We have been quite casual about our practice periods thus far. There has been virtually no attempt to direct the time for undertaking them, minimal effort has been required, and not even active cooperation and interest have been asked. This casual approach has been intentional, and very carefully planned. We have not lost sight of the crucial importance of the reversal of your thinking. The salvation of the world depends on it. Yet you will not see if you regard yourself as being coerced, and if you give in to resentment and opposition.
This is our first attempt to introduce structure. Do not misconstrue it as an effort to exert force or pressure. You want salvation. You want to be happy. You want peace. You do not have them now because your minds are totally undisciplined, and you cannot distinguish between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear. You are now learning how to tell them apart. And great indeed will be your reward.
Your decision to see is all that vision requires. What you want is yours. Do not mistake the little effort that is asked of you for a sign that our goal is of little worth. Can the salvation of the world be a trivial purpose? And can the world be saved if you are not? 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. In your determination to see is vision given you.
The exercises for today consist in reminding yourselves throughout the day that you want to see. Today's idea also tacitly implies the recognition that you do not see now. Therefore, as you repeat the idea, you are stating that you are determined to change your present state for a better one, and one you really want.
Repeat today's idea slowly and positively at least twice an hour today, attempting to do so every half hour. Do not be distressed if you forget to do so, but make a real effort to remember. The extra repetitions should be applied to any situation, person, or event which upsets you. You can see them differently, and you will. What you desire you will see. Such is the real law of cause and effect as it operates in the world.
"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."
God gave us our perfect self, with eternal life and immortality. There is nothing wrong with us.
But we denied who we were, hid from ourselves, blocked our awareness of being perfect, and tried to destroy our selves.
Having blocked our perfection we thought we were lacking and in need, as though empty of self, and began to feel compelled to find ourselves. But without questioning the belief that we were not already love within.
So we started to look outside ourselves, separate from ourselves, for ourselves. We thought we had to invent ourselves, add ourselves, redefine ourselves, make ourselves. Because we lacked ourselves.
And so we made up a false identity, an ego self, a fake self, of our own making, in an effort to have a self. In an effort to compensate for the lack of self, resulting from self denial.
By following the "seek and do not find" paradigm we thought that we could replace the self God created with another one of our own choosing. But this can never work because we keep trying to create it separate FROM ourselves.
And this self we keep trying to make needs bolstering, needs validation, needs attention, needs reinforcement, needs effort and energy and work, needs to be constantly patched up, constantly fixed, constantly modified and perfected, made to be "right" and superior and to be proud of this self. It is always becoming a self and never really being one.
But all this effort to make a false self is arising from the denial of BEING a self already. It's coming from not accepting who you really are as created by God. It's a substitute for the self you think you LOST and believe you do not have.
So if you were to simply accept yourself as God created you, if you were to uncover your real Christ self, if you were to just let yourself exist already as a creation of God, you'd have no lack of self, and no need to make a self, and would stop manufacturing the ego.
The making of a separate self is the end goal of attempting to have a "spiritual path". Attempting to become something, to gain something, to transform into something, to produce something. You keep wanting to form a spiritualised ego, a self that is spiritual, of your own making. But this is an ego pursuit - a pursuit of ego by ego. Trying to turn yourself into something more spiritual, while your real self is already 100% spirit.
It's all to do with you trying to seek to have a self that you think you lack. Why would you need to invent a new self and have an ego self or be a body if you already had a self that God gave you?
Thus accepting atonement is simply about you owning up to being what you already are, uncovering the self God created, re-identifying with your true nature, and simply knowing yourself. Know thyself as you were created by God, as you have always been, and as you will always be.
You cannot be someone you're not, you are not lacking, and you cannot be the creator of yourself.
To heal is to liberate totally. We once said there is no order in miracles because they are all MAXIMAL EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE. This has no range at all. The non-maximal only APPEARS to have a range. This is because it SEEMS to be meaningful to measure it FROM the maximum and identify its position by HOW MUCH IT IS NOT THERE. Actually, this does not mean ANYTHING. It is like negative numbers in that the concept can be used theoretically, but it has NO application practically. It is true that if you put three apples on the table and then took them AWAY, the three apples are NOT THERE. But it is NOT true that the table is now MINUS three apples. If there is NOTHING on the table, it does NOT matter what WAS there in terms of amount. The "nothing" is neither greater nor less because of what is ABSENT.
That is why "all" and "nothing" are dichotomous, WITHOUT A RANGE. This is perfectly clear in maximal test performance and for EXACTLY the reason you emphasize. You cannot interpret AT ALL, unless you assume either MAXIMAL motivation or its COMPLETE ABSENCE. Only in these two conditions can you validly COMPARE responses, and you MUST assume the former, because if the LATTER is true, the subject WILL NOT DO ANYTHING. Given VARIABLE motivation he WILL do something, but you CANNOT UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS.
The RESULTS of tests are evaluated relatively, ASSUMING maximal motivation. But this is because we are dealing with ABILITIES, where degree of development IS meaningful. This does NOT mean that what ability is used FOR is necessarily either limited OR divided. But one thing is certain. Abilities are POTENTIALS for learning, and you will apply them to WHAT YOU WANT TO LEARN. Learning is EFFORT, and effort MEANS will.
You will notice that we have used the term "abilities" as a plural, which is correct. This is because abilities began with the ego, which perceived them as a POTENTIAL FOR EXCELLING. This is how the ego STILL perceives them and uses them. It does NOT want to teach everyone all it has learned, because that would DEFEAT its purpose in learning. Therefore, it does not REALLY learn at all. The Holy Spirit teaches YOU to use what the ego has made to TEACH the opposite of what the ego has LEARNED. The KIND of learning is as irrelevant as is the particular ability which was applied TO the learning.
You could not have a better example of the Holy Spirit's (this) unified purpose than this course. The Holy Spirit has taken very diversified areas of YOUR past learning, and has applied them to a UNIFIED curriculum. The fact that this was NOT the ego's reason for learning is totally irrelevant. YOU made the effort to learn, and the Holy Spirit has a unified goal for ALL effort. He ADAPTS the ego's potentials for excelling to potentials for EQUALIZING. This makes them USELESS for the ego's purpose, but VERY useful for His.
If different abilities are applied long enough to one GOAL, the abilities THEMSELVES become unified. This is because they are channelized in one direction, or in one WAY. Ultimately, then, they all contribute to ONE RESULT, and by so doing, their SIMILARITY rather than their differences is emphasized. You can EXCEL in many DIFFERENT ways, but you can EQUALIZE in ONE WAY ONLY. Equality is NOT a variable state, by definition.
That is why we once said that papers will be easy to write when you have learned THIS course. To the ego there appears to be no connection, because the EGO is discontinuous. But the Holy Spirit teaches one lesson and applies it to ALL individuals in ALL situations. Being conflict free, He maximizes ALL efforts and ALL results. By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS. Its application does not matter. It is ALWAYS maximal. Your vigilance does NOT establish it as yours, but it DOES enable you to use it ALWAYS and in ALL WAYS.
When I said, "Behold I am with you always," I meant it literally. I am not absent to ANYONE nor in ANY situation. BECAUSE I am always with you, YOU are the Way, and the Truth, and the Light. YOU did not make this power any more than I did. It was created to BE shared, and therefore cannot be meaningfully perceived as BELONGING to anyone AT THE EXPENSE of another. This perception makes it meaningLESS by eliminating or overlooking its real and ONLY meaning.
For your own salvation you MUST be critical, because YOUR salvation IS critical to the whole Sonship. We said before that the Holy Spirit IS evaluative, and MUST be. Yet His evaluation does not extend BEYOND you, or you WOULD share it. In YOUR mind, and your mind ONLY, He sorts out the true from the false, and teaches you to judge every thought that you allow to ENTER in the light of what God PUT there. Whatever is IN ACCORD with this light He retains, to strengthen the Kingdom in YOU. When it is PARTLY in accord with truth He accepts it and purifies it. But what is OUT OF ACCORD ENTIRELY He rejects by judging against. This is how He keeps the Kingdom perfectly consistent and perfectly unified.
But what you must remember is that what the Holy Spirit REJECTS the ego ACCEPTS. This is because they are in fundamental disagreement about everything, because they are in fundamental disagreement about WHAT YOU ARE. The ego's beliefs on this crucial issue vary, and that is why it promotes different moods. The Holy Spirit NEVER varies on this point, and so the ONE mood that He engenders is joy. He PROTECTS this by rejecting everything that does NOT foster joy, and so He alone can keep you wholly joyous.
The Holy Spirit does not teach your mind to be critical of other minds, because He does not want you to teach your errors and LEARN THEM YOURSELVES. He would hardly be consistent if He allowed you to STRENGTHEN what you must learn to avoid. In the mind of the THINKER, then, He IS judgmental, but only in order to unify it so IT CAN perceive WITHOUT judgment. This enables the mind to TEACH without judgment and therefore learn to BE without judgment. The UNdoing is necessary only in YOUR mind, so that you cannot PROJECT it. God Himself has established what you can project with perfect safety. Therefore, the Holy Spirit's third lesson is: Be vigilant ONLY for God and HIS Kingdom.
This is a major step toward FUNDAMENTAL change. Yet it is still a lesson in thought REVERSAL, because it implies that there is something you must be vigilant AGAINST. It has advanced far from the first lesson which was PRIMARILY a reversal, and also from the second, which was essentially the identification of what is MORE desirable. This step, which follows from the second as the second does from the first, emphasizes the DICHOTOMY between the desirable and the UNdesirable. It therefore makes the ULTIMATE choice inevitable. But while the first step seems to INCREASE conflict, and the second still ENTAILS it to some extent, this one calls for CONSISTENT EFFORT AGAINST IT.
We said already that you can be as vigilant AGAINST the ego as FOR it. This lesson teaches not that you CAN be, but that you MUST be. It does not concern itself with order of difficulty, but with CLEAR-CUT PRIORITY FOR VIGILANCE. This step is unequivocal in that it teaches THERE MUST BE NO EXCEPTIONS, but it does NOT deny that the temptations to MAKE exceptions will occur. Here, then, your consistency is called on DESPITE chaos. But chaos and consistency CANNOT coexist for long, because they are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. As long as you must be vigilant against ANYTHING, however, you are not recognizing this, and are holding the belief that you can CHOOSE EITHER ONE.
By teaching you WHAT to choose, the Holy Spirit will ultimately be able to teach you that YOU NEED NOT CHOOSE AT ALL. This will finally liberate your will FROM choice, and direct it toward creation WITHIN the Kingdom. Choosing through the Holy Spirit will only lead you TO it. You create by what you ARE, but this IS what you must learn. The way to learn it is INHERENT in the third step, which brings together the lessons inherent in the others, and goes beyond them toward real integration.
If you allow yourselves to HAVE in your minds only what God put there, you are acknowledging your mind as God created it. Therefore, you are accepting it AS IT IS. And since it IS whole, you are teaching peace BECAUSE you have believed in it. The final step will still be taken FOR you by God. But by the third step, the Holy Spirit has PREPARED you FOR God. He is GETTING YOU READY to translate having into being by the very nature of the steps you must take WITH Him. You learn first that having rests on GIVING and NOT getting. Next you learn that you learn what you TEACH, and that you WANT TO LEARN PEACE. This is the CONDITION for identifying WITH the Kingdom, because it is the condition OF the Kingdom.
But you have believed that you are WITHOUT the Kingdom, and have therefore excluded yourself FROM it in your belief. It is therefore essential to teach you that YOU must be INCLUDED, and the BELIEF THAT YOU ARE NOT is the ONLY thing that you must exclude.
The third step is thus one of PROTECTION for your minds by allowing you to identify ONLY with the center, where God placed the altar to HIMSELF. We have already said that altars are BELIEFS, but God and His creations are BEYOND belief because they are beyond question. The Voice FOR God speaks only for BELIEF beyond question, but this IS the preparation for BEING without question.
As long as belief in God and His Kingdom is assailed by ANY doubts in your minds, His perfect Accomplishment is NOT apparent to you. This is why you MUST be vigilant ON GOD's BEHALF. The ego speaks AGAINST His Creation, and therefore DOES engender doubt. You cannot go BEYOND belief UNTIL you believe wholly. No one can EXTEND a lesson he has NOT LEARNED FULLY. Transfer, which IS extension, is the measure of learning because it is the MEASURABLE RESULT. This, however, does NOT mean that what it transfers TO is measurable. On the contrary, unless it transfers to the whole Sonship, which is immeasurable because it was created BY the Immeasurable, the learning itself MUST be incomplete.
To teach the WHOLE Sonship WITHOUT EXCEPTION demonstrates that you PERCEIVE ITS WHOLENESS and have learned that it IS One. Now you must be vigilant to HOLD its Oneness in your minds because if you allow doubt to enter, YOU will lose awareness of its wholeness, and WILL BE UNABLE TO TEACH IT. The wholeness of the Kingdom does NOT depend on your perception, but your AWARENESS of its wholeness DOES. It is only your awareness that NEEDS protection, because your BEING cannot be assailed. Yet a real sense of being CANNOT be yours while you are doubtful of what you ARE. THIS IS WHY VIGILANCE IS ESSENTIAL. Doubts ABOUT being MUST not enter your mind, or you CANNOT know what you are with certainty.
Certainty is OF God for YOU. Vigilance is not necessary for truth, but it IS necessary AGAINST ILLUSION. Truth is WITHOUT illusions, and therefore WITHIN the Kingdom. Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION. But you must learn to ACCEPT truth because YOU THREW IT AWAY. You therefore saw yourself AS IF you were WITHOUT it. By making another Kingdom WHICH YOU VALUED, you did NOT keep the Kingdom of God alone in your minds, and thus placed part of your mind OUTSIDE of it. What you have made has thus DIVIDED YOUR WILL and given you a sick mind that MUST be healed. Your vigilance AGAINST this sickness IS the way to heal it.
Once YOUR mind is healed, it radiates health and thereby TEACHES healing. This establishes you as a teacher who teaches LIKE me. Vigilance was required of me as much as of you. But remember that those who will to teach the same thing MUST be in agreement about what they believe.
The third step, then, is a statement of what you WANT to believe, and entails a willingness to RELINQUISH EVERYTHING ELSE. I told you that you were just beginning the second step, but I also told you that the third one FOLLOWS it. The Holy Spirit WILL enable you to go on IF YOU FOLLOW HIM. Your vigilance is the sign that you WANT Him to guide you. Vigilance DOES require effort, but only to teach you that effort ITSELF is unnecessary. You have exerted GREAT effort to preserve what you made BECAUSE it is NOT true. Therefore, you must now turn your effort AGAINST it. Only this can cancel out the NEED for effort, and call upon the BEING which you both HAVE and ARE. THIS recognition is wholly WITHOUT effort, because it is ALREADY true and needs no protection. It is in the perfect safety of God. Therefore, inclusion is total and Creation is WITHOUT LIMIT.
In this world, nothing gets done unless you put in some effort. And that's a chore, meaning that making stuff requires work. This isn't really natural to us - we are creators. We should be able to cause things to happen just by will alone, by mind power.
But we made the world as a result of being unwilling, which means it's not a world of will, it's a world that seems unwilling to do anything. So you have to then force it.
When bits of trash fall on the ground, they will stay there forever, unless someone does something to pick them up. If you want to "create" something here, which really means making something, there is now a craft to it, which requires skill and effort because all the objects are different.
At first, the thing you want to make doesn't exist at all, you have a blank slate, an empty canvas, a nothingness. You have no idea what it will be like, but you have to start somewhere. This is daunting, to take nothingness and make it into something.
The process of making is a process of translating higher-level abstract mind-stuff into form, which is an act of materialising, or at least sculpting and forming and reshaping and assembling and building from parts and pieces and materials.
To make anything, you have to take it from an idea to an implementation. But at first, you will have no idea how to do that. You will have to push, and force, and try to wrangle stuff to get it to become a bit more finite, more concrete, to nail things down, commit to decision, to move things forward and see it "take shape" as it turns into form.
That can be difficult because it means trying to take an empty nothingness and somehow "make" something out of it, which means having to put limits in place, define things, make lots of decisions, design and plan, and gradually refine it.
You start with a basic template perhaps, a vague idea, and you start somewhere and put some pieces roughly in place, but it's not finished and you have a lot to figure out. You don't even as yet know how it's going to end up, because you don't as yet understand how to even move forward with it.
So in order to push it forward you have to do some work on it, because if you don't it will just sit there, lifeless and doing nothing, because you're really make it out of death. And even if you do a bit of the work, it's not finished, it will just stop whenever you stop, because it has no real life of its own. It can't become anything until you force it to.
So then making becomes an act of forcing and applying effort and energy and attacking the thing to overpower it and coerce it into taking on a certain form, as an accumulation of actions. And gradually as you apply this effort you reshape the thing and refine it and it starts to turn into something.
Eventually with enough time and effort you can get through the seeming brick wall of nothingness, through all the uncertainty and difficult lack of definition, and pin things down. It's a process of taking something in the mind and trying to make it physical. You have to physically go through the motions, apply the tools, click the buttons, do all the little annoying steps, in order to get to the end result. Sometimes this can be painstaking.
This is a translation process, and it takes time. And unless you keep hammering away at it, it won't happen. Again and again you have to keep gong back to it to do more to it, to keep building, to keep growing it, to keep moving it forward toward the goal, otherwise it just sits there lifeless and incomplete. And no-one's going to do it for you or come along and rescue you, unless maybe you pay them.
And then once you complete the thing you're making, when you think it's good enough, and done, maybe you're happy with it, and maybe you recognize it's ended up a bit shit anyway. Because the things we make in form and from materials in spacetime are all very limited and strange and not really like the level of mind where anything is possible. Have you seen people's DIY disasters?
You have to make do and tolerate limits and put up with imperfections, to accept choices for one color and not another, to go with some option that partially works and know that the other options had something you're missing. What you end up with is a strange collection of stuff that is very limited and unwhole and imperfect, but it'll have to do, because that's as good as physicality gets. You're forced to have to "conform" to form, which means accepting limits and separations and exclusions.
This is all unnatural for the mind and soul, because it means trying to work within the confines of a very awkward system of limits, in which every little part of the thing you're trying to make has to be undertaken personally and with effort and force, to sculpt it and mold it and make it be something. That takes a lot of time and patience and commitment.
You can easily be put off when the next step is unclear, when you don't have the experience, when you don't know how it's going to look or what's going to work. When you have to figure things out as you go along, and the whole thing seems like you're just winging it, making it up as you go.
And then when you get to the end you don't even know if what you made is really the most ideal or best it could be, because you didn't have the foresight to be able to produce perfection. And what you then made is quirky and odd and maybe partly does the job. They you'll probably have to go back over it and fix stuff and polish it up, to do more work on it based on hindsight.
Making is certainly a strange process. But without making, nothing in this world gets done. The world just stays much the same way as it is. Your "life" stays stagnant, your home remains undecorated, your projects remain unfinished and you end up stuck in a rut. If you want things to be different in form, you have to take action. Physical action and effort. You have to try.
Compare that to heaven where to create you simply will what you want to exist and there it is, perfect and whole and complete, instantly effortless, with no time or space involved, no forcing or constant refinements, just simply direct perfect results every time, and joyfully so. How very different that is to getting anything to happen in spacetime through labor.
This is why life is a bit of a chore, and why sometimes people just can't be bothered to do the work. It's tiresome, unless you can find some way to enjoy the process itself, enjoy the craft, or feel some sense of accomplishment or purpose to why you're doing all that work. Maybe if it's of service to others you can feel better about it. Life here is hard work, in general, because the world is difficult in general. But maybe it can be repurposed and seen in a better way.
"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."
"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."
An exercise in receiving...
1) Just be where you are (sit, stand, lay, levitate)
2) Close eyes
3) Be aware of any effort whatsoever to make anything happen, and stop it. This is not your time to DO anything. Its time to receive a freebie.
4) Picture God or Jesus right in front of you, radiating powerful love toward you, given to you FOR FREE with no catches.
5) Just RECEIVE. Do not make effort. Do not try. Just yield, surrender, receive, let yourself be LOVED ... that's love with a D on the end!
Just receive love.
"God bathing". Just like sunbathing but soaking up God's love.
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.
God created you perfect. It's a done deal. You're already complete. You cannot add to yourself or take away. You can't be changed. You are permanently as God created you. He didn't leave anything out or fail to share anything or leave you less than completed. You can't be perfected or improved upon. You're already absolutely divine.
So the one lie is, anything that tells you otherwise. Anything of the ego that suggests, you need to do this or that, go here or there, learn this or that, attain this or that, become this or that. It's much more a case of, sinking into and accepting, owning up to, admitting to, become re-awakened to, what is ALREADY THERE underneath all this bullshit that we've dumped on top to PRETEND we are not immortal.
e.g. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt"
But in truth you are unhurtable, invulnerable, immortal. So all this time spent trying to prove otherwise, is futile. It doesn't change anything, because it's literally impossible to change your soul. All we can do is deny it and pretend it's not divine.
So we have this divine self in us, as us. It's all we can really be. And so what is all this other stuff? All the seeking, the searching, the figuring out, the unraveling, all this work and effort, all the effort of striving to belief, trying to convince ourselves, isn't absolutely all of it completely pointless? The truth about what we are can only be accepted or denied, not changed.
It seems then ultimately the entire thing about awakening to our divine holy self is simply that we stop doing everything ELSE that is taking us AWAY from it. If we would stop weighing ourselves down we'd float right up to the surface. If we'd stop attacking ourselves we'd be perfect already. If we'd stop resisting the truth we'd just melt into being ourselves. If we'd get rid of all this ego stuff, which is the attempt to be something we're not, we'd simply return to being what we really are already.
It seems counter intuitive because it's more like retracing your steps and going backwards, going within, returning to, rather than building something new. The whole effort to "become" is an ego effort to DEFINE what you are. Or moreso to redefine it. Which is always a lie because you can't be changed.
So every opinion about ourselves can't be true, unless it aligns with our nature as God created us. "I am still as God created me" states this perfectly. Simply, nothing has happened to you, nothing has changed you, and this whole dream has been an excursion into nothing. We simply need to accept that WE ALREADY ARE perfect in God and stop trying to prove otherwise.
This is why the Atonement is simply a matter of ACCEPTING what is already true about you, and nothing else.
""I am as God created me."
This single thought, held firmly in the mind, would save the world. From time to time we will repeat it, as we reach another stage in learning. It will mean far more to you as you advance. These words are sacred, for they are the words God gave in answer to the world you made. By them it disappears, and all things seen within its misty clouds and vaporous illusions vanish as these words are spoken. For they come from God.
Here is the Word by which the Son became His Father's happiness, His Love, and His completion. Here creation is proclaimed, and honored as it is. There is no dream these words will not dispel; no thought of sin and no illusion that the dream contains that will not fade away before their might. They are the trumpet of awakening that sounds around the world. The dead awake in answer to its call. And those who live and hear this sound will never look on death.
Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth."
"Seek and do not find" is the absolute rule of the ego's way of perceiving.
It's very simple logic.
1) You already have everything you need. You are love.
2) Deny everything you are. "It's not in you".
3) Feel deprived and lacking and driven to search for what you lost anywhere, except in you - because as per step 2, it is clearly not in you (notice here that we never mentioned it being anywhere ELSE either though).
4) Now you go on a passionate hunt for what you lost - yourself - God - everywhere OTHER THAN where it is. Everywhere separate from you. In every illusion that prevents you from being as you are.
5) COMPLETELY fail to find it, because it is NOT OUT THERE.
Sometimes you'll find something which you think is your salvation - idols, objects, people, relationships, activities, places, etc. You invest them with 'hope' that they will be 'the one' that will save you from this dilemma of denial of yourself. BUT at the same time, you absolutely DO NOT believe that they will do so, because you're convinced the truth is NOT in you and never will be ever again.
So whatever you find starts to fail and reveal its cracks and show evidence that it is not working - it's not restoring you to happiness or love or who you are. So you become disillusioned, maybe angry that you've been led astray. You feel deceived and abandoned and frustrated. This REINFORCES your feeling that you are not loveable, that you are not good enough for God, that you are not with God, and that you are not yourself. You feel terrible. Even worse than before. And how does the ego suggest you solve this?
Any guesses?
"Why not go looking somewhere else, since it's obviously not here?" - ... in other words, MORE DENIAL, leading to more compulsion to seek outside yourself where you WILL NOT find what you're looking for.
Every effort you make to 'hold on', forces you to 'lose'. Every effort to 'have' or 'get' forces you to lose. Every effort to 'gain' what you lost reinfoces it's loss and loses even more. Every time you try to 'keep' what you 'little left' you fear to lose, you believe in its loss even more and it goes away. Every time you try to control what's happening so that you don't lose any more of what you value, it all gets taken away from you.
This is how the ego functions. It is insane. Only the insane would tell you to go looking for what you don't have because of how you failed to find it the last time you went looking. The last hunt didn't work? Keep on looking, you're sure to find it someday! Not.
What you're really looking for is God. What you're looking for is your True Self. It's not fancy cars and people and sex and bodies and tv shows and weddings and vacations and rainbows and pets and political rallies and movies and whatever else. It's not out there.
What you want is BEHIND the wall of denial that you've constructed, which you USED the ego to accomplish - or rather, you made the ego BY denying who you are and what you already have.
Everything you really want and CAN ever really HAVE and BE and EXPERIENCE, is already given to you by God. It is what you are. It is love Itself. With this there is nothing else that you really want. That is why the course says, "this world holds nothing that you want". Sobering. It holds nothing you want because it's not WHAT you want, what you want was already yours - it's YOU, as God created you. And you already ARE that. It's in you.
And let's be very very clear about something, because this is the ego's entire cover-story that we're about to blow. Ready? .... Denial is NOT removal. Denial does NOT destroy. Denial does not get rid of anything. Denial merely COVERS UP what is already there and PRETENDS that it is not there.
You want to know what the ego's crowning glory of denial is? The total denial that you are love, that you even live? It's DEATH. Death is DENIAL, it does NOT remove anything, it does not destroy anything, it merely PRETENDS that Life (God, You) do not exist.
It's a cover up!
You merely need to look with Holy Spirit at where you are DENYING - God - Your True Self - and uncover that, expose it to the light again, and reclaim your "natural inheritance". God's already given you everything you could possible want to be satisfied. You're just choosing not to want it. And because of that, you WILL NOT find anything better or more satisfying anywhere else.
Undo denial and you awaken to the love that is already your natural birthright. God created you AS love and that will never change, NO matter how much you might DENY it. And it is still the truth about you, because denial has not touched it or changed it. You are love.
Love is the truth, forever.
There are a number of aspects to 'being spiritual' that you do not have to TRY to be. And 'trying' actually works against you.
For example, being present. You can try to be in the 'now' all you want but you will continually be pulled back out of it by your unhealed guilt. So you need to heal that guilt and then you will naturally find yourself in the present without effort. Otherwise you'll be one of these people that is just constantly trying to be present all the time and its a great big effort. You can't be present while you're still attached to an unhealed past.
Another example, you do not have to work at being 'more loving'. To be more loving reinforces the idea that you are not loving enough. You don't need to do that. There's a reason why you think you're not loving/loveable enough and its again got to do with unhealed baggage and faulty perspective. Those are blocks to the *awareness* of love's presence, and those blocks need to be healed and undone.
One the shit is undone, then you are naturally left with an awareness of the presence of love - because IT IS ALREADY THERE. It's not something YOU have to put there, or create, because God has already put it there. And also, realize that just because you are not aware of love does not mean it has gone away, it's just covered up. You are already enough love, even if its hidden from you. So stop trying to be loving and let it be.
Similarly there is not much point trying to be spiritual. That doesn't mean of course you don't have a goal of becoming more aware of your pre-existing spiritual nature, it just means you need more acknowledgment of the spirit that you already are, rather than trying to 'spiritualize' yourself - trying to 'make spiritual'.
Trying to make spiritual is what leads to the spiritual ego, because it reinforces the idea that you are not spiritual. If you're not spiritual, you feel compelled to have to add more spirit. You don't need any more spirit. You ARE spirit. You just need to work on becoming aware of your pre-existing spirit. There's plenty of it already. Don't become more spiritual, because it also makes you un-spiritual, in denial of your existing nature. There's a difference.
This is why the Course doesn't try to teach the meaning of love, but only how to remove the obstacles that make you believe it is not here, or that you are not it. These are all MISTAKES, because a) you are already 100% love, b) you are already 100% spiritual, and c) you are already 100% perfect in God. So you don't need to 'be perfected' or 'become'. You only need to cease the crap that blocks and prevents you from ACKNOWLEDGING what you really are already.
This is all very different than 'adding more' to yourself, or 'attaining' or 'building up' or 'becoming more'. All of those are driven by the ego's idea that you came into existence from some kind of EMPTY VOID, in which you are completely at a loss for love - God having left you in the dirt - so now you have nothing, so now you have to be super-compelled to go seeking for it (where you won't find it). You seek everywhere other than to acknowledge that it was always where God put it, because separation from it has NOT happened. Separation from YOURSELF has not happened, and you are love already. Perfect love. So you have to question the emptiness, it's an ego construct to try to deny that you're already and still as God created you.
So stop the fucking effort of trying to become a better person or better behavior or more spiritual or more loving bla bla bla... you don't need to. And you won't. The more you try to do that the more you will come up empty handed AND create a bunch of bullshit reinforcement in your mind that you're still not good enough. And then you'll be a perfectionist that never is good enough, because you're not willing to UN-DO the false belief that there's not enough love in you already. The idea that you're not already perfectly okay with God is a complete pile of crap.
You're already enough. And you're already you. And God already loves you.