Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

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."

"God did not create the body."

"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."

"Love did not create the body."

"A mind and body cannot both exist."

"You CANNOT make the body the Holy Spirit's temple, and it will NEVER be the seat of love. It is the home of the idolater, and of love's condemnation."

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"For minds need not the body to communicate."

"How can a body be extended to hold the universe? Can it create, and BE what it creates? And can it offer its creation all that it is, and never suffer loss? God does not share His function with a body."

"I am not of this world." "I am not a body I am free."

"Yet God did not will the destruction of His creations, having created them for eternity."

"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"That this is all the BODY does is true, for it IS but a figure in a dream. But who REACTS to figures in a dream UNLESS he sees them as if they were real?"

"And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. But God would not be loving."

"Yet could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"

"(Pain) Its purpose is the same as pleasure, for they both are means TO MAKE THE BODY REAL."

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

"The Great Rays would establish the total LACK of value of the special relationship, IF THEY WERE SEEN. For, in seeing THEM, the body WOULD disappear, BECAUSE ITS VALUE WOULD BE LOST. And so your whole INVESTMENT in seeing it would be WITHDRAWN from it."

"It is impossible to seek for pleasure through the body and NOT find pain."

"A miracle reawakens the awareness that the spirit, and not the body, is the altar of Truth."

"All separation, all distinctions, and the multitude of differences you believe make up the world. They are not there. Love s enemy has made them up."

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

"Perception involves the body even in its most spiritualized form."

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real."

"(The body) Leave it behind, it cannot enter Heaven."

"The mind that made the body can make another because all form is illusion."

Receiving of miracles it not something that you "get" from God and then just sit there with it as though it is now in your possession. It is not possible to actually receive miracles WITHOUT being also willing to give and extend them. They are not personal. You will only allow yourself to receive them if you believe you are worthy, and having believed you are worthy you will automatically believe everyone else is worthy of receiving them from you.

Those who believe miracles are merely shifts in your own personal perception are much mistaken, because miracles affirm that giving and receiving are One and therefore, because you are one with God, you will automatically give what you received from Him, being also its giver to yourself and others.

Miracles therefore are EXPRESSIONS or extensions of the truth through you, for you, and for others, to others and to yourself, from God. They are SHARED. They are the embodiment of sharing and wholeness and inclusiveness. They are not personal or found in isolation. You must GIVE ALL to have all. And even Jesus said of his own atonement that by receiving it he received it for all and now expresses it for all. How else would you be the light of the world or truly helpful in any way if you just hoard the goodness of heaven for yourself?

This is why if you are to receive miracles for yourself you MUST also become willing to SHARE IN THEM and to receive AND give them, otherwise you cannot have them. You cannot have the kingdom without its extension and it is extended by sharing. You cannot have anything real without it being GIVEN also. This is why miracles are not just about you, they are about you giving TO your brother. They are the maximal service you can render to your brother.

Members of Jesus's party are active miracle workers.

It's a bit similar to "use it or lose it". Give it, or you cannot have it.

"You are saved, and your salvation thus becomes the gift you give the world, because you have received" - ACIM

"They are received where they are given" - ACIM

"You will receive miracles because of what God is. And you will offer miracles because you are one with God" - ACIM

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession. Here the laws of Heaven and the world agree. But here they also separate. The world believes that to possess a thing, it must be kept. Salvation teaches otherwise. To give is how to recognize you have received. It is the proof that what you have is yours." - ACIM

"You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away. " - ACIM

"What you want in yourself you will make manifest, and you will accept it from the world because you put it there by wanting it." - ACIM

"Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours." - Bible

Lesson 159 - I give the miracles I have received:

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

W163L

Lesson 163 "There is no death. The Son of God is free."

W163L1

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.

W163L2

Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come.

W163L3

All things but death are seen to be unsure, too quickly lost however hard to gain, uncertain in their outcome, apt to fail the hopes they once engendered, and to leave the taste of dust and ashes in their wake in place of aspirations and of dreams. But death is counted on. For it will come with certain footsteps when the time has come for its arrival. It will never fail to take all life as hostage to itself.

W163L4

Would you bow down to idols such as this? Here is the strength and might of God Himself perceived within an idol made of dust. Here is the opposite of God proclaimed as lord of all creation, stronger than God's Will for life, the endlessness of love and Heaven's perfect, changeless constancy. Here is the Will of Father and of Son defeated finally, and laid to rest beneath the headstone death has placed upon the body of the holy Son of God.

W163L5

Unholy in defeat, he has become what death would have him be. His epitaph, which death itself has written, gives no name to him, for he has passed to dust. It says but this: "Here lies a witness God is dead." And this it writes again and still again, while all the while its worshippers agree, and kneeling down with foreheads to the ground, they whisper fearfully that it is so.

W163L6

It is impossible to worship death in any form, and still select a few you would not cherish, and would yet avoid while still believing in the rest. For death is total. Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible. For here again we see an obvious position which we must accept if we be sane; what contradicts one thought entirely can not be true unless its opposite is proven false.

W163L7

The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it. For it implies that God was once alive and somehow perished, killed, apparently, by those who did not want him to survive. Their stronger will could triumph over His, and so Eternal Life gave way to death. And with the Father died the Son as well.

W163L8

Death's worshippers may be afraid. And yet can thoughts like these be fearful? If they saw that it is only this which they believed, they would be instantly released. And you will show them this today. There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond.

W163L9

"Our Father, bless our eyes today. We are Your messengers, and we would look upon the glorious reflection of Your Love which shines in everything. We live and breathe in You alone. We are not separate from Your Eternal Life. There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever. We accept Your Thoughts as ours, and our will is One with Yours eternally. Amen."

The idea of death was made as the opposite of the idea of God. The separation from God was total opposition to God's nature. It's an assertion that God does not exist, blotted out and dead.

Whatever attributes God has, death is the idea of the total absence of all of those attributes. A total lack of life, of love, of happiness, of peace, of sharing. Anything that God is, death opposes.

"The thought of death is ... the opposite to thoughts of life." UrW167L8

God is creation, and so death is destruction. God is permanent, and so death is change. God is love, and so death is murder. God is reality, and so death is an illusion.

In order to oppose God, the truth must also be opposed. That which is false is asserted as true. True and false become swapped. The truth of God becomes a lie, and the lie of death becomes a reality.

As a result, all of the attributes of God are assigned to death, while all the attributes of nothingness are assigned to God.

Death is now seen as inevitable, real, permanent, eternal, irreversible, powerful, known, true, dependable, trustworthy, welcoming, wanted, attractive, loved, salvation, peace and happiness. God is now seen as uncertain, changing, vulnerable, hateful, vengeful, nothing, meaningless, lifeless, mindless, unloving, destructive, dark, murderous, unwanted, rejecting, an enemy, selfish, unsharing and unreal.

The result is that we have a belief in death, which takes on every possible form. It takes on physical form, as well as in the form of changes of mind, states of feeling, types of thoughts and senses of identity. Every illusion, all of space and time, every perception arises in the idea of God's opposite.

"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come." UrW163L2

"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?" UrM28A1

Anything less than the true nature of God is a form of death. This includes any sense of unhappiness, any notion of attack, any kind of sickness, any temptation, any desire for bodies, any false perceptions, any fear or guilt, any idol worship and any way that you see yourself and others as less than having eternal life.

There can't even be atoms and molecules and bodies and planets without the idea of death. Death is change and change is time and time is death. To be separated from life, from God, is to enter into an illusion of dying. Spacetime is the idea of the death of God, in which God appears to not exist.

"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." UrW230W32

"And the last to be overcome will be death." Of course! Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born." UrM28A6

Every aspect of ego, every form of separation, every unloving relationship, every body worship is all a form of death. If you believe in anything but God's reality you believe in death and are trying to die. We came into this world precisely because we wanted to play with death and to pretend that we can die. We are immortal beings, making a world that is always dying in which we can pretend to die.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you." UrW191L9

Undoing death is resurrection. To resurrect is to side with eternal life and reject every form of death. Sickness, which is "a little death", must be forgiven and reversed. Death of a body must be reversible. And an entire world rooted in death must be undone. Without the idea of death, spacetime cannot exist. And without death, there is no world and no separation from God.

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world." UrT12G3

"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. It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is "laid to rest" in devastation's arms, where worms await to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real." UrM28A3

"The idea of the death of God is so preposterous that even the insane have difficulty in believing it." UrW163L7

"There is no death. The Son of God is free." UrW163

"There is no death, and we renounce it now in every form, for their salvation and our own as well. God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion. This the stand we take today. And it is given us to look past death and see the life beyond." UrW163L8

"There is no death, for death is not Your Will. And we abide where You have placed us, in the Life we share with You and with all living things, to be like You and part of You forever." UrW163L9

"To the ego, THE EGO IS GOD."

"The ego's goal is quite explicitly EGO AUTONOMY. From the beginning, then, its PURPOSE is to be separate, sufficient unto itself, and independent of any power EXCEPT ITS OWN. This is WHY it is the symbol of separation."

"The ego is insane. In fear it stands beyond the Everywhere, apart from All, in separation from the Infinite. In its insanity it thinks it has become a victor over God Himself, and in its terrible autonomy it "sees" the Will of God has been destroyed. It dreams of punishment, and trembles at the figures in its dreams, its enemies who seek to murder it before it can ensure its safety by attacking them."

"If the ego's goal of autonomy COULD be accomplished GOD's purpose could be DEFEATED, and this IS impossible." ... "According to the ego's teaching, ITS goal CAN be accomplished, and GOD's Purpose can NOT."

"A harsh and strident form of communication arose as the ego's voice."

"Therefore, you have used the world to COVER YOUR LOVE, and the deeper you go into the blackness of the ego's foundation, the CLOSER you come to the Love that is hidden beneath it."

"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."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion." Jesus is clear about this. The ego is the idea of the OPPOSITE TO GOD. The idea that God is separate. That is, a seeming autonomous, separate entity, which stands alone, which rules its own kingdom, which is self sufficient and depends on nothing outside of itself, which has its own power, which does not need God for anything, and wants to be as completely distant from God's nature as possible. It wants to share nothing and have everything for itself selfishly. It wants to be the only thing that exists.

"Sin is the "grand illusion" underlying ALL the ego's grandiosity. For BY it, God HIMSELF is changed, and rendered incomplete."

"Do you really want to be in hell? Do you really want to weep and suffer and die? Forget the ego's arguments which seek to prove all this is really Heaven."

"For the ego's destructive urge is so intense, that nothing short of the crucifixion of God's Son can ultimately satisfy it."

"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."

"The body is the ego's chosen weapon for seeking power THROUGH relationships."

"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."

"The death penalty is the ego's ultimate goal, for it fully believes that you are a criminal, as deserving of death as God knows you are deserving of life. The death penalty never leaves the ego's mind, for that is what it always reserves for you in the end. Wanting to kill you, as the final expression of its feeling for you, it lets you live but to await death. It will torment you while you live, but its hatred is not satisfied until you die. For your destruction is the one end toward which it works, and the only one with which it will be satisfied."

"Possession for its OWN sake is the ego's fundamental creed, a basic cornerstone in the churches that it builds unto itself."

The ego is like the anti-God. Just as it is also referred to as the anti-Christ. It is the illusion of a separate self, a little isolated cut-off self, disconnected and alone, imprisoned in a body, unrelated to anyone else, not communicating with God whatsoever, suspicious of everyone, having no trust of anyone, and completely backwards in all its perceptions.

"The ego's opposite in every way,--in origin, effect and consequence--we call a miracle."

"Death, were it true, would be the final and complete disruption of communication, which IS the ego's goal."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God."

"Peace is the ego's greatest enemy, because according to ITS interpretation of reality, war is the guarantee of its survival."

"Do not underestimate the intensity of the ego's drive for vengeance on the past. It is COMPLETELY savage, and COMPLETELY insane."

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

"LOVE DOES NOT KILL TO SAVE. For if it did, attack WOULD be salvation, and this is the ego's interpretation, NOT God's."

"BECAUSE the body is not part of you. This makes the body the ego's friend."

"The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion."

It sees God as everything the ego really is, believe itself to not be the ego at all. The ego actually believes it is sane. It regards its insanity as sanity, it regards its hell as heaven, it regards death as life, and punishment as atonement. It has everything completely backwards and upside-down. It sees God as evil and vengeful and sinful and attacking. It sees heaven as hell and holiness as blasphemy and innocence as guilt. Everything that is true is sees as false, and all that is false is regards as true. It is the complete anti-thesis to everything real.

"To the ego, completion lies in triumph, and in the extension of the "victory," even to the final triumph over God. In THIS it sees the ultimate FREEDOM of the self, for nothing would remain to interfere with IT. And this IS its idea of Heaven. From this it follows that union, which is a condition in which the EGO cannot interfere, MUST BE HELL."

"If you perceived the special relationship as a triumph over God, WOULD YOU WANT IT?"

"In a sense, the special relationship was the EGO's answer to the creation of the Holy Spirit, Who was God's Answer to the separation. For, although the ego did not understand WHAT had been created, it WAS aware of threat."

"Attack is ALWAYS physical. When attack in ANY form enters your mind, you are EQUATING YOURSELF WITH A BODY. This is the ego's INTERPRETATION of the body."

"They provide STRIKING examples, both of the ego's INABILITY to tolerate reality, and your willingness to CHANGE reality on its behalf."

"Crucifixion is ALWAYS the ego's aim. It SEES AS GUILTY, and BY its condemnation, IT WOULD KILL."

Each of us has this ego thing in our mind somewhere, and it has to be turfed out and catharted and undone. It is the central core of what keeps us in hell, and is the origin of all our guilt. It believes that everything sinless is sinful, that all of heaven is guilty, and that the Son of God is murderous. It tells every lie imaginable. It is twisted and dark and delusional and insane.

Can you accept the atonement?

For the ego, atonement means that you really did something wrong, and now you have to pay for it. This is the idea that you must make up for the losses you caused, because of your guilt. It calls for you to make a sacrifice, to have some portion of yourself or what you value taken from you, to make up for what you stole when you sinned. It suggests that if you "do your time" and suffer enough, MAYBE... just maybe, there might be a forgiveness or a pardon.

MAYBE those with authority and justification and righteousness to judge you guilty might decide to pardon you and let you off the hook. Except that, these judgemental accusers are never really satisfied, and there is no amount of atoning you can do to make up for your sin. Once a criminal, always a criminal. And all crimes are considered punishable by death. Even little ones.

If you believe that this is the truth of what atonement means, you will not want to accept the atonement, or understand it.

Similarly, it is believed by many that when Jesus allegedly died on the cross, he was suffering and in pain. And that this tremendous suffering, having to undergo death, somehow "carried the weight" or "paid for" or "took on the sacrifice for" or "suffered for" everyone else's sins, so that everyone else could be considered forgiven thereafter. It's even said that God, in all his loving ways, condemned His beloved son to death, in order for this atoning to occur, so that everyone else could be let off the hook.

Nevertheless, it's quite obvious that in spite of this alleged atoning and suffering, pretty much everyone is still riddled with sin and guilt and fear and murder and death. So it didn't exact "work", according to the evidence. And the fact that this explanation is evidently false is covered up with further theological justifications which are all unfounded band-aids trying to patch up a broken fundamental misunderstanding of what atonement is.

Jesus's atonement was misunderstood. He did not suffer on the cross. He was a profound miracle worker, had no guilt in his mind (the guiltless mind cannot suffer), did not believe in death at all, had already raised the dead, had power and authority over all illusions, and was an embodiment of the power of Christ. Nothing could happen to him against his will. He was not a body at all, and anything seeming to happen to his body did not happen to him. He was truly beyond it, beyond all suffering and death and sin.

He was not a victim in any way at all. It is claimed that Jesus was "sacrificed" for us. How can sacrifice be in any way associated with Jesus, who does not believe in the sacrificial thought system of the ego, and its belief in egoic atonement through loss? Jesus was not asked to sacrifice and he was NOT a sacrifice. He was a demonstration that sacrifice was an illusion and was not POSSIBLE, because sin was not real, and He had not done anything wrong. And he knew that we hadn't either, so sacrifice was never even called for.

His act of being on the cross showed that in spite of the fact that he was supposed to die, he could not die, and could not feel pain, to DEMONSTRATE the miraculous truth that you are not a body and you are invulnerable. And upon returning in a brand new manifested body later, He further demonstrated and proved that bodies are not who you are, that you cannot die, and that you are immortal spirit.

Jesus knew this because He knew what the atonement really was. He knew that it meant that, in truth, nothing real can be threatened because the entire world, bodies, and death, are all illusions. He did not believe in them. AND he did not believe in SIN. Not one bit. He had no sin in him because He did not believe in it. In that view, HE knew that everyone else's "alleged" sinfulness was forgiven, because nobody had really sinned at all. And all of the ways that people believed they were sinful, HE knew that those were not "real sins" in the eyes of God, and that all sin WAS undone because it had not really occurred. That's the true meaning of the atonement and most people did not get the memo.

That also demonstrates why, in spite of the fact that Jesus knew and perceived and experienced the atonement principle, that nobody was sinful or guilty at all, claiming it for himself and thus for everyone, this didn't prevent everyone else from STILL BELIEVING IN SIN. In fact, most onlookers believed in sin so much that they thought that his death was real and did not "get" the teaching of his demonstration that the body is not real at all. And it was precisely the people who DID believe in sin and death and bodies, who MADE UP the interpretation of Jesus being "really sacrificed" and "really suffering for us", which has been an ongoing ego myth for 2000+ years. The ego rejoices that so many people believe that Christ could suffer and be sacrificed. It's satanic!

And so people have carried on believing in real sin and in BEING in sin, because they still believe that sin is real. That's why Jesus's atonement did not instantaneously lift the belief in sin from everyone's mind, which it should have done if what is claimed about the crucifixion were true, ie that Jesus took the hit for us. If he did that, why are we still believing in sin and death? Jesus's awakening should've removed all sin from everyone. In HIS eyes, this was done, but in OUR eyes, it was not done, because WE still freely chose to continue believing in real sin and real death. And plenty of people have demonstrated this by DYING ever since.

Jesus IS the atonement in that Jesus has united with the Holy Spirit in a mind of pure innocence, in which God recognizes the truth that we HAVE NOT SINNED, and that sin is not reality. Jesus knows this is true of us, but WE have not woke up to this reality yet. And so we DO continue to still do "real sins" because we still believe in real sin. That keeps us bound to sin and death. We CAN be liberated from this if WE will accept the atonement, but WE do have to willingly do that ourselves. Jesus can't force it on us. He knows we have not sinned but we don't believe him. Not really.

So all these false definitions of atonement have to be thrown out. The atonement means that literally nothing "real" has actually happened, and that all the things that you thought were "real" were just imagined, just a dream, a vast illusion, masquerading as a real world with real bodies doing real bad stuff. Its UNREALITY is the proof of innocence. You cannot have become less than innocent if you did not achieve a REAL sin. Make-believe sins do not count! You cannot REALLY sin and you have not really sinned. But while you believe that you HAVE, that's a problem. That's keeping you from the truth and keeping you from ACCEPTING Jesus's demonstration of the atonement.

The world is not reality. It is an illusion. And you have not really done anything wrong here, because everything you've ever supposedly "done" has ONLY ever been a portion of a made-up dream that isn't really real. It sure as heck can seem real, but ONLY because you believe that dreams are reality. Look around you at all the people who have set up camp in this dream, believing it's the real world, believing it is real life, prepared to hang out here and just die and not wake up to the truth. There is more than this.

Undo all of your beliefs that the physical world is reality. It is not. Jesus proved it, IF you will believe it from His vantage point. He knew that there was no real sin, and saw that everyone's sins ALREADY were forgiven before He even came to that awareness. God does not condemn. God does not judge. God knows your innocence is still pure and holy. And God knows that you cannot POSSIBLY "actually" separate from Him other than in a dream-like illusion of separation. Your innocence is guaranteed. It is ALREADY the truth, even while you believe that you have really sinned.

The truth of the atonement ALREADY WAS TRUE before Jesus became the first to claim it for Himself and for all. It was ALREADY TRUE that God had not condemned us and had not believed that we really sinned. It was ALREADY TRUE that God's unconditional love had not wavered for a second, and that He KNEW that it was IMPOSSIBLE to actually separate from him. Real Sin is impossible. Jesus came to ACCEPT that the atonement is true, He did not CREATE the atonement. The truth of the atonement is God's truth, and has always been true and always will be.

It's a done deal. Nothing happened. Wake up.

W72L

Lesson 72 "Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation."

W72L1

While we have recognized that the ego's plan for salvation is the opposite of God's, we have not yet emphasized that it is an active attack on His plan, and a deliberate attempt to destroy it. In the attack, God is assigned the attributes which are actually associated with the ego, while the ego appears to take on the attributes of God.

W72L2

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. The limit on communication cannot be the best means to expand communication. Yet the ego would have you believe that it is.

W72L3

Although the attempt to keep the limitations which a body would impose is obvious here, it is perhaps not so apparent why holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation. But let us consider the kinds of things which you are apt to hold grievances for. Are they not always associated with something a body does? A person says something we do not like; he does something that displeases us; he "betrays" his hostile thoughts in his behavior.

W72L4

We are not dealing here with what the person is. On the contrary, we are exclusively concerned with what he does in a body. We are doing more than failing to help in freeing him from its limitations. We are actively trying to hold him to it by confusing it with him, and judging them as one. Herein is God attacked, for if His Son is only a body, so must He be as well. A creator wholly unlike his creation is inconceivable.

W72L5

If God is a body, what must His plan for salvation be? What could it be but death? In trying to present Himself as the Author of life and not of death, He is a liar and a deceiver, full of false promises, and offering illusions in place of truth. The body's apparent reality makes this view of God quite convincing. In fact, if the body were real, it would be difficult indeed to escape this conclusion. And every grievance that you hold insists that the body is real. It overlooks entirely what your brother is. It reinforces your belief that he is a body, and condemns him for it. And it asserts that his salvation must be death, projecting this attack onto God, and holding Him responsible for it.

W72L6

To this carefully prepared arena, where angry animals seek for prey and mercy cannot enter, the ego comes to save you. God made you a body. Very well. Let us accept this and be glad. As a body, do not let yourself be deprived of what the body offers. Take the little you can get. God gave you nothing. The body is your only savior. It is the death of God and your salvation. This is the universal belief of the world you see.

W72L7

Some hate the body, and try to hurt and humiliate it. Others love the body, and try to glorify and exalt it. But while it stands at the center of your concept of yourself, you are attacking God's plan for salvation, and holding your grievances against Him and His creations, that you may not hear the Voice of truth and welcome it as Friend. Your chosen Savior takes His place instead. It is your friend; He is your enemy. We will try today to stop these senseless attacks on salvation. We will try to welcome it instead.

W72L8

Our upside-down perception has been ruinous to our peace of mind. We have seen ourselves in a body and the truth outside us, locked away from our awareness by the body's limitations. Now we are going to try to see this differently. The light of truth is in us, where it was placed by God. It is the body that is outside us, and is not our concern. To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever it is accepted it is accomplished already.

W72L9

Our goal in the longer practice periods today is to become aware that God's plan for salvation has already been accomplished in us. To achieve this goal, we must replace attack with acceptance. As long as we attack it, we cannot understand what God's plan for us is. We are therefore attacking what we do not recognize. Now we are going to try to lay judgment aside, and ask what God's plan for us is:

"What is salvation, Father?

I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand."

Then we will wait in quiet for His answer.

W72L10

We have attacked God's plan for salvation, without waiting to hear what it is. We have shouted our grievances so loudly that we have not listened to His Voice. We have used our grievances to close our eyes and stop our ears. Now we would see and hear and learn. "What is salvation, Father?" Ask and you will be answered. Seek and you will find.

W72L11

We are no longer asking the ego what salvation is and where to find it. We are asking it of truth. Be certain, then, that the answer will be true because of Whom you ask. Whenever you feel your confidence wane and your hope of success flicker and go out, repeat your question and your request, remembering that you are asking them of the infinite Creator of infinity, Who created you like Himself:

"What is salvation, Father?

I do not know.

Tell me, that I may understand."

He will answer. Be determined to hear.

W72L12

One or perhaps two shorter practice periods an hour will be enough for today, since they will be somewhat longer than usual. The exercises are as follows:

"Holding grievances is an attack on God's plan for salvation.

Let me accept it instead.

What is salvation, Father?"

Then wait a minute or so in silence, preferably with your eyes closed, and listen for His answer.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
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