Both sides of every war are run by the ego. The war is symptomatic of the ego attacking itself. War is self attack.

When you believe that one side of the war is the good guys and one side is the bad guys, YOU have fallen for the ILLUSION.

BOTH sides of every war are played ultimately by the SAME side. There is only ONE side which has divided against ITSELF, and is attacking itself in both directions. This is the ego mind, the split mind, pretending to be TWO, when in fact it is one. The human race is attacking itself.

When we are deceived by all of these ILLUSIONS that someone did not ask for something, someone is a victim, someone is unfairly treated, someone is sick against their will, someone is suffering unfairly, etc... if we believe these things, that the person did not in any way choose or want this, WE TOO have fallen for the same illusion they fell for. And now we are supporting and adding to their illusion, and have kept them imprisoned.

We need to learn that the world is FULL of illusions of Party A appearing to be separate form Party B. In every way that this expresses, it ALWAYS looks as though one group of people is separate from another group of people. Ie that there are two distinct identities, or parties, or teams, or groups, or agendas, or whatever. Always two separate camps. And the appearance of two separate camps is the EGO. That's what the ego split mind looks like - a mind with multiple personalities, where those personalities are at war with each other.

We need to learn not to fall for these illusions. They are NOT the truth. It is NOT true that victims are victims. It is NOT the truth that things happen to people against their will. It is NOT true that death isn't chosen. It is NOT true that people do not want to be sick. It is NOT true that those who are afraid are being caused to be scared by someone or something outside of them. It is NOT true that people suffer against their will. These are ILLUSIONS, lies, disguises, covering up what the person is secretly really doing to themselves.

When we then believe and fall for these illusions, we are not seeing correctly, and we ourselves have become insane. And now we are entering into FALSE EMPATHY with others by joining with them in this delusional thought system, supporting their CLAIM that they do not want this, or that it happened without their choosing it. By entering into this with them we support and empower them to STAY the way they are, thus keeping them imprisoned. We cannot set them free until we are willing to FORGIVE, which means to overlook the ILLUSION that what they're presenting to us is the truth.

People who are victims will fervently express the belief and conviction that they did not want this to happen. People who are sick will passionately proclaim how this suffering is unfair and unwanted and they did not ask for it, and that they want to do everything to get rid of it (while doing nothing to really cure it). People who are in fear, are actually attackers who believe in disempowerment and weakness and attack others by seeing them as guilty and sinful. Do not believe appearances!

You have to learn, if you're to be a miracle worker, to OVERLOOK all of these illusions because they are all LIES. They are untruth, and dishonesty, and irresponsibility. Do not get into pity and sympathy and false empathy about how people are suffering against their will. They are attempting to bring you into a delusional thought system. They are attacking you with their DEMONSTRATION that they believe in attack and defense and war and conflict and fear and suffering.

Do not believe in sickness. Sickness is not REAL. Do not believe in death. Death is not REAL. Wake up! Be the light of the world and demonstrate a different truth. Demonstrate that the secret to salvation is that we're doing all of this to ourselves, and that owning that is being responsible and honest. Demonstrate miracles, that no matter what has happened, it can be undone, because there IS no real sin, and all of the effects of an ILLUSION of sin must be reversible.

The world is full of lies and liars. Be careful of listening to other people's "obstacles to peace". Beware of the way that other people make sin real and attack you by reinforcing their own belief that you should be afraid of "real bad things happening". These would not come from a sane mind or a mind that is aware of God, and aware of Reality. Discern the difference between illusions and reality. In truth nothing has gone wrong, no-one has suffered against their will, there is no death and there is no world.

Time to wake up!

I used to think that "false empathy" meant when you are basically empathizing with someone, sympathizing, or sort of getting into their emotional drama etc....

Now I see it is more than that. It means really `joining` with someone in, and agreeing about, ANY kind of ego scenario, relating to ANY appearance or ANY illusion that covers up the immortal, God-created Real Self.

If a person comes along and is in any way demonstrating belief in being anything less than God created them, perfectly whole and holy and innocent and invulnerable, then that's an ego drama. If I go along with it, buy into it, join with them in it, participate in it, take it seriously, listen to it, judge it, engage with it or any of that, that's me entering into false empathy.

It's kind of like a false Oneness... a false joining, that says, I will join with you in a subjective illusion and pretend it is objectively real, and the two of us will then be 'infected' with this ego attitude and at least we'll agree with each other that this it the truth.

Real empathy then would entail absolutely not joining in ANY ego whatsoever, overlooking all ego, persona, and appearances, not believing in or taking seriously ANY presentation that runs against that (including anyone seeming to be sick, diseased, afraid, upset, etc)... holding the light, holding the truth, being a beacon, a leader, and strength that invites the other person to remember who they really are.

Sometimes when I am upset and I am asking God to help, I am in a state of begging, and that's because I believe there is such a tremendous distance (separation) between where I am and where the solution seems to be.

As I "ask" God to "do things" (lol)... the suggestion to me by Holy Spirit is to, instead, THANK GOD. Well... in a state of upset and begging, the idea of thanking seems totally opposite of what I can muster or believe in, because when I am EXPERIENCING things happening that I DO NOT WANT, I am being the OPPOSITE OF GRATEFUL.

I seem to be having a pity party in my upset feelings and here it's being simply suggested that I lighten up and 'rejoice' in God by ACCEPTING that God IS helping or HAS/WILL help, by entering into the stream of thought which appreciates and THANKS Him for doing so.. like, it's a given, because then I am PARTICIPATING IN THE MIRACLE.

There's a world of difference between "God please help, things are so fucked", and "Thank you God, thank you for restoring ... to peace and love" or whatever.

The question is, can we love, can we be willing to rise up out of despair and actually JOIN GOD in love, and to then have a celebration party about how wonderful he already is and how much he is already going to solve this entire problem... THANK GOD.... can we jump to that from the middle of despair?

It's hard. But not impossible. Sometimes you have to have good old fit first of all and feel it all and get it out of your system to use up all that stupid ego energy. Then you might be more ready and able to reach up to the higher truth of God and align with it in gratitude.

It's a leap. And to go from 'I need help' to 'thank you for helping' also requires that I LET GO OF my ego misery pot. I mean, after all, if I'm asking for help, then I better dam well get prepared to RECEIVE THE HELP and stop just wallowing in the darkness, right? I'm asking for it, so I need to shift gears and actually open up to receiving and thanking.

Ego doesn't want to thank God for anything ;-) But this is the simple difference between ego prayers and Holy prayers. Ego prayers come from the dark and cry out in anguish and in belief at how everything sucks and there's nothing to be thankful for. Holy prayers align with Heaven and extend and express love in gratitude and happiness. Big difference. It's night and day, as well, in terms of the POWER that will come when you enter gratitude and COMMAND situations to heal instead of being a victim.

Thank you God for extending your love through me.

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!

Upon entering the separation, we immediately entered into states of suffering. This happened because we rejected our wholeness. By choosing to believe we could be separate from God, in the fall of man, we were choosing not to be the whole of who and what we are.

We rejected our wholeness and wanted to be partial. We started to believe in lack. We saw ourselves as special and wanted to hoard some things for ourselves selfishly, meaning that we also wanted to be deprived of what others had. We introduced this depravation and suffering into our own minds.

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, ***you will be incapable of suffering.*** But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the ***acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE***. Your Father created you ***wholly*** without sin, ***wholly*** without pain, and ***wholly without suffering of any kind***. If you deny Him, ***you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind***, because of the power He gave it. "

This meant that upon the very instant of beginning to enter into separation, in the fall, we introduced suffering into our own minds. This suffering is nothing more than the seeming lack of wholeness. Simply by rejecting wholeness, we placed our minds in every conceivable condition that you might think of as suffering.

For example, all of "the separated ones", by rejecting their whole identity, actually came to be uncertain whether they really exist. They rejected their souls and began to experience a tremendous uncertainty about whether they were even real, or even existed at all. This is because we rejected our Father, and therefore rejected the belief that we had been CREATED. So this brings with it a fear of not existing (fear of death).

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in your mind that it may even doubt whether you really exist at all."

Also in the separation, by trying to be partial and special and not whole, we introduced the idea of lack and scarcity. We saw ourselves as lacking, or being less than whole. This alone lays the foundation for feelings of inadequacy, shame, unworthiness, weakness, fear of not having what it takes, a desire to hide, powerlessness, deprivation, scarcity, lack of abundance, fear of loss, constant anxiety about being overcome, and perpetual stress.

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience.""Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones."

So by going into the separation, we immediately placed ourselves into suffering states. It's not like something in life happened to cause the suffering. It's not about some event taking place on a timeline. It's not about people doing stuff to us on a Tuesday. It all began and has its deepest roots in the separation from God itself. That's where it all started.

Your sense of suffering, lack, unworthiness, inadequacy, fear etc, can be compounded, and seem to increase or decrease, based on reactions to life events and so on. But fundamentally it isn't the world that's making you suffer, or any specific person, or any even major event. It's the separation from God. It's the lack of wholeness in your mind. It's the rejection of your soul. That's what's making you suffer, and that is the core root of ALL suffering. Which as the secret of salvation tells you, YOU are doing to yourself.

This really is also the source of all sickness and death. By believing that we are not as God created us, we reject eternal life, and believe in death. By seeing ourselves as unsufficient, a failure, lacking, unprepared, incapable, disabled, broken, etc, we form an image of ourselves as a body, representing what we think is true of us, and this now symbolizes and pictures our inner condition. So now the body is sick and frail and disabled because the mind is sick and frail and disabled."If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

The resistance against the truth, puts the brakes on the extension of creation, rejects your natural functioning, and places you into a state of malfunction. This is the root of ALL forms of sickness. Worded in another way, it is a fear of the state of wholeness, a fear of approaching that state of wholeness, and therefore a fear of awakening to wholeness.

"All forms of sickness even unto (physical) death are PHYSICAL expressions of the fear of awakening."

This tells you also that if you were not to be afraid of awakening, if you were to embrace wholeness, if you were to open up to your perfection, and if you would deny and reject anything not of God any power over you (including death therefore), your mind would not be in a state of fear and would not need to defend itself against the truth, sickness would vanish and the body would return to a symbol of health.

It ultimately isn't stuff in the environment, little viruses, people's attacks, weather conditions, poisons in the food and water, or anything else in the world that is making us suffer. It is solely our own seemingly broken relationship with God. It is the connection between you and your soul, which has become blocked off and rejected. It is the denial of your SELF, that is making you have an ego exprience.

All pain is therefore induced by the denial of God. "The denial of God is the ego's religion." This denial of God produces a false "God of sickness". And this God of sickness demands the rejection of health both mentally and physically.

"Allegiance to the denial of God (and thus your wholeness) is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."By even dipping your little toe into "the separation", by even perceiving at all, by believing a single illusion, you are entering into a realm of suffering and pain and fear. You cannot feel safe until you are whole. You cannot feel free from death until you embrace your eternal life. You cannot end suffering or be happy until you know you are with God.

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is with God. "So we can look externally all day for illusory sources of suffering. We can attribute the cause of death to anything OTHER than ourselves. We can blame the whole world for causing us to suffer. We can use the world as a gigantic scapegoat. But it will never change the underlying fact that WE cause our own suffering through our belief in separation. And this is the ONLY cause of suffering, sickness and death.

"Every illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments in which it hides its nothingness."

"Illusions carry only guilt and suffering, sickness and death, to their believers."

"Reason will tell you that the only way to escape from misery is to recognize it and go the other way."

"Our efforts will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one problem and one answer."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

For those of us, us "separated ones", who see ourselves as trapped in bodies, and prone to suffer, we need to be gentle with ourselves in recognition of WHY we suffer. We see ourselves as unworthy and insufficient, lacking and unwholy/unholy, imperfect and flawed, weak and frail and afraid, guilty and shameful, not good enough, disempowered, lost, alone, withering and dying. We believe this because we believe in being separate and are deceived by illusions.

It's quite natural to then become afraid of failure at every step, because if you know/believe that you are less than whole, you know that you do not have everything you need. And you then see yourself as incapable. And in recognizing your limitations, you will not trust that you can do things. You will undermine yourself, sabotage your efforts, avoid, procrastinate, and generally "fail" to live. And in seeing yourself as inadequate you will avoid doing anything because you know that you do not have what it takes to do it.

All this undermines your sense of confidence and certainty. It places you into doubt and fear and weakness. So you have to now be gentle with yourself in trying to "recognize your disability", which is mentally imposed, and work to undo this disability. To overcome your belief in being limited and confined and broken. Because by recognizing your immortal perfection you can rejoin yourself in wholeness and undo the illusions of damage and reverse your belief in being a frail lifeless piece of garbage.

We are all here as "recovering" death-addicts. We are all trying to find the strength to carry on. The will to live. We have to develop trust in a truth bigger than ourselves that we are far more powerful than we realize, are fully capable, and "there is nothing our holiness cannot do." This is a pathway in becoming re-empowered, re-energized, and alive again. It is the path of resurrection from death. You are coming back to LIFE, because you are crawling our of your hole of self torture and torment and hell, and are rising up the stairway to heaven's gate, where God is there to welcome you Home.

Probably most of us start working on a spiritual path from a state of isolation. We see everyone else as flawed or a reason to want to be more spiritual, and so we work on ourselves - separately from them - in hopes that even if they suck, we can improve. We see ourselves as separate with the potential to separately grow.

You might then pursue some spiritual practices, usually on your own, maybe in secret, and maybe only at certain times or under certain circumstances.

But then at some point, you come to realize, you literally cannot become any more spiritual in isolation without bringing the isolation itself into question. The compartmentalization of your spirituality into a little box also has to be reconsidered. And when you allow yourself to 'get spiritual' or connect with Spirit has to shift from 'only when its really needed' to 'all the time'.

So then, it occurs to you, that to move forward in your awakening, you have to open up your spirituality to be more inclusive. You can't continue to have certain pockets of the world that you don't forgive. You can't keep certain people in the dog house forever. You can't withhold forgiveness from key individuals that you especially can't get over. And what you are attempting to access through your spirituality is opening up into an inclusive, shared oneness, which means it is surpassing the boundaries you set up.

So now to go further, you have to realize, as ACIM says, that you have to see everyone as Christ in order to see it in yourself. You have to forgive everyone to forgive yourself. "What you do unto the least of my brothers you do unto me" - Jesus. What you do to one member of the sonship you do to everyone. And what you are entering into as you advance is actually a SHARED spirituality where your identity is actually ONE with other people. Equality. Christ consciousness. Sonship/one-ship.

So at some point you have to confront all of the reasons why you want to keep your spirituality in a box, in order to progress further. You can no longer withhold love and forgiveness from those special-hate candidates. You can no longer think about your awakening as something that happens to you AND NOT other people. You can no longer see yourself as being ABLE to wake up `in isolation` to the exclusion of everyone else. You are waking up TO everyone being awake.

As the course says, we all wake up together. And as Jesus says in the course, until He awoke, the entire sonship was in darkness. And when he awoke, because he was a part of the sonship, the entire sonship woke up as one. And also because Jesus is part of the sonship, this absolutely means (this came to me last night) that Jesus is 100% included in your awakening and will be a PART OF YOU and is actually going to be fully present with you as part of the sonship - he's not just some occasional drop-in that goes away and hides behind a mind-cloud.

No stone left unturned. No person left unforgiven. No grievance left undone. No fear left uncorrected. No love left unshared.

"He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive."

A Course in Miracles tells us that as soon as we cease to be forgiving, we enter into an unforgiving state where judgement is automatic. Judgement is attack. It is condemnation. It is required and necessary in order to implement separation, to come between You and God.

Typically we think of judgement as something you believe about others. But this is always an illusion. Judgement is always from you, towards yourself, happening within your own mind.

Judgement also does not judge something which is separate from you and outside of you, but it seems to make a part of yourself separate from the rest of you and outside of what remains of you. It establishes part of yourself as "other" and "not me", and attacks it.

Judgement is sin. It is an attempt to attack the Truth and split the mind. It also possesses two parts, one being the vantage point of "the judger" and the other being the vantage point of "the judged". It is not possible for a mind to be only a judger and not the judged. It must be both, because that same mind must believe that being judged is possible and real to it.

The mind entering into judgement is entering into separation. The mind becomes separated within itself. It forms a victimizer and a victim simultaneously. It engenders an attitude of superiority and inferiority simultaneously. It is not possible to therefore hold an "inferiority complex" without also possessing a "superiority complex".

To believe you are inferior can only come about by part of the mind skewing itself away from what appears to be superiority or worthiness or innocence, which is required in order for the other part of the mind to skew towards judgement.

Thus the mind splits into two simultaneous attitudes, victimization and victimhood, or judgementalism and being judged. You cannot judge without being judged, and all judgement is a judgement of yourself, not another. The mind thus simultaneously manufactures an experience of being judged, and an experience of judging, and then pretends not to be doing so.

It becomes easy for a judging mind to enter into denial that it is playing both roles, because it will either side with the position of judger or judged and deny that the other role exists within the same mind, in order TO judge or be judged. A sense of separation is needed between these two "false identities" to establish that one is what it is and the other is different.

The conscious part of the mind will likely see itself either as judged or as judging. When it sees itself as judged, it will see its judger as separate from itself and likely projected outward. It will be afraid of judgement coming from "other" than itself, which is thought to be other people. It will literally use other people to judge itself, even if they are not actively judging, trying to explain how "not myself" is the cause of this.

Alternatively, the mind can focus conscious awareness on the active role of judger, in which the role of being judged is more unconscious. It sees itself as judging only, and that which is judged is separate from itself and "other". It therefore sees judgement as being against others outside of itself, such as other people, even if other people are innocent. It believes it is not judging a part of itself, having split off the target of its judgements from awareness, through disassociation.

Both of these roles coexist within the same mind, as a split personality with two identities. There is an identity of a judger, superior and righteous and condemning. This is more clearly aligned with the act of sin, whereby to judge is to affirm that sin is real, that judgement is justified because of sin, and that it is someone else who has sinned.

Yet this condemnation is itself sin occurring in the mind, because sin is an attack just as is judgment. The attacking, judging part of the mind believes it is free from the effects of its own attack, having projected them onto another part of the mind.

Then there is the second identity of the judged, the victim who has been attacked from without, and the part of mind that sees itself as powerless, unjustified, weak, vulnerable and open to attack.

It sees itself being attacked against its will and having no power to judge at all. Seeing itself as unworthy, it disclaims having its own opinion or any sense of passing judgement upon others, and acts like a helpless victim. It is the receiver of judgement, open to feeling hurt and embarrassed and ashamed by the accusations which seem to come from beyond itself, typically projected onto other people as the cause because it doesn't recognize that the cause is within the same mind it exists within.

Both of these identities are happening within your own mind, and the interplay between them is happening entirely within you. The judging "you" and the judged "you" are both fictional, illusory identities. Neither of them are true of who you really are - a whole mind with no separation. Neither of them are your real identity, given that who you really are is wholeness and innocence and is completely free from attack, given or received.

You which are the HOST MIND to these two artificial portions of ego mind must gain enough awareness to recognize that you are judging yourself AND being judged by yourself, you are the one who stands in condemnation over yourself, it is you who is the source of your victimization, and "others" have absolutely nothing to do with this.

The only reason you believe that others i.e. other people are judging you, or are the target of your judgement, is because both the judger and the judged parts of your ego mind are unaware that they exist within a larger mind which hosts both of them. Both believe they are all of your "self" and that there is nothing more to your identity than the limits or confines of each false idea of identity.

Being incapable of seeing beyond themselves, both the judger and the judged thus see the "other" which is playing a part in causing or receiving judgement, as being "not myself" and therefore must seem to be "other people". It's easy to conclude this given that other people showing up separate bodies are readily available to "project" this onto, or to see them as sharing the same location as the "otherness" which is believed to be the problem. But this all has nothing to do with other people at all.

Whether it be others in the form of distinctly separate external people, or others in the form of the other part of your own mind, it is only the separation between these identities and the fictional story about how they see each other which is maintaining the split and projecting of the cause.

Your whole mind needs to recognize that it is bigger than and containing these two false selves, that neither self is the whole truth because its story is limited and partial, that YOU as the whole mind are choosing and playing these two identities against each other, and own up to the fact that since they are both WITHIN you, they must both BE a part of your one identity.

In order to return to a single identity, their separateness and distinctness must be dissolved and seen as an illusion. For both of these illusory selves to be a part of you, neither of them can be the whole truth. And in this light, the distinctiveness between them is overlooked and dissolved. Thus do they disappear and judgement and suffering ends. You must admit that you have been playing both roles, and therefore YOU are the one identity behind the ILLUSION of two selves.

Similarly, you must realize that all of your victimization, all of the ways that you believe others are doing things to you, all of the ways that you seem so suffer because of causes separate from you etc.. these must all be recognized as being because of another part of YOU, which is perhaps hidden behind denial and unconsciousness, attacking this second part of you. You've come to identify with this one split-off part of your mind, and are in denial of the rest of you.

It is you who has judged yourself, because it is you who have believed in sin and used sin to split your mind into multiple personalities. You are both the judger and the judged, and yet you are neither because they are both ego illusions.

It is no more true that you actually are being victimized by anyone else, than it is true that you are a victimizer of someone not yourself. You must realize that BOTH of these roles are not your true self, your real identity, or the whole of who you are. They are but an illusion of a separated, split ego mind, pretending to be an identities which you made up.

You are the one who has attacked you. You are the one who is attacking you. You are attacker and attacked, victim and victimizer. And yet you are neither of these, ultimately, because they are both fictional. The ego is always attacking itself and nothing else. The ego IS your self-attack, the scene in which a victimizer and a victim both play roles and cooperate to build a fictional story of interaction.

This is all taking place within you and has nothing to do with other people. It's only because of the split in your mind and your sense of there being a self that is "other" than your self, that you then become confused and accidentally project that sense of otherness onto other separate bodies. Really the otherness your are relating to as your enemy is just a part of your own mind, and your judgement of "them" is directly an attack on yourself, appearing to be indirect, or not at all.

To judge is to attack yourself. To believe you judge another not yourself is the very denial which makes judgement seem possible. You will judge yourself if you judge, and you will never judge another person. And if you are judged, rest assured you are not judged by another, nor should you fear the judgement of other than yourself. It is really your OWN "other self" which you are afraid of judging you, because YOU are the one who is judging you from within.

Surrender both of these positions, therefore, and return to wholeness, which is a mind of forgiveness. In wholeness you will not see an other to judge or to be judged by. Forgiveness cancels judgementalism and the belief in victims and victimizers. You have but done this all to yourself and have experienced all sides of your self conflict. Self conflict always contains two selves, who believe they each are all of your self and yet is limited in its self concept.

You cannot judge without being judged. You cannot be judged without judging. Both make up the state of sin, which is a belief that you should be condemned, or are being condemned. All of it is your own doing.

Judgment of another is a position of causality, in which you are squarely within the identity of the one who is doing something to another. Being judged then is a state of being at the effect of the judgement of another. Yet by entering into the drama of judgement, you become both the cause and the effect of it. And yet, you are not really the cause because none of it has been real. There are no real consequences from separation.

Following from the judging causality of sin, there is the result of guilt, which sees itself as the effect of sin. Yet from the perspective of guilt, as the victim of sin, the mind sees itself as separate from the sinner, and therefore sin is made unconscious and the guilty mind now sees itself as causal. It then proceeds to stand in the role of cause, continuing judgement against the self, determining that because it is guilty, it must be punished, and punishment is just another step on the road of judgement.

Judgement leads all the way to death in this manner, since condemnation calls for death to atone for what you claim you did. You will both suffer and want to suffer, will die and want to die, and will be victimized and want to be victimized. This is what comes from judgement - the entire ego thought system of sin, guilt, fear, punishment and death.

Learning not to judge is only important in terms of learning not to believe in real sin, and to place your mind back into a state of forgiveness. Of yourself. Wholeness, which is the end of judgement, cancels its illusory effects and they are undone.

It is not helpful to simply stop projecting judgements onto other people, if you are not recognizing that it was you that you were judging all along. That would only mean you continue to judge yourself but now are constipated with a censorship of the judgement that continues internally, trying not to shift it onto others but still believing you deserve it. Ceasing to project onto others is only the first step.

You must realize that you've been attacking yourself, judging yourself, being judged by yourself, and that you need to stop doing this. That you are willing to stop doing this. Generally speaking, an awareness that you have been doing this at all may be enough to shine enough light into your mind to make sense of what you have been experiencing, and to dismantle the ego's construct of self attack completely.

You need but a little awareness that it is you who has been both attacker and attacked, and that if you are both of these, then you must have a single identity, and therefore the illusion of separateness between them must be false and unreal. And thus, as an illusion recognized as an illusion of separateness, it will disappear. The mind is thus healed and restored to wholeness, awareness of wholeness returned, and along with it your FULL identity is restored to awareness.

Think of yourself not as confined to a small body, but think of yourself as, in your natural state, being expansive and the size of the universe. You are omnipresent, you are everywhere and in all things. You share the entirety of existence with all other children of God. You overlap with everyone. You exist in the same space, share all of your being with other beings, and commune intimately in a state of oneness.

What happened to that self, which was a universe-sized fully sharing being, in the separation idea, is you attempted to withdraw from immersion in the whole, you confined yourself, you shrunk down, you limited yourself, you withdrew yourself from the communal experience, and so made yourself show up as an isolated body person.

You became small and little and weak and frail, fenced off from the rest, not wanting to share with anyone, wanting to have something special just to yourself, something exclusive, something that only you have, which makes you different and unique and selfish. Instead of being everywhere you decided to be somewhere, restricted in spacetime to a small tiny spot, around which you defend against the entire universe from entering.

This is what happened in the separation. This is how you took your pre-existing sharing self, and "made it separate". You separated it from its communal experience with other infinite beings, putting yourself in a corner and walling yourself in, in order to keep them out and you in. You did not want to share in them, and you didn't not want them to share in you. This was the purpose of the body idea, a separation device and a wall of flesh around the mind.

This produced what is termed "the separated self" which is a self who used to share with everyone, who now does not want to share at all. This imprisoned self, is still a real self, but has placed itself under limitations. And these limitations are made of illusions, which seem to now substitute for a sense of real, full self, making it seem as though you "made up a self" to replace the fullness of your soul. You made the body, and identified with and as it, in an attempt to isolate and exclude. This is all that happened in the separation. You just became selfish and special and different.

The restoration of your true nature simple entails the willingness to drop the walls, remove the isolation, transcend the body separation device, return to being the size of the universe, re-immerse yourself in creation, rejoin the community of the Sonship, and resume a state of perfectly unselfish sharing. The willingness to let others share you, as much as you share them. Restored to being your natural self as God created you, a self who is equal to all real brothers and who shares everything with everyone.

Once you can see what you were like BEFORE the separation - a limitless universal being who shares everything with every other limitless universal being - the family of God - you can easily contrast this against the position you now find yourself in, and realize that it was the attempt not to share that put yourself into this situation. Where you are now inside a body, everyone else is kept outside, you seem to inhabit it alone, and now no-one shares anything with you inside your little fence. Being kept apart and separated off and unwilling to join, is a lonely and isolating experience.

The walls of separation, the body itself, all physical matter, all illusions, the ego, body identification, forms, the world, all things little, every prison wall which keeps you from sharing and immersing yourself in communion with God and Sonship, which occurs only in Heaven, keeps you from being IN heaven, and keeps you imprisoned. This is why the body cannot contain you who are love, any more than God can enter a body or join you there. You must expand. You must become unlimited. You must return to being an eternal being who is everywhere and sharing with all other eternal beings in an unlimited, open and unselfish way.

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

The ego doesn't have any real power of its own. Its only strategy is to try to get you to willingly give your power to it.

To do this, it has to present to you some kind of temptation or lie, something untrue, and generally something that upsets you in some way. If it can especially get you to have a reaction, or be triggered, then you have fell for its trap.

The ego uses your own beliefs and your own blind-spots, as a way to get you to agree to go along with it. While you remain unconscious and attached to a certain egoic belief, you are quite literally agreeing with the ego and giving it permission to use this against you.

The ego cannot take power from you, you have to give it away. When you give it away, you give it away through playing the role of a victim, perhaps entering into fear or guilt etc. This is your way of making it seem as though the power you share with God has now been separated from God and is handed over to the ego.

In certain other religious circles, this principle is taught in terms of the devil, sin, and how the devil operates. That is, that you first must sin which means you believe in something that's mistaken. Then based on this sin, you have literally agreed that something untrue is true. And now this creates an 'open door' and an invitation and a resonant agreement, which allows 'the evil' to come in and control you. This is also how evil 'spirits' enter people's lives. Because YOU have violated a law of God, so to speak, by going against it, you have permitted darkness/ego/devil to use this darkness against you.

But notice here that the ego/devil does not actually have its own power. And it completely depends on you agreeing with it, and continuing the 'sin' i.e. the false belief. It also does not actually have any power to prevent you from undoing that belief, or choosing again, or waking up. It has ZERO 'actual' control over you, besides your own willingness to play along. If you were to decide to stop playing along, and to withdraw your belief, and to take back your power knowing it is yours, and knowing that the ego can do absolutely NOTHING to stop you, the ego would be dis-empowered.

The only tool the ego has is the presentation of illusions, in an attempt to try to play upon what you believe and to convince you that it is either your friend and ally, or to distract you from choosing again by throwing fears or guilts or rationalizations or whatever else your way, to try to once again push your buttons or pull up your past hurts or play upon your own fears, to keep you ensured in its mindset. And often, in unconsciousness, you will go along with this and be pulled right back in, but ONLY because you have not become conscious/aware enough yet to discern and to decide not to listen or believe what it's saying.

So really the ego is just a mirror for your own mis-beliefs. And it shows you and reflects back to you what you currently believe. Change your belief, and the reflection of that belief - the ego - must disappear.

There is nothing keeping you stuck. There is nothing stopping you but yourself. There is no reason why you can't be loved. There is no reason why you can't wake up. The only thing keeping you asleep is yourself.

When I'm projecting my own stuff onto someone else, I can't possibly see them as innocent. I'm putting my guilt onto them and I'm seeing it in them.

While the guilt is 'out there', there is simply no way my perception can show me their innocence. I have a screen in the way, a filter, a layer of dirt and noise.

I used to try to see other people as innocent, like, you know, they say to 'see everyone as Christ'. Well you can't do that if you're projecting. You can't just immediately launch into seeing them as Christ because you see them as guilty.

It is not until you take back your guilt, which you tried to make them responsible for, on your behalf, that you can possibly see them as innocent. Until you withdraw your projection from them, you can't see them for who they really are.

So you take back your stuff, and you own up to being the one who believes YOU are guilty. And you take the guilt back from their hands, recognizing it was NOT their guilt you were seeing, but your own. Having taken it back you CAN now see that they are innocent.

Also at this point, seeing that the other person is innocent isn't really a process, and it's also not some kind of label you put onto them, and it's not that you 'make' them innocent. In fact, all you've done is reveal the truth that is already there. Underneath your projected guilt, they already ARE innocent.

So you don't really have to be in the business of trying to talk yourself into 'believing' that the person is innocent. You don't have to try to convince yourself that someone else is Christ or holy. It's not something you need to make happen or do to the person or bestow upon them. Remember you are in the business of removing the blocks to the awareness of love's presence, which means when you remove the block to your awareness, by taking back YOUR guilt that you gave to another, having accused them of your own sin, you naturally REVEAL what was there all along - their in-built, inherent, God-given innocence. Their innocence is there all by itself.

This is similar to how you need to go up into Holy Spirit's thought system, above the battlefield, stepping out of the projection of guilt, and entering closer to your own innocence, before you can look down IN forgiveness to see that everything below/outside is forgiven. Looking back on others WITH Holy Spirit/forgiveness allows you to recognize and see their innocence. You didn't give their innocent back to them because it was never taken away. You just had covered it up with your own stuff.

Note that when you look WITH Holy Spirit's forgiveness you will see innocence, and this is what it means to BE forgiving, rather than to 'do' forgiving. If there is a 'doing' of forgiveness (commonly thought of as 'applying'), that refers to you taking back your guilt and going to Holy Spirit with it so that you can come to be able to SEE the innocence in you and your brother. That process itself does not make innocent, it only uncovers it, and forgiveness then is the light in which you SEE.

So now you can also go to Holy Spirit and ask, hey, I think this guilt is mine, which I was putting onto them, and I now take it back and recognize it's not theirs, so they are innocent, but I still feel this guilt about myself. I think I'm guilty. Is it true Holy Spirit? I want you to decide. Tell me your verdict. "You are innocent", Holy Spirit will say, in one way or another. And then you will accept this with relief, let go of the guilt, allow Holy Spirit to HEAL IT FOR YOU, and release you from your own delusion that you are guilty. Now you can see your own innocence as well.

They say that by seeing the innocence in someone else you will see the innocence in yourself because your minds are One, and there is some truth to that. But this never really worked for me. I couldn't simultaneously lift guilt off their mind and my own, on my own, just based on the concept that this works. I can see now that I have to at least take back my guilty projection first in order to see my brother's innocence, and THEN I can take it to Holy Spirit and get it fully corrected. Then I will see my own innocence AND the unified innocence of my brother.

So often I believe I know. I think that I have the facts or the information. Or that I have experiene. Or that my assumptions are true. Or that I know better than someone else. Or that they are wrong so I must be right.

But I am reminded to ask myself, do I really, REALLY know? I mean, do I actually have direct knowlege that this thing is true, or even an ability to do so, or am I just making shit up as I go along?

The other day I was worrying about an outcome in a situation which I felt "sure" was going to go only one possible way. Holy Spirit said, "you don’t know".

At first I could not accept that I did not know. I thought I DID know. I thought I had a very good story or reason to explain what was obviously going to occur. But... I allowed myself to question that. Did I REALLY know, or was this just my best educated guess? Did I REALLY know, or was I just relying on my ego intellect or my past or my judgements to assume I know?

And gradually over the course of a few minutes, as I allowed myself to question this... to consider,... maybe I do not actually KNOW.... maybe I am just making a strong guess and passing it off as knowledge, gradually what at first seemed like a fact "orbiting" off in the distance poking fun at my convictions, became much more centrally accepted within.

I had to admit. I actually do not know. I do not know what is going to happen. There was, along with that, a kind of peace, because now the whole drama story of doom and gloom of what was "sure to happen" no longer had a basis. Without the assumed outcome I was trying to control and avoid to prevent its awfulness, maybe I didn’t need to do anything at all. Maybe I simply was mistaken and maybe there is in fact a possibility and a hope that I had not considered.

While I am busy focusing on depending on my own self and my own knowing and my own figuring out, I am not being open to the facts or reality. I am being closed off and not listening. Nor am I leaving room open for a miracle, for healing, or for completely unexpected outcomes. Possibilities that I had not even thought were possible.

While it’s important to recognize that I do not know "anything", the key here is identifying that I do not know anything *independently* from God. So if I am trusting my own know-how and pride, then I am not knowing the truth. If I put that aside and admit that the stuff I thought I knew, was not real knowledge, I actually become open TO real knowledge.

We are to give up fake knowing. We are to surrender trying to think we know things which are not really truth. We are to let go of false beliefs which masquerade as very certain convictions and definite consequences. But as we give these up, this fake knowledge, this fake certainty, this fear which pretends not to be fear, this prediction which is simply imagined and unreal, it makes way for revealing TRUE knowledge.

True knowledge is the ability to know God, to trust God, to not need to control things, to allow and accept reality, rather than trying to interpret it change it or form false beliefs about it. Be willing to admit you know nothing, and it will open the doorway to knowing everything there really is to know.

There is some small part in the course where Jesus talks about how, at a very high level, in the transition between ego and spirit, more or less upon entering heaven, that it becomes possible to literally directly know everything, experientially, rather than having to rely on your own "accumulated" scraps and memories and learning. We have taught ourselves a lot of bullshit which we have to become willing to give up, recognizing that it is just "made up". Stuff that we make up is not truth. We do not really *know*, when we are trusting these beliefs.

Beliefs are not truth. Beliefs are not knowledge. I do not know what anything is for. I do not know what anything including this means.

There are various feelings you can seem to experience, but they are not real feelings. When you're in the ego, lost and confused, you'll discover a wide variety of different feelings.

Ego emotions include sadness, grief, loss, frustration, anger, excitement, guilt, fear, dread, anxiety, worry, hurt, shame, embarrassment, unworthiness, and all kinds of other sensations. These all include some element of suffering and unhappiness.

It is easy to think that all these feelings are normal human emotions. Everyone has them. They seem commonplace and everyone has felt them. But can they be real feelings? Can they be states which God Himself ordains?

If God's will for you is perfect happiness, then anything even slightly short of perfect happiness must involve the ego. As soon as we're entering into guilt, fear, any kind of emotional turmoil, we're in an insane state of mind.

It's true enough the mind can invent all kinds of states and sensations, which we experience and register as "how I feel". But at some point these feelings have to be brought into question, because they are not really ever valid, real, or of God.

So if I'm feeling angry, I'm going to at some point have to look at this and recognize, this anger is not something God ever feels, and it cannot be real. God is never angry and His creations cannot be angry. So if I am angry, I am having a false, illusory feeling. I feel it, seemingly, I experience it. But it's false. It's a made-up artificial feeling.

All the ego emotions are made up. They are not of God, nor are they God's will. If I feel guilty, I've invented a lie about myself. If I feel sad or grieving, I'm very deceived and believing separation has really happened. If I am afraid I'm believing in sin and punishment. If I'm feeling hurt, I've accused my brother of attacking me.

Mixed into all the ego feelings there's always an element of me hurting myself, me trying to hurt others, and some kind of accusation or judgement. These aren't true feelings. An enlightened person should not ever be experiencing these feelings because such feelings cannot exist without ego.

It's not enough to say, well, there is anger arising but I am separate from it. That's bullshit. Someone is causing it and choosing it. God's children are never unhappy or angry or upset or afraid or guilty or suffering in any way. God's children are entitled to perfect peace, permanent happiness, and constant joy. His angels never stop smiling.

Trying to justify that these emotions are "valid" is an ego attempt to make it okay to suffer and to feel states which are illusory. When I am "not at peace", I MUST have made a wrong decision. I made the decision myself. I chose to not be at peace, meaning I wanted to feel something unlike God feels.

If I am feeling anything other than how God intended that I feel, I have invented a false feeling. It seems perfectly possible to experience these feelings, even very intensely and deeply. But they MUST be states of mental illness, they must be forms of attack and denial, and they must involve my ego.

Any time that we are sad, it is because we think there is something to feel sad about. There is nothing to feel sad about. God's Kingdom is perfect and there is no basis for any kind of unhappiness. If we are unhappy we are mistaken. If we are feeling anything other than joy we are blocking awareness of love.

So there are fake feelings and there are real feelings. Just as my only real thoughts are the thoughts I think with God, so too my only real feelings are the feelings I feel LIKE God and WITH God. Those include joy, happiness, bliss, peace, love, holiness, innocence, safety, and gratitude.

Anything less than true feelings must reflect states of darkness and deception. Something has gone wrong if we are not happy all the time. Something is not working correctly if the mind is experiencing a nightmare.

We MUST therefore bring into question ALL false ego emotions, regardless of their seeming reality, intensity or justification. They are not true, they are not real, and they do not exist. It is not simply enough to question thoughts and beliefs, we must also FEEL the love of God at all times.

What we do in secret, and separately from God, and thinking that it is not something God is aware of, and which we hope other people do not know about, and how we suffer in silence, and feel things that we don't want other people to know we feel, and think things that we don't want to admit to thinking, this is all us doing it in the 'darkness' of the ego.

Darkness is the absence of light (God) and there can only be a darkness if light is SHUT OUT, which you do by entering into some kind of private, secret world, where you do not 100% fully share things openly. Indeed, coming into the physical world is an attempt to enter into a secret, private world, where God's light is absent - a world of darkness and despair.

If you are not fully 'open', like the shutter on a camera, light cannot get all the way in. If the shutter is closed, you will have a picture of darkness. When you 'shut down', become closed, withdraw, hide, go into secret fantasy land, conceal, deny, resist, attack, or in any way enter into EGO, you are shutting out the light.

Things that you KEEP in the dark, remain seemingly unhealable because you are not allowing them to gain light exposure. Exposure to light shows them for what they are and dismisses them, effectively revealing that they only existed IN the dark and do not really exist IN the light at all.

Therefore, everything that you do in the dark, or in secret, or which you keep buried, or do not want to admit to, ONLY EXISTS so long as you KEEP it in the dark, because it is MADE FROM darkness itself. All illusions are made from darkness. They are not made from light.

So as you expose yourself to God/light/love, these dark things must be exposed to the light and seen IN the light, and since they are not made OF light they do not exist in the light, so when you look IN the light for them you will not find them, because they will have DISAPPEARED. Light shines away darkness because darkness is only the absence of light, not a real thing in itself. This is why shadows disappear when light illuminates the scene. This is why the darkness of night disappears when the sun comes up. Where does it go? It does not exist.

You can stay in the dark and keep your dark illusions and dark fantasies about how dark you are and how real the darkness is, OR, you can open up and expose yourself courageously to God, knowing that GOD DOES NOT ATTACK, and GOD LOVES YOU UNCONDITIONALLY, and ALLOW the light to heal you of this darkness. Love replaces darkness with itself, and you are NOT held accountable for being dark, because you are MADE OF LIGHT.

Darkness is illusion. Light is reality. In truth you are innocent and holy, but if you don't allow yourself to step into the light, you will believe you are sinful and guilty. Only in the dark, where you cannot even see properly, could you think you are sinful and guilty. Only in the light, where you can finally SEE, can you be ABLE to recognize that you are only pure and innocent.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light"

"I am not an illusion but a reality"

- ACIM

Read this carefully from ACIM.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

These are Jesus's words. They are correct. It does not say that impossible separation from God has been made possible. It does not say that we in fact DID separate from God. It says that something called "the separation" HAS happened. There is a major difference between THE separation, and the general impossible potential for actual separation.

There is a very popular myth in ACIM circles that we're supposed to just assert that "nothing happened." Jesus is saying this is NOT appropriate and is a misuse of denial. Did you ever notice that for example you actually are having SOME KIND of experience of a world, a world in which you have a body, you type posts on facebook, you respond to people and so on? Technically speaking if these "things" were UTTERLY impossible, in the strictest sense, there is no way that you would even be able to dream of them happening. You wouldn't be ABLE to sit there right now reading these words, whether they're real or not.

There is a view of many people that the separation - confused with separation in general - did NOT happen, and therefore the logical conclusion is that "there is no facebook". This is CLEARLY A DENIAL. It makes no sense at all. It does not explain how it is clearly obviously possible for there to be some kind of a facebook, some kind of a body, some kind of a physical life.

No-one who believes that "it never happened" has ever been able to satisfactorily explain HOW ITS POSSIBLE that we can be sitting here typing little text messages to each other. They don't have an explanation because they believe we're supposed to just sort of turn a blind eye to all this stuff, slap a label of "not real" on it, PRETEND ITS NOT THERE (denial), and carry on trying to assert its unreality.

Jesus is telling you that this is a MISUSE OF DENIAL. Because in fact, per his words, "THE SEPARATION HAS OCCURRED." This isn't a real separation, it is fictional. But a fictional separation HAS occurred. A belief in, a dream of, an illusion of, an impossible separation, HAS occurred in thought, in the mind. It HAS in fact produced a whole other "order of thought" in the mind.

"We have discussed the fall or Separation before, but its meaning must be clearly understood, without symbols. The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity. All beliefs are real to the believer."

Read it carefully. The separation is NOT symbolic. Jesus says it is an ORDER OF REALITY. And that while it "lasts" ie in time, it is PERFECTLY REAL. This is NOT something that most ACIM students are very happy about, do not want to admit to, and will run away from at high speed. It seems to fly in the face of what so many people are saying, that "it never happened". Well, if it could not have possibly happened in ANY WAY, you literally would not be reading these words right now. And you are. Whether its a dream or an hallucination it doesn't matter, you ARE reading.

In the separation we did in fact produce a second order of thought and gave it a sense of reality. "Whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you." It doesn't mean it is ULTIMATELY real, or that it really has permanent existence. It is truly an illusion of a possibility. But Jesus is clear the mind is perfectly equipped to sleep and to dream. These are NATURAL CAPABILITIES.

In fact, God gave our minds free will. And part of that TOTAL FREEDOM, is that you can freely try to use your mind to deny its own freedom. Yes, you have that freedom. It doesn't mean that anything real or possible can necessarily come from it, and it hasn't, but you CAN TRY TO. And when you do try to, your mind DOES SEEM to go to sleep, entering a state in which it dreams. This is entirely WITHIN THE LAWS OF GOD.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

This means God has given you the POTENTIAL, the freedom, to choose, per your own free will, whether to accept reality or not. You are CAPABLE of denying reality. This denial doesn't remove reality because denial is a pretense that you're doing something impossible. But while you are IN denial, your mind IS in a certain state. You ARE IN "the separation." This is why we DID produce a state of mind which Jesus refers to as "the separation". We DID have a mad idea, we DID fall asleep, we DID dream of spacetime, and we DID make bodies and facetime.

Denying any of this is not in line with the course. This isn't to say that these things we dream of are ultimately real, but they ARE real to the dreamer. They don't have permanence because they are denials of permanence, making them temporary, and reversible. But while they are HAPPENING, while the mind IS sleeping and dreaming, we ARE in fact CAUSING the mis-creation, the production, of states of mind, which entail a denial of reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In order to return TO ultimate reality, the denial has to be undone. But the denial is, itself, an actual state of mind. It's something you're holding in your thought. You are having a dream of being separate. "You are safe in God, dreaming of exile". It is not helpful to claim that you are NOT DREAMING. "you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy."

Jesus does not really ask that we "deny the dream is real" while STILL dreaming it. Because this is an false denial. The proper denial should END dreaming entirely. If you are still dreaming, then you are still giving reality to an order of thought.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

This order of reality is being maintained by the mind and it HAS some reality while it is being maintained. That is why the world seems real. It is a kind of subjective reality but it's still a reality. Jesus asks us instead to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE HAS BEEN A SUBJECTIVE SEPARATION - at least a state of denial and belief, a state of TRYING to oppose God - and that we must admit to this before we can heal it.

"However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

He doesn't say "just assert that it never happened." He doesn't say "just assert that separation is impossible." He says that you are supposed to ACCEPT THE ERROR TEMPORARILY, to acknowledge that your mind is in an unnatural state, so that you can change your mind into a more natural state. Eventually the unnatural state will diminish and be replaced by, or reveal, a more natural state. And by CHANGING YOUR MIND, which is always your freedom, you can revert it back to the service of spirit.

Remember that "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

We HAVE chosen poorly, we HAVE used psychic mechanisms - mind power - thought and belief - to mis-create an illusory world. We did not create a NOTHING. We mis-created a distortion of reality. That HAS happened. But it can be undone. This far more accurately acknowledges your ACTUAL EXPERIENCE that you drive a car and eat food and go to the bathroom. There is SOME reality to this, some possibility to this, otherwise you literally could not even dream of it.

The dream is not nothing, it is a way of thinking that's out of alignment with God's will. That's why we NEED atonement. "Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you NEED Atonement BECAUSE you have DONE something loveless because you WILLED without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its CREATION."

So Jesus is really saying that we did in fact enter a state of mind in which the mind does in fact experience strange illusory worlds as if they are real. A state of insanity. And we have given reality to this and it HAS SOME reality. It is relatively real, but not absolutely real. And because of this entering into a freely-chosen state of denial, a legitimate mind-state that is POSSIBLE because you have the freedom to try to deny your freedom - we DID in fact experience a "separate from God" - the fall of man.

And now we find ourselves in a mental state that NEEDS correction. There is a legitimate NEED for atonement, and we NEED to change our mind by free will in order to return to the acceptance of God's reality as the only reality that truly makes sense. A movement out of a state of sleep and denial, into a state of awakening and acceptance.

That's why the Holy Spirit was created, to guide us out of a state that we are PERFECTLY FREE TO ENTER, but which does not resonate well with our true nature, and so brings experiences of suffering. The atonement legitimately offers correction for this and restores the mind to a more natural functioning. It's not enough to just say "oh it never happened." You HAVE used your freedom and your power to choose something unnatural, and you DO need to choose again.

It's not just a matter of me taking back responsibility for everything in life, and then sitting there all by myself.

There is instead a shift away from ego-self and towards being aware of and TRUSTING in God.

It's not just a matter of realizing the cause of things is in my mind, not out there, although that's necessary.

What is cause? It's not just some idea or decision. GOD is cause.

It's also not just a matter of removing blocks to awareness of love. What happens when the blocks are removed? Love/God shows up. And that's no small matter.

I've relied on my intellect, on my ego's abilities, on my separate intelligence, on my self-taught learning. But this is all essentially because I am not depending on God.

Independent thinking... okay... highly overrated. It's actually a substitute for being connected to, trusting in, and having real faith in God.

I'm opening up to a willingness to surrender, and to actually believe and stay unwavering in, a knowing-based trust that God is taking care of things.

It's not God that wavers or fails, it's my selfish ego trying to do everything on its own.

I have to let go. I have to surrender. And I have to stop being the one who has all the truth all gathered up in my separate mind like a big database of information.

Truth as information is a substitute for truth as an experiential relationship with God. It is a substitute for being WITH God, intimately. For being AWARE of God's real presence and communicating with Him and being directed BY Him.

It really boils down to a simple either-or question. Either I trust in my own abilities, or I trust in God. Either I think that I have to control and enforce everything myself, or I let go of the reigns and let God.

And in that trust, in that surrender, it's not that God just sits there idle. To trust that he is taking care of things, that he can heal all situations, requires strong faith and belief and certainty and loyalty. And that also means, knowing that God actually IS taking care of things... even worldly things, even worldly problems.

This is the next stage in the development of trust. I have to learn to step aside and not only 'let God' but actually trust God, believe God, and put aside my own little fears and worries about how God won't help or isn't in charge or can't heal things or whatever.

It's about opening up to relying on God, knowing that God goes with me, allowing God, being intimate with God and allowing myself to be supported BY God. And this has everything to do with working miracles, which REQUIRES faith and firm belief and TRUST in God.

My lack of faith, is what it comes down to. As Jesus says in the course we have placed great faith in the ego, in our own selves, in intelligence and thinking and learning, that we have displaced our faith away from God.

I/we must learn that God really is on our side, really is our partner, that we really are taken care of by Him, that he really can and will do what He says he can and will do, and to trust Him to manage life for us.

It's not just that we are separate from God and have to live in separation and maybe get some input from God once in a while. That isn't the LIFE that we are meant to live. We are meant to team up with God and be loved and united with Him, and actually have Him IN us and working THROUGH us FOR us, without us having to carry the entire weight of the world by ourselves.

How can I trust God unless I am willing to let go of control of life and actually allow Him to do this? How can I trust unless I am 'hands off'?

God repeatedly says to me, "let me". And I did not really understand what this meant. I didn't know if it meant he would do something through me if I did something. I didn't know if it meant he was 'maybe' taking care of something, and then me having no faith in that entering into fear and believing that He wasn't doing anything.

If I don't have trust and faith that God can take care of things, I in effect block God's power and actually do fail to RECEIVE God's blessings.

Anyway.

Today I am grateful and thankful that God HAS delivered, God HAS provided, God IS taking care of situations, and I am not alone any more.

When you decide to use your persona, you are actually striking a deal with the ego. The ego has an all-or-nothing clause, where if you want to use the persona, you have to also use the shadow right along with it. Usually you don't realize you're making this deal, because you focus on the parts of the deal you want and like - which is what the persona is all about. The shadow part is just a... technicality, we need not mention.

The ego offers you what seems like a lovely glowing possible answer to all your problems, and forgets to remind you about the steaming pile of shit that will be coming right along with it.

So as you enter into the persona, you're entering into a deal, where you are saying to the ego, okay, I'll take the risk of possibly getting what I want through your persona mechanism, knowing that I might not get it and I might have to deal with some pain instead. It's sort of a 50-50 chance. But you take the odds because you're desperate.

What then ends up happening is that in order to wear the persona mask, you have to now 'serve' the ego. You have to serve the persona itself which is part of the ego, by worshipping everything it values. You make it your idol, your goal, your cherished beloved artificial self.

This means you're now in a vulnerable position of being exposed to what seems to be coming at you from other people, who seem now to be able to affect you. You attempt to screen out their BS with your persona by relegating it to your shadow. But now you're also concerned that you may or may not 'get' what you were trying to get out of the deal.

Part of being in the persona means you will be very 'self conscious' about what other people think of you, because part of the use of this persona was to get other people to think 'good things' about you, which you seem to think are valuable opinions.... ego strokes. You want people to feed your ego, not detract from it. But this also means you have to put on a bit of a 'show' - a people pleasing performance - in order to 'get' that attention, that narcissistic adoration or that special love.

So now you're basically an 'entertainer' for other people, like some kind of ego puppet, dangling from the ego's strings, singing and dancing and trying to win people over in order to suck their energy. So while you're using the persona, it HAS to mean that you have accepted the ego's rules, you're playing the ego's agenda, you're doing what the ego wants, you're serving the ego's ultimate goals, and you're basically all caught up doing what you think everyone else wants you to do. You're not being yourself.

When you realize that the 'game' of playing with the ego persona, which seems to promise tremendous rewards but often brings suffering and sickness, always produces pain in some form eventually, you might eventually realize it is not worth playing it. And especially if you come to realize, that what the ego was offering you, you did not even NEED to begin with. You only thought you needed it because you bought into your own ego lie that you were somehow defective or lacking or separate from infinite supply.

So if you take off the ego mask, drop the persona and the shadow, and stop trying to 'get' the benefits of the persona's promises, you're going to find that you are much more empowered. You'll realize that you no longer 'serve' the ego, i.e. you're no longer tied to having to give 'other people' what they seem to want to 'get' from you. You no longer have to entertain people or put on a show that you don't want to provide. You no longer have to suffer underneath a fantasy life image that covers up all of the pain that this very same persona generated in the shadows. And you also no longer have to suck up and people-please anyone for any reason whatsoever. So now you find yourself somewhat empty-handed as to who exactly you are now going to serve.

Well... if you're not serving the ego... and the only other mind you can be part of is Holy Spirit//God mind, who are you going to be working with now? You're not going to be looking to the ego for 'what to do' or 'what to say' or 'how to present yourself' or 'what facade to put on' or 'what to write/publish' or whatever else. Instead, you now stand apart from the ego masses, essentially 'free', independent of the entire ego game, ready and willing to come empty handed to God. And then it's merely a matter of you saying, well, here I am God, I'm here 'alone', I don't want to work with the ego any more, what do you want me to do?

P.S why did every episode of Scooby Doo have to have someone in a costume? lol

Time to get your mind out of the gutter?

"Eternity is an idea of God, so the soul understands it perfectly. Time is a belief of the ego, so the lower mind, which IS the ego's domain, accepts it without question."

Jesus refers to you having a lower mind and a higher mind. The lower mind, or the place where you have a "thought system" of spacetime and ego, arose in the separation from God.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought that is PERFECTLY real in time, though not in Eternity."

"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."

The lower mind, or egoic false perception, tends to look at things in a narrow, hateful, judgemental way. It's kind of like the mind is coming at the things it seems from a "lower" vantage point, down on the landscape or battlefield. What we need is a "higher" vantage point which "overlooks" ("To forgive is to overlook") and sees with love.

Forgiveness, or being forgiving, is a gift given by the Holy Spirit. It's a true-perception viewpoint that looks from a high vantage point of holiness, harmlessness, innocence and love. The Holy Spirit sees with Christ Vision, and looks upon everything correctly, ie based on God's truth and love.

We might spend a lot of time trying to figure out "how to forgive", which is really the lower mind trying to stay in control. Instead, consider that we simply need to join with the Holy Spirit. We need to not simply ask for his help, but invite him in. We need to allow him to operate on us, and to help us to share in how he is seeing things.

That means getting your mind to see what and how he is seeing. Your mind has to experientially, not in theory, actually "shift" or move into a higher position, in which you receive the Holy Spirit's healing vision. In which you allow yourself to BE forgiven and to see with HIS forgiveness. A forgiveness that is GIVEN you, rather than one you keep trying to make yourself.

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

Notice how it says that overlooking guilt - in which to forgive is to overlook - means that forgiving must entail letting HIM forgive, and simply trying to line your mind up with his to be open to entering into, joining with, and experiencing, his sight. A little willingness is all that is needed to invite him to help, and to ask for his viewpoint, not to merely hand it down to you but to actually orient yourself so that you let his perspective become your own. Such that God's will becomes your own.

Also, although this is not stated often, forgiveness is the same thing as love. A forgiving perspective is a loving perspective. The mind has to be willing to want a HIGHER way to look at things.

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form. Yet what is needed here is given here as it is needed. In this form you can fulfill your function even here, although what love will mean to you when formlessness has been restored to you is greater still."

Part of our challenge is we often do not recognize that we're in need of moving into a higher perspective. We are stuck and lost in our lower ego mind having false perceptions, which act like prisons and traps, and may not even realize that we're doing it. We think it's normal and don't question it. But we need to try to be vigilant and notice what we're doing, when we're being unforgiving, when we're going it alone, and when we need to ask for help.

The holy spirit is there to help you. God created him entirely TO help you, to heal you, to guide you, and to love and support you. You can't very well move closer to God without sharing in his mindset, his viewpoint, and his higher perception. But to move into it you have to be willing to let go of attack and sin and guilt and death. To be wiling to admit, you might be mistaken, you might've made a wrong choice, and you want something better. The only thing that is ever better is something closer to God.

"While I am not attacking your egos, I AM working with your higher mind whether you are asleep or awake, (just as your ego does with your lower mind.)"

When your attempt at healing asks "what is wrong with me?" .... you know you're on the wrong track, because you're actually trying to find something wrong with you.

The truth can NEVER be that there is something wrong with you. The truth is that you are always perfect. How can anything be really wrong with you?

Yet this mode of diagnosis is extremely prevalent, where the ego is trying to come up with an explanation for "why" you are sick. To explain why you are sick is to completely assume that you ARE sick. This alone cements the sickness in place regardless of what diagnosis you come up with. By the time you THINK you know what the cause is (which will not be the real cause), the sickness will have been amplified even more.

You can't find health by asking in what ways you are unhealthy. It just makes the sickness real. Once you've made sickness real, that means you've lent it a sense of truth and reality, and having done so, you cannot heal it. What is true is permanent and your belief that the sickness is real KEEPS IT.

God does not need diagnosis. Diagnosis is an ego device for prolonging the story and the drama surrounding the sickness, while PRETENDING to be doing something to deal with it.

What if the sickness were to just disappear, right now, never to return? Would you want it? Would you be willing to drop all of the drama and story and side-benefits that arise from having the sickness? Perhaps in your sickness you actually want to be sick because it's serving a purpose?

Most people who are sick... and this is not an attack... just observing.... most people who are sick, well let's just say ALL people who are sick, WANT to be sick on some level. They must. Jesus tells us so - nothing can happen without your own consent and you only get what you ask for. There are no accidents and no victims. So if you're sick, you chose it somehow, for some purpose.

This is what I'm finding to be a bit of a problem in terms of healing the sick.... on the surface they may very much want to be healed, but somewhere deep down there was a decision to be sick and a they wanted it. So there is always some kind of denial of healing, some kind of resistance to truth, and some kind of unwillingness to be healed.

Yet, if a person could leap from their state of denial and desperation and resistance, to a state of healing where the problem no longer exists... I think most people would simply celebrate and be grateful. The shift in awareness would remove all of the foundation for fighting against health. People think they want to be sick, but *REALLY* they want to be with God. This leap from not wanting healing to being healed, is a DIVINE INTERVENTION, which is why Jesus says in the miracle principles: "miracles intercede for your holiness."

So remember, as you try to perform miracles, or heal anyone, you have to be wary of yourself entering into a diagnosis mode, dwelling on the story of how the person was a victim, or of what ALLEGEDLY caused the problem. The truth is that nothing in the world causes anything because the world is nothing more than an illusory effect. So looking for answers in the world will always turn up empty handed. It's the ego's mechanism for distraction and for seeking but not finding, so that healing will not take place. Trying to diagnose problems simply makes them real, keeps them, and fails to cure them.

So we need to get into this mode of... instant healing, and it being not a spectacle, and simply being done with it and then moving on with enjoying Life. Like it's no big deal. But for most people it's going to seem like a huge deal because the limitations imposed by sickness probably has imprisoned the person for a long time. But sickness is nothing.

God doesn't need to diagnose in order to heal something. God is always in a state of health and radiates healing. God's health is instantaneous. He does not dwell on figuring out the cause, or why something happened, as though that would imply DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS depending on the problem. That would be a CONDITIONAL healing. He heals unconditionally, so doesn't care what the problem is or how difficult it seems. There is no order of difficulty in UNCONDITIONAL MIRACLES. He simply heals. Now.

Problem corrected. Done. Move along. Nothing to see.

There are two levels on which you basically can operate, and this also relates to how you perform miracles.

The first level - "level 1" - is physical - this physical universe, which includes the physical body. On this level, the physical body directly interacts with other physical bodies through physical activities. So you might think that to perform healing at this level, you need to physically touch someone.

The second level - "level 2" - is non-physical - its the spiritual universe which includes the "spiritual body". On this level, the spiritual body interacts with other spiritual bodies through spiritual activities. The spiritual body doesn't particularly go around being physical or doing physical things or interacting physically. Interactions are mental.

Therefore, recognize that when you're attempting to perform healing miracles for people, whatever actions you perform with your body will NOT produce healing. And miracles do not COME FROM this level.

Also, if you attempt to direct your mind on the spiritual level towards the physical body of the other person, that also may not produce healing.

Instead, recognize that your mind on the mind-level needs to interact with - join with - the mind of the other person - at least their spiritual body - on the mental level, in order for it to produce changes there.

So while you're in your physical body, perhaps laying your hands on the sick or performing some physical action like holding out your hands etc, recognize that this alone will not produce miracles.

What needs to happen is a kind of 3-step process.

1. You be in your body but you reach up into your mind and access your mental powers.

2. Your mental body reaches out to the mental body of the other person and forgives and heals them and sees them as healed.

3. Their mental body translates the healing on the mental level back down into their physical body.

This seems sort of indirect to us on this level but it's really the only way that healing can seem to transfer from one physical person to another. You must access the level of mind where you can *actually* join with your brother, because you definitely CANNOT join with your brother on the physical level. Joining is oneness, and oneness brings healing.

Recently I was just about to lay my hands on my wife to do a healing and Holy Spirit stopped me. He was quite abrupt. It was because I was starting to be of the mindset that if I would take this physical action, somehow it would produce healing. He wanted to teach me that this is not the case. Bodies are not CAUSES, they are effects. And miracles are not coming from physical actions (but physical actions can express them).

When you start to believe that your physical-level self has something to do with healing, you are entering into a belief in magic. Magic is the belief that bodies have their own will, they have causal power, and they can make things happen. So now if you buy into this idea that you must approach someone physically and do something physical, you're actually turning the potential for a miracle into a sorry excuse of magical weakness.

I believe Holy Spirit is guiding me to recognize that our mind must access other minds on a mind level, to facilitate healing principles, and effectively this means even our own body is really nothing to do with the healing process. Healing may or may not flow through your body, but it is not required. Healing flows from Mind (God) to minds (Sons of God). The minds of the Sons of God then translate this and express it into the physical where they then demonstrate relief.

What this also means is that healing can for sure be accomplished remotely, purely in the mind, without any physical contact or proximity at all. So something has to happen within your awareness, inside your mind, in order to heal, and not just stand there touching someone and doing a bunch of stuff. Even if you are giving verbal commands, if you are of the mindset that just "saying the word" will do it, you are mistaken. The mind must believe and be involved, which the ego does not want.

The mind must be renewed and you must have moved your sense of identity away from the physical body level and into the spiritual level. That means letting go of ego and purifying your awareness and having a sense of identity that is anchored in the spiritual realm, in Holy Spirit, rather than in the physical. And part of that means learning to recognize that bodies are not real at all, they are just illusions, and that's why they CAN express different effects.

If you are not there yet, for sure you can temporarily shift your "self" away from the body and toward the spiritual mind, by using your imagination and visualizing healing taking place - perhaps asking Holy Spirit to help you - from your mental self to the mental self of others. You can see their spiritual "body", you can see it healing, and you can cast out sickness and dark thoughts. If the person will receive it and allow it, they'll also allow this to show up in their physical expression.

It's kind of like you need to hop in an elevator, go up to the next floor, walk across the corridor to another person who also came up to the next floor via another elevator, love them and heal them, and the let them go back down to the ground floor. And you can do all this at any time, even while you're in your body interacting with the person's physical body. Just remember it is your spiritual self/body that is joining with their spiritual self/body, and both of your physical bodies are just illusory effects.

There are different teachers for different students at different points on their path. The teaching that is given to the students at any given stage are appropriate learning for what that student can accept at the time. The student is only able to learn what is 'next' on their path and according to their willingness.

At some point if the student has learned something beneficial, they will increase in awareness and will begin to see flaws and cracks in the teacher's teaching that they did not notice before. This indicates teaching has been accomplished in some way. It may be necessary for the student to then move on to a different teacher who has the ability and appropriateness to teach the next lessons that the student is ready for.

There are teachers who teach to large numbers of people and many of those teachers are not necessarily teaching the whole truth. Now, the ego jumps in here because the ego is fantastic at drawing comparisons, measuring-up who is who and who is saying what and whether said persons are being 'as truthful' as others. It loves to make a competition out of everything.

The are two sides to this. From the student's point of view they will start to compare teachers and find ways that their current teacher is flawed and become disillusioned with this teacher. They are recognizing that the teachings being offered have been outgrown, but they are still expecting that this particular teacher is meant to be the teacher of ALL lessons, and that they're failing to be 100% authentic. This comes about because the student has become attached to the teacher and has set them up with idol worship in some way, which is part of what caused them to come together initially.

The other side is from the teacher's point of view - remembering that as the student progresses they become a teacher also to those who "have less light" - and so the teacher is now aware of the flaws and shortcomings of the message being given by other teachers who seem to be 'behind' them on the path, and begin to downgrade them as inferior students and as being wrong for teaching what they're teaching. This is all ego and is driven by insecurity that their own teaching and learning is incomplete.

Now, what we need to recognize here is this. "Those who are to meet will meet" - ACIM. There are appropriate teachers and appropriate teachings for everyone, based on exactly where they are at, their individual curriculum, what they need to learn and can learn and are open to learning at the time. Everyone is very different and has their own path. There is rarely a single teacher who teaches everything to everyone, because usually the ego is too strong in novice students to accept full exposure to the truth that might come from a 'higher' place. So instead the Holy Spirit works with everyone where they're at and sends them the appropriate lessons and teachers at the right time, to take the next small steps on their path.

Without an ego comparison entering into it, those who are therefore 'teaching less truth' have perhaps volunteered to fulfill the role of building bridges between those who are teaching even less truth and those who are teaching more. Just because these teachers do not have all the answers doesn't mean we have to hold them accountable or find them guilty. They're providing a service. Even Hitler is a teacher. Even Saddam Hussein was a teacher. Even Jack the Ripper was a teacher. For the appropriate students, these people taught what needed to be taught and what could be learned by the appropriate students, who agreed to be exposed to those lessons because they needed to.

So instead of us saying, well, ok Marianne Williamson, Wayne Dyre, Deepak Chopra, Oprah, etc.. instead of saying like they all teach only part of the truth or they're not totally pure or they're guilty for peddling lies - and technically they are not telling the whole truth so that's true - instead of them being guilty for falling short of perfection, recognize instead they are the right teacher for the right students and the people attracted to them will naturally be drawn to do so because thats what those students need, psychologically. They're not ready for a greater truth. They're not willing yet to open up to a greater truth. They need a bridge. They need stepping stones. And therefore these teachers are being really helpful by positioning themselves as the bridges to a higher place.

So what you can take away from this is... recognize that it's okay to like who you like and to learn from who you're learning from and you don't have to listen to certain people if you're not resonating with them. You will naturally flow to the company of the people that you are ready to be receptive to and that you can open up to and learn from, regardless of where those teachings lie in the big picture. Everyone finds their way to God eventually and it doesn't matter that it takes a very long time or that people are 'deceived' temporarily along the way. When students become aware enough in their own true learning they WILL learn to recognize a greater truth and WILL discern and WILL know when there are flaws and WILL move on when they're genuinely ready. So let them have their teachers and their lessons and where they're at. And let yourself have your teachers and your lessons and where you're at.

Do this without trying to force yourself to always be absolutely perfect and whole before you're ready, and without making yourself guilty for liking who you like or not liking who you don't - that's your guidance system - your program for today's performance. Trust where you are at. You are in the right place at the right time doing the right thing with the right people. You are on the right path. You have the right teachers, unless you're transitioning to a new one which in itself is also right. And so is everyone else. The freedom to let others be where they are at without pressure to be where they're not, gives that same freedom to you.

Seeking for perfection in this world is an ego pursuit, but everyone's doing it. It stems from the separation from God.

The idea of separation introduced a mental state of conflict and war, of attack and destruction. It also gave rise to a fragmenting of everything, putting things in separate boxes with separate meanings.

As soon as we did this, competition arose, in which everything is different and at odds with everything else. No two objects are alike, and everywhere you look there is a seeming drive to stand out and be unique.

Separation literally gives rise to competition. In that competitiveness, all egos are trying to gain more, outdo others, usurp God's will, become something, win against the opposition, and generally inflate themselves.

This whole drive is towards trying to find the properties of God in the physical world at the physical level. It can never work because God is not the physical world, but egos don't believe that because they made the world and want it to be reality.

So then within this "war zone" battlefield of constant competing, everyone keeps trying to one-up everyone else. To stand out from the crowd. To have that career success, to become famous or an instagram influencer, or to get noticed. All the egos start screaming in unison "look at me, I'm the chosen one."

This realm of competition makes everyone a perfectionist. Everyone regards themselves as lacking (God) and in need (false needs) of finding something outside of themselves. Rooted in the belief that what they lost cannot be found within - leading to the ego's mantra of "seek and do not find."

So then there is a constant external push, a drive toward going out of your mind, into the world, to gain the world, and to become one with the world and the body. Or in other words, to become more perfect, based on the deeply held belief in being imperfect.

All perfectionists believe they are not good enough (an attempt to stop God loving them), leading to a compulsion to seek for a "better way" toward the world rather than away from it. To find the ultimate this that or the other in the world itself, the golden calf, the fame and fortune, the special other, the perfect house and car, the perfect hairdo, the perfect body.

But all this driving for perfection, which is an attempt to find answers in the world where they don't exist, just makes us more insane. The more you seek to emphasize how perfect something eternal is, which is idol worship, the more you believe in imperfection. The search itself undermines perfection, causing you to lose more in the name of gaining more.

Then enters the fear of not being good enough, fear of rejection, fear of not being perfect, fear of failure, fear of poverty and lack, fear of loss, etc, all various disguises for an underlying belief that no matter how much you become perfect it will never be enough.

Expecting anything in the world to be perfect is a total waste of time. The world was not made with perfection or to be perfect. It was made from an idea of rejecting perfection and entering into chaos, lack, finite limits, faults, damage, a potential for attack and breakage, things being misplaced, stuff breaking down and all manner of disappointments.

You will not ever find perfection outside of you in the world.

Trying to expect a fundamentally broken limited system to become perfect and limitless is insane. It's part of a drive to try to swap the attributes of God for the attributes of nothingness. The true and the false. Trying to make out that this world is heaven, or that it is eternal, or that it is perfect, or whole, or holy, or permanent, or wanted, or meaningful.

The world is nothing at all. It has no properties of its own because it is nothing more than a mirage in the mind. A dream of exile from heaven. We have been trying to give the world the properties of God since we made it, and we have never succeeded. And even as soon as we made it it was ready to die.

Wanting it to last is part of wanting it to have God's permanence. Wanting nothing to go wrong or to break or to be lost or damaged is a wish that it possess God's immortality. Wanting the bodies to stop dying is a wish that they were actually creations in God's Kingdom. All the resistance around things going to hell is an attempt to make it into heaven.

The only place you will ever find true perfection is in the Kingdom of God, heaven, which is not of this world. And you will find this Kingdom within yourself, not out there, or in the clothing cupboard, or in the bank, or on the streets, or at your job. Only that which is shared with and created by God is truly and permanently perfect. And thankfully, that means you already are.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it." UrT12G2

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it." UrT11G1

You can’t solve a problem by staying within the SYSTEM or level in which the problem seems to exist.

In ego terms, in intellectual terms, we’ll have a great many questions. We do not recognize what these questions are or their purpose of maintaining separation. They make separation real and then ask how it was possible. Then they seek for an answer.

But if you could find all those answers to all those questions, it would only produce an ILLUSION of a solution to the problem. Temporarily problems would seem to be fixed, only to be replaced with more in different forms.

The same is true of the past. If you have unhealed stuff from the past, problems unresolved, old wounds etc, you might think that these really exist and are real and need solving. Then you’ll set about trying to find solutions to them to make them go away. And maybe you’ll find some things that seem to alleviate some if it.

But you’ll stay within the system.

For example I can tell that the ego will NEVER stop feeling unhappy. It will never stop grieving loss, it will never find salvation, it will never heal, it will never accept love, and it will never stop believing in death. But if we’re experiencing these things or have them anchoring us into the past, we might look for solutions to these things to try to make them stop or to find a fix.

But this is always a matter of trying to stay within the realm of what you think is reality, making the issues real, and then trying to be free from them. It’s not the problem that you need to be free from, it’s the whole SYSTEM! Because the system is designed to malfunction and break and fail and it will never stop being that way.

The same is true of all questions, especially intellectual questions. To question is actually to doubt God’s reality. ALL sense of questioning is an attempt to be separate from God. It’s to bring into question what is without question and certainly known. It’s an attempt to undermine the truth and bring suffering into being.

What then seems to be an earnest attempt to ask a great many questions, to figure everything out, to cover all the intellectual answers, to find every single “answer” to every one of the multitudes of questions, is actually an attempt to STAY AWAY from God and maintain a state of separation. So then the intellectual answers are not really undoing separation, or solving the problem. You will NOT be saved by answering all your questions.

What needs to happen is you need to resolve the issue of what is CAUSING the questions, which is a sense of being separate from God. The ONLY solution to that issue is to resume being one with God. There is NO other solution and no other way. No amount of questions will ever answer that, solve it, make it go away, or resolve the suffering. The entire system of “questioning God” is designed to NEVER ANSWER the questioning.

What really solves the problem is communion with God, entering into the light, getting out of the past, and being in the present. ONLY moving closer to God solves the problem. It is the ANSWER. In other words, all questions simply melt and dissolve and become IRRELEVANT when the actual problem - being separate - is solved.

When you get God, you have no purpose or reason to question, doubting comes to an end, interference with reality stops, and you are simply giving up the NEED to figure everything out. Answers to a bazillion questions might at best point you towards God but cannot UNDO the separation. You do not need to get all our questions answered, or to understand all technicalities or theories. What you need is more love and less fear.

You can resolve the past, with its perpetually loose ends and its unresolved issues, NOT by being IN the past trying to fight with what’s in your belief system and trying to change what you think is happening. You resolve the past by GETTING OUT OF IT. Entirely. As Jesus says in ACIM, paraphrasing... “The best thing to do with a desert is to leave.” You can’t solve the problem of spiritual starvation by staying in the desert.

Get out of the past and into the present. Your problems DO NOT EXIST in the present. All healing takes place in the present. The present moves you closer to certainty and to love, which means less fear and doubt, which means less questioning, which means less of a NEED for answers. The more you need answers the further you are from the answer. All questions are separation. The only answer is God.

Escape your past by not being in it. Escape your problems by recognizing you don’t have any. Escape suffering and death by recognizing they don’t exist. Escape fear by moving into love. And escape unhappiness by going where the happiness is.

"You're doing this undo yourself."? No way!!!

The ego objects to the secret of salvation. "I CAN'T be doing this to myself! There's no way I'm causing or choosing this! I don't want this, I didn't ask for this, I didn't do anything to make this happen."

Of course the ego thinks this because this IS the defense that is covering up the awareness that you are all powerful. That you chose and caused.

See, ego equates responsibility with guilt and it has absolutely no notion that you can be responsible WITHOUT being guilty. It sees responsibility as "where the blame lies", who is guilty, who sinned, who did it.

It doesn't WANT to be open to the idea that you could take responsibility and be INNOCENT. And so it has a lot of defences and denials and resistance to this idea.

When you start taking responsibility the ego is going to come in and say that you are guilty because of this. So you're going to have to learn to separate out the responsibility from the accusation.

It can really challenge you to be willing to consider that you might actually be choosing what you are experiencing. It means you're going to have to let everyone off the hook and not hate them. It means you can't be a victim, you can't be unfairly treated, you can't be being misrepresented or not heard or accused.

The ego sees taking responsibility as on par with admitting to a crime that's going to send you to prison. It does not want to do it. It sees confession of truth as totally against your best interests. It's like admitting to being a guilty sinner, tapping into your deepest hidden hurts and sense of regret and guilt and shame.

Who wants to admit to being the cause of something awful, or some suffering, or something unpleasant even? But this is what we're going to have to do. The ego has been judge and jury and has decided that the only way you can have the power to do anything is by having the power to be a guilty suffering attacker.

This is why it's a bit challenging, admitting to the truth. You suspect that you sinned, you suspect you're guilty, you don't even want to look at it in case it's true. Or it seemed true when you last looked at it, so you hid from it and vowed to keep it hidden.

But the truth is that you cannot suffer unless you choose to do so. And that's easy to say but a lot harder to totally own. It means you're going to have to look at and question how you might have actually done this. How you chose. The power of your decision. How you decided and the purpose you were trying to serve in your deciding. Why you wanted to suffer. Why you wanted sickness. Why you wanted pain and misery.

Probably you'll feel that the reason for this self-attack was some kind of horrible sin that you committed long ago, maybe an ancient sin, you know, like trying to kill God? Which you believe is true. So you're going to have to confront that at some point to find a path through so that you can get to where you are responsible without the guilt. Where responsibility can mean a verdict of freedom.

We are quite averse to admitting to what we think we've done because we don't want to. And we've become used to projecting it rather than owning it, because owning it feels like shit. But we are not being asked to own up to something terrible that we did, we're being asked to own up to having NOT DONE ANYTHING.

But the road to freedom requires the total acceptance of total responsibility. Without ANY sin or guilt entering into it. When responsibility is polished clean of all guilt, it simply means you are still as God created you, pure and clean, innocent and sinless. And cause for celebration.

"Loudly the ego tells you NOT to look inward, for if you do, your eyes will light on sin, and God will strike you blind. This you believe, and so you do NOT look. Yet this is NOT the ego's hidden fear, nor YOURS who serve it. Loudly indeed the ego claims it IS. TOO loudly and TOO often. For underneath this constant shout and frantic proclamation, the ego is NOT certain it is so. Beneath your fear to look within because of sin is yet ANOTHER fear, and one which makes the ego tremble. What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend."

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

Ego is a narrowing and an excluding of wholeness. We began in wholeness, into which a tiny mad idea of "not whole" was thought. An idea of limitation or something less than whole - as if lacking something.

In order to be not whole, some part of the whole has to be excluded. This introduced the idea of exclusion or exclusivity into what was originally entirely inclusive. And this also means a sense of being excluded from or separate from God and each other.

This is the idea that something can apply to you alone, and not apply to others equally. And so was the beginning of inequality. When things are not equal, unconditionality is lost and we now have conflict, and ideas of better than or less than.

It was actually a request to God that you be treated differently and in a special way, compared to others. As though having special favour with God, being more important than your brothers.

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son." UrT12C11

Entering into this idea of "not whole" is entirely ego. It's a whole different kind of "thought system" or way or thinking, seemingly excluded from God's system of wholeness and oneness.

Everything about this system is egoic in some way, and while it persists the "ego", or egotism, persists. Another way to describe this is selfishnesss - something which applies only to you, and something which you do not share with others.

The separation from God was thus an entry into egotism, selfishness, and not sharing. It was an attempt to hoard, to have something that belonged solely to yourself, and to defend it against others so that they would lack it. As though exclaiming, "mine."

As mind progresses into this ego idea, a whole dynamic of relationship and identity and meaning unfolds. A sense of self shifts from being one with others, to being "only myself". What you have shifts from "shared with God and everyone" to "mine alone."

We begin to take credit for what God created, claiming God did not create it. We decided God is not our father and we try to be father (cause) to him, going against his will forcefully. We try to be more than God, usurp his will, overthrow heaven and exist excluded from infinity.

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. " UrT29I6

Egotism depends on exclusion. It depends on being less than whole. It depends on having enemies, lacking something, gaining something, and being always unfulfilled. It requires ongoing attack and guilt to maintain a sense of separation. And without this it cannot be there.

Egotism then turns to self interest. Our egos are only concerned with ourselves because we see ourselves as existing stranded on an island separate from everyone. We think of everyone else as outside of us beyond the perimeter, and therefore cannot possibly need to consider their interests.

It is very natural therefore that as mind narrows down from wholeness, seeing the boundary of infinity shrink down to the body, or even less, that its scope of interest shrinks also. And so it becomes concerned only with itself in isolation, trapped in a body, confined to a self-made prison.

As egotistical people we then have concern only for ourselves. We need constant recognition from others, wanting them to worship us and adore us for our artificial sense of power and pride. We need constant validation because the ego is unreal, have no real sense of worth because we've thrown infinite worth away, and are permanently insecure.

As egos we can't escape from some fundamental experiences which come as part of the package of being exclusive. Anxiety and depression, loneliness and fear, threat and attack, vulnerability and suffering, it's all part of the dynamic of being less than whole.

"Today's idea will eventually overcome completely the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss." UrW41L1

The return to God very simply entails the expansion of the boundaries of Self to be wholly inclusive of the whole of the Kingdom. To share everything with everyone and to be one with everything. To have no concern for exclusive rights or self importance or specialness. And to recognize that we have nothing other than what God has shared with us, which is equally shared with all.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds. It calls to you to be yourself, within its safe embrace. There are the laws of limit lifted FOR you, to welcome you to openness of mind, and freedom. Come to this place of refuge, where you can be yourself in peace." UrT18G16

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The main difference between us as yet is that I have NOTHING ELSE. This leaves me in a state of true holiness, which is only a POTENTIAL in you." UrT1B40Y

"By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT. Follow His teaching in forgiveness, then, because forgiveness IS His function, and HE knows how to fulfill it perfectly." UrT9C6

'In your own unconscious, deeply repressed by the ego, is the declaration of your release. GOD HAS GIVEN YOU EVERYTHING. This is the one fact which MEANS that the ego does not exist, and which therefore makes it profoundly afraid." UrT4D21

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What was the ego? What the darkness was. Where was 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?" UrU3A6

He also says nothing can happen without your decision to make it happen, and what you choose to happen must happen, and nothing else can happen. There are no accidents or victims.

This completely flies in the face of the typical experience of most people, whose lives seem filled with cases of apparent victimhood, victimization, unfairness, accidents, things going "wrong", blame for responsibility, and all manner of lies which cannot be true.

But how is it possible that someone chooses death?

Imagine a perfectly happy, sane person who absolutely deliberately wants to die, just for fun. Imagine that this person very carefully orchestrates a plot, which allows them to seem to be killed by someone else, with absolutely no involvement of their own. This person puts on such a powerful "performance", like an actor in a play who pretends to die, that most bystanders believe wholeheartedly that the person died against their will.

But imagine that you know better, and that you know every single part of this person's death was chosen by themselves. That they literally did it to themselves. And there wasn't even the slightest bit of room for error, or mistakes, or other people being involved. And yet, this person very very cleverly painted a picture for the whole world to make it seem like they absolutely did not want this. "Poor me, woe is my, how could you do this, gasp etc".

And so this person puts on a spectacular show, for example entering into tremendous fear, getting down on their knees and begging for their life, when secretly they know exactly what they are doing and absolutely cannot be killed by anyone else. Yet they try to make it look like someone else is doing it to them. They will even hide their own tremendous power, they will shove all of their sense of responsibility under the carpet, trying to create the *illusion* that they are not choosing this at all. And the only part of themselves which they will allow the world to see is a tiny spec of identity represented as an innocent victim, who did not choose this terrible end.

So basically, this is someone faking their own death, or at least the circumstances of how or why they died. It's a huge story they made up, a lie, to cover up the fact that they themselves were the one who dealt the final blow to themselves. And yet, all these other people came to be blamed, all these other people became involved and falsely accused, and absolutely nobody suspected that this person made this happen on their own.

If everyone else involved were awake, they would not for a second buy this story, and would not be participating, and nobody would take this person's melodramatic self-destruction seriously. Nobody would become lost in the story of it, the illusion of it, and nobody would for a second be convinced that this person isn't doing it to themselves. All the facts would be out in the open for everyone to see.

Yet when other people are also asleep, and do not see the whole picture, and do not recognize how the person is making choices, and do not recognize freedom, they too will seem to "participate" in the story and make it seem much more plausible that the person is not the one destroying themselves. They believe that the person is a victim and is suffering death against their will, because THEY TOO believe in being victims who are destroyed against their own will, and do not want their own cover to be blown.

It is a cover-up, with accomplices. And so there are roles to be played and even contracts formed, by the person, to arrange a hitman so that nobody else suspects that they were arranging their own death. And at the last minute the hitman would be blamed and scapegoated and the person would be laughing all the way to the grave.

This is what happens, every single time that someone dies.

Death cannot happen if you do not choose it. But that choice is very extreme, as Jesus says, very absolute. It is not by half measures. Any choice for the ego is a choice for death. Any belief in illusions is a choice for death. And any belief that false lies are the truth, leads to death.

So if you are awake, let's say you are Jesus, looking upon a person who has gone through an extraordinary sequence of 'events' and transformations, to make themselves look like a terrible victim, on purpose, by choice, and yet at the end of this process most people are believing the person is a 'genuine victim',... Jesus would look and he would SEE the whole truth, he would RECOGNIZE the person's absolute freedom, and he would KNOW that every single step of everything that has happened has been by the person's choice. No matter how it seems on the surface. The person has created such an impressive illusion of death and victimhood that everyone falls for it and only the awakened can see through it.

And so if the person were to attempt to "die", or even if they seem to bring about their death, Jesus could be standing there taking none of it seriously, laughing at death, taking it as the con and the joke that it is, the deception and the lie that it is, believing it not even for a second. And then Jesus might say, as he did, "get up and live", or "Lazarus, stop being an idiot and pretending to be dead, come back to life. It's a lot easier".

And then the person would suddenly miraculously 'come back' to life. Or rather, they would own up to the fact they were doing this to themselves, AND that death is not FINAL because death is just denial of life not its removal... and would snap out of their silly mood and perk right up. And everyone would be like, well that's a miracle right there. Jesus raised the dead. Well, death is not permanent, and it is just a performance, underneath which is an immortal spirit pretending to be dead - an eternal unkillable being pretending that it can die. So yeah.

Death is not the end. It is not real. And you cannot seem to go through it unless you choose to. So you literally are faced with a life or death choice. Do you choose to live forever, or pretend to die (again)?

Everything that we consider to be a sin, is nothing more than being mistaken. Being mistaken means you are making an error in judgement. You've come to a false conclusion. It means you are incorrect. You have faulty reasoning. You are not recognizing what is true.

Sin is also the idea of insanity, and insanity really is nothing more than confusion about what is true and real. Believing that something is true which is not, is simply a state of being mistaken. You have simply made an error, and now you are confused.

While you are in the confusion, believing that your false truth is true, you ARE mistaken, but you do not recognize that you are mistaken. You believe that you have actually sinned, pulled off the impossible, and accomplished something that can never happen in reality.

To believe this IS, nevertheless, being very mistaken. Just as denial hides the truth from you. Just as framing all acts as sins is a failure to recognize they are JUST mistakes. God knows that his children as simply mistaken, and can never be sinners, and all they need is to recognize their error and accept the truth.

In fact let's put it this way. You should reframe EVERY sin, as nothing more than being mistaken. Every single thing which you consider sinful, evil, wrong, bad, negative, etc should be recognized for what it IS and not for what you think it is.

If someone is trying to attack another, they are simply mistaken. They are mistaken about who they are. They are mistaken in believing the other person is not one with them. They are mistaken for believing they are guilty, and they are mistaken in believing that projecting that guilt onto someone else is going to make it leave their mind. Even if they go through with this, they are still simply making a sequence of mistakes.

Even serious attack such as murder is a state of being mistaken. The person is obviously insane, which means they are confused and do not recognize what is true. They are very much mistaken about what the truth is. They believe that they are justified in the attack, when in fact they aren't, and so they are mistaken. They believe that the death of the other will allow them to gain something, which isn't true, and so they are mistaken. And by finding the other person to be deserving of death, is a totally mistaken notion, since no-one deserves death.

No matter how you look at it, if you look at the big picture and recognize what is true - the immortal innocence and perfection of all beings, it becomes very clear that we can simply be MISTAKEN, but we cannot sin. All evil acts are mistakes. All scapegoating is a mistake. All belief in your own unworthiness is a mistake. Every abuse, torture, rape, killing, destruction, is all to do with people being very mistaken. Even the causation of horrible events is a mis-creation, a mistaken choice in what to cause.

No one in their right mind is mistaken. Being sane means recognizing reality and knowing what is true. If you know what is really true, you are not mistaken about what is true. If you are in touch with reality, you are not mistaken about what is possible. No one in their right mind would even try to sin or attack anyone, because they recognize that they would have to be VERY mistaken to believe it could a) be accomplished and b) be justified.

If you feel guilty, you are simply incorrect about being guilty. You cannot be guilty in God's eyes, because He created you to be innocent forever. So your belief that you are guilty is an error. You are incorrect. You are confused about what is true. You might be insisting that you are RIGHT, but it's not going to make you HAPPY, because being right about something which is false is a state of the denial of happiness.

Forgiveness, in the purest sense, is nothing more than recognizing what is true. It's a state of NOT being mistaken. It's a state of recognition, sanity, and having the whole story. It lacks no information and is not deceived. It simply looks and notices that everything ego or evil is simply false, impossible, untrue, unreal, has no consequences, and does not prove anything. It also recognizes that to believe in such things as possible would be a mistake.

It's kind of like, a question of whether or not you have the facts. If you have all the facts, you are in touch with reality. You know what the whole picture is. But if some facts (information) are missing, you probably are going to start drawing some false conclusions. And now you are entering into illusions, into temptation and deception, because something now appears to be something it isn't.

So let's put it this way. Right now this instant, there is no sin anywhere. There is no evil anywhere. All there is, is a bunch of people who are, temporarily, very mistaken. That is all. They're not evil. They're not sinners. They're just confused. They are out of touch with who they are. They don't recognize their brothers. They believe things are true which aren't. They are just temporarily insane. And insanity is nothing but being mistaken.

Mistakes can always be corrected. They are just temporary errors that you are making. Kind of an "oops". You concluded something which was incorrect. You decided that something means something that it doesn't. You reasoned with faults and ended up confused. You are perhaps unwilling to accept the truth and are in denial of it, which is just a desire to stay mistaken, due to not recognizing that you are.

Those who are insane therefore don't recognize they are simply mistaken, and believe their beliefs are completely true. Those who are in denial do not recognize that they are in denial, they believe they are fully aware of everything and are accepting all of the truth. They aren't, and so they are mistaken. But they believe they are not mistaken.

This then ends up being the key to the turning point in the mind. It's a matter of having to have that "little willingness", to be open to the possibility, that what you believe MIGHT simply be a mistake that you've made. Not like having to admit to being in sin, or that you really are guilty, but just that you are somehow "technically" incorrect. This doesn't have to entail shame or guilt or other rebounds related to being "wrong". It's just a simple fact.

If, while you are in the midst of believing you are completely right, and are not mistaken, and are not recognizing why you are mistaken, you become at least a little willing to consider with some humility that you MIGHT not be "correct", then you start to open up to CORRECTION. You have to be able to get some larger truth into your mind. You need a miracle to shine in the mind and remind you of what is true. To correct your level confusion. Being CORRECT has nothing to do with being RIGHTEOUS.

Correction, which is provided by the Holy Spirit and the truth he represents, is simple the radiant fact of "the miracle", the truth, reflecting the truth of God. It acts as a light of sanity, correctness, accuracy, truth, recognition and reason. You need correction, having made ERRORS, so that you will become "corrected". When you are corrected, you are sane. When you are corrected, you are happy.

So really it all boils down to a simple matter of whether you are correct or whether you are mistaken. Sin never really enters into it, nor does guilt or fear. Those are all the seeming side effects of being mistaken, coupled with the rejection of correction. The rejection of forgiveness. Forgiveness is really just a matter of diffusing the drama of "sin guilt and punishment" and looking at the facts. Looking with sight, with reason, at what things ACTUALLY are. Recognizing that ALL you are right now is in a mistaken state, you've made an error somewhere along the lines, and now all you need is to correct it.

"CORRECTION of the error brings release."

"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong- mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception."

ALL sin must be re-framed as nothing more than being mistaken. Every person you hate, is just mistaken. And you are just mistaken for hating them. Anyone who ever hurt you, was simply mistaken for hurting you, because they made an error. And any hurt you experienced was simply you being mistaken, believing you can be hurt at all, given you are immortal. So now you, and the other person, are just mutually mistaken. And that is all.

And what that tells you is that if someone's attack upon you was merely a consequence of them being MISTAKEN about yourself and themselves, they DID NOT REALLY MEAN IT. They were NOT in their right mind when they expressed this action, based on a mistaken state of mind. They did not realize what they were doing. They THOUGHT they were right and correct and true, but they were mistaken. They were CONFUSED. And they attacked you BY MISTAKE. Since what they did was out of a state of mind of being mistaken and in error, an error which they THEMSELVES did not even realize they were making, you cannot hold it against them.

To forgive someone, therefore, for sin or abuse or attack or harm of any kind, for any kind of upset or broken relating or outright onslaught, is merely to RECOGNIZE that they are NOT in their right mind, they ARE very mistaken. And if you buy into it, into the belief that they are TOTALLY sane in all their decisions and are acting against you ON PURPOSE knowing exactly what they are doing, deliberately, YOU are very mistaken as well. There's just got all these people making mistakes all over the place, NOT sinning, NOT being truly guilty.

The world is just a world of insanity. A mad world, within a mad idea. Even the tiny mad idea that you can do the impossible, was simply a mistaken conclusion. It was an effort to assert something that can NEVER be true. It was an attempt to claim that God can be attacked or opposed. That is not possible. Anyone who believes in that is SIMPLY MISTAKEN. And any belief in sin or separation or bodies or spacetime is SIMPLY a mistaken belief. These things are all false, untrue and impossible.

It utterly boils down to nothing more than a question of accuracy. Are you correct, or are you mistaken? Are you really in touch with what is true, or are you confused and mistaken? Are your beliefs lined up with God's will and truth, or have you invented some MISTAKEN truth which contracts the truth and is therefore mistaken? Do you recognize you are mistaken and are you willing to accept correction?

When Jesus says (biblically) "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do", this encapsulates the whole thing. If you were to recognize what people are doing, or what their state of mind is being driven by, you'd recognize they simply DO NOT KNOW what they are doing. They are MISTAKEN, in a mistaken state of mind, a state of insanity. They aren't even aware of what they're doing. They think they are doing something else. And if they do not love you they don't even recognize you.

By recognizing that all "sinful behavior" is simply by confused, temporarily mentally ill people acting out from states of mistakenness, not realizing what they are doing, not really knowing why they are doing it, how can you accuse them or hold it against them? All they're doing is making a mistake and being in error, doing something by mistake, believing it was something else, not REALLY intending to. No-one REALLY wants to hurt anyone. No one REALLY in a right-minded sane state WANTS to induce suffering.

Let's say that simply, when someone's mind goes into a state of confusion, they lose touch with reality. How they act or express themselves then is going to be coming from a kind of unconsciousness, a lack of awareness, not really knowing what they are doing. They are going to act in error. They BELIEVE they know what is true, but they don't. And everyone simply acts on what they believe is true. It's not possible to do otherwise. So now you've got people seeming to exhibit insane evil behavior, justifying it, but who are only acting WITHIN the confines of their thought system - within the confines of their truth.

When their truth is not true, when they are mistaken and confused, they are LOST. And when they are lost they are out of touch with themselves and with others. And all their actions now become ACCIDENTAL. They keep making mistakes. They keep justifying things based on mistakes. They keep being motivated by mistakes. Compelled by mistakes. Urged into certain reactions based on mistakes. Because they are not awake. And the whole time they don't even know they are doing this because their conscious mind is disconnected from reality and everything they do they believe is totally justified.

There is no sin. There is only a temporary error. And all errors can be corrected. And making a mistake does not call for PUNISHMENT of any kind. If someone is taking a math test and makes a mis-calculation and comes up with a confused result, which they think is accurate, and which they will defend, they hardly deserve to be punished, hit, abused, damaged or destroyed. Because those are not the things that the person NEEDS, and those things are NOT CORRECTION. It does not provide them with the CORRECT ANSWER in any way.

PUNISHMENT DOES NOT CORRECT MISTAKES. THOSE WHO PUNISH ARE MAKING MISTAKES.

In fact, punishment is itself a mistake. It's based on a false perception that the error was a SIN, and not just a mistake, and that a person can undo their temporary insanity by experiencing pain and suffering, to "motivate" them towards the truth. This is utterly ridiculous. All that punishment does is cover up the mistake, turn it into a sin, solidify it, lock it in, and add to the mental illness in the mind by adding more confusion-inducing pain and suffering. It does not work. All it does is lead to even more resentment and mistaken conclusions later.

If someone has made an error on their math test, what it really calls for is proper correction of the mistake. The person needs to be SHOWN, by example, what the CORRECT truth is, and why it is true. The MISTAKE needs to be identified and pointed out, not as a sin, but simply to bring awareness and recognition. Then the student recognizes WHY it was a mistake, because the true truth makes more sense, and automatically justifies alignment with it because it is OBVIOUS. The student than "takes on" the greater truth and receives it and is now corrected, such that in future they will not be mistaken again. They have become the truth. This is the true correction of errors without punishment ever entering into it.

A belief in sin calls for punishment and death. A belief that a mistake is NOT merely a harmless correctable mistake, is a belief that it deserves to be punished. Evaluating that all mistakes CAN'T be corrected, due to severity or consequences, is still a further mistake, which justifies punishment. Oops sorry, your mistake was TOO BIG, so it's overflowed into sin territory, so now we're going to attack you and take something from you so that you suffer, to "atone for it". Punishment then becomes atonement.

Yet even murder is JUST A MISTAKE, and through miracles all the consequences of that wrong decision can be undone by the holy spirit. "He will correct all the consequences of my wrong (mistaken) decision IF I will let Him."

Real atonement, the undoing of error, which is forgiving, and which always recognizing that we're all JUST mistaken, not sinners, is a gentle correction, a loving correction, a harmless correction, which merely makes you aware of what the truth really is and shines a light so that you can see. And then in that light the mistake is recognized for what it is, its underpinnings are exposed, the steps are retraced, and it is undone at its source. Now is the mind corrected and correct, accurate and truthful. And now forgiveness has brought a healing and life instead of death.

How was the tiny mad idea possible? How was it possible for us to mis-create? Why did God give us the ability to try to sin? Did we lose our innocence in the separation? How is it that this world seems to exist?

When God created his children, He gave them the freedom to will and create. The mind is not capable of ever doing anything that God didn't give it the ability to do. It cannot add abilities to itself, it can only operate within the parameters of its design. This means you literally cannot go against God's will or do anything He did not make possible.

"God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them."

But what God did do, was give you freedom. The power of the mind to freely choose to will to co-create. And this freedom is fully given.

"The world, in its original connotation, 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. "

Within the context of being "completely free", it is technically possible for you to try to USE your freedom against itself. You HAVE to be free to do this, in order to truly have freedom. While you have free will, it HAS to be possible for you to potentially USE that free will to try NOT to will anything. If this weren't a part of the freedom of will, you would not have free will. It's not a productive USE of will, since it creates nothing, but it is still part of it.

The thing is, although you are free to TRY to deny freedom, something completely pointless happens when you do so. Since it remains true that God's will cannot be opposed, and you cannot remove your freedom from yourself, and you cannot make yourself unpowerful, and you cannot be changed in any way, the exercise of TRYING to use your will to NOT will, to be "unwilling" or to oppose God's will, HAS to be futile.

It's not that you aren't free to TRY to do this, it's just that there is really no point in doing it. It's not possible to cause anything real to happen this way, because it denies creation. So it's like saying, I want to use my free will against itself to cause nothing to happen. I want to will not to will. I want to not create anything. I want to deny myself.

There is a circular logic which enters into this. You are trying to use your free will to cause your free will to stop being free and to will nothing. But how can you still be WILLING that you will nothing? You have to still USE the will to will that you don't will anything. So the notion is really absurd. You have to keep using the will, while claiming that you're not using it. And so it has to entail denial and it has to NOT accomplish what you're trying to make it accomplish. And never can you will the WILL itself to cease to exist, because you'd have to USE will to do that.

It has to be a state of denial, because the fact remains you can't change your freedom or power. So trying to DO so can only mean you are going into a DENIAL of what is true of you, and are PRETENDING to do whatever you're doing. You can't actually make yourself un-free or destroy your power. You can, however, seemingly deceive yourself in believing that its possible. Precisely BECAUSE you are free to do so. God did make it possible for you to be free to try to not be free, but He did not make it possible for you to ACTUALLY affect your freedom.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Another way to put it is, it is not possible to change God's will or to cause your own will to stop. It is literally impossible to separate from God or be where God is not. However, you are FREE to use your freedom to TRY to do so. You can INSIST that it is possible, and invest belief in it, and try to GIVE IT truth and make it real and convince yourself of it and deceive yourself, but you STILL cannot make it a reality or actually do it in reality.

As you try to do so, as you attempt to use your freedom to stop being free, as you try to will not to will anything, or as you try to will nothingness, or try to give reality and meaning to something impossible, you go into what we're calling the "tiny mad idea". The idea of separation and sin. Which just means you're insisting that something impossible is possible - that something false is true. That you CAN separate, you CAN sin, you have done so, and there is proof that the impossible is happening.

This can only be self deception and denial, because it's still impossible. But you are free to believe it if you want to. To believe it you have to DENY what is true, try to be out of touch with the facts, and pretend that the will has been denied. You are free to pretend that you have no freedom, which seems to place the mind in a state of "sleep" or dormancy, as though it is not creating or has no power, or is not alive. A sort of "stand-by mode", in which the mind believes that everything impossible is possible, and thus imagines that the opposite of God is happening through a kind of hallucinatory process of wishful thinking. ("There is no world apart from what you wish").

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

Now, going into this state, is NOT A SIN. NOR is it outside of the scope of what God made possible. You can never actually rewrite the laws of God. You can't give yourself something He did not give you. You cannot change yourself. You cannot destroy yourself or your freedom or your will. But it IS within your rights and within your power to deny or pretend that you can do these things.

Pretending that you are not immortal is the best you can do, because you cannot cause yourself to die. But you certainly can produce illusions, fabrications, that its happening, through the DESIRE to have it be possible. You can confuse your identity with these illusions. You can also believe that the suffering is real. But it remains unreal, and the truth is unchanged.

What this simply means is that by "mis-using" the mind to believe that impossibilities are possible and happening, you hallucinate a world of make-believe, which you try to invest in and convince yourself is true and real. You even try to give it immortality and life and will and a mind of its own. But you can't succeed. You can only fake it. But you are free to fake it.

Entering into this state of "denying that you are free", using your freedom of will to try to will not to have freedom of will, you are ONLY entering into a state of being MISTAKEN. If it is true that you HAVE freedom and will, you are mistaken when you believe that you don't. If it is true that you are immortal, you are mistaken when you believe death is possible. If it is true that sin is utterly impossible, you are mistaken when you believe sin is happening.

Being mistaken is still an "innocent" condition. Guilt does not have to enter into it at all. Someone can make an "innocent mistake", which is simply a failure to willingly admit that you're trying to do something which makes no sense. You can be mistaken in believing that willing against God's free will is possible. It's not possible. Nor can you really will against yourself. But you are free to believe it's possible, and to try to do it, and to try to convince yourself that you've done it. But you cannot do it, and so are mistaken when you believe this.

Believing that you can be separate from God, is a simple mistake. Since it's not possible, you can't do it. But you can try to convince yourself that it's possible. Doing that is pointless and futile because it can't BE possible. But you are free to try. You are free to resist the truth. Or to use your power to try to pretend to be powerless. You are innocent in this because all you're doing is using your God-given powers in a way that is a pointless exercise. A way which results in nothing really happening, as you "play small" and try to be little and powerless.

Provided that you recognize that mis-creation is just a state of being mistaken, and is not a sin, and is still well within the laws of God, and that at no time is God's will violated, even when you are mistaken, then you can also see that mis-creating is an innocent act. It's really not an act at all. And it does not change the truth about you. All it does is set up some illusion of deception and some confusion about what's really possible.

"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. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

The Course also talks about how entering into this "detour into fear", which is just an attempt to make true what is not true, or to use will against itself, produced a "lower order mind" or a "system of thought" which seems to function opposite to how God originally indended it in higher reality. This lower (ego) mind is a mind of denial, deception, untruth and confusion. But it is not a sin. It's just a mis-configured and unwise mis-use of your God-given abilities.

"Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual."

The physical world of bodies is what is produced in the deceptive state of being mistaken about the truth. In the state of denial, the dream of death, the illusion of separation, the pretense at being powerless and imprisoned, it produces the "forms of error" which the body sees. Error is just a mistake.

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

Attempting to assert that will can cause will not to will, produced an illusion of an "unwilling world." A world in opposition to God. But this is STILL within the confines of the Son of God's freedom. The angels also have this freedom.

"Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit..."

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.""God does not coerce".

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth. He does not have to continue to believe what is not true, unless he chooses to do so. All of his miscreations can disappear in the well known "twinkling of an eye", because it is a visual misperception. "

God is not viewing your excursion into "trying to make impossible things possible", as being a sin. He doesn't see it as a real threat to what you are, either. Nor does he coerce you into stopping doing this against your will. For God to oppose your free will he would have to oppose his own. He does however "encourage" and guide and help his children to "come to their senses". Because it remains true that "trying not to will anything" is a rather pointless exercise which can't really result in anything creative. It's more like, taking a nap where you dream of destruction or "the opposite of creating". A dream of mortality and death as "the opposite of eternal life."

We mis-created the world, but only as a mistake. Not as a sin. When it is recognized as only a mistake, sin is lifted away from it and it is regarded as forgiven. Being an illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible, this is seen through and beyond, and this overlooking is forgiveness. It's a forgiveness which looks past bodies and the physical to the light of reality, not deceived by the illusion that false things are true. To the the light of sanity and reason. We simply made the world in error and it can be undone.

"You made the body in attempting to deceive yourself."

"Miracles reflect..." "I have done this thing and it is this I would undo."All we're doing here, is basically, innocently, trying to do something which isn't really possible. We're using our freedom to try to imprison ourselves. We're using our immortality to pretend to be mortal. We're using our holiness to pretend to be sinners. And we're using the power of the mind to pretend to be weak and powerless. We can't ACTUALLY be imprisoned, or mortal, or sinful, or powerless. And so we're using all these things against themselves, to PRETEND that we don't have these things. This BLOCKS and disguises them, using illusions to make it appear something is true which isn't.

Seen as nothing more than an error, a mistake, a futile attempt, a pointless exercise, the dream of death is not "against" God's will, which cannot be opposed, but is an ATTEMPT to believe that opposing God's will is possible or has merit. The mind is just stretching the truth. But using the mind in a "destructive" way, against its own nature, isn't constructive or creative and it also doesn't allow you to experience happiness.

"The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere."

"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."

God DOES will that you maintain the sanity of the clear recognition that there is NO POINT trying to use your freedom against itself. That it is truly impossible to WILL nothing. Or to make yourself have no power. Believing you are powerless when you are powerful, or that you are imprisoned when you are free, is obviously a state of denial, and this denial of life can only produce illusions of suffering and pain and misery."We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all."

"Whenever projection (creation) in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth."

When you try NOT to create, you enter into "making" illusions. You produce an "emptiness" or lack of love, which is the world of "sin", meaning just the illusion of love's absence, or the absence of light. It isn't the presence of darkness, or of sin, or of real death, it is the illusion of the absence of their opposite. Because even in illusions you can't get outside of God's laws. You can never violate the parameters of your functioning as given by God. And so the world remains ONLY a mistake, not a real sin.

God's own will follows the knowledge that it is pointless to use will against itself, even though its possible to TRY to do so. Because when you try to do so, nothing is willed, and so nothing happens. God knows this and he is sane. His will is that you know it also. When you refuse to know it or you deny it, insisting that you CAN will nothingness to be something, you become deceived and confused. And God does not will that you enter into such suffering. "God's will for me is perfect happiness". And you can only be happy when you will in accord with God's true will - purely constructively and using your freedom to create. Free from self destruction.

"God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

"The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false."

In all this, you always remain innocent, you can be correct or mistaken, but you cannot change the laws of God or of your true nature. You can be asleep in a denial state of trying to pretend that impossibilities are possible, but you can't ACTUALLY cause an opposite to God to happen. You can dream of it, imagine it, try to give it reality, even convince yourself of it, but you can't make it true. So at some point you have to admit, it's a fruitless exercise, and just return to creating with God. Using will to willingly will your creations, as God intended.

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.

You may think that you have the freedom to do anything you want in this world. You conceive of jumping off mountains, swimming in the ocean, running through forests, or lounging on your deck sipping your favorite beverage. Whatever it is, you think that this is freedom.

You think that you're allowed and capable of, and have a right to, do anything you choose, at any time, anywhere. And technically, within the scope of this world, you do. If you want the American dream, go for it. If you want to build an empire and conquer the planet Mars, go for it.

But, here's something that you might not realize.

Although you think of yourself as having total freedom here, which is technically true - you have freedom within the confines of what you're actually capable of doing - there are SIGNIFICANT LIMITS on your ability to experience "Life".

This physical universe is a highly limited place. Your body is a highly limited vehicle. Your so-called "world" that you see as a playground of unlimited possibilities is VERY limited.

The mechanics of this universe, the way that objects are opposed to each other, the way that everything must be different and not shared, the way that the mind has been shut out of the body, the way that you are bound by laws of physics and nature, automatically renders you SIGNIFICANTLY DISABLED, just by being here.

You may not realize what true freedom is, because you think that the scope of the freedom you have now is vast. But it is not unlimited.

You do live in a prison world, not just a prison planet but a prison universe. The ego has you locked up here. It tells you there is no escape, but it allows you an illusion of a vast amount of so-called "freedom" within the confines of its walls. Within the context of what this universe is, there is a LOT of room for you to have experiences and do stuff. But it is still vastly limited.

Even just coming into a body places profound limits on your awareness. It is like being squeezed into a tiny hole and to then have the door shut behind you so that you can no longer be aware of God. Entering a body is like taking on brain damage, as your awareness is clamped down and dumbed down and restricted.

Because you perhaps do not remember what it was like to not be in a body, you think this world is a place of freedom, when in fact it is a place of SEVERE LIMITATION. Your acceptance of it as a wonderful place, is really like a prisoner who has gone insane and has fallen in love with their prison. And with their prison guard, which is the ego.

MIRACLES on the other hand, reveal to you signs of just how limited this world is. When something happens that completely defies the "laws" and "breaks the illusion", it has now hinted at what is REALLY possible and the kind of freedom that you REALLY have outside of this world.

When Jesus demonstrates walking on water, or dematerializing, or changing water into wine, or raising the dead, or whatever, all of these things are happening because HE IS UNLIMITED in his freedom and power. He is in a state of being that transcends ALL of the laws of this universe, and so has absolutely no problem with rearranging parts of it in any way he sees fit, with nothing to stop Him from doing so.

It's kind of like waking up to the "matrix" and realizing that the whole world is running inside a computer simulation as a giant "program", and then seeing that there are programs for physical, programs for aging, programs for suffering, etc.. and then CHANGING THE PROGRAM. Whatever the program now produces seems like the fracking computer just rebooted and something absolutely out of the norm just happened. The program just carries on doing what it's doing, but the operator of the computer has made a change in the software. This now shows up as what looks like a miracle, "a glitch in the matrix", where suddenly something utterly law-defying and rule-breaking occurs as though someone from outside of reality just changed all the rules.

That's what happens when miracles are performed. They come from outside of the limited world, from God's love, and defy all laws, are not bound by illusions, have no limitations whatsoever, and completely bypass any restrictions. There is nothing they cannot do, and they prove that there is nothing that cannot be healed or reversed or manifested out of nothing. That's the kind of freedom we REALLY have - UNLIMITED.

So don't think you are living in a free world, or that this universe has massive scope for exploration, or that there are so many things to see and do... bla bla bla... it's a severely limiting experience here and it's our job to get the fuck out of it.. And even escaping the 'prison planet' Earth will only leave you still roaming around within the larger prison of the physical universe.

We need to come to the awareness that this universe does NOT limit us, and to break free of illusory imprisonment once and for all.

It may seem that you have fallen from grace, have become corrupted, damaged and broken. It may seem you have become hurt or have hurt yourself, and now need healing. It may seem something is wrong with you, you have sinned and are guilty. It may seem you have reasons to be afraid.

In seeking healing, you might then look to try to change yourself, as though trying to turn yourself into a more spiritual person. You might strive to be more loving, or to grow and evolve.

But let's first remember an important fact. God created you perfect already. There is nothing you can do to add to or remove anything from your holy self. Your soul is divine and perfect and immortal and permanent. It never changes and needs no healing of any kind. That is who and what you are.

So with that fact in mind, it is no longer a matter of discovering how you "really were hurt" or "what sin you committed" that you're trying to undo. It can't be true that you WERE hurt or DID sin, if God created you permanently perfect.

So if you are permanently perfect, even entering into states of harm, suffering, unconsciousness, sickness or unhappiness, cannot actually CHANGE or UNDO your permanent perfection. These must be forms of denial, a disguise, a deception, something untrue. They can't even be real sicknesses or real sins or real unhappiness.

The question then is, if your self is perfect and permanently can never change or be changed, and has not stopped being innocent and holy and immortal, what is it that is keeping you from happiness, wholeness, health and holiness?

It can only be that you are blocking AWARENESS of a PRE-EXISTING condition of perception. It can only be that for some reason you are in denial about being immortal, are trying to be something else, are trying to make something untrue true or believe something is real that isn't.

Somehow behind your "problem", or your state of "needing healing", there is already a fully healed self. So what then is healing? It's really more to do with questioning the damage, or seeing through the illusion of not being perfect already, than trying to transform a "real problem".

And ultimately that means, as per atonement, which is forgiveness, and the ONLY means of salvation, ACCEPTANCE OF THE TRUTH ABOUT YOU is actually the key to awakening. We are to WAKE UP TO the fact that we are ALREADY OK.

This also ties into the secret of salvation, that if you would just stop TRYING to make true something that isn't, TRYING to prove you can be hurt, TRYING to die, you would simply bounce back to your perfect immortal self and be aware of living forever as an invulnerable eternal being.

We are to become AWARE OF our healed holy nature. We are to RE-ACCESS our immortality. It has been blocked, covered up, hidden, and seemingly lost track of, behind walls of denial and deception. And even things which seem like real problems or real damage, cannot be that. They must have a different purpose, to HIDE the truth that you are NOT damaged, NOT broken, and NOT sick.

"You are immortal and you cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

Forgiveness, if thought of as a practically applied atonement principle, is the act of moving towards AWARENESS OF your pre-existing, already-established, unassailed inner perfection. IT is already THERE, waiting for you to acknowledge it and live from it. It doesn't need you to invent it or define it, only to accept it and allow it and be grateful that God created you flawlessly.

What is this movement "toward" the atonement? It is a waking up. It is a removal of blocks. It is an uncovering of truth. It is a willingness to accept God's reality rather than your own made-up illusions. It's a RECOGNITION of what is actually TRUE about you, versus the confusion of what SEEMS to be true but isn't.

It's a vertical movement, upwards towards the light in which you can SEE, away from the darkness in which you are confused about what is true. It's the way out of hell, into heaven. It's your rising, or resurrection, away from the state of death (unconsciousness) towards life (awareness of eternity).

Either you forgive and move upwards in awareness and freedom from darkness, or you move downwards into unforgiveness and grievance and suffering. Forgiveness is therefore the ONLY WAY out of hell, but IS a guaranteed way out of hell, and the only way that WORKS.

To forgive is to let go of what is not true and accept what is. To forgive is to relinquish false beliefs and embrace reality.

To forgive is to return to the love of God and let go of fear.

To forgive is to let go of who you thought you were, and resume being your real self.

The goal of the course is to "Know thyself." To simply BE still the same perfection that God created you to be. You are this ALREADY, you just don't want to accept it or own up to it yet. You have not yet "come out as Christ", preferring to play with littleness. You are God's perfect creation and always will be. Your real self is waiting for you.

It is easy to offer guilt as a way to atone for doing something wrong or not doing what you were supposed to. We give little 'gifts' of guilt. We're trying to say, ok, I acknowledge that I failed in some way, so to make it up to you, I'm going to enter into guilt and have a 'guilty conscience' (bullshit), and then to atone for this sin I'm going to have to SUFFER by doing some shit to make it up to you. I'm going to position myself as worthy of guilt and suffering in order to make it up to you, and this is my offering to you to atone for my mistake.

A 'guilty conscience' is actually a bullshit ego device designed to always find you partly innocent when you are not doing anything, and wholly sinful when you step out of line. It demands that when you make mistakes you should be punished mercilessly, and that you are supposed to be ashamed, and that you are supposed to feel guilty. It says you deserve this guilt because you made a mistake. This is absolute bullshit and is not true at all. It leaves no room whatsoever for forgiveness or unconditional love.

Mistakes call for CORRECTION, not punishment, and punishment in ALL its forms does not lead to correction. It can appear to lead to correct only by inflicting additional damage and suffering which can only later yield even more mistakes in retaliation and grievance. (This is why hitting kids is nothing other than pointless abuse - an illusion of obedience arises out of fear and trauma and now the original error persists and has been joined by a second layer of self-hate - an illusion of obedience at the price of suffering and unlove, which only leads to resentment and being even more error-prone.)

Being in guilt does not make it up to anyone. Being in guilt means you are offering guilt as a gift and are giving guilt as a statement of what you are worth and what everyone is worth. It could only possibly please a sick-minded person to enter into guilt in attempt to atone for an error. And entering into guilt can only reinforce and offer sickness to that person. If you are sane, you do not want people to be guilty on your behalf, you want them to ... as the bible terms it.... repent ... i.e., stop choosing sin and choose love. If the 'error' is that they chose not to love, then the correction you should truly seek is to see them being loving - for themselves, and for you.

It would be far better when you make a mistake or fail or do something 'wrong' to offer up your innocence and love instead, to position yourself as wholly worthy of forgiveness, and to choose-again to extend love instead of punishment. That would be loving. That would be an offering of love which could truly ATONE for i.e. UNDO what you think you did wrong.

It should be in everyone's best interests that when someone does something in error, they are loved and forgiven, and in turn they are encouraged to return to love and to offer love as a way to 'make up for' the error. (This is kind of like being forced to do pushups as atonement knowing that the exercise actually helps rather than hurts.) The error is hardly corrected by admitting to guilt or demonstrating that you deserve punishment. That is an offering to a false God of hate. God holds nothing against you and only wants you to claim your innocence, unconditionally.

It is also in everyone's best interests that you choose love instead of guilt or punishment, because, literally, we are all ONE, we are joined in the mind, we SHARE an identity, and what you do to yourself you do to everyone. This goes against the ego's law that everyone is separate and that individual can suffer in isolation. If you choose guilt for yourself, you DO choose it for everyone else as well, and that is not only an additional layer of attack but also an offering for everyone to join in your suffering. Nobody wants to first be attacked and to then have the attacker turn around and attack a second time to try to make up for it! How ridiculous is that. This is also why prisons are ridiculous - when an individual suffers everyone suffers.

Mistakes call for love and forgiveness, not punishment and despair. Look at your close relationships and notice all the times that you enter into guilt as a 'worthy' response and way of 'agreeing' that you have sinned, and how you wallow in guilt in order to atone for the mistake, thinking that doing so is actually giving people what they want. If people want you to suffer in guilt, THEY are in error and do not deserve your offering.

We all mistake guilt for love because this is how the ego's thought system functions. I don't want anyone's guilt. You should not want to give anyone your guilt. It is far better that you seek true correction through the truth of Holy Spirit and return to offering love, which is truly worthwhile and valuable. You do not have to be guilty EVER AGAIN. When you make a mistake, immediately remind yourself,

"because I did this [whatever the fuck-up was], it proves I am completely innocent and I choose to love myself instead".

(This doesn't justify it being okay to be an asshole - if you're heading to that conclusion, STOP and seek correction - it's level confusion.)

Choose only love, for that is what you are.

The kingdom of God is ultimate reality. This side of the gate of heaven/separation, we're in the perceptual realm of spacetime.

At the height of this perceptual state, perception can become very "accurate" and line up with reality so closely that you perceive things "as they actually are", also referred to as "the real world."

Jesus refers to this as you making "reality contact", as well as "accurate perception", "true perception" and various other things like forgiveness, atonement, vision, reason etc.

Basically in order to see and be aware of "how things actually are", we have to have a mind that is not insane and does not attack or distort or deny or hide from reality.

We avoid reality in various ways. Attack, denial, resistance, fear, scapegoating, hate, sense of separation, selfishness/self interest, specialness, body identification, unwillingness, dissociation etc. Basically all the ego activities.

All of these activities are ways to try to "avoid" reality by squirming and sidestepping and being unwilling to just FACE IT DIRECTLY. To admit to it, to ALLOW IT to be what it is.

By reality here I don't necessarily mean the physical contents of spacetime, because that's all illusions. But reality is something where you have to be completely PRESENT, aware, fully alert, extremely honest, and completely lacking in any form of denial.

Your mind can't be distorting what's there, having preferences, wishful thinking, wanting even the physical forms to be different, hoping for a non-existent future, dredging up the past, wanting something to be different to how it is etc.... otherwise you don't directly face "what is".

In order to face what is, regardless of whether that seems to be the physical world's current PRESENT configuration in the NOW, or the general sense of presence and nowness that is the "now of time", symbolic of eternity ... you have to give up all of the ways that you avoid the truth. Another word for that is surrender.

And this doesn't just mean an occasional surrender. It means a state in which you are no longer FIGHTING, no longer at war with, whatever is. It means no longing judging or attacking reality, or attacking the present. No longer living in the past or future. The only physical world that exists is the configuration of the one that exists right NOW, not the past or future version.

An unwillingness to admit to or accept "what is now", takes you away from the present state and into every dark avenue of the ego. The ego is literally an attempt to escape from reality, to escape from the present. And that means putting up a fight against reality to try to make it go away, to avoid it, to deny it, to destroy it.

So ultimately it takes you getting into a state which we might call "being totally surrendered". This surrendering literally asks of you to surrender the fight against God, to stop being at war with the present or the illusory contents of the world. No longer wishing that things were different, no longer being unwilling to accept WHATEVER happens on this level, and no longer having any kind of separation or denial between you and what is.

Essentially this leads to acceptance, in which you're willing to "let things be", and can accept the truth of the atonement. Strangely it requires you to also be able and willing to accept the current state of the physical world, but only because it happens to be in front of your face. Really you are entering an acceptance of the present moment, regardless of whether it's filled with content forms, and the acceptance is not tied to the physical at all.

To accept atonement therefore is to accept reality, to accept the truth, to accept God, to accept that only the truth is true and nothing else it true, to accept that there is no past, to accept that only the current configuration of the world is there anymore, and to have absolutely no ways in which you are trying to avoid or deny or prefer something else.

So we have to get into a totally surrendered state, a state where our war with reality and life and truth comes to an end, where the mind is totally focused and accurate in its perception, avoiding nothing, hiding from nothing, not minding what happens no matter how it looks, having no reaction whatsoever to anything that would suggest you "don't want it" to be that way. Just completely dropping all ego and all resistance and all insistence on making things be different than God's will.

In that totally surrendered state you are awake and ready to return to God. It is the only way to find peace because it's the end of YOUR one-sided ego war. And only by total acceptance can you enter the Kingdom.

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it. This is what is meant by the point on "perspective adjustment." UrT1B31A

"The term "right-mindedness" is properly used as the correction for wrong-mindedness, and applies to the state of mind which induces accurate perception." UrT3F10

"Misperception is a BLOCK to knowledge, while ACCURATE perception is a stepping-stone TOWARD it." UrT4G1

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it." UrT11I1

"Remember, then, that God's Will is ALREADY possible, and nothing else will EVER be. This is the simple acceptance of Reality because only this is real. You cannot DISTORT reality and KNOW WHAT IT IS. And if you DO distort reality you will experience anxiety, depression, and ultimately panic, because you are trying to MAKE YOURSELF UNREAL." UrT8J16

"This is Palm Sunday, the celebration of victory, and the ACCEPTANCE of the truth." UrT20A1

"The full acceptance of salvation as your only function necessarily entails two phases; the recognition of salvation as your function, and the relinquishment of all the other goals you have invented for yourself." URW65L1

"And the world awaits your glad acceptance, which will set it free." UrW310W104

"The ACCEPTANCE of peace is the denial of illusion, and sickness IS an illusion." UrT9I14

"Now let the peace that your acceptance brings be given you." UrW80L5

"You but emerge from an illusion of what you are, to the acceptance of yourself as God created you." UrT24C14

"Christ waits for your acceptance of Him as YOURSELF, and His Wholeness as YOURS." UrT10E8

"Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought; you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself." URT93L7

"I choose to testify to my ACCEPTANCE of the Atonement, NOT FOR ITS REJECTION." UrT13H3

"The ego analyzes; the Holy Spirit ACCEPTS. The appreciation of wholeness comes ONLY through acceptance, for to analyze MEANS to separate out." UrT10F14

There is a physical time, in terms of spacetime, which is actually just a 'now moment' that keeps shifting its form. The present of time is the only time that seems to exist. Once stuff "as it was" is no longer, the past is gone. There is no actual past or future.

We are located in the present moment, but in the present we keep dreaming of the past and future. We drift away from the present to hide from the light, and to keep replaying the ego/past. All grievances and suffering is in the past.

If you are seeing the past you are psychologically focusing in on what is not here now. In time, the present moment is all that remains. The present moment of time symbolises the always-here-now foreverness of eternity. The present of time is also WHERE you will find access to heaven.

The present moment is where the reflection of God is because presence means immediacy and hereness and actuality. It's where reality is. It's where there is light and love. It's where you'll find peace and happiness and heaven. It's allocated in the now because that's the only "place" where stuff actually is.

When you are dwelling on the past you are in the present dreaming of the past, thinking of old hurts, remembering pain and suffering, attached to things that are gone, hiding in darkness. It is an avoidance of the presence, because the present is where light is.

When you are psychologically focused on the past you do not see anything as it is now in the present, but instead project the darkness of the past onto the present. When you are in the present you are closer to heaven and project heaven's reflection onto it instead, seeing the real world.

You can ONLY find the real world, happiness, love, light, God, peace, etc in the present. You cannot find it in the past or future. NOW is where God is. The past does not exist.

The ego tries to drag the past into the present to keep it going, blotting out the present by projecting the past onto it, and then trying to extend the past into the future producing an illusory 'continuum'. This erases the present from time.

The holy spirit's view is that the present is the only time, there is no past or future, and remaining centred in the presence he extends the present into eternity.

Everything to do with 'level 2' which we might call the separation or the lower order reality or spacetime or the ego thought system, is all to do with the psychological past. All darkness, suffering, sickness and death, victimhood, grief and guilt, fear and sin etc, is all movements into the past. 'Level 2' is the past and its projected future, Level almost-1 is the present in time, and level 1 is eternity.

Eventually time and the present-now-moment of time will disappear, leaving only eternity. The now of time symbolises eternity and is as close as you can get to God/heaven etc while still in spacetime. It's where you see the world "as it is", the real world, the forgiven world, the present "reality".

It's where the happy dream is, where you can see in the light, and where miracles are born. You cannot perform miracles in the past, only in the present. Holy instants are moments in the present without a past. Every part of ACIM's teaching leads toward becoming totally present in the here and now and letting go of everything past and future.

Forgiveness IS the present!

"I see only the past." W7

"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts." W8

"The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the total misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"now is the only time" UrT5E8

"This instant is the only time there is." W308

"Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"The present is the only time there is." W164

"The present now remains the only time." W132

"There is no past nor future" UrM25A1

"You HAVE "sinned" IN THE PAST, but there IS no past. Always has no direction." UrT11J7

"A miracle is a beginning and an end(ing). It thus abolishes time. It is always an affirmation of re-birth, which seems to go back, but really goes forward. It undoes the past in the present, and thus releases the future." UrT1B13

"For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past." UrT12D10

"NO SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IS EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT." UrT16H2

"His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT see it." UrT12F1

"Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present" UrT12F5

"Here in the present is the world set free." UrW132L3

"He is as safe in the present as he was before illusions were accepted into his mind, and as he will be when he has let them go." URM17A7

"There is no fear in the present, when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future." UrT15B7

"In the holy instant, you see, in each relationship, what it WILL be, when you perceive ONLY the present." UrT15F8

"Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future" UrW137L20 "The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference." UrT28B7

"Past, present, and future are not continuous" UrT12F4

"Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last." W293

"The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever present, here and now." W308

"FUTURE loss is not your fear. But PRESENT joining IS your dread." UrT26I3

When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists.

"In brief, the past is NOW your justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego AGAINST THE PRESENT. For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

The present is before time WAS, and WILL BE when time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they ARE one. THEIR continuity is timeless, and their communication is unbroken, for they are NOT SEPARATED by the past. Only the past CAN separate, and IT is nowhere.

If there is a pain in my hand, and if I believe there is a pain in my hand, I will begin to experience reactions about the pain.

This is simply because I see there being some kind of causality coming from the pain. I think it has a power over me. I see it as happening to me. I seem to be experiencing it as though it has happened without me asking for it. And so it seems unfair, malicious, unwanted, unwelcome, as though these sentiments are somehow justified expressions of me being holier or more innocent than this.

And if this pain in the hand continues or increases, then I will likely increase in my perception of victim hood, and simply by the reversal of cause and effect, seeing cause as outside of myself, I am actively creating responsive conditions inside of myself which show up as reactions, having threatened my own self with my own mistaken perception of this pain.

I myself am creating my own reactions, including fear which begins to mount in response, as though the pain is causing me to be afraid - what does it mean, what is it leading to, why is it happening, but simply also the sheer apparent fact (albeit unreal) that it is even happening at all, is enough to provide an upset.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there." - ACIM

And so as my fearful reaction increases, so too does my conviction that this is a more serious problem than before, that it calls for magical curative measures which will attack it and manipulate it and try to make it go away. And the more strongly I feel passionate about the need to be rid of it, the more I will actually add empowerment to it, seeing it as being so strong and mighty as to deserve serious counter-measures.

These perceptions of the need for a counter measure, a retaliation, a reaction of any justified kind, a fear, or any sense of taking this seriously or treating it as real, simply shows the extent of my mistakedness and the fact that what I am ACTUALLY doing is CREATING THIS. I create it with my fear of it, I create it with my rejection of it, I create it with my desire to be rid of it, and I create it with my attempt to fix it.

And the more real of a problem it seems to become, the more certain I will be that I really need to get something done about this because it's very very serious indeed. And yet in perceiving it, describing it, envisioning it, interacting with it and making it be serious as such - believing in its appearance - I am merely choosing to manifest it, to give energy to it, to feed it.

The reason that we do this is because when we are using the mind incorrectly and are entering into illusions, false perceptions and errors, we start to experience the opposite of what we attempt to achieve. We think that we do not want pain in the hand, but this means that we will put it there. We think the pain in the hand should not be happening, and such intensify its happening. We think that it is making us very afraid, and as such we literally are causing it to become more monstrous.

We do not realize that as soon as we have stepped away from real truth and have entered into mistaken truth, we've lost our mind and our way, have become deceived, and are now operating our mental powers 'inversed' or back to front.

The ego is an entire thought system based on this back-to-front inversion of truth, and when we are in this mind, we quite literally ask for what we do not want, attract what we are trying to get away from, try to fix what is not even a problem, and generally compound the very issues that we suffer from, not realizing all along that we are inadvertently causing ourselves to prolong the suffering, simply because we're applying ourselves through an inverting filter, a reality flip, which gives us back the exact opposite of what we think we are asking for. And this is simply because once in the ego perception, we are in opposition to the real truth, and therefore are bringing about opposite effects.

Indeed the incorrect form of forgiveness correlates to the ego activities and behaviors of believing that you are sincerely attempting to rid the world of that which is wrong with it, by taking a purer or more innocent standpoint, all the while actually reinforcing, manifesting, increasing and generally adding to the conditions of sinfulness. Such forgiveness then becomes an attack rather than a correction of error, a judgement instead of a miracle.

True forgiveness therefore must entail the cessation of all of the above egoic behaviors, reactions, self-caused chaos, and general inversion of truth and opposition to it. All of these symptoms are expressing merely because you are using the mind backwards, expressing opposition and resistance instead of unity, order and health.

True forgiveness entails the complete UN-doing of all of these egoic thought patterns, attitudes that reinforce the reality of the monster, reactions to it founded in fear which really are created by your own self as part of your psychological reversal and belief in threat, and the cessation of "making real" this problem. To lend reality to it, to believe in it, dwell upon it, give it credit, think of it seriously, forget to laugh at it, mistake it for real danger (which does not exist), and to generally actually side with it while claiming and portraying yourself as doing the exact opposite, is simply to keep the problem and make it worse.

We need to learn to forget this world. As Jesus says, forget this world and come with wholly empty hands unto your God. To forget is to literally pay no further attention, knowing that the thing was unreal, and requires no upkeep to defend against it.

We need to learn to stop learning the wrong things. We keep teaching ourselves with the ego, we keep learning that sickness is real, that sin is irreversible, and that death is inevitable. This must all be corrected and undone and vanquished from the mind, replaced with the Holy Light of the Truth, which comes to set you free.

The truth does set you free, literally, actually, and in reality. Because the Truth is God and only Love is Real.

This is a big lesson for me and everyone: How to love all the time. It's natural, but our divine nature to always love and express love has been blocked by fear, attack thoughts, grievances, hatred etc.

When other people seem to be loving and we're "getting" something out of the relationship, ie specialness, we open up some of the flood gates and allow "exclusive love" to go towards the person.

But when the person fails to love you, is angry or upset with you or treats you poorly, there is great temptation then in the ego to simply use it as a way to prove that someone doesn't deserve your love. Then you form a grievance, hold onto attack thoughts, fail to heal, and stop being loving. In order to deny love to others, you have to block it, which denies it to yourself! You cannot love and hate at the same time!

This turns then into conditional love, which simply means you will only love others when they are doing something that you want or being a certain way. Particularly when they are seeming to be loving toward you or giving you what you think you want or need or lack.

We have to actually wean ourselves off of conditional love in order to reach atonement. That means that we have to recognize that our "loving" or expressing must not be tied to external conditions of any kind, causes of any kind, or people of any kind. That means that we don't love in "reaction" or response to others, but we simply love because it's what we are and how we want to express. It's a decision.

"Teach only love for that is what you are" says it all.

I've started to see glimpses of this. To refuse to be unloving even in a situation which seems it would warrant defenses or reactions. To simply choose... I'm only going to love right now. And to then love, to radiate love, to be love. Not because of the person, not as a defense, not as a reaction, nothing to do with the ego at all.

Then you find out that your willingness to love is not *dependent* on other people or the state they are in. And at first this seems crazy, that you would choose to love in spite of appearances or situations that seem to "call for" some other response. This expressing of love OVERRIDES the ego's laws in the situation, ignores the hierarchy of illusions, forgets/forgives grievances and has unexpected benefits to yourself.

In a situation, I decided I am only going to love. So I stood there and loved. I felt love in my heart area radiating out. I didn't know I was able to radiate this love. As I did this, the other person was not happy at all. My deciding to love was not in response to their ego. And so it seemed to me there wasn't really a "reason" to love, other than that... it sure felt good. Certainly better than entering into false empathy.

The really interesting thing is, if I choose to love, to extend love, the love expresses, like it goes out and radiates and "sends" love. In this sending, something really intriguing happens. I share in the love, I feel the love, and I become more sane. Love is the "natural nature" of a sane mind. It quickly corrects mistaken perception. It's like the sun comes out and the light is shining and everything is put into its proper place.

I also notice when I choose to love, just spontaneously, not as an ego reaction - to will to love - the extending of that love allows me to receive it. *I* feel loved. By giving love, love comes to me and through me. I was waiting a long time for a certain person to be more loving, and it wasn't until I decided to just love them that *I* experienced the love that I thought THEY were supposed to be providing.

This goes back to the very basic lesson (seek and do not find) that when we believe that we are lacking love, we will shift responsibility for love onto someone else and expect them to do the loving for us. Then they either will or will not, and when they will not, we stay in a lack of love. So we have to learn the difficult lesson, that we cannot get other people to love us and we are not SUPPOSED to. You can and will only experience the receiving of love, truly, when YOU LOVE.

When YOU choose to love, you instantly enter into love's extension and expression, you feel the love, you become part of the love. "To have all, give all to all." This is a basic law of God, that in order to have something you have to give it. If you are not having something, it's because you are not giving it.

If you do not have love and others don't seem to be filling the void for you, it's because you are not loving enough. And when you love enough, you don't NEED anyone to love you FOR you, because YOU are joining in unconditional love and extending God's love. Love comes through you, and you experience it.

It boils down to this simple state, which I presume is what it will be like in Atonement, where you simply love all the time. You express love all the time. You radiate it, flow it, extend it. It comes out through you from God and from your soul. And as it goes out, it has miraculous power. And this loving power actually has something to do with healing and miracle working.

Love has this property that, unless it is given or shared, it does not exist. Love isn't a "state" that's static. God isn't static. God is an extender and creator. "Love goes out because of what it is." "Divine abstraction takes joy in application."

Love HAS to be shared. "God did not will to be alone." When it is not being radiated and shared and GIVEN, it does not have any radiance, and does not shine, and has no presence. That means it is dead. Death is the denial of extension of love, which is also life.

So in order to be alive, to be in resurrection, to reach atonement, and to be happy, we have to remove these blocks to love SO THAT we can once again resume our NATURE of always extending, always loving, no matter what, no matter who, no matter what time or the reason. That means that you being loving really has NOTHING to do with anyone else. You just be loving because you ARE love. You can't help it. "Teach only love for that is what you are".

So that means being willing to love and extend love in ALL SITUATIONS regardless of the situation, or who it is, or how upset they are. And the reason you love really has nothing to do with the other person. You simply do it because it's natural, healthy, you are willing to, and it feels great.

I thought I was forgiving someone because I was doing forgiveness processes about them. But... I didn't really get to a point where I was LOVING them. THAT is the healed state that is the goal to reach with forgiveness. If I am not loving the person, literally, the I must still have some kind of grievance or block to love, therefore am not receiving it, because I am not extending it. And feeling "unloving" unfortunately automatically means you will also feel "unloved".

Love comes from within, and it extends outward to others. It radiates naturally when it is not obstructed. It also contains willingness because unwillingness is unnatural and everyone naturally wants to share love to increase their joy. "God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (love) and want to share it to increase their joy."

That means if you want to feel the love, you have to BE the love. You have to give the love. And that doesn't mean special love, or sacrifice, or loss. It doesn't mean subservience or reaction or slavery or being carpeting. It means you love because YOU WANT TO, IN SPITE OF anyone else. And then you naturally bring that love to others simply because it serves BOTH of you. That is the golden rule. What applies to you applies to them.

Love first. Being loved is secondary and automatic. Trying to be loved first blocks being loved.

This means then we have to learn to decouple or disconnect "whether we will love" or "when we will love" from anything that other people are doing. Even if other people are stressing out and upset and angry or whatever. We have to decide, I, by myself, with God, am going to love right now, regardless of anyone else, even if that someone else is someone close to you.

And that means you have to claim the responsibility, freedom, joy and pleasure of LOVING for YOURSELF, which is the same thing as accepting atonement for yourself. It's your right to love and experience love. It's your inheritance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The death of an illusion means nothing."

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

"Nothing I see means anything."

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

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

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

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the physical world, events seem to happen where physical objects and bodies are involved. Coupled with the illusion that some objects cause effects on other objects, it seems as though we live in a world where some thing or person does something to someone else.

It seems as though these causes produce real effects, which you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands. The effects seem very tangible and convincing. You could be standing there looking at the effects of an action, proving that it happened because of what has been changed.

The ego uses these physical events to demonstrate and prove its belief that things have really happened, that there has been real sin with real consequences. This can all be very convincing to the body's eyes.

When you witness these things, if you look on them as real and believe in what you are seeing, your mind is actually entering into a belief in illusions. It is not actually true that any of these has happened for real, because it is only a dream. Taken seriously, it seems to be true, proved by what the body is sensing about what has taken place.

Perceiving that, and trusting that to be true, your mind aligns itself with these illusions and therefore is mis-perceiving. This becomes a trap, because by believing in what seems to have happened, you join in the ego's thought system and become convinced of a lie.

Believing that what we see happening in the world is real and true, this leads to a host of psychological deceptions. For example, in this world, scenarios happen where it seems blatantly obvious that one person is wrong and another person is right. If there is a green tree in the yard and one person is claiming the tree is purple, and the other is claiming the tree is green, the person seeing a green tree may see themselves as "right". According to the physical ego evidence, they are right.

But this then becomes a trap for that person. If they are perceiving the illusion of a green tree and are believing they are right about what they are seeing, and that the other person must be wrong, because the tree is "real", that person is still in the ego mind. They will start to become righteous. They will believe they are completely justified in being righteous because of what is obviously a green tree. And so the physical evidence proves that they are justified in being right.

Believing they are "right" is now a trap because their mind is now trying to make the other person wrong, and is believing in an illusion. It's a very subtle trap because, in terms of the physical scenario or events that seem very real, the structure of the events makes it really seem as though they are right. There is physical proof. In this situation, they are correct. But this is a "temptation", to believe psychologically that they are right as well.

Even though it seems true that you are right, in that what is happening in the dream seems to prove that you are the one who is right, if your ego gets involved in this you will use it to become righteous. So the challenge is, that even though you are right, technically, based on what the dream is doing, to be careful not to use it as an opportunity to bolster your ego.

If your mind starts to psychologically align with the physical events and appearances, you will start to defend your position and get into the ego. Being willing to not make yourself right, when technically in this situation you are right, requires some subtle discernment and honesty. When the physical events seem to prove that you are right, and the proof is staring you in the face, you must learn to detach from appearances and stay centered in the real truth.

The real truth is that you do not need to be "right", even if you are right. It's easy enough to realize that you're being egotistical if you are "wrong" and are trying to defend a position which even the physical situation doesn't prove or support, but when the physical situations seems to agree that you are right, it is now much easier to be tempted to fall into its trap.

There is also another way that this subtle temptation happens. When situations arise where it seems like you are innocent, and it seems that someone else really is doing something against you which seems uncalled for, your belief and perception that you are innocent is a trap.

It becomes very easy to believe that you are innocent because, according to what's happening in the physical world, what the person is doing, what your are not doing etc, physical events seem to "prove" that you are innocent. If you're sitting at home and someone comes along and throws a ball through your window, breaking the window, it seems, based on the physical evidence, that that person is guilty and you are innocent. This then is a significant temptation by the ego for you to believe what you're seeing - they are guilty, you are not.

Because the situation seems to physically prove your innocence, it then becomes very easy for your ego to use that as the basis for justifying your anger and counter-attack. If you're not careful, you will use the physical proof to justify retaliation and upset. If events transpired where you were the one who broke the window and were guilty, it would be perhaps a clearer contrast for you to notice the ego at work. But when the ego seems to agree with what you want to believe about yourself, that you're the innocent one, the slippery slope is much harder to stay away from or even notice.

It becomes again a subtle trap, where the physical proof aligns with your ego mind, and you become almost blind to the possibility of being mistaken. When physical events correlate to the ego's beliefs, there is a blindness or unconsciousness. When physical events are in contrast or opposite to what the ego believes, it is more noticeable and discernible. It's easier to be honest and unconditionally loving, it seems, when events support it, than when they don't. It is easier to love someone when they are giving you love, than when they are seeming to attack you.

Our lesson then is to detach ourselves from all appearances, which includes appearances and events which seem to be in our favor, as well as events and appearances which seem to be against us. Even the ones which seem to be on our side, or show us as right, or prove we are innocent, are just as much a trap to fall into. You do not want to be found innocent or guilty by the ego's world. Neither is the truth.

In some ways, when things in the physical world seem to align with your interests, be on your side, support your case, prove your innocence and finds someone else guilty, it's a much bigger temptation than when the world is finding you guilty. If the world says you are guilty, it ties straight into your unconscious guilt, bypassing your ego's fake facade of innocence. It blows the ego's cover-story about why you are not guilty, given that it really believes you are guilty deep down.

So beware of things going your way in this world. Beware of physical situations, evidence and proof, seeming to imply that you are the one who is right or innocent, and someone else is not. It's a temptation to believe the ego and to align with and support its dream. It's an attempt to get you to want to keep the world and stay on the ego's side and maintain allegiance with it.

We have to be honest enough, consistently aligned with the real truth, that even when it seems like we are receiving the long end of the stick, we dispel that and ignore it and find both yourself and others equally innocent. We need to overlook all occurrences of illusions which portray either ourselves or others as either innocent or guilty, based on appearances or physical evidence. None of it is truth.

Neither the ego-proven innocent or the ego-proven guilty are really either. We are all beyond the ego's verdict. We need to learn not to define who we are or what is true based on what is external or physical or proven with evidence. Our innocence lies in the Holy Spirit's viewpoint, which is that none of the ego's illusions are true. We are all equally innocent because nothing that seems to happen physically in a dream is real. No-one is the winner in a world of lies.

Decouple yourself from depending on the world to define whether you are right or wrong, or innocent or guilty. Get your truth and your verdict from the Holy Spirit, who will find you unconditionally innocent, and everyone else along with you. Then in that view, no-one can be considered righteous and no-one is guilty, because nothing has really happened.

Physical events are illusions. They are part of the ego's thought system. Part of the ego's mind. Objects and people and bodies and events and happenings are all part of this dream which isn't real. We need to learn not to depend on or trust or believe any of it. God is the greater reality in which we can trust, and in which our faith is justified.

Physical evidence doesn't prove anyone's guilt or innocence, because physicality is not reality. In God's eyes, everyone is innocent, and unconditional love and forgiveness is always justified.

"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."

"Listening to the ego's voice MEANS that you believe it is possible to attack God. You believe that a part of Him has been torn away by YOU."

"We have repeatedly emphasized that the ego DOES believe it can attack God, and tries to persuade you that YOU have done this."

"But sin, were it possible, WOULD be irreversible."

So you have this part of your mind, which believes in ego ideas of attack, which is the same as sin. The ego in you believes that you CAN attack real things, even though "nothing real can be threatened." It also believes that not only can it attack God, but it HAS attacked God.

It's the part of you that believes, deceives, and is trying to convince yourself, that you are the ego. That you are not as God created you. And therefore that YOU can attack God, and that you have done so.

"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."

If you believe this, you will believe that you've sinned. This is what the "original sin" is all about. It's the authority problem, the notion you can cause your own cause. That you can cause God against His will, and therefore change him and destroy him.

It is utterly impossible that you're able to do this. God cannot ever be attacked because He is permanent and immortal. You cannot have attacked anything real, at any time. You have never sinned. Not only have you never sinned, sin is actually literally impossible.

The ego however believes that sin IS possible and HAS happened. So you have these two perspectives. The truth in you is asserting that you must still be sinless, but the lies in you are fighting against it and trying to insist you have done something awful. Something totally EXTREMELY awful, as to try to murder God. The ego even thinks it has succeeded.

The belief that you HAVE attacked God, produces a death wish. If you've attacked Him and hurt Him, then he would logically be in a position to be completely justified in revenge. And that now means that God is angry and attacking and threatening. This goes hand in hand with believing that you've attacked and threatened him through anger.

"Death wishes ... DO kill spiritually. ALL destructive thinking is dangerous. Given a death wish, a man has no choice except to ACT upon his thought, or behave CONTRARY TO it. He can thus choose ONLY between homicide and fear."

"And you do not recognize that it is WHAT YOU INVITED IN that would destroy you, and DOES demand total sacrifice of you."

"The ego wants YOU dead"

That being your "new truth", you will then believe that because sin has actually happened, you deserve to be punished. That you are guilty and should die to atone for it. Or that death will allow you to escape from God's wrath. Because now you see God as having vengeance, as having a very good reason to hate you and to want you dead. That your death is God's will.

You will also then see that by believing you attacked God and hurt him, he is not happy with you. That he cannot possibly love you any more. And therefore you find yourself unworthy and unlovable. And even moreso that you cannot go home. That you are expelled from Heaven and are not welcome there, nor do you ever want to go back there.

What this does is it sets you up for the belief in "death as inevitable." Because if you can't go back home to LIFE, then your ONLY choice is to head towards death. It means you can kind of "never live again". And so you crawl away with your tail between your legs, licking your wounds, condemning yourself for what you think you did, and trying to guarantee your own punishment. And to think this is only because you LISTENED to the ego and BELIEVED it's lies about you being sinful.

Thus you become suicidal because now you yourself believe you deserve punishment for sin, that it makes complete sense that you're guilty, that God would never forgive you, and that what you did is irreversible. It's not even that you think others will punish you for this crime, it's that you yourself believe you deserve to be punished, and you yourself begin to actually enact it upon yourself.

This then frightens you because now you are actually against yourself and are entering into self-harm and self-punishment. You are trying to make yourself dead to pay for what you did. So that now means that you've become suicidal. And your only seeming hope to take away from God all power and rights over you, is to head towards death as a doorway out. You reason that if you will die, you will be saved. And now although you fear it, death becomes salvation and is attractive to you as a solution.

This is literally how every single person chooses to CAUSE their own death, and why all death is suicide, and why "no one dies without their own consent." It's all because you don't think you deserve to live. The ego in you believes so strongly that sin exists, you CAN sin, and you HAVE sinned, that a whole cascade of logical conclusions follow on from it, condemning you to death as the ONLY remaining option.

The only way you will get out of this downward spiral into hell and self-destruction, is to move away from the ego's "version" of what is true, and embrace God's version of what is true. That means questioning the belief in sin, that sin is possible or that you're guilty of doing it. This means the undoing of guilt as well, and therefore also fear.

While the ego in you is screaming "I have sinned", the God in you is gently reminding you that "sin is impossible." While the ego is trying to condemn yourself to hell, God is reminding you that you can't attack anything real. While the ego in you believes and is committed to keeping guilt, and to project it, in order to keep the separation going, the Holy Spirit is trying to teach you that you're not guilty because you have never sinned. Because sin is impossible. That everything the ego believes and asserts is a lie.

"You think if anyone could see the truth about you he would be repelled, recoiling from you as if from a poisonous snake."

"Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged."

"You need to hear the truth about yourself as frequently as possible, because your mind is so preoccupied with false self-images."

"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."

"The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable."

"You have NOT attacked God, and you DO love Him. Can you change your reality? No-one can will to destroy himself."

Going into a questioning mode, in which you ask yourself, should I do this or shouldn't I.... is actually a movement into fear.

As soon as you're in this mode of perception, there is no way you're going to settle on a peaceful decision.

You'll think that deciding one way will bring you peace, except that.. you can't get the other way out of your mind. And then you think if you decide the other way, maybe that will bring you what you want, except that, the first solution still seems to have something about it that the other doesn't.

Always in this mode of fear, it is a mode of duality, where your mind is split in two and you can't "make up" your mind - because you HAVE 'made up' a mind - an ego mind, which is now trying to rectify the fact that it has to deal with two different and unrelated options.

By perceiving differences, you are fixating on the appearance that one option has something about it that the other does not, and these differences are what MAKE the two options seem like two distinct options. And yet, as soon as you see this and try to deal with it, you cannot possibly see any kind of certainty, truth, clarity, obviousness or lack of confusion.

There is no sane way to choose between these two different paths, at least not from within a position of choosing. When you're weighing up your options, what you're really doing is trying to decide whether to accept what's missing about one of the two things, versus whats missing about the other. And the fact that they are both incomplete, can only leave you uncertain and unconvinced.

The only way out of this confusion, which masquerades as very careful decision making - on your own, in isolation - but really is a movement AWAY from decision and certainty, is to entirely STOP this whole deception of choosing between things. When you are questioning what to do, you are questioning YOURSELF, and throwing yourself into fear and confusion needlessly. "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability." - ACIM

There is no way you can choose between things, because that requires separation and rejection and you will never be able to experience certainty or peace while separation is operating.

The only way to peace is to entirely step back out of the 'split' between options, to back off from being in a position of trying to know, or trying to figure out. You even need to get past the illusion that a decision even needs to be made, because the sense of NEED has entirely come from the very same FEAR that you have entered into, which has CAUSED you to think that you have to decide something in the first place. "Let my recognize my problems have been solved." - ACIM

You have to RECOGNIZE that what you are trying to do is impossible, and that's why you will be confused and frustrated. You need to see this deception for what it is - not two clear-cut choices, but a device for indecision, fear, egocentric control, and trying to know everything on your own.

You can't know everything when your mind is split. So when you are in this decision-making mode of selecting between things, you are not only choosing which of two things is "better", you're also choosing which of two IDENTITIES you want to associate with. And that means you are literally putting your SELF into one of two boxes.

Once you're inside boxes, or are attempting to hide in boxes in the name of getting out of a box, you can no longer see clearly and won't be able to feel the sense of relief and peace that comes from being OUTSIDE the box.

So really there is absolutely no way that your ego (split mind) can make a decision on its own and be certain or happy with it. Either you struggle and seek for truth in only one part of existence and not another, causing you to be inherently insane, or you stop trying to decide on your own.

Decisions can still be made from a vantage point outside of this split mind, where you join with Holy Spirit and see the whole situation as one, recognizing the temptation of the illusion of deciding for yourself and ceasing to enter into it. Then Holy Spirit can share His light and freedom with you, to instill a knowing, inspiration or guidance - a peace-based decision - which you CAN trust and feel certain about.

As Jesus says in the Course, seek not to make decisions about doing something you do not want to do, because it will only make you afraid.

You need to learn to notice when you've slipped into a "I don't know if I should" mode, or a "what should I do" mode, or a "I can't decide mode", which pretends to be decision-making, because it means you've gone into the ego split mind and cannot possibly decide anything. You are AFRAID, and for no real reason.

Questions are doubts. They are not real questions. This is why the tiny mad idea was a movement AWAY from knowing and truth, towards "questioning truth", i.e. entering into fear and doubt, in an attempt to pretend that you're looking for an answer, while using that excuse as a cover-up for actually moving AWAY from the answer.

Ego questions do not lead you to truth. They lead you to more illusions, and you will never find happiness or peace of mind there.

So stop yourself if you notice you're being indecisive. No matter what your ego mind says - for or against certain options - do not listen to ANY of the arguments or cases for or against anything. They are all deceptions, because the overall deception is you believing that you NEED to decide at all.

You only think you need to decide when you've become afraid, and really then you're in a state of fear, trying to decide something in order to gain relief from fear, but every effort to do so will just make you more afraid.

Imagine all the wonderful things you will actually achieve and 'do' and feel good about and act fearlessly on, when you're moving and flowing with Holy Spirit's truth and trust and awareness, instead of trying to be "sure" about what "you" need to do with "your" life.

What you will realize eventually, as is dawning on me now, is that maybe there isn't even a decision to be made, and maybe moving into decision-making is actually just fear and undermining yourself with your ego, and you need to stop doing THAT, because that is the real problem here, not what option to choose.

I thank Jesus for this clarification today, and for reminding me when I am questioning whether I'm doing the right thing, thinking that this means I have to decide all over again what to do, I need to recognize the real problem - I've entered into fear and have attacked myself, and that's the only reason I seem to be separated from truth. To return to truth I do not NEED to make this illusory decision, I need to stop listening to my own bullshit.

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.

There is a view of what ACIM says, based around the idea that this universe is all there is.

It's a view that God created this universe, and thus created all the galaxies and planets, all bodies and objects etc.

People with this view will adopt a model of ACIM in which perception is projected onto God's creation.

They will then believe that false perception means a misinterpretation OF God's perfect creation, and a true perception means a perfectly accurate view of God's creation.

They also will then believe that knowledge is merely a slightly different or more direct way of seeing the SAME stuff that you saw with true perception. That this same world is kept and known.

And therefore to these people, forgiveness means that you forgive the world instead of attacking it, BECAUSE it is real. Because it is God's Kingdom, it's thought to to be your job to "forgive the Kingdom" and stop attacking it. As if "forgiveness means to "be loving toward what's really there."

Another side effect of this view is the belief that, in the separation from God, we DID NOT make a second world. There was no making of space or time by us. There was no forming of galaxies or planet Earth by us. There was no making of human physical bodies by us.

Essentially that there was no result from opposing God, no other world made, no effect producing a dream world, other than that you entered into some kind of egoic state of mind where you don't see heaven correctly. And then the correction of this lets you see heaven directly.

This leads to yet another strange occurrence, whereby since there is no "second world" covering over heaven, and you didn't make THIS world, any references in the course which refer to "the world" are now grouped together with references to egoic perceptions.

So when Jesus says something about "the world", which would be referring to the second world we made without God, and since it's believe such a world was never made be us, those same quotes are now thrown into a "must be an ego interpretation" bucket.

If any such statements suggest that "the world" is not real, is not created, is cruel, is in denial, attacks itself, is contradictory, or anything else that seems un-God-like, then such believers now have to put ALL of those statements into a "false perception" bucket. They have to be interpreted as being egoic mis-perceptions of what would otherwise be recognized as a perfect creation.

As such, since in this model there is no second world to assign anything to, and there is only the first world of the Kingdom of God, anything speaking about "this world" in a less than holy way is thought to be part of the ego's use of it, and NOT a statement about the world itself. Thus false perceptions/interpretations and projected meanings are now MIXED IN with factual statements about the INHERENT nature of the world.

This of course then strips away every single statement which might suggest "this world" is not God's Kingdom, and shuffles all of those facts into an ego bucket where they are safely tucked away and brushed under the carpet. If there is no second world, there is no world to ATTACH them to or associate them with or see them referring to, except "the ego's world".

The end result of all this is that, if you believe there never was a second world made in the separation, and if you believe that Earth is therefore literally God, as God's creation/extension, then you will be completely unwilling to question this world's authenticity.

Forgiveness then becomes a love-affair with the planet, in which we think that we should love what God created, and keep what God created. And forgiveness is no longer seen as UNDOING something that's unreal, but rather as "correctly seeing" something that IS real.

The fact that forgiveness would make what is forgiven DISAPPEAR, because you can ONLY forgiven illusions, becomes swept under the carpet. The notion that the world will disappear when recognized for what it is, as NOT God's creation, now becomes completely denied. There is no place for such a notion in a mindset that cannot accept that we made this world.

So now instead of forgiving the world in order you undo it, we would see our function as forgiving it as though it's something completely perfect and real that we've been mean to and need to apologize to and come to love again. Our entire relationship to this world and what it is thus vastly different when you think of it as God's creation and will, rather than the antithesis of God's nature.

In this model, which seem simple, there is simply God's creation and our perception of it. If we perceive it as anything other than God's perfection, we're seen to be doing something wrong. And if we perceive it as holy and perfect then we're doing something right. And direct cognition or knowledge is then thought to be almost identical to true perception - that true perception shows you what you will still continue to see in a state of knowledge.

But while this model seems simpler and, in and of itself has internal consistency, it still flies in the face of a great amount of what A Course in Miracles says. ACIM actually does say many many times in many many ways that we produced a second world. It says that we made a world opposite to God's world.

It also distinguishes clearly that this second world was DISTINCT from the ego's USE of this world. That ego projected meaning onto this world AFTER it was made by us. And that the Holy Spirit's REPURPOSING of what we made, is NOT a repurposing of the ego or of false perception, but a repurposing of a second world. We can see Earth reflecting heaven or hell, due to its neutral nothingness.

If God truly had created this world, the course would actually be somewhat easier to grasp. We would simply need to realize that we should love everything we see with the body's eyes. That it is all real. Another problem arises though, that the course does not speak well of the body. It even states that it does not really exist and is not God's creation.

In a mindset that thinks that this world IS God's creation, references to "the body" HAVE to take on a different meaning. If the course says the body "is nothing, which it is", this doesn't fit with the idea that God created the physical world. So then we have to shift the body once removed from the world, ie think of the term "body" not as referring to the physical "God created" body but rather to some kind of internal EGO PERCEPTION. And now, this should mean, that all references to "the body" are NOT talking about the physical body, bur about some internal interpretative state.

This kind of shifting of levels, this displacement of meaning and the need to completely redefine basic recognizable words, is an unfortunate side effect of this warped view of the course. Changing the meaning of words becomes necessary otherwise they would indeed imply that physical things are not God's Kingdom.

Indeed, "The body is clearly destructible and therefore not of the Kingdom" tells us that all physical things are not the Kingdom of God. And yet a belief system bent on believing the opposite to this will refuse to accept this meaning. Instead, "body" will be redefined as "must be something the ego is doing", because we don't like the idea that the actual human body is being identified as inauthentic and not of God.

In fact, what we find is that in many many areas, believing that God created this world leads to a completely OPPOSITE belief to what ACIM is actually saying. It produces beliefs which are absolutely and completely diametrically OPPOSED to the teachings of A Course in Miracles. 180-degrees opposite, heading AWAY from the truth instead of towards it.

So when the course tells us that Earth and the body are not of God, such a believer will believe they ARE of God. And when the course tells us that WE made this world, such a person will believe we DID NOT. And when we're told that false perceptions look at an illusion and make it seem real, such a person will invert this to mean that a false perception happens when you're looking at something REAL in an illusory way. And now as someone develops a special-love relationship with the planet, they THINK that they're entering into a genuine and holy relationship with it.

This whole view of ACIM leads to a complete flipping upside-down of almost everything it teachers. It puts reality and creation where it does not belong. It fails to see that the Kingdom of God is not like this world. It cannot comprehend that the physical body is not of God and nothing like our true nature. It completely reverses the meaning of false and true perceptions. It suggests that keeping the world is atonement, instead of its undoing. And it finds no reason to leave this world behind.

In this estimation of the world, it also includes having to believe that things which die are a part of God. That the seasons are God's will. That murder and rape and torture are entirely within what God allows to happen. That war and conflict and destruction are completely normal and natural. And that if you're not accepting them with love then you must be perceiving them with the ego.

As such, believers of "Earth is God" will insist that all of the dark twisted things of the world, when seen with true perception, will be seen as so holy and perfect that they will be deemed on par with God's will and nature. That it is absolutely natural for leaves to fall from trees, for animals to be squashed on roads, for weapons to be manufactured and guns shot towards bodies, for explosions to destroy buildings and for wars to destroy cities. These "destructions", these physical events and objects, are considered to be absolutely divine creations. And it should be fairly obvious that such a suggestion implies that God is far from sane.

It is one thing to forgive a world in which these things occurs, on the basis that they are NOT God's creations, which leads to seeing them in a better light with more forgiveness. But only as a stepping stone toward their dissolution. It's quite another to suggest we would not only love these things but even desire to KEEP THEM FOREVER, as an inherent part of what God is like. The PURPOSE of forgiveness is no longer seen as the end of even the potential for destruction, and instead is seen as a way to recognize that from God's view, destruction IS creation.

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge. What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them. But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error, which seemed to cast you out of Heaven, to shatter knowledge into meaningless bits of disunited perceptions, and TO FORCE YOU TO FURTHER SUBSTITUTIONS."

Consider the idea of a script for your life which you fully planned, consented to, and passionately wanted, before you came into this lifetime. Imagine that you organized and orchestrated every single interaction. You created agreements with every single person you would ever meet and you asked them to do to you every single thing they were to do, with which they would comply. Imagine also that only what you planned would happen and nothing else would happen - except you would also forget that you planned it.

ACIM does speak to this, in that it says that nothing happens to you that you have not asked for, and that you get *everything* you ask for, and that you get *nothing* that you did not ask for. It also speaks to this when it says that nobody dies without his own consent. NOBODY DIES WITHOUT THEIR OWN CONSENT.

At some point, somewhere, whether it's in this life or before this life, but somewhere, for ACIM to be TRUE on this matter, you ****MUST**** have consented to every single thing that has ever happened in your life. ABSOLUTELY ALL OF IT. Not only consented to it but created it, asked for it, wanted it, designed it and even set it in motion YOURSELF. Not by any outside force or coercion or ANY amount of victimhood whatsoever. (this is somewhat described in the "song of prayer" pamphlet as well)

Remember the Course also says the key to salvation is this - that you are but doing this to yourself.

IF the Course is telling the truth (and it is), then everything that has ever happened in 'your life' has been exactly designed by and asked for by you. All of it. So this takes quite a lot of 'fessing up', which also means your life must become totally void of victimhood.

If you look now, and you look back at some things that you recognize as having 'happened' in your life, particularly events which involved people where they seemed to influence you in ANY way, and in particular in what *looked like* any kind of negative way, then you need to now reinterpret that. If you can allow yourself to ACCEPT that you planned and asked for every single detail of what occurred, then a few insights must arise:

1) You have to realize there was a REASON WHY you planned what you did, and that reason was FOR YOUR GOOD. Every single thing that you designed must have been for an intended purpose of, ultimately, leading you to a spiritual awakening. Every single 'lesson' or scenario that you put together, MUST have been intended to HELP YOU in some way.

2) With the information that all events are helpful, this must then shed a new light on all of these tragic past experiences, to show you that SOMEHOW, whatever happened, and no matter how it looked at the time, somehow that event and that person were ONLY doing what was in your script and they performed it perfectly. Therefore they weren't REALLY a victimizer. And you weren't REALLY a victim. At the time, yes, you believed you were, but here's the thing. You only believe you are a victim when you are UNAWARE that you are a script-writer.

3) This now gives rise to the insight that every way you've experienced being a victim in the past, was a result of a lack of awareness on your part, in which you experienced something designed to HELP YOU but interpreted it initially as HURTING YOU. This symbolically is the same thing as being loved by God but believing that you're actually being attacked by God. Ie it seemed against you rather than for you. So all of the ways that you STILL hold onto past events with a grievance, thinking of them as 'wrong' or 'unwanted' or 'bad' or 'unpleasant' or whatever, blaming the other person, all of that INTERPRETATION of events came about ONLY because you did not remember that you wrote the script. It looked like you didn't ask for what happened, which, IF it were true, WOULD justify your anger and hurt and offense. And that means, you need to to be more truly forgiving, ultimately accepting the atonement.

4) This now helps you to see that, ultimately, everyone involved is INNOCENT, because nobody has done anything outside of the contract and nobody ELSE is responsible for having done anything TO YOU against your will. Your will is embedded in your script which YOU WROTE, so even if you now find yourself unaware of this and experiencing victimhood, YOU DID STILL WRITE IT. So you can hardly blame the other person. So now you need to go look at all the unhealed grievances that you still haven't let go of, and which you still interpret in a victim consciousness that says "I didn't want this to happen", "this wasn't fair", "they did it to me against my will" etc.... you HAVE to reinterpret that.

5) This now leads us to TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. This might seem like a step which places a shitload of guilt on your shoulders, blaming yourself for what happened, bla bla bla. That's ego. What it really means is actually a doorway to FREEDOM and RELIEF. You see, if you scripted all this, and you asked xyz person to do what they did, and you can admit that and own that fact, then you can let them off the hook. You can realize they did not victimize you. YOU victimized you. You hired them to carry out your wishes. If you are responsible for writing your script (and maybe you had help on the other side to do this gently/realistically etc), then you can no longer blame anyone else for what happens, in the past or in the future. It also means you can no longer view experiences as unwanted, bad, against you, unhelpful, hurtful, something to resist, as an attack, or any other form of victimization. That means, yes, whatever they did, whatever happened, you wanted it and got what you wanted, FOR A REASON, to HELP YOU to wake up.

6) Having now admitted to this responsibility, and started to access the sense of RELIEF and freedom that this gives you... because dropping the whole victim drama is a RELIEF from suffering, you can now enter into GRATITUDE. You cannot be grateful to an attacker while you think you didn't ask them to attack you. But you can be grateful to them when you realize you DID ask them to AND you can turn your mind to look at the situation as helpful/for you. It's like looking for the silver linings. What's happening is NOT a terrible tragedy or a horrible event gone wrong. That's illusion. What's happening is trying to help you to be steered in the right direction or to keep you safe or to help you learn who you are or to guide you to remembering whats true or to learn to love and care etc.. whatever the purposes are in your plan for spiritual "growth."

7) Finally then you have to learn to change the 'direction' or angle from which you look at events. If you're responsible and everything is for your good, then you need to learn to 'take it' that way. Look for the helpfulness. Look for how it is 'positive'. Look for the silver lining, the learning, the opportunity its giving you. Look at how it is making you grow or what you're learning from it. Ultimately then there is only one LESSON, in the form of all lessons. And it's this. You need to overcome the NEED for the lesson by recognizing the truth, owning up to the responsibility of who you really are (owning your innocence), entering into the mindset of the Holy Spirit which shows you that you are never a victim, and reclaiming your FREEDOM from the dramas of the ego. Ultimately this translates to you OVERLOOKING (forgiveness) all of the ways that you get LOST in the 'game' that you set up, so that you literally are no longer CAPABLE of playing the game. Once the truth is revealed, you can never forget it. And so you no longer need to create these dramas ever again.

Remember, nothing happens to you against your will. There are no accidents. Nothing happens that wasn't planned at some point in time BY YOU. Nothing is being forced upon you against your will.

You might find yourself 'inside a lesson' in this lifetime and feeling stuck in it, victmized by it, limited by it. But you might not also remember the benefits of this situation. Maybe it has indirect effects on the spiritual growth of other people. Maybe by suffering a sickness you HELP other people to learn compassion. Maybe by being afraid you give others an opportunity to learn to nurture. We're all this big soup of roleplay and side-effects and responses.

Also let's just finish by saying you're not stuck with a lesson. Holy Spirit WANTS you to learn the lesson. The answer to it is not being hidden from you. Often Holy Spirit tells me, in the midst of some frustration and confusion, "its a lesson". So them I'm like.. hmm... what is this lesson, what am I meant to learn? And it's not like Holy Spirit is withholding the answer, but I need to experientially becoming willing to accept some measure of truth in order to complete the need for the situation. The lesson may not be obvious.

In fact a recent lesson for me was to learn to DROP the idea of miraculously healing a problem with my eye, so that i would let go of false ideas about control and spiritualization of my ego, even though this outcome seemed at the time to be totally the opposite of what I thought I needed to do. Holy Spirit eventually revealed, when I was at the readiness to admit to it, that the whole point was to help me to 'see' the truth - that I was trying to do/be something beyond what is asked of me.

Also I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned compassion and a heart-opening as a result of various challenges that a person close to me has been through. For which I'm grateful, even though it sounds 'sick' to say you're grateful for sickness.

Holy Spirit said to me, "there is a plan". I'm learning to trust that more. And thus learning to take responsibility for my part in that plan, and thus relinquishing all of the support for victim mentality and blame. Even now as I start to look back at past events in 'this new light' I can see that I need to become grateful to people that I thought were against me or who I thought did the wrong thing. They were only helping and they only DID help. I just didn't recognize it.

Ultimately you want to get to where you have no more need for writing scripts, having learned everything they offer. Then you are free from the cycle of reincarnation forever.

In ACIM Jesus says the ego made the body as a way to focus away from the mind and to make the mind seem to be 'private'. The body is like a wall around the mind which creates the illusion and perception that the mind does not communicate. In other words, the mind seems to be shut off from all other equally-separate minds, and there is no sharing on any level of awareness.

The result of this is that the body is now exalted as a means of communication, in which the ego wants bodies to become physically intimate to 'represent' communication happening. Even the spoken word is then considered communication, but really it is a complete substitute for real, direct communication, and typically is a communication failure.

True Communication isn't telepathy as such, the idea of telepathy means separate people with separate minds sending messages. The truth is that our minds are NOT separate, and the belief in a separation between minds is the cause of all sickness, all mental illness, and death. And this is why the body dies - because the mind has been kept from true communication and locked in a prison. Or to put it another way, the body HAS to die if the mind remains unaware of its true function, because the body IS the idea of death.

Jesus talks about how the ego will do anything it can to ignore the mind, and will even let the mind have activity and thoughts because it thinks of it as serving the body and allowing the body to tell the mind what to do. Then the body uses the mind only so that the body can get what it wants, such as property, clothing, sex, food, physical contact, etc. You can see this reflected in the scientific/medical model which says that the 'brain' is the cause of consciousness or is the 'source' of thinking, which is completely the opposite of the truth.

This heavy focus on the physical, as well as this reversal of who is in charge - i.e. that the body is in charge of the mind, is a "confusion of the levels", which Jesus also explains as the cause of all sickness. "All sickness comes from confusing the levels" ... and that miracles correct this 'order' and place the levels in their proper order - i.e., restoring the mind as CAUSE and the body as EFFECT.

The body did not exist at all until the ego made it as a way to enslave the mind, to make you unaware that you even have a mind, to shut out awareness, to cut you off from everyone else, to make you isolated and lonely, and to disempower you. This was the PURPOSE of the body. This is the body's entire reason for existing. It is not some lovely creature that God created and that we should bow down and worship. It is an ego device for separation and for splitting the One Shared Mind into many many small imprisoned minds.

I had an experience of God a few years ago and in this experience my mind became very expanded, and I became very very aware. I thought I was fully awake when I woke up in the morning but it was absolutely nothing in comparison to how awake and aware I was in this experience. I became quite close to leaving my body because I was becoming very aware of God and the attraction to Him was so strong, that I wanted to leave absolutely everything behind and go to Him. It was like a scared child running to their parent after some nightmarish thing just happened and finally realizing that they can run to safety.

However, this didn't last very long and my expanded awareness and unification of mind started to come back into my body. I was extremely ungrounded for some time and gradually my awareness collapsed back down and reinserted itself into my body. This took a few weeks. As it progressed, I felt and perceived that it was like undergoing some kind of brain damage - as though coming into the body was taking on a tremendous dumbing down, suppressing, 'disabling', stunting of my consciousness, such that I could only liken it to having some kind of terrible brain damage that was blocking out and shutting out the beautiful awareness I'd experienced.

Towards the end of this process of 'returning' to the ego, which was very upsetting because once you taste God you don't want to leave... my awareness gradually entered into my physical senses more fully and this was like putting on a dark costume where, once you get inside it enough, the door behind you closes, your sense of connection to God gets almost completely shut off, your awareness of anything bigger is totally shut down, and you are sort of 'locked in'. Then, it seems that the only thing you can be aware of is what the body's senses show you - there is information coming into the eyes, tastes, smells, sounds etc, but very little awareness, no connection, no expansion, no real communication, and no God.

It's sort of like some creepy thing like, entering "The Matrix", or getting plugged into a virtual reality suit where, once you go into it, all of real reality gets shut out and you can ONLY fixate on what the 'encounter-suit' shows you. This is because the body forces you to focus on form, on what's outside of you, and what's separate from you. It totally shuts out your connection to the whole and makes you feel like some kind of tiny little, strapped-in prisoner, who can barely move or perceive anything, with blinders on, forced to stare at a make-believe world and not allowed to look at any thing else. This was really upsetting to go through 're-entry' but it showed me clearly just how much the body blocks awareness and shuts down the mind.

We can ascend our awareness to a heavenly place, I mean, when I was having my experience I was still in my body, just about, but such an expanded state of being really urges for total release from the body, it's so expansive that the body cannot contain it. At some point, as I see it, when we really thoroughly wake up not just to the Higher Self (sonship) but also beyond to Christ and to Heaven, it would become extremely, extremely difficult to maintain a body at all, and more than likely the mind would have to completely leave bodies entirely and then only return in the form of a kind of apparition or temporary image, which the mind is not at all imprisoned by.

So you see, the body is not an idol. It is not God's greatest creation. It is not something to worship. it is not what people are. It's not what you are. It is a very heavy, very isolating, very imprisoning suit of armor, deliberately made as a device for blocking awareness and diminishing the mind. It is the manifestation of an attempt to be separate from God. It is an illusion of minds no longer being joined. And when minds become joined and the mind becomes miraculous, the body has to heal, up to a point, but then the mind will stop creating a body.

How can a mind that knows of absolute oneness have any use for the body at all? Yes Holy Spirit can use it for TRUE communication, which means the MIND communicated with other minds directly - or rather, "shares". But the body itself is nothing but a temporary tool in a temporary dream, which we do not NEED in order to exist and therefore is not an inherent part of life. When Jesus was done with His body he saw no further truth in it and it DISAPPEARED. But he remained, because He is immortal spirit. And so are you.

P.S. "virtual reality" devices are now a metaphor for this... you strap on an artificial body, all of your visual senses are completely imprisoned and shut out from perceiving the 'real room', you go inside a fantasy world that doesn't exist, and you see only what this artificial body wants you to see. Your mind and awareness of the room outside is completely shut off, and you are immersed in a dream that you think is real. All the while real characters go about their business in the same room knowing, from the outside, that you are asleep inside a fake body looking at a fake world. So it is with the human body. And the body will eventually have to be 'taken off' from the mind to allow awareness to be fully aware of what is real.

All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.

The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.

In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.

"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."

What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.

The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.

It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.

"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."

An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.

Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.

"The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death."

Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.

To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"

Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?

But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.

At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.

So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.

You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.

People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.

So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.

It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.

It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself."

I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.

Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.

You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.

At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.

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?

The sins of the flesh, so to speak, include temptation. The temptation to believe that a son of God is a body. To then relate to their body as if it is the person, which is really an attack on the person and an attempt to imprison them. And to even ignore their body and focus on your own, for what it is getting from them. What you think you're getting from them is the rest of your self, which they stole, and housed in their body, which you hate them for and want to destroy them for, and you plug yourself into them in an attempt to regain what you think you do not have.

Being tempted by physical form is also another example of the rejection of Christ Vision and a willingness to be blinded by perception of form. As we oogle the nude pictures or watch the naughty porn movies or get all excited upon seeing a physical specimen we like, we are quite strongly falling for illusions, entering into body vision, losing sight of the truth, losing our minds, losing sanity, losing sight of the light beyond the body, and preferring bodies to God.

Of course, all of this is enough to induce guilt and make everyone feel like dirty little sinners. Which the ego is perfectly happy to label you with. Let's say that there is nothing at all wrong or sinful about any such activities because they are not real. And you can bet that millions of people are still "doing it" right now and will continue to do so for a long time to come. Course students included. But it is what it is.

Sex is something we invented, for a purpose. The only HOLY use of the body is for extending love and perhaps, if conception happens in such a way as that the persons are in christ vision and barely even noticing the body at all, you could call this the ultimate use of the body for procreational purposes only. But we have to also realize that the entire functional mechanism of what causes a man to inseminate a woman for example, is entirely based on sensations, body senses, chemistry, physical interaction, and usually hormonally driven, testosterone powered desire. And that's all at the level of ego body stuff. And it's selfish.

In essence, in truth, there were never supposed to be bodies in the first place. Yet alone to use them for separation, to make bodies real, to mistake subtle pain for pleasure, or to mistake copulation for love. There isn't anything love related about a sexual act. Unconditional love has nothing to do with it. It's purely a physical, biological, sensory process. Producing feedback, perceptions and justifying certain behaviors. You can do the same exact procedures with or without love being present.

Of course, someone who is loving, truly, unconditionally, may well enjoy the sexual performance with less guilt, more joy, greater fearlessness and confidence, but the point will come eventaully where what the body "offers" is so pale in comparison to what the spirit offers, that all desire for intercourse will end. Spiritual marriage, mind-to-mind joining, oneness with God, are orders of magnitude more meaningful and enjoyable than anything the body has to offer with its parody of love. "A teacher of God is willing to give up all the pleasures of the world." Knowing that you are gaining far more than you are giving up.

This is not to say, you have to give up sex right now. I'm not going to and nor is most of the planet. But we ARE in a process of learning what it really IS, and what it is not, as part of our journey home towards true union with God. And we can use this information to help move our special, sexual relationships, with others or self, towards a more innocent, holy experience, as we transition onwards its eventual total relinquishment.

At some point we will come to recognize it is not possible to do ANYTHING REAL with the body, and so will stop using the body entirely. Until then, boink your brains out if you so choose, or not. It's up to you - free will. But keep in mind, your MIND is more important than your body, and if body identification is increasing as a result of how you look at what you're doing, you're heading in the wrong direction.

In heaven there is no sex. In heaven, there is the constant bliss of needing nothing and being permanently fulfilled. Surely this is better than an occasional splurt at the end of a long road of effort. And certainly better than the frustrations and failures of sexual attempts to separate from God.

I think that for years I have been mistaken about the course. Mainly in terms of the orientation of my mind and the direction in which it was heading.

We start out in false perception, in ego, in body identification. As if we are down in hell at the bottom of a ladder. And then we think of heaven or light or truth or atonement as being higher up the ladder, and so we start the process of climbing out of hell.

Along the way we're told of particularly "high" things which become goals to strive for, like true perception, accepting atonement, the real world, christ vision. And we wonder how to achieve these things. We kind of come at it from a "I don't have it, how do I get it?" point of view.

But the thing is, this is all backwards. We're literally starting out in a backwards thought system, moving in the wrong direction, looking in the wrong direction, and trying to get our heads around what the truth is.

I think as we gradually learn more about the truth, God, soul, reality etc over time, we open up to it more. We do more forgiveness, we heal, we let go of old pain etc. Our identity starts to shift away from the body. We begin questioning the reality of the world etc.

Then at some point, perhaps a kind of tipping point, where for a while we've had our feet in both worlds - heaven and earth - we start to lean more towards reality. We start to side more with the truth than with the false. We develop more truth and find a surer footing that anchors us in reality.

The interesting thing then is that our whole orientation seems to do a 180 degree shift. We start looking from the top down instead of from the bottom up. And we feel more secure in the truth of God and more accepting of what's real as "where we are coming from".

I have found it extremely helpful and clarifying to spend time investigating the nature of God, heaven, creation, souls, sonship, mind, free will, causation, etc. Not the things of this world. This has really fleshed out some solid "facts" that I can depend upon.

I see the simple truth that God, who is truth, has extended himself to create me, and whatever is true of me ONLY comes from God. And that I in turn ONLY have what I inherited from God, and can only be and extend that which I have been given. This has now become a kind of "starting point" for me. A rock solid core of truth within my being. Not even I have any real say in what I am or what I can do.

Now I find myself basing my whole thought process on that truth. Regarding myself as not of this world. Recognizing that only the Kingdom is real. Feeling into and aligning myself with God's will and with my real function. Embedding myself in heaven and looking outward from there. This is orienting me from "the top down" to look at everything the course says from a new vantage point. And it's as if I am seeing things in a way I never saw before.

I'm finding is just an avalanche of clarification and insight about what it's getting at. I find for example that while many "bottom-uppers" believe their whole mission is to escape from hell and return home, really the whole course is aimed towards anchoring yourself in your true nature and expressing that, shining a light into the world to produce healing. As if what's at the top of the ladder reaches down to the bottom of the ladder, to either shine it away or raise it up.

There are in fact many parts of the course related to bringing heaven into the world. Shining God's light as a reflection of his being. The extension of miracles which we are literally told fall DOWN like drops of healing rain FROM heaven ONTO the earth.

The fact that christ works through our bodies, that the holy spirit uses the body for his purposes, and that we extend through the body to form holy relationships. Even forgiveness is a matter of allowing the light of heaven's truth to infuse the mind to correct it's perceptions. Where do we get any kind of truth from if not from outside of perception itself? Truth is of God!

It's not so much a "let's just get out of here" thing. It's more of a, let's remember who we really are anchored in heaven's reality and shine outward from that core truth into the world, to be the light of the world, a healing presence, a teacher/extender of God into the dream, and to help shine away the world. This isn't escape from hell, it's a DISPELLING OF DARKNESS by shining the light of heaven onto it. And this will seem "backwards" to those who believe their only goal is to get out of here asap.

I also think that all the discussions about true perception, christ vision, the face of christ, the real world, atonement etc, are all quite misleading. Mainly because it's very clear to me now that true perception is merely a SIDE EFFECT of a mind which is anchoring itself on the OTHER side of the separation. A mind which is identifying with the spirit being that is BEYOND the realm of perception entirely.

Even the perception of the real world is clearly infused with the light of heaven and is really just a stopping point just prior to entering heaven, on the way to TOTAL immersion in heaven. It just represents a state of being ALMOST entirely spirit identified. And giving yourself over entirely to the atonement merely means becoming FULLY dependent on the truth, having been previously only "mostly" dependent upon it. And truth is not of this world.

"Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement (but have partly accepted it) and given themselves over to truth. Perception is based on a separated state, so that anyone who perceives at all needs healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know."

This really tells us that the acceptance of atonement is at first a GRADUAL TRANSITION out of hell towards heaven, out of false perception towards truth, and it is only FULLY or FINALLY accepted at the end, where you are 100% willing to accept the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Until then, you are PARTLY atoned, just as Jesus says you are "not now wholy insane." Truth has corrected your mind to SOME extent.

Indeed the whole idea of forgiveness is riddled with confusion and misunderstanding. To forgive really means, that you recognize what is true - which IS HEAVEN, and to then "defend" that truth through the proper use of denial, to REJECT that anything not of God is real or has any power. It's a recognition that illusions are false, BECAUSE OF what is true. AND what is true is God - not of this world. Forgiveness thus is rooted in and depends on recognizing God's nature, which is itself BEYOND forgiveness.

The most obvious point is that, here we are in bodies starting out in false perception, blind to God and in denial of reality. The question then is how do we solve that. And obviously the only real way to solve that is in "leaving the desert". That means that in order to become more loving, more light, more truthful, more sane, you have to actually identify with something BEYOND the dream, with a real eternal truth that is entirely OUTSIDE of perception, so that your perception transforms to line up with it. The blueprint for right mindedness is the one mind.

You can't just work on perception in a closed box. True perception in fact has to be BASED UPON knowledge. And knowledge is the real truth. Believing that the real truth is true - a truth which is OUTSIDE of spacetime - causes perception to be transformed to line up with it. It's almost like, you have to reach outside of ALL perception first, get a hold of reality, then infuse that reality into your mind so that your perception becomes lighter. This was not at all evident in years of past study and in the common interpretations of the course.

We're also told about miracle working and the fact that miracles in fact come from God and fall down from heaven like healing rain, onto the earth. This is similar to how forgiveness works, in that the light that is higher and more true, shines into the mind and into the world, and bestows life where there was death.

Because "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life" and "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers". That means they're starting out IN HEAVEN and are expressing FROM God through our minds, transforming perception and healing the world. That's a TOP DOWN mechanic, which is why they cannot be received when fear (false perception) is too strong.

I've also found that until you can get a really solid metaphysical, logical grasp of the nature of God and creation, you can't really have anything clear and true enough to compare anything to. You really need a solid idea of the light, in order for it to clearly contradict the darkness. You need to know the truth of heaven and of your being and nature, in order to compare that to other things that happen in the world, to recognize WHY those things are false and unreal. You can't just compare illusions to true perception, you have to compare them to God, then perception will follow.

"Perception (even true perception) is a RESULT, not a cause".And so it sort of comes down to not just the question of what things are, but of the question of WHY they are that way. The understanding or logical reason that they are based on. Illusions are illusions BECAUSE of what the truth is. Sickness is unreal BECAUSE of the immortal nature of God. The world is a dream BEACUSE reality is not like it. Miracles can raise the dead BEACUSE of their expression of eternal life. If you don't have your mind anchored in heaven, you really don't have any solid ground to stand on at all.

For me, my whole orientation with the course is quite strongly transitioning to a totally top-down view at the moment. This reflects the changes in myself which are transitioning to a "going within in order to be able to express outward", or seeking the higher mind in order to shine FROM it into the world. Or aligning myself with a higher light, so that I can shine darkness way. I am finding out WHO I AM, so that I can REJECT what I am not.

"Yet when they find their own Reality is even here, then they step back and let It lead the way. What other choice is really theirs to make?"

"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."

Ultimately what we're really doing is we are rising up from the pits of hell and ascending into heaven. But the closer you get to heaven the more you feel like you are IN heaven, looking back downward towards hell. It's most like returning to HERE, having been AWAY. Or becoming more PRESENT, having been absent. Or becoming more authentic, having been artificial.

That orientation of "peering out from the truth" or "operating under the laws of God" or "being true to yourself first" or "having innocence in you first which you project out", is what MAKES the real world and true perception be what they are. They are reflections of the light that is IN you, which you have stepped into and are radiating. The love which you give in order to see love. "Love looks upon itself."

So it's really about you deciding to change which ROOM you are located in. Are you in hell, or in heaven. When you seek for a better way than suffering, to any degree at all, you are seeking to be in the room of heaven, where you are happy. And then you start to move between the rooms. You want to get yourself as much immersed in heaven as possible, so that almost all of you is very close to being in heaven just before you leave the world. That means you are practically a REFLECTION OF DIVINITY, while in the dream, allowing you to perform miracles and heal the world. To extend God's love and light and to keep illusions from tempting you.

It's all top-down. All the correction is top-down. All the extension of love and light and power is top-down. All of the being true to yourself is top-down. All of the health of the body is caused from the top-down. All dispelling of illusions and the sanity of the mind is brought about from the top-down. Death is conquered throught the top-down expression of eternal life. True perception and the forgiven world and the real world all come about through the top-down application and expression of your true nature. And eventually the goal is to be SO completely vigilant for the Kingdom, or to seek first the Kingdom of God, so that you put God FIRST in all things, and everything else just follows naturally from there.

Think of the physical body as having a purpose. It has a purpose, because it has a USE, because it has a USER. It is being used FOR something, other than the body in and of itself - because the body is not an end in itself. It is a tool.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

The ego - ie insanity in your mind - can use the body for a negative purpose. This purpose is attack and destruction. When you are using the body for this purpose, the mind uses the body like it's a weapon.

It actually transforms the form of the body into what looks like "a picture of crucifixion." This is a picture of body which has things like damage, sickness, disease, signs of death, cancers and deformities and so on. Basically various forms of DEATH, to try to GIVE DEATH to others.

These are USED by the ego mind to send a message to those who look upon the body. At the same time the ego is using the body to try to ATTACK others. The sickened states that it invents in the body are themselves attempts to reach out and "infect others" with suffering.

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

Not to induce guilt in anyone who might be doing this or experiencing the difficulties of sickness, but the course is indeed teaching that when the ego USES the body it uses it as a weapon to try to inflict suffering on others.

Its primary method is to put sickness "symptoms" into the body so that the body itself, physically, becomes a way to "spread death" to others. In particularly virile forms the body becomes contagious and capable of causing to others what seems to have happened to itself, thus extending sickness and death.

When the body is sick, it also sends a kind of visual physical message to those who witness it, that says "look what you did to me." It induces guilt, it accuses of sin, it projects an egoic message of the proof of sin, and we hold this suffering up for others to see so that they will be accused of causing it. And thus by our own desire to make our own body sick, we're willing to suffer if it means others are accused of sinning against God and can take on the guilt and the punishment.

In effect, a sick mind uses the body to make the body sick so that the body can make others sick. But the mind can also be healed of its sickness and its attempts to attack or to make guilty. And then the mind is more healed and now the mind is still USING the body but it is now using it for a higher purpose.

A healed mind USES the body not as a weapon or to try to project guilt or to scapegoat or to prove others to be the sinful cause of its symptoms. Instead a healed mind sends healing through the body. This healing love literally heals the body and removes from it the signs and symbols of attack and death.

As the body is healed, it now changes its symbolic message, and instead of now showing a picture of crucifixion to another it instead shows a symbolic image of something "unharmed", something innocent and free from attack. Such a healed healthy body sends a broadcast, visually, symbolically, that other people have not done anything to it, and therefore they cannot have sinned. This "physical message", a literal physical embodiment of the mind's belief in wholeness, exonerates those who look upon it, and in turn CAUSES their minds and bodies to be also healed.

"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."

In effect, a sick body provides a powerful TEMPTATION to others to believe that they are guilty because of its suffering. While a healed body provides a powerful LIBERATION to others to believe that they are NOT guilty because the body is obviously unharmed.

What actually happens is an interesting repurposing of things. Given that a person with an ego will believe the body is real, and give a great amount of weight to the FORM that the body takes, they will tend to derive MEANING from the form of the body. As such we might say, because the body has the shape of a cancerous growth, "that means" there has been an attack and a sickness.

And by thus deriving meaning from the body based on its appearance, the mind of the viewer BELIEVES and gives POWER TO that body, making it real to them. And now it cannot escape being at the EFFECT of that body. The unhealed mind of the viewer now sees that body as confirming their guilt, providing their sinfulness, suggesting they must have attacked it, and they basically AGREE with its condition. Entering into false empathy, they cannot help but feel personally responsible - guilty - that the other "real body" is sick. And this cannot be escaped while the person believes bodies are real.

The result of this is that those with egos view sick bodies as offensive and accusatory and harmful and not to be trusted and as attacking and threatening them. I couldn't find the exact quote wording but the course does say the ego hates sick bodies and feels threatened by them.

"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."

What then happens when your mind is more healed, and thus removes the sickness from the body, is that you TAKE ADVANTAGE of the fact that other people are making your body real still. They still have an ego, their minds are still sick, they still need healing.

When they look upon your body with the same mentality of "making it real", and believing that its FORM defines MEANING, it looks there and sees no evidence of attack, no suffering, no pain, no proof of sin. Because your mind has truly forgiven and has PROVED forgiveness by healing the body of any side effects.

When a sick mind looks upon a healed body, the sick mind still believes the body is real and that its form is meaningful, and thus is "giving its power away" to that body to define FOR IT what is true. When you thus show an egoic mind a HEALED BODY, it taps into THEIR belief that they've given power to your body, THEIR belief that your body defines the truth, and because your body is depicting a healed FORM, they now automatically derive a MEANING from its form that "there's nothing wrong with it."

Because of their own giving away of their own power to your body, they can't help now but be AFFECTED BY your healed body, having given it power over them. And thus your healed body now taps into this dynamic in their mind and gives them the message "I have the power to inform you that you have not sinned."

And by this kind of indirect "back door" in a way, a re-purposing of their belief that your body DEFINES their guilt or innocence, your healed body TEACHES THEM, through its repurposed use of symbolic FORM, that they must be innocent because there is no sign of suffering. That they cannot have done anything. The impact of this teaching has massive amounts of POWER to educate them that, because your body is healed, THEY ARE INNOCENT.

And thus by witnessing that their nightmare has turned into a happy dream, your body has turned into a herald of harmlessness, their mind is now ACCEPTING the message - on their own terms - that they must be innocent. And thus, indirectly, their mind will now allow your body to exonerate them and this (by their own causation) causes them to believe they are innocent.

Thus does a healed body become a messenger to the sick, to tell them that they are not sick, because there is no evidence of them having caused sickness. It shows them they are not guilty, and uses their belief in your body's "power" to tell them what's true, to correct their view of themselves. So they think, I cannot have done anything because your body is in great condition and it is literally inspiring me to believe in life and health and wholeness.

As such their mind now accepts healing, becomes itself more whole, is lifted up, resurrected, and it in turn facilitates the side-effect that it also heals their own body. Thus the miracle of healing which was given to YOUR mind to heal YOUR body, extends and transfers to the minds of OTHERS as they witness your miracle. And thus is your brother HEALED ALONG WITH YOU. And now HIS BODY HEALS AS WELL!

"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."

"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."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. 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."

It can be very therapeutic to just listen and be still and judge not while someone expresses themeslves. This is the essence of being forgiving.

"Forgiveness … is still, and quietly does nothing. … It merely looks, and waits, and judges not" - ACIM

When we all have egos, we're all so busy not listening. We're too busy broadcasting and transmitting illusions and stories to make ourselves special.

Even if you're in a conversation with someone and you're supposedly listening, you're probably still not FULLY listening because you're not in a state of forgiveness.

Instead you're starting to mentally engage with what was said, are starting to process it, are chewing on it, judging it, judging the person, thinking about what to say, having memories of your own personal story, resisting the person and hoping they will shut up soon, etc. All of these activities mean you are not being forgiving, but it also means you are not fully listening. You're not paying full attention. You are not being fully present because you're lost in your own ego.

So then when the person speaks, they sense this. They know in the mind/energetic level that they are not being heard. They know that there are limits and boundaries in place, which you put there, which are your attempts to make them stop and shut up. Especially if you start to offer advice or talk over them or try to stop their expression. Maybe their expression is very ego and it triggers you and you just want it to stop because you can't just be still.

The result of this is that the person does not feel permitted to fully express themselves. They don't feel that you are listening, that you recognize them deep down, that you really care unconditionally, or that you even want them to continue. They will take these cues, consciously or not, and it will stop them fully expressing.

We are all so used to walking around in a world where everyone is always broadcasting that we feel terribly constipated with ego energies, feelings and expressions, which are not being ALLOWED to fully express. Nobody is listening! And that's because everyone has egos and are not in a state of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a state of mind of stillness and listening and allowing and presence and non-judgement. That's the state that we're sorely lacking in this world.

This state is a state of "holding space". It means that you are so still and clear and non-judging and present that you simply allow and listen and permit everything. You do not resist, you do not get caught up in your own thoughts, you don't get lost in your own reactions, and you don't try to stop the person. If you do this for someone and you let them just express, you will notice something really interesting happens.

Not only will they express themselves and all their ego stories, feelings and thoughts, but they will seem to really go overboard, over the top with major ego expression. Given permission that it's okay to express fully, as proven by your forgiving willingness to listen and be present, it all just comes flooding out. The person doesn't even quite know why they are doing this. They can seem to become "very ego" while they do this. YOU MUST NOT try to stop that. It's good. They are venting. Maybe for the first time someone is finally fully listening to their heart's pain and they can therefore finally let it out and let it go all the way.

People are natural expressers. Even if it's ego shit coming out and totally bullshit, they still need to express it, and not being in a situation where it's safe and okay - unconditionally okay - to be as ego as they like, it just stays stuck inside.

Also when you are in a state of holding space and being fully present with the person, where you are actually giving your FULL ATTENTION while simultaneously backing totally off from expressing anything of your own, this creates a kind of "space". That is, your intense attention connects to the person where they are, and the fact that you are totally withholding your own expression creates "space" in between the two of you. It's a space that you're not flooding with your own expressions, because you are RECEIVING.

This space is held by the mind and can actually be an energetic presence. You form it with your EMPATHY. In True Empathy you are listening intently and sharing awareness and unconditional acceptance, WITHOUT ENTERING INTO the person's problem. This is TRUE empathy. Empathising without engaging or joining in or making real the illusions that flow out in any way. And that doesn't just mean be quiet on the outside, you must be totally present and attentive INSIDE your mind as well, otherwise you are distracted with ego and are not listening.

And because there is a kind of law that nature fills a vacuum, their ego is SUCKED OUT. It pours out to fill the space. Or to put it another way, your willingness to FULLY RECEIVE allows them to FULLY EXPRESS. The person may not even realize they are really digging deep and sharing all their deep dark secrets and even stating embarassing egoic "secrets" that they never told anyone. Onlookers might judge them and label them as evil! But you have to let it just flow out into the space. Just listen, fully. Give your full attention in silence.

After the person has "finished" expressing, having been heard deeply perhaps for the first time ever, and having aired tons of dirty laundry and guilt and everything in between, they will tell you... if you succeeded in this .... they'll tell you, they feel TREMENDOUSLY PEACEFUL. They got it out! They finally could let it all out and let it go instead of having it shoved halfway down their throat by everyone else who is too self-absorbed to ever give them permission to fully express.

I have done this before, by accident. I didn't know what I was doing, but I was doing it. I recall a person at an old job who started to brag. He was a natural bragger. But as he did, instead of wanting to shut him up as such, I just paid attention and let him get on with it. I held space, sort of accidentally. And he just kept going, and going, and going. He really really vented, and started even telling me about all these secret exploits and perversions that he'd been doing, just a great big giant ego brag. He didn't even know why he was expressing so much, he just kept going! An onlooker judged him, not understanding what was happening, telling him that he should stop talking because he was making a fool of himself. But it was a HEALING.

And then,..... he wound down, and he said, he couldn't believe how peaceful he felt. He was shocked at how calm he was. It was simple. Pay full attention and be fully present without your own mental noise.

Also, if a person is quite shy or sensitive, introverted or has difficulty or fear expressing themselves, this is like GOLD. If you are like this, you know that you are very much put off by the loud intensity of everyone else's expressions, and usually you will only express yourself to one individual in a secret corner when no-one else is looking. Only if there is near silence do you feel permitted to make sound, to speak, or to express yourself. You are really sensitive and everyone's just "regular" level of expression is experienced as like LOUD. Like, they're shouting all the time and don't really want to hear you at all. And especially if the person is domineering or controlling or takes over expressing for everyone, you can bet you will just shrivel up into a hole of loneliness.

That's why sensitive people become so quiet and shy. In their spectrum of expression, they are drowned out. Loud intense or even just regular people can "shut down" sensitive people and make them even shyer, because they're never really given an opportunity to BE HEARD. People won't shut the fuck up for long enough to let them express their soft gentle expressions!

If you say to a shy sensitive person, that you're going to be totally quiet and just listen and that they can go ahead and just talk and tell you anything... anything at all, just go ahead and I'll listen quietly.... that's like GOLD. If you will trust that as a sensitive person, you will then start to express yourself, and you'll keep going, and going, and you'll explore and uncover all kinds of things that you could never tell anyone. It's SO healing and cathartic. To be heard in this overly broadcasting ultra-loud ego-screaming world, it's absolutely treasure. It touches a person. It heals them. Sometimes as a sensitive person I wish the whole world would SHUT THE FUCK UP for long enough for me to express myself.

(I WILL BE HEARD! Thanks for letting me express that, lol)

This is also partly why my expressive energies have diverted themselves into the silent, unhurried expression through typing and writing.. ... people don't shut you up when you put it down on paper.Mostly. Until they start reading it, hah. Then it's "that's too long to read, shut up". .. ie, I can't read all that text... when will *I* be able to talk about myself! lolol

Anyway. Hold space for people. It is thoroughly deeply healing. We should have healing circles where we do nothing but let people express silently. This is partly how it's set up in Alcoholics Anonymous and AlAnon and other programs with a "no cross-talk" rule... although it should be extended to a "no mental chatter either" rule. No ego.

Be quiet. Be present. Listen. Let people be fully acknowledged. This is an expression of true forgiveness.

Remember, this is part of being truly forgiving. And having the opportunity to PRACTICE this is an opportunity to be forgiving. As Jesus said:

"Forgiveness … is still, and quietly does nothing. … It merely looks, and waits, and judges not" - ACIM

Before the physical universe came into being, there was only the Son of God and no "other".

The mind of the Son of God contained a state of guilt, which arose from the belief in the separation happening (sin).

The Son of God then attempted to deny this guilt, making it unconscious. This denial created an illusion, a facade, that the Son of God was not guilty.

To do that, He had to invent a "picture" i.e. illusion to cover up the guilt, a picture of innocence. And this innocence had to be seen as vulnerable and powerless, so that all sense of guilt could be hidden. Only an idea of harmlessness and vulnerability would suffice.

It was through this denial that the physical universe was "put in place" to cover up the guilt in the One mind, which now became the collective unconscious mind.

The surface facade of this cover-up features "newborns" to portray this facade of innocence. Whether it be newborn babies or new plants growing or new puppies or a new planet or whatever.

The "birth" of the universe is based or starts from this idea of vulnerable innocence. Real innocence is strong and invulnerable. Fake innocence is weak and vulnerable, and only this would suffice as the opposite of being responsible for sin.

Human bodies, as babies, then are symbols which represent or try to convince us that the Son of God is not guilty. They portray Him as weak and tiny and powerless and helpless, as though anything could happen to Him and He could not happen to anything. This is the perfect cover-up for guilt. Who would suspect a baby?

The human body, therefore, is the mask of innocence, or the collective "persona" of the Son of God. It is what we wanted to show to ourselves, in denial of what is hidden in the unconscious. And then the larger unconscious mind is projected out as the rest of the universe.

We then find ourselves showing up as innocent, and with a state of so-called "amnesia", not remembering what came before. That amnesia is the implementation of denial in the mind, blocking the unconscious guilt.

The body then is a mask which the mind wears to portray itself as contained inside of that mask, vulnerable to the world and capable of being affected by it. The body, being a victim of and product of the world, is therefore represented as the one who "did not do it", i.e. did not put the world in place.

Even though the mind has created the body to be a victim, susceptible and vulnerable, it secretly wants this because it allows it to maintain denial and keep ownership of the guilt at bay.

Everything outside of the body is the "shadow", the unconscious mind in which the guilt is swirling around producing world events. Literally, and symbolically, we have shadows outside of our bodies.

And so our unconscious mind is now outside of the body, our conscious mind is inside of the body, and the body is our self image. It's not that we have a self image on-top of the body or an imaginary self-image in the mind, the body IS that image in the mind.

Fake innocence therefore is a collective coverup which starts at birth and maintains a denial of the unconscious guilt. The body itself, as the face of that innocence, is the block which prevents us from being aware of this unconscious guilt. The presence of the body at all is a demonstration that the mind behind it does not want to admit to being a sinner. It is a device for maintaining unconsciousness.

We come to believe that all that is left of us is the body, which is innocent, and is who we are, and is all of who we are. We do not remember that there was another portion of our mind which we have made unconscious, have projected outward, and are in denial of even existing.

In order to heal the unconscious guilt, you have to realize that your belief that you are innocent is not real. There is an entire layer of fake innocence stopping your mind from being consciously aware of your own belief in sin. Your belief that the body is real therefore blocks your awareness of your mind and its content (and its power to choose).

You believe your body self is all there is to you. You believe you are not the cause of your problems because you are innocent and you do not see anywhere in your awareness where you seem to be doing anything to yourself. That's because the part of you doing it to yourself is outside of your conscious awareness. It is un-conscious.

We have to then realize that we've made ourselves be in this position of being a victimizable, falsely innocent vulnerable body, as the symbolic representation of the idea of what happens after you deny your guilt. You're automatically in denial and unconscious and believing that you are only your innocent self, as soon as you "emerge" into this fake world of victimhood.

There is thus a veil of fake innocence, which aligns with physical form, which is blocking our awareness not only of unconscious guilt, but also is blocking awareness of the level of mind which came before so-called "incarnation".

Incarnation is just a state of entering into denial and going unconscious and ending up in a state of partial awareness, clueless about the larger mind that you just fled from. Incarnation is seen as an escape from guilt, and a desire to see yourself as innocent, even though deep down you do not believe it.

We have to realize this layer of this belief in being innocent, i.e. this unawareness that we ourselves actually believe we are sinful and guilty, is quite a strong layer of repression and denial. It is making us believe we're not the one who is guilty, even though we are experiencing the presence of guilt outside of us (which is our unconscious mind, made to seem separate from and "outside" of our conscious identity).

We don't suspect that we might have this guilt or that we even believe in it ourselves. We are busy believing that other people are guilty, because we do not even see that we ourselves unconsciously believe that we ourselves are guilty.

What we have done to ourselves, condemning ourselves with sin and judging ourselves as guilty, is the ONLY reason why we are upset, it is the only reason we are incarnate as a body-self, and it is the only reason why stuff is attacking us.

When we can become aware of the fact that we are faking our innocence and own up to believing in our guilt, we bring the guilt back into conscious awareness where we can at least now question whether it is true. This requires us to admit to the ways that we try to defend and maintain our "innocence" in order to keep our denial intact and repress the unconscious guilt.

Upon seeing that you yourself have attacked yourself, that you have condemned yourself, that you are the one who believes you are guilty, it is impossible to continue to pretend to yourself that your situation is being caused by someone else. What they allegedly were causing in you was actually coming from you. Admitting this is the secret to salvation - that you are only doing this to yourself.

We then must question whether we are guilty, because it is not real guilt. It is not causal guilt. Guilt is an effect of sin. And then we must question whether we are sinful, because it is not a real sin. It has not taken place in reality, nor has it affected reality at all. It has taken place only within an illusion and nothing more.

Therefore in reality, nothing has happened, and in truth, we MUST still be TRULY innocent. Believing this and accepting this as true is accepting the atonement. The atonement locates and identifies who we are OUTSIDE of the physical universe.

To uncover the unconscious mind and make it conscious and heal it, is to make your mind whole again. It also MUST mean that the facade of fake innocence must disappear. It was a device to maintain denial, and if you are no longer in denial, you do not have such a mask.

Given the human body IS that mask, and it is the belief in separation made manifest, and it is a device for denial, and its purpose was to maintain unconsciousness, if you are now choosing awareness you are literally undoing the need for or purpose of having a body at all. It is the persona, the false self image, designed to cover up the mind and block you from admitting to the truth, or from taking responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

Without a belief in sin and guilt, there is no further need for a body. The mind will simply cease to implement denial, which was a defense against the truth. And therefore the body, which was a defense against the truth, and therefore a sickness, MUST simply cease to exist. It must disappear because the guilt, which compelled the NEED for a body, has been undone.

This is because the mind has exited its identification and location within the realm of the fake innocent self - the physical universe - which WAS the unconscious mind, now made conscious, and therefore the mind has transcended the physical universe. This is ascension. This is what happens upon full completion of the atonement. It is a return to Heaven because it is an acceptance that Heaven is real and this world of fakery and false masks does not really exist.

We are children of God. We belong in the realm of love. We are innocent, forgiven and worthy of love, forever holy and eternally beautiful as an extension of God. None of this universe even happened and when it is recognized as the illusory device of denial that it is, it will disappear.

Everything about practicing the Course could be described as moving "backwards". Accustomed to how the ego operates always "forwards" this can at first seem counter-intuitive and a difficult "direction" for the mind to operate in.

Purification and correction are entirely geared towards a backwards motion, such as retracing your steps, seeking inward rather than outward, undoing, reversing, collapsing, deflating ego, re-winding time, digging deeper to find the true inner cause, looking "behind", getting to the core of oneself, going within, taking attention away from illusions, becoming whole, acknowledging what already is, accepting what is already true, receiving what is already given, lifting away layers of false belief, recognizing things for how they are, taking back projections, claiming responsibility for yourself, re-owning yourself, coming back to center, un-ravelling, seeking back through time to when beliefs were formed, reversing the effects of sin, cancelling, deleting, removing, restoring to a former state, moving backward to before any sense of something happening, returning to innocence, becoming aware of love which is already present, listening, receiving, accepting, allowing, reversing sickness and death, resurrection etc.

Notice that all of these procedures take you from being externally focused to focusing within, in the direction of yourself. The truth is inside of you. All of these actions return you to yourself.

Now, the ego is the total opposite of this in every way. The ego wants to always add something, increase denial, hide stuff behind new layers of illusions, implement things, find success, seek outside yourself, lose yourself, forget who you are, move away from yourself and God, project, attack, point a finger of blame away from you, destroy others, fight with an opposing will, acquire, get, consume the external (food etc), implement magical solutions which undo nothing, add lie upon lie, twist and distort things out of recognition, get rid of sin onto others, disassociate from yourself, believe that cause is outside of you, see yourself as an effect of the external, positioning yourself as a victim of something separate, pursuing wild goose chases and dead ends, running away from God, becoming alone and isolated, losing your mind and sanity, fragmentation, making others responsible for your existence, trying to get someone else to choose for you, trying to get someone else to love for you or to wake you up, going to sleep, living in ignorance, becoming unconscious, entering darkness, achieve, strive for goals, develop an image, accumulate and build stuff that never existed, fill the emptiness with idols, idol worship, seeking external salvation, believing that things outside you can save you and solve all problems, being sick as a result of an external cause, dying by someone else's hand, listening to the ego's counsel, making things worse, an eye for an eye, waging war, murder, etc.

Notice that all of these actions are in an outward direction, away from yourself. They are all designed to disconnect you from God and put distance between you and God and therefore between you and yourself. They take you away from yourself and place every attribute of yourself outside of you into someone else's hands.

The main difficulty I find is that having been in the ego mindset for such a long time, my mind has sort of become very used to or unconsciously has formed habits whereby the mind moves in a direction away from myself. It pursues the external and thinks in externalizing ways. It's like there's all these arrows pointing outward and it seems to make the mind "flow" in that direction automatically. Even normal "thinking" processes seem to head in the direction of the external and these are just accepted as automatic or "normal".

So then when we come to the Course, our mind is coming up against a set of truths and techniques which are all INWARD pointing, and basically flowing in totally the OPPOSITE direction to the ego's thought system. They all point towards God, towards your true self, towards what is inside of you already. Even just the simple idea that you need not seek to find love or teach love because that is what you are but that you need to REMOVE the obstacles you've built against it. We are not accustomed to REMOVING anything. We're accustomed to believing that we LACK God and therefore need to go seek for specialness and ADD it to ourselves in order to "become" loving or spiritual. That's totally the ego, KEEPING its belief in sin and hiding it and then pretending to try to find solutions to it externally, where solutions do not exist, and thus building layer upon layer of denial and failure. It's all the authority problem, believing we can add to or change God's creation into something better or more true.

So it's quite difficult to get the mind to even move in the direction of thinking inwards, thinking upwards, thinking IN REVERSE, or thinking towards what ALREADY EXISTS within you. To think in reverse means to go from where your mind is at to what came BEFORE it, rather than going from where your mind is at and proceeding forwards to some kind of next step. It seems alien. It seems unnatural at first. It seems to take steps that bring all of the illusion into question, all assumptions are undermined, and all beliefs have to be examined and exhumed and tossed out, all values are brought into question, every attachment has to be surrendered, all external structures are collapsed, and your whole life is brought into question. And that's not what the ego wants at all, and it's not how we're used to thinking. To question everything, to question sin and sickness and death. To assume nothing, and to believe nothing that even our body's senses are telling us. To travel backwards up the chain of causality to where we came from.

You are already as God created you, you are already love, you are already perfect, there is NOTHING you can add to God's creation or Kingdom other than to increase what is already in it, which is perfect joy and love and happiness. And you are already WHOLE, already complete, needing nothing, lacking nothing. All of this other stuff that you keep trying to deal with by ADDING or CHANGING layers of illusions, are ego solutions and ways of dealing with this, really attempts to hide it even more.

So like, something happens and your ego steps in with a reaction and says, oh my God, this thing is so externally real, it is really happening, and the future is going to suck, so I better do something about this. I know, I'm going to do this and that... and then comes up with a long list of reactions and plans and solutions which it is going to DO, to tackle what it itself made real, as though something really occurred. It creates this entire "chain of thought" or train of thought, which goes from "here" to way off in the distance down all kinds of twists and turns, taking you away from presence. We need to stop the train before it even leaves the station, get off it, and then look backwards down the tracks to where we CAME FROM and go in THAT direction, undoing, backtracking, reversing and returning, inwardly and upwardly BACK to the truth, BACK to the answer to end all questions, and BACK Home to God.

To think with Holy Spirit is to think BACKWARDS. This requires us to initially STOP and put the pause button on. Freeze-frame things. Freeze the entire scenario and just observe what it contains, from a big perspective. And then start to REVERSE the steps we have already taken, to backtrack, to look at our real hidden motives (secret sins/hates etc), and to UNDO layer upon layer of false beliefs and projections and stuff that we basically tried to ADD to ourselves already, that has led to us witnessing a falsely perceived situation. But this seems awkward and counter-intuitive - or at least counter-ego. It's therefore essentially all about letting go and letting God, relinquishing attachments, surrendering to what is already true, accepting God as God is, returning to yourself, and becoming EMPTY of all the stuff that you "added" to yourself to try to make yourself become something you are not - different to how God created you (and how you still are, buried under the ego lies).

To question... "has this even really happened" - that's a totally backwards step which brings into question any ASSUMPTION that the ego has made, and digs way deeper into what is happening than to react to it and try to fix it or attack it with Course quotes or to deny it with fake positivity or to build a spiritual ego to defend against it (and keep it). To stop and go backwards, to ask, is this even real? Why do I believe this? Where is my perception coming from? Why have I chosen this? How did I put this in place myself? Who am I really underneath this? Is this really true of me? Not ACCEPTING stuff into your mind.

As Jesus says, whatever you accept into your mind, it becomes real to you. The ego automatically is just accepting everything "into" the mind like a black hole sucking the life out of everything. We have to learn to stop that, to think in reverse, and to cancel the ego, to go within, to reverse our thinking processes and develop this new "inward direction" which flows away from illusions and towards the PRE-EXISTING truth and love within us, which is already there and is already perfect. To ACKNOWLEDGE what is already true and accept it, rather than trying to REPLACE it or cover it up or deny it with stuff we MAKE (invent/add) with the ego.

At first this kind of backwards thinking is not at all easy for the mind to do. It seems like the mind has become "wired" to think forwards with the ego, outwardly. But gradually over time as you "practice" this and go through this PURIFICATION process, digging out and releasing old pain, getting to the bottom of things, finding yourself, taking back your power, returning to responsibility, accessing the power of choice, accepting atonement, it becomes easier because there is less of your own ego-aligned will working against you.

It's like you're literally learning how to reverse the direction of flow of a river. The mind has become separated from Spirit and is flowing out all by itself, broadcasting its own ideas and trying to replace God's creation with something of its own. That needs to be totally reversed and undone. We need to go back within and reconnect with God and plug ourselves back into the service of Spirit. It takes time to break out of the unconscious habits of flowing outward with the ego.

And there is a paradox here. Funnily enough, the more you go within and withdraw your projections away from the external and get to the core love that's already in you, THEN that's when love starts to radiate out from you. You don't become loving by trying to give give give without receiving.

You must receive inwards first. It's more like, you become a light bulb, the switch goes on, and you simply stay CENTERED and rooted in your true self, in Spirit, and you RADIATE from there, staying in that center at all times, instead of going away from yourself or abandoning or losing yourself. To the ego giving is a loss of yourself. To Spirit, giving INCREASES and you not only keep/hold onto your inner real self but you also SHARE that and it extends out on its own. Love extends because of what it is, without your help.

So to be more loving, stop dwelling on the external or on trying to sacrifice yourself or martyr yourself. Return inward to access awareness of love's presence and then simply SHINE from within. This is how God creates, by shining and radiating and sharing and extending, remaining true to Himself and still complete and anchored within Himself. He does not lose Himself in the process. This is how the Kingdom is increased. This is what it means to be the light of the world. To shine from within rather than to lose yourself. To become an intensely bright light which goes out from within. You have to BE WITHIN first in order to do that, and stay there. This outward shining is CREATION, and it is the same thing as sharing and extending. It is how God created you to begin with. And in that light you have never stopped being God's innocent child.

"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."

Each of us has an identity. God gave us an identity in and as part of Christ or the Sonship, which we share. But in the separation from God, we denied who we were and sought an identity that wasn't shared. That meant denying our mutual identity, placing us in a state of not being certain of who we are. Another way of saying that is that we became afraid of who we are.

Then we started trying to make an identity that would replace the identity we lost. We were out of touch with reality. So we started trying to assemble an identity from various illusions, and from things which are not really who or what we are. In particular we tried to identify with something isolated and alone, that you could call "only yours", rather than sharing an identity with others.

This included identifying with our bodies, believing that our body is our self. To do this our mind has to literally "attach" itself to "mix itself with" the body, trying to become "one" with it. As if to blur the lines between what is the body and what is our self. So that there is only one seeming self, not two. By trying to identify with a body, we're trying to hide our real identity and forget it, so that all that remains is the body self.

If I bind my definition of who and what I am, or what is true of me, to the body, then I am saying I AM a body. And then everything about the body I take personally as if it speaks of and defines me. Maybe I'll feel positive about my body for various reasons, due to how it looks or what it is capable of. Or maybe I'll feel negative about it based on it being ugly or defective. But both are still identifications with the body.

We can also shift to identifying with the mind, or with thoughts. When we have thoughts we can get a sense of an artificial sense of self, mixed in with the thinking. The mind can chatter away with its noise and the more it talks the more you mistake the talking for the person doing the talking. As if the sound of thought is the presence of someone. As if the thoughts are a self. And now you've identified with thinking, perhaps with intelligence or intellect, with memory or accumulation of knowledge.

You can also identify with social standing, your social background, class, race, gender, how much money you have, where your family seems to rank in terms of some social hierarchy, whether you are upper-class or lower, living in wealth or in poverty etc. You can also identify with failing to have much of a worthwhile identity in any of these areas, perhaps with a poor body and poor finances and poor living conditions, seeing yourself as identified as a helpless victim.

I think we can also identify with objects, with animals and pets, with places, with homes and cars etc. We can identify with our children, and literally feel as though what happens to them happens to us. As though they are a part of us, to such an extent that when they suffer we suffer, or we take everything that happens to them as a personal attack. This can lead to the identity of being a father or mother, someone who wants to keep that identity and not let it go, and who cannot deal with the empty nest.

These are all confused senses of who and what you are. And we're all looking for ourselves because think we lost ourselves. We sense that we are uncertain, thus afraid, of who and what we really are - or don't want to know. We don't remember our identity. It's like we have an amnesia. Whether it be an amnesia imposed by birth through crossing the barrier of dimensions and entering a body prison, or the illusion that every time you're born you start from scratch to build an identity.

"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." "The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So the big question really is, who are you? What are you? Are you the son of God as He created you? Or have you become something else? Do you want to be something else? Are you a body? Are you a relationship, or a child that you possess, or an object you own? Are you a social status or a financial position? Are you your job, or your role as a parent? Are you made of the guilt and fear and sin that you feel? Are you your thoughts and your thinking? Are you the intellect? Are you awareness? Do you have a soul?

Finding out who you really are, knowing yourself, is what Jesus says is the entire point of this course. It's about remembering and waking up to the recognition that you are still exactly the same identity that God created you to be forever. You are still Christ, you are still a soul, still part of the sonship, still perfect. Still a spiritual being. And your real identity is shared with all the other Sons of God.

So our whole process here is just sorting out, what are we experiencing as being our identity, who or what have we identified with or latched onto, what is it that we think is our self, and where have we put that? What have we tried to become "one with", other than God? What have we wrapped ourselves around in trying to portray ourselves as something God did not create?

If I think I am my body or my thoughts and have actually bound myself to them such that I seem to experience them "as me", then I am in need of correction. I am out of touch with who I really am and am believing I am something I am not. This means I lack awareness or awakening, or am unconscious. These mis-identifiations with things we are not, are blocks to awareness.

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. "

"The ego IS therefore a confusion in identification, which never had a consistent model, and never developed consistently."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU. This identification is as beyond doubt as it is beyond belief. Your wholeness HAS no limits, because its being is in Infinity."

"EVERYTHING you perceive as the outside world, is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification, for everyone believes that identification is salvation."

"They are reflections both of your own proper identification WITH your brothers, and of your own awareness that YOUR identification IS maintained by extension."

"The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for."

"When you imprison yourself, you are losing sight of your true identification with me and with the Father. Your identification IS with the Father and with the Son. It CANNOT be with one and not the other. If you are part of one, you MUST be part of the other because they ARE One."

"In his complete identification with the Christ--the perfect Son of God, His one creation and His happiness, forever like Himself and One with Him - Jesus became what all of us must be."

"As long as your identification vacillates, (and B's is weak) you cannot accept the gift that belongs to you."

"Your identification with the Kingdom is totally beyond question except by you WHEN YOU ARE THINKING INSANELY."

"ALL attack is self attack. It cannot BE anything else. Arising from your OWN decision NOT to be what you ARE, IT IS AN ATTACK ON YOUR IDENTIFICATION. "

"Miracles praise God through men. They praise God by honoring his Creations, affirming their perfection. They heal because they deny body-identification and affirm Soul-identification. By perceiving the Spirit, they adjust the levels and see them in proper alignment. This places the Spirit at the center, where Souls can communicate directly."

"This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. "

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"For example, if the identification is with the body, consciousness may distort superconscious impulses by denying their Source, and seeking their impact in the orgasm."

Everything real is of God, within God. God has no opposite because God is infinite, everywhere, always. It is not possible to leave God. There is nowhere that God is not. Anywhere "else", which must be unreal, does not exist.

"Ego", is nothing but a concept. It's an idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God. Since God is absolute existence, the idea of an ego is "total non existence". Literally, this conceptual idea of total opposition to God DOES NOT EXIST. Non-existence has no existence at all.

The ego is also the idea that you can totally LEAVE God, be OUTSIDE of God, totally separate from and cut off from God, in an entirely separate realm of "existence", in which God is 100% absolutely absent and there is NO LIFE. It's the idea that you can and have left God entirely, have successfully separated from reality, and are now NOWHERE, not existing, having no life, in total oblivion.

This notion, this idea, of total opposition to and separate from God, IS the idea of the ego. But IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Non-existence HAS no existence whatsoever. It is not possible to go there, exist there, be there or live there. We have not done this. Not even in our dreaming. It's a "goal", a "wish", but it is wishful thinking to believe you can accomplish it. God has no exit.

It is literally impossible to be outside of God's being. It is therefore literally impossible to be "inside" or "in" ego. In fact, the idea of ego is the idea of nothing. "The ego" has never lived, it has no life, no mind, no will, no power, no force, no opinion, absolutely nothing. It DOES NOT exist. It is literally NON-EXISTENCE. So all it can ever be to us is a CONCEPTUAL IDEA.

The "tiny mad idea" is the idea that IMPOSSIBLE NON-EXISTENCE actually exists. It is INSANE to believe this. You CAN believe impossible lies if you choose to, but this does not make them REAL, and believing it you MUST BE MISTAKEN.

You could not EVER even in the greatest delusion produce a state of non-existence. You could not separate yourself off from God's being. You could not leave God's reality. You could not produce a state opposite to God that HAS existence. You could not place yourself in a location that you can call "non-existence". Non-existence does not exist. Ever.

But what you DID DO, is you ATTEMPTED to APPROACH this state. You attempted to TRY to leave God. You tried to imagine that you COULD leave God completely, and that you had. And given that this was literally impossible, you WERE very confused, delusional, deceived and mistaken. You HAVE NOT DONE what you think you have done. ("There is no sin.")

It's kind of like, you are inside God still, but you imagine God has "outer walls". And then you imagine that you can push against these walls causing them to stretch. You think that if you push hard enough you will cause the walls to thin out. And that perhaps even in the greatest opposition to life imaginable, you'll be able to actually BREAK THROUGH .... to non-existence. That you'll literally be able to LEAVE God forever. To enter into some state where He DOES NOT exist.

The good news is, you WILL NEVER accomplish this, because all you could possibly do is enter NON-EXISTENCE which DOES NOT exist, so you CANNOT GO THERE. The ego is the idea of that place, that non-existence hell of nothingness, emptiness, lack of God, darkness, absence of light, lifelessness, death. It's a CONCEPTUAL REALM that does not exist. But you have used this concept of an "idea" of "what's it like to totally leave God forever", as a way to TRY TO DO SO.

It should be obvious this attempt is utterly pointless and futile. It cannot succeed. You are guaranteed to never not exist. All that you've "done", is ATTEMPT to leave God. You've pushed up against fictional boundaries, you've stretched the envelope, you've tried to blot God out of you mind so that you THINK you are not still inside of Him, and you've tried to make his outer walls as thin as possible. You reason that if you can ALMOST break through God's perimeter, He will become so thin that you will be able to OVERLOOK Him. And that then you'll be able to see PAST God, TO that non-existent realm. And this is what gives rise to FALSE PERCEPTION.

False perception is the attempt to overlook God in order to NOT SEE God, and instead to ignore and see PAST God TO that non-existent ego realm. And you will then start to IMAGINE that you CAN SEE a realm that doesn't exist. That you CAN SEE things which are IMPOSSIBLE and NOT THERE. And as Jesus clearly and correctly identifies this, this MUST be form a of hallucination. Because you CANNOT SEE what is NOT THERE, but believing you can and are MUST be delusional and hallucinatory.

You CANNOT REALLY SEE non-existence, but you keep trying to. And so you hallucinate A WORLD believing you are SEEING one. There IS NO WORLD, because there is NO OPPOSITE to GOD. The world, the illusory world you made, including Earth, is the insane system of thought produced by those driven mad by guilt. By people who believe they CAN SEE GOD's OPPOSITE. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." Earth is an hallucination by the insane, believing they are or have escaped God.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

The making of this hallucinated world was an attempt to leave God and to produce a state where GOD IS ABSENT. A world OUTSIDE the Kingdom, a world of NON-EXISTENCE, non-life, non-love, non-reality.

"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"

Yet even in this so-called "separate world", it STILL is not outside of God. We DID NOT produce a state of total non-existence. Even this world has a limited degree of seeming reality. It is not "totally not here". And so in this world, which is, let's say, hovering on the outer border between God and non-existence, still within God (a dream of exile within God), the idea of physical death is the FINAL attempt to TOTALLY LEAVE GOD. It's how we try to put as much distance between ourselves and God as possible. To be as opposite to LIFE as possible.

We reason that, in death, we finally can LEAVE the realm where God exists a little. As if we think death is a doorway into the NON-EXISTENT realm of the ego. As if even the fake illusions of life and almost-death of this world, are still not "unlike God enough", and ONLY death can seal the deal and take us TOTALLY into that ego state. To cross over into the realm of non-existence. And as such, when we produce death, we are trying our hardest to LEAVE GOD and be NOTHING LIKE HIM. Death is a total unwillingness to live, to exist, to have anything of God, and to make His Son NOT EXIST. The attempt to do this is of course murderous and suicidal.

EVEN WHEN the body dies, unfortunately we STILL do not succeed in reaching the non-existent ego realm. The Son of God's spirit cannot be affected or killed, so we HAVE TO then carry on and reincarnate. Death FAILS to take us outside of God. Death FAILS to end life. Death is not the end of life, it is merely DENIAL of the fact that you CANNOT DIE because you CANNOT LEAVE THE LIFE OF GOD. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

So think of this world, Earth, as merely A FAILED ATTEMPT to leave God. A failed attempt to completely separate from existence. A failed attempt to die. It does not accomplish what it claims. It cannot succeed in destroying God or His Son. Death is pointless and futile. You might as well just acknowledge you are alive in God and live forever.

"Swear not to die you Holy Son of God, you have made a bargain that you cannot keep."

In this world, "separation from God" or the LEAVING of God, producing a state of NEAR death, near non-existence, is REVERSIBLE, because it is not total. It is not total non-existence or total ego. If it were "absolute separation", it could not be undone. The fact that it CANNOT BE separation proves it is limited in its capacity to accomplish anything. And this is why death can be reversed and resurrection is possible, even physically, because death is NOT TOTAL.

This world does not work. It is a failed attempt. Death is failure. It doesn't do what it claims to do. It will NOT complete the separation or take you outside God. You might as well stop trying to die and just live. You HAVE eternal life, you just keep rejecting it. Denying it. You're an eternal immortal being pretending to suffer and die as if that were ever possible. Pretending you are limited and mortal and affected and sick and suffering. It is futile. It will not bring about an escape from God. And sickness's only purpose is to TRY TO escape from God.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"All forms of sickness even unto death (including physial death), are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

You cannot leave God. You have not left Home. You DREAM that you are outside the Kingdom. You imagine you have placed yourself BEYOND God's walls. You THINK you have succeeded in entering a non-existent lifeless realm where God does not exist. You have not. You are just sleeping and pretending to be exiled.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The ego DOES NOT EXIST. It's nothing but the CONCEPT of NON-EXISTENCE. It is another word for nothingness, impossibility, absolute void, godlessness, emptiness and absence. It HAS no existence at all. All our dramas are entirely a fictional attempt to BRING IT ABOUT, to get closer to it, to attach to it, to believe YOU ARE IT. This CANNOT BE. You can't do it.

BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN OR HAVE IS DELUSIONAL. It produces hallucinations of worlds that don't exist. Stuff that is NOT THERE, that you only seem to perceive because of your BELIEF in it. Your DESIRE to DREAM OF unrealities and fictional fairtytales. It is WISHFUL THINKING. And "there is no world apart from what you wish." You're not in non-existence, you're IN GOD, PRETENDING NOT TO BE. THERE IS NO WORLD.

Post-atonement awakening reawakens your mind to realize that THERE IS NO EGO, there is no non-existent world, you never DID leave God, you COULDN'T die, nothing has really happened, and ONLY the Kingdom of God exists. It is the end of DENIAL, the end of resistance, and the end of suffering.

"Ego" is nothing, literally. Your ATTEMPT to give "it" power does not give it power. You can't empower nothing. Ego does not exist. All you do is convince yourself that you are willing against yourself and that you are using your power against itself. You merely become divided against yourself and disassociated. All your efforts to be NOT LIKE God seem to manifest "the ego's characteristics", is an attempt to BE LIKE the ego. The non-existent ego. You never BECOME it.

It's just you being confused about what you are and where you are. You are safe in God at all times.

"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."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."

"You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God."

"denial of Life perceives its opposite"

"your salvation lies in teaching exactly the opposite of everything the ego believes"

"You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you."

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to reality."

"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?"

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

God has given you free will. Anything you choose is yours to choose. No-one else has any say in what your choices are. No-one has any right to decide for you what your choices are, to make commentary about your choices, to judge your choices, or to accuse you of making the wrong choice. It is none of their business.

Each person is solely responsible for their own personal freedom, which means that anything that a person experiences is entirely chosen, and not induced by anyone or anything else. God is the only cause of anyone. "I am forever an effect of God." One brother does not cause or create another brother. All brothers are equals as siblings precisely because they are not the cause of each other. No one else has EVER been the cause of anything you have experienced. If you believe otherwise you are confused.

You do not have the power to cause anyone else. No one else has the power to cause you. Being entirely responsible for your own freedom can only arise when you grant everyone else total responsibility for their own freedom. If you attempt to control, manipulate, judge, coerce, persuade, condemn, or otherwise alter other people's freedoms, you are denying your own and imprisoning yourself. It will not help you.

When you are entirely responsible for your own perfect freedom, which is a gift from God, you will recognize that absolutely nothing happens against your will. Not suffering, not sickness, not even death. "The power of decision is my own." Your sole responsibility is acceptance of atonement for yourself, so that you can offer it to others. But it is not for you to shove it down their throats, nor can you force anyone to be at peace, or to be loving, or to choose what you think they should.

When a person begins to lose sight of their own freedom, they lose touch with responsibility for the power of choice. And they begin to believe that causation and power are outside of them. They disempower themselves by blaming others. And then they automatically begin to try to make sense of why things are happening seemingly outside of their choosing, and it starts to make sense that someone else is choosing for you. And now you have assigned responsibility for your freedom to someone else.

When you think that someone else is responsible for your freedom, you are being irresponsible, and you will now depend on them making decisions that you approve of. You will encourage them to choose for you, provided it's the right choice that you indirectly want. If they do not choose what you want, for you, you will attack them for failing to give you what you want.

This then becomes the ego's mandate of "forgiveness to destroy", in which responsibility for freedom and for change is assigned to someone other than yourself, instead of you taking the responsibility to make your own decisions. You also cannot claim total responsibility for your own decision-making, while simultaneously believing that other persons are responsible for your decisions. Which means you have to allow other people to be entirely responsible for whatever decisions they make.

When you enter into coercion, control, blame, judgement, accusation, condemnation, taking sides, demanding that people comply with your beliefs, trying to force people to act a certain way, requiring people to make certain choices that you think are the right choices (for any reason), or have expectations or "needs" relating to what they do to or for you, you are entering into insanity, a special relationship, and false perception.

"God does not coerce".

"Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange."

"Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

You can easily spot when someone is moving into ego. Instead of being responsible ONLY for their own free will choice, they begin to displace responsibility onto other people. Causation is placed outside of them. They then begin trying to manipulate or "guilt-trip" others into acting certain ways, to comply indirectly with their wishes. The seeming "boundary" of freedom between them and others is disrupted, they trespass on the sacred territory of another, and the invasion of war begins.

When people are arguing about whether they should or should not do something, or what is the right thing to do, or who did what to whom, or who is responsible for causing other people to be sick, or who is putting who in danger, or any other dynamic where one person is accused of being responsible for another, the ego is involved. The two people are becoming tangled in a special relationship, anchored at the body level of insane illusions and fictional causes.

Interestingly, when someone is doing this, which always involves projection and anger, which is an attempt to make someone guilty, the person is claiming to be acting in the interests of freedom and the good of all, but are simultaneously rejecting their own freedom by trying to control the freedom of others. Or rather, they place their own freedom into the hands of other people and then try to accuse them of mis-handling it, meaning you don't really believe that other people are free to use YOUR freedom as they see fit.

To make a long story short, what other people choose to do is absolutely none of your business. This is why Jesus asks you to "be passerby". You are only free when you recognize that your brother is free. You cannot recognize his freedom if you are trying to control him, trying to get him to side with you, are waging a war and trying to win allies, or when you're accusing him of inappropriate choices (sin).

If you reject the freedom of others you are in fact shutting down your own freedom, but you do this in the name of trying to uphold your freedom, which is insane. You clearly cannot increase your freedom, or secure your rights, by taking freedom and rights away from other people. If other people are making poor decisions, then the consequences of those decisions are their responsibility only. You cannot be affected by them, unless you yourself personally make a poor choice as well. You cannot be cursed unless you curse yourself first, and other people's poor decisions DO NOT affect you against your will.

"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."

When you move into an area of believing that other people greatly affect you, can destroy your life, can interfere with your health, can threaten your family, or can in any way do anything to you by their free choosing, you yourself have a mental health problem. You are denying your own freedom to such an extent that you think other people are the owners of your freedom. You have given them the power to do this to and for you, meaning also that you do not love yourself. And yet you accuse them of acting against your love.

You in fact want other people to be responsible for you, and in fact you want them to do things to you against your will, so that you can maintain that you are not free. You therefore use your enemies as devices to keep yourself imprisoned, and the more you hate them the more you succeed in imprisoning yourself. The only way to be free yourself is to grant freedom to everyone. Blaming people for imprisoning you or violating your rights is a great way to violate your own rights.

You might think that if you were to do this there would be anarchy, you would be vulnerable, idiots would run the country, fools would steal your possessions, stupid nutjobs would try to hurt your family, and the broken would try to infect you with their diseases. But these are actually part of your own attempt to reject health, reject life, reject protection, reject invulnerability, and reject safety. None of this can happen without your psychological consent.

You can't have it both ways. You can't be in the business of disempowering yourself and disowning your supernatural power of immortality, while at the same time claiming that other people are responsible for your wellbeing and are able to hurt you. You do in fact have a mind-over-matter power innate to all children of God, capable of rendering you immune and invulnerable to all the things of the world. You have an automatic God-given miraculous ability to heal anything and overcome anything. And nothing can prevail against you.

"Today it is the ego which stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

When you are in the business of making other people's business your business, you are not in business. You are out of business, which is why you are trying to get the business of others by being involved in their business. You busy yourself with their business because you have no business doing so. And by doing so, you have no business at all.

The people who are having an utter shit fit about whether or not to vaccinate need to pay attention to sanity and reason. You are immortal and you cannot die. No-one and nothing can happen against your will. So who are you accusing of being responsible for things happening to you? It is in fact you who is disempowering yourself and setting yourself up as a victim, and you want to have victimizers in your life who you believe oppose you, to pretend that you don't want their opposition, so that you can keep being a victim about it.

All forms of sickness are illusions produced by an insane mind, acted out upon a body. This is something that you do to yourself. "The mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body." Your mind has the power to decide whether or not to live or die, to be sick or well, to be happy or unhappy. No one has the right or the responsibility to take this power or freedom away from you. And no-one can. Only you can give it away, disown it, or try to lose it, by your own free will. That's your choice.

If you fear that you can be infected by another's contagion, or by some random environmental evil, then your mind is already sick and needs help. If you are not willing to receive the help, then you are in a bind. It means you do not want to be healthy and you want to die. And yet in this condition you will claim that you want to be healthy and not be sick. But you cannot be even believe that you can be sick while simultaneously bringing about the ONLY decision capable of making you suffer. Nor can you be blaming the cause of your suffering on a speck of particles, or a car crash, or any kind of external causation.

"No-one can die, unless he chooses death. What seems to be the FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."

The real deeper issue behind all this covid panick, is the fear of death and "how to be safe". However...

"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."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

When we are body identified, we place ourselves on the battlefield and accuse ourselves of weakness. Then we set ourselves up for being subject to a warzone and threaten ourselves with causes on the same level. We then try to escape this threat with magical means and silly maneuvers which are supposed to somehow make you invulnerable and safe, as if this solves the problem. The problem is not whether or not you are susceptible to a disease, the problem is that you are choosing to believe in disease in the first place, therefore threatening yourself with inducing it.

It then does not matter whatsoever whether you choose to get a vaccine or not. Getting one is insane. Not getting one is insane. Both are insane because they are based on a false premise. If the premise is "sickness is real and I am vulnerable to death against my will", then you are already insane. And making the decision to be vaccined OR not vaccinnated are both equally insane outcomes based on a lie.

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." You cannot go either way and claim to be making a sane decision.

You cannot escape from or have external salvation from sickness, while looking for external solutions to an externalized problem. If the world does not exist, who is doing this to you? Who is deciding that you are weak and vulnerable and attackable and destroyable? This is nothing other than your resposnibility and your belief. "I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts." ...

"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 which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you are not able to accept total responsibility, which is atonement, then you are in a predicament. You say you want salvation but you don't. You say you want life but you keep choosing death. You say you want health but you believe in sickness and then panick in fear trying to scramble to find ways to defend agaisnt it, knowing it cannot work. What are you going to do? If you are not willing to entertain a miracle, then you are left with no other option. If you are not willing to forgive and rise above the battlefield, you have no other option.

The only remedy you are then left with is a solution which can at best seem to partially work, and at worst destroy you. This is true of any vaccine as much as it is true of ANY magical solution. No magical solution will ever induce wholeness, nor will it make you invulnerable, nor cause you to be what you are. Magic will not correct your mind, it will likely have no effect on your insane beliefs, and it will not ultimately save you from death. It is your thoughts alone that decide whether or not you are choosing to die, and this overrides all magic, and the world.

So you are then in a predicament because you cannot possibly choose a remedy that truly works, all the remedies are broken, the only action you can take is incomplete, and nothing external can truly cause you to be peaceful. "salvation comes from nothing outside of you."

"THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you."

A vaccine is, at best, an illusion of a solution. It might seem to work for some people and not for others. It may seem to work to a degree, but not totally. It absolutely MUST attack the body in some way as all magic does. It will not stop any virus from entering your body and beginning to take hold.

It will not prevent your body from being vulnerable. It will not ward off death nor will it cause you to feel safe. It might, potentially, seem to manipulate the body so that it might, perhaps, if your mind consents, avoid contagion or transmission of a disease some of the time. But it will not bring peace to your soul. God doesn't live in a syringe. Nor does God need booster shots.

If all you can choose is a senseless insane choice, a partial choice, a choice which you know cannot truly work, which can at best produce an illusion of health, and which may in fact hurt you, what are you to do? This is where you need to ideally be willing to turn to someone who knows better than you. Ask the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus. Ask your angels. Get some guidance from a higher perspective. If you are not willing or ready to go there yourself, get their input. Let them decide for you.

And this again is where we must acknowledge the freedom of your will. No divine being is ever going to mandate a vaccination, nor are they necessarily going to always advise against it in a given situation. What is right for YOU, is dependent upon every speck of your mental state and what is appropriate, not only for you, but in the atonement plan and in the script for your life.

There may be a reason for you to elect temporary sickness. There may be a reason for you to meet certain people. There may be a good reason for YOU in particular NOT to choose a vaccine. There may be a cascade of outcomes that are only possible if you do, or do not, get medicated. There may be a good reason why you SHOULD, just as there may be a good reason you shouldn't. And it has absolutely NOTHING to do with anyone else, solely because the curriculum is individualized.

The Holy Spirit knows what is best for you given YOUR situation, where you are at and what you are ready for. He knows where your trust is. He knows what you are capable of and will accept. Turn to his advice rather than that of fear or the ego. And especially beware of the egos of other well-meaning people especially the ones who are religious about the "reasons why" you should or should not make a certain choice. EVERY reason on this level is fiction.

If you cannot or will not turn to the advice of a wiser counsel, and if you refuse health, and if you actively are choosing sickness, and if you are living therefore in fear of contagion, then your options are limited. Love does not enter where it is not welcome. You can be prayed for. You can be loved. But you may reject all support. You may have a death wish. You may want to die. It might be "your time", based on your plan. Who knows. I do not know and no-one else likely knows either. Matters are far deeper than some "statics" about viruses or medicines.

Long story short, if you made it this far. .... you are always absolutely free to make any choice you want to make, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. If anyone is trying to control your decision for ANY reason at all, they are denying their own freedom and are trying to make you responsible for them. They are like children looking for a parent to depend on, to decide everything for them.

This is because they have become undependeable and irresponsible. It's up to YOU to decide how to discern where they are at, and to be responsible yourself for your own choice. And whatever you choose, God loves you.

At the end of the day all you can do is make your own choice in freedom, and free from guilt, and do so decisively and with conviction. But not a conviction that turns into tyranny, or the attempt to recruit others to your cause. Let people be where they are at. Let them make their own decisions. Let them be mistaken and recognize that they are.

Not because they don't do what you want them to do, but because they are free of you. You have no business trying to coerce people to agree with YOUR fearful belief in laws that are not of God.

What I decide to do is none of your business, or anyone's. What guidance I receive regarding my own choices, is none of your business either. What I decide to do or not do has nothing to do with you either. And if you think that my choice affects you, you are deliberately disempowering yourself, because nothing happens to you against your will. This is not supposed to be a selfish free-for-all, or a war, where people are opposing each other and digging in their heels thinking they know what's true. Nothing in this world is true, it's just a dream.

Go within, and go above. That's the only place where there is any sanity.

God willed that you be innocent forever, and God's will is done. Nothing can ever change this. This innocence isn't merely some kind of judgement of your condition. It's your actual permanent state of being. In your being, in your mind, there is still a place that is wholly completely innocent and pure and will never be guilty.

"We seem to be discrete and unaware of our eternal unity with Him. Yet back of all our doubts, past all our fears, there still is certainty. For Love remains with all Its Thought, Its sureness being Theirs. God's memory is in our holy minds, which know their oneness and their unity with their Creator."

In the separation, we merely went into a state of denial. We pretended that the truth was not true. We also pretended we were no longer ourselves, no longer innocent and no longer a part of God. This denial isn't a fact, because denial doesn't actually make anything go away.

All denial does is hide the awareness of the presence of that which is STILL THERE, pretending it is gone. In fact, Jesus speaks to this property of denial and the fact that even the denial confirms the existence of that which it denies.

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true." So a part of your mind does in fact still believe, right now, and always, that you are perfectly innocent forever. Then your mind became split, and now a second portion of your mind believes it is guilty. You therefore have two conflicting opinions about yourself in your mind at the same time.

"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE."

The problem we typically have, is that once we go into denial, the denial DOES SEEM to block the AWARENESS OF the presence of love. It seems to block the awareness that, in truth, you actually still are holy and innocent. You still are an immortal being in God. And you will never change, nor have you been changed by the denial.

So some portion of you is literally still innocent right now. And some other portion of you believes the opposite. That second portion is what we call ego.

"The ego is a part of your belief about yourself."

However, in order TO DENY the part of you that is still innocent, your mind does block awareness. This produces a shift in premise, which makes it potentially possible to become convinced that what you've denied HAS GONE AWAY. Ie, out of sight out of mind. If you are not aware of it, surely it's not there.

Entering into denial tends to make you believe that you have actually CHANGED, from an innocent holy being, into an evil anti-christ false-self. The denial suggests your real self has been destroyed, and no longer exists. That you have literally transformed from one state to another, and now you are SOLELY in a state of guilt. The unawareness of the continued presence of your innocent self tempts you toward believing these illusions.

All of the world, all bodies, space and time, all sickness and death and suffering, is entirely designed to try to HIDE FROM THE TRUTH. It's an attempt to shut out the FACT of what you STILL ARE. That you actually literally still are as God created you right now. Just as the world was made as an attack on God, it was an attempt to ASSERT a one-sided ego war upon the truth about you. To depict you as if you have been destroyed and turned into something dead.

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son."

All suffering, all death, all states of sickness, all resistance to reality, all defenses against the truth, all blocks to awareness, all lies and deceptions, all body identification, its entire purpose was to resist God. To try to stop God's will. To try to overthrow and usurp his completed permanent works and replace it with something else, in order to PRETEND that his kingdom had been destroyed. That the son of God could be killed.

The strange scenario, however, is that while you are busy being guilty and worthless and deserving of horrible punishments, SIMULTANEOUSLY, there is another self, another PART OF YOU, that is right this instant STILL HOLY AND INNOCENT. It has not in truth changed.

What this then reveals is that the world, the mindset of the ego thought system, all of space and time, and every separation ego idea, is all a COVER UP. It is literally a veil placed OVER the truth of the permanence of the Kingdom of God. It is put there to come BETWEEN you and the truth to HIDE the truth. To hide from the attraction of God. To smother reality with illusions. To keep you from realizing that NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

"To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true." "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"

Therefore, we can say that "underneath" your guilt, there is ALSO a place any our mind where you are STILL innocent. That innocent place was NOT converted into guilt, it was NOT transformed into an anti-christ, and it remains exactly as God created it. Right now. Even in PARALLEL with the guilty false sense of self that you maintain is your whole identity.

THERE IS STILL INNOCENCE IN YOU AND THERE ALWAYS WILL BE.

"The changelessness of Heaven is in you, so deep within that nothing in this world but passes by, unnoticed and unseen. The still infinity of endless peace surrounds you gently in its soft embrace, so strong and quiet, tranquil in the might of its Creator, nothing can intrude upon the sacred Son of God within."

"But most of all, try to sink down and inward, away from the world and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality."

"Go past all the raucous shrieks and sick imaginings that cover your real thoughts and obscure your eternal link with God."

"and then try to reach past all your images and preconceptions about yourself to the truth in you. If Love created you like Itself this Self must be in you. And somewhere in your mind It is there for you to find."

So Jesus is actually telling us that below the murky surface "clouds of guilt" which seem to smother and obscure, block and distract, deflect and deceive, BELOW and BEYOND the world and the body and the ego guilt, there is STILL a quiet place within you where you are perfectly innocent still. Where you are still as God created you.

This means that you actually have two parts to you right now. A holy self and a false self. Because your mind is split. The guilt is in one part, and the innocence is in another. And the guilt merely seems to HIDE the innocence, so you think there is no innocence in you, or that you can ONLY be guilty OR innocent at one time. This is not true.

Your mind is in fact divided between TWO goals, and wants two conflicting things at once. One part of you still accepts your innocence while another part is attacking it. The only reason you tolerate this is because you've identified WITH the guilt and have believed the illusions of the denial, such that you don't think the innocent part is EVEN THERE any more. And you maintain the guilt IN ORDER TO keep the innocence hidden.

Because if you were to actually become aware of the sinlessness within you, it would then become obviously clear that you cannot be both innocent AND guilty at the same time. And yet this is what your mind has actually been believing. Covered up, below, beyond, and underneath your guilt, there is a dwelling place of innocence and being as God created you still. And how can that be compatible with being guilty?

If you go within and look for that innocence and realize it MUST still be there, then it also becomes apparent that you cannot ACCEPT being both innocent and guilty, in conscious awareness. Only one of them can be true. One of them must go! And since the innocence has the property of permanence and unchangeability, the guilt MUST be fake. The guilt must be false and a mistake and NOT TRUE. And this also means the world must be false as well.

Jesus actually refers to "the real world" as this borderland of thought or place within your mind, where you come to fully realize that the innocence is true and the guilt is false. Allowing yourself to recognize that ONLY THE TRUTH CAN BE TRUE, ie only the permanent innocence in you can be really there, the guilt is correctly framed as IMPOSSIBLE, and is finally let go.

"Here is the meeting place where thoughts are brought TOGETHER; where conflicting values MEET, and ALL illusions are laid down beside the truth, where they are judged to be untrue. This borderland is just beyond the gate of Heaven."

"It HAS BEEN recognized that, if they were BROUGHT TOGETHER, their joint acceptance WOULD become impossible. But, if one is kept in darkness FROM THE OTHER, their SEPARATION seems to keep them both alive, and equal in their reality. Their JOINING thus becomes the source of fear, for, if they meet, acceptance MUST be withdrawn from one of them."

"They are brought together, and only ONE continues past the gate where Oneness is. Salvation IS a borderland, where place and time and choice have meaning still, and yet it can be seen that they are temporary, OUT of place, and EVERY choice has been ALREADY made."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT? Light or darkness, knowledge or ignorance are yours, but not both. Opposites must be brought together, and not kept apart. For their separation is only in your mind, and they are reconciled by union, as YOU are. In union, everything that is not real MUST disappear, for truth IS union. As darkness disappears in light, so ignorance fades away when knowledge dawns."

"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."

All bodies are different. Even the bodies of identical twins. No two are alike. No two share the same molecules. They can be similar, but more often than not they'll be different in a multitude of ways.

The whole world seems to thrive on the differences between bodies. And then we all tend to compare our body to the bodies of others. As if we are our bodies, and as if having certain body attributes defines whether we're good enough or lovable or correct or fit in.

But all bodies were fundamentally born from the idea of inequality, difference and conflict. They might appear to be of the same species, as if sharing common characteristics, but within that framework there is great variety. Even the wings of butterflies are not all identical. Not every fish has quite the same scales. And no two voices are quite the same.

Sometimes, those who are body-identitied then try to adjust to this fact by making out that the body is special for being different. It's unique and unalike, standing out from the crowd. And then we exalt them for certain noticeable abilities and features.

But the fact is that in order to have something in this world, you have to lack something else. In order to define yourself as one thing, you have to exlude other things. You can't have or be everything on a physical level. You must be deprived in order to gain. You must lose in order to win. And you must sacrifice in order to measure up.

There are great movements towards trying to get bodies to be considered equal. Equal rights for each gender. Equal rights or sexual persuasions. Equal rights for ethnicity or skin color. As if to say, everyone who is a body is the same. But bodies are never the same. No two are exactly the same, and never will be. They can't be. To be what they are they have to lack what the others have.

This means that no-one can ever be in a position to have everything as a body. No body can be perfect. No body has it all. Some might seem to turn out more lucky or favorable than others. Some are uglier, some more aesthetic. Some are larger, smaller, taller, thinner. Some may be fundamentally more artistic, more athletic, quicker to move, clumsier, better shaped, more manly or womanly, better able to think or analyze, more emotional etc.

So then it comes down to the fact that all bodies are really just pieces of equipment. Because people are not bodies and minds are not bodies. So each of us has this chunk of equipment strapped onto us which we express through and use. But the particular configuration or "features" of the equipment will determine what the body can seem to do.

I will not ever have the low bassy voice of Barry White. I will not ever have female parts. I will not ever have the genetically blessed muscle definitions of Arnold. I will not ever have Betty Davis's eyes. My legs won't look like that of an olympic runner. My fingers aren't ever going to be nimble enough to play Spanish guitar music. My face isn't ever going to look like a rugged lumberjack. And there is just no way my bum is ever going to look big in this.

These are just simply the facts of what kind of equipment I am using. And for some people there are significant defects. People with disabilities, limbs missing, motor control problems, defects of skin, wonky eyes, a propensity for deadly farts, and hopelessly crooked teeth. That's just what the body has, and shows us what the body also does not have.

Both of which go to defining what it seems to be capable of. If you identify with your body you are doomed to enter into a realm of comparison and low self esteem and dissatisfaction and dysmorphia and food disorders and judgement and all manner of concern. Jealousy and envy and hatred and anger and sadness and all sorts of stuff can arise from this. Because if the body's limitations are considered the truth of you, then the fact is that EVERYONE is limited in one way or another, and no-one in the whole world will ever have physical perfection.

"Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found."

"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. 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. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"The body is a limit imposed on the universal communication which is an eternal property of mind."

ALL bodies are lacking and all bodies are defective and all bodies are limited and all bodies are special. They're supposed to be. They were made in an effort to limit you and act as a decoy and disguise for your inner perfection. They were meant to separate you off and confine you and act like a prison wall. And they were designed to be a representation of what you are NOT like.

"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."

Some bodies thus seem to have talents or abilities that others do not, or aptitudes or intelligences or particular quirks that others lack. Some seem to be born blessed and others cursed. Some have wonderful voices and others sound like a freight train. Some are beautifully symmetrical and others are like a lopsided lump of lard. These are just the way bodies are. They are greatly varied and unalike and unfamiliar and unequal and unnatural.

Some will take advantage of the particular traits of their particular body to try to maximize its capabilities. And this usually means certain aptitudes in certain areas. Some become brain surgeons while totally sucking at singing. Others become pop stars but completely suck at relationships. Some become athletes but can't dance to save their lives. And others just get dealt a bad hand of shit and crap and deformity and bullshit. Then we have to sort of make the best of it, or just hate ourselves.

We can't look to the body for perfection because perfection means wholeness. Bodies are limited and varied and none of them have everything, so none of them are whole. They are fundamentally lacking. Not one of them can fully or accurately represent who and what you are. None of them look like you. And none of them can picture what you really look like.

"For what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

If you identify with or AS your body, or your body's attributes or abilities, or the roles you assign it or the labels you give it, you are mis-identifying yourself and do not know who and what you are. This narrows you and confines you and shuts you in a prison and places major limitations on you. It distorts and shuts down your awareness, diminishes your mind, and deranges your mind.

In fact, Jesus tells us that if we conceive of ourselves as a body in any way, even slightly, we are in fact attacking what we are. Given that we are perfect whole spirit lacking nothing and sharing everything, when we identify with or as a body we are literally putting limits on ourselves. And this is an attack on ourselves, which produces symptoms of sickness, which then manifest in the body. So now the body becomes sick if you believe you are your body, because you're shutting down your unlimited life.

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."

"Any relationship in which the body enters is based, NOT on love, but on idolatry."

"The ego is idolatry; the sign of limited and separated self, born in a body, doomed to suffer and to end its life in death. It is the will that sees the Will of God as enemy, and takes a form in which It is denied. The ego is the "proof" that strength is weak and love is fearful, life is really death, and what opposes God alone is true."

"God created love, NOT idolatry. ALL forms of idolatry are caricatures of creation, taught by sick minds, who are too divided to know that Creation SHARES power, and NEVER usurps it."

"The power to heal is now his Father's gift, for through His Voice He still can reach His Son, reminding him the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth."

"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. For here is love made fearful, and hope abandoned. Even the idols that are worshipped here are shrouded deep in mystery, and kept APART from those who worship them. This is the temple dedicated to no relationships, and no return."

Jesus in fact is saying here that the body, designed to be a device for separation, becomes a way to NOT RELATE TO ANYONE, by being cut off and limited physically behind a wall of flesh. If you identify with it, make it your self, see it as defining you, accept its limitations as true of you, associate or align with it, dwell on it, focus on it, make it an obstacle, or in any way allow it to come between you and others to any degree, then you are entering into the separation and into death.

"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."

"The removal of blocks, then, is the ONLY way to guarantee help and healing. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working THROUGH the body but not IN it. If the mind believes the body is its GOAL, it WILL distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it will INDUCE illness by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot BUT foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else." There is a way to work through the body and to use it for a higher purpose, but this doesn't change what the body IS. It doesn't make it become whole or holy. It doesn't lift away its nature or stop it from being a confining limited mechanism. In truth, the Holy Spirit's repurposing of the body in fact renders the body FUNCTIONLESS and MEANINGLESS.

"Yet freedom of the body HAS no meaning."

"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."

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim. 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 body is supposed to become UNNECESSARY to you. Un-needed, and cast off. Adding nothing to you. Giving you no abilities. Not defining you or limiting you or getting in your way. Nor does it remain and succeed in doing this, because the body has to go in order for you to experience unlimitedness. "To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

"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."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. ****Limits on love will ALWAYS seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him.**** The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and completely limitless idea. It draws a circle, infinitely small, around a very little segment of Heaven, splintered from the whole, proclaiming that, within it, is YOUR Kingdom, where God can enter not. Within this kingdom the ego rules, and cruelly. And, to defend this little speck of dust, it bids you fight against the universe."

The body must be transcended, then let go completely. You must surmount it and go beyond it.

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

"The death of an illusion means nothing. It disappears when you awaken and decide to dream no more."

In this world, it SEEMS that death is linear, ie horizontal. You make a passage through time, the body gradually malfunctions, and eventually it dies. This seems to mean that death is the final result of life, at the end of a long road.

But let's consider for a moment, that perhaps death is not linear, but vertical. You don't become more dead by moving sideways, you become more dead by moving DOWNWARDS, away from God who is life.

If a person is closer to God, they are closer to life. They are high on life. If they are more distant from God, they are closer to death. They are removed from the present, riddled with guilt and lost in time. This is irrespective of the age of the body.

When someone enters into sickness they are entering into death. "Sickness is but a little death". But, if the sickness is healed, what does that mean? It means they have resurrected a little. They have moved closer to God who is life. Death has, for now, been surmounted. We do in fact move in and out of death, or rather UP AND DOWN between life and death, as we move in and out of avoidance of God.

Anyone who is young, or who is old, can be said to be more or less alive, not based on the age of the body in time, but upon whether the mind is close to or more distant from love. God is love, God is life, God is health and wholeness. If you are closer to that, you are more healthy in the mind, and this will result in a healthier body. Some people even become more healthier "later" in life.

Advancing upwards towards the light, is resurrection. Resurrection means "a return to life", suggesting a temporary absence or lack of life. A person can quite easily dip down towards hell, at some point in their life, hit rock bottom, and then return upwards. And in this upwards motion there is a resurrection and a healing. Life is restored, health is restored. The person is less dead than they were. They are more filled with the life of God. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life."

The Course asks us to "swear not to die". It is asking us to swear not to move down into death away from life, or into the ego away from God. It isn't simply pointing at you causing the body not to die at age 90, it's telling you to stop killing it at all ages. Even that it may be in near-permanence for an indefinite time.

We need to think of death not so much in physical terms but in mental terms. A "more dead" mind is one filled with ego, fear and separation. An attacking mind is certainly not in-line with life. A heavily sick mind is half dead already. An attacking mind is also very much more prone to express sickness and attack the body, making it symbolize its distance from health and life. Remember "the sick are merciless and in contagion do they seek to kill", because in sickness we are defending against life.

Death therefore really doesn't so much have anything to do with the linear progression of time, or how old the body seems to be. It is much more, and perhaps only, to do with how vertically a person becomes closer or more distant from life itself. If we remove ourselves from harmony, peace, love, sanity, harmlessness, we are removing ourselves from health and vitality as well. We are darkening our light and attacking our bodies. The ego worships the "God of sickness" who is against health and against life itself, so the more ego-filled we are the more dead we are.

A destructive mind is a deadly mind. A constructive mind is a resurrective mind. Regardless of what happens to the body, or whether perhaps it is laid down or exited or disappeared, if the mind of the person in the body is filled with life and light, the body is much less prone to destruction, decay, damage or death. It has been infused with a higher vibration of order and sustaining of life, making it much harder for degradation to take hold. And a mind free from guilt completely CANNOT suffer. "The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body, for it cannot conceive of illness." etc

This may explicitly account for the cases of "incorruptible bodies" of some saints, whereby even though their soul/mind has left the body behind, the presence of LIFE and light and spirit, working through that body, infuses it with continuation. With life-supporting vibes. Or rather, attacks it much less, and so it is not left with an imprint of death and destruction. This causes it to remain in health and avoid decomposing because as an "energy pattern" or "thought form", it is a thought of life and not a thought of destruction. A thought FROM a living mind.

Death has to be considered vertical, in fact, because we know that death is a manifestation of fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death are physical expressions of the FEAR of awakening." Therefore death, which is the same as sickness, and all forms of sickness of the body, all malfunctioning, is really nothing to do with linear causes at all, and only to do with vertical causes. A fearful mind attacks the body and destroys it by pushing it away from heaven towards hell. A loving mind heals the body and maintains it in perfect health by lifting it up in ressurection.

What we call health then, cannot be described in terms of linear happenings. We have to think of it as a question of whether you are close to heaven (thus to order and harmony), or whether you are closer to hell (thus to disorder and disruption). The body symbolizes and represents where the mind is at, in its vertical alignment. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "A damaged body shows the mind has not been healed." This is a vertical axis of life vs death, not horizontal.

This also corresponds perhaps to aging. If we think of aging in terms of horizontal time measurements, we are maybe missing the whole point, because horizontal aging is an ILLUSION. Yes the body can transform into various states of what we might call maturity over time. But whether or not the body is healthy or sick is nothing to do with its age. It's more to do with how the mind is using that body at a particular time. Because "what you use the body for it becomes to you." When used for attack it becomes sick (dead), and when used to bring God's word it CANNOT be sick or die - it's too close to life.

So we could say that when a person's mind is closer to the light, the body is held in a state of health and healing. It symbolizes eternal life and immortality. It is free from pain, from scars, from damage, and represents harmlessness. The healed mind heals the body and cannot conceive of illness. It forces the body into a resurrected state, by the extension of love through it, lifting it out of suffering. Light, love, life, from above, shines downwards, and lifts upwards. A light-filled body cannot age or decay or become sick or die beacuse it is infused with POWER. Vertical life overrides horizontal death.

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from heaven (downwards from above) on a dry and dusty world where starved and thirsty creatures come to die. And all around the signs of life spring up (upwards from below)."

Life, progressing from death to life, as in vertical resurrection, is a vertical movement towards God. Towards truth. Towards innocence. Towards guiltlessness. Since "sickness is but another form of guilt", and sickness cannot EXIST without guilt, the removal of guilt from the mind (as in moving upwards towards the light) causes the body to represent a higher frequency or order, and thus health. A higher mind is a more POWERFUL mind and it is filled with holiness and healing.

In fact as ACIM teaches, as the mind move upwards towards atonement, it is moving towards health and wholeness. And it enforces the body into a symbolic representation of that. It takes on "the power to represent an endless life." So at the pinnacle, the body is suspended in light and higher "vibration", free from attack, free from guilt, free from psychological torture. And this effectively leaves the body in a state of symbolic immortality. ie that it cannot become sick at all, and it has no death in it. Its appearance can also then be modified at will, to represent any age or gender or form. It becomes transparent and light and is not pulled down into suffering or the lower vibrations of decay.

So we really need to realize that in ACIM Jesus talks of sickness and death and health on a VERTICAL axis. Is mind high, or low. It it close to the light, or hiding in darkness. It is moving upwards towards God and atonement and LIFE, or is it moving downwards into sickness, damage, attack and destruction. The minds constructive powers have to be reinstated in order that it can take power OVER sickness and death, which really means, to RISE ABOVE IT, by moving the mind into a higher state, and therefore abolishing exposure to anything lower. Death is the lowest state and is simply "out of reach" for an enlightened mind.

We, all of us, on this planet, right now, are in various states of life vs death. We all need resurrection. Any measure of sin or guilt or attack or fear in the mind IS a state of removal from life. It IS a rejection of life and of health. Any movement into ego is a movement into choas and disorder and malfunction and failure. And death IS failure. It is a failure to live, a failure to be in the light, and represents the fear of God. Perhaps it's fitting to consider that death ends in the ground, while ascension takes you into the heavens.

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. ****It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly****, having no function except communication."

"The resurrection ***is the denial of death***, being the ***assertion of life*** 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. Love is no longer feared, but gladly welcomed. Idols have disappeared, and the remembrance of God shines unimpeded across the world. Christ's face is seen in every living thing, and nothing is held in darkness, apart from the light of forgiveness. There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it.

Here the curriculum ends."

Let's clear this up.

For the entire time that you have a physical body with working eyeballs, you will physically see the physical world based on the laws of physics. The body functions biologically based on photons of light entering the retina etc and sending messages to the brain and mind.

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE NO MATTER HOW MUCH FORGIVENESS YOU DO, how many workbook lessons, or how much you've read. Your physical eyes will continue to report the same exact differences, conflicts, problems, wars, destruction, sickness and death. This will NOT change. If you point your eyeballs at the physical world, of which they are a part, they will SHOW YOU exactly the same PHYSICAL world.

Meanwhile, you are working on forgiveness, and on changing your mind in order to change your perception. But this is to do with your MIND in terms of what it believes. What it believes determines what it projects in terms of MEANING, and thus how it categorizes the true and the false, the real and the unreal. It puts everything into a category, and so as the body SENDS IT physical messages of physical sights, the mind INTERPRETS those signals.

It is then up to the mind to decide what to DO WITH those signals that are coming in from the physical eyes. Initially, realize that the body is LOCKED IN to false perception. It CANNOT SEE reality and it never will. The body can ONLY look upon illusions and GIVE them reality, regarding them as equally of the same material and nature as ITSELF, and therefore one with them, and thus regarding them as REAL.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

Consider also then that if your mind BELIEVES everything it is shown by the body's eyes, it will categorize all illusions as reality, which is "false perception". A failure to recognize that illusions are illusions, that dreams are dreams, and that the world is not real. Taking the body "at its word" is false perception and unconsciousness.

The mind therefore has to open up to another WAY of seeing, which is the spiritual eye, or the mind's eye. The mind can see directly without photons and does not rely on the body's eyeballs to do this. True vision can see anywhere and everywhere at any time without limit, even the other side of the universe in the past or future. The mind, as it begins to OPEN UP to reality, which requires transcending the physical world, starts to IGNORE the physical sight messages and tunes into another world.

As it does this, the mind is going to start categorizing everything the BODY claims is real, as unreal. It has to in order to awaken and move into true perception. Everything the body reports is a lie because the body is blind to reality. So the mind starts to open up to seeing without the body, and seeing beyond the body, and beyond form, and beyond the world, and beyond space and time. This means it is opening up to seeing light and reality, at the same time as DENYING AND CLOSING DOWN to the physical signals coming in from the body.

However, so long as you have a body, you will STILL CONTINUE to receive signals from the physical sensory equipment. You will STILL be shown images of a broken world, images of faulty bodies, images of war and death and sickness and suffering. The body CANNOT HELP IT but keep showing this to you all the time. As soon as you open your eyelids you're going to be shown this, every single day for as long as you have a body.

So the interesting thing is then that mind is changing but the body is not. Mind is still USING a body, at the same time as learning to see WITHOUT a body. And this means that the mind is going to have to deal with TWO CHANNELS OF INPUT at the same time, in parallel. The physical sight is being phased out, so to speak, while the spiritual sight is phased in, but until you reach total atonement and awakening to heaven's reality you're going to see BOTH AT ONCE. As Jesus confirms:

"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."

So this now means that you as mind are going to be getting inputs from a physical and FALSE sensory apparatus, which is going to KEEP remaining fixated on the PHYSICAL world for as long as it persists, while simultaneously it's going to get inputs from BEYOND the physical which the physical body CANNOT see. The mind is closing off to unreality and opening up to reality's at the same time. So you have a kind of DOUBLE VISION, at least for as long as the body persists.

If you think this is not true then you should consider the fact that you are STILL perfectly capable of reading every single workbook lesson no matter how many of them you've done or for how long. The words on the page have not changed, the color of the text has not changed, nothing about it has changed. It is PHYSICALLY THE SAME BOOK as when you started reading. This is because the physical sight has not changed. But your MIND'S SEEING HAS changed.

So what this means in worldly terms is, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you're going to STILL get input from the unreal physical world, claiming all kinds of things to be true which aren't, while at the same time opening up to a new reality BEYOND the physical world which the body can't even see.

This means that if you see a physical body with your physical eyes and your eyes report an image of that body which has a broken leg and skin cancer and bad hair and a limp and some blubber, you're going to KEEP ON SEEING THAT for as long as it's there physically, REGARLDESS of whether you are more spiritual or not. 10 years from now you will still look upon that same physical body and see the same physical symptoms. But what it MEANS to you will be different and what you make of it will be different, as well as your mind will be opening up to OTHER sights and sounds from beyond the world. Jesus again confirms twice:

"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 use PHYSICAL SIGHT to watch the dream figures suffer and die, BUT their MINDS ARE HEALED. They have done forgiveness work. Their mind is opening up to unlimited spiritual vision and seeing BEYOND physical bodies, but the physical body is STILL reporting the same shit as before. This is not going to change just because you're waking up.

So if you see someone with your physical eyes and they report a certain condition or state, that's because your physical eyes are still functioning true to their design. Just because your MIND is different and is seeing from a more inclusive loving vantage point does NOT mean that you will no longer see the same physical sights! It does not mean that graveyards are going to disappear, or that the wars will be gone, or that people aren't writhing in agony and screaming for help. They will still physically do this and your body will STILL physically report it. But your mind will INTERPRET it different because it will OVERLOOK it and look PAST it, beyond it to the light of truth.

So you see, you can't say that "if you see it it's' yours". And you can't say that if you see someone doing something you are judging them. And you can't say that just because you're seeing it your mind is not healed. That's all bullshit. That's a denial of the mechanisms of perception. Many people think that perception is ONE THING and that you change this ONE perceptual mechanism and EVERYTHING you see will just transform and shift away from suffering towards some kind of beautiful world where nothing ever dies. That's SORT of true in that the mind opens up vision to seeing the real world, but it's NOT true in the sense that this causes you to NOT SEE the physical world UNTIL THE VERY END.

That's because you're in a state of transition BETWEEN the two ways of seeing, which will continue for as long as you have a body, and until you see the face of christ, and forget the world entirely, as the veil of illusions lifts from your sight and you see ONLY with vision, and completely VANISH the body from your existence. ONLY THEN will you no longer see the physical, and only then do the physical signals stop bombarding your mind. UNTIL then, until you are DONE, you're going to have to continue dealing with FALSE MESSAGES coming to you from a false world, at the same time as tying to look past them psychologically.

So no, if you see bad physical stuff happening, it's NOT because you are projecting bad stuff. It's not because you are not healed or are guilty. It's NOT YOUR STUFF. Your stuff isn't physical, it's mental. Your baggage of stuff to be healed in your false perceptions, which you project ONTO THE PHYSICAL SIGNALS, is an added layer of meaning which you GIVE TO the signals coming from the physical world. It's how you INTERPRET them. You can read into them and put hate and guilt and sin onto them, or you can OVERLOOK them and diminish their power and see them as false and sinless and nothing.

If I see a person walking past with a broken leg, that's because their leg is broken physically and it will carry on being broken physically whether I'm in a good mood or not, whether I'm lining up with the holy spirit or not, and regardless of anything else I do. OTHER than to say that if I move towards the light I WILL extend healing and this will INFLUENCE the other person, and may indeed miraculously heal their broken leg, but that's a whole other story. If I have physical eyeballs I WILL SEE the physical world. And I will keep seeing it until my mind is 100% totally committed to seeing ONLY reality. That's why you can still find your way to the toilet!

This is the point at which the physical stops showing you pictures of impossible worlds:

"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."

Note then that spiritual sight only very "lightly" touches upon the physical "veil of illusions", the world, earth, as it LOOKS PAST it and beyond it to the light of heaven or the real world. It sort of lightly sees the forgiven world (to forgive is to overlook) as a result of not looking heavily AT it, and instead looking THROUGH it and past it. This makes the world gradually more transparent until eventually the veil of spacetime lifts entirely, revealing christ's face. ONLY THEN will you stop seeing the physical (forgiven OR unforgiven) world. And then you will use ONLY vision and see ONLY reality.

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

So can we please try to stop saying that everything you see is because of how you're seeing, and stop saying that if you see something you're judging, and stop saying that every single claim is a projection, and stop saying that seeing a broken body means your mind is not healed, and stop being CONFUSED about the fact that there are TWO PARALLEL CHANNELS OF INPUT coming into your mind. One of them is true, and one of them is false. And the false channel can and will show you earth EXACTLY AS BEFORE, until you no longer have a body to look at it with. And this has NO BEARING on how healed your mind is other than to say that only in TOTAL healing will you stop USING the body at all.

"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."

Eternity, Heaven, is the living world of light, our home in God. It is reality. It is a "world" of light, in which there is only light. There is no darkness, no shadows, no blockages to resist the light. "Nothing there but shines and shines forever."

The separation is an attempt to deny that this is so, by trying to resist the light. It's an attempt to block awareness of the pervasiveness of light by being unwilling to accept it into the mind. We put up walls that block the light, and this SEEMS to produce states of darkness.

An extremely important thing to realize here is that the seeming presence of the darkness ENTIRELY DEPENDS on the light being absent. It is a direct consequence or "effect" of the light being blocked. When the block is removed or the light is allowed to shine and pervade, what happens to "the darkness"? It doesn't go anywhere, it doesn't displace, it doesn't hide. Darkness cannot make light go away. Light completely overpowers it and cancels it. It simply vanishes.

Where is the darkness, in the light? There isn't any. In perfect light, infinite light, there is no darkness anywhere. So what happens to the darkness when the light shines? The light SHINES AWAY the darkness. How does it do it? Because darkness isn't really a THING in its own right, it is ONLY the temporary, illusory result of blocking the light.

The darkness's entire "existence" is 100% dependent on the light remaining blocked. The darkness is like a shadow. The shadow doesn't determine for itself what it is, it is a consequence or result of the way the light is blocked. It acquires all of its properties, shapes and forms, from the blockage, and can only symbolize the blockage. Having no inherent qualities, properties, behaviors, characteristics, life, or existence of ITS OWN, it is merely a side-effect of the appearance that "light is absent."

When you block the light of Heaven's reality, the world God created (the Sonship, not the Earth), you seem to produce in your mind a blockage to the light, which produces shadows or "darkness". Or to put it another way, darkness SEEMS to come out of nowhere, when the light is blocked. It just sort of "appears", like a mirage or hallucination. It isn't caused by anything real, it is "caused by" the illusion that reality is not present.

Darkness is sort of like a "hole" in the light. And the darkness seems to take on various shapes, forms, sizes, appearances. It may seem to represent objects. It may even seem to take on the shape of a human body, a tree, a planet or a galaxy. It may even SEEM as if these "objects" are actually alive or moving and thinking for themselves, as if they have an actual existence or identity, which none of them have. Shadows have no inherent properties of their own, no mind, no will and no life. These "life" FORMS are the illusion of what *separateness* looks like - the absence of Heaven's light. Shadows are always fragmented and conflicted.

All of spacetime is a bubble of darkness, like a hole in Heaven, where light seems "shut out". The "world you made" to block the light, the world which is "an attack on God", the world which is a "picture of the crucifixion of God's son", the world of "death" or the "dream of death", are all this same one thing - the illusion of the absence of God/Light.

The entire "physical universe" is this appearance of a non-existent, lifeless, unreal, illusory world, which houses and includes the Earth and all bodies and objects. All of these things can ONLY seem to exist, WITHIN the absence of light, AS the absence of light, and only so long as the light is absent. They are "made of darkness", lack, emptiness, absence, NOTHINGNESS. They are not made of light. And darkness is only an illusion. It's a strange hallucinated imagined appearance of what it would look like IF light could be made to be absent.

When you are in a dark room, and you switch on the light, what happens to the darkness? Does it go somewhere? Does it turn into light? Is it retained? Does a chunk of it still persist in the light? Are its dark forms and shapes kept? No. The light DISPELLS them. They simply vanish. They "cease to seem to be." They don't transform into light. They just disappear. They are the OPPOSITE of the light and do not really exist. When the light is allowed to shine, the darkness or "lights absence" is corrected, light is supplied, and there is nowhere - no gap or hole - in which the darkness could SEEM to exist.

The world, including the Earth, all its forms, creatures, oceans, forests, the moon, the sun, the entire galaxy and all the thousands of galaxies, the void of space and all of time, are all symptoms or side-effects of what it seems to look like when light is absent. They are HELD in place by minds who are resisting the light and trying to enforce a blockage or denial of the light. When these minds come around and are healed, they will no longer desire that light be absent, and so there will be nothing "to keep a separated world in place." Without an active resistance to the light, there is nothing to prevent light/love from entering and dismissing the illusion that darkness exists. OR the illusion that the world exists.

It does not matter in the big picture whether you view this world through false perception or true perception. It does not matter whether you glimpse the real world or see the world as wholly forgiven and benevolent. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the world is nothing but "a thin veil over the face of Christ." When the light shines brightly enough, the dark veil that LOOKS LIKE a planet, will become transparent, thin, like a puff of smoke which can easily be dispelled. The entire universe, all forms of matter, all objects and bodies, will become increasingly invisible. As though you are pushing past a thick heavy curtain which is finally parting to reveal the LIGHT behind it which it was BLOCKING.

The world, including Earth, IS nothing but a blockage to the light. It DEPENDS ON the light remaining blocked in order to SEEM to exist at all. It is MADE OF and exists only WITHIN the illusion of darkness. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is light or life. It's a shadow. What happens to shadows when the light shines? They do not exist. They are REPLACED with light. The ego is where the darkness WAS. The world is where the darkness WAS. Bodies are where the darkness WAS. And they absolutely DO NOT EXIST in the light.

Being MADE OF darkness, if you take them to the light they will be dissolved, shone away. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "The body cannot remain without illusions." Try taking an illusion of light's absence INTO the light, and it cannot remain. Its nature, which is light's absence, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH HEAVEN'S LIGHT. It is THE OPPOSITE of Heaven's light. Never the two shall meet. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

The closer you approach the light which is BEYOND the body and BEYOND the world, behind them, the world will become less and less of an obstacle. It will seem less and less heavy or serious. It will seem to become lighter, itself, as its transparency begins to allow the light BEYOND it to shine through. As you begin to "see God in everything you see" because God is BEHIND the things you see. The things you see are BLOCKS to God. To forgive them is to OVERLOOK them (NOT SEE THEM) and to see PAST the "granite block of sin" (the veil of matter) TO reality.

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams (not Earth). And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as **behind the dream**, **beyond all seeming** (behind the world) and yet surely theirs." It is the light BEYOND hell/dream/darkness/Earth that appeals to you, it is that light which you WANT to see, it is that light which is coming from ANOTHER WORLD (Heaven), and it is that light which is God which you see "in" or "through" or "behind" the things you see, while you are traveling TOWARDS the light.

As you move closer and closer to the light BEYOND the veil of matter (wall of sin), the veil dissolves. The veil ITSELF (the world you made - including Earth) thins out, stops seeming so solid, stops seeming to represent "real sin" or "real guilt", and it in a sense will seem to stop looking like "hell". It may even seem to become lovely or holy. But the loveliness is not there AS the world which is still made of darkness, it is there because there is increasingly LESS darkness (world) and increasingly more light (Heaven), revealed through spiritual sight/vision in parallel to the darkness that the body's eyes see.

The FORGIVEN WORLD is the thinnest, lightest, least dense, least heavy view of the SHADOW WORLD that's possible, while still seeing it. It's a perception of the ILLUSION of light's ABSENCE, in which the light is barely absent at all, such that the illusion seems to slightly remain as a THIN VEIL over Christ's face, and Christ's face is almost fully seen.

The forgiven world, Earth and spacetime, grows lovelier ONLY because it is DIMINISHING, and only because a loveliness is shining FROM BEYOND IT, coming from behind it, as the veil of matter dissolves. It is the SOURCE of the light that you want to get to. Just because the forgiven world seems illuminated BY this holy light, does not MAKE IT holy. It is NOTHING. It merely becomes like a spotless mirror in which you see a *reflection* of the light of Heaven, where it is obscuring the light the LEAST while still seeming to slightly exist. Once the light of Heaven beyond the world world/veil shines FULLY, the veil LIFTS, the face of Christ is seen, the WORLD IS FORGOTTEN, there IS NO WORLD, and Heaven is uncovered at last. And it is Heaven that you want.

Here, all the things made of death and darkness are shone away into oblivion, the "world spins into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came", the stars disappear in light, the dark world of shadows vanishes, the world is consumed by the light, shone away because the world is nothing but an ILLUSION of light's absence, and light's presence forces the impossible world to cease to exist and "Heaven is all that remains."

Not one single FORM of darkness (matter, energy or otherwise) remains in Heaven because ONLY LIGHT can remain in Heaven. "Gone are bodies in the blazing light of the Son of God." "Gone is perception". "Gone are walls" (objects, planets). "Nothing there is seen, only known." The Kingdom of God in all its glory. It was merely HIDDEN behind the blocks to love, the illusion of sin, which took the temporary illusory form of worlds and planets and bodies, made "as a place where God could enter not". These walls must go. Matter is an illusion. Spacetime is an illusion. Death is an illusion.

THERE IS NO WORLD. THIS IS THE CENTRAL LESSON THE COURSE WOULD ATTEMPT TO TEACH. Means simply... there is no shadow, no darkness, nothing OPPOSING the light. There is ONLY the Light of the Kingdom of God.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world (physical) 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." ... "Nothing so blinding as perception of form" (objects, bodies, planets).

To behold (see) the world (Earth and space) in ANY way, is to be blinded to God. Not one single FORM, object, body, or planet, can remain in your vision if you are to experience God. You cannot keep the world, or the body, and be with God. "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." "To be without a body is to be in your natural state." To be in/with/having a body is unnatural because the body is darkness (" in the body's darkness"). "The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes."

Light is natural. Light is eternal life. Light is your home. Light is what you are. "Eternity will shine away the world."

"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.)

Catchy title eh.

"God dwells within, and your completion lies in Him. No idol takes His place. Look not to idols. Do not seek outside yourself."

Ok so, this is quite fundamental. Who you are, one with God, is INSIDE of you. God is in your mind. The truth and the love are in your mind. ALL suffering is induced when you go AWAY from God within you, see a lack of love within you, seek to not find it somewhere outside of you, and start seeking externally.

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace."

The instant that you go AWAY from God within you, you go "out of your mind" towards hell. You go into sickness. You go into suffering. You go into the body. You go into the world. You go into insanity. And you go towards death.

At the same time, you feel that you need salvation from your problem. The problem seems to be a lack of love inside of you. You think you cannot find the solution there. So you seek outside of you to GET an answer. To solve your problem.

You want salvation from a location where salvation is not. What you do is you set up things - the body, the world, and all its contents, as your savior. As the cause of you. And you position yourself as at its effect. And then you seek to be "affected by" the world. And now you want to be its victim, and its lover. You want it to give you what you want. You want to get everything you need from it. You depend on it for salvation.

All the external sources that you think will SAVE YOU, now become your everyday experience. You are now entering into IDOL WORSHIP. That is, the worshipping of "false Gods". These false Gods are everything external that is not of God. Everything separated off. Everything illusory.

This includes the body, the world, special relationships, special objects, made-up values, special places, buildings and cars and houses and stadiums and forests and mountains and oceans and cities and all manner of external things. All of them are there as idols for you to worship, to get your "needs met". Your need for love, which you formulated inside yourself.

So now you reach out to the world. On the one hand you have special love for it because you want it to save you from hell. Even though the world itself is hell. Then on the other hand you have special hate for it precisely because, deep down, you CAN'T find the love you're missing there. In fact you suspect the world has stolen it from you.

Those who worship an idol have a two-faced attitude, in that on the one hand they seem to put the idol on a pedestal and worship it, wanting it to save them - to do something to them. But at the same time they want the idol destroyed, in order to take everything they have, there is jealously that they have what you lack, and you think they are the one who stole your love.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

So now, everything external is considered the source of you getting your fake needs met. You think you will find YOURSELF outside of you. You think you will find the LOVE you lost (within) outside of you. The source of your SALVATION. The world is now going to SAVE YOU, from suffering. From unhappiness. From a lack of love. And even, from the many symptoms that arise as a RESULT of looking to the world to save you. By trying to get salvation from the world, you are SELLING YOUR SOUL in an attempt to GAIN the world. You want to have the world to substitute for God.

"The ego is trying to teach you how to gain the whole world, and lose your own Soul. The Holy Spirit teaches that you CANNOT lose your Soul and there IS no gain in the world, for OF ITSELF, it profits nothing. To invest in something WITHOUT profit is surely to impoverish yourself, and the overhead is high. Not only is there no profit in the investment, but the cost TO YOU is enormous. For this investment costs you the world's reality, by DENYING YOURS, and gives you nothing in return. You CANNOT sell your Soul, but you CAN sell your AWARENESS of it."

By seeking outside yourself you take yourself AWAY from health and sanity. And then you ask the world to save you from this sickness and insanity, which you think it has induced, and which you induced by making the world your savior. On the one hand the world seems to attack you and hate you and is trying to make you dead. On the other hand the world seems to be offering special magical solutions, potions, medicines, foods, drinks, environments, toys, money, success, playthings, people, bodies, revenge, as a way for you to get saved.

You then become deceived in that you think the world is not the thing attacking you. And instead you try to skew your vision, to select the aspects of the world you think are there to help you, and reject the parts you think are there to hurt you. You gravitate towards making a special life, with a special house, and a special bank account, and a special relationship, while trying to avoid the nasty signs of evil and murder creeping in around you. To create a nice little bubble of artificial safety to keep you protected from the grim reaper.

"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death. You look for safety and security while in your heart you pray for danger and protection for the little dream you made."

But you know on some level that the very same world that seems to save you and gives you everything you want and meets your needs, is also the same world that is seemingly the source of ALL your suffering. It hates you and loves you. You hate it and love it. The two of you tango back and forth in a love-hate dynamic of mistrust and absorption. Fighting to be free from it, fighting to keep it. Wanting it, needing it, depending on it for your life. Hating it, rejecting it, wanting nothing to do with its insanity.

But even in the midst of this scenario of the world being both your attacker and your savior, its actually true that the world is NEITHER of these things. The world cannot attack you, nor can the world save you. It is really YOU in your mind who has decided to go away from peace and happiness and safety and love and power, and has "thrown away" this inheritance, and wandered off into "enemy territory", where you are then left fending for your life and trying to make allies.

"It means that nothing outside yourself can save you; nothing outside yourself can give you peace. But it also means that nothing outside yourself can hurt you, or disturb your peace, or upset you in any way."

It's really your choice to go away from God, that leaves you in a position of "sleeping with the enemy". Better the devil you know, and all that. You think you can trust the world but you can't. You think you can trust the body to protect you from love, but it doesn't. You love it for seeming to save you from God, but you hate it for its weakness and its inability to do anything. Nor can it ward of the ultimate self-attack - death by suicide.

Salvation from the darkness that appears WHEN you leave God, can only be found by NOT leaving God. One problem, one solution. You think you are separate from God, and this has given rise to EVERY problem in the world. Even to the world itself. You have invented all the problems around you. You are their source. And the only way to truly find salvation from the "attacking world" and its fake offerings of "help", is to go back within to find God. To reunite with your REAL safety. Where you have no needs.

These then are your only choices. Either stay with God and need nothing, or leave God and form artificial needs which cannot be properly met by the world you invent. In neediness you are always lacking and nothing is ever enough. And the world can never fill the void or the gaping hole in your heart. Nothing the world can do can really SAVE you from your own self induced secret journey to move AWAY from salvation. The world cannot attack you, nor can it give you peace. What you need is a solution from another world - an inner world.

Getting a good job is not going to save you. Eating the right food is not going to save you. Having the right house is not going to save you. Hearing the best music is not going to save you. Traveling to see all the special places is not going to save you. Earning lots of money and getting all the good toys is not going to save you. Finding a special someone in a body is not going to save you. Having lots of sex or drugs is not going to save you. Special tv shows are not going to save you. Harming the body is not going to save you. Fighting with people is not going to save you. Magical medicine and treatments and surgeries are not ultimately going to save you. The world HAS no solution for death because it is made of the idea of death itself.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"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."

This is no idle small thing. The ENTIRE world was set up as a place to suffer and die. And the ENTIRE world is offering you salvation from itself. And the ENTIRE world CANNOT solve your problem. And the ENTIRE world is not the CAUSE of your problem. The cause is inside of you, in your attempt to leave God and throw away your inheritance of happiness. That is THE ONLY problem and the source of ALL needs and problems. And solving that problem will NEVER be done by getting anything from the world.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

"Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons."

"The worlds nothing that I want."

The world cannot give you ANYTHING real, or anything of value, or anything permanent, or any real solution to your only problem. All it can give you are fake bandaids which look like solutions but ALWAYS have side effects, because they are attacks shrouded as helpfulness. Nothing in the world is devoid of a two-faced counter-attack. Everything it does has the MOTIVE of death.

"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."

The only real salvation is found within, moving in the direction of God, not outwardly away from where He is. "What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected."

"Salvation is our only need. There is no other purpose here, and no other function to fulfill. Learning salvation is our only goal. Let us end the ancient search today, by finding the light in us and holding it up for everyone who searches with us to look upon and rejoice."

"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution."

"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"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."

"Begin these practice periods by repeating the idea for today, adding a statement signifying your recognition that salvation comes from nothing outside of you. You might put it this way:

"My salvation comes from me.

It cannot come from anywhere else."

"My salvation comes from me, and only from me."

"For the short and frequent practice periods today, remind yourself that your salvation comes from you, and nothing but your own thoughts can hamper your progress. You are free from all external interference. You are in charge of your salvation. You are in charge of the salvation of the world. Say, then:

"My salvation comes from me."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

"Salvation comes from this One Self through Him Who is the bridge between your mind and It."

"Salvation comes from my One Self.

Its Thoughts are mine to use."

"Each time today you tell your frantic mind salvation comes from your One Self, you lay another treasure in your growing store."

"Salvation comes from my One Self."

From my One Self, Whose knowledge still remains

Within my mind, I see God's perfect plan

For my salvation perfectly fulfilled."

"My salvation comes from me."

"The search implies you are not whole within, and fear to look upon your devastation, and prefer to seek outside yourself for what you are. Idols must fall BECAUSE they have no life, and what is lifeless IS a sign of death."

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power." - ACIM"There is nothing my holiness cannot do." - ACIMI want to be clear about this, because this is an often misunderstood matter. It's a question of who does what, who has the power, and who should get the credit. Is God the miracle worker? Are we? Both?First of all, let's tackle this term "of myself". Of yourself, you have and are nothing. This does not mean you do not exist. It means that what you are, YOU did not put there. You did not create yourself. What you have did not come from you. You did not originate it - it wasn't "of" (from) you. But this DOES NOT in any way mean that you HAVE NOTHING or that you can do nothing. Far from it.For example, children do not create themselves. Of themselves, they did not give themselves life. But they have life. They have life because their creator SHARED their life with them. Their parent EXTENDED life and GAVE life to them, creating them as a standalone life joined with the parent's life. The child is not devoid of life or incapable, but what they have was inherited.God extended his own will to us to create us. He shares the Kingdom with us. He put everything he HAS into us. He invested us with HIS POWER. His light is our light. His love and joy are shared with us. It's in us. We didn't put it there, but you sure as heck HAVE it. We are HOST TO GOD but this doesn't mean "only God exists and we do not".

God does not create weak beings who can do nothing. God creates POWERFUL beings of light. In fact, unlimited, holy beings who can do literally ANYTHING. They are fully equipped to CREATE. They are unlimited. They have been GIVEN the ABILITY to accomplish anything.

In fact, God has established his children as CO-CREATORS, which does NOT mean that God is the only one doing the creative act. It's not just God sitting there creating "through His children with His children doing nothing at all. His children MUST collaborate, MUST be included, MUST share, MUST exercise free will, and MUST CHOOSE to co-create with and like the father. BOTH of them produce creative ACTS together in collaboration.

God created the sonship, and the sonship is fully equipped with the ability to ADD TO the Kingdom. They create additional beings - "children of my will". But they create them WITH their brothers, AND with God. This doesn't mean any individual part of the Kingdom "does all the work". EVERY part of the Kingdom does all the work. Even the Holy Spirit participates in co-creation. So who gets credit? They all do.

So when we say that of ourselves we can do nothing, we have to be very careful not to imply that we do the OPPOSITE of doing something. Because it is absolutely NOT TRUE that we "do nothing" or that God is "the doer" through us, excluding us from the process. Without us God CANNOT act through us.

This is why ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin" and why "Love cannot enter where it's not welcome." YOU have to participate, not merely in an act of getting out of the way and allowing, but ACTIVELY WILLING in accord with God's will.

God has GIVEN YOU His power, making you a powerful co-creator with a powerful mind. That means there is stuff you can do. Not only is there stuff you can do, there is nothing you cannot do. You are unlimited in your power. YOUR power. But YOUR power is ALSO HIS. You don't OWN it exclusively, but you DO own it.

The point Jesus is making is not that you can't do anything or that God does everything. He's making the point that your symbiotic relationship with God means that anything you CAN do is BECAUSE you and God are working TOGETHER in unison. You are sharing in God's power. You are extending HIS love, AS your own. How could you even experience the ability to love another if you could not YOURSELF be capable of loving? YOU love others, along with God.

We need to be careful, indeed, not to believe that our power is "of ourself". This is an ego belief that everything we are and can do is because we independently have superpowers that do NOT depend on God, or that are not shared or accessible to all. It would be egoic and arrogant to claim that everything we do, we do WITHOUT God. We would be merely bragging at our prowess with our limited "skills."

This is why Jesus deferred "ownership" of miraculous acts to the Power of God through Him. But he did not mean that HE Himself had no power or did not participate or merely sat on the sideline and watched. Jesus's mind was powerful. HE was a powerful miracle worker. It's just that in terms of WHO does the act or WHO makes it possible, ownership is SHARED with God. Of Himself Jesus HAD nothing and WAS nothing. He was not OF Himself, He was an extended creation of God. But he definitely HAD power and DID acts. HIS mind was miraculous.

Here for example, Jesus explains that ownership to God does not mean "God gets all the credit and we get none". To Him, ownership is about SHARING, meaning that ALL created beings HAVE the power to USE as they see fit. And while God DOES deserve "full" credit, He is not the ONLY one who deserves credit. Omitting credit from yourself omits it from one of God's extensions, which in turn omits it from God.

"It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him."

This makes sense because anything created is FULLY given EVERYTHING that its creator has. Through extension, what is God's IS YOURS. This is YOUR INHERITANCE!!! Which means you are a divine, holy, powerful, creative being, because God has created you to be this. It's just that your power isn't yours ALONE, exclusive to you, special, different, or something that God doesn't ALSO SHARE. God has equipped and enabled to you to be miraculous WITH him.

So what we need to say more clearly perhaps is, what we have did not come from ourselves. Of (from) ourselves, we have and are nothing. There is nothing IN us that WE put there. We didn't create ourselves. God made everything that WE can do possible. God gave us the power TO perform miracles, because HE is miraculous and is involved in the miracle. "Miracles are a universal blessing from God". Yet WE are powerful miracle workers as well.

We should be very careful not to transition from the ego position of "everything I have is mine alone", to "I have and do nothing. And we should be careful not to transition from "I believe I am powerful" to "I have no power". It is in fact the EGO that thinks this way, jumping to what seem to be opposites. To go from one state of exclusivity to another, because it does not understand inclusive thinking.

It is NOT an improvement to switch from the ego position of "I exclusively have power" to "God exclusively has the power". That is NOT correct. That's an ego conclusion. God does not think this way. God thinks INCLUSIVELY. We need to transition from "I exclusively have power" to "WE SHARE ALL POWER WITH GOD."

It would be ridiculous to say Jesus, a Son of God, had NO power. Jesus was immensely powerful and strong minded with an undivided constructive will, aligned with God's will, working in unison with the Holy Spirit. His own mind was miraculous BECAUSE he shared His mind with God. It's fine to have the humility to not "claim exclusive ownership" of miracle working, but this does NOT mean Jesus himself had no power or ability.

In order for a "separate God" to work through us, and for us to be a passive conduit, which is also NOT how it works, you'd have to be NOTHING. You are not nothing. You become loving in order that love can move through you. This means still that YOU have to be loving. This is why you are NEEDED by love so that it can go out. On its own it is blocked if you do not cooperate. God sends the love, you must RELAY it by ALSO loving like and with God, amplifying the signal. Your will must ACT and be INCLUDED, FREELY.

"Miracles are expressions of love" and "All expressions of love are maximal" and "Miracles are everyone's right but purification is necessary first" is telling us that miracle can only function "through you" with YOU being miracle minded and miraculous, by YOU entering a state of WILLING TO LOVE in a maximal and powerful way, SO THAT you are OPEN to RECEIVE love from God, acknowledge the love that is IN you because God put it there, and in turn willingly EXPRESS it as miracles. YOU have to be miraculously minded AND maximally loving in order to perform them. If YOU are not, YOU are not "doing your part", and then the miracles do not happen because "something has gone wrong" (ie you are blocking love).

We need to drop the idea that we merely "step aside". Yes we need to get our EGO out of the way, but not our SELF. We need to get our selfishness out of the way, but not our soul. We need to BE very loving in order to BE miraculous. And WE MUST have miracle mindedness in order to perform miracles. But miracle mindedness does not mean "a mind that cannot do anything." It means a mind that cannot do anything WITHOUT God, and CAN do EVERYTHING WITH God.

By being open to receive and admit and aknowledge and allow God to work THROUGH us, it does not mean that WE aren't doing something. That again is ego exclusive thinking. "God or me" is EGO thinking. "God AND me" is divine thinking. "God does it all" is TRUE, but NOT if you make that exclusive. "God does it all and no one else does anything" is an ego conclusion. You are a CO-CREATOR, not just a medium.

We need to acknowledge that we didn't give ourselves the power to heal. But we do have it, and we need to acknowledge that also. We need to admit we cannot heal WITHOUT God, but this does not mean that WE do not do anything. Our function is to SHARE in the state of power. And that means WE have to be powerful, healed, whole beings of love and light, which in their own right are very capable.

"Teachers of God will take over the world because of their strength."

"Now must you share His function" "You share His function only by judging as HE does"

"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."

Your function is not "be passive". It's not to "just let God work through you". God CAN'T work through you unless YOU DO SOMETHING AS WELL. Your function is to be a miracle worker, a DOER, to DO HIS work WITH Him. To SHARE His function, not to have Him do all the function. Your mind's condition is VITAL and IMPORTANT in the equation of how miracles happen. Your WILLINGNESS is absolutely required. Your power to love is mandatory. You choosing to DO miracles WITH Him makes them possible.

This is not about giving God 100% credit and giving us zero. That is false humility and false thinking. We must give God 100% credit AND give ourselves 100% credit. This flies against ego thinking. What we can do did not come from us, but we nevertheless are powerful beings. Thinking it is ours exclusively IS ego. Thinking we have NO power is ALSO ego and is NOT true humility. The children of God are not puppets. YOUR strength, shared with Him, enables miracles to happen. Miracles express from YOUR mind. YOU are the miracle worker.

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." (a shared state of collaboration)

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless" (God's children have unlimited power)

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth. My only gift to you is to help you make the same decision FOR YOURSELF." (Each of us HAS all of the power of heaven to use as we see fit)

"All power and glory are yours because the Kingdom is His." (YOU deserve glory, not just God. The ONLY problem is you claiming the glory without sharing it)

"By teaching the power of the Kingdom of God Himself, He teaches you that ALL POWER IS YOURS." (see, ALL power is yours. YOU are powerful - it's just that it's not ONLY you that's powerful)

"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 unto you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do.***" (There is nothing YOU cannot do because all power has been GIVEN to you).

"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***." This means:

Listen to MY Voice, Learn to undo the error, and ***DO something*** to correct it.

***The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers.***

***The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you.*** I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But ***you must be ready and willing to do*** them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ***ability***. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE (shared function). Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."

EGO: I have the power, God does nothing. I gave myself this power, it's special and exclusive.

HOLY: God and I share all power and together we can do anything. What I have God has, and we perform miracles together.

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.

The "tiny mad idea" was an idea of madness, leading to an entire thought system of insanity. Within this thought system there is a sense of self that we call the ego. The course refers to this as yet "unmanifested" thought system as "the first dream", which was then projected out as a "second dream" as the physicality of spacetime.

"The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based." UrG3A9

The ego projected out, ie "mis-created" from fear, a world from the INSANE mind, symbolising in form its ideals, preferences, beliefs and attitudes. This produced the physical world, which symbolises the ego's "attack on God." A sort of solidified defence against the truth. And now the physical world SYMBOLIZES the ego thought system in all its ways.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear." UrW240W32

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see." UrT11J4

"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." UrT11D10

"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." UrT11J2

"It can indeed be said the ego MADE its world on sin. Only in such a world COULD everything be upside down. This IS the strange illusion which makes the clouds of guilt seem heavy and impenetrable. The solidness this world's foundation SEEMS to have is FOUND in this." UrT19C6

This means that the way the physical world is set up and how it functions - its nature, the relationship of separate objects, what it seems to mean when things happen, was all originally a symbolic representation of an ego idea of madness. And this isn't with any kind of judgement or negating entering into it. Just its nature and how it functions is NOTHING like God's Kingdom.

"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." UrT16F3

For example the ego sees you as a separated off person, and in its insanity (which is sin), this insanity led to the making of the body, giving the body eyes and senses, and regarding the body as a real person.

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?" UrW250W41

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin (egoic insane thought system) 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." UrT20G11

Similarly the ego believes that there is a separation between giving and receiving, between cause (God) and effect (Son). Thus it perceives that to give is to lose, and means deprivation and sacrifice. This plays out PHYSICALLY by virtue of the fact that if you give someone something physical you DO NOT have it any more and have lost it. This is a simple fact. Any object you give you lack.

The idea of SHARING (oneness), natural in heaven, is pretty much obliterated on a physical level. So too is any idea of oneness or real love or creation or extension or sanity or harmlessness or safety or any other property of God. This is why the world is so opposite to heaven and so dysfunctional on a physical level, regardless of any judgements about it. It is designed by the ego to be "physically insane." And yes - that confusion of mind and body is what the ego is all about.

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." UrW153L1

Also on the physical level, when a body is regarded as a person, and if the body dies, this is a statement of the ego belief that death is real and the son of God is dead. Its whole system is anti-life and death promoting. It is against health and wholeness in every way possible.

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain." UrW190L3

The entire notion of physical space is an idea opposite to omnipresence and depends on separation. You can't even have particles of matter without separation. While time is an attack on eternity, attempting to make everything that existed before stop existing (die). Change itself is the idea of uncertainty (fear) and instability and impermanence - the opposite of immortality. As such everything in the physical world is mortal.

"They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die." UrM13A6

"Death (physical) is the symbol (physical 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." UrM28A3

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end." UrW129L2

Everything in the physical world is a SYMBOLIC VERSION OF THE EGO THOUGHT SYSTEM. Like a physicalised MIND. That's why it was made, that's who made it, and that's how it is set up. So it is indeed a PHYSICALLY INSANE world, so to speak. Riddled with separations, contradictions, attacks, death, murder, lack and loss, suffering of every kind, etc. All ideas the ego made up.

You can see throughout all these quotes that there is clearly a level of mind post-separation which is an insane thought system, which houses all of the ego's fearful beliefs. That mind is mad and dark and horrifying. That mind MADE spacetime and everything in it as a physicalised, condensed version of that thought system. You can see in the quotes sometimes references to the underlying "ego mindset", and in others to the physical world that was made FROM that.

"You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error (the insane ego mad idea thought system). It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge (the physical world/spacetime illusion projected from it). What else COULD come of it? Its fragmented ASPECTS are fearful enough, as you begin to LOOK at them (physical things). But nothing you have ever seen BEGINS to show you the enormity of the ORIGINAL error (underneath the surface, the ego mindset that made it), which seemed to cast you out of Heaven" UrT18B12

"That was the first projection of error outward (the physical world was a symbolic projection of the mental error). The world (spacetime, physical) arose to hide it (to hide the underlying mindset of ego), and became the screen (like a physical screen) on which it (the ego mindset) was projected (as a second projection onto the world AFTER the world was projected), and drawn between you and truth." UrT18B3

The ego thus projects its mindset out, making an insane world, which symbolises TOTAL INSANITY and a TOTAL OPPOSITE to heaven, as physical form and spacetime and galaxies. And then it projects its underlying insanity ONTO that world in its purpose and USE OF that world. To sort of "operate it", make it real and believe that what happens physically is what it means. The physical world is a MEANINGLESS world, and has no meaning of its own, because it is really nothing, like a void.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space (void) which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void (spacetime) may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct." UrW13L2

You can see clearly that 1) We were in heaven ("level 1") and believed the mad idea, 2) This produces a whole thought system of insanity ("level 2"), 3) Ego symbolises this thought system, 4) Ego insanity projects out as spacetime ("level 3") a physical fake "universe", 5) That universe is meaningless and nothing, and now the ego tries to project its MEANINGS onto that spacetime world, using the SAME insanity it used to make it.

So now the ego's thought system, mindset, beliefs, attitudes, identification, starts to PERCEIVE (through the body) the physical world IT MADE, from its vantage point, with a psychological false perception that MATCHES a PHYSICAL false perception (physical sight).

It sees it through a thought system of insanity and darkness and evil. And so it believes that the physical world is reality, it believes people are bodies, it believes there is no level of mind (the physical denies the mind, hides the ego thought system), and basically regards physical things as the symbolic version of itself.

Thus even the body symbolises the ego, the egoic mind identifies with the physical, and believes this is all that exists, hiding in the body as "its chosen home." The ego in the mind sort of now "takes up residency" in the body it projected.

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation. UrT15I8

"For your beliefs converge upon the body, the ego's chosen home, which you believe is YOURS." UrT23B3

So now you've got the underlying ego thought system which is insane still, a physical world being projected by that thought system as an hallucination, and then further projections of insane egoic meaning ONTO that physical world by that thought system to try to keep the separateness going.

For example it says that a physical person is the son of God, and when the physical body dies the son of God is dead. That death is a hard ending from which you cannot return. That's the egos idea of a total and utter permanent destruction and cessation of all creation. Putting a STOP to God. So it sees the death of a body as a total ending, after which there is nothing, and no coming back from it, producing horrendous loss. And there should be loss if a part of reality itself has been lost.

But this is the ego's insane perception of the world that IT set up to look this way on the surface. There is ANOTHER WAY to perceive the physical world thought because the insanity in the MIND can be corrected, causing the mind to USE the world for a higher purpose. You can see it without the ego, without the insanity, without the murderous thought system of separation. You can see it with the Holy Spirit with Christ Vision and forgiveness.

This forgiveness looks upon the highly malfunctioning lacking world that your ego made, and OVERLOOKS the ways in which it falls horrendously short of an immaculate creation. It does not BELIEVE the forms of the world. It does not interpret change as death, or the death of the body as a finality. I takes no meaning FROM the world, because it knows it HAS NONE. It recognizes that what is real is NOT OF THIS WORLD, and is utterly unaffected by what happens in form. Thus death is nothing and the world is nothing.

To this mindset of sanity and reason there is no death at all, and all physical things are illusions not to be believed. A mere MIS-creation produced by a MAD mind. It can be forgiven and reinterpreted and UNDONE by sanity. And then it must disappear, when an ego insane thought system is no longer upholding its separations and its physicalised lies and literal physical madness. The world is a mistake, not a sin, and mistakes can be undone.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error (a projection from an insane mind), and it has not left its source. It will remain no longer than the thought which gave it birth is cherished. When the thought of separation (insane mind) has been changed to one of true forgiveness, will the world (physical) be seen in quite another light; and one which leads to truth, where all the world must disappear (physical literal disappearance), and all its errors vanish. Now its source has gone, and its effects are gone as well." UrW240W31

Even death can be reinterpreted and seen as "not meaning" what it means to the ego. It can mean nothing more than that the illusory form has changed and the soul/mind has left the body to continue its eternal existence. That is a thought and perspective of permanence and immortality and continuation, rather than a thought of death and endings.

And so thoughts of eternal life replace the egoic thoughts of death and interruption, and this causes us to PERCEIVE the physical world as "the forgiven world", overlooking its nonsense and disregarding its physical falsity. Such a healed mind RUNS OPPOSITE to the nature of the world, and the entire thought system and physical nature is REVERSED.

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely." UrM29A2

"The only effort you need make, to give this world away (earth, physical, spacetime, bodies) in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (Kingdom of God, heaven) is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE (cus ego made it FROM falseness)" UrT12G3

"And now God's KNOWLEDGE, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its Kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here 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." UrU5A7v "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. What can be born of death and still have life? But what is born of God and still can die?" UrM28A6

"The ego made the world as IT perceives it (how it perceive it is the SAME AS how it is designed physically), but the Holy Spirit, the RE-INTERPRETER of what the ego made, sees it only as a teaching device for bringing you home." UrT5E15

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!

I've heard some people saying that we do not perform miracles. I've also heard some people saying that Jesus always acknowledged God as the one who does miracles. I've also heard people saying that we do not have any power to do anything, we're supposed to "do nothing", and our only job is not to interfere. I'd like to clarify this.

Consider these quotes:

"To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

"The power of God and not of you engenders miracles."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"You do not do them."

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

"There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

"You share the Holy Spirit's function on Earth." "Your function on earth is Healing."

"Do His works."

"I have nothing that does not come from God."

"You are forever host to God."

"You must be ready, willing and able."

"All power in heaven and earth has been given you."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours."

"All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

There is no contraction in these statements even though some of them seem to talk about God/HS doing stuff, some talk about you doing stuff, and some about you both doing stuff.

If you think in terms of EITHER OR... like, either God has the power OR I do. Or.... either God does miracles OR I do.. .. this is how the ego thinks. It's a separation-based form of reasoning, because the ego does not like to acknowledge any kind of sharing or oneness or joining.

It's not a question of whether God OR you perform miracles. Or whether God OR you have power. Nor is it really a question of whether God OR you do them. The "setup", or the arrangements of parts and functions in the machinery of miracle working, is more sophisticated than this.

We can't think of this RELATIONSHIP between you and God, in terms of either-or. Either him or me. That's ego thinking. We have to look at how we actually relate to him.

In heaven, God GAVE all of Himself to you in your creation. He EXTENDED Himself AS you, giving you His power, His will, His Mind, His strength, His love, His freedom etc. You HAVE all of this stuff, because He gave it to you. And He gave it to you FULLY.

"God is my strength."

"God is the mind with which I think" etc

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created."

"All loving creation is freely given."

So now this sets up a scenario where you have God IN you. You are HOST to God. You have an "inner altar" where God is shining within you, with HIS light. You shine brightly WITH light, because the light is IN you AS you, but the you didn't PUT the light there, the light IS GOD ie "of God". Yet it IS your light.

It is true to say, that all love is God's love and there is no other love. It is also true to say that God IS the light in which you see and there is no other light. And it is true to say that vision is GIVEN you just as love is given you. God is the SOURCE and PROVIDER of these things. What you have is an INHERITANCE. You INHERIT power from God.

Since God does FULLY GIVE these gifts, you do FULLY HAVE them. In fact, in your creation you were created to BE a POWERFUL CO-CREATOR. This does not mean that you are just some kind of puppet for God to manipulate. Nor does it mean that God coerces you into doing His will. Nor does it mean that you just sort of "step aside" or "get out of the way" and DON'T PARTICIPATE, so that God goes about HIS business without your grubby little hands getting into the mix. God Wills that YOU will to create WITH Him. This is why you have "children of my will."

The way it's set up, you actually CONTRIBUTE. You have the power TO CREATE. You actually CO-CREATE with God. BOTH of you create together. And you create in ACCORD with His will. But this isn't coercion, or being a puppet, or having no say in what is created. God has given you free will and the power to choose. So now you AND GOD, together, are co-creating the Kingdom. This is why YOU have YOUR OWN CREATIONS, because YOU have the power to create them.

Now, because His will is YOUR will, and his power is your power, by acknowledging that all power is OF (from) Him, allows you to ACCEPT that He has GIVEN you His power, and therefore YOUR sense of "my power" is in fact HIS power. This is what it means that "God is the mind with which I think" and "God is my strength". What seems to be YOURS, is ALSO his. The power that you inherently have is in fact God Himself, in you.

The distinction that has to be made is that God is not the ONLY ONE who has power. God is not the ONLY ONE who creates. And God is not the ONLY ONE who does anything.

The ego likes to claim that it has a power which is OF itself. A power which IT HAS, which God DID NOT give to it. It's an invented power, an alien will. This is the authority problem. It's the attempt to believe that you have and can do things which God did not allow or give. That you "gave yourself" your own creation and your own power. And now you depend on "yourself alone".

But then let's consider what is the OPPOSITE to this. And this is where we have to be VERY careful. It is NOT appropriate to say that, since the ego is the idea of "a power of my own"... that the opposite of this is "I have no power". That is NOT the truth. It is only the "of my own" that changes.

Before joining with God, you will believe that any power you have is YOUR OWN power, in isolation, separate from God. But as you join with God, you have to be careful not to believe that you are entering into a state of having NO POWER. God did not create powerless beings. Christ is not a powerless being.

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

It's the "by myself" part that goes away. Which means, that when you are not doing everything ALONE, you are now doing everything WITH God. And this is a relationship of SHARING! It's not the same thing as a relationship where God is the ONLY ONE who has power. That's the ego's idea of its opposite, a tyrannical God who has power OVER it who makes IT have no power and takes everything away from it. That's the idea of NOT sharing anything. And that's not how God operates.

YOU are to reclaim and regain YOUR power. BUT, this can only be done by recognizing that the power which is YOURS, is not OF you. "Of" means "from". You do not originate your power in yourself, it comes from God. And your power IS God Himself being powerful. But because you are ONE with Him and joined and share with Him, literally, IT IS YOURS. God has created you to BE a powerful CO-CREATOR with Him. You will TOGETHER.

Jesus for example performed miracles and he attributed the power to accomplish the miracles to God. However, this can be misunderstood. If it is taken to mean "ONLY GOD did anything", this ignores the FUNCTION that Jesus had as a miracle WORKER. It is completely appropriate to attribute all power - the source of the power - TO God, but it is NOT appropriate to DISOWN that power, because it IS yours. And Jesus IS POWERFULLY MIRACULOUS.

You see, there is a function that you fill. "The only function of spirit is to extend God's being." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God, through me, to all my brothers." "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." YOU.... have to fulfill a FUNCTION.... in order for miracles to GO OUT. When you block this function, which is extension and expression of YOUR mind's power, miracles do not happen. "Miracles should be happening all the time, but when they do not something has gone wrong."

Your function, which is healing while on earth, and creating while in heaven, are mirrors. Being a miracle worker is in line with being a co-creator. You are an extender of God. But YOU yourself HAVE to fulfill a comprehensive list of requirements in order to do this. You can't just sit there "doing nothing".

Your mind has to be miracle minded. Your heart has to be open. You have to be willing to love. You have to express love. You need to be free from fear. You have to have purified yourself. You have to be placing faith and trust in God and the Holy Spirit. You have to be open to the Holy Spirit working through you because He is the mechanism of miracles. You have to be willing to go and be where the people are that Jesus sends to you, lay your hands on them, pray for them etc. In fact, Jesus says this about doing nothing...

"This quiet center, IN WHICH YOU DO NOTHING, will remain with you, giving you rest in the midst of every busy doing on which you are sent."

"I need do nothing" is a state of inner calm WHILE you are operating in the world. It is NOT a state of inactivity.

So you have to actually step up and BE the powerful, co-creative, extending, loving, miraculous, unified, whole being that God created you to be, in order for you to perform miracles. There is a ROLE that you play. A function that you have. You are NEEDED to fulfill this function, as the light of the world, in order FOR miracles to be ABLE to express and extend. You actually HOLD BACK God's miracles when you resist doing this. If you weren't holding back, they'd be happening ALL THE TIME.

Jesus is clear that YOU are a powerful entity. The only distinction is that this power that you have, did not COME FROM you. God IS this power. He literally is embedded into your being like a battery. He POWERS you. And you in turn USE His power, which is YOURS, to perform miracles. And by being ONE WITH His Power, when you use his power, it IS HIM doing this through you, but it is ALSO you doing it WITH him.

If you were to perform such miracles and then CLAIM, that "I did this all by myself WITHOUT God", this would be arrogant. But to claim "I did this WITH God" or "God did this THROUGH me" AND "I fulfilled MY function as well", that's appropriate. Because you ARE powerful and loving and creative and a force to be reckoned with. There is nothing egoic about acknowledging that you are a powerful creative being, provided you don't claim to be that way WITHOUT God.

This is why Jesus is getting you to re-acknowledge YOUR power, which is God's.

"I am not afraid but all powerful."

"Power is of God, GIVEN by Him, and re-awakened by the Holy Spirit, Who knows that, as you give you GAIN."

"Those who choose freedom will experience only its results. Their power is of God. And they will give it only to what God has given, to share with them."

"See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the release from sin you offered him."

"Here again is the paradox often referred to in the course. To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. ***As God created you, you have all power.*** The image you made of yourself has none."

The image you made of yourself is the ego, not your soul/self. It is ONLY the ego that has NO power. This is why it can only seem to have power when YOU give it power, because YOU have power TO give, because it was given to you. By acknowledging that "of yourself you can do nothing" does NOT mean that YOU can do nothing. Only that you cannot do anything WITHOUT the source of power. Add in fact YOUR power IS God IN you, so rejecting God rejects your power and makes you weak.

It means you can only do nothing IF you are alone. It means you can do nothing BY YOURSELF. That isn't the same thing as saying that when you INCLUDE God, you STOP being able to doing anything at all. It's the "by myself" part that is the ego. All by yourself you have no power and are weak and can do nothing. Acknowledging God as the source of your power, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.

"There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

We are JOINED with God. We SHARE with God. God IS in us. Our power IS his power. His strength is in us AS OUR strength. We are not "separated off" from God, like some kind of weak container that God sometimes visits and passes through. We are literally HIS will. We are HIS power. We are one with Him. And He has established us as having UNLIMITED POWER, BECAUSE He shares His power with us.

You have to stay plugged into God, basically. So long as you are hosting and staying plugged into God, YOU get the electrical charge of his power supply. If you UNPLUG yourself, you become isolated, and become weak, because you have no power OTHER than the power of God. Alone you have no power, but ego will claim there is "self-power" that it made. WITH GOD you ARE all powerful. We must acknowledge that God DOES the miracles, but He only does them WITH you, and CAN only do them when YOU cooperate with Him, because YOU BOTH do them, just as you BOTH create.

This is why YOU are a miracle worker and a miracle doer. This is why YOU have to become miracle minded. This is why YOU have to be willing to extend love. It's not a matter of you stepping out of the way onto the sidelines efforting not to interfere, passively, while a SEPARATE power does stuff. Your function is NOT passive or inert. It's that YOU AND GOD need to get IN LINE with each other, BOTH of you need to WILL together, and BOTH of you fulfill your functions in the machinery.

This is also why Jesus says things like "DO his works" and "What the holy spirit enables YOU TO DO is clearly not of this world." The power is joined. There IS a "doing" component on YOUR PART that is required here. It's just that what you become ABLE to do is BEYOND what you can do ALONE, YOU do not understand miracles because they come FROM God and yet YOU CAN DO THEM. And you are being ASKED TO do them. Add you can only do them by SHARING.

"The power to work miracles belongs to you."

"The distinction has also been made here between "miracle-mindedness" as a STATE, and "miracle-doing" as its expression."

If miracles are expressions of love, then DOING a miracle is to EXPRESS love. Expression is a DOING. It's an ACTIVE role. Expression is not a state. This is why in the great crusade, "members of my party are ACTIVE workers." Not passive sideline-sitters. You are a powerful co-creator and a powerful miracle-worker. But you GET your power from God, and HE IS the power that you utilize. Thus HE AND YOU work together to perform miracles.

"Atonement is the natural profession of the children of God."

"The first two are not enough. The real members of MY party are ACTIVE workers.

The power to work Miracles BELONGS to you. I will create the right opportunities for you to do them. But you must be ready and willing to do them, since you are already able to. Doing them will bring conviction in the ability. I repeat that you will see Miracles through your hands through MINE. Conviction really comes through accomplishment. Remember that ability is the potential, Achievement is its expression, and Atonement is the Purpose."