approach entails a different kind of seeing. Fear places you in false perception, where the whole world seems like a prison. Love places you in true perception, where the whole world is harmless and forgiven.

Love entails giving in order to receive. As you give love, as you shine your light, as you extend, you yourself are uplifted. "Miracles benefit both the giver and the receiver." Even if you start out in fear and lack, efforting to love more will empower you and lift you out of darkness. To love is to fulfill your natural function. You are supposed to shine. You are supposed to radiate. You are supposed to give and extend and reach out to join with others in love. AS you do this you automatically are protected and saved and it raises you up into the light where you are happy and at peace.

When you don't do this, you must recoil and withdraw into fear. You will step back and not give. And it will now seem that the world has taken from you. A gap will form in between you and others. You will develop enemies and opponents. You will hate some of them and hate yourself for hating them. You will become weak, afraid, lost, alone, and suffer in the dark. You will feel isolated and sick and like no-one is on your side. The world will loom heavily over you as if it has power to make your life hell. And all the while you will be trying to get, to take, to have, to own, to possess, to be special, and you will feel selfish. And everything offered by love will be missing.

It really is as simple as if you have only one choice. Either you give love or you lose love. It's like there's an emotional beacon in you, in your heart, where either your heart is giving outwardly and energy and light are flowing out of you in support of others, or your heart is cold and empty and you are withdrawing and escaping as an enemy of the world. Either your energies express and extend outward, or you hold yourself back. Either you feel loving and warm and bright, or you feel hateful and cold and dark.

You get to make this simple choice at all times. You can switch on love at any time. You can feel it in your heart. Even in the midst of any other illusion of suffering. And yet the ego is expert at making it seem like there is no way out of suffering and love will not help. Can it be as simple as that your heart is not switched on? Of all the many seeming problems, stresses, upsets, emotions, can it be that simply loving more will cure it?

The ego would say no, it will tell you that each of these problems is unique and needs a separate solution. And what it thinks it needs it tries to get. And yet getting it does not make you happy. Underneath all the complicated forms in which fear arises, and all the ways you can feel unloved, there IS in fact only simple solution to all of them. Simply love more. It lifts you out of all upset feelings, it brightens you, makes you feel happier, stronger, more confident. It dispels fear and erases upsets. It heals you.

Being 'human' can seem so complicated but actually what's happening in your mind is incredibly simple. You are like a piece of machinery whose function is to extend the love of God to others. That is all. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." You are host to God and extend God. That is all. Your only choice is to continue extending God at all times, or separate yourself off into isolation and fear, in which you will experience all forms of suffering. And at any time you can switch back into fulfilling your function as the light of the world.

The only way to be happy is to fulfill your function. To love. To express love. It's completely natural and produces miracles. It is holy relationship. It is God's will. It is God's will that you love and be happy and healthy. Love makes this possible and guarantees your health and perfection. Either you extend God's love, or you will attack yourself and make yourself sick.

This is why Jesus says "teach only love for that is what you are." It's an extremely simple choice, between love or suffering. To love is to heal and to be happy. To love your brother is to uplift and resurrect him along with you. Your focus should not be on yourself and your needs, or your body. These vanish when you love your brother. Focusing on your body makes it sick because mind is supposed to extend PAST it to others. The light has to shine, to produce health. The light shines PAST sickness and bodies, because it is forgiving.

To love or not to love, that is the question. And only love can make you happy.

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of ***all illness*** because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY. "

"Salvation is a lesson in giving, as the Holy Spirit interprets it. It is the re-awakening of the laws of God in minds that have established other laws, and given them power to enforce what God created not."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them. "

"You have but two emotions, yet in your private world you react to each of them AS THOUGH IT WERE THE OTHER. For love cannot abide in a world apart, where, when it comes, it is not recognized. If you see your own hatred AS your brother, you are not seeing HIM. Everyone draws nigh unto what he loves, and recoils from what he fears. And you react with fear to love, and draw AWAY from it. But fear ATTRACTS you, and believing it is love, you call it to yourself. Your private world is filled with the figures of fear you have invited into it. And all the love your brothers offer you, YOU DO NOT SEE. "

"You have but two emotions, and one you made and one was GIVEN you. Each is a WAY OF SEEING, and different worlds arise from their different visions. See through the vision that is GIVEN you, for through Christ's vision, He beholds Himself. And seeing what HE is, He knows His Father. Beyond your darkest dreams, He sees God's guiltless Son within you, shining in perfect radiance, which is undimmed by your dreams. And this YOU will see as you look with Him, for His vision is His gift of love to you, given Him of the Father FOR you."

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!

When we look at the nature of reality, of heaven's laws, we find that it's kind of a combination of "oneness" and "multiplicity." We're told in ACIM there are many creations of God, plus our own creations, plus the Holy Spirit. There's a permanent trinity. So there's many things going on. But at the same time, it is all one.

The thing that's really super difficult to conceive of is how it's possible for one thing to be two things, while still being one thing. Like, how one son of God can be an individual, and another son of God can be an individual, but still at the same time there is effectively no boundary preventing them from being completely one.

I think that what this implies is reality really is paradoxical. The special "something" that allows one to be two, and two to be one, transcends all possible explanations. You can talk about one aspect of it at a time, such as focusing on the one. Or focusing on the many. And you can sort of tie them together by describing their holographic relationship. But there's no way whatsoever to blend those two into a single 'theory'.

Jesus actually refers to the special "something" that allows each soul to have everything simultaneously, as "the miraculous power of the soul." Somehow there is some way, in reality, without breaking any laws, for God to create many beings, WITHOUT in any way reducing or limiting the fact that they are STILL completely 100% one with him. They are joined, but they are not joined, and yet they are joined. He calls that "miraculous power".

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." I think that truly, what this reveals is that first of all, as you approach God you're approaching a transcendental, omnipresent, paralogical and paradoxical state, in which all rules and limits just fly out the window. This actually literally forces it to be IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a "universal theology".

I think it may even be correct to say there will NOT EVER be a "unified theory of everything", scientifically speaking. When you approach reality everything becomes everything else. It becomes a kind of infinite blur. It is specific, yet abstract. It is personal, yet impersonal. There are many parts, yet they are all one, and each part is the one whole. And it also means one number equals all numbers. You can't even do math at that point.

So really the nature of reality is that it literally cannot ever be explained. This isn't actually a matter of whether people are smart enough, or whether they can study it, or whether there are things they can or cannot say about it, or whether words or formulas are satisfactory. It's simply that the NATURE of God is so transcendental that it utterly defies any attempt whatsoever to pin it down, limit it, confine it, label it, put it in a box, or break it up into nice little pieces. It's nature is just so incredibly "everything at once" that you just can't MAKE a concept about it.

I think also that this "true nature" of reality is very appropriately described as "miraculous". It seems as though its nature is utterly impossible. Yet at the same time, it is possible. It seems impossible that one thing can be two things, or two things can be one thing, while still being two things. But somehow this is the nature of reality. Every son of God is the whole kingdom. And yet there are many sons. And what makes that possible at all is so beyond and defying all possible explanations that you really have to just say, it is miraculous in the true sense. It utterly defies explanation.

Because of that, I think we can say that it cannot EVER be understood. Not that it can't be KNOWN, or make sense to those who experience it, but there can never be a theory accurate or encompassing enough to describe it. You will never find a full definition of "what makes it possible" in any text book.

An extension of that is, that quite possibly, even after years of trying, the answer may be that we CANNOT UNDERSTAND MIRACLES. They have a nature which transcends all logic. Even very advanced paralogical reasoning simply reveals that reality is more than just "one or two", it's BOTH one AND two at the same time, and there will not ever be a way for anyone to get their head around that. This is why I think in ACIM Jesus says that you do not understand miracles.

So I think we've spent so much time and years trying to understand what a miracle is, how it works, what makes it function, how to do them etc, and ultimately it's actually a fact that we cannot ever understand them. The Holy Spirit knows them and so dose Jesus and perhaps when we reach a state of total enlightenment it will dawn on us that WE simply ARE miraculous and our natural way of expressing in that state of sharing has miraculous qualities. But HOW that's actually possible I think may remain so transcendental that no-one will ever be able to truly explain it.

I think in some ways we can get close to it, we can come up with models and symbols to try to reveal some of its properties. We can see that it seems to be a paralogical, paradoxical, omnipresent, holographic kind of a system. Where seeming impossible things become possible. But I don't think we can get much closer than that. Which means if you really want to be intimate with it you're going to have to live it, experience it, and be it.

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

The Holy Spirit is a real spirit from God that has unlimited power. He can heal anything. He can undo anything. He can also move mountains. There is nothing he cannot do. The Holy Spirit is with you and would like for you to develop trust in him, to the point where you might be willing to allow him to enter you and help you on a practical, experiential level.

It is a matter of willingness, trust, letting go, surrendering your ego attempts to fight with everything, and allowing the Holy Spirit to come into you. He is invited every time you show at least some willingness to move in the direction of atonement and forgiveness. But without your "permission" or your knowing that it's safe to allow Him to help you in a supernatural way, He will not take those measures because He knows that you might be frightened.

I was having a period of time that was very difficult emotionally and kept turning to the Holy Spirit to help me to forgive and to let go. In heated moments of tremendous emotional upset I started to say over and over again, "I surrender". Or, "I let go". I would say it repeatedly many times, and would start to experience a sense of relief. Because if there's one thing the ego does is it controls, holds on, attaches, clings, manipulates, bears grudges, resists, fights, and tries to dig in its heels. By surrendering willingly, you cut right to the core and drop the ego activities quickly.

I did this many weeks, often at night before falling asleep. And each time I would ask the Holy Spirit to help me to forgive and let go. I know he helped me with thoughts and insights and so on. But what was more important, was that over time, each time I went and surrendered, he often would start to remind me to surrender. He would say "relax" or "let me". And so I would relax, physically, because when you relax the body physically it also is a sign that you are willing to receive. Physical tension can be a sign of active resistance. So I would physically relax and let go and just focus on surrendering over and over and over.

And as it turns out, this gradually developed to where my surrendering of ego was, in a way, also an opening up to or surrendering to the Holy Spirit. I was moving away from ego, towards Him. And in surrendering, as you let go, you become more allowing, more trusting, more willing to step aside, more open to receiving love and support and help. And so I developed trust in the Holy Spirit, to the point where I would start to ask Him, willingly, but tentatively at first, to "come into me and heal me". To help me to heal. And in fact, I started to experience things happening.

At first it would be that my hands would shake, involuntarily. Or maybe my feet. And I didn't really know what this was "doing" but I learned that it was a side effect of whatever He was doing. And so I gradually learned to let go more and more and trust Him more, that He knows what He's doing. Over time this increased and the vibrational, spiritual, supernatural healing intensified and became more effective, stronger and more powerful. My whole body would shake and vibrate in ways that I cannot re-enact. And after this period of activity, actual emotional energy would have been significantly reduced, maybe even removed completely, resulting in me laughing, without having to go through the normal processes to release it.

This also escalated through further trust and willingness to allow Him to help me to heal with physical maladies, pains, symptoms and effects in the body. He is just as capable. If I am willing, and not afraid, and trust, and open myself up, I can let Him heal sickness of all kinds. I'm not quite to the point of trust yet where I can let something just disappear instantly but I'm working towards it, continuing to deeper my trust and openness to allowing the Holy Spirit to work miracles through me. And it also has been starting to extend to others.

I say all this not to brag and ONLY to ENCOURAGE that any and everyone try this for themselves if you have not done so already. I have no idea how people relate to the Holy Spirit but I do know that until I invited him to come into my "body" and "do whatever he wants", all of this supernatural healing was not happening. He wasn't seemingly "removing all the consequences" for me, and only through surrender and trust did I start to be WILLING to allow him to actually remove all consequences, emotional or physical or otherwise, FOR ME, through no effort of my own.

Before, I thought I had to do all the correcting and undoing on my own, which was my ego trying to do the course by itself. If you have never experienced the Holy Spirit actively DOING SOMETHING, in ways that have manifestations that you can SEE and FEEL, then you are in for a surprise. There is literally nothing He cannot do if you will let him. He frequently says to me, when I am tempted to solve or fix something myself, "let me", I stop and allow, and immediately he shakes me all over the place (side effects) as he proceeds to heal it for me. I don't have to do anything but allow and try to not interfere, and stay relaxed.

Have a go, if you have time. Spend time time each day surrendering and letting go, feel the relief, open up to allow and trust and invite the Holy Spirit to work in and through you. Put aside fear of "disembodied spirit doing stuff"... you have to learn to trust past that. Spirit is perfectly capable of doing ANYTHING, it's only a matter of how much we are willing to get out of the way and LET HIM. If you develop this trust far enough there is no miracle you cannot perform, nothing you cannot heal and no limits to what He can do through you for others. I've already started to allow Him to heal others through me, and he is quite effective.

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

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

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

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

"Illusions are always illusions of differences."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"there is no order of difficulty in healing."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

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

In ACIM Jesus sometimes says things which SOUND contradictory, but they are not. He will claim one thing, then claim another, sometimes in the same sentence. And it will sound like the two things are totally opposite. So then you'll tend to conclude only one of the two statements can be true. But this is a mistake.

Here are some examples of logically cryptic-sounding self-contradictory statements:

"It should be noted that God HAS begotten only ONE Son. If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

"I and my Father are one."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"Within its holy circle, is everyone whom God created as His Son."

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as one."

The reason they sound contradictory is because they simultaneously take two logically opposing positions. For example he tells us God has one son, but in the next breath tells us God created many sons. Or he tells us there's "I" and "my father" and then says they are "one". Then he's talking about brothers, suggesting more than one, but is talking about how they are seemingly one thing. Or how God created "everyone" within heaven, but then refers to them as a seemingly singular "one son". Even to suggest that God has one son, but that he knows "them all" as one.

So then you find yourself asking, how can it be possible that God is having one son AND that God is knowing "them all" as one? And USUALLY what almost everyone does, who thinks the way most people think, is to SIDE WITH one or the other of the statements, and DISMISS the other. Because that "seems to make sense". Because if you can turn a blind eye to the contradiction, you seem to "solve" the problem. But this is a TOTAL FAIL. Here's why.

The ego thought system is based on separation. The separation always suggests that something is true of one thing which is NOT true of another. It is the opposite of an equality-based system. It reasons that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone. That something is either true of this OR that, but not both. The whole ego approach is to differentiate and make un-equal everything it refers to. This results in ME VS YOU, ie war.

Examples of this are e.g. "I am innocent, you are guilty". "I parked in the first parking space, not the second". "I bought the red one, not the blue one". "Its either male or female". "You can go north or south". "I took the left door, not the right door." "I am Paul, not Jim" etc.

The whole PHYSICAL world, and all of space and time, was MADE based on this thought process or "way of reasoning". In fact you can say the physical world IS the ego thought SYSTEM. And so when you THINK this way, in terms of "EITHER THIS OR THAT, BUT NOT BOTH", it maps very very well to the physical world. It doesn't seem to produce contradictions either.

I'm either in America or in England but not in two places at once. I can go north or south, but not both. I am old or young, but not both. I can have the salad for supper or the beef steak but not both. I can buy the house or the condo but not both. etc. I can go left or right but not both. etc

The trouble is, God's Kingdom is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to this way of thinking, being opposite to THIS WORLD.

"Earth, heaven's opposite in every way."

The whole system is completely unlike it. And what's POSSIBLE in God's system is IMPOSSIBLE in the ego's system. And what makes SENSE in God's system appears to be utter NONSENSE in the ego's reasoning.

And the thing is, pretty much everyone in this world, whether you're into ACIM or not, and even if you are, USES the ego's reasoning system to draw conclusions.

That's fine, if you're talking about the physical world. But the instant you start talking about God's Kingdom, his laws, his nature, his creations, you are now in TOTALLY inappropriate territory for that way of thinking. That way of thinking is NOT how God thinks, so it WILL NOT map correctly to God's Kingdom or draw correct conclusions about it. And HIS world is not broken up into pieces of "either this or that."

The key difference is that God's Kingdom and system of thought, logic and reason, are based on INCLUSION AND SHARING. Whereas the ego's system is based on EXCLUSION and SEPARATION. This can be simplified to two simple equations or formulations:

God: BOTH THIS AND THAT ARE EQUALLY TRUE.

Ego: EITHER THIS IS TRUE OR THAT IS TRUE, BUT NOT BOTH.

You can also see that since God's Kingdom is reality, and the ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE of God, the ego is a logical "operation" of NOT GOD, or the negation of God. And if eternity is "always", the ego's opposite is NEVER. ie "always never."

Which is why its whole system is based on this notion of "This is true, but that is not". ie EITHER this is true, OR it's false, but not both. Or this applies to ME OR YOU, but not both at once. There is no simultaneous, at-once, sharing, or inclusiveness, in the ego world. And that limits its thought process.

In God's thought system, God shares all of himself with his creations. This SHARING, fundamental to his nature, means that his creations HAVE everything God has. Without limit. Without compromise. Without one person having something and having to wait until the other is done with it. They SHARE it, like simultaneous access. And they OVERLAP each other, which is impossible in the physical world without causing an atomic explosion.

Similarly, the Golden Rule which describes God's thought system, applies here just the same. What is true of one brother, is true of another brother. What is true of one of God's creations, is true of ALL creations. Every thing God creates is EQUAL in its nature and its wholeness and its perfection and its LIKENESS to God.

So now you can say something which sounds bizarre like, if what is true of ME is true of YOU, then it is true of BOTH of us. It is true of ME *AND* YOU. Which means if it is true that I am me, it must also be true that YOU ARE ME ALSO. And now there are two things, me and you, which are ALSO simultaneously BOTH one thing, while still being two things.

THAT is the "oneness" that is taking place in reality. And it's this oneness of sharing that many do not understand because it DEFIES exclusive thinking. I am INCLUDED in my brother, I am INCLUDED In God, and my creations are INCLUDED in me.

In God's system, a whole bunch of seemingly bizarre things are possible and true. For example Jesus talks about how when you GIVE in reality, you SHARE it, and now YOU have it AND the other has it. Because now both of you share the same thing. And instead of having to LOSE the thing, you now allow another to GAIN it while you RETAIN it. Which means it has INCREASED. This defies the ego's reasoning.

"Ideas are increased by sharing."

It would be silly to suggest that when God creates, he sacrifices himself and there is nothing of himself left, given that he GAVE ALL of himself to his creation. But that's what the ego would conclude. The ego would also conclude that if YOU have everything, NO ONE else can have ANYTHING, because there is nothing left to have that is not already yours.

Ego produces a FINITE system because it does not want to share anything and so sees everything as LIMITED in its amount. This also leads to conditional love, like love is a scarce commodity to be traded. The ego would say if you have all of God, no-one else can have any of God, because the ego is based on SELFISHNESS, which arises naturally as part of a system of exclusion. As Jesus confirms:

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

In the ego system, when you give something, you lose it, the other gains it, you sacrifice, and there is no increase. If I have a pizza and I want to "share" it with you, I have to SACRIFICE AND LOSE half the pizza. This is compromise, not sharing. We both have less than wholeness. But in heaven, its the total opposite. I can have the whole pizza, you can have the whole pizza, because we share it. We OVERLAP. We merge together and are one in our having of the pizza. And now we BOTH have THE WHOLE.

Similarly when you think about sons of God, the EGO's way of thinking would say you have to put things in concrete boxes and keep them SEPARATE. Which leads you to conclude, EITHER I am in my body, OR I am in your body, but not both. But God's law would say, I am in my brother and in myself at the same time. What is true of me is true of him. Therefore there are TWO brothers who ARE ONE. Their oneness or union DOES NOT IN ANY WAY overthrow or erase or undo or cancel, the fact that there are STILL TWO. And this applies clearly in cases like "one brother is all brothers", and "I and my father are one." Jesus confirms:

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND.""

"Every mind is in all minds."

Notice here that he clarifies that there are STILL TWO PARTS in the statement. There is still ME and GOD. Two entities. Yet, they are ONE. Which means logically, 1=1 and 2=1. This makes no sense to the ego. But it is true. And accurate. And correct. This is how things are in reality. God has created a son, SHARED everything with him, so now THEY BOTH have everything, and thus they BOTH AS TWO ... are one. Their oneness does not undo their twoness, and their twoness does not undo their oneness. None of this has to do with the ego or "the separation".

The ego on the other hand, or those who THINK WITH the ego, tend to think about God's kingdom in EITHER OR terms. This is a complete logical failure. It results in false conclusions all over the place. If AIR, let's say, is in one box AND in another box, the ego would have to say, the air can only be IN one box OR the other box, not both. But the air is in both boxes. Similarly, a son of God is in his own box, BUT he is ALSO in the boxes of all the other sons. And in God's box/being.

If you use ego reasoning to draw conclusions about the inner contents of the Kingdom, YOU WILL come to a false conclusions, guaranteed. God's Kingdom is not made up of SEPARATE (un-shared) BOXES. It's made of SHARING boxes. So you can't say "either this or that", or "either one son or many", or "either God or God and a son", or "either oneness or separation" or "either one or many". That's all ego thought. It's a mistake. You have to THINK LIKE God to "get" what God's system is really like. And that way of think is to think WAAAY outside the box.

Once you recognize that God's system is based on a totally different kind of logic, basically "BOTH AND" rather than "EITHER OR", *EVERYTHING* Jesus says no longer is a contradiction. It is no longer contradictory to say "God has but one son knowing them all as one". It does not mean He only has a count of one son, because that ignores the fact he has many. And is does not mean that by having many they are "separate" in the ego sense, because they DO SHARE EVERYTHING and therefore transcend their boxes and thus ARE one. Their oneness and manyness coexists.

If all you do with these kind of statements is to TAKE SIDES with one PART of the statement and relegate the other to "the ego", that's a total fail. Because now you will relegate perfectly legitimate multitudes of creations of God to the realm of EGO, or multiple minds are now considered fragments of one mind, or multiple sons is considered an illusion. WHICH IS WRONG. It is completely a total failure of logical reasoning because the wrong kind of logic is being used

You can't just say "well it says I and my father are one, therefore I don't exist.". That's BS. That's what the EGO concludes. That's not God's conclusion, nor is it true. It is still true that YES, essentially, in truth, you and God ARE ONE THING. But, this oneness DOES NOT in the traditional sense mean or imply that there aren't ALSO two things. God IS a father and DID create a son.

I want to just make it clear that this is also NOT the same thing as"duality". Some people will argue that God having many of anything is duality. It is not the same at all.

Duality is the ego's idea of separateness. That is, that something is EITHER this OR that. This denies sharing. When you change the "OR" into an "AND", to correctly map to God's nature, the statement becomes THIS AND THAT. Which now suggests that there is sharing between TWO or more things. This is no longer duality, but it is also NOT THE END of individuality or many-ness. In any "contradictory" statement Jesus makes like that, THIS (part A) AND THAT (part B) are BOTH true. Without cancelling each other, and without opposing each other.

God's Kingdom is not duality. Duality means separate boxes WITHOUT sharing. As Jesus confirms:

"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships that imply BEING."

Those RELATIONSHIPS, are the SHARING nature of the Kingdom. You need more than one of something to have relationship. It's what joins you with God and the Christ mind. But these relationships also do NOT undo your individuality. Nor does it imply that you having a self is unholy.

God who is whole, creates additional wholes beings. He cannot create partial beings. "The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created, there is no lack in it." So now if God has a son, which he does, because he's a creator, and a father, His son MUST BE A WHOLE, yet to ego logic you can't have two wholes.

If God is all encompassing, there is NO ROOM FOR ANY SON AT ALL. To the ego, anyway. Because "two wholes" is nonsense to the ego. Yet many proponents of oneness and non-duality like the idea of there being at least a son still, which is COMPLETELY illogical in any thought system.

Ego thinkers who struggle with logic will conclude this. But the truth is God does have a son, and there ARE TWO WHOLES. The reason this is POSSIBLE is because of sharing. The two wholes SHARE everything, and therefore ARE ALSO ONE WHOLE. EACH SON therefore is a WHOLE SON, has everything, and shares it with the WHOLE of the rest. As Jesus confirms:

"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS created "separate" beings, who have EVERYTHING individually, and want to share it to increase their joy."

This is a statement of divine logic. God is whole, and yet, he SHARED himself to create MANY "separate" beings, INDIVIDUAL WHOLES - souls, sons, who HAVE EVERYTHING because they share all of God, and they WANT to SHARE it. This statement was taken out of later editions btw, probably due to ego thought processes that deemed it "nonsense" or "suggesting separation", appearing to be a contradiction when it IS NOT. God created separate beings who are share as one.

Technically God should not have a son, or be a father, or a creator, if God is everything. Because what is all encompassing cannot have an opposite, thus cannot create a division or separation. BUT God DOES that, not by SPLITTING, but by SHARING. He allows within his own being the presence of additional beings provided they SHARE ALL of what is, thus NOT invalidating their individuality OR the wholeness of the system

"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."

Even to the ego the idea of God having even ONE son makes no sense. It implies separation and two-ness. And that is against the EGO'S spiritualized concept of "oneness" meaning "a count of one". Ego reasons, if you remove all separations, you must end up with ONE BLOB. One perfect blob, which we'll call oneness or God. And thus IT concludes THIS is what God is like. But this is the logical outcome of EGO thought processes. And it is COMPLETELY WRONG.

Or perhaps we can say it is partly right, because God IS one and his whole creation IS one, BUT.... it is also many. And it is this "one AND many" which the ego CANNOT comprehend. It can reason there is one, OR many, but not both. And BOTH is true. Because God IS a creator of many sons, and has a FAMILY. And his nature is to share, and be inclusive, which means BOTH me AND God exist.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"Ultimately, every member of the family of God must return"

AND, you have your own creations, which further adds to the sonship. AND God created the holy spirit. AND the angels. The Holy Trinity DOES have three entities. And "The Kingdom of God includes all his children and their creations." AND "Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite." Infinite creations is a LOT MORE than "one". But the ego would balk at this as if it's some kind of "duality", or separation, or ego. EGO concludes that God is ego-like!

So if you really want to grasp HOW and WHY Jesus is NOT contradicting himself, and WHY his seemingly opposite statements are NOT against each other, and why ALL parts of his statements are true simultaneously, and why God did create multiple children who are BROTHERS, and why separate individual beings does not mean ego or duality, you have to adopt a whole different way of reasoning. A thought system LIKE how God thinks.

"Either this or that" is ego and DOES NOT work when used to think about ANYTHING in heaven. And this one "default" way of reasoning is what almost EVERY acim student uses, because we don't recognize that we're basing all our thought on a false permise and assumption. It's an assumption to believe that two things cannot be one thing, or it's "natural" for two things to be separate and not share anything, or that you can never have two things being one thing. You have to question this.

Such thinking has led to countless horrendous manglings of the course material and its meaning. Relegating Jesus's TRUE statements to PARTIAL truths and partial falsehoods. Which has produced interpretations of the course which fall way short. People then either conclude WRONG things about heaven, or they give up and exclaim its not possible to undestand it because they can't see HOW to think outside the box. BOTH are ego reactions to ITS failed logic.

"No-one who looks upon this "reasoning" EXACTLY as it is could fail to see it does NOT follow, and it makes NO sense. Yet it SEEMS sensible"

To the ego, the truth is UTTER NONSENSE. But what is nonsense to the ego, makes perfect sense to God. To him it is completely natural to create an infinite number of creations which all are whole and coexisting in total harmony, sharing everything without selfishness or egotism. And God's creations DO NOT think in terms of "me or you", but in terms of US. You have real holy brothers and always will.

"We are creation, WE, the sons of God."

I think we all realize we are supposed to get rid of the ego. This is agreed to by almost all ACIM students, shockingly enough. But how do we do that? And can we do it without losing ourselves entirely?

We do have a real self. "I am as God created me." There is at least one son of God which is you, and me, and everyone. So we don't want to be getting rid of what God has created.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."

Gods mind functions based on the holographic principle, in which the whole (God) is in every part (Sons), and every part is whole and contains the whole. That means each son shares the same whole and is the same whole, and each son is every other son as well.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

In the separation, we drew a little circle around our individual selves and decided to stop sharing. We wanted to separate off and go our own separate ways. We became exclusive, and selfish, and thinking of ourselves as not having what others have. It was an attempt to put a stop to the oneness, while keeping the individuality.

If we were to now say we should get rid of individuality, we are trying to destroy what God created. Individuality was never the problem. The problem was the desire not to share anything. It was the opposition to the oneness and produced the ego. The ego then is simply "selfishness", or unwillingness to share.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

So in fact we are supposed to be full of self. But self is shared. Self is Christ - a shared identification as the one son. We are each the whole. When you are full of the whole, you are full of self. And that also means the entire Kingdom of God is you.

"The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone."

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven, but you have let the belief in darkness enter your minds, and so you need a new light."

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God."

So we don't want to be getting rid of anything God created. We don't want to be undoing individuality - provided it's an individuality that is also shared with others. We don't want to be destroying all identity or eradicating self - provided the self also includes other selves.

It's also worth nothing that we do not want to be getting rid of mind. There is no such thing as an ego mind or a wrong mind. There is only mind as God created it. And sometimes mind is sane and sometimes mind is insane. When it is insane it is being egotistical. The egotism needs correction so that that same mind can return to sanity. We do not destroy minds, we heal them.

What we DO want to be rid of is the sense of separation. Separation isn't what gave us individuality, nor led to many beings. Separation is what happens when you take the holographic system of heaven and you draw a little fence around the part that you regard as your self or soul, and you "separate it off" as though it is exclusive and isolated and alone.

This later leads to the physical fence around the mind that we call the body. It's kind of like a little prison. So one thing we do want to get rid of is the sense of imprisonment in a body, which we do by not identifying with it and not believing it. But more broadly we want to be getting rid of any sense of exclusiveness.

In God, everything belongs to everyone, and you DO own what you've been given, but you do not own it EXCLUSIVELY. You have to share it. It's like a communal property. Even your SELF is shared and not exclusively yours. When you develop a sense of owning something that ONLY you have, or lacking something that others have, that's ego.

This becomes a little tricky then because we have to let go of the idea of exclusively owning anything, which to the ego implies we own nothing (wrongly), while still keeping ownership of everything. We are not being asked to get rid of everything, we're being asked to stop trying to posses it like it's only ours or only for ourself, as if it has only your name on it and no-one else can have it.

You could say, well, let's get rid of anything personal. Because "personal", similar to "private", tends to be an idea of something that is exclusively yours, or a form of exclusion. But you have to be careful here because personal becomes bound to "the person" and getting rid of anything personal can imply (to wrong thinking) that you have to get rid of your self. You want to incorporate the oneness of the whole but without denying yourself.

What we do want to be free from is exclusivity, selfishness, possession, exclusive ownership, hoarding, lack and poverty, not sharing, a desire not to include others in one's sense of identity, being separated off by a wall of flesh, seeing ourselves as having anything at all that others don't have, any sense of inequality, any isolation or aloneness or sense that you exist inside a body prison, any notion that what's best for others has nothing to do with what's best for you, and any sense of pride or specialness as if you are better or worse than another.

Any kind of "wall" has to go, and as the walls go the separations go. And this does NOT mean (wrong thinking again) that this leads to a oneness in which you stop existing as a self. It does lead to oneness, but oneness means SHARING and relationship and community and being God's family. All that should happen to your self is it should EXPAND TO INCLUDE the whole and all others, while still being a self. It sounds like a paradox to the ego but it's how things are set up in creation.

None of this has anything to do with getting rid of yourself or your sense of being an individual, but it does entail weeding out the aspects of individuality that hint at "I'm different to you". The elements of "self" that have become infected with "mine alone" and "not yours" and "you not me" and the various other forms of exclusivity.

The sense of self has to be PURIFIED of the egoic elements, so that you end up with a PURE SELF, a whole self, which contains the whole, is identified with the shared Christ identity, contains all brothers and the entire Kingdom and all of creation, and is one with God as well. That means recognizing that the entirety of heaven is in you, God is in you, all brothers are in you, and you are everyone and everything, including yourself.

This is the title of ACIM lesson 125. The essence here is to realize that everything you give, you receive, because giving and receiving are one. Per the golden rule, whatever you "do to another", you literally and directly and personally do to yourself. Anything at all that comes out of you, goes back into you.

This is the law of God, and it is inescapable. But it seems to be very difficult to recognize this law is in effect. It seems possible that you do something to another and experience none of the consequences. That somehow there is a separation between what applies to the giver and the receiver.

The body in particular makes it seem possible to do something to another while escaping the effects. One body can seem to hurt another, and yet come away with no apparent harm. This violates the law of God and seems to suggest the golden rule does not apply. But the laws of God always apply.

If you were aware that anything you do is done to BOTH yourself and others, you would be very careful in choosing what to do. If when you poked another's body, you felt a poke of your own body, you would hesitate to poke them. If you attacked their body and immediately felt the hurt and impact and effects of the attack, you would instantly recoil and reconsider your actions.

If it were impossible for you to do something to another without it also being done instantly to you, you would realize that you cannot do anything harmful without hurting yourself. You would literally find it insane to suggest that you WON'T be hurt when you hurt someone else. You would know this is not true, and that you are guaranteed to suffer when you inflict suffering.

The motivation this gives you then is the clear sanity that, in order to be happy and loved, your only option is to give happiness and love to others. If for an instant you choose to give hurt or to make guilty, you know that you will instantly feel awful and would be quick to stop yourself. If the very dagger with which you attempt to pierce the heart of a brother literally sticks into your own body, you would stop in your tracks.

In truth, when you are more aware of reality, you actually are in touch with this law. It may not appear to apply at the physical level, but it does apply at the level of mind. Any seeming psychological state of attack which you think you project onto another, you do not escape. Any angry attempt to make another guilty reinforces your guilt. Any desire to be murderous and hurtful threatens you and instills fear.

v There IS no escape from the golden rule. The ego counsels that you can easily escape it, even that you can commit the most horrendous attack and come away without remorse or damage. That you can get away with murder. But the only way you would seem to convince yourself that you've done this, is to be in denial.

It requires you to separate yourself off, dis-associate from your brother, form a separate identity which is different and at war, believe that your brother is in no way part of yourself, isolate and imprison yourself in the body, and then perhaps be convinced that your actions won't hurt you. Only by severing yourself from the sonship could you possibly convince yourself that this would work, but at the cost of making you imprisoned and alone.

In truth, your real nature is that you are one with all others. That we are all joined together in sharing as a single family of equality. I am you and you are me and we are each other.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

Everyone is everyone. We are each individually the whole sonship. Everyone else is a part of your self. Not one single thing can occur against a single individual without it happening to the whole. When one suffers, the whole suffers, because the whole is in every part. We have a holographic relationship and this is the will of God.

The fact is then that if we fall into the ego delusion that we are separate from each other, we will then automatically believe that we can indeed attack without being attacked. And so begins the spiral down the slippery slope to hell in which you believe and then perceive that you are justified in murder, capable of revenge, and can get away with it unaffected. This state of mind itself is mental illness, suffering, self-attack, self-abuse, and self-destructive.

The simple truth then is that everything you give, you are included in the receipt of. Anything you do, you do to yourself. Anything you give or radiate or share or express, is being expressed toward you as well. It may seem on the physical level that something has to leave and travel and be sacrificed and lost, in order to be given or done to another, but in truth you always keep what you

give, because sharing is reality and not separation. To receive what you give is the golden rule and the inescapable law of God. It is functioning even when you don't believe it is functioning. It is functioning when you believe you are getting away with separating yourself off from receiving. It is also the secret of salvation, in the recognition that if you are suffering, you must have done this to yourself. You must have given suffering and then received it, believing that you would escape the receipt.

If you are suffering, you have attempted to attack the sonship. Not just yourself, but everyone. But just as every attack thought, and attitude, angry guilt-mongering, or outright violence, is always an attempt to give yourself death. It makes you unhappy to make others unhappy. It hurts you to hurt them. You cannot escape this. Anything you do to attempt to destroy a son of God will have self-inflicted repercussions. And as such, if you are not at peace, you must have made a wrong decision.

To find salvation therefore we have to learn the simplicity of lesson 125 - that at all times, what I am giving I am receiving. If I do not like what I am experiencing, I must recognize I have chosen it and have given it, and have therefore received it. And I have done this to myself. I must be mistaken if I have given myself suffering, and I made the decision myself, but I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace.

This is all tied together. It is the one law of God that everything is always shared, everyone is always included, and you will never escape the consequences of your giving. If want to stop suffering, learn to stop making others suffer. If you want to be happy, give happiness. If you want to feel loved, learn to love. You will heal as you let the Holy Spirit teach you to heal. And you will find God in your brother as you learn that your brother is a part of your shared identity in Christ.

God is the state in which there is perfect healing all the time, not that there is 'something to heal' due to there being sickness, but that there is `pro-active healing` which PREVENTS there from being sickness, all the time. So God is in a state of health and grace forever.

God is also the source and creator of who I am as His Son. So, I extend from God. And everything I have must therefore have been given me BY God. Jesus says that the only difference between Him and us now is that he does not have anything OTHER than what God gave Him... meaning that the rest of us cling to what we think is 'other' stuff that we got from somewhere 'else', because we made it up separate from God. And none of it has any power.

Love inspires miracles and miracles are all based on love, and therefore they are expressions of love, and therefore they are expressions of GOD. They start in God. God is perpetually in a state of CHOOSING health by pro-actively always creating health. And by health I mean, a healed state in which sickness is impossible because there is only love. All true healing must then either flow from God or involve us entering INTO God to share in what God is.

So it comes down to a matter of what seems to be, two vantage points. 1) Healing flows FROM God TO where we are, and 2) We go TO God in order to share IN healing.

Most of what we seem to attempt to do in our awakening process is to go TO God in the knowledge that as we get closer to God we open up TO the healing state that is in God, so that we can share in health. However, God also is coming to us :-) God is extending constantly, and wants total health at all times, and shares total health at all times. He has no desire to 'make sick' or to 'keep sick'. And, given the chance, he would immediately flow His health to us and share it with us, healing us of all sickness.

When some portion of ego 'meets' God, God transmutes it into love and healing, or rather, health, is restored. It seems however that we live in a world where there is all kinds of sickness happening which appears not to have been 'corrected' by God yet, as if somehow it has some kind of power over God or that God for some reason does not attempt to 'heal' it or correct it. And this can lead to confusion as to exactly how it's possible that God is total health but the world is full of sickness.

Part of the issue is that we each have written 'agreements' i.e. 'scripts' before each lifetime, which were essentially sequences of events that we would 'allow' and which we would be at least a little willing to use as learning devices, to bring us ultimately closer to God, WILLINGLY, rather than necessarily being 'forced' into love. And because we did not want healing, having rejected God in the separation, it seems we now have to go through the plans that we lay out to learn our lessons and become more 'receptive' to God's love. And that can take time, and it can also seem to mean we 'have to suffer'.

However, God has no intention of making you suffer or of it having to take a long time to heal. God's Spirit works NOW. God is spontaneous and immediate and has absolutely no reason for delays of any kind, being of absolute confidence and certainty. He would heal the world in an instant. He does, however, honor the wishes of each of us to dream and pretend, up to a point. However, let's be clear, that our scripts and our excuses as to why we will not accept healing, is OUR issue, and not God's. God is not the one who keeps resisting healing or the provision of it. God wants to heal ALL THE TIME.

Because of this, I do believe it is possible that God is perfectly open to 'bypassing' your script, if an appropriate request is made. I asked Archangel Raphael about this and was surprised when he said "there is a process", and that a "petition" must be made to God. Because, how everything is sort of 'set up', we have all these agreements over many lifetimes to go through various processes to gradually awaken. God doesn't really care how long that takes, having infinite patience and knowing we're not really separate. But God is also still very immediate and instantaneous. AND, God only wants to LOVE US all of the time.

So since God is in constant love with us, and wants for us ONLY to return to Him as soon as possible so that WE can experience love and not suffering, as an act of compassion, God is perfectly capable of bypassing the script and enacting 'gifts' or 'blessings' or 'miracles' which are capable of healing someone or bringing them closer to Him 'in spite of' the ego contracts. It is possible for Holy Spirit, who has the power of God (!), to enact miracles of healing and restoration of health on all levels, at any time and to any extent. As we awaken and open to love we become co-facilitators of this and miracles become more common and natural. However, Holy Spirit is not held back by us and does not depend on us to be able to heal.

It is possible to pray for someone and to request healing for them. And this prayer basically entails you going to God in some fashion, with whatever amount of openness you currently have, and first of all emphasizing the nature of God, which is to be grateful for what already is. Grateful that God loves us, grateful that God already loves the other person, and grateful that healing and health are natural and are ALREADY TRUE. "Thank you God" is very appropriate, up-front.

We thank God profusely for having already accomplished our full and total healing, which may not be apparent in TIME but has already been accomplished in eternity. And then we might take action to EXTEND God's love (which we then are feeling) to others. We might simply ASK God/Jesus to heal someone, acknowledging and being thankful that it is DONE ALREADY (you could call this having faith), and you could even command this healing occur now.

Holy Spirit and Jesus are then perfectly capable of healing ANYTHING RIGHT NOW, and that means, correcting you FOR you, or correcting another person FOR them, without them necessarily knowing HOW to correct themselves or being capable of enlightening themselves. It is an 'intervention', a blessing and a gift. It is an extension of love. If healing is possible, it has to mean that it can occur IN SPITE OF the ego and TO UNDO THE EGO, meaning we are not really required to necessarily become miracle-minded in order to receive a miracle... IF someone else is willing to request the miracle for us. We can even request it ourselves and receive more than we asked for.

God loves us very much. We do not need to suffer. And unconditional love has NO CONDITIONS that prevent its extension.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. 2 Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate and has a different set of thoughts that set him off from others. 3 This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are more valuable and therefore true. "

Basically the first law means that because you believe there is the absence of love/God within you, there are blocks to awareness, thus divisions, thus levels and hierarchies, and now everyone is separate and in competition. If love is not in you, you now have to find it outside of you.

"The second law of chaos, dear indeed to every worshipper of sin, is that each one must sin, and therefore deserves attack and death."

Since we're all separate and no-one apparently has love in them since it's been denied, we must all be sinners and therefore we all deserve attack and death. Another way to put this is that we now see "someone else" as having denied the love in us, its their fault, so we are justified in attacking them to get it back (even though we did this to ourselves).

"This leads directly to the third preposterous belief that seems to make chaos eternal. 6 For if God cannot be mistaken, He must accept His Son's belief in what he is, and hate him for it."

We then believe that God cannot be the source of love and therefore if God is not a source of love He must be evil and therefore is justified in hating us and wants us to be dead. So our own rejection of His love, creating the illusion of His absence, has rendered Him seemingly like an enemy, and we cannot "go there" to get love or salvation, so we have to find it elsewhere.

"The ego values only what it takes. 2 This leads to the fourth law of chaos, which, if the others are accepted, must be true. 3 This seeming law is the belief you have what you have taken. 4 By this, another's loss becomes your gain, and thus it fails to recognize that you can never take away save from yourself."

We now perceive that we must take from others in order to "get" what we are in need of, and that be taking from them, you can have it. This is a reversal of the fact that in order to have anything real you have to give it/extend it from God. The ego says you can "gain" or increase by accumulating from others against their will, so since all love is now considered "finite and limited" there is only so much to go around, taking it from others must cause them to have less, and so now you can gain by having more.

"But what is it you want that needs his death? 2 Can you be sure your murderous attack is justified unless you know what it is for? 3 And here a final principle of chaos comes to the "rescue." 4 It holds there is a substitute for love. 5 This is the magic that will cure all of your pain; the missing factor in your madness that makes it "sane."

In the fifth and final principle, basically we believe that this substitute for love - specialness - can be taken from others by force, causing in the most extreme cases for them to be drained of it thus murdered, and so their death has given you life, for which you are justified due to their sinfulness. We presume that this magical specialness will cure all of our pain and lack and needs and is what we are "lacking" and thus it will bring us salvation, make us sane, and take away all the emptiness. Except, it does not work.

The only solution to the emptiness is to return to awareness of love's presence within, by undoing all stages of separation and denial and becoming aware again that the truth is true - that we are already love, did not separate, have not lacked, and therefore need do nothing to be the love that we already are.

"Miracles demonstrate that learning has occurred under the right guidance, for learning is invisible, and what has been learned can be recognized only by its RESULTS."

Which means miracles are supposed to produce EFFECTS and CHANGES in things tangible or seen, which DEMONSTRATE learning has occurred. Without the demonstration, the learning has obviously not occurred, because the person is still teaching something else through physical proof. Miracles have visible RESULTS.

"Everyone in the world must play his part in the redemption of the world, to recognize that the world HAS BEEN redeemed." Redeem it with miracles!

"You cannot see the invisible. But if you see its effects, you KNOW it must be there. By perceiving what it DOES, you recognize its being. And by WHAT it does, you learn what it IS."

You MUST be able to see the EFFECTS of miracles in order to know their source is real. You PERCEIVE the effects, in order to recognize the Holy Spirit is real. And by what the miracles DO, IN THE WORLD, PHYSICALLY, you learn about what this power is. You develop your miracle working ABILITY thus:

"You cannot SEE your abilities, but you gain confidence in their EXISTENCE as they enable you to ACT. And the results, of your actions you CAN see."

You do MIRACULOUS ACTS IN THE WORLD. And the effects you produce help you to gain confidence in the ABILITY of miracle working.

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you can see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there."

You can SEE... visually, in the world, the RESULTS of the Holy Spirit’s presence. Through the RESULTS, 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."

Let’s just be clear, that your little shifts in perception ARE NOT miracles and have nothing to do with breaking the laws of physics. Miracles VIOLATE the laws of physics. Laws about how big something is, how heavy it must be, the way it must be manipulated, thi is all ignored and trampled upon by the Holy Spirit’s manifestations IN THE WORLD.

"Perceiving His results, you will understand where He must be, and finally KNOW what He is."

You perceive his results not inside your head but in the world. In your body, and beyond it. And the results speak volumes for what He must BE - a power far greater than anything in the world. And clearly NOT OF THIS WORLD, due to his world breaking, law defying capabilities.

"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."

Miracles are WITNESSES to the power of the Holy Spirit. They testify that HE has DONE SOMETHING supernatural. These witnesses CAN BE SEEN with your eyes. They are changes to physical forms, energy, matter, space and time.

"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."

Manifest? We’re talking about things happening in the world here. Manifestations. Forms changing. Bodies being healed. The dead being raised. Mountains moving.

And here is clear instruction from Jesus about what you are supposed to be DOING in the world as a miracle worker:

"Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"You will see miracles through your hands through me. You should begin each day with the prayer "Help me to perform whatever miracles you want of me today."

"15. Each day should be devoted to miracles."

DO HIS WORKS!

"Here is the fear of God most plainly seen. For love is treacherous to those who fear, since fear and hate can NEVER be apart. No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

We need to realize that when Jesus talks about fear, he isn't talking about you suddenly having an increase in a sense of fright. Or a temporary worry. He's actually saying that the ENTIRE SEPARATION is a movement away from love, into a state of love's absence. That state is called fear.

But we need to also realize that Jesus says we have entered into seemingly many things, all of which are one illusion. This includes fear, sin, attack, guilt, death, suffering, sickness, murder, etc. Even the ego itself is nothing more than a fearful thought. It may seem to house all the many aspects or attributes of separation but it is also fear. It is insanity and guilt and fear and death and many other things all rolled into one.

When you are stressed out, you are afraid. When you are worried for someone's physical health, you are afraid. When you are concerned whether something will work out or not, you are afraid. When you are seeing yourself as victimized and attacked, you are afraid. When you have a sense that everything is going wrong and there is no hope, you are afraid.

When you are entering into that familiar and horrible state of "this is a nightmare", you are afraid. When you feel like you are dependent on the world and of something being a certain way, you are afraid. When you are taking illusions seriously you are afraid. When you think that someone "is really sick", you are afraid. The fear can seem to take on many forms and in many degrees and levels and most of the time you may not even realize it.

When Jesus says that fear comes from trusting in your own strength, he is reflecting on the fact that if you listen to the ego and focus on self-sufficiency without God, you will be afraid. Because this means you're separating off from God and thus are trying to distance yourself from him - in fear. In essence, separation from God, or separation from anything or anyone, is a state of fear. Just as it is also a state of guilt, and of sickness, and of death.

Jesus tells us that "all healing is the release from fear." This pertains to you in terms of you needing to be healed, and in terms of your miracle working for others. Where there is fear there is separation and seriousness, darkness and despair. When there is fear, there is no lightness or happiness or freedom. Fear binds you and imprisons you and makes you powerless. Fear is literally a rejection of love, or life, of health, of God, of everything.

This is why he casually has said that we have made a "detour into fear". The whole separation is a detour away from fearlessness into fear. This tells you then that when you get OUT of the fear, you will find happiness and joy, lightness and peace, health and wholeness. All "forms" of separation from God have to be undone and fear is a really big part of this. Teachers of God cannot be afraid. We should be fearless. This does not mean having a lot of arrogance or physical strength or competitiveness, it means you literally are not feeling fear or having reasons to be afraid.

Ultimately this is all wrapped up as simply the opposite of love. Fear is love's absence. Fear is God's absence. Fear thus becomes the "fear of God", seemingly, as if God is causing the fear. But in truth, the fear is being used to FRAME God as the cause of fear. To justify shrinking and withdrawing.

As Jesus says, if you are afraid, know that you have withdrawn from the light. If you are afraid, you are hiding from God. This is not because God in any way is a threat, but because you have to believe God is a threat in order to pretend that you don't love him.

When Jesus was in a body he would often say, "fear not". This quite literally is like saying "do not deny God" "do not be separate" "recognize you are safe" "choose love over fear" "do not attack" "choose not to die" etc.

"There is, however, considerable clarification of this concept, which must be understood before the real meaning of the "detour into fear" can be fully comprehended."

"ALL illusions are of fear, and they CAN be of nothing else."

"The ego is quite literally a fearful thought."

"Faith is the OPPOSITE of fear, as much a part of love, as fear is of attack."

"And hate must be the opposite of love, regardless of the form it takes."

"There are no scraps of dreams. Each one contains the whole of fear, the opposite of love, (in all its ways), the hell that hides the memory of God, the crucifixion of His holy Son."

"Life has no opposite, for it is God. Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

"If perfect love casts out fear,

And if fear exists,

Then there is NOT perfect love.

But

Only perfect love really exists.

Therefore, if there is fear, it creates a state which does not exist."

"THE FEAR OF GOD, the final step in your dissociation."

"For once you understand it is impossible that you be hurt except by your own thoughts, the fear of God must disappear."

"When the fear of God is gone, there are no obstacles which still remain between you and the holy peace of God."

"Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist. The fear of God is causeless. But His Love is Cause of everything beyond all fear, and thus forever real and always true."

"No-one can look upon the fear of God unterrified, unless he has ACCEPTED the Atonement, and learned illusions are not real. No-one can stand before this obstacle alone, for he could not have REACHED it unless his brother walked beside him. And no-one would dare to LOOK on it, without COMPLETE forgiveness of his brother in his heart. Stand you here a while, and tremble not. You will be ready."

"To look upon the fear of God DOES need some preparation. Only the sane can look on stark insanity and raving madness with pity and compassion, but NOT with fear. For only if you SHARE in it does it seem fearful."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God. His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds It from awareness like a shield held to obscure the sun. The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot co-exist with God."

"The fear of God and of each other comes from each unrecognized belief in specialness."

"The fear of God is fear of life, and NOT of death."

"The fear of God results as surely from the lesson that His Son is guilty as God's Love must be remembered when he LEARNS his innocence."

"What seems to be the fear of God is really only the fear of YOUR OWN REALITY."

"The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just ONE error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him."

To us folk who are not used to miracles, or are not used to the power that we share with God, or the potential freedom of Christ, or the endless possibilities of immortality .... which is most of the planet including me, lol .... we consider miracles to be... "miraculous". Perhaps we are inspired by Jesus's work as documented in the bible and elsewhere. Perhaps we are in awe.

But the thing is, miracles only seem to be miraculous to those who are further removed from miracle-mindedness. And truly, miracles are actually completely NATURAL, and are supposed to be happening all the time. They are in fact supposed to be a normal mode of functioning, in which you have absolute power over all illusions and are subject to no limitations whatsoever, able to bring into manifestation anything you might desire in alignment with God's will.

So it's really a matter of perspective. We are just not 'used' to miracles, so they seem outstanding or awesome or .. miraculous... when in fact they are simply the natural, God-given inheritance that we all deserve and should be functioning in 24/7. Commonplace works of God.

Note that it's important to beware, of thinking that when the Course talks about miracles as. .. not a big fanfare.. it's not because miracles are NOT impressive or important or capable of overcoming all ego limitations, but because they do so ALL THE TIME and we're supposed to be functioning in a constant mode of miracle-working, such that it is second nature at the same time as being 'extra-ordinary'. Another word for this is, super-natural.

Here are some miracle principles from ACIM which back this up:

2. "Miracles as such do not matter. The only thing that matters is their Source." - i.e. they don't matter as such because they're not 'special', they supposed to be normal and a given.

3 "Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love." - Notice they occur NATURALLY, which means they are not really unusual and are supposed to be your normal mode of operation.

4. "Miracles are habits and should be involuntary." - Again miracles are something you can do all the time having learned the 'how' and are practically like just habitual, natural activities, rather than something out of the ordinary.

6. "Miracles are natural. When they do not occur something has gone wrong." - Again miracles are completely natural and indeed effortless and easy for those who are miracle minded. It is normal for the miracle-minded to perform miracles constantly. When this is NOT happening, something has gone wrong, and you can see that the profound ABSENCE of miracles in our lives indicates a LOT has gone wrong.

7. "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." - Miracles aren't for the few, or the special, or the one in a million. They're supposed to be commonly available and achievable by ANYONE. Everyone has a right to miracles.

10. "The use of miracles as spectacles to induce belief is a misunderstanding of their purpose." - I feel the point here is that if you were doing miracles all the time, to bring healing, correction, unlimited supply, abundance, etc... it would be pretty pointless to suggest that they are 'special'. To make miracles special requires that miracles are NOT always happening, such that when they happen it is out of the ordinary and something to shock and awe. When we are truly always miraculous, using miracles in this way actually works AGAINST miracles and suggests they are special and limited when in fact they are completely unlimited in their availability. See also principle 31 "Miracles should inspire gratitude, not awe."

15. "Each day should be devoted to miracles." Each and every day. Miracles. Every day of the year. Every year. Forever.

21. "Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness. Through miracles you accept God's forgiveness by extending it to others." - Miracles are natural signs of forgiveness, natural as in, how things are supposed to be, as determined by God's will for us.

So you can see, our natural inheritance is to be capable of performing miracles, every day, anywhere that they are needed or helpful. 'Miraculousness' is a state of being plugged into God's unlimited power source, his unlimited abundance, and able to bring that forth into any form at will, including the complete healing of sickness, reversal of death, manifestation of objects, being able to walk on water (if you so choose, might be fun), etc.

Once we are 'used' to our miraculousness and have accepted our natural state of being, unlimited and immortal, we would not think of miracles as 'miracles', but merely as, completely natural and a no-brainer. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

One thing I never could make sense of in the Course was when Jesus referred to minds being joined or how it wasn't possible to be sick if minds were joined.

My ego could not understand this. It made no sense in terms of people being normal separate minds in separate bodies. I could only think in terms of doing something to something separate. How does anyone join with the mind of someone else in the first place? And why would that bring about the impossibility of sickness?

What I see now is that individuals in separate bodies are just fragments of a larger Self - the Christ Self, the One Son, and that identity has a single mind. There are not multiple Christs.

Mind, in its natural condition, is a single mind shared everywhere. It is the mind of the Whole Self. When pieces of mind seem to split off and be separate, that's because there is an illusion of separation happening. This separation is the root of all sickness.

Separation is two-sided, in that when the mind is divided, there is a piece of mind over here and piece of mind over there and they are kept apart by some kind of illusion of not being joined. That belief in separation produces sickness because it's a belief in limitation and lack. The separation blocks awareness, and blocks to awareness are denials which deny Life and thus produce death.

So when separation is present, and there are "two selves", that's a state of sickness. The mind is sick. It has multiple personality disorder. I'm talking about the one mind here, not an individual's mind. An individual's mind also is sick and divided within itself - each personality of the multiple personality disorder of the one mind, has within it further multiple personalities, lol

Ok so, to maintain the separation between selves, and thus to mantain sickness, both of those parts of the multiple personality must continue to exist. Without them being different from each other they would be one. If one of those two parts of mind decides to transcend what seems like the illusory limits placed upon itself, and redefines itself as the WHOLE, not a part of the whole, then it comes to experience Oneness with the other part of the mind, recognizing it as literally itself. Then there is only one mind. The two parts of mind are joined as One.

If the other part of the mind was trying to be an individual, it no longer can maintain that state of sickness because the first part of the mind has decided not to believe in it. So it doesn't have support for its belief and no matter how much it tries, it can't establish separation. If part of mind has woken up to the One Self (Christ), the other part has no way to remain in separation either. They must both wake up together to a single identity.

When Jesus woke up, He must have woken up to the reality that we are all One. And thus His awakening must have been the awakening of everyone. I don't know if this means that our minds MUST be healed, but certainly that it is POSSIBLE to be healed. If we were to decide to be one with Jesus, we would be healed instantly.

In the thought system of Holy Spirit, we are all one shared mind, and one identity. Holy Spirit looks upon CHRIST. Nowhere does it say he looks upon multiple real individuals.

When minds thus join, there is a healing of the separation between them. The separation defines their separate identity, so this must mean the undoing of a false sense of isolation and opening up to realizing that you are much more than you thought you were. An increase in awareness. Awakening. We awaken TO the Christ mind, the one mind, that we all share as the One Son of God. We're all the same Self. And this is how miraculous healing is possible.

I’ve come to realize the Course refers to miracles on three distinct levels.

1. Everything in Heaven is miraculous. All expressions of love, in reality, are miraculous. The soul is miraculous. Creation is miraculous. Everything real has a miraculous nature. You are miraculous. You are a miracle. Miraculousness is permanent, natural, and the way God’s thought system always functions. Miracles give LIFE. At this level miracles defy every ego limitation and law. Life itself is a miracle.

2. After the separation, God blessed the Sonship with a miracle. The miracle was the answer to the separation, a healing thought, designed to fully heal the separation. This produced the Holy Spirit. References to "the miracle" are referring to the Holy Spirit. He is the "mechanism of miracles" because He is the way by which miracles (on level 3) are produced. This "one miracle" contains all individual (level 3) miracles. Accepting "the miracle" is accepting the atonement.

3. Within the realm of perception, there are many seemingly individual miracles. Course references to "miracles" in plural refer to this. E.g. "Miracles make minds one in God." "Miracles unite you with your brother" etc. These miracles are holographic, in that each of them contains wholeness and maximal love. They are all reflections of the one miracle, all support each other, are all equal, and all transcend orders of difficulty. These are the "miracles" that you perform IN the world as a miracle worker. These miracles can heal the sick, raise the dead, change perception, and repair the separations between brothers. As a subset, these may also include "shifts in perception" which are not "what a miracle is", but are one of their results. "A miracle is a correction introduced into wrong-minded thinking etc". Here the aim of miracles is to heal the separation between the sonship and induce revelation.

These are all tied together by statements such as "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers." Similarly, miracles extend through Christ as their source, as in "miracles express from an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His atonement."

Miracles do NOT originate at the ego level. They do not originate in your attempts to correct perception. YOU do not do them without God/Christ. Miracles require the absence of fear (ie maximal love), and express FROM a state of miracle mindedness, which is equivalent to true perception. Blocks to awareness must be removed, extensively, before FULL love is allowed to express with enough wholeness to perform a miracle. "The perceptual content of miracles is WHOLENESS." They require vertical perception which is a recognition of mind over matter cause-effect, in which the world is recognized as an EFFECT only, containing no causes, and transcends all ego laws and breaks every law of this world. Miracles are supernatural.

Miracles can correct perception. They can even correct the mind of your brother. However, "the world IS perception" and so additionally, miracles can correct the world. They have power over all forms. Earth is a world of tremendous limitation. Miracles demonstrate that this world is an illusion by changing its forms to show that they are not real. Mind is stronger than the body, and every miracle demonstrates this. Miracles can literally move mountains.

You as a miracle worker become MORE miraculous as you remove blocks to love. When you are done shifting perception, miracles do not come to a stop. Instead, you perform miracles ALL THE TIME. Miraculousness is your God-given NATURE. It is completely natural to your spirit, which is omnipresent and beyond ego laws. Your soul is permanently miraculous. To extend God’s love as LIFE is miraculous. Miracles are life-giving creative acts. They supply a lack. Death is lack of life, so miracles can raise the dead.

There is no sin and nothing impossible that miracles cannot reverse and undo. Believing otherwise is believing the hierarchy of illusions, which is a belief in orders of difficulty. Miracles are all the same. They ignore difficulty. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." You cannot be loving without being miraculous. Atonement, which includes miracle working, is the natural profession of the Children of God.

There really are only two states. Wholeness, which means sharing everything, and separateness, which means being excluded from the rest in selfishness.

"Selfishness is of the ego but self-fullness is of the Soul because that is how He created it."

"Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."

The whole practice of ACIM is simply the transition between the state of separation and the state of being joined together.

In the separated state, people believe the are only a small part of what exists, limited and cut off from the rest. Particularly the body seems to prove this, in that anything outside the body seems to be nothing to do with you. And by "being" a body you identify yourself as exclusively imprisoned inside of it, kept apart from everyone else.

In the shared state, you are the whole of everything, sharing everything with everyone fully. Everyone has everything simultaneously. We are all one. Like a collective consciousness or hive mind. A unified holographic experience where anything that applies to you applies to the whole. Everyone is included, nothing is left out, and anything you do or give you also receive.

So when Jesus is talking about forming a better relationship with your brothers, in which if you do something to them you are affected, he's simply reiterating that what you give you receive. It's simply the idea that you need to remember your true identity as the whole, and realize the implication of this.

If you are the whole, then anything you do to any part you also do it to yourself. Anything you give you receive it as well. Anything you cause, you experience the effects. Other people are a part of the whole with you, so any way that you relate to them you also relate to yourself.

It also extends to the transition between false and true perception. False perception is a focusing on separateness and exclusion, making things out to be not joined and not part of a whole. True perception is nothing more than a state of recognizing that the whole is in all the parts and every part contains the whole. That every mind contains every mind. That each brother is all brothers.

This leads to a sense of identity that transitions from being a separated-off self, which typically identifies with and as a body as a "separation device", different and unique, to sharing a singular nature with everyone in a single shared identification as christ. Christ is just another name for the shared aspect of the sonship, the sense that we are all one and are each other.

"Christ is the link that keeps you one with God, and guarantees that separation is no more than an illusion of despair."

So all your practice really needs to be, to "do the course" and awaken, is to transition your sense of who and what you are from being exclusively "only you", to including everyone and everything in what you are. To think of yourself as the whole, and not just a part. That you are an individual soul, but your soul is shared with others. To reclaim the part of you that shares, so that you relinquish selfishness without a loss of self.

To exclaim, "I am the whole", and to remember you are the whole, puts your mind in a position where you properly acknowledge the golden rule. Anything you do, anything you say, anything you express, anything you think or feel, teaches all the universe. Anything at all that comes from you also comes toward you. Giving and receiving are one. You give to the whole, as the whole. You receive the whole as a result. You are included in everything.

This simple idea that you are included in everything, is the undoing of separation. Separation means exclusion. If you are included in everything, you will have shared interests. That means that anything you do to another you do to yourself, and therefore it's in your own interest to treat others with love so that you will treat yourself will love. If you don't treat others with love, you will treat yourself with a lack of love, and will make yourself suffer. You will have done it to yourself.

The simple "secret of salvation" then, and the whole key to being saved from all suffering, sickness and death, is in this simple recognition that you are the whole of the sonship. You are the whole Kingdom of God. It's not just some place you go to and hang out in as an individually created being, it's literally who and what you are. You are the entire environment. You are a part of and hosted within the being if God. He is your home, and you are one with the whole of him and with everything he created. The kingdom of heaven is you.

By being the whole, whatever you claim applies to another applies to you. Recognizing you are the whole, you will only want to give to another what you would want to receive for yourself. If you have given something sinful to another then you've made yourself sinful, because you are included in the recipients. Every psychological email you send out is carbon-copied to you. You must learn to share with everyone, love everyone, and know everyone as your self.

Your whole motivation shifts from selfish interests to the good of all. Your application of self becomes universal and unconditional instead of limited or conditional. Your loving becomes unconditional, your relationships become unlimited, your response becomes singular and consistent, your mind becomes unified, you no longer register orders of difficulty or hierarchies of illusion, and your whole approach to anyone and anything is to know and love it as yourself. Knowing your brother as yourself is the way to know God.

When Jesus tells you that if you do something to another to you will do it to yourself, or that you're doing it all to yourself, he isn't saying that you're doing it exclusively to yourself. He's saying that you, as the whole, are doing it to the whole, and you are included in the whole. The secret of salvation is that you are doing it to yourself - AS THE WHOLE, and because you are the whole.

Everything you do is done to everyone. Inclusion is the law of God. It also means that if you change, you are also changing other people, which is why you are able to affect the minds of your brothers towards sickness or health. Your miracles resurrect them and give them what they have denied themselves, simply because your mind IS their mind.

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

"Your gratitude to each OTHER is the only gift I want. I will bring it to God for you, knowing that to know your brother IS to know God."

"Giving and receiving are one."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"The Kingdom CANNOT be found alone, and you who ARE the Kingdom cannot find YOURSELVES alone."

"You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven" "The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"All that I give is given to myself."

"As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God."

"It will be GIVEN you to see your brother's worth, when all you WANT for him is peace. And what you want for HIM, you will receive."

"Asking for EVERYTHING, you will RECEIVE it."

"You had everything when you were created just as everyone did."

"You WILL receive the message you give, because it is the message you WANT."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

All that I do I do unto myself.

If I attack, I suffer. But if I

forgive, salvation will be given me."

"The full appreciation of its self-fullness makes selfishness impossible, and extension inevitable."

"I (myself) will be healed as I let him teach me to heal (others)."

"I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts."

"I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."

"Their minds are one; their joining is complete. And God works through them now as One, for that is what they are."

"This is the function of your holy relationship. For what ONE thinks, the OTHER will experience WITH him. What can this mean, EXCEPT your minds are one?"

"A miracle is a Universal Blessing from God through Me to all My Brothers."

"When I am healed I am not healed alone."

"So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him."

"And by his healing IS his brother healed. Let THIS be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and NOT apart."

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real."

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe."

"The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark."

"The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

When your mind is whole, you are in your right mind, and not in two minds. Being in two minds is what happens when your mind is split in half. What happens in the state of split mindedness is quite interesting.

It's not merely that you split off a part of your mind. As you introduce a split, ie a belief in separation, you lose sight of wholeness completely. What then happens is you actually form TWO artificial identities, and neither one of them is the whole of you. It's almost like having two egos or personalities, and both are fake.

One of these identities, let's call it the persona, is retained in awareness as more of a conscious self. This self is the part of your mind that is steering away from darkness and sin and tries to be "good". It uses denial of "the rest of you" in order to hide its sense of sin and guilt in the darkness. It blocks it out of awareness through this denial, which is attack, which buries it and projects it.

The part of your mind which has also split - the other 50% of you - becomes a dumping ground for sin and guilt, hidden behind denial and repressed. You project this dark shit outward through disassociation, to try to disown it. It's part of further trying to disown part of your mind that your persona-self thinks is evil. Recognize the persona appears good but ultimately is judgmental and wants to destroy the sinful self.

So the "goody two shoes" part of your mind which is always trying to focus on a fake sense of idealism, positivity, looking good, saving face, being popular, seeming to be perfect etc, actually has a murderous attitude towards the other part of your mind. It basically sections off this other part of your mind, hates it, judges it, and shoves everything it does not "approve of" onto it. That includes sin and guilt, so now this "shadow self" is formed and relegated to death.

So in your mind, if your mind is split, you have this conscious persona self and this much less conscious shadow self. The shadow self is kept in the dark because, as Jesus says in the course, if you were to bring these two selves in close contact with each other they could not long remain separate.

The persona self fears the shadow self and tries to constantly judge and attack in on order to keep its distance, to maintain its own sense of autonomy. The persona sees itself as what the course calls "the face of innocence", aka the victim. And it views ithe shadow portion as a victimizer, or an enemy, which it wants nothing to do with and pushes away. This pushing away produces separation, disowning and projection onto others and the world, to try to "attach" the sin to something other than your own mind or sense of self. As the course says, separation means disassociation, or coming "between".

But we have to realize here that being split minded does not mean you are being the whole of your real self while you're in your persona self, or that your real self is under attack by the shadow self or its projections. Instead, recognize that the persona self is only a partial ego self, and it not whole, and it is not real, and it is not you. It's an artificial sense of identity formed from illusions of preference and avoidance, illusions of innocence and pretending to be perfect.

So as you consider how to forgive and take back projections and so on, you have to also realize that the "you" that is trying not to judge or project, is actually part of the judgement. It's part of the split mindedness. That persona self, wants as best it can to be completely free from the repressed shadow crap. So beware that as IT tries to take back projections, it is really not that interested in UNDOING the sense of sin, to begin with, because it needs it in order to maintain the split. And note that this persona self is "trying to wake up and be more spiritual" - the spiritual ego, and it can't - you have to wake up FROM it.

Without the split in the mind, without maintaining a sense of separation, both the shadow self and the persona self cannot exist. They rely on keeping the war going. The inner conflict has to be perpetuated, denial and blocks to awareness have to be maintained, otherwise it blows up the whole dynamic of you having a split minded relationship with another part of yourself.

For example in terms of victims and victimizers, usually the shadow crap is projected and seen as an external victimizer, while the innocent victim role is assigned to your persona self ie conscious self. But in order to "heal" this situation, it's not enough to just "take back the victimizing". It's not enough to simply own that you are the one attacking yourself from the outside in, or that you are vicariously using others to do this. The victimizer is only one HALF of the problem.

The victim role is also part of the split, and being a victim has to go as well. You can't maintain this ideal of "getting rid of attackers" while keeping the "innocent victim" intact. So what that's going to have to mean is, if you want to wake up, is that you're going to have to not only dis-identify from the victimizer, but also from being a victim. You have to recognize that your mind - the larger container of this drama - is actually playing both sides. Your mind is being both a victim and a victimizer of itself. And NEITHER of those roles is your real identity.

When you can bring both of these parts of your mind into awareness and see them together, AND then recognize that you are the ONE MIND who is pulling all the strings and making the victimizer victimize "you", plus making the victim "be a victim", you can no longer maintain the ILUSION that they are separate identities. When you own that you are both of them, you will own that you cannot be EITHER of them. It's been a lie, all along, that either of these two identities were you.

You were pretending they were DIFFERENT to each other, by means of splitting off some attributes to assign to one and some to another, to maek them seem to be opposites. But the opposition is entirely a deception and in truth, the two identities are not really opposite at all. They are both being run by one "larger" mind - your real self - who temporarily is the actor behind the scenes who has lost sight of itself while pretending to be having a multiple-personality disorder.

Because we so heavily identify with the conscious persona and not with unconscious hidden projected stuff, largely because we are not aware of it, you "as the conscious self" might think that you merely need to deal with the harmful attackers outside of you who are making your life miserable. But it's not just them. It's also you, in denial, with rose-tinted glasses, pretending to be special and perfect, who are also part of the murderous dynamic of sectioning off parts of yourself and relegating them to hell. So that sense of identity also has to be brought into question.

You are not a victim, or a victimizer. You are not the persona or the shadow. You being the persona is not you being the whole of yourself, even though this split off part of a sunbeam thinks it's the whole sun. You are bigger than both. Which means your sense of identity has to let go of these illusory selves and expand to a larger reality. As Jesus says in the course, as you awaken your sense of self expands. Because what you are really waking up from is being stuck inside little boxes and compartments, walled off from each other as if you have multiple selves that live in isolation.

Your enemy is yourself. The perpetrator is you. The victim is you. The fake innocence is just a "face" you put on to hide the pain and maintain the shadows. To take back your projection means only to reel in the projection of the shadow content, the sin and guilt, to try to bring it closer to its source. But it must also meet with your persona and cause the two of them to cancel each other out. You are larger than both aspects of the split mind, because you are the whole of mind. And only whole-mindedness, without the split condition, is a state of sanity.

The ego is always about taking sides, emphasizing differences, being special, having enemies, being offended, being at war with something. But what is this "opponent", except MORE EGO? It takes both sides of every conflict, it does not care who wins or loses. It does not care who is the victim and who is the victimizer. It is both, in a state of self attack. It doesn't even care if you live or die because it knows that someone will die, when you play its games.

So you have to realize that your "conscious ego self" is really only PART OF the problem and your sense of having a spiritualized ego is just as much part of the problem as the projected sin. Being holier than thou goes hand in hand with becoming highly judgmental and condemning other parts of yourself as unworthy and defective. If you feel unworthy it's because your conscious self believes it is superior. Inferiority and superiority go hand in hand.

The conscious ego self cannot wake up. Much of its efforts are to make its life better by continuing to repressed, reject, accuse, condemn, project, disown and kill off anything resembling "unacceptable and unlovable". And yet all the while, judging you are unlovable from the outside so that it is never satisfied with trying to make you more perfect through self mutilation. The ego is in two minds. It is not in its right mind. And it is not your mind. There is more to you than any of these roles or fantasies or illusions of being one thing and not another. You are everything.

The holy spirit is planning all events that transpire!

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?" UrW135L19

The holy spirit smoothing the way ahead of you and removing obstacles!

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it. You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill." UrT20E9

The holy spirit producing physical manifestations which can be seen with the physical eyes!

"You cannot see the Holy Spirit, but you CAN see His MANIFESTATIONS. And UNLESS YOU DO, you will not realize He is there. Miracles are His witnesses, and speak for his Presence. What you cannot see becomes real to you only through the witnesses who speak FOR it. For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares HIS with you on earth." UrT11H4

The Holy Spirit smoothing your way in the world!

"The Thought of God protects you, cares for you, makes soft your resting place and smooth your way, lighting your mind with happiness and love." UrW165L2

The Holy Spirit materialising a healed body for you!

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS." UrT27B3

The Holy Spirit assisting with the healing of others and speaking through your body and sending people to you!

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE."

The Holy Spirit undoes the consequences (symptoms, manifestations etc) of your wrong decisions!

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me." UrT5I20

The Holy Spirit solves all problems for you!

"The Holy Spirit will answer EVERY specific problem, as long as you believe that problems ARE specific." UrT10H9

The Holy Spirit arranges things for you!

"Once you accept HIS plan as the ONE function that you would fulfill, there WILL be nothing else the Holy Spirit will not ARRANGE for you, WITHOUT your effort." UrT20E8

The Holy Spirit work miracles through you!

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you." UrT14F7

The Holy Spirit guarantees that specific people will meet!

"Therefore, the plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. They are ready for each other." UrM4A1

The Holy Spirit is the co-maker of the world along with you!

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the Laws of God." UrT25D4

"The Maker of the world of gentleness has perfect power to offset the world of violence and hate that SEEMS to stand BETWEEN you and His gentleness. It is not there in His forgiving eyes. And THEREFORE it need not be there in yours." UrT25D8

The thought system of the ego has directly produced this physical universe.

The thought system of God has directly produced heaven.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way."

It's not just that Heaven is "another place" that you can think about in the same way you think about Earth or this universe. Heaven THINKS DIFFERENTLY from how this world thinks, it reasons differently, it draws conclusions differently, and its logic does not operate like the ego's logic.

This world represents and is part of or inside of, the ego mind. Anything this side of the separation from God IS the ego thought system, including this universe. The ego mind's THINKING has produced this universe and all forms of matter reflect the idea of EXCLUSION.

Heaven represents and is part of or inside of, God's mind. Anything THAT side of the separation from God is the Holy Spirit's thought system, including Heaven. Heaven proceeds according to entirely different THINKING and its nature, it structure, is nothing like the ego predicts.

The two thought systems are so extremely opposite to each other, as to be nothing alike. The two "worlds" are unalike in EVERY way, and Earth being totally unlike God's nature cannot possibly have been created BY him because it is not LIKE Him at all.

The problem arises when, unfortunately, we USE the ego's thought system to attempt to look at or understand the nature of God's thought system. Extraordinary misunderstandings arise from this, because the ego's way of thinking and reasoning fundamentally *requires* seeing things in a certain way. When looking at something unlike itself, it literally cannot see it correctly without major distortions.

This is why we have to be extremely careful about the conclusions we come to about Heaven, God, Sonship, Creation etc, because in just about every case, we are USING the ego to think about it. And this has unfortunately led to a huge list of false conclusions about the nature of Heaven.

We may not realize it, but we actually THINK WITH the ego, and all of our thought processes follow ego laws and proceed according to ego rules. The way that we reason things out, the way that we "make sense" of anything, it all stays INSIDE OF the ego's thought system. When we try to use the ego to make sense of heaven, therefore, we don't actually LEAVE the ego's thought system to go TO heaven to THINK LIKE GOD, instead we look upon it from afar and make false judgements about it.

Jesus says that we need to learn to THINK LIKE GOD, and that means learning a whole different way of reasoning and thinking and concluding. A whole different way of "making sense", if we are to have any hope of comprehending WHY God acts a certain way or WHY it's possible for Him to have created individuals with free will. Or WHY He could not possibly have created this physical universe. Or HOW the nature of this world is fundamentally IMPRISONING right down to the atom.

We literally are living INSIDE the tiny mad idea, which is an idea of "separation thought" and all of our thinking follows exclusive, separating rules. These rules split things apart and make them different and pit them against each other, because it is a murderous thought system. The result of using the ego's thinking processes to evaluate God's creation is that it results in MURDER of God's creation. And yet the ego will evaluate that it has merely "made sense". When the ego makes sense of something, it makes NONSENSE.

While the Course largely focuses on USING the ego's thought system and its way of thinking, to lead you OUT of its way of thinking, this is only because it's how you DO think for the most part and so He is trying to speak our "language" and to use how WE think and reason to help us to make conclusions AGAINST the ego. But the truth remains that the way the ego thinks is fundamentally false and excluding and separating, so at some point we have to move past this to learn to think like God.

When you think like God, which is holographic INCLUSIVE logic, it becomes clear that the conclusions the ego came to about God's Creation are simply false.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If I react differently to each person, or in each situation, I am not being unconditional. I think that one response is appropriate for one situation, another in a different situation. And in this way, my ego becomes locked into and engaged with the FORM of the situation. If someone becomes angry, I react with sternness. If someone is kinder, I react with kindness. This is conditionality.

I didn't really realize that I was doing this all the time. I was giving back a response based on what I received from the person, instead of giving a response based on what I received from God!

It is very challenging to be loving all the time, in spite of and regardless of ego appearances. Our ego is easily triggered when other people act unlovingly. It's also easy to buy into the appearance that something has gone wrong with someone's life and that they're guilty of a fault. It may seem true in form that they are doing something, but my reaction doesn't HAVE to mirror that guilt/attack back to them.

Being able to love all the time totally flies in the face of what the ego shows us and completely denies all ego illusions the power to change us. I have been going through this lesson recently, learning that ONLY LOVE works in a dire situation, and ONLY LOVE can make a difference. All of my other reactions and manipulations and misperceptions and emotional reactions did nothing but make the situation worse.

Unconditionality is very much contrary to how the ego operates. It wants difference and change and special conditions placed on all interactions. When someone is happy, you love them. What about when they are depressed, or violent, or insane, or severely upset? Can you overlook that and LOVE THEM?

I found myself coming face to face with my own inner inability to love, as situations pushed and challenged me to love unconditionally. I said to Jesus "I cannot love that"... and I couldn't. Or I believed I couldn't. It wasn't true. It's just that I was being forced to have to love when my ego didn't want to and so I had to move PAST my ego (overlook/forgive) in order to love anyway.

It seems hard to do this at first. I like many are so used to just having the normal automatic ego reactions. And the ego is especially very TEMPTING in trying to pull us into its drama, to get us to believe that something has gone wrong. Holy Spirit's advice to me in the face of ridiculous ego absurdity was LAUGH! It seemed completely inappropriate, and it was actually hard to find a laugh, but I did it.

Gradually I'm growing more capable of loving unconditionally even when faced with ego bullshit, and, the cool thing is, that this means that in order TO love unconditionally, I have to learn to put aside my own ego self-attack, which fails to love myself unconditionally, and as a result, the more I choose unconditional love the more I seem to gain some kind of... invulnerability to the ego's temptations. Situations seem to be bothering me less, or they are not latching onto me as easily. I am having less reactions. Things which would've upset me, I've had to overlook, and that means I'm no longer as deceived by the ego. Yay.

So now it's more a question of, a situation happens, and then REGARDLESS of what the situation looks like, choosing to only come from love, in the heart, rather than all the other 'reasons' for responses of the ego which come from the head. Just plainly ignoring everything, ignoring how it looks, ignoring appearances, ignoring the form of the situation, ignoring what the ego is demonstrating, and then demonstrating unconditional love instead. I WILL STILL LOVE YOU ANYWAY!

The challenge is to keep this up all the time. To come from love, all the time. ALL the time. Not just sometimes. Love love love love love love love love love.

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS."

"Miracles are ENERGIZING."

"What you share you STRENGTHEN."

"Miracles are healing because they supply a lack."

"A miracle is a universal blessing from God"

"..he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received."

"I give the miracles I have received"

"But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"By lending you his strength, he strengthens himself."

"And both are strengthened by their union with each other."

"They will strengthen him and stabilize you."

"KNOWING this perfection is shared, it RECOGNIZES it in others, thus strengthening it in both. "

"A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking by ME. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and snapping it into place."

"The miracle dissolves error"

"See the point about miracles as a perception corrector before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

Here are statements demonstrating that you can SEE real stuff. Seeing God, seeing the Son of God, seeing Christ, seeing the Kingdom. Note that perception of reality is NOT the same as being IN reality. But some of these quote infer you can SEE WITHIN REALITY (not using perception).

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."

"The idea for today is the springboard for vision. From this idea will the world open up before you, and you will look upon it and see in it what you have never seen before. Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you."

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God."

"The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs."

"Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind to him ; we will not look upon our grievances."

"This is the way in which you MUST perceive God's Creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees."

"For who could see the Son of God as innocent and wish him dead? Christ stands before you, each time you look upon your brother."

"Nothing that you remember, that made your heart seem to sing with joy, has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. FOR YOU WILL SEE THE SON OF GOD. You will behold the beauty that the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and that He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this FOR you, until YOU learn to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it, and giving thanks with Him."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth."

"For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past."

"For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts, you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark."

"You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the truth of what you are."

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You CAN know God, because it is His Will to BE known."

"The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER. ... Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear."

"No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out."

"Your holy brother, sight of whom is your release, is no illusion."

"You would not do this, except for your UNWILLINGNESS to perceive reality, WHICH YOU WITHHOLD FROM YOURSELF."

One of the things about letting go, is to do with willingness. I realised it's about what you "want". If there is a wanting, a desire, it drives you to an attachment.

If you then want something, but can't have it, you'll experience emotional upset, grief and loss. If the thing you want has seemingly gone away, but you still want it, you'll suffer.

For me, for example, my wife has gone from the physical, but there are parts of me that still want her to be here in a body. The part that doesn't want to "let go" or can't figure out what to let go of, is the part that is already committed to pursuing what it wants, and is so into making what it wants "be there" that it is blind to its own ambition.

The part of me that wants the person to be present, wants the relationship, wants the specialness etc, is the part that isn't letting go. After all, you really only hold onto stuff that you want. And it's not easy to let go of "wanting" a person.

So now I find there is a contradiction between what I want and what I "can have". I still want something that isn't available. And that produces a sense of loss and emotional upset.

So what we have to let go of isn't so much the thing itself, but the wanting of the thing. The wanting is a form of control and attachment. What that leads to is having to realise that the wanting is a choice. I have chosen to want something. And as I continue to choose it, coupled with its unavailability, it is making me suffer.

And what that leads to is realising that at some point I have to choose to want something else. Or to stop wanting entirely, if that's possible. And that means choosing away from what I was choosing.

That's not easy to want to choose away from something you are attached to with special love and bodily value, when the rest of oneself is saying that it wants to keep it going. It's like having to deliberately decide to leave a relationship that you see no reason to leave, which isn't easy.

But as usual, what it amounts to is that, if I am suffering, I am doing to it to myself. "I must have chosen wrongly because I'm not at peace."

My wife, in her wisdom, and in our brief discussions mind-to-mind now, has been quite brutally honest and blunt about things. She is far ahead of me on this. She's told me that "we had our time" and, with regards to our marriage, "all those chains are broken now." I attempted to wear her wedding ring around my neck and she told me quite firmly to "take it off". She knows that these are forms of trying to stay attached to specialness.

It's a bit hard to accept that, and not take it as a rejection to the ego, almost seeming as if she doesn't "want me" anymore. But the higher soul perspective is much more detached, much more unconditional in its love, and much more shared. We're all supposed to love everyone, and exclusivity is of the ego.

Thing is, what could we be in "want" of, except something we lack. And who can lack when they are immortal. And what could be wanted except things that aren't real to begin with, and were never real. it gets pretty deep.

No-one wants to let go of what they believe is real, because whatever you value you allow into your mind and it becomes real to you. To let go of illusory things they have to be recognised as having not been real to begin with. An unreal relationship with an unreal body in an unreal world.

"And while you see more VALUE in sleeping than in waking, you will NOT let go of it."

"You do NOT recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of ALL the barriers you hold against EACH OTHER."

"I must let it go by realizing that it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place."

"For what you think is real YOU WANT, and will NOT let it go."

"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."

"You groped but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to let it go, or to take hold on life so long forgotten."

"Forgive the past and let it go, for it IS gone."

"No-one would choose to let go what he believes has value."

"Light cannot enter darkness, when a mind BELIEVES in darkness, and will not let it go."

Usually we want to get rid of everything we do not like, everything that feels harmful, every fear, every upset, every ounce of grief or loss. We want to get rid of all our enemies and things that hurt.

But this is actually the ego in action. It wants to get rid of these things because there is a potential that these things might be used to wake you up.

So long as you're in the midst of a lesson, in which something seems to be against your will, you will have this sense of "I don't want this and it shouldn't be happening". This is the ego's reaction. It does not want you to use this opportunity for forgiveness. It does not want you to learn the lesson.

Not that the ego is arbitrarily against you. You made it and you asked it to do this for you. You wanted it to deflect you away from sources of healing, from anything that might trigger an awakening to truth. You wanted it to keep telling you that stuff isn't supposed to happen to you, and you wanted it to make you see things as if they are happening against your will. That way you could stay asleep.

But each time you try to 'get rid of' what you do not like, or be free of a lesson, or fix a problem, or make a bad person go away, or stop something from happening, you're really using ego denial. And you do this in the name of spirituality.

You think it is spiritual to have a life where there are no problems, where nothing is happening to you, where you have no enemies, where everything goes well, where people seem to just adore you, and where you aren't hurt or offended by anyone. I mean, as a goal that's great... That could be true of real spirituality, but the ego wants this goal WITHOUT awakening.

So that means, getting rid of all protagonists, all offenders, all enemies, and all threats. It tells you you shouldn't be afraid and that fear is a bad thing. It tells you not to be guilty. It even tells you you should be constantly happly or people-pleasing. These are all deceptive ways the ego gets you to NOT deal with your shit, and it forms a spiritualized ego.

When you are afraid, that's very good, because you are being confronted with the results of some belief that you have and it's coming into your awareness. This is a great opportunity. Instead of the fear hiding out in the back of your mind, it's being brought into awareness. You don't like it, for sure, but recognize it is an opportunity because now some normally hidden dark shit has come out into the open where you can take a look at it.

It's all about how you use things - whether you use it to deny your shit or use it to bring light to your shit and undo it. So you could take the fact you're scared as a great opportunity to look at WHY you are scared, rather than to just want the fear to go away. It's pretty normal to want the fear to go away, but it's not healthy. It is healthier to take a look at it with Holy Spirit and find out why you are afraid... What guilt is the fear based on? What's the deeper cause of it? Why do you want it? How's it serving you to keep you in the dark? Where is the so-called truth that surrounds the fear to make it seem justified? What is the real truth of this situation?

Its the same with feeling guilty, upset, angry, offended, whatever... Each time this stuff comes to your awareness it's a great opportunity to heal and undo. So don't try to hide this stuff away. Don't shove it back down or want to get rid of it or to avoid it. And don't blame people for triggering it off - they're trying to help you to look at the stuff you don't want to look at. You're better off dealing with it and then being done with it, rather than constantly hiding from it and feeling its torment in the back of your mind, only to keep resurfacing saying "please acknowledge me and recognize my message to help you grow, and please use me for awakening."

This is all great material. Great opportunities to make progress. It's hard work but it's worth it, and it's far better for you than to want to just keep making this stuff go away. You can be free of it permanently if you deal with it properly and heal it. Isn't that better?

"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."

So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.

The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.

This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.

When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.

Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.

"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE."

So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.

The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. "

"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.

"The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND's FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND's JOY."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.

If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.

This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.

"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."

The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

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

Each time I am upset, it's because I am agreeing that something is true which isn't. Even if my upset seems to express the opinion that I do NOT agree, or that the thing is 'wrong', I am still upset because I see wrongness. Seeing wrongness makes me upset. Seeing rightness/real truth makes me happy.

It's quite possible that all you need to do to wake up is to get completely straight/correct about what is true and what is false. If you're upset, it's because you believe in something false and think it's the truth, which means you believe that some aspect of the truth is not true. You just need to be straightened out and clarified on what's really true here. This is the only process needed.

Once you are completely clear about what the truth is and what is false, it will be totally obvious that the ego is 100% false and unbelievable. But when you're not clear about what the truth is, you will experience upset and be offended by the very falsety that you believe is attacking you. And it's only attacking you because you believe in it.

Kind silly, and highly contradictory, how we WANT what we DON'T WANT.

Most of the time, most of us are trying to perfect our persona-self, the self-image. This is part of the ego. This involves spiritualizing the world in some way, sectioning off the 'good bits' from the 'bad bits' and trying to only keep the good bits.

You try to build up this sort of spiritualized ego persona, which ultimately is the ego trying to attain some kind of 'image' of enlightened God-like status. But to do this, it has to keep only the special, valued, accepted, allowed, preferred parts and reject the rest.

So the main mode of functioning of this ego persona isn't so much to 'acquire' the good stuff, but to simultaneously weed out and get rid of as much of the bad stuff as possible. In other words, it is a function of denial and rejection, based on condemnation and judgement.

So once again the ego is contradictory, in that it *appears* to be seeking to include only the stuff it likes or wants, which it has selected from the big soup of life, but actually accomplishes it by rejecting and condemning and relegating the parts it doesn't want to some kind of waste basket. Fact is you can't select and section-off some part of your self or life without simultaneously rejecting and condemning some other part.

This waste basket lives in the ego as the rejected, suppressed, hidden, repressed, denied, shut-out, blocked out 'stuff', which is nevertheless still there and still functioning. This generally 'dark stuff', or at least, surrounded with beliefs and judgements of darkness, will seem to do the opposite of what the persona wants, and indeed attacks it from time to time.

When the shadow attacks (ie the pain body) you generally will want to get rid of it, of course. Just like any 'pain', even physical pain, it's generally the sensation of something you want to get rid of. But that's a major problem. Because how will you get rid of pain? You'll use the persona. The persona will then be selective and attempt to relegate, reject and condemn the pain, to make it go away. The persona doesn't want to accept the pain or integrate it so that the persona and shadow cancel each other out. The persona wants to maintain a separation.

So it seems I think, that most of us are traditionally fixated on loving the persona, building up the persona, reinforcing the persona, choosing to use the persona to manipulate and get what you want, using the persona to paint a picture of 'everything is great' when it's not, or generally repressing your real Self. And you would not SUSPECT that this alone is the entire problem with the ego, because it then directly produces a large body of repressed pain in the shadow.

The ego persona wants you to think of the persona as all sweetness and nice, so that you would not suspect IT is the big problem, yet alone suspect that it is the CAUSE of everything that is dark and unwanted. Instead it deflects all appearance of the dark icky stuff onto the shadow so that the shadow gets to look like IT is the bad guy, IT is the thing to get rid of, IT is the thing to weed out and destroy.

So on the one hand you have this picture of 'innocence' in the persona (like the innocent victim), which you would not suspect is causing any problems at all, and then you have the apparently 'guilty' shadow which looks like it is the sole location of all the pain and misery and guilt and sin. Are you fooled? Most of us are. I know I am. I am fooled all the time by this. I keep believing the persona and seeking out that innocent, denying self, and trying to get rid of all the nasty icky stuff that I think the shadow represents.

So now all the bad shit in the world seems to be blamed on the shadow, and all the 'good stuff' is credited to the persona. When in fact, all the bad stuff is CAUSED by the persona. We choose the persona first (or simultaneously), and then by choosing it, ie choosing to focus on including only a PART of what is, or a PART of ourselves, we automatically simultaneously are adding more stuff to the shadow part of ourselves. That shadow part, generally seeming to be that which we repress and deny and hate or don't want to feel etc, seemed to be generally held at bay in a sort of 'unconscious' state for the most part, until it rears up into awareness and seems to attack the persona.

But let's look at this. Does the pain body/shadow actually attack the persona? Or does it just seem to behave in the terms of what the persona has given it? If the persona chose 'i want cake not dog shit', and the shadow became 'you are dogshit', then the 'you are dogshit' comes up seeking... healing, and exposes itself to the persona, which generally reacts with its usual relegation and denial and hate and 'get rid of it' attitude, which makes it an UPSETTING experience for the persona, disrupting its facade of pretend specialness and fake innocence. But what if the persona weren't so resistant to the shadow, and instead the SELF (real self) stepped back from the persona and was simply AWARE of what's going on, observes it, and allows both the persona and the pain to basically... be seen to be the same thing, to cancel each other out, then perhaps there can then be HEALING and RELEASE.

Anyway. My main point is this. And you may have heard it before. Choosing to use the persona is a trap, which absolutely guarantees that you will experience pain and suffering, because the persona will create the perception that something is unwanted, painful, and in need of being denied/separated from. This happens the INSTANT that you put the persona mask on, because you can't wear the mask without condemning everything that the mask does not contain. ie the shadow is the 'negative space' of the persona - everything else - which the persona is made to reject. The persona can only 'focus' on what it wants to include by excluding everything else that exists, and that simply becomes the shadow rather than 'extra stuff that never has anything to do with me'.

Morale of the story then is.... you believe you have the ability to choose what you WANT, WITHOUT in any way being affected by or involved with what you DON'T want, but this is a complete 100% ego lie. When you partially included, you partially exclude. Basic fact of a dualistic mindset. Every time you partially include something you have to reject something else and that rejected stuff is. ... ultimately, what is ... which includes the whole you. So as you wear that mask, you are attacking your whole self, suggesting that only some portion of it is acceptable, and that the other portion is unacceptable.

That is like... simultaneous self-eggrandizement and self-attack. Simultaneous ego inflation and a diminishing of Self. It splits the mind in two, shows one half to the world and hides the other, and as it does so, the shown part seems to amplify into 'goodness' while the dark hidden part amplifies into 'darkness'. You cannot escape the presence of this darkness. Just because it is hidden, does not mean it's not there. And some day it's going to manifest as sickness and death. Each time you believe in good and bad, or right and wrong, or any other dualities other than true and false, you are making BOTH a persona and a shadow, and must accept the consequences of both. The persona is your special love, the shadow is your special hate. Both of them are special.

Use the ego persona, get attacked. Use the ego persona, suffer the consequences. Use the ego persona, to make yourself look good, to win, to get, to be successful, to appear to be innocent, to have this fake facade of a person that you aren't even really that, ... be prepared to die. And who will have caused you to die? Yourself. Your own choice did it to you. So it's a good idea not to play with 'fire'... don't play the ego's game, don't live a life where you are constantly trying to 'gain' in manipulative, ego-persona ways. Just be what you are. You're perfect already.

The ego has two parts to it, because the ego is a belief-system based on duality. Duality is based on separation. The ego mind is a 'split mind'. The ego mind is at war with itself and is in conflict. The ego mind pits one part of itself against another part of itself, attempting to make out that the two parts are not whole. It is a device for separation and self destruction.

The ego is therefore two-faced. It supports both sides of all arguments provided they are opposed to each other. It both attempts to protect itself and to hurt itself. It is a victimizer and simultaneously a victim. It exalts itself onto a pedestal of idol worship while at the same time loathing itself with hatred.

The first face of the ego is what psychology would call 'the persona'. This is a fake self-image, made as an attack on who you really are. It's a disguise. It's a veneer of positivity, attempting to focus exclusively on what you like, accept, allow, everything you deem special or valuable, all of your special/love relationships, your favorites, your preferences, and all forms of 'positive judgement'. The persona is the ego's surface facade, like the jewel-encrusted picture frame Jesus describes in ACIM, housing a dark twisted picture of hatred.

You can also see the persona manifesting in the world, for example in the design of many commercial objects, such as a car, whose exterior is made to look attractive and desirable and pleasing, while concealing all of the ugly, dirty, noisy, dangerous, icky 'inner workings' underneath. The persona focuses on a form of 'inclusion', and thus focuses on getting, wanting, desiring, taking, approving, and keeping. But, never to completion... always requiring that certain things are special because other things are not. It is also represented by our point of 'attention' or focus, which homes in on what we want to be aware of, and shuts out everything else.

The second face of the ego is the shadow. You can think of the shadow as the usually indirect implications of what the persona has given value to. So, if the persona is saying, this person is really special to me, as stated in many love songs, then this also means that 'everyone else' is less than special, i.e. in some way 'less than' or despised. So while we special-love some people, doing this automatically means that you special-hate others. That 'hate', seeming to be indirectly and less consciously focused on, goes 'into the shadows'. It gets stored and becomes part of the ego, just as much as the persona is part of the ego. The shadow is the part of the entire ego that has been rejected by the persona part.

So the shadow, albeit seemingly outside your awareness much of the time, becomes this storage place, or a 'room', in which you shove all of the bad, rejected, hated, feared, judged, condemned, unacceptable, wrong stuff that the persona directly or indirectly judges. The shadow houses everything the persona wants to get rid of. The ego persona loves to craft an 'idealistic life' where everything seems to be going smoothly and it includes only the stuff you seem to 'want'. And to achieve that, it has to suppress and repress and deny all of the other signs and symptoms of life sucking or not being what you want. So while you steadily build up a life of pleasantries and people-pleasing and denial and repression, you're secretly accumulating a huge shadow-full of destruction.

At some point that shadow content boils up into awareness, and attacks the persona-self. It attempts to destroy the persona self. So if you're identified with the persona-self, you'll experience it as though you are being attacked. This 'body of pain' (pain body) can come out of seeming unconsciousness and overwhelm the conscious mind, taking over the thoughts and producing total chaos in the person's life. And you will wonder where it came from. And this is also, btw, why 'bad things happen to good people'. Being 'good' is the persona, which generates 'hidden bad', which comes back to bite you in the butt.

So the ego has these two parts and both of them depend on and feed into each other. The shadow's rejection of 'the good' relegates the good stuff to the 'good room' of the persona, and the persona's denial of the bad relegates the bad stuff to a 'bad room' of shadows. It is self-conflict and self-abuse. Good and bad. Right and wrong. You can't believe one without believing the other.

Our challenge then is to stop using both of these. To learn when you are in the persona, which shifts and changes based on who you are with or what's happening and is thoroughly inconsistent. And to recognize when you might've shifted into the shadow-self, suddenly angered into a road-rage or filled with negative thoughts. We need to learn when we are in either the persona or the shadow, and learn not to choose either of these deceitful attitudes. They are both based in right/wrong, good/bad duality. You need to move instead to a point of view of, what is TRUE, and what is FALSE.

The truth shall set you free. Truth means, am I being completely honest and authentic by being in my persona-self, pleasing everyone and not showing anyone how I really feel, or censoring myself? Am I being really honest and authentic when I go into a rage and accuse others and speak hurtful words or attack myself with negativity? Is it TRUE and genuine that I am 'this fake self'? Is it true and genuine that I am an unworthy, hated, fearful victim? Is it true and genuine that I am an inconsistent, unreliable, fickle two-faced liar? We need to learn how to notice when we're in EITHER of the two ego faces, which particular facade we're putting on, and to decide to say NO to both.

When we say not to the persona and the shadow, we are saying yes to God. When we say no to dualistic thinking, we say yes to the mind of God. When we say no to the self-conflict that projects outwardly as parts of the world we like and parts of the world we don't like, we come into acceptance of the totality - what is. When we say no to the separation and split in our own mind, which we see outside of ourselves, we can come to an awareness of wholeness and presence. This is the way out.

But we have to always be careful, to stop feeding and building our shadow-self, an unconscious hidden face of the ego, by trying to be so perfect and ideal in the persona. They are both false. They are both lies. Who are you really? Where is your real personality? What is your genuine self? How will accept ALL of you, and not just a part of you? Each time you choose one thing and reject another, you are choosing one part of yourself and rejecting another. We need to learn to stop doing that. To use denial in a helpful way, to deny the ego entirely - to deny the persona and the shadow the ability to run our lives. To choose to be in the Holy Spirit.

Getting rid of our shadow stuff, all the stuff which our persona self thinks is the 'stuff that is wrong with us', that we 'need to get rid of', in order to 'become more spiritual', is a trap of the persona. It would have you get rid of all of the shadow, by shoving it into the shadow more, so that it is more unconscious, so that you can pretend to only be aware of the 'good stuff'. And then your focus on the good stuff will actually create even more bad stuff, because you can't sit on one end of the see-saw without the other end being affected.

The only way out is truth, honesty, awareness, responsibility, acceptance, wholeness, and the various other properties of a WHOLE mind, i.e. the right-mind, which becomes the one mind, united with God.

"I am not a body. I am free, for I am still as God created me. All that I do, I do unto myself. If I attack, I suffer. But if I forgive, salvation will be given me."

If you get angry or start blaming and pointing a finger at someone, you perceive as if it really is "about them". You see them doing something, you judge "them" for it, and your mind starts attacking them. But here's the truth.

When you do this, ideas do not leave their source. You might perceive that you're successfully attacking a "separate person out there", but the attack is actually taking place INSIDE your mind. It isn't leaving you. And this has two key parts to it:

1) The attack is taking place inside your mind

2) The "target" of the attack is also inside your mind

So both the attacker and the one being attacked are IN YOU.

You might have a tremendous sense of disassociation in that it seems you are just blaming xyz person for something, casually and easily, but you may not be realizing that even when you're hurling abuse at someone who obviously is "in the wrong", you're basically having a PRIVATE SELF ATTACK, inside a private bubble, in your mind.

So all that attack that you're trying to get rid of through projection and blame, although it doesn't seem like, is actually part of your mind attacking another part of YOUR mind. Which means that you literally are attacking yourself. You think "that asshole cut me off in traffic". Well, your mind there is saying to ITSELF, that it is an asshole.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins". It's simple and easy to say, but may not always be obvious to recognize as what you're doing. In every case, every way that you seem to be "able" to attack someone else without experiencing the seeming effects and consequences, you MUST be in denial, MUST be mistaken, MUST have disassociation happening in your mind, AND you are attacking ONLY yourself.

So this is the thing. Your angry attack on another is NOT really an attack on another. The idea does not leave your mind. The thought does not leave your mind. The source of the attack (the attacker) does not leave your mind. And the thing that is attacked does not leave your mind. So while it SEEMS like you're "not targeting yourself", YOU ARE. In every case.

Underneath the illusion that it's not about you, it's always about you. Always. 100% of the time. Every time you think you can "get away with" having someone else experience the effects of what you're causing, without you participating in those effects, you are mistaken. Not only do you participate in the effects, ONLY YOU participate in the effects

If that other person chooses to be innocent and invulnerable your mental illness attack has absolutely no effect on them. If they choose to laugh in the face of your attempted attack, it has no effect on them. Whatsoever. You could be sitting there screaming at someone thinking that you're successfully attacking ONLY THEM, they could be totally happy and at peace and immune to it, and YOU are the only one suffering. And it's not simply that you are suffering because you're being angry, you're suffering because you are actually the THING that you are angry AT. You are RECEIVING the attack. What seems to aim "outward" actually goes inward.

See, your mind isn't only inside your body. Your mind is everywhere. Infinite. Bigger than the universe. And when you have a split mind of self attacking conflict, you position part of your mind seemingly "outside of your body". You disassociate from it and believe it is not inside you, is not your self, and is in fact another separate alien willed person who is doing stuff "Against" your will. Well, it's actually your will against your will. Your will is in conflict with itself and having a war. That "external" target is squarely YOU, INSIDE your mind.

This is sobering. Because simply put, it means that it is not possible to even attempt to attack anyone without attacking yourself. It's not possible to blame without hurting yourself. It's not possible to be angry at someone without accusing yourself of sin. So at some point you have to realize, it's got nothing to do with anyone else ever doing anything to you. It's ALWAYS about you doing stuff to yourself. Each time you attack and project and THINK it's not about you, it is. Each time you are annoyed about someone, it's YOU that you're annoyed about. And each time you retaliate, it's against yourself.

Which means that you've been hurting yourself, all this time. And it's never been about anyone else. And every single time in your life that you thought you were simply justified in reacting to someone else's bullshit, you NEVER WERE, you were hurting yourself. Nothing ever left your mind. Every argument was with yourself. And the question is, are you tired of hurting yourself? Do you want to keep doing it?

If you would simply be aware of this, and realize and recognize it, you'd realize the simple Golden Rule. Whatever you try to do to others you do to yourself. Whatever you think is true of others is true of you. It has nothing to do with whether they reciprocate or not. You do to yourself what you would have yourself do to you. Others never do anything. They are never the cause of you. Ever.

If you realized that you could not ever make a single effort to attack "someone else" without it being 100% an attack on yourself, you would not do it. It would be insane to do it. If you knew that it's not possible to attack another without hurting yourself, you would not do it. It hurts too much.

If you knew that you can NEVER get away with murderous behaviors without hurting yourself, you'd see the sense in never even considering attacking, knowing that to do so would hurt yourself. It's a kind of self regulating thing. All you need is the awareness that you are in fact INCLUDED in, and the ONLY one included in, receiving the effects of whatever you're trying to cause.

So the question simply is, if you are aware of this and can stay aware of it, do you really want to keep hurting yourself? It is in your best interests to only love. It is in your best interests to only ever be loving toward yourself and others. You can't have one set of rules that apply to others and another for yourself. You can't have it be that you are loved while others are hated. Its BOTH, or NEITHER. Either both you and others are loved or both you and others are attacked. There is no escape. And the ego is the thing that suggests there IS a way to get away with this without any consequences.

There is no escaping consequences. Whatever you do you do to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. All you need is awareness to SEE that any slight mis-step against "another" is REALLY a mis-step against yourself, and you do not want to do that because it hurts you. And it splits your mind. Which makes you disassociate from yourself and imagine an enemy, which makes you project, which doesn't REALLY project at all. External enemies are indirect self attack from your mind to your mind.

You've never attacked anyone but yourself. No-one has ever attacked anyone but themselves. You've never been attacked by anyone other than yourself. You have the power not to attack yourself. To not attack yourself you must also not want to attack others, because the fantasy of being ABLE to attack others will make you hurt yourself under the belief that it's having no effect on you. Secret of salvation. You're doing it all to yourself. Stop hurting yourself. Love yourself. Easy peasy.

Here a beautiful and inspiring collection of short quotes all to do with going BEYOND. Beyond the body, beyond appearances, beyond forms, beyond sin, beyond the world. This is the goal of the course. To return home to Heaven.

"Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is."

"Beyond the body"

"Beyond this world there is a world I want. I choose to see that world instead of this, For here is nothing that I really want."

"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"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."

"Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARDS it."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception."

"Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain."

"We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"I DO go before you, because I am beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego."

"Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see beyond appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality."

"Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one."

"And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. "

"Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist."

"You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity TOGETHER."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely. "

"NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you."

"One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty."

"The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world? You are a stranger here."

"Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation."

"Truth is so far beyond time, that ALL of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all."

"Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sounds and sights of this insane world. You do not live there."

"He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? "

"And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all."

"But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. "

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond everything that would hold you back."

"It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world. It is its holiness that points to God. It is its holiness that makes you safe."

"This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is."

"Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him."

"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."

"How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!"

"If they understood what is beyond them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."

"No-one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."

"Who, then, can say which one can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive?This is insanity indeed.It is not up to God's teachers"

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. "

"Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want."

"He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time."

"He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them."

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"Only joy increases forever. Joy and Eternity are INSEPARABLE. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. "

"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure."

"It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them."

"What lies beyond them cannot BE attacked."

"For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane."

"It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never died, but has been kept obscure."

"They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. "

"For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind."

"NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today s idea perfectly."

"The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."

"Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. "

"For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them."

"You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. "

"Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request."

"Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond."

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you."

"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."

"Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth."

"From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks."

"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."

"It is the world s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely."

"It is past the clouds, and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the light."

"Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release."

"But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved."

"There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever."

"Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own."

"You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love s "enemy" Christ s vision does not see."

"And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them."

"We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. "

"The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember."

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted, hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to JOIN with Him at last."

"From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared."

"No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One. "

"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body."

"This One can teach you how to look on time differently and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin."

Oneness does not mean "one thing."

In reality, all thinking follows along the lines that whatever applies to one creation, applies to all creations. What is true of one son, is true of another. What is true of you, is true of the entire sonship. Whatever applies to you, applies to everything. It either applies to BOTH of you, or NEITHER of you.

This is a LOGIC system, a way of THINKING, based on the simple idea of "BOTH-AND". What applies as true, is true of BOTH you and others. It is true of me AND you. It is a system based on INCLUSION and EQUALITY. The entirety of God's mind and all of creation runs on this form of reasoning, this kind of THINKING. It's how God thinks and how all of creation functions in harmony. And it's how you should think of ALL your brothers, as being equal to you in every way.

In the dream, the ego's thinking was devised as a way to OPPOSE God's way of thinking. To develop another thought SYSTEM and WAY of thinking that breaks away from God's system and DENIES IT. What better way to disrupt equality and everything applying equally to everyone, than to introduce the law of chaos that the truth is DIFFERENT for everyone.

In the ego's thought system and its way of thinking about anything, it does not think in terms of both/and. It thinks in terms of EXCLUSION, because the whole system is based on separation/exclusion/isolation/specialness. So to the ego, what is true of you is NOT true of your brother. What applies to you does NOT apply to them. This ISOLATES you from them and sets up a special rule that seems only to apply to some PART of the sonship, not everyone. And "me not you" is murderous.

The entire ego MIND runs on "EITHER-OR" logic. The ego never wants to confirm that anything is EQUALLY TRUE of more than one thing, because this would erase separation and differences. It emphasizes how, one thing is NOT another thing. How you are NOT the same as your brother. How what is over here, is NOT over there. How what you have, your brother does NOT have. This belief alone, this kind of mindset, gave rise to SPACETIME, in which what is true in one location is not true in another.

Now, spacetime IS THE THOUGHT SYSTEM OF THE EGO. And because everything IN spacetime is "laid out" logically on a basis of exclusion and isolation, where one object appears to be over here and not over there, and one object appears to be different to thus not equal to other objects, this maps exactly onto the way the ego THINKS. And so then it seems to be natural to THINK in terms of either/or, about everything in the world, because it happens to map exactly or "naturally" onto the physical world.

You can for example easily talk about how your car is parked in the first parking space and not the second one. How you were in Australia for a week and not the USA. How your body is not the same as your neighbor's body. How you own a particular car while your neighbor does not. How your hair is brown while your neighbor's hair is blonde. All of these ways that you pick apart the world, is inherently a direct reflection of the entire ego thought system (which is the world), and so makes it seem easy to talk ABOUT the world using either/or logical reasoning.

However, because this "way of thinking" is COMPLETELY OPPOSED to God's SYSTEM, his thought system,which is HEAVEN and how heaven functions, whenever you use this kind of either/or reasoning to think about ANYTHING to do with heaven, creation, sonship, sons, god etc, MAJOR DISTORTIONS HAPPEN, hugely FALSE conclusions are arrived at, and all kinds of confusion erupts. The ego's system was made to DENY AND DESTROY heaven's system, so if you USE the ego's system to try to understand heaven's system YOU WILL FAIL. Guaranteed.

Here's what happens. In ego thinking, you think in terms of boxes. Either something is in box A, or its in box B. Those are the only accepted possibilities. All of spacetime's "reality" seems to support the idea that this is the only possibility ie something cannot be in two boxes. However, Heaven is outside of spacetime and transcends its nature and its laws. Things having to be separated out by space, things not being equal, things not SHARING a location, things having to be in one place at a time and not everywhere at once, etc... are all DEFIED by heaven's thought system. The ego's laws are BROKEN by Heaven's laws.

The truth is, in heaven's reality, in God's system of both/and thinking, it is possible for very "strange" things to happen. For example it's possible for one thing to be in multiple locations at once, simultaneously. Not only is the thing in multiple locations, it is FULLY in EACH of those locations. This is because everything in heaven has OMNIPRESENCE. God is omnipresent and so are all his creations. Meaning LITERALLY, that a being in reality is capable of showing up in multiple locations simultaneously.

God is not only everywhere, he is FULLY PRESENT in EVERY location. Without compromise. Without only one "part" of him being over here and another "part" of him being over there. He is not partial. ALL of God is simultaneously in multiple locations at the same time. To the ego, that is regarded as ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE. But it is nevertheless possible, because God does abide by the ego's limited laws. The ego would say, anything that is in this location, must be TOTALLY ABSENT from another location. And if it thinks that is true of God, it is not TOTALLY FUCKED In its comprehension of the truth and has come to a completely INCORRECT conclusion. Ego thinking is BROKEN!

Now, that's a problem for ego reasoning, because the EGO wants to put things into nice discreet boxes. It wants to say, well, either a son of God is in this one box, or he is in another box, but he can't be in both at once. But in reality that is actually a LIMITATION which is being placed on what is possible. In reality, A son of God CAN be in both boxes at once! He transcends boxes even when there are boxes. So the ego looks at reality and sees a son of God and says, this Son of God is either:

a) totally separate from all other sons of God because he MUST be ONLY in one completely discreet box by himself, thus "multiple sons" MUST mean SEPARATE sons and this is therefore an "idea of separation", thus the sonship is an ego thing, or

b) the division between the boxes must be erased completely so that there is only ONE box, resulting in there being in truth only ONE son, which by erasing the boxes, has now destroyed the individual sons of God because the ego can't comprehend how many sons can SHARE existence or OVERLAP boxes.

Similarly, if we talk about the notion that a single son of God can be in two places at once, or that there can be multiple sons of God, the ego has no way to comprehend that correctly. It WILL come to false conclusions. All it can conclude is either:

a) if there are multiple sons of God there must be multiple SEPARATE boxes whereby the sons do not SHARE boxes at all and thus are separate - which renders the idea of multiple sons an EGO idea of separation to be discarded as untrue, or

b) there aren't really multiple sons because there can only be "one son per box" so if you take away all the "separations" by taking away all the boxes, there can only be one box left containing only one son, thus completely ignoring the fact that God created many permanent sons IN reality.

This is the kind of ego reasoning that almost everyone in this WORLD uses because it seems to match up to the LAYOUT of spacetime and thus goes unchallenged. To think about or try to understand reality, heaven, creation, and the sonship THROUGH this ego lens, is an AUTOMATIC DISTORTION of the truth. The result is FALSE CONCLUSIONS that SEEM to make SENSE, but are TOTALLY NONSENSE.

It is FALSE to say that God only has one son, by reasoning that there can only in truth be one box in order to have no separation. Separate boxes in reality does NOT mean separation, because the contents of the boxes TRANSCEND the boxes. "One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds" does in fact mean there ARE many boxes!

It is FALSE to say that multiple sons implies multiple separations and is therefore a separation idea. If you think of "any kind of separation" as being an ego thing, not realizing that it's OKAY and NATURAL for there to be NATURAL DIVISIONS in reality WITHOUT it implying EXCLUSION, ignoring that the boxes are SHARING with each other, then you are making a mistake.

SONS OF GOD SPAN BOXES. THEY TRANSCEND THE LIMITS OF EGO REASONING. THEY CANNOT BE CONTAINED BY OR ACCURATELY MAP ONTO A SYSTEM OF THOUGHT BASED ON EXCLUSION! YOUR WAY OF THINKING IS FAULTY!

So in order to actually comprehend how and why there ARE MANY sons in reality, and why AT THE SAME TIME they are "all one", YET MANY STILL, and why this is NOT an ego idea of separation or duality, you have to go BEYOND "box based thinking." And another way of saying that is "thinking outside the box". If you don't think outside the EGO box you WILL come to ALL of the ego's logical conclusions such as "god has only one son" (because it SEEMS to make sense) and "multiple sons is a separation idea" (which SEEMS to make sense) because that's all the ego CAN conclude. It's automatic as a result of either/or thinking.

To think like God, means to stop thinking in terms of either/or. For example, in this world, you have to learn to stop thinking about how your brother is DIFFERENT from you. You have to stop thinking that some truth can apply to him and NOT you. You have to move past this ego model of "its true of you, but not me" or "you're sinful, I'm innocent". You actually have to learn, in thinking like God, that what is true of you is true of THE WHOLE SONSHIP. What is true of you is true of your brother. And you and your brothers are totally EQUAL in every way. And that also means you are transcending the LAWS OF SPACETIME, and you are transcending the entire WAY that the ego thinks, which opens you up to POSSIBILITIES that the ego considers totally impossible.

It's quite a big transition to go from constantly thinking in terms of "true of me, not true of you" or vice versa, to thinking in terms of "whatever is true of me is true of everyone". Or to go from "having individuality is an ego separation idea" to "having individuality that we share but still retaining my SELF is TOTALLY NATURAL." God's system is a matter of either:

a) its true of BOTH of us, or

b) its true of NEITHER of us.

That's totally different to the ego's system of "its true of either A or B but but not both."

It's a TOTALLY different SYSTEM of thought. A totally diffeent MIND. It's a totally different WAY of thinking. It's a totally different way of REASONING and performing logical conclusions. God's system simply is not LIKE the ego's system. And so to understand heaven's dynamics you HAVE to move past either/or thought. If you don't, if you just keep thinking of ANYTHING to do with God's Kingdom USING the ego to THINK WITH, you will conclude falsely!

You have to realize WHY either/or thought is LIMITED, why it was made to produce CHAOS, why it leads to CONFUSION, and why it is totally NONSENSE. In fact, when ego thinking looks at anything to do with reality, anything true registers as nonsense, and anything false registers as making sense! That's because the ego is NUTS and totally OPPOSED to truth. IT CANNOT SEE REALITY CLEARLY. But that doesn't mean YOU can't comprehend heaven's nature, you just have to ditch the WAY you have always been thinking.

So let's say the ego looks at heaven and it sees ok, over here there seems to be a son of God, but over there there also seems to be a son of God. There seems to be two things, two brothers. What will the ego conclude? It will conclude that if there are two things, there are two separate boxes, and the two things are EITHER in one box OR another, but they do not share boxes at all. And thus that this means there are two SEPARATE beings, thus there is *separation* happening, thus its an EGO situation so the two brothers MUST BE ILLUSIONS. And thus it turns the sonship, which comprises MANY INDIVIDUALS, into an ego concept.

That's a PROBLEM, because the fact is that one brother is IN the other brother, and both brothers are SHARING their INDIVIDUAL boxes. There ARE two boxes, but the CONTENTS of the boxes SPAN the boxes. The ego can't handle that! So it sees joined unified SHARED experiences/minds, multiple INDIVIDUALS who SHARE EVERYTHING, as being "separated off" isolated units, and thus concludes that the idea of multiple children of God must be an ego idea of separation that IT has put INTO an ego framework. TOTAL FAIL!

It is PERFECTLY POSSIBLE, in reality, in heaven, for there to be MANY INDIVIDUAL THINGS, which SIMULTANEOUSLY are one. One AND many. Truth that applies to one thing AND to another. Truth that is true of BOTH OF THEM. Something in box A which is ALSO in box B, supporting oneness AND individuality. THAT is heaven's nature! It's a realm, a mind, a thought system, where there ARE many things, in number, many INDIVIDUALS, but AT THE SAME TIME, those individuals are SHARING everything of themselves with each other and God and therefore are "one". The one doesn't cancel the many!

"God who encompasses all being, NEVERTHELESS (defiant of ego logic) created *SEPARATE BEINGS*, who have EVERYTHING INDIVIDUALLY and want to share it to increase their joy."

There is nothing false in this statement and "separate beings" does NOT mean EXCLUSIVE ISOLATED BEINGS. It means MANY beings, who SHARE everything. Who have boxes, and SPAN boxes. They TRANSCEND LIMITATIONS.

Beware. Just because they are ONE, does not mean they are NOT TWO. THAT would be an ego conclusion. And just because they are TWO, does not mean they are NOT ONE! That too is an ego conclusion. Are you following? It's mind bending. The truth about God's creation TRANSCENDS EGO LAWS. Transcends ego logic. Transcends limitations. And transcends the "layout" of spacetime. Omnipresence is the total opposite of spatial relationships, just as eternity is the opposite of time. Spacetime and its structure (thought system) was made as an ATTACK on God.

Heaven is NOT LIKE THIS WORLD, because it is a SYSTEM OF THOUGHT (God's creation) totally opposite to the SYSTEM that runs spacetime. Heaven does not THINK like how the ego thinks! It's laws and rules are BEYOND the ego's laws and rules. Your entire WAY of THINKING has to be transcended and recognized for its limitation in order to go BEYOND it to SEE clearly and correctly the metaphysics and dynamics of heaven. It is not of this world. And in fact you have to unlearn "thinking with the ego" and LEARN TO THINK LIKE GOD. This is in the course! Your mind has to get out of the either/or paradigm!

Ego says, "how can something be two things and yet one thing at the same time? that makes no sense". OF COURSE! It makes no sense to the EGO's way of thinking, so it registers as nonsense, even though IT IS TOTALLY SENSIBLE. One thing CAN be two things! God HAS CHILDREN!!!!!! God has a FAMILY! The Holy Trinity is real and DOES HAVE 3 PARTS TO IT. The Holy Spirit *IS* a permanent distinct ETERNAL CREATION. The sonship DOES have its own children! God DID create legions of angels!

"We are creation, we, the sons of God."

"The Kingdom of God includes ALL HIS CHILDREN, and their creations."

"God's angels".

Until you can recognize and move beyond the limitations of either/or-based ego thinking you will not be able to SEE or ACCEPT why God has created many sons or why it makes TOTAL SENSE to say so. You have to think way outside the box and use an entirely different KIND of thinking. If you look up "paralogical reasoning" you will get an idea of how this works.

This is also why heaven is NOT DUALITY.

This is also why heaven is ****NOT NON DUALITY.***

***BOTH of those concepts are EGO CONCLUSIONS!!!!***

THEY ARE BOTH FALSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The ego can't help but think that way. "Either its one thing, or its two things". That's ALL the ego thought system can conclude, ever! And so it thinks "one thing" is "more spiritual" than two things, so let's go with that. BUT IT's WRONG! IT"S NO BETTER! "Either its duality, or its non-duality, there's no other possibility". THAT'S EGO!! THERE IS another possibility beyond the limits of that assumed way of reasoning. THERE IS A BETTER WAY!

Reality is not duality OR non-duality. It is "paraduality" or "transduality", to coin a phrase. It TRANSCENDS BOTH OF THEM. Stupid ego rules DO NOT APPLY. God is one AND MANY. Creations are one AND many. One brother is ALL brothers. One mind is ALL minds. There are MANY!!! And it's not duality!

Omipresence! Transcendence of the limits of space and time. Transcendence of finite boxes or being one box or many boxes. SHARED experiences. Transcendent experiences. Unity which does not obliterate individuality. Oneness which does not undo or cancel the multitude of God's creations who are, according to ACIM, "in number infinite"!! Equality which acknowledges REAL BROTHERHOOD. A sonship which DOES CONTAIN MANY INDIVIDUALS who are all "the one son of God" AND WHO ARE THE MANY SONS OF GOD. At the same time! Doesn't make sense? TO THE EGO!

Some of you reading this will get it. Most probably will not, and most have not, mainly because we don't realize just HOW steeped we are in ego reasoning. Thinking like God is VERY DIFFERENT to what you're used to. Any time you go towards "one box", or you go towards "many separate boxes", you are IN THE EGO and failing to comprehend the nature of reality.

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT." (notice how the ego's reasoning comes to false conclusions because it can't comprehend how multiple souls could have everything AT THE SAME TIME and not exclude each other).

"It goes against all the thinking of the world, but so does Heaven. The world will end when its thought system has been completely reversed." (Heaven's thought system of both/and GOES AGAINST the ego's thought system of this WORLD)

"...but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world..." (the true nature of heaven is ALIEN to the ego's idea of it)

"Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely. Life is now recognized as salvation, and pain and misery of any kind perceived as hell." (Recognition of reality REQUIRES that you ditch either/or based thought and adopt both/and based thought, which is INCLUSIVE REASONING)

"You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes." (to reach true perception you have to transcend the body's perception, ie transcend EGO THINKING and the EGO WORLD/SYSTEM, so that you can SEE SENSE and SEE REASON and return to reality, only possibly through an acceptance of how everything applies equally to everyone everywhere always.)

"I and my father are one"

Oneness does not mean "one box"! THAT IS EGO!!!!

Oneness means SHARED UNITY AND BEING JOINED AS TWO THINGS IN HARMONY WHO ARE NOT SEPARATE YET ARE STILL TWO THINGS!

That which is real cannot be threatened. Reality is permanent truth. What is real cannot attack or be attacked. It cannot be at war with another because it is everything. And it cannot be at war with itself because it is undivided.

The denial of reality is the ego, which is a system of thought in the mind which believes in separation. Separation leads to division, to inequality, to differences, and to conflict. This begins the laws of chaos, in which the truth seems to be different for everyone.

As soon as everyone is different, they are automatically conflicting. There is a breakdown of unity, harmony, equality, wholeness and relationship. Just the mere notion that you are different to another is a state of conflict. This applies to different particles of matter, materials, forces, events, bodies, places, times etc. They are all conflicting all the time because they do not share.

The whole ego thought system is really a system of SELF DENIAL - the denial of the soul. As such, it is a state of self attack, an attempt to destroy oneself. This self destructiveness means that one part of self is trying to destroy the rest. This also means the mind has to be split in two, with one part at war with the other.

It doesn't take much for one part of mind to SEEM to contain different beliefs, attitudes, appearances, forms, states to the other part. And before you know it, there is internal conflict. There is war, on the basis of differences in form and belief. One side of mind seems to NOT BE the other part, and so now there seem to be two identities, who separately disagree with each other.

The illusion is that one part of mind SEEMS not to be of the same mind as the other part. The differences in belief and appearance make it SEEM as if there are TWO, not one. Two identities. Two selves. Two sides. Opposing forces. Clashing attitudes. Disunity and misunderstanding. Mis-trust and suspicion. Conflict and war.

This internal war plays out on what appears to the the stage of the world, because the world is in the mind. It is a projection of the ego thought system. The forms of countries and nations, people in bodies, armies, weapons, nationalities and cultures and so on, are all just aspects of the ONE ego thought system playing the part of taking sides.

If you fall for the illusion and are deceived, you will listen to what one side says against the other and believe it. And by believing it you will disbelieve what the other side says. And the forms and behaviors of one will tell you what it means, and what its truth is. And before you know it, you think one country is more righteous or sinful than another on the basis of which difference you prefer.

But the truth is that the ego is playing BOTH SIDES. Both sides are part of a single whole. The ego is the oppressor and the oppressed. It is the victim and the victimizer. It is the bigger country and the smaller country. It is the unprovoked and the provoker. It only PRETENDS not to be EACH OTHER, through dissociation and through the illusion of forms of separation.

If you buy into this you will take sides and feel sorry for one over the other and use one as an innocent victim to accuse the other of war crimes. This happens every time. It means you have failed to recognize that BOTH sides are ego attacking itself. One side attacks the other, the other attacks back, and BOTH of them are warring, regardless of how it appears.

Nor are there really two sides, nor two camps, nor two countries, nor two armies, nor two sets of people. If you believe there are, you are buying into the ego thought system. The ego is at war with ITSELF. It splits itself apart and the armies of one part fight with the armies of another. It destroys itself, it blows up its own buildings, it attacks its own "people", and wars against its own countries. The whole thing is internal conflict.

This may seem to be playing out between two particular groups of people, in a given part of the world. Or maybe it was happening in another part of the world. Or on your doorstop. Or thousands of miles away. And it will keep happening. Because it's always the SAME LESSON over and over and over again. Yet another conflict presented as an opportunity for forgiveness and for undoing the separation. Remember the one lesson - you are doing it to yourself.

If you look at all the reactions people are having about a particular war, you'll find 99% of it is a form of scapegoating. People taking sides. People buying the illusion of innocent victims. People buying that one country IS NOT the other country. That there are two, not one. That this is a fight between TWO parties, instead of ONE overall mastermind. THE EGO is the culprit behind all wars, all divisions, all conflicts, all invasions, and is the RECIPIENT of ALL attacks as well.

The ego thought system is in fact SICK, in that it actually takes pleasure in hurting itself. It would pleasure itself to death. It would destroy parts of itself in order to preserve parts of itself. It would rip off its own arms and burn off its own legs if it meant that it could perpetuate suffering and victimhood. It is twisted and insane and evil and makes no sense. It wants to perpetuate itself AND destroy itself.

It is both the evil dictator AND the defenselessly oppressed. So don't just blindly buy into how things APPEAR to be on the physical level. There is NOT a war between two sets of people. There is an internal war by ONE set of people, ONE mind, that is trying to split apart and destroy itself, and it just LOOKS like a conflict between two sides on the physical stage. If you take either side, assign innocence to either side, assign guilt to either side, you are INTENSIFYING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM and making it WORSE.

The only way to undo this is to not buy into the ILLUSION OF WAR, and instead to offer UNITY AND HEALING through unconditional love for ALL sides at all times. Don't be praying for one side to win over another. Pray for reunion and forgiveness and real peace. When you buy into external war, YOU ARE SPLITTING YOUR OWN MIND AND ARE HAVING AN INTERNAL WAR which you are projecting onto the world. Then it is YOUR mind that needs healing as well.

"When we said that prayer is the medium of miracles, we also said that the only meaningful prayer is for forgiveness, because those who have been forgiven HAVE everything. "

"How strange indeed becomes this war against Yourself!"

"War is impossible unless belief in VICTORY is cherished. Conflict WITHIN you MUST imply that you believe the ego has the power TO BE VICTORIOUS. "

"Surely you realize the ego IS at war with God. Certain it is it HAS no enemy."

"The war against yourself is but the battle of two illusions, struggling to make them DIFFERENT from each other, in the belief the one which conquers will be true."

"War is the condition in which fear is born, and grows and seeks to dominate. Peace is the state where love abides, and seeks to share itself. Conflict and peace are opposites; where one abides, the other CANNOT be; where either goes, the other disappears."

"Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace."

"Yet in this war THERE IS NO OPPONENT."

"Yet no-one sees himself in conflict, and ravaged by a cruel war, unless he believes that BOTH "opponents" in the war are real. Believing this, he must escape, for such a war would surely end his peace of mind, and so destroy 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."

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

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace."

"Yet peace is stronger than war, because it heals. War is DIVISION, not increase. No-one gains from strife."

"The world will end in peace because it is a place of war."

"Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself."

"Who COULD be hurt in such a war, unless he hurts himself? He HAS no enemy in truth."

"It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war. No-one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict. Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty."

Ok so, various people have expressed doubt that there are "levels" in ACIM or that this is in any way important or useful. So I thought I'd ramble on a bit about this from my point of view. I can see this being somewhat controversial.

The first thing is this.

Jesus wrote ACIM and he is not in a body, and throughout the Course we're taught we are not a body. That's even today's workbook lesson - I am not a body I am free. That doesn't mean, oh, you're still IN a body but it's not you. Also the course says at no time does the body exist. Ok. So.... WHERE do you exist? Where is there no physical matter? Not this universe.

Clearly this means there is some other seeming 'place', if you will, in which mind - spirit - is able to exist, which does not require a physical form and has nothing to do with the physical world, which, by the way, is not real.

So here we at the very least have 2 `levels`. The level of the physical world of form, and some other spiritual level. Sort of like a 'dimension' if you will. It's non-physical. It's where you end up when your body dies. And its the stopping off point between lifetimes.

Now, each 'level' has to be like a 'place' of sorts.. which the Course refers to as a 'universe'. And if you read the text carefully, when it mentions universe it uses that exact same word even though it's sometimes referring to the universe of form, and sometimes referring to the universe that God created. ie reference to at least some other non-physical level or experiential existence.

So if you don't believe there are levels, and you read the course talking about 'universe' in this way, and you don't discern exactly what that relates to given the context, then you're going to assume it's always talking about the physical universe. And then when it makes statements about 'universe' it's going to throw you into a whole bunch of confusing misunderstandings and ego interpretations. You'll attribute all kinds of 'truth' to the ego universe because you think the course is telling you this is the case.

The course is often quite subtle about this, and it also shifts around quite a lot between which 'level' of experience it's referring to, without necessarily giving you a nice obvious disclaimer that it's doing so.

Now, this other universe, the spiritual universe, also has to be broken down into sub-levels because there are parts of the course which speak of certain truths which cannot possibly apply to a separate place like that. For example whenever the Course speaks of 'heaven', and of 'souls', and of 'Gods Creation', and of 'knowing', and 'oneness' and all these interesting things, they often refer to the very highest 'level' of the metaphysics - heaven if you will.

But then at other times the course speaks of things like the sonship, alluding to you having multiple brothers, a brotherhood, not in terms of all brothers being ONE SON, but in terms of a multitude of sons. Also the urtext speaks of multiple souls. Now, in terms of the metaphysics, it does not make logical consistent sence to group together references to these 'sub-level' ways of looking at things with the highest-level way of looking at things. If you do that, then when the course refers to something like heaven or knowing or whatever, or the son of God, you will lump it all together under a general umbrella of 'heavenly spiritual stuff' and make the only distinction that this apparently is 'not the ego' level. This will result in all manner of confusions, misunderstandings of meaning, wrong implications, false conclusions and just a big mess. The metaphysics will break, the course will become inconsistent and you won't be able to understand it.

So now at the very least, there is a level of heaven, a level where the sonship exists as multiple sons, a level of christ where there is only one son, and a level of the physical universe where the ego plays out in duality. This is all quite clearly in the course text throughout and referred to in multiple ways and in multiple contexts. And if you read it and if you understand what it means, then when you read about christ you know that its referring to the unified one son and when its referring to sonship or brotherhood you know its referring to the level of multiple sons.

So there is a level of the metaphysics, which has its own 'universe' and its own 'state of mind', like a 'place' of experience if you will, for each of these aspects of the course. This is the structure of the dream that the ego made. Different levels of 'splits' in the one mind. And these are on a colossal scale. Astronomical. The ego dream comprises separation from God, resulting in a separate son 'level', and then a split into a sonship/brotherhood which is a whole other universe/level, and then there's the level just above the physical (level 2) where the holy spirit resides, and then the physical level. All of these levels are explicitly referred to in the course and if you really can grasp the logical and subtle implications of every thing Jesus says in each section, you can tell that these levels 'exist' in the metaphysical structure.

So now, if you don't believe in these levels, then as mentioned, you will draw all kinds of false conclusions. It results in all kinds of behaviors where you try to attain states of mind/being/experience which are extremely far beyond the 'level' of the dream that you find yourself on. You generally can only transition to the next highest level, one level at a time, you can't easily jump to the top - to heaven. Holy Spirit is on level '2', in a different 'dimension' if you will, which is where we all are being asked to get to as our main next step. When we try to move beyond that to things like awareness of the sonship, total equality, oneness, christ-mind, etc... we basically CANNOT do it and it leads us into all kinds of ego deceptions - a spiritualized ego.

The spiritualized ego is what happens when the ego, or shall we say the mindset, of a given 'level 'of the ego's total dream, attempts to transfer itself to a higher-order level of existence. It tries to KEEP its mindset (e.g. level 1 ego duality) but at the same time take itself to the next level where there is really a totally different mind (Holy Spirit's mind). But this is impossible, of course, but this doesn't stop it trying. And this creates a great amount of specialness and fake spirituality and fake progress and ego images and behavioral fuckups which call for sacrifice and illusions and all kinds of madness. It's not possible. We have to let the 'mindset' of level 1 - the ego - we have to let it GO, detach from it, so that who WE are can travel up to level 2 and proceed from there.

So anyway... if there's only one level, or even only 2 levels, you will develop a spiritual ego from it because it will lead you to so many false conclusions and so many attempts to greatly spiritualize lower-order levels of existence that cannot contain those truths. The lower mind cannot grasp and experience the higher states.

If you read the Course with these levels in mind, it is much more clear where and when Jesus is referring to certain specific levels of the dream - different dimensions, different universes, different mindsets and different aspects of the metaphysics. Also if you look at your own 'course attitude' based on these levels, you will see that you've been attempting to become an achiever of very high-level metaphysics but still while being a level-1 identity/mind. This produces bliss-ninny spiritualization of the ego, and it is rife in the course community. And in myself as well. I'm just starting to realize how far this has gone.

So anyway. The levels are just a way to map actual levels of experiential existence in the hierarchy of the total dream, which comprises several 'dimensions' of which the physical universe is only one, and therefore it's really just a clear and truthful acknowledgement of this fact, allowing you to navigate realistically and to understand what the heck the course really means when it says something. Very high-level truths are of NO USE TO YOU when you are on level 1. You cannot be christ when you are a level-1 ego. You have to become level 2, then 3, then 4, then 5. It is also a relief to let go of the pressure of trying to attain such impossibly high spiritual states which are out of reach of the level-1 mind. You can attain them but your ego cannot, and until you let go of 'level 1' thinking you cannot get to level 2 yet alone up to heaven.

What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-pI.135.18:1)

Your passage through time and space is not at random. You cannot but be in the right place at the right time. Such is the strength of God. Such are His gifts. (W-pI.42.2:3-6)

Therefore, the plan includes very specific contacts to be made for each teacher of God. There are no accidents in salvation. Those who are to meet will meet, because together they have the potential for a holy relationship. (M-3.1:5-7)

This may or may not involve changes in the external situation. Remember that no one is where he is by accident, and chance plays no part in God's plan. (M-9.1:2-3)

No one is sent by accident to anyone. Relationships are always purposeful….Whoever comes has been sent. (P-3.III.6:2-3, 5)

What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.

On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.

What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?

What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?

Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.

This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.

A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.

A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.

All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.

The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.

Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.

Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.

You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.

Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.

Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.

At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.

At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.

And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.

And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.

So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.

So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.

So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.

What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.

And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-135.13)" - ACIM

It's all for the best.

This may not be popular.

True relationship is between one person and everyone, simultaneously. The human body was constructed in order to disrupt this relationship, and to focus on isolation, so that rather than being in relationship with everyone, you are in relationship with typically only one other person.

By becoming closer to their body, and attempting to unite with the body, there is actually an attempt to move AWAY from everyone else. Far more is excluded than included. By attempting to join with "only one", 99.99% of the rest of existence is left out. One winner and billions of losers, as is always the result of competition. And so the sex act is a total opposite of true joining.

Bodies cannot join, they cannot even share the same space. One part protrudes, another caves in, there seems to be a surface friction but there is never a true merging. The ritual of the sexual act is really a ritual to death and sin, whereby the body is emphasized over spirit in order to move towards the body, towards sin, towards hell, and towards death.

Intercourse is movement towards death because it emphasizes that the body is real, it highlights sensations over knowledge, it shuts spirit out of awareness, focuses on the body's sensors, eyes, touch and so on, and makes you "lose your mind." It produces and increases body identification, believing you are the body and that you are interacting with a person who is a body. This closes the spiritual eye, shuts out life, and proceeds towards death.

You could say that by a man and woman copulating, they are performing a death ritual, in which they are attempting to manufacture a separate self, born from death, born in pain, and produced as a result of an illusion of joining made to actually prevent joining. The separation then increases, there is a fragmentation, and another "entity" shows up as the result.

This is very much no different to the illusion of cell division, in which separation is used to split cells in order to multiply them. This is called reproduction, but it is the opposite of creation of life. Bodies come together and do not join and some matter is transferred and some illusory biological processes occur and another body appears, increasing bodies. But what has actually occurred is separation has been used to testify to the end of God and a symbol of the separation has emerged. It's called birth, but it's an eruption of death.

All sexual acts involving a person attempt to utilize the person's body to get something, to meet a perceived need, or to mutually take from each other. Since the body is a picture of selfishness, resulting from specialness, sin and isolation, both body identified persons see themselves as lacking and limited, and want to fulfill themselves by getting something out of the activity. Of course, we then imagine that if we "only give and don't receive" this is somehow more loving, but giving without receiving is sacrifice, and you can be sure the ego is right there to emphasize it.

More or less, everyone with a body is interested in self gratification, a kind of masturbation, in which ultimately they seek through the body to experience something external, to sense something, to have something happen to them which they find to be preferable. For some the "happens to me" might be painful, sadistic and twisted, while for others they might seek what appears to be an illusion of "love making". But rest assured, sex is murderous and cannot in any way create love.

"What is not love is murder" is based on the Golden Rule, that what applies to one applies to another equally. When this law is broken by our egos, we move into a state of imbalance where something is more for one and less for another, there is finite limitation, there is "give and take", and attempts to believe something is true of one person not the other. "It's my turn" is selfish. Two people copulating is an attempt on both parts, typically, to gain something which the other is perceived to give them, both taking from each other, usually under the guise of giving.

Bodies cannot create. They do not create life. Life forms are not alive, they are death forms. Illusions of life. Babies bodies are just as much illusory as adult bodies. Bodies reproducing is a testament to the ego's attempt to produce alternative, different, unique, separated off identities. Little walking prison cells for the mind to inhabit. There is no particular glory in the production of an allegedly "god given" (ego given) baby any more than there is glory in those children becoming adults and trying to merge back together. You'd think it should be obvious that the bodies should not have been produced through separation in the first place if later a "re-joining" is the supposed goal.

Bodies cannot join. Just so you know, no two atoms of matter can ever touch each other. They are repelled by nuclear forces. The sensation of someone touching you is not really them touching you, it's the force fields repelling your force fields and causing there to seem to be a sensation of collision. No two bodies have ever touched and lived to talk about it, because this would result in a nuclear explosion. And the earth does not "move" this way.

For the most part, most of us body identified people are rather self absorbed with our bodies. Men and women alike preen and prune as if attempting to allegedly attract a mate, but quite honestly, almost all of it is self adoration. Because it is the body that we are in love with, not people. Bodies are idols to worship and we worship no bodies more than our own.

Most of what we allegedly do to prepare ourselves for a partner (an excluder) is of no interest to them and they probably can't relate to it. We bolster ourselves up in our vanity and egotism so that if we approve of our own condition, we're satisfied. We're all a bunch of egomaniac vain self-obsessed fools, falling over ourselves to manipulate someone into doing something to us that we prefer so that we can get our own rocks off - a form of positive victimhood.

Having become body identified, we have identified with being separate. The bodies are literally separate. There is space between them and the bodies will never touch. There is even a line in the course that says God is the only one who has ever touched his creations. Going into body mode, we then go through this process of trying to hump the brains out of all the other body identified people, in an attempt to overcome the very separation that we bought into in the first place, without doing so.

And there really is no real attempt TO do so, the whole purpose of it is to STAY SEPARATE. The whole dynamic of bodies joining is an attempt to KEEP the separation going, to reproduce the separation, and to produce more separate things. "Babies" come from this, as an increase in the population of ego flesh suits, ready for the next mind to be trapped in a brain and ready to suffer.

You could say, that the more an intimate couple focuses on the body, the less connected they are. The more they focus attention on sex, the more love is shut out. The more they make the body real, the more disconneced they become and have no real relationship. Then it becomes just about the physical sex, which is not love. They come together, almost literally, to separate from each other. Only love joins people together, not the body. And by starting out by going into body identification, they have already moved away from love, away from relationship and away from true joining. You could even say that this is a form of sickness.

In holy relationship there is no interest in the body for its own merits or purposes. It is recognized that the body is not inherently pleasurable, and anything related to it is not the cause of joy. In fact, the body would diminish true pleasure (which comes from doing God's will), by shutting God out of the equation in order to "sin together." Is it any wonder that a vast majority of sexual practice occurs in the dark, under the sheets, behind closed doors, in guilt and shame and fear, perhaps even with eyes closed? What is there to hide? Or rather, what are we hiding from? God?