"...I do not feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him.
I choose to let Him, by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
In order for you to fully allow Holy Spirit to decide for you, whether you are truly innocent or guilty, you need to be fully willing to accept His verdict.
That means, unconditional acceptance.
If I go to Holy Spirit holding onto some kind of hope that He will decide one way or another, or some kind of belief in the reasons why I will keep my guilt, then I'm not really allowing HIM to decide for me. It means I'm still using my own decision-making processes to evaluate my own guilt and am judging myself and having an authority problem.
So let's put it this way.
Think of Holy Spirit like a courtroom judge who is going to listen to your case. In this courtroom session, you do not have any say in what the law is. The law will be perfectly enacted. You will not be able to squirm your way out of or into anything. So really, you do not have any say in what the verdict is going to be. Holy Spirit knows about all of the evidence and nothing is hidden. So you really are not in a position to be able to control anything. It is impossible for you to sway the verdict or get off lightly or persuade the jury or anyway. All you're going to be able to do is receive a verdict. Whatever that verdict says, is going to be the law, and you are going to have to accept it. There is no point in fighting it or resisting it.
So in order to get yourself ready for Holy Spirit's verdict, you are going to need to SURRENDER. And that means, unconditionally, that you give up trying to evaluate for yourself whether you are guilty or innocent. It's no use trying to believe EITHER that you are innocent when you feel guilty, or that you are guilty when you're really innocent. You do not know. You do not have the faculties to know. That's why you've come to court, to allow He Who Knows to make a completely informed decision.
So your position now is that you will ACCEPT whatever Holy Spirit's verdict is. If Holy Spirit says that you are 100% guilty, then you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS, even if it sucks. If Holy Spirit says you are 100% innocent, you are going to WILLINGLY ACCEPT THIS also, even if you think you're meant to be guilty. See, regardless of what YOU think, you have to put ALL of that aside and be willing to really hand over the decision-making to Him. It's not up to you whether you're innocent or guilty. That's for God to decide. You have to admit to yourself you are not in a position to 'invent' innocence or guilt. You are willing to surrender and accept whatever God says is true. And that means unconditionally, no matter what He says. You're just going to have to live with it.
I don't mean that to sound dire like some kind of terrible fate, but you do need to have that unconditional willingness to ACCEPT and allow Him to decide. So then you ask Him. Ok Holy Spirit, here's all the shit that I believe, all my guilt, etc... what do YOU think of this? Am I really guilty? You decide. If he says you're guilty, you're guilty. If he says you're innocent, you're innocent. So you listen. And he says.... drumroll please....
His unconditional response is ALWAYS, YOU ARE INNOCENT.
And as He tells you this, any fear relating to what His verdict will be, will lift. And you will be relieved that you are NOT GUILTY. None of what you thought about yourself or others was true. And because you were willing to fully accept, unconditionally, His verdict, you are now in a position to actually ACCEPT IT. So you allow it. And this allows His HEALING to come into you, and literally to undo and correct all of the consequences of your wrong decision, which actually does mean undoing all negative feelings and energies in your mind/body, removing all guilt, and leaving you PURIFIED. It may take a bit of practice for you to allow Him to do this, but He can indeed 'supernaturally' heal you of all consequences that came from your guilt, especially now that you have accepted that you are innocent.
Party time!
The thought system of the ego has directly produced this physical universe.
The thought system of God has directly produced heaven.
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other’s sorry outcome which is Heaven’s opposite in every way."
It's not just that Heaven is "another place" that you can think about in the same way you think about Earth or this universe. Heaven THINKS DIFFERENTLY from how this world thinks, it reasons differently, it draws conclusions differently, and its logic does not operate like the ego's logic.
This world represents and is part of or inside of, the ego mind. Anything this side of the separation from God IS the ego thought system, including this universe. The ego mind's THINKING has produced this universe and all forms of matter reflect the idea of EXCLUSION.
Heaven represents and is part of or inside of, God's mind. Anything THAT side of the separation from God is the Holy Spirit's thought system, including Heaven. Heaven proceeds according to entirely different THINKING and its nature, it structure, is nothing like the ego predicts.
The two thought systems are so extremely opposite to each other, as to be nothing alike. The two "worlds" are unalike in EVERY way, and Earth being totally unlike God's nature cannot possibly have been created BY him because it is not LIKE Him at all.
The problem arises when, unfortunately, we USE the ego's thought system to attempt to look at or understand the nature of God's thought system. Extraordinary misunderstandings arise from this, because the ego's way of thinking and reasoning fundamentally *requires* seeing things in a certain way. When looking at something unlike itself, it literally cannot see it correctly without major distortions.
This is why we have to be extremely careful about the conclusions we come to about Heaven, God, Sonship, Creation etc, because in just about every case, we are USING the ego to think about it. And this has unfortunately led to a huge list of false conclusions about the nature of Heaven.
We may not realize it, but we actually THINK WITH the ego, and all of our thought processes follow ego laws and proceed according to ego rules. The way that we reason things out, the way that we "make sense" of anything, it all stays INSIDE OF the ego's thought system. When we try to use the ego to make sense of heaven, therefore, we don't actually LEAVE the ego's thought system to go TO heaven to THINK LIKE GOD, instead we look upon it from afar and make false judgements about it.
Jesus says that we need to learn to THINK LIKE GOD, and that means learning a whole different way of reasoning and thinking and concluding. A whole different way of "making sense", if we are to have any hope of comprehending WHY God acts a certain way or WHY it's possible for Him to have created individuals with free will. Or WHY He could not possibly have created this physical universe. Or HOW the nature of this world is fundamentally IMPRISONING right down to the atom.
We literally are living INSIDE the tiny mad idea, which is an idea of "separation thought" and all of our thinking follows exclusive, separating rules. These rules split things apart and make them different and pit them against each other, because it is a murderous thought system. The result of using the ego's thinking processes to evaluate God's creation is that it results in MURDER of God's creation. And yet the ego will evaluate that it has merely "made sense". When the ego makes sense of something, it makes NONSENSE.
While the Course largely focuses on USING the ego's thought system and its way of thinking, to lead you OUT of its way of thinking, this is only because it's how you DO think for the most part and so He is trying to speak our "language" and to use how WE think and reason to help us to make conclusions AGAINST the ego. But the truth remains that the way the ego thinks is fundamentally false and excluding and separating, so at some point we have to move past this to learn to think like God.
When you think like God, which is holographic INCLUSIVE logic, it becomes clear that the conclusions the ego came to about God's Creation are simply false.
"Who but yourself evaluates a threat, decides escape is necessary, and sets up a series of defenses to reduce the threat that has been judged as real? All this cannot be done unconsciously. But afterwards, your plan requires that you must forget you made it, so it seems to be external to your own intent; a happening beyond your state of mind, an outcome with a real effect on you, instead of one effected by yourself.
It is this quick forgetting of the part you play in making your "reality" that makes defenses seem to be beyond your own control."
- ACIM - sickness is a defense against the truth... Here Jesus describes how we create sickness.
We evaluate that the truth is a threat (to our ego truth), we decide we need to defend against it, so we create a sickness by making it real and doing it to ourselves, yet making it look like we didn't choose it. Jesus goes on to say...
"But what you have forgot can be remembered".
He also says:
"Defenses must make facts unrecognizable. They aim at doing this, and it is this they do."
and
"And yet you have forgotten that they stand but for your own decision of what should be real, to take the place of what is real."
i.e. sickness is an attempt to obscure the truth and make it unrecognizable by associating truth with something illusory. Sickness is illusory, so regarding it as truth obscures what the truth really is.
and ie... you use sickness to convert reality to untruth and illusions to reality.
We need to then remember we did this and uncover what the truth really is, to bring about healing.
Only in the past couple of months have I started to really get this picture, that all people are equal brothers who are perfect immortal beings, sinless and guiltless and bodyless.
When I therefore see bodies I am not seeing the person. Bodies are covering up all people. This is a very strange world in which spirit beings have wrapped themselves in flesh and hide inside of it, trying not to be seen. This is not true of anyone.
The recognition that God has many children and all of them are permanent perfect beings of light, gives us the correct perspective in which to evaluate other things. Bodies then are clearly artificial separation devices, forms are illusions, all notions of sin and guilt are fake, and no-one is really sick.
Nothing real can be threatened. No real soul can be threatened. No real son of God can be threatened. It is impossible for a son of God to sin. No-one has ever really sinned. Behind all notions of sin, which is 100% lies, there is the reality that we are all STILL as God created us. Perfect and whole and holy and innocent.
This is the only truth about people. So if I'm seeing something else or believing something else is true of people, that they are their bodies or that their illusions are true or their false beliefs are true or their obstacles to peace are real or their sicknesses are real, I am mistaken.
Seeing things in their correct light - the nature of our relationships and reality in Heaven, helps to form a contrast in which to compare the nature of earthly bullshit, to allow us to recognize what is real and what is unreal. What is true and what is false. I've found this very clarifying, to have a model of Heaven to compare everything else to.
The task now is to learn to see past bodies and forms to such an extent as to recognize only the immortal spirit that we each are, our permanent innocent unchangeable selves, which are STILL as God created us, and which cannot ever be changed. How can immortal beings suffer and die? The suffering must be fake.
It is not possible to be angry at another person and see the other person correctly.
If you are in any way experiencing the other person as anything other than PURE LOVE, there must be some kind of negative attitude in your own mind with which you are seeing them. This negative attitude acts as a BLOCK to awareness, a filter, which is skewing perception. It is showing you something that is not really IN the other person, but is in fact in your own mind. Its your judgement. Your hate.
While you are perceiving others through this filter of hate, it is impossible for you to see them correctly. So if you are not seeing them correctly, how are you able to completely objectively evaluate whether they deserve to be hated or not? You can't. Therefore your hate is always unjustified and in error, and for all you know, underneath a world that SEEMS like it is filled with hate, there could be a world filled with LOVE, that you just don't SEE because you are too busy hating it.
Again the ego has lied, to tell us that its possible to objectively perceive the world at the same time as evaluating that people are enemies or are unworthy or are to be hated or are guilty in some way. If we see this in them, we are NOT seeing them clearly, and we are not being shown a clear view of reality, and our evaluation is now in ERROR. We have become blind to what is actually there.
Only when you look with unconditional love can you have TRUE VISION and SEE what is really there. Otherwise, you are looking with the ego and you will not be able to see.
"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - ACIM
If your ultimate, completely long-term goal was to awaken to truth and return to God, and you knew that ultimately nothing could hurt you because you are Immortal Spirit, you would be COMPLETELY okay with WHATEVER is necessary in order to accomplish that goal.
And that does mean literally anything. If you knew that the most important thing in your entire existence is to return to being with God, then you would 'okay' a lifetime in which you suffer terribly, have horrible diseases, are attacked endlessly, treated unfairly, and end up dying. You would sign on the dotted line - yes please, I'll go through this.
And the only reason you'll allow and agree to this, is because you can see ahead of time, what the experience is going to be like but, most importantly, WHAT IT WILL LEAD TO. And because you want what it will lead to - an increase in spiritual growth, an increase in awakening, learning to be more loving, growing your heart or the hearts of others, IF you could be shown that ahead of time, you would be like... yes, that's going to be a painful lesson but the end result is WORTH IT.
This is how we initially set out to become victims in this world. We go through this process before we are born. We evaluate with help, what we want to LEARN, and what is going to be required in order to learn it. And sometimes the requirements or 'stimuli' that will provoke learning may not be necessarily pleasant. And that's a very light way of putting the fact, that we literally choose to suffer in terrible ways, IF it will lead ultimately to awakening.
Then we come into the world and really bad shit happens. Really really bad shit. And it seems terrible. And initially we don't understand because we have this amnesia, on purpose, shutting out awareness of WHY this is happening. But the whole point of that amnesia is so that we can learn and become aware of WHY... so that we can become empowered, so that we can grow stronger, and so that we can ultimately WAKE UP.
In that light, victims are not victims. There are no victims. There are only choices, agreed-to scripts, and purposeful events. Everyone who is to meet will meet. Every thing that is meant to happen will happen. And everyone will ultimately wake up. And everyone will know that it was all worth it, especially given that NONE of this stuff was even real anyway.
Whatever the extent of your conscious awareness is right now, if it is not technically an awareness of God or the whole of your True Self, then somewhere in you there is unconsciousness.
In spite of that fact, you will still believe that the full scope of your current conscious awareness is the "whole" of who you are, the "whole" of the truth, and the sum total of all information that's present.
The problem is, if you have unconsciousness to any degree, there is some information you are not aware of. You will then attempt to come to conclusions based on all the information available to you at the moment. It will seem then to make sense to you.
This for example is why people become justified in being angry. They are unconscious of the way they have projected sin onto others, unaware of the full dynamics of the situation. It then *seems* (an illusion) that, because of a block to awareness, it is perfectly logical and sensible to conclude, based on what you are *aware of*, that the other person is the one who caused your upset. Then you will be justified in being angry or blaming them. But this is because you do not see the whole picture.
Anyone in a body who has an ego, has some unconsciousness. That also means, their sense of identity is limited, and therefore there is some kind of illusion of a self which is *blocking* awareness. This illusion of self is a mask or facade or persona. Typically this persona presents itself as "innocent". Everyone thinks they are innocent. That's because this innocence HIDES, and makes unconscious, their guilt.
You have to realize then that you have a facade of fake innocence which has blinded you. You have to also realize that, even if you THINK you are fully aware right now, are fully yourself, or are fully in the truth, you probably are not (unless you really are with God). You will not BE AWARE that you have an unconscious mind. You ego persona will deny it and cover it up. But it is there.
This means you have to be willing to question your facade of fake innocence and whether there might be DENIAL happening, which is hiding truth from you. When truth is hidden you cannot see correctly and WILL come to false conclusions. This confusion then is responsible for ALL UPSET, resulting from mis-perceiving what is happening. You NEED more information in order to properly evaluate what is happening. You need a bigger picture. Without it, you are blinded and will react to illusions.
Ego is always about believing you are SEPARATE FROM the things you attack. That cause and effect are separate. That you can escape the consequences, and get away with murder.
If you project guilt through anger, you believe that the other person is guilty and not yourself. You might not be quite so aware that when you JUDGE in any way, you are doing the same thing.
You judge something that you believe is NOT YOU, in order to believe you've escaped the consequences of judging.
However, because the Golden Rule always applies, when you do to others you do to yourself. Because you are one with them, and a part of them. The part of you in them is attacked by your attack, and judged by your judgment.
You cannot help but feel judged, victimised, embarrassed, ashamed and guilty, when you judge something. And this is because all judgements you make are with the ego. They are attempt to separate off and evaluate independent parts, which splits your mind, and causes you to hurt yourself.
It's not merely that you should not judge because "its mean to someone else." Or that you'd be guilty if you did that to someone not yourself. But more that you should not judge because you CANNOT get away with it, and WILL experience effects upon yourself.
You think you sit within your body and observe and are passive and can hand out judgements on things outside of you with no effect whatsoever. This is not true. Judgement will disturb your peace and remove your happiness, because you cannot condemn and love at the same time.
"Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself." UrT29J2
"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment" UrM16A2
"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own." UrT3H1
1. Nothing real can be threatened because reality is PERMANENT.
2. Nothing unreal exists because unreal things are TEMPORARY.
3. If something can be threatened, it can be changed.
4. If something can be changed, and given nothing REAL can be changed, that thing ****MUST NOT BE REAL****
5. Only UNREALITY can be changed.
6. God, who is REAL, and permanent, and cannot be changed or threatened, CAN ONLY CREATE that which is permanent, and unchanging.
7. Anything that CHANGES in ANY WAY, is temporary, ***UNREAL***, and *****NOT CREATED BY GOD*****!!!!
8. God who is real, can only create THE PERMANENT. He can only create eternal life. If something grows, changes, transforms, changes form, or dies, it is NOT A CONSTANT STATE ("reality is a constant state"). Therefore it *CANNOT BE REALITY*, it MUST BE an illusion, and it DOES NOT really exist.
9. Nothing unreal exists. Anything that changes does not exist. Herein lies the peace of God.
10. God is at peace because NOTHING REAL IS CHANGING.
In summary:
1. If it changes, IT IS NOT REAL.
2. If it cannot be changed, IT IS REAL.
Use this to evaluate *EVERYTHING*. Ask yourself.
Q. "Can this be changed?"
If the answer is YES, *****IT IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT*****
Example:
Does planet Earth change? Yes. It spins, it moves, it changes shape, it has oceans which flow, forests that grow and die, bodies that suffer and become sick, tragedies and horrors which transform and affect people and threaten things.
Therefore, EARTH IS NOT REAL AND GOD DID NOT CREATE IT.
If you can’t accept this.... either
a) you have some difficulty understanding simple logic
b) you are confused about whether something changes or not
c) you can’t see why "changing things" is unreal because you’ve never had a sense of anything truly permanent to compare it to
d) you are in denial
e) you do not want to give up the world and want it to be reality, so are having wishful thinking
f) you are just not ready to accept this yet, which is ok, but that doesn’t CHANGE THE TRUTH.
We do not recognize an illusion when we see one. Since birth we've been looking at this world believing it's real. It seems real enough. But "there is nothing so blinding as perception of form."
The problem is, we don't have something MORE real to compare it to. There is no frame of reference to evaluate it or contrast it. If you could see something truly real, it would frame this world AS an illusion, it's illusory nature would become obvious, and you would be able to tell that this world is clearly false and unreal. But you have to have a sense of what true and real things are like in order to be able to compare and contrast, that this illusion is opposite to that.
Think for a moment then about reality, about God, about Heaven, about the nature and quality of infinite immortal being. Contemplate what God is like. The eternal nature, the endlessness, the freedom from sickness and death, the inability to create anything less than perfection. Then ask yourself, is this thing you are looking at, THAT? Does it match up? Does it correlate? Does it seem like something God would create, something immortal, unlimited, perfect, beautiful and pure?
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
With something to compare it to, it becomes more obvious that the things of this world, the stuff you've been looking at since birth, MUST BE an illusion. It must be something manufactured, artificial, pretend, fake, unreal, deceptive. It cannot really exist. There is no cancer in God. There is no insanity in God. There is no dog shit in God. There is no crying in God. There is no attack in God. There is no fear or threat or danger in God. Can this appearance of sin and attack exist WITHIN God's perfect being? Not even slightly. So what is it you're looking at?
It has to be something that is not really there. It has to be a lie, an illusion, a deception and a temptation to believe in something unreal. It's some kind of hallucination. It's make believe fairytale dreaming. It can't exist. It can't really be there at all. It seems to be but it's not. It is really nothing, pretending to be something. The impossible, pretending to be possible. It can't exist in God. It has no real cause. It hasn't been created. Remind yourself of this, and it will become clearer and more RECOGNIZED, that what you're seeing is an ILLUSION, some kind of invented puff of smoke masquerading as something else. It can't be real. It can't exist. It's not there. It's gone.
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
There is only God and His Kingdom. "Only the creations of light are real."
"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."
Intellect here is being basically equate with the ego thought system. Intellect is a device that separates and analyzes. It looks at things and separates them off and compares them. It judges them and evaluates them. This splitting apart is an emphasis on separation and increases the send of fragmentation of things. Things can become extremely complicated in the intellect.
As such, since the physical world is made from the idea of separation and the intellect similarly fosters perceptions of separation, the intellect can be said to be responsible for making the world. ie the ego mind of separation reinforces ideas of differences and contrasts and directly leads to physical matter showing up.
Jesus congrats this against real thinking, ie the thoughts you think with God, thoughts of love and creation, which are extensions of God's mind. Those create wholeness and spirit and eternal life because they are not based on separation. It's a way of thinking that doesn't dissect or analyse or judge or evaluate. It's a thought process that looks out from a loving whole state of mind and creates more of the same - the good, the beautiful and the holy. This extends the Kingdom of God (heaven).
"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."
You might notice also that when you move away from love and the present moment, the mind creates a sense of separateness from "what is" and moves into a kind of more fictional, theoretical, conceptualizing state. This produce a sort of "shift upwards" in the mind, or what we might call moving thought up into the intellect. In the intellect everything becomes theoretical and non-practical, or is a lack of application because it's a lack of real engagement and sharing. It could be thought of as a way of shutting down and separating off by trying to hide from immediate reality, going into fantasies and sidetracks.
"Intellect may be a "displacement upward"
The intellect can be somewhat useful perhaps for assessing things in this world and sorting out what to do and so on, but only as a temporary tool. It's easy to become lost in it and to be so involved in intellectualizing that your whole experiences becomes one big theory and not a whole lot of relationship. Then you can be sort of living in a cloud of "course thought" masquerading as "doing the course" but only really being good at talking bout it, around it, and indirectly referring to it. The truth has to be lived, and that means eventually the intellect will be transcended and used no more.
Judgment is a fairly large topic in ACIM. The course teaches us to basically "not judge". But that's not the whole story. Judgement can relate to evaluating the meaning of something, but also can in its lower forms mean condemnation. It can devolve into hate and attack and sin, or it can elevate to true justice and forgiveness.
Judgment is tied into perception, which "selects and evaluates" the meaning of things. And because it's based on perception, it is uncertain and unstable. That is, until it is stabilized by the Holy Spirit.
He has correct judgement because he, in part, has perception, but he also has knowledge. You have to know EVERYTHING in order to correctly discern what anything is. It thus requires vision, based on knowledge. He is the only one who can judge correctly, until you can learn to share his judgement in place of the ego's judgment. The ego always judges harshly, producing what we call "condemnation" or "being judgmental."
This is because the ego does not know anything, and is always wrong. Its judgements are always harsh and attacking, accusing everything of sin and guilt. It cannot recognize the "true" judgements of the Holy Spirit, and so its judgements produce false perceptions.
If you let the Holy Spirit judge for you, and then you match, accept or align with his judgement, your own judgement will line up with his and be accurate. If you try to judge on your own, and given you lack knowledge, most of the time you will judge with the ego and make false judgements. These judgements will be attacks and they will hurt yourself.
As you learn to let your judgement rest upon the Holy Spirit's judgement, your own judgement aligns with the truth, causing your perception to become "true". You judge with the ego less and trust the Holy Spirit to judge for you. Eventually your own judgement becomes "as true" and equal to his, shared with him.
Only when your judgement is perfected, and your perception aligned with knowledge, are you in a position to judge correctly without ego. This is an advanced state.
Jesus doesn't entirely write off all judgement. He does want us to stop using our ego to judge, and to instead depend on the Holy Spirit to judge for us until we are better able to judge with him correctly and share his judgement. His judgements are not condemning, they are healing and forgiving.
Thus to him, true judgement or "the final judgement" is a way of evaluating everything as forgiven and innocent, in which judgement becomes "non-judgmental." In this way, the attacking judgementalism of the ego becomes repurposed and is used to cancel itself out. By using judgment to not attack, the need for judging at all is undone, and so the need for perception ends.
Ultimately, by using the Holy Spirit's nonjudgmental judgement, we escape from the world. The world was made BY judging, ie as an attack on God, as a condemnation of his son. The ego aligned with the world's nature (both based on separation) and judged the world harshly.
The Holy Spirit judges the world fairly and without condemning it. You thus escape from the world by not playing the world's game of condemnation and attack (which is also sin). By not attacking what is rooted in attack, by not judging those who condemn, by seeing sinners as innocent, judgement is repurposed as a way to evaluate that the judgmental attack-world is forgiven. Thus is our investment in its nature undone, and the world is gone with it.
When judgement is perfected, ie shared with and in agreement with the Holy Spirit, ego and the body and the world disappear. Perception ends and we return to a state of knowledge, waking up in the reality of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no condemnation and no sin and no ego, and no need to judge or evaluate the meaning of anything. Everything there is inherently meaningful and means everything, which thus gives way to cognition and knowledge.
This all boils down to:
1) Do not condemn (hate, attack, sin, make guilty, attack-thoughts, grievances etc).
2) Do not evaluate anything on your own, recognizing you cannot (let Holy Spirit judge through you - extend his judgement).
"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."
"Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."
"No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation."
"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself."
"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is."
"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."
"Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being."
"We will receive but what is given us from Judgment made beyond the world."
"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment. What is your judgment on the world, teacher of God? Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him."
"How CAN specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too."
"We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety."
"Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one."
"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you."
"Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be."
"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."
"Good judgment" in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does "bad." It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment he merely gives up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."
"Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception."
"No-one can escape God's final judgment. Who could flee forever from the truth? But the final judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear."
"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."
"The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. The Final Judgment might be called a process of Right-evaluation. It simply means that finally all men must come to understand what is worthy and what is not."
"Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact."
Moving out of victimhood towards empowerment requires a radical shift in perspective. The victim mindset always involves a sense of separation from others. In this mode, your mind assigns certain things to them, and not to you. They're the one that's guilty, they're the attacker, they're the one doing something wrong. But in order to get out of this, we have to realise that everything "about" this situation is YOU doing it TO YOU.
That means that even when you think of someone like "that person is being evil", that is not actually a separate thought about a separate person. That is your mind attacking itself. Your mind splits off and invents a character to represent the other role, projects that character onto the other person, imagines that character being sinful and attacking, and then believes that the guilt belongs to them and not you. But this is YOUR mind forming a split personality, identifying with one part and not another, being at war with itself, and attacking itself from the outside in a kind of indirect way.
It is NOT TRUE that you can use your mind to just think casually about anyone and anything, with no effect on you. Even if you think you are describing what someone "is like", even if it seems based on their physical appearance, their behavior, or anything else that you think belongs to them, it requires you to still judge and attack in order to assign these labels to them. And when you do that, it's really your mind attacking itself. You cannot just sit there on a kind of fence having objective observations of condemnation and pretend that you're not hurting yourself by doing so.
It's kind of like a misuse of the equipment, like you don't know how to use your mind. You think that your mind is capable of operating in a mode where you can remain separate from others and cast judgements at them, label them, describe them, evaluate them. As if these perceptions have no effect. But what you don't realise is this is a totally incorrect way to use the mind. Mind cannot have these thoughts, labels, judgements, even if they map accurately to someone in form, without them being a form of attack. If I say "you did something wrong", I am literally telling myself that I'm wrong, I am split minded, have a case of dissociation, and am pretending to be a victim.
The major shift of believing that the problem is separate from you "out there", to recognizing that "you are doing it to yourself", requires a complete ownership of your thoughts, your judgements, your attitude. It's a total responsibility. It's a recognition that anything you perceive you have projected, because projection makes perception. Any labels you give to things are not neutral, they are a way that your mind is setting up an enemy within and as itself, to attack itself. It's your mind using the world vicariously to imagine that the world is doing something to you, when in fact this visualising is your mind doing something to itself.
So basically we have to go from believing that the stuff out there is not inside us, to realising that "ideas leave not their source". That any idea you have "about" anyone is about yourself. That you are included in everything. That you never escape any consequences, you are never separate from any judgement you make, what you do to others you are doing to yourself, and you are still bound by God's law of the golden rule. It's a shift away from a mind which is in two halves with two wills and two characters, to a mind which is single and whole and undivided against itself.
"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you, quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make, a plan you lay, when for an instant truth arises in your own deluded mind, and all your world appears to totter and prepare to fall. Now are you sick, that truth may go away and threaten your establishments no more."
"How do you think that sickness can succeed in shielding you from truth? Because it proves the body is not separate from you, and so you must be separate from the truth. You suffer pain because the body does, and in this pain are you made one with it. Thus is your "true" identity preserved, and the strange, haunting thought that you might be something beyond this little pile of dust silenced and stilled. For see, this dust can make you suffer, twist your limbs and stop your heart, commanding you to die and cease to be."
"Thus is the body stronger than the truth, which asks you live, but cannot overcome your choice to die. And so the body is more powerful than everlasting life, Heaven more frail than hell, and God's design for the salvation of His Son opposed by a decision stronger than His Will. His Son is dust, the Father incomplete, and chaos sits in triumph on His throne."
"Such is your planning for your own defense. And you believe that Heaven quails before such mad attacks as these, with God made blind by your illusions, truth turned into lies, and all the universe made slave to laws which your defenses would impose on it. Yet who believes illusions but the one who made them up? Who else can see them and react to them as if they were the truth?"
...AND ITS REVERSAL...
"God knows not of your plans to change His Will. The universe remains unheeding of the laws by which you thought to govern it. And Heaven has not bowed to hell, nor life to death. You can but choose to think you die, or suffer sickness or distort the truth in any way. What is created is apart from all of this. Defenses are plans to defeat what cannot be attacked. What is unalterable cannot change. And what is wholly sinless cannot sin."
"Healing will flash across your open mind, as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal, and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey."
"Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more."
"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed, because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."
ACIM
My note: Note that Jesus specifically refers here to healing the physical BODY, and to his intention that we PRACTICE this in order to then evaluate how well we did based on how meaningless the body is afterwards, as well as making the body invulnerable to and not dependent upon the world.
To judge or be judgemental, in course terms, is to section off part of the world and put it into a category, likely based on its form or appearance or behaviour. Sometimes it is judged as good sometimes as evil. Sometimes it is regarded as a sin, sometimes a blessing.
But in all cases it is based on separating off and pitting it against other things, producing more conflict. Even seemingly positive judgements are ways of saying "this is better than that", as a subtle put-down of something else. Nothing can be elevated above unless something else is worse.
We use judgement like a way of selecting what something is "in isolation", and then determining its merit. Is it righteous or cursed? Is it acceptable or rejected? But in truth all judgement rejects because it has to push something else away in order to focus on and accept something.
Essentially judgementalism is simply a way of applying an un-whole and unholy viewpoint, to only a portion of the world, rather than to the whole of it. And that requires emphasising differences and comparing them and finding something lacking. No matter how positive the judgement seems to be it must have a flipside, of the dark things it judges against indirectly in order to put something on a pedestal. Just as special relationships hate the rest of the community.
Therefore judgement leads to idol worship, where something is either put on a pedestal or buried in the ground based on what you "believe" its value is. But the thing about judgement is that it isn't objective, it isn't passive, and isn't unbiased. It is always a condemnation and used as a weapon to separate and subdivide and increase space-time. It's a way of accusing something of being something, projecting some of your lovely guilt onto it, or onto its competition.
While we are in ego we are being partial, and all our judgements are wrong. That's a big statement but it means every single way that we judge on our own without the wholeness of the Holy Spirit, is a form of grievance, unforgiveness, attack, making sin real, and projecting guilt. It's a way of separating things off, splitting the mind, and focusing on differences.
This is why we have to be willing to give up making ANY judgements without the Holy Spirit's judgement, because every single time we judge or evaluate anything we're making a mistake. EVERY time. And then our judgement is an attack thought, and projects guilt, and labels and categorises, and fragments everything into a worse state. Plus you are included in the mind-splitting effects of judging.
We might not think we judge, but we're doing it all the time. We might think we're not even angry, making a passing commentary about something, having an opinion, giving a wise and educated verdict, using our experience, but it's all flawed. Unless it addresses the whole coming from wholeness and concludes only universal innocence, it is judgementalism and is ego.
"Judgment was made to be a weapon used against the truth. It separates what it is being used against, and sets it off as if it were a thing apart. And then it makes of it what you would have it be. It judges what it cannot understand, because it cannot see totality and therefore judges falsely." UrW311L1
It is not possible to PERCEIVE **within** reality, because there is no perception WITHIN reality. Perception is an interpretative process based on judgement. You can evaluate reality and PERCEIVE it, but this isn't the SAME as knowing it or DIRECTLY experiencing it.
"Only your vision can convey to you what YOU can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you."
Perception ends before you enter the Kingdom, this does not mean that you cannot SEE in some manner WITHIN the Kingdom.
"Only the mind CAN SEE."
In fact, after an extensive search, I found a great deal of evidence in ACIM that mind in fact DOES have a permanent ability to see. And that even God can see. This seeing does not use PERCEPTION, however. It uses cognition, recognition, and knowledge.
It is possible to KNOW reality, and to RE-COGNIZE God and your brothers. This knowing is a DIRECT experience of what IS THERE. You KNOW it, in awareness. This may well not entail BODIES, but you are SPIRIT, and spirit can be known and SEEN. The son of God can also be seen. YOU are a perfect shaft of light, which can be seen. The great rays can also be seen and they stretch to infinity.
Perception is a way of seeing based on JUDGING or EVALUATING what is there. It is interpretative. Beyond perception, WITHOUT judgement or interpretation, you can directly KNOW what is there. This knowing isn't just some fact or piece of information of non-visual experience. You can SEE GOD and His Creation - the universe of love. Knowing is UNDERNEATH perception and provides direct awareness of reality.
I will present below only a small segment of all the quotes I found. These ones speak more directly to seeing in God, seeing God, seeing His Son, God's ability to see, beyond perception, and beyond vision.
"Perception can reach everywhere under His guidance."
"Perception changes, made to take the place of changeless knowledge. Yet is truth unchanged. It cannot be perceived, but only known." (does not mean it cannot be SEEN!)
"To perceive the truth is not the same as knowing it."
"The innocence of God is the true state of ***the mind of His Son.*** ***In this state, man's mind DOES see God***, and because ***he sees Him as he Is***"
"God knows His Children with perfect certainty. He Created them by knowing them. ***He recognizes them*** perfectly."
"Blessed are the pure in heart for ***they shall see God***" is another way of saying the same thing. Only ***the innocent CAN see God.***"
"The soul never leaves ***the sight of God***"
"ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, ***has any real existence***. ***This, then, is all that the innocent can see.***"
"The wish to see calls down the grace of God upon your eyes, and brings the gift of light that makes sight possible. ***Will you behold your brother? God is glad to have you look on him.***"
"***See His creations as His Son***, for yours were created in honor of Him. The universe of love does not stop because you do not see it, nor have your closed eyes lost the ability to see. ***Look upon the glory of His creation***, and you will learn what God has kept for you."
"***You will see that God Himself*** is where his body is. Before this light the body disappears"
"***God is in everything I see*** because God is in my mind."
"***God is the light in which I see.***"
"***You cannot see apart from God*** because you cannot be apart from God."
"When you ***look upon knowledge***, all judgment is automatically suspended, and this is the process that enables ***recognition to REPLACE perception.***"
"Judgment is the process on which perception but not ***cognition*** rests." ... "It is ***perfectly possible to look on reality without judgment***, and merely ***KNOW it is there*** By knowing this, you are not doubting its reality at all."
"The innocent see safety, and ***the pure see God within His Son***, and look unto the Son to lead them to the Father."
When you hold a grievance, where you demand that someone else has to change because they are unacceptable to you, you are using the ego's version of forgiveness.
If you claim they are wrong or bad or evil or sinful or guilty in any way, you are saying you need them to change. They should not be the way they are. They are wrong and bad and evil to be the way they are. They should not be this way.
This means really that you want THEM to change so that YOU do not have to change. And it also means that you in fact want to be AFFECTED by them, as a victim, but you want them to affect you in a way that matches your desires.
So if you were to get a person to change and be the way "you want them to be", then supposedly they'd now treat you the way you want them to, and give you what you want. Maybe they'd now "make you happy". But this is still a form of victimhood.
Being caused to be happy by something outside yourself is just as ego as being cauesd to be unhappy by something outside yourself. They are both forms of being at the effect of the world. And when you depend on the world being nice to you, giving you what you want, meeting your standards, or forcing you into preferable states, you're forgiving to destroy.
By demanding that someone change, or be not like they are, which is your projected judgement of them in the first place, you are destroying them with your judgement of them. You evaluate first that they are evil and then ask THEM to be the one to stop being evil. This is not only self destructive, it's an attempt to destroy the world.
It's like accusing someone of being a bad person, even when they're not, and trying to put that onto them, and then demanding that THEY change to get out of the prison that you've put them in, to make you happy. It's like asking someone to do your own dirty work.
So first you try to destroy them, then you demand they stop being the destroyed person, to appease you and for your own gain. Like hurting someone then requiring that they get up and thank you for it. This is how the destroys in order to try to bring about a "forgiven" state where the sin seems to have been removed. In a sense you demand that they "resurrect" from being evil, for your benefit.
If someone undoes the sin you accuse them of, by changing, and complying with your wishes, then the ego now says well, you have indeed forgiven, and now that I see you are not being the evil I accused you of, my perception of you is not seeing evil in you. And that implies that I've done a forgiveness. If you stop being the evil sinner that I hate, then apparently I have forgiven you. But nothing has really changed in my mind, so there has been no real forgiveness at all.
It's like when someone does something you disapprove of, and then you say you are not going to forgive them until they change their ways. They have to repent. And when they change their ways and meet your conditions, you will say yes, very good, you did what I wanted and now I approve of you, and now you are my loyal servant. Then you are temporarily bestowed with an ego blessing of seeming mercy, while still enforcing that if you return to your wicked ways, you'll be punished just as much as before.
This in effect is therefore like some dictating tyrant who wants everything to be their way and wants everyone else to comply. To have power over everyone and control everything. To force the world to stop being the way it is, or the way you judge it to be. If those other motherfuckers would just stop being assholes everything would be great for you and life would be smooth. And so the ego seems for an illusion of peace in the midst of its warring ways.
"The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains that if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If this were different, I would be saved." The change of mind that is necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself."
One of the things about letting go, is to do with willingness. I realised it's about what you "want". If there is a wanting, a desire, it drives you to an attachment.
If you then want something, but can't have it, you'll experience emotional upset, grief and loss. If the thing you want has seemingly gone away, but you still want it, you'll suffer.
For me, for example, my wife has gone from the physical, but there are parts of me that still want her to be here in a body. The part that doesn't want to "let go" or can't figure out what to let go of, is the part that is already committed to pursuing what it wants, and is so into making what it wants "be there" that it is blind to its own ambition.
The part of me that wants the person to be present, wants the relationship, wants the specialness etc, is the part that isn't letting go. After all, you really only hold onto stuff that you want. And it's not easy to let go of "wanting" a person.
So now I find there is a contradiction between what I want and what I "can have". I still want something that isn't available. And that produces a sense of loss and emotional upset.
So what we have to let go of isn't so much the thing itself, but the wanting of the thing. The wanting is a form of control and attachment. What that leads to is having to realise that the wanting is a choice. I have chosen to want something. And as I continue to choose it, coupled with its unavailability, it is making me suffer.
And what that leads to is realising that at some point I have to choose to want something else. Or to stop wanting entirely, if that's possible. And that means choosing away from what I was choosing.
That's not easy to want to choose away from something you are attached to with special love and bodily value, when the rest of oneself is saying that it wants to keep it going. It's like having to deliberately decide to leave a relationship that you see no reason to leave, which isn't easy.
But as usual, what it amounts to is that, if I am suffering, I am doing to it to myself. "I must have chosen wrongly because I'm not at peace."
My wife, in her wisdom, and in our brief discussions mind-to-mind now, has been quite brutally honest and blunt about things. She is far ahead of me on this. She's told me that "we had our time" and, with regards to our marriage, "all those chains are broken now." I attempted to wear her wedding ring around my neck and she told me quite firmly to "take it off". She knows that these are forms of trying to stay attached to specialness.
It's a bit hard to accept that, and not take it as a rejection to the ego, almost seeming as if she doesn't "want me" anymore. But the higher soul perspective is much more detached, much more unconditional in its love, and much more shared. We're all supposed to love everyone, and exclusivity is of the ego.
Thing is, what could we be in "want" of, except something we lack. And who can lack when they are immortal. And what could be wanted except things that aren't real to begin with, and were never real. it gets pretty deep.
No-one wants to let go of what they believe is real, because whatever you value you allow into your mind and it becomes real to you. To let go of illusory things they have to be recognised as having not been real to begin with. An unreal relationship with an unreal body in an unreal world.
"And while you see more VALUE in sleeping than in waking, you will NOT let go of it."
"You do NOT recognize that love has come, because you have not yet let go of ALL the barriers you hold against EACH OTHER."
"I must let it go by realizing that it has no meaning, so that vision may take its place."
"For what you think is real YOU WANT, and will NOT let it go."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"You groped but feebly in the dust and found each other's hand, uncertain whether to let it go, or to take hold on life so long forgotten."
"Forgive the past and let it go, for it IS gone."
"No-one would choose to let go what he believes has value."
"Light cannot enter darkness, when a mind BELIEVES in darkness, and will not let it go."
A good question to ask is, it is any of my god-dam business?
In various ACIM groups, a majority of statements made are attempts to evaluate what someone else is doing and to judge whether or not they are supposed to be doing it.
It's kind of like the behavior police, making it one's own business to require that other people be a certain way in order to be acceptable.
What I think it really stems from is this issue of irresponsibility for our own choices. Or rather, trying to make someone else responsible for your happiness, and thereby being justified in anger at them when they're not being the way we need them to be, in order to choose what we want on our behalf.
There is this "forgiveness to destroy" all over these groups.
If I am responsible for my own choice and what I experience and I am not responsible for anyone else's mistaken decisions, then what anyone else is or is not doing should really be of no concern to me.
If I can access anything I need and any experience I desire through responsibility for my own choice, then I should have no need for anyone else to be a certain way, say certain things, have certain behaviors, or comply to some kind of guilt-laden course ideal. If I'm finger-pointing as to how others are falling short, it must prove that I am falling short and I'm the one who needs to own it.
What I came away with from spending time in the groups is, getting back to this self-study practice, for myself. No-one else can choose the atonement for me, or deny it for me. It's not anyone else's choice to make on my behalf. So I ask myself now whether there is really any significant merit in participating in these "discussion groups" where 90% of what's written is about the ways that other people are wrong.
Why are so many people talking about the way that OTHER people are doing the course and judging them for it?
I don't think we're supposed to be even getting into other people's business. Like, if someone is doing the course a certain way for them, that's their choice. It may not be the way I do it or what I believe the course says. But as soon as my ego starts to compare and judge the person now I'm getting involved in their business, interfering with their choices, trying to control them, and then rejecting them when they fail to comply.
We need to mind of own fucking business a bit more. Or as Jesus puts it more eloquently.... be passer by. Observe.
Forgiveness looks and is still and quiet and judges not. Where is the entanglement of opinions and getting into whether other people are right or wrong, in that?
All the debate and trying to coerce others to be like oneself, is an indirect ego attempt to avoid making one's own choice for atonement. It's a failure to forgive, actually, resulting in justified judgement. "He who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive." We aren't going to get to heaven by having someone else choose to go there for us.
So what does it matter what anyone else is doing? What does it matter whether other people are getting it or not? What does it matter who said what to whom and who was an asshole and who is passive aggressive and who is spewing lies about the truth 24/7?
I'm just thinking... I need to do the course myself, for me, and let go of trying to change other people when they're not ready or willing. Those who are to meet will meet. When students are ready, teachers appear. There are no accidents in salvation. God has a plan.
Given everything is driven by free-willed cause and effect, nothing is accidental. There are no mistakes. There is nothing happening randomly or by chance. Nothing happens at all without someone choosing it and willing it. There must be a CAUSE, before there is ANY effect.
You might think this is not true based on what appears to be a world or 'nature' that seems to do random stuff and is hard to explain as being anything but chaotic. But the fact is that nothing happens without some kind of "cause" making it happen. Whatever the cause may be. Without a cause there is no effect, so whenever something is 'happening', something caused it.
You then also get the idea that even if you cause something, it seems to have a cascade of completely "unintentional" consequences or side effects. There's seemingly knock-on effects or a whole chain of seemingly chaotic aftershocks. Yet are these things truly random? Are they not simply cause producing effects, which act as causes producing effects, and so on, in a chain of causality?
As the Course says, those who are to meet will meet. So for example, people meet because they choose to do so.
If you also look at My Self is Ruler of the Universe, it explicitly states that nothing happens without your say-so, and anything you choose happens, and nothing else.
The course also describes how teachers of God make all decisions fully consciously, with total awareness of the consequences, meaning, they know exactly what effects they are causing, and cause only those effects, on purpose, deliberately. And it is by choosing only loving choices that they guarantee their safety.
So this world, while it may SEEM like it's a total mess of random chaos and accidents and things happening against your will and victims and mistakes and all these illusions of uncertainty, in actual fact absolutely nothing is happening without a cause. It is all chosen. All deliberate. All instigated by a mind, somewhere.
Nothing moves or animates without mind making it move. Nothing appears or disappears without mind's say-so. Even the laws of nature are being "run" by a mind, somewhere, deliberately choosing what will and will not occur. The entire world would not even show up if it were not for a decision made somewhere.
And just because we think okay, we "set it in motion" and now the chips will fall where they may and a completely automatic random chaos follows, that's simply not true. Causality ensures that the consequences were set up in the causing, not as a result of the effects. Effects do not choose. Effects are not the source of decision. Even if there seems to be an entire cascade of consequences, one thing leading to another, is that not also completely specifically deliberately set in motion by a mind making a choice?
The truth about this world and enviornment then is that nothing happens without your consent, everything that happens is chosen, the world doesn't even spin unless someone spins it, and it is literally impossible for anything to happen if you do not choose it to. You are the author and dreamer.
You are the causer, chooser, instigator, of everything. You are never at the effect of some 'other chooser' choosing against your will, or things happening 'on their own' or as a result of some process or sequence of events that seem totally unrelated. There is no 'un-asked-for' anything. Remember that this entire world didn't even exist until someone explicitly put every piece of it in place, through choice and belief.
So there are no accidents, of any kind, ever. There is no victimhood. There is no mistake or something un-asked for. BUT, it DOES remain possible to make a POOR decision. It's possible to make a wrong decision or a decision for something that brings suffering. It's possible to evaluate situations and set in motion things which later turn out to be harmful. And it's possible to be very deluded as to what you have chosen or why.
The law always holds. Your free will is never violated by anything. If you would simply choose to wake up, you would. "Heaven is a choice I must make". Nothing can keep you imprisoned in hell against your will, other than YOUR choosing. You CAN make a poor choice, producing explicitly selected consequences or conditions, but you cannot make NO choice, and whatever you DO choose WILL happen. No exceptions.
The task then simply becomes one of, making a better choice. "I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace - I made the decision myself but I want to choose otherwise - I want to choose otherwise because I want to be at peace". Choose again, the course says. You are free to choose, but not free from the consequences of choosing. And all consequences are chosen. This is how you create your own hell. And it is how you find salvation.
The body is entirely designed to look upon an illusory world and make it seem real. It is designed to take something unreal and give it seeming reality. To turn fantasy into fact and to experience its own unreality as if it were real.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
Therefore you cannot ask the body to show you what is real or to ask it to describe anything true. It is not ABLE to see reality. It ALWAYS and permanently fixates on what is not real, and attempts to give it truth. And because the body itself is part of "what it observes", it will tell you that the body ITSELF is real, and will pass this off as a neutral observation.
"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality."
"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."
"You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real.""
The body then is a strange device which is utterly biased and incapable of being objective. The question of whether the body EXISTS or not, is given to the body to answer. And the body can ONLY report that it does exist. It will not ever report its own unreality. It is not capable of seeing reality, or recognizing it, or having the kind of vantage point to be able to discern whether something is real or not. That's because the body ITSELF is unreal and cannot step outside of its own unreality.
So what we do is, we keep using the body to try to evaluate what things are, whether they are true, whether they have reality etc. But the very device we're using to do this is utterly biased towards false perception. The body can ONLY see falsely and CANNOT see truth.
"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. "
The problem then is that the body itself is INCAPABLE of reaching outside of its own limitations. It is not capable of seeing heaven, nor is it capable of seeing the real world. The physical eyeballs are LOCKED into a mechanism of physics and biology based on separation, utterly dependent on separation to function. They can "see" only the reflected photons which were rejected by illusory surfaces, put there to BLOCK vision and to not see.
You cannot therefore USE the body to see reality, nor to discern what is true, or to correctly identify anything. It is a device made to be part of the very system that it is observing, such that it literally cannot discern anything unlike itself. And because what it observes IS like itself, it regards this as a validation of "reality" and of its own existence. You use the body to look at the body and the body reports, "this body exists". But this is not true.
The body is completely biased and one-sided and tainted in its supposedly "neutrality" of observation. It is incapable of making neutral observations because it, itself, is completely skewed towards making illusions seem real. It HAS taken sides. And it is on the side of hell and death and proving sin is happening. All things physical do this - they are all part of the deception of spacetime.
If you want to find out what is true or real you have to go beyond the body and beyond the physical. There has to be ANOTHER kind of vision, another way to see, which does NOT depend on the body and does not use the physical eyeballs. A way to discern what is real and what is true and what exists. This is the spiritual eye in the mind.
"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."
"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight."
"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."
"The spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error"
"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."
We are asked therefore to turn away from this isolating dependency on the PHYSICAL SIGHT, on the physical senses, and all the physical LIES of the body, and open up the spiritual eye to being able to SEE with vision, using the mind only, beyond the physical. This is what the development of true perception is about. It's about going beyond the body into the light where you can actually see what is real and true and not be deceived by an illusory physical world. And that has to mean overcoming the body and leaving it behind.
Heaven is vertically opposite to the Earth. Heaven is love, yet love has no opposite. The earth is the opposite to love and does not exist, hence "there is no world."
"Never was love in the world."
"The truth is simple; it is one without an opposite."
"There is no death because an opposite to God does not exist."
"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."
The Earth is made of fear, guilt, and sin. It is an illusion. It is the idea of the opposite to love, and opposite to God. Yet, an opposite to love does not exist.
If you take heaven an earth and put them alongside each other, seemingly with a separation between them, you are suggesting that you can evaluate them as though comparable equals. This is dualistic, horizontal logic. Heaven’s relationship to the earth is NOT horizontal.
Heaven, love, God, creation, do not HAVE an opposite. They are ABOVE, on a higher level. Earth is BELOW, on a lower level. Their relationship is not horizontal, it is vertical.
Heaven is infinite. Earth is finite. Heaven is reality. Earth is illusion. Heaven is truth. Earth is a lie. Heaven is everywhere. Earth is nowhere. Heaven is all that exists in God. Earth is nothing that exists anywhere but in a fiction.
You cannot compare them like apples to apples. You also cannot suggest that if you remove the separation between them, then they will BECOME ONE. That would only happen in a horizontal logical comparison, which is how the EGO THINKS about oneness.
Compare them vertically, and what happens?
Vertically, because love has no opposite, it means:
1) There is no world. It does not exist ANYWHERE.
2) When the "real world" disappears, and the supposed "separation between heaven and earth" is dissolved, this does NOT mean that they blend together into ONE state that includes them both. IT DOES NOT. It means, that which was EVERYTHING REAL - heaven - is all that will be left. That which was NOTHING REAL - earth - will be recognized as ceasing to exist.
3) Earth is not a part of heaven. It never will be. There is no world. Not even the "real world" exists but as a dream. Dreams end and what was dreamed ceases to exist anywhere.
4) Earth does not "Translate into heaven" as a way for it to BECOME heaven, to be included in heaven, to turn into heaven, or to blend with heaven. What was thought to be there, as a world which DOES NOT EXIST, disappears entirely, being recognized. Jesus teaches "Illusions recognized must disappear", not "illusions recognized are kept and transformed into part of heaven."
5) The removal of the separation between heaven and earth does NOT MEAN that heaven ceases to exist afterwards. Opposition is the idea that exists only in the illusory earth. Heaven does not oppose. Heaven does not participate in the separation or in becoming one half of a duality. Heaven recognizes there is ONLY heaven. "There is no life outside of heaven." When the idea of separation disappears, the CONTENT OF THAT IDEA will disappear, which was entirely ONE SIDED! The ego’s opposition to Heaven was NOT part of Heaven’t opposition to the ego. Heaven does not attack or separate. Heaven is not a PART OF the separation idea. When the separation is undone, vertically, ONLY THE WORLD DISAPPEARS, NOT HEAVEN. What remains is ONLY HEAVEN.
6) This is the meaning of "nothing unreal exists" - the earth DOES NOT EXIST. Trying to find a way to make it continue to exist "in God" or "fused with Heaven" is DENIAL, based in fear. Heaven/God/reality is all that exists. Ego/separation/earth/illusions is UNREALITY and does not exist. Never do the two become one. Only one of them is TRUE. The world is FALSE. Never will "what is false" be converted into or kept or become a part of heaven or ANY state of oneness no matter what you call it or how you try to read into it.
7) There is no world. This is the central thought the course would attempt to teach. It is an extremely radical idea. It threatens the ENTIRE ego thought system. Resistance against it is the sum total of ALL of the resistance of the entire ego thought system. No-one with an ego wants to admit it is true. It means nothing in the world, no forms, no bodies, no pretty animals and rainbows, no lakes and mountains and oceans, no special relationships, no bodily relationships, NONE OF IT EXISTS.
That’s why this threatens so many people. Believing YOU are made of or are a part of the ego world (earth) makes you certain that IF it does not exist, NOR DO YOU. And that is interpreted like a threat of DEATH by the ego. And then the person will put up *defenses* against the truth, moving into sickness in an attempt to explain why the world is real and part of God’s creation. It is nothing less than the fear of death.
It takes WILLINGNESS to accept that this is true and that Jesus is literally telling us there is no world here at all. This is also why Jesus repeatedly says that "nothing you see means anything" and "the world you see does not exist". Literally, planet earth does not exist. NEVER will it be a part of heaven in any way under any circumstances or interpretations whatsoever. Love has no opposite. What is not love does not exist NOW, even if it’s showing up as a fake planet. And it will not begin to exist LATER, after the universe disappears.
Only love is real.
You are hampered in your progress by your demands to know what you do not know. This is actually a way of hanging on to deprivation. You cannot reasonably object to following instructions in a course FOR knowing, on the grounds that you do not know. The need for the course is implicit in your objection. Knowledge is not the motivation for learning this course. PEACE is. As the PREREQUISITE for knowledge, peace MUST be learned. This is ONLY because those who are in conflict are not peaceful, and peace is the CONDITION of knowledge because it is the condition of the Kingdom.
Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His. Knowledge IS His Will. If you are OPPOSING His Will, how CAN you have knowledge? I have told you what knowledge OFFERS you, but it is clear that you do NOT regard this as wholly desirable. If you did, you would hardly be willing to throw it away so readily, when the ego asks for your allegiance.
The distraction of the ego SEEMS to interfere with your learning, but it HAS no power to distract unless you GIVE it the power. The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real." Hallucinations ARE inaccurate perceptions of reality. But you are NOT asked to dispel them alone. You are merely asked to evaluate them in terms of their results TO YOU. If you DO NOT WANT THEM on the basis of LOSS OF PEACE, they will be removed from your mind FOR you. Every response to the ego is a call to war, and war DOES deprive you of peace.
Yet in this war THERE IS NO OPPONENT. THIS is the re-interpretation of reality which you must make to secure peace, and the ONLY one you need ever make.
"He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." - ACIM
Meaning, forgiveness is a fixation on the truth that Christ is real and nothing of the ego is real. It fore-gives by having a purely forgiving attitude so that there are no errors introduced into your own perception, so that you do not see sin as real. This means you are overlooking the ego and not believing in it. You are not supposed to believe the ego even really exists!
If you fail to do this, if you are not truly purely forgiving, which occurs in the Atonement and the acceptance that nothing "real" has happened, therefore innocence prevails, then you will enter into a psychological condition which Jesus has named "judgement".
Judgement becomes your attempt to evaluate or justify WHY you did not forgive, by explaining using various other reasons what the cause is of what you're now seeing. Since you're making a perceptual error and are hallucinating errors, you will see sin as real and will attempt to explain why it is real by judging, ie evaluating, fake reasons.
Also judgement means that you are attacking, are condemning, are attempting to give reality to illusions, and are seeing someone as less than holy. This then takes on and accounts for all forms of what you think of as judgement, which is a judgemental attitude, but really encompasses the ENTIRE ego thought system. Every part of egoic perception is judgemental because it's a split-mind thought system of self-attack and condemnation. It points a finger of blame to scapegoat and enter denial, and finds someone guilty.
The belief that sin is real is judgementalism and is the opposite of forgiveness.
A major mistake all egoic minds make is believing that one part of the ego mind is holier than another, and then pits that one part against the other. One part is called holy and the other part is called evil. And then there is judgement against those that are considered sinful, even though the entirety of that attitude is judgemental. You see people in Christianity doing this where they become very polarized and anti-sin, waging a "spiritual war" against the devil, because they believe it is REAL. But it's not just Christians that do this, everyone with an ego does this.
You WILL be judgemental if you are not forgiving, and the only sign of true sanity is One who has absolutely no belief in "real sin" whatsoever. That mind, Holy Spirit's thought system of real truth, demonstrates and proves that there is no real ego at all. Nothing has happened. The atonement.
People will then say, if you want to do the Course correctly, you need to not be judgemental. So then people repress their ego and hide their judgements. If they believe sin is real they will continue to judge on some level even if they don't express it. And it will be an unconscious self attack. You can't just "stop judging" in expectation that this will solve everything, because the only reason you're judging is because you believe the world/body/ego/sin is reality or truth. You could take that path IF it would lead you to the insight that NONE of that is real, but I don't generally think that's happening for most people.
Instead, focus on forgiveness which is the true undoing of judgement, which must lead all the way to the Atonement if it is to completely uproot the core belief about the separation really happening. Only then will judgement cease, because judgement is really an EFFECT of non-forgiveness, not a cause in its own right.
P.S. I don't mean this post to be a "judgement" about judgemental Christians. Not all Christians are judgemental by any means. But they do often present a good example of this happening due to their belief in real sin and can't help but be "against" sinners. Some of the most intensely judgemental people I've met claim to believe in Jesus with the most gusto and passion, yet were horrible to be around and so incredibly righteous. Their personas were huge and they were in such denial. This doesn't mean Christians can't be truly forgiving and not believe in sin, just that many don't get that far. This is the lower level of expressing Christ's truth and is an attempt to express it within the context of the ego being real, so is really a major "level confusion". Christians can become Christ if they can let go of a belief in real sin and the entire package of evil/hell/sickness/death/vengeful God that accompanies it.
Ok. Think about all the ways that people try to understand ACIM. All the opinions. All the "figuring out" what it means. All the discussion, debate, arguments and disagreements. And still it seems no-one quite knows the whole picture.
Well none of that is necessary. In fact, behind all of the words of ACIM there is a purely logical metaphysical structure and progression of thought, which if followed precisely will automatically reveal the components of separation, why bodies show up, what the world is, aspects of creation etc. All of it follows IMPECCABLE LOGIC.
All you need to do therefore is discern, from a completely sane and logically-sound starting point (God), what is the progression of logical outcomes or consequences. All of God's creation and everything about it proceeds according to perfectly logical rules. Additionally the separation from God, the ego, the ego thought system, sin and death, all proceed according to perfect logic.
For example, the idea of an "opposite" to reality, which is the separation idea, is a logical argument suggesting that something *COMPLETELY* opposite to God's nature can exist. And this for example is reflected "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way". .. because Earth is the logical outcome of the separation thought system and must be opposite to God's conclusion.
It is a "black and white", very clearly defined "state". And as the ego progresses in its thought system, it produces states of MIND, which correspond to logical conclusions and consequences.
All you need to do is learn this logical structure, what specifically MUST be the outcome and logical conditions that arise based on each step towards death, and the entire picture of existence is revealed, with everything in its right place and everything understood in its relationship to the rest.
This then forms "the metaphysics" of the course, which is kind of a living experiential description of the "states" of mind which have arisen, what they are based on, and how they are corrected. Once you get this underlying structure, which is deeper and less removed than words, you can take any statement in the course and fit it into the picture accurately and understand it far better than any other "random" or disjointed attempt to form an opinion.
You don't then even need an opinion. All you need is to comprehend the logical basis for things. This circumvents all discussions, debates, arguments and misinterpretations. You can also then USE the logical basis to evaluate any new statements, or to base expressions on that structure in order to "extrapolate" the course or say things about it which are completely in accord with the Course's teaching.
Jesus in the Course is extremely logical and clear. For example:
"Perfect love casts out fear. If fear exists, Then there is not perfect love. But: Only perfect love exists. If there is fear, It produces a state that does not exist."
This is a progression of pure logic. There are many many other examples. Below, Jesus talks about LOGIC and how everything proceeds according to logic...
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death. We have followed much of the ego’s logic, and have seen its logical conclusions. And, HAVING seen them, we have realized that they can NOT be seen but in delusions. "
"In one sense, the ego’s fear of the idea of God is at least logical."
"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos DO follow neatly from their starting-point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth’s reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth. Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. And where your thinking starts, there must it end."
"Upside-down logic produces this kind of thinking."
"Yet the logical outcome of your decision is perfectly clear, if you will LOOK at it. By deciding AGAINST your reality, you have made yourself vigilant AGAINST God and His Kingdom. And it is THIS vigilance that makes you afraid to remember Him."
"You HAVE carried the ego’s reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."
"Now take this personally, and listen to Divine logic: If, when you have been forgiven, you have everything else, and
If you have been forgiven
Then you have everything else.
This happens to be the simplest of all propositions.
IF P then Q
P
Therefore, Q
The real question is, is P true. If you will review the evidence, I think you will find this inescapable. I went on very personal record to this effect, and I am the only completely True Witness for God."
"This is perfectly logical, though clearly insane. The ego draws upon the one source which is totally inimical to its existence FOR its existence."
So if you have a "question" about something in the Course and you're sure where it fits in relation to something else, or what it means, or how it's structured, or whether something is on a certain level or another level etc... once you get a visual of the logical layout in your mind, you can quite easily determine where things go and what they MUST mean, due to logical conclusions that are sound.
But of course to do this you HAVE to develop a very clear sense of what logic IS, and be very careful to discern when you are making logical errors. This means you have to be careful with reasoning, be aware of skipping around in levels, beware of trying to make "glue" that ties stuff together that doesn't go together, etc. There doesn't have to be any fuzzy boundaries or blurry conclusions that you're not quite sure about. It all makes SENSE.
The main thing we keep doing over and over, is confusing the mind and the body. Similarly, confusing the mind and the physical world.
If we assign to the body/world MENTAL attributes, we are doing what the course calls "level confusion." We're confused about what level something applies to.
An example is believing that you are a physical body. The belief requires you to try to MERGE the mind and the body. And now the physical body is believed to "have a mind" (the brain).
This belief brings with it what Jesus calls "magic", which is part of level-confusion.. .. the belief that physical things now have MENTAL attributes, such as power, will, mind, causation. And therefore the BODY is now CAUSING things to happen.
This confusion of levels is an attempt to narrow the mind down to a physical object. Another word for this is IDENTIFICATION. The mind is expansive and unlimited and whole. The body is separate and small and limited. They are opposites.
If you try to smush the mind into the body you sort of place the mind "under arrest", to use Jesus's term. This arresting of the mind's nature, trying to make the mind function "like a body", makes the mind sick. And this sickness is then taken out on the body, and now the body becomes sick and dies.
The ego is especially keen to merge the mental and physical levels. It wants to eradicate and ignore the mind level, so it tries to turn it into a physical thing. It wants to ignore that you have a real self, so it tries to imprison it in a body. It wants your sense of "self" to be "I am a physical object". Then it can kill the physical object and believe that the son of God has been killed.
The sole problem is the attempt to merge the mind level with the physical level. To merge self, identity, truth, God's properties, with the physical. To give the physical reality, power, causation, eternal life, value, meaning etc. Doing this makes you mentally ill and makes you lost sight of who and what you are. It's how you lose awareness. This is the attempt to be ONE WITH THE PHYSICAL.
The solution then is that we have to positively "separate out", what is mind and what is physical. We look at the various ways that we refer to physical things with MENTAL labels. Such as thinking that a body is guilty. Guilt is mind-content, not physical. Or that "the weather decided to rain". The weather does not make mental decisions. Or that "that person just sinned" - sin is a mental judgment and bodies are not people.
In particular, our sense of identity, our self, who and what we are, needs to be peeled away from the physical. To put it another way, THE EGO needs to be identified as DISTINCT from the physical. We need to recognize the physical as its own sort of layer of images and illusions - a dream. And this dream covers over a prior dream that is purely mental content. The ego thought system, which is hidden below the surface.
When we stop confusing ego stuff with physical stuff, we can see more clearly that the ego stuff is the problem we need to correct. The insanity in the mind is where the problem is. The insanity influences how we see and what we see. The insanity judges the physical and hates it.
To see the physical world and body as forgiven, we have to correct the content of the mind so that a healed mind can look out from its holiness and see the reflection of heaven. To do this the physical has to be NOT confused with mental constructs. It can't be labelled as being inherently mind-stuff, like sinful, guilty, fearful, evil, etc.
All mental qualities such as reality, truth, eternal life, power, etc have to be TAKEN AWAY from the world and the body. They do not have these things. The body/world has to be recognised as being a neutral image, quite apart from your mind, nothing to do with you, nothing to do with anyone.
Physical bodies have to be seen as having absolutely 0% to do with anyone or anything real. Recognised as just material suits which are temporarily utilised then discarded, with no value of their own. When they are confused with minds, souls, people, wills, powers, etc then we are mentally ill and confused and our identification has shifted from spirit to form.
Even physical death has to be seen as not meaning anything. It has to be seen as not causing anything, harming anything, doing anything real, having any effect. The whole world in fact has to be recognised as not CAUSING anything to anyone or anything real. Causation has to be associated with the mind ONLY. Then the world can be recognised as an EFFECT only.
Long story short, all mind-oriented stuff has to be recognised as NOT PHYSICAL and nothing to do with the physical. So then things like blame, hate, attack, guilt, fear, judgement, murderousness, unworthiness, etc... all is lifted away FROM the world and the body and properly identified as a MIND problem. And since the problem is in the mind, it can now be healed IN the mind.
"The INTENTION is in the mind, which tries to USE the body to carry out the means for sin, in which the MIND believes. Thus is the JOINING of mind and body an INESCAPABLE belief of those who value sin." UrT21D10
"..he does NOT accept the ego's confusion of mind and body." UrT7F3
"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality." UrW96L4
"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?" UrW135L9
"The attempt to unite non-physical content with physical attributes is illustrated by statements like "the thirst for knowledge." UrT1C20
"Mind CANNOT be made physical" UrT8G11
"All physical illness represents a belief in magic. The whole distortion which created magic rested on the belief that there is a creative ability in matter, which can control the mind. This fallacy can work either way; i.e., it can be misbelieved either that the mind can miscreate IN the body, or that the body can miscreate in the mind. If it can be made clear that the mind, which is the only level of creation, cannot create beyond itself, then neither confusion need occur." UrT2C6
"Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the hero to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body? Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is." UrM14A2
"To the ego, THE MIND IS PRIVATE, and only the body CAN be shared." UrT15H8
To judge, is to evaluate, or to decide upon the meaning. We assess, we deduce, and we theorize as to what something is. It's kind of like an attempt to study something, to learn something about it, to understand it, and then to label it with a conclusion.
But Jesus is saying this entire process isn't something we are really in a position to do. To really truly be accurate in assessing anything, we need to know all the facts. We need access to absolutely everything in order to do that. We need to know all of the past and present and future, all causes and effects, all potentials, all influences, all variables and pretty much a crystal ball.
We're told that we don't have that because we've narrowed our minds so much that we are out of touch with "everything" and therefore cannot KNOW what everything is. Which leaves us really in a position of not knowing what ANYTHING is.
But we're also told that the Holy Spirit remains in a position of having access to everything, he knows everything past present and future, all causes effects variables and potentials. And so He IS in a position to "judge accurately." This is why we're asked to hand over the role of "judging" to him, so that we don't keep making mistakes.
When we judge wrongly by mistake we end up suffering the consequences of the beliefs that we form. To judge really is similar to accusation. We accuse things of being something, or of something being true of them. We hold it against stuff. That's like a condemnation of sin. We kind of attack the world with these judgements. To label or name anything anything is an attempt to confine and limit and understand it.
And we're even told that the Holy Spirit does NOT understand the world at all, because it cannot BE understood. Essentially that real understanding is knowledge and "dissection" or analysis just blinds you.
As you narrow things down and put them in boxes you isolate and exclude and shut out, you increase the separation and enhance differences, and now as you are becoming more "accurate" in your understanding or "describing" of the world you actually become more out of touch with the more abstract big picture. You might think that understanding something "perfectly" is knowledge, and now passes for knowing. But it is totally opposite. The more you think you know, the less you actually know.
So there are two factors in why you cannot, or are incapable of judging accurately. 1) You do not currently have access to every fact in the universe, and 2) Attempting to judge based on limited facts limits your awareness and shuts the truth out. So you just end up believing you are "finding answers" in the dirt, very specific answers, when in fact all you're doing is becoming blinded by separations and forms. And really, all judgements made based on limited awareness are in fact the judgements OF THE EGO.
To judge is to "put meaning onto" something. In a way it is tied also into projection. You are always projecting. When you project some kind of "definition" onto reality you're trying to turn it into that definition. You hold the projection against the thing, see the image you have made, and think it is the thing you made it about.
The problem also is that by being in a role of being the one who has to figure everything out on your own, which you are not at all equipped to achieve, you also make for yourself an entire collection of meanings and purposes for the world. And all of these meanings, having been made by mistake, due to not being able to judge effectively, lead to false conclusions, which in turn produce various forms of suffering and destructiveness.
This is how you make your own hell. All your faulty judgements keep limiting and isolating and boxing you in and labelling you. Everything you think is true of what you see becomes true of yourself. You think you are right and accurate but you are highly mistaken because you don't have all the facts. And so whatever you think is happening is wrong, and results in faulty perceptions, which result in unfortunate effects of pain and misery.
So Jesus is then saying you can be alleviated from all the self-inflicted suffering you keep making by recognizing that you CANNOT judge. You are not, at present, in a position to judge accurately. You are too limited and small to know what anything is. Not that you're inept or anything but, until you are totally awake you really are out of touch with reality and are very uncertain about what is true. So you are better off asking the Holy Spirit to judge it all for you.
That means giving up the role of being the one who evaluates, judges, decides, figures out, determines, assesses, analyzes, understands, or has to in any way "know" what anything is, what it is for, how to use it, what it means, etc.
That's a pretty huge burden lifted off your shoulders if you can be willing to step out of the role of "gatekeeper of reality". Just being honest enough to admit that you really are too limited to be able to tell what anything REALLY is and that you need the Holy Spirit's vision to see FOR you. "Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me.
Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."
"We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be."
"We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so."
"You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false."
"It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you."
"Let me (Jesus) see for you, and judge for you what you would look upon. When you have seen with me but once, you would no longer value any fearful thing at cost of glory and the peace of God."
"You share His function only by judging AS HE DOES, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."
"Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception."
On the level of the physical world, all objects and forms can never be perfect. This is sobering to recognize. It's actually because of the nature of spacetime.
In order to have space, or locations, it's necessary that something is in one location and NOT another. It's also therefore necessary that any given object LACKS what any other given object has. There is no real sharing, whereby two objects are literally one object. Everything is separated out, exclusive, unique, different and unequal.
This applies throughout this universe. It sets up a scenario where, in terms of a physical object, which includes planets and human bodies and toys and cars and houses and food, it is literally impossible to find perfection.
"It is the world you see that is impossible."
"The world was made that problems could not be solved."
"All its roads lead to death"
So now, as we enter this physical world, seen through false perception of the body's eyes, blinded by sight of form, we now seek to try to find "the perfect thing".
The ego presents objects as options, choices, and then asks you to choose between them. It does not ask whether you believe in the objects existing at all, it simply assumes they do exist and leaves you with the only remaining "choice" of choosing A OR B. This "either or" scenario is built into the whole ego thought system of spacetime. "Do you want to die this way, or that way?"
But the problem is, you are now left with two inferior, partial, temporary, incomplete, unwhole options. Neither of them ca be perfect because they both are lacking something. They both entail compromise. None of them truly mirror any kind of divine nature. They are all flawed.
So now the best you can do is choose between two flawed possibilities, where you know that to choose one you will lack the other. And committing to any of them is not fully possible with full satisfaction or certainty because to choose one is to reject something else, leaving you empty handed.
If you choose object A, you lack what object B has to offer. It drives you nuts trying to settle on what you want. You try to look more closely for signs that one thing is "better" than the other, to judge and evaluate its worth or value, as if its even possible for one of them to BE perfect.
Then after a lot of frustration and fear and uncertainty and lack of commitment and inability to trust, you "settle" for what you think is the lesser of two evils. It seems to be the best choice only because you're willing to accept its limitations and what it cannot offer you, which seems less of a sacrifice than the other choice. And so you "commit", reluctantly and in fear, crossing your fingers that it will be the right one.
The ego is playing this game all the time. It is literally impossible to be 100% satisfied with ANY choice the ego offers, because they are limited and lacking. And it would simply have you choose between two forms of death. And you think that by choosing the better of the two, you will defer death a little longer.
As you look at this, you'll find yourself trying to seek for this "perfection in the world". The perfect choice. The perfect option. The perfect car, perfect house, perfect body, perfect diet, perfect tv show, perfect city, perfect president, perfect whatever. Trying to find that one something that is completely whole and lacking nothing and utterly fulfilling and flawless. And there is NO SUCH THING in this world.
Anywhere.
I stumbled on this many times, particularly in terms of artistic projects and trying to come up with something that was perfect. My mistake was not recognizing the ways in which limitation are inherent to this world. I thought in terms of ideas, that some kind of perfection was POSSIBLE among the physical objects or physical choices or things I could create physically.
This would lead to tremendous frustration and blown-out expectations and procrastination and low self worth and being afraid of the judgement of others when they would find out how flawed and imperfect my creations were, implying my own imperfection. And this would just snowball into a huge amount of avoidance and shame and dysfunction trying to deal with this whole mess of "how will I achieve perfection". And this search for physicalized perfection is the spiritual ego, with its mantra, "seek and do not find."
It is much better to recognize when I am seeming to seek perfection at a FORM level, and to recognize the truth that ALL form is INCAPABLE of perfection. So for example if I am trying to create a piece of art, or some project, I have to realize there are built in limits as to what is possible. It cannot BE perfect, ever.
Limits have to be realistically set, there is only so much time and energy, there are only so many features, there are only so many design decisions, the object cannot ever be some kind of "miracle" that pleases everyone infinitely.
For example maybe I'm writing a book and getting hung up on how this book will "cover everything", how it will "talk to everyone", how it will be everything to all people. And then this becomes paralyzing, because as soon as you try to appease the myriad "forms" the ego presents, such as billions of disagreeing egos, it is now literally impossible to please them.
In any creative endeavor, any form of shopping, any kind of selection process, any decision making about your life or your time or where you will go or what you will do, if it entails the physical level at all it is far more productive and sane to "accept" that there are these limitations on this level. And to then simply work within those limitations, removing the sense of expectation or "wishful thinking" that form CAN BE anything other than it can be.
This means accepting that the world of limits IS fundamentally limited and limiting. And by that I don't mean to just settle for imprisonment, because of course we are meant to rise above these limits, break all the laws of physics, go beyond all boundaries and demonstrate "the impossible is possible." But in terms of the form level, it JUST IS a world of limitation and pretending it isn't really gets us in trouble.
There is one passage in ACIM where it touches on this with regards to why Jesus was not able to "perfectly" save or teach the whole world during his lifetime. The nature of the beast is simply that operating IN TIME AND SPACE, there were limits, and he had to be selective, and there was a plan and a goal and various things to be done and not others.
A physical life cannot truly embody unlimited infinity, nor can divinity be fully expressed at the level of the world. This is a world of partiality and lack and temporary differences, inequalities and flaws. It can never be immortal or perfect or holy or innocent or have eternal life or be whole. It lacks, because it is a picture of lack. We can work with it, or we can break its rules with miracles. But even miracles can't keep death while expressing life.
The world can only do what it can do. It's in its nature. It's a world of limits. It won't ever give you heaven or salvation or the attributes of God's perfection. Through true perception it can be seen as a reflection of God's perfection, but it cannot be it.
"Is he the Christ? O yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of you. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God. And when you join your will with his, your sight will be his vision, for the eyes of Christ are shared. Walking with him is just as natural as walking with a brother whom you knew since you were born, for such indeed he is. Some bitter idols have been made of him who would be only brother to the world. Forgive him your illusions, and behold how dear a brother he would be to you. For he will set your mind at rest at last and carry it with you unto your God."
Healing is always certain. It is impossible to let illusions be brought to truth and keep the illusions. Truth demonstrates illusions have no value. The teacher of God has seen the correction of his errors in the mind of the patient, recognizing it for what it is. Having accepted the Atonement for himself, he has also accepted it for the patient. Yet what if the patient uses sickness as a way of life, believing healing is the way to death? When this is so, a sudden healing may precipitate intense depression, and a sense of loss so deep that the patient may even try to destroy himself. Having nothing to live for, he may ask for death. Healing must wait, for his protection.
Healing will always stand aside when it would be seen as threat. The instant it is welcome it is there. Where healing has been given it will be received. And what is time before the gifts of God? We have referred many times in the text to the storehouse of treasures laid up equally for the giver and the receiver of God's gifts. Not one is lost, for they can but increase. No teacher of God should feel disappointed if he has offered healing and it does not appear to have been received. It is not up to him to judge when his gift should be accepted. Let him be certain it has been received, and trust that it will be accepted when it is recognized as a blessing and not a curse.
It is not the function of God's teachers to evaluate the outcome of their gifts. It is merely their function to give them. Once they have done that, they have also given the outcome, for that is part of the gift. No-one can give if he is concerned with the result of the giving. That is a limitation on the giving itself, and neither the giver nor the receiver would have the gift. Trust is an essential part of giving; in fact, it is the part that makes sharing possible, the part that guarantees the giver will not lose, but only gain. Who gives a gift, and then remains with it, to be sure it is used as the giver deems appropriate? Such is not giving but imprisoning.
It is the relinquishing of all concern about the gift that makes it truly given. And it is trust that makes true giving possible. Healing is the change of mind that the Holy Spirit in the patient's mind is seeking for him. And it is the Holy Spirit in the mind of the giver Who gives the gift to him. How can it be lost? How can it be ineffectual? How can it be wasted? God's treasure house can never be empty. And if one gift were missing it would not be full. Yet is its fullness guaranteed by God. What concern, then, can a teacher of God have about what becomes of his gifts? Given by God to God, who in this holy exchange can receive less than everything?
The below quotes are from sections about true perception and how it works while still in a body.
It speaks of how the body's eyes STILL see what seems to be an "outside world" of differences, forms, bodies, places.
However, the mind is responsible for INTERPRETING, the messages which come in FROM the body's eyes. The body's eyes can ONLY look upon the physical world of form and never has real vision. The body's eyes cannot look past the world of forms and differences. So it is up to the mind to determine whether the "signals" coming to it are TRUE, or FALSE.
ONLY THE MIND PERCEIVES, not the eyes! Perception is not about what the body's eyes see AT ALL. The body's eyes just collect "data" and send it to the mind to evaluate. The body's eyes cannot ADJUST to anything. They cannot "see differently". They cannot change perception.
They can ONLY LOOK AT the world you made as hell. The physical form of the Earth. They cannot and do not INTERPRET what they see, because they were made to FIXATE ON FORM. They are neutral. They do not "see lovingly" nor do they "see hatefully" or fearfully.
A healed mind will put all such signals into a category of "false", *recognizing* that *everything* the body's eyes "see" is an ILLUSION. It recognizes they are ALL UNREAL.
The body's eyes at this point are still "seeing" the forms of the physical world. But the MIND, which is responsible for SEEING, is now seeing with forgiveness and recognizing that the physical world is ENTIRELY illusion. That every signal coming from the body is FALSE, and therefore totally unreal.
This is why in TRUE PERCEPTION, you STILL SEE the world, the bodies, the world events, all the same as before, but your MIND interprets the whole thing as FALSE, because it sees with the whole truth.
As stated below, reality is without size, shape, time or place and differences DO NOT exist in it. Heaven has no forms. And so in comparison to this, a mind aware of the truth knows that all forms, shapes, times and places are NOT reality. And so such a a mind perceives that the physical world of forms is NOT REAL.
Note it is also clear here that PERCEPTION is not about what the BODY'S EYES SEE, it is a function of the mind which either mistakenly interprets those "visual" signals and thinks that some of it is real, or correctly interprets those signals entirely as unreal. This is why you must not "believe your eyes" at all.
"M-8.3. Where do all these differences come from? 2 Certainly they seem to be in the world outside. 3 Yet it is surely the mind that judges what the eyes behold. 4 It is the mind that interprets the eyes' messages and gives them "meaning." 5 And this meaning does not exist in the world outside at all.
What is seen as "reality" is simply what the mind prefers. 7 Its hierarchy of values is projected outward, and it sends the body's eyes to find it. 8 The body's eyes will never see except through differences. 9 Yet it is not the messages they bring on which perception rests. 10 Only the mind evaluates their messages, and so only the mind is responsible for seeing. 11 It alone decides whether what is seen is real or illusory, desirable or undesirable, pleasurable or painful."
"M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."
Notice also that in terms of "projection makes perception", the quotes above state that the mind projects its hierarchy of values and preferences outward, THEN it sends the body's eyes to try to "see" that, the body now looks only at the FORM of the physical world, sends back signals of its physical nature, the mind is now FILTERING that signal through its belief system of values/hierarchy/preference, and only SELECTS what it wants to allow into awareness. This is described here:
"What perception sees and hears appears to be real because it permits into awareness only what conforms to the wishes of the perceiver. This leads to a world of illusions, a world which needs constant defense precisely because it is not real....When you have been caught in the world of perception you are caught in a dream."
Remember that perception is a function of the MIND, not the eyes. So here, the mind is filtering through its perception, its interpretation of body signals, what it wants the signals to mean. It only allows into awareness, the root of the perceptual system, that which makes it through the filter.
Therefore if the mind has false perception ie false interpretation and projections of filtering beliefs in attack etc, it is now MIS-perceiving and hallucinating a distorted version of the visual signals it's getting from the eyes, and READING INTO them, and EXCLUDING what it does not want to look at, in order to make it SEEM as though it's seeing the reality it PREFERS. "Perception SELECTS and makes the world you see." But the "world you see" is happening in your MIND, in your perceptual interpretation function, regardless of the world that is "out there".
Here is some additional material:
"Reason will tell you that the form of error is not what makes it a mistake. 2 If what the form conceals is a mistake, the form cannot prevent correction. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."
"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but not to see? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. 6 Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. 7 Nothing so blinding as perception of form. 8 For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."
"Only mistakes have different forms, and so they can deceive. 2 You can change form because it is not true. 3 It could not be reality because it can be changed. 4 Reason will tell you that if form is not reality it must be an illusion, and is not there to see. 5 And if you see it you must be mistaken, for you are seeing what can not be real as if it were. 6 What cannot see beyond what is not there must be distorted perception, and must perceive illusions as the truth. 7 Could it, then, recognize the truth?"
This is an important point. When you are being forgiving, you do not continue to LOOK AT the thing that you were forgiving. Sight of it was the result of NOT forgiving.
Forgiveness is NOT ABOUT looking "at" bodies and at the world and regarding them as sinless and holy. This is not how forgiveness functions. Forgiveness does not make something real and then try to look past it, nor does it make something real and then attempt to endow it with qualities of love and perfection.
To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to keep looking AT the world in a loving way. To forgive the world does NOT MEAN to love the world and believe it is God's creation. To forgive does not mean that your SIGHT stops at the outside surface of material objects and still regards them as reality. I'm sorry but that is NOT forgiveness.
To forgive means to OVERLOOK. It means to SEE PAST. It means to NOT FIXATE ON. It means to NOT BE DECEIVED BY. It means to GIVE NO REALITY TO. It means to CANCEL illusions. It means to DIMINISH illusions in your sight so that you can see THROUGH THEM and PAST THEM to the truth (Christ) that was being hidden BY them.
The world stands like a block of sin before the face of Christ. So does all bodies. You have to OVERLOOK THEM if you want to see Christ in your brother. The Christ in him is BEYOND HIS BODY.
"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."
"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light"
"And place no value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is."
You have to OVERLOOK PHYSICAL OBJECTS. Your sight, your spiritual sight, has to take the place of your body's vision (which lies to you and only looks at bodies). To be forgiving, to forgive your brother, and to forgive the world, does not mean you're still SEEING THE WORLD or seeing bodies. Nor does it mean you still see exactly the same stuff you saw before but with a sense of innocence and loveliness. You are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE SEEING THIS WORLD.
Those of you who believe that God created this planet, are particularly apt to be mistaken about this. It is an error to say that your aim is to "love the world". Your love would dispel the world. "Eternity shines away the world." You cannot love what isn't really there. You can only love the reality and truth which is BEYOND the world. To want to keep the world and the bodies and keep SEEING them, and keep being BLINDED by sight of form, while trying to simultaneously reach a state of love and forgiveness, is IMPOSSIBLE. You have to let the world go. You are NOT being forgiving if you keep fixating on it.
All things in this world are the form of sin and error. You must learn to OVERLOOK these errors and see PAST them with reason. Only this way can you "see God in everything you see". It's not because you keep seeing the world AS God. You see God IN PLACE OF the world. Behind the world. He was hidden BY the world. That was why you made it, to shut him out. To forgive is to recognize that this illusory world IS NOT THERE, HAS NOT HAPPENED, AND DOES NOT REALLY EXIST. Only by looking PAST forms to the Christ BEYOND can you recognize God's Son.
When your mind stops at the outer surface of objects, you are blinded and the extension of your mind has been arrested. If you arrest the extension of the mind you foster separation and induce illness. It is unnatural to see this world and bad for your health. You need to see PAST its illusion in order for your mind to JOIN with the Christ that is hidden BEYOND the world and beyond bodies. It is the only way you can communicate and it is the only way you can love. Love shines PAST illusions and renders them unreal and irrelevant. The world is irrelevant. The body is irrelevant.
It's like in the Matrix movies... you have to learn to see the 'matrix code' instead of being deceived by illusions of a world that doesn't exist. Then you can get out of hell and get back to being in Heaven.
Only love is real and "love was never in the world". Love wants the world to end.
"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins..."
"...brought to its forgiveness is gently overlooked, and disappears"
"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the face of Christ"
"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances."
"By its ability to overlook what is not there, it opens up the way to truth"
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK."
"You can overlook your brother's dreams. So perfectly can you forgive him his illusions"
"For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."
"For it is your unwillingness to overlook what seems to stand between you that makes it look impenetrable"
"(body)... Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything."
"Let love draw near them and overlook the body, as it will surely do"
"Thus are his sins forgiven him, for Christ has vision which has power to overlook them all. In His forgiveness they are gone. Unseen by One, they merely disappear because a vision of the holiness which lies beyond them comes to take their place."
"When you have looked upon each other with complete forgiveness, from which no error is excluded and nothing kept hidden, what mistake can there be anywhere you can not overlook? What form of suffering could block your sight, preventing you from seeing past it?"
"In your madness, you OVERLOOK REALITY COMPLETELY, and you see ONLY YOUR SPLIT MIND everywhere you look."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"See him as guiltless as I look on you, and OVERLOOK the sins he THINKS he sees within himself. "
"Condemn your Savior not because he thinks he is a body. Far beyond his dreams is his reality"
"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body?"
"He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes."
"This separating off is symbolized, in your perception, by a body which is clearly separate and a thing apart. "
"To see a brother in ANOTHER body, SEPARATE from yours, is the expression of a wish to see a little PART of him, and sacrifice the rest."
"And while you see your brother as a body, APART from you and separate in his cell, you are demanding sacrifice of him AND you. "
"What witness to the wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? He is INVISIBLE in such a world."
"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."
"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"
This is the VERY SIMPLE essence of our work with ACIM to return to sanity. We simply need to identity and recognize, correctly, WHAT IS TRUE, AND WHAT IS FALSE.
This recognition comes about through the DISTINCTION between the two. Some things are simply inherently true - such as the creations of light. Some things are simple inherently false - such as the illusions of the dream world.
It is only because we have CONFUSED AND SWAPPED what is true and what is false, that we do not clearly recognize which is which. We have lost touch with reality and sanity. We simply need to learn to distinguish clearly between them, and recognize that ONLY that which is really true is true.
If your mind has confused or mixed or swapped truth and lies, it perceives accordingly. False perception is INVERTED perception, meaning what is true appears false and what is false appears true. This "total confusion" is the logical outcome of the ego thought system. It produces false perception in which NOTHING is recognized correctly.
To access true or accurate perception, that which actually is true must be "separated out" from that which is false. The false must be clearly and accurately recognized AS inherently false, and the true must be clearly accepted AS the only real truth. All real truth is of God. All real truth is THE KINGDOM and its contents. All real truth about YOU and your brothers is defined in the creation of souls.
When you have COMPLETELY distinguished correctly what really is true and what is not, BOTH the true and the false are recognized for what they are. The true - as in heaven or the real world, is seen as the only truth (vigilance for the Kingdom), while the false - the world of illusions - is regarded AS false and give no reality.
Jesus in fact tells us that if we give reality or truth TO that which is false, we will SEE IT, because we invest it with belief. This produces false perception and sees the world of bodies. When that which is true is the ONLY place where you allow there to be reality and truth, you will SEE ONLY the face of Christ.
This means that learning to SEE THE TRUTH (the Kingdom), allows you to OVERLOOK the false world (which is now the forgiven world, the veil, which disappears from sight). He wants us therefore to SEE ONLY REALITY.
Jesus makes reference to this many times over...
"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
"Recognize this, for it is true, and truth MUST be recognized, if it is to be distinguished from illusion"
"You do not have them now, because your mind is totally undisciplined, and you cannot distinguish between joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and fear."
"Therefore, if you learn the tests by which you can distinguish everything from nothing, you will make the better choice."
"Only by learning what fear is can you finally learn to distinguish the possible from the impossible and the false from the true."
"Its sole concern is to distinguish between truth on the one hand, and error on the other."
"His Voice will teach you how to distinguish between pain and joy, and will lead you out of the confusion you have made."
"Thoughts are not big or little; powerful or weak. They are merely true or false."
"Thought-systems are but true or false, and all their ATTRIBUTES come simply from what they ARE. Only the Thoughts of God ARE true. And all that follows FROM them, COMES FROM what they are, and is as true as is the holy Source from which they come."
"But a hypothesis is tested as either true or false, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If it is shown to be true it becomes a fact, after which no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status AS fact is questioned. ... EVERY idea which the ego has accorded the status of fact is questionable, because facts are in the realm of knowledge."
"For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion, you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."
"The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception."
"My role is to separate the true from the false in your own unconscious, so it can break through the barriers the ego has set up and shine into your minds."
"Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true."
"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 you must be. He led the way for you to follow him. He leads you back to God because he saw the road before him, and he followed it. He made a clear distinction, still obscure to you, between the false and true."
"For reason sees the SOURCE of an idea as what will make it true or false."
"Innocent (or true) perception means that you NEVER misperceive, and ALWAYS see truly. More simply, this means that you never see what does not exist in reality."
"If nothing but the truth exists (and this is really redundant in statement, because what is not true CANNOT exist) Right-Minded seeing cannot see ANYTHING BUT perfection."
"The way to correct all such delusions is to withdraw your faith from them, and invest it ONLY in what is true. To whatever extent you side with false perception in yourself or others, you are validating a basic misperception. You CANNOT validate the invalid.""If you are willing to validate what is true in everything you perceive, you will make it true for you."
"The Spiritual eye perceives both the Creations of God AND the creations of man. Among the creations of man, it can also separate the true from the false by its ability to perceive totally rather than selectively. It thus becomes the proper instrument for reality testing, which always involves the necessary distinction between the true and the false."
"Christ's Second Coming gives the Son of God the gift to hear the Voice for God proclaim that what is false is false, and what is true has never changed. And this the judgement is in which perception ends."
"In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds much along the lines suggested very correctly by Bill, e.:
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 existBelieve THIS and you WILL be free."
"What COULD you choose between, but life or death, waking or sleeping, war or peace, your dream or your reality?"
There is only one choice in the world. Not a million choices. Not a million scenarios. Not a million conditions to judge and evaluate and decide upon. There is only one choice. You are always choosing either life or death.
Life here means eternal life, immortality, invulnerability, perfect health, wholeness, happiness, love, peace, joy, etc. The attributes of God and His Kingdom of creation.
Death here means the cessation of eternity, an attack on God, a rejection of health and wholeness, a desire for destruction and death, and an attempt to make God non-existent.
The physical world itself is set up such that everything in it tends to lead towards death. It is not in support of God because it was made as an attack on him. This is why everything in it seems to make death inevitable.
But just because the world says all things must die, it doesn't mean you don't have a choice. It doesn't mean you have to go along with it and just give up and drop dead. Nor does it mean you have to find a way to try to accept death and cozy up to it.
What many in the world do not know is that there IS an alternative to death and dying and destruction and degradation. To embrace it requires a recognition of two things.
1) The world is ONLY offering death and there is no hope of life. 2) There is ANOTHER world which is offering only life and no hope of death.
Only if you can recognize that there IS AN ALTERNATIVE to the world's ways, do you even have a real choice. If there is no better world, no God, no eternal life, no miracles, no healing, no resurrection, then you really DON'T have a choice. You are set on a rollercoaster ride to hell and death and will not get off it until you're worm food.
We might think there are choices be made along the way, electing for different states of dying, different kinds of sicknesses, different unhappinesses, trying to trade-off one thing for another to come out on top. But the world has news for you - it is not ever going to let you come out on top in the long run.
So you have no real choice at all, because death is looming and you have no way to stop it. Or do you? Only IF there is another option do you actually have any real choice in life at all. Otherwise you're destined to die. And you cannot be at peace with such a fate because it is utterly insane.
Only if there is another world, another way, another option, and only if you have some kind of power of decision to choose it and make it be your experience, is there any REAL HOPE at all. There is REAL HOPE if you can in fact CHOOSE not to suffer, be sick, or die. And there is REAL HOPE if you have in your mind the POWER to actually make that choice, to choose away from death, and actually CAUSE life and REVERSE death.
Only if you can surmount death and overcome the world, can you be free from the descent into hell. Only if you can resurrect and raise the dead and reverse sickness and perform miracles, can you head in the direction of God who is life. Only if you can demonstrate harmlessness and invulnerability can you prove your commitment to immortality.
The world does not think immortality is possible. It is seen as a silly idea thought by crazy people. It is seen as having had almost zero examples and certainly does not appear to be commonplace. It seems like no-one gets out of here alive. And everyone has just decided to try and accept this fate and "live with it". To then adjust to it and try to "make the most" of the little lot of life we have, begging death for scraps of time and asking for little gifts of nothingness before we're extinguished.
Unless you are open to God and open to immortality and open to resurrection and miracles and healing, you are NOT open to life. You are committed to dying. And that is the only reason it will happen. You are CHOOSING it by not choosing away from it. And you are free to make this choice. If you do not choose God, you are choosing destruction. If you do not choose resurrection and healing, you are choosing to die.
This is your responsibility because you actually have a power in you to decide what you want. You do not HAVE to die or go through sickness or suffering. You CAN in fact elect not to have any of these things happen, and make it so. This is not a fantasy. Your mind is just as capable of causing life as it is of causing death. But to choose eternal life IS going to require you to fly in the face of the entire world, all its supporters, all its believers, and all of its pathways.
Only with help from beyond the world can you be liberated from the world. Only with the Holy Spirit can you find a solution, an answer, a way, which breaks all the laws of physics and violates all the seeming laws of reality. Only with his power can you recover and heal and resurrect even in the face of what the world would say is an impossible irreversible situation.
You have to choose towards God and towards life, away from death and way from destruction, if you want to live. If you want to escape from death and from sickness and hell, you have to choose life. This is really a no-brainer. If you are choosing life you will have life, if you are choosing death you will have death. You are free to choose.
"You who fear salvation are WILLING death. Life and death, light and darkness, knowledge and perception are irreconcilable."
"Either you give each other life or death; either you are each other's Savior or his judge, offering him sanctuary or condemnation."
"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."
"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die."
"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."
"The emphasis this course has placed on that idea is due to its centrality in our attempts to change your mind about yourself. It is the reason you can heal. It is the cause of healing. It is why you cannot die. Its truth established you as one with God."
"Now do we live, for now we cannot die. The wish for death is answered, and the sight that looked upon it now has been replaced by vision which perceives that you are not what you pretend to be."
"Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."
"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."
"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."
"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."
"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has immortality."
Since all things physical are rooted in separation, it is impossible to do ANYTHING in this world without it being in some way connected to being separate.
Eating, breathing, talking, touching, fighting, whatever, everything physical is not God’s nature.
We tend to section off certain physical things as somehow “meaning” that they are good or bad, right or wrong, better or worse, more or less spiritual. But physicality can’t really be said to be selective in terms of what it represents.
A war, a butterfly flapping, people hitting each other, baking a cake, painting a picture, on the physical level it’s all still forms in a dream, images made of ideas of separateness and conflict. But somehow arbitrarily we’ve assigned all kinds of hierarchies and categories to physical things to say that some are better than others.
Given that you can’t DO anything in the world without it being rooted in separation, it then comes down to PURPOSE. And by purpose we have to mean that how it is being USED or toward what ultimate goal. The use of it isn’t inherent to the thing itself, because purpose is about mind and the meaning the mind gives to things.
It is mind that judges murder as bad, or as worse than kissing. It is mind that decides that a dead broken body is more evil or proof of sin that a healthy athlete running a race. It is mind that decides to say that people shooting others with guns is bad while hugging is good.
Ultimately the strange truth is that all things physical cannot be used to determine “what it means”, or whether it is a good thing or not. Our categorizations of stuff comes from judgements, and most of those judgments are rooted in ego. It is technically the ego that says that physical war is ”an ego thing.” Which is kind of a confusion of two levels - mental and physical.
Let’s remember the world is a dream. And the dream is made of symbols. And the symbols can sometimes look what we have decided is nice and other times not nice. Even the death of the body has been artificially endowed with negative meanings, while the non-dead bodies have been endowed with positive meanings. Yet:
“The body cannot be meaningfully invested with attributes of Christ OR the ego.” Because the body is actually “nothing.”
So if we stop completely trying to evaluate whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, spiritual or not, based on its FORM … we might be better off. This means all illusions are equal and there is no hierarchy. Just because something looks like “a big disaster” doesn’t mean it IS actually in truth “worse than” a seemingly small problem. These are DECEPTIONS based on being blinded by perception of form.
A headache or cancer are technically both equally unreal and untrue, and one is NOT technically worse than the other. One is not more serious than the other either. Both are supposed to be regarded as equally meaningless and their forms are meant to be regarded as illusions of deception. We are not supposed to buy into how stuff looks on the physical level, as though differences mean something.
This is a bit radical because it means putting physical war and murder alongside kisses and hugs as equals. And not just categorizing the arbitrarily as opposites. It means that terrorism and abuse are “just another form” of the same illusion as someone throwing a birthday party and giving gifts. Because the FORM something takes is not its real meaning.
As the course teaches, when we look to the form tell us “what it means”, and USE and depend on the form to “describe” its meaning, we are deceived by illusions. A healthy body is not better or worse than a sick body in this sense. But the world is very accustomed to evaluating rightness or goodness based on what form something takes. Technically a nuclear bomb is no more ‘evil’ than a feather falling to the ground lightly.
“Let me not use this as a sign of sin and death, or as an obstacle to peace, but help me to use it to facilitate its coming.” This applies to all the seemingly physical FORMS of “bad things” in this world as much as anything - you should be able to find a way to laugh at it and see it as affirming a mental purpose of peace.
In terms of judgement, meaning, purpose, evaluations of whether its good or bad, judging whether it is spiritual or not, an ego thing or not, more or less ego based, etc…. that’s all mental stuff happening on a separate level from the physical. We have to give stuff all the meaning it has because it has none of its own. It’s a meaningless world. It has many different forms and we seem to prefer some over others, but truly we are not supposed to. The form illusions takes is not supposed to sway us whatsoever.
So then it comes down to the mind’s USE of the form, the PURPOSE it gives it from a higher level. What is it for. What meaning do we give TO it. What goal will we use it to serve? Who are we looking at it with - ego or holy spirit? You could say that a physical war could be used by the holy spirit’s vantage point to welcome laughter and happiness, just as much as you could say that a happy dance with hugs and kisses could be used by the ego as a sign of treachery and betrayal and conflict.
We’re not supposed to be dividing up the world based on what FORM things take, whatever category we put those forms into, or what meanings we give to those categories. Otherwise we start to try to “spiritualize form”, by saying that certain behaviors, acts, physical movements, styles, wardrobe choices, words, whatever, are somehow “more spiritual”. And before long we’re creating an illusion of being “physically spiritual.”
Of course a mind at peace, coming from Holy Spirit, may well tend to be guided to act in a certain way, to avoid certain things, or to do other things. But the things that are done are done for a higher purpose. And the form that these things appear to take may be misunderstood as “not looking spiritual.” There could be a higher purpose at work even if on the surface something does not “look spiritual.” Who are we to judge anything?
Can physical forms of separation and attack be AVOIDED in this world? Probably not. No matter what you eat, no matter how you move, what you do, it’s all still technically unreality and an attack on truth. Forms of sin and weird strange behaviors. You can’t avoid it. The whole system is one of death. But you can change how you look at it, what meaning you give to it, and what you make of it. And that’s all you can do with it. See it differently.
The key to seeing it differently is detaching from HOW IT LOOKS, disregarding the form, not trying to make the form take on a certain shape in order to be more spiritual, and not feeling guilty about what form it does take. Even going to the toilet is technically an act of war on the physical level. Nature’s nature is to devour. Everything you eat requires something else to starve. There is no escape from problems in this world. But you can change your mind about it and how you use it.
Very simply, the purpose of psychotherapy is to remove the blocks to truth. Its aim is to aid the patient in abandoning his fixed delusional system, and to begin to reconsider the spurious cause and effect relationships on which it rests. No-one in this world escapes fear, but everyone can reconsider its causes and learn to evaluate them correctly. God has given everyone a Teacher Whose wisdom and help far exceed whatever contributions an earthly therapist can provide. Yet there are times and situations in which the patient-therapist relationship becomes the means through which He offers His greater gifts to both.
What better purpose could any relationship have than to invite the Holy Spirit to enter into it and give it His Own great gift of rejoicing? What higher goal could there be for anyone than to learn to call upon God and hear His Answer? And what more transcendent aim can there be than to recall the Way, the Truth and the Life, and to remember God? To help in this is the proper purpose of psychotherapy. Could anything be holier? For psychotherapy, correctly understood, teaches forgiveness and helps the patient to recognize and accept it. And in his healing is the therapist forgiven with him.
Everyone who needs help, regardless of the form of his distress, is attacking himself, and his peace of mind is suffering in consequence. These tendencies are often described as "self-destructive," and the patient often regards them in that way himself. What he does not realize and needs to learn is that this "self," which can attack and be attacked as well, is a concept he made up. Further, he cherishes it, defends it, and is sometimes even willing to "sacrifice" his "life" on its behalf. For he regards it as himself. This self he sees as being acted on, reacting to external forces as they demand, and helpless in the power of the world.
Psychotherapy, then, must restore to his awareness the ability to make his own decisions. He must become willing to reverse his thinking, and to understand that what he thought projected its effects on him were made by his projections on the world. The world he sees does therefore not exist. Until this is at least in part accepted, the patient cannot see himself as really capable of making decisions. And he will fight against his freedom because he thinks that it is slavery.
The patient need not think of truth as God in order to make progress in salvation. But he must begin to separate truth from illusion, recognizing that they are not the same, and becoming increasingly willing to see illusions as illusions and to accept the truth as true. His Teacher will take him on from there, as far as he is ready to go. Psychotherapy can only save him time. The Holy Spirit uses time as He thinks best, and He is never wrong. Psychotherapy under His direction is one of the means He uses to save time, and to prepare additional teachers for His work. There is no end to the help that He begins and He directs. By whatever routes He chooses, all psychotherapy leads to God in the end. But that is up to Him. We are all His psychotherapists, for He would have us all be healed in Him.
Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…
“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”
“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”
“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”
“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”
“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”
“I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty.”
“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”
“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”
“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."
“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”
“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”
“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”
“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”
“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”
“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”
“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”
“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”
“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”
“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”
“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”
“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”
“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”
“I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.”
“It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”
“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”
“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”
“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”
“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”
“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”
“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”
“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”
“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”
“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”
“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”
“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”
It is critical to recognize this fundamental truth about the world. It is true of the world, it is true of every part of the world, of every world, every planet, every galaxy, and every part of space and time itself.
Time is change, and change is death.
Space is separation, and separation is death.
Space and time are systems of death.
There is no escaping this. There are no exceptions.
If something can change, it can stop being the way it is. Fundamentally it doesn't matter how perfect something seems to be, how new it is, how long-lasting, how impervious, how hard or solid, how much vitality it has, how much time was put into it, what it's made of, who made it, what brand name is slapped on it, how ancient it is, or how slowly it seems to change.
All things in space and time are constantly in a state of dying. We call "cell division" life. It is SEPARATION. It is death.
ALL THINGS HERE DIE.
"There IS no life outside of Heaven."
That which is immortal lives forever. It remains constantly the same. In order to be immortal it cannot change or be changed. It has to be invulnerable and impervious. It has to last forever. It cannot have any quality of modification, change, alteration or effect. It cannot be influenced, moved, transformed, attacked, made different, or questioned. It has to be always rock solid, the same, permanent, true, real, everlasting, and endless. Reality is ABSOLUTE.
That is true of all things in heaven's reality, in God. It is not true of ANYTHING in this world.
EVERYTHING in this world changes. Time forces it to change. TIME IS CHANGE. Time is a seeming force that takes whatever exists, and does not allow it to be permanent. It takes whatever is there now, and converts it into something else. It does not allow anything to stay the same. It does not permit permanence of any kind. Time is destructive. It is fundamentally a process of making sure NOTHING can last. NOTHING.
Time is death, and it is only a matter of time.
This means all things in space and time will end.
"Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end." "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."
Think not that there is just some small PARTS of the world that do this. Think not that there are some places you can go, people you can meet, body types, vocations, objects or anything at all anywhere in this whole system which escapes this law. It is the law of death. It is the law of NO freedom. It is the law of punishment. It is the law of sin and payment. Everything has a cost. Nothing is without sacrifice. And there is loss everywhere. Welcome to hell.
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."
"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."
Time DEVOURS.
"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."
You cannot WANT this. But if you are not willing to look at its nature, you WILL want it, because you will be in denial. You will think the world is not like this. That there is hope. There is NO HOPE in the world. It has NO HOPE of ever succeeding at escaping death. It has NO HOPE of ever ceasing to disappoint.
It always falls short because something always changes. Everything always comes to an end. Every physical form transforms and decays and is no longer like itself. And nothing has any sense of any permanent identity at all, so there is no knowledge or anything trustworthy. You cannot rely on it. You cannot depend on it. It lies to you constantly. It is not your friend. It gives only to take away, and it never really gave in the first place.
You can only want the world if you are not willing to look at this. You can only want it if you think this is not true of the world. If you have the rose-tinted glasses of selective perception, in which you fake a sense of positivity and try to dress the world up as great and valuable. You invest time into it. You assemble its objects into pleasing configurations. You try to make it look new and shiny. You clean it and polish it. You make it appear never before seen as if it has given birth to something utterly fresh and interesting. And every single time it is a decoy to tempt you to stay in hell.
You cannot want the world because it was not MADE with love. It was not made through an act of wanting. It was made of rejection. You made it by rejecting the shit in your mind that you did not want and hated, by projecting it out. And thus your unwanted garbage turned into a dumpster pit filled with lies about external salvation and valuable treasures. You do NOT really want the world, and that is the underlying truth.
You cannot want a world which fails. You would be insane to do so. You cannot want a world which offers nothing of real value. You cannot want a world that does nothing for you and everything against you. You cannot want a world whose offerings are always death wrapped in a picture frame of sparkling jewels and special love. You cannot want a world that fundamentally can only die and can never sustain anything.
"You who feel threatened by this changing world, its twists of fortune and its bitter jests, its brief relationships and all the "gifts" it merely lends to take away again, attend this lesson well. 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."
You cannot want a world that denies its own existence, hates itself, destroys itself, is completely disinterested in you, and attacks you at every turn. You cannot want a word that does not want you, and instead rejects you and abandons you. You cannot want a world that wants you to be destroyed and ignore who and what you are. How can you love something that is so utterly unloveable? To love it would have to be to completely overlook it.
That's what forgiveness means. "To forgive is to overlook." It means to NOT SEE the world. To look past the bodies and not see them. To look past physical matter and beyond the veil. To NOT SEE the world. That is forgiveness. Because your focus on the truth and the light of God BLINDS you to hell and makes the world of form turn transparent. You cannot look upon hell with love and expect the darkness to remain. Shine upon it and it will be dispelled from your sight.
"Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances. It keeps its steady gaze upon the light that lies beyond them."
"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred." "What fear would feed upon, love overlooks."
"For, at its center, Christ has been reborn, to light His home with vision that overlooks the world."
"Forgiveness RECOGNIZED as merited will heal. It gives the miracle its strength to OVERLOOK illusions."
"To forgive is to OVERLOOK. Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS."
"For you are asked but to forgive all things that no-one ever did; to overlook what is not there; and not to look upon the unreal as reality."
"It is impossible to overlook what you would see, and fail to see what you have chosen to behold. How surely, therefore, must the real world come to greet the holy sight of anyone who takes the Holy Spirit's purpose as his goal for seeing."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD."
"Is he (Jesus) the Christ? Oh yes, along with you. His little life on earth was not enough to teach the mighty lesson that he learned for all of us. He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."
The truth is, there is no real sin. Sin, the idea that you can attack something real, is literally impossible. Reality cannot BE attacked because it is permanent. Therefore sin is 100% impossible.
The question then is, what is this "sin" thing? It must be a fake sin, some kind of artificial sin. It can't be a real one. But in this world there for sure seem to be "sins" happening.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible." "To the ego the body is to attack with". "The body is the idea of sin made flesh" etc
Even when there seems to be a sin taking place, let's say someone is murdering another person, the truth is that this cannot be a real sin. Real sin doesn't exist. So what is it?
It has to be some kind of illusion of sin, like a fake sin. It has to be a kind of camouflage or disguise. Something which SEEMS to be one thing but is actually something else.
Sin, being untrue and false, has to be a lie. It cannot be a true something because sinlessness is true. Innocence is permanent, per the will of God that you be forever innocent. So whatever sin is, it must be a lie. It's some kind of pretend sin.
Recognizing this is forgiveness because it means you're not taking the appearance of sin at face value and believing it's really what it seems to be. It means you're seeing beyond its ILLUSION of sin, and are recognizing that it IS NOT really sin. It's something else.
The illusion of sin, is just kind of an assertion, a lie, a story being told, a portrayal of a seeming attack, which is impossible, upon something which is unreal, as if it were real. That it is even seeming to happen is a lie. That the events seem to be taking place is a lie. They aren't actually happening.
Sin is therefore an assertion of evil, or an attempt to "make possible" something that is not possible. It's an attempt to assert that something real can be destroyed. This was the whole purpose of the world we made.
"Not in truth, but in the world of shadows and illusions built on sin."
"Sickness would prove that lies must be the truth."
"It can indeed be said the ego made its world on sin."
This world, the world of sin, was made as a lie, to depict something untrue (that God's son is crucified), and that attacking God (or reality/truth) is possible.
"The world is a PICTURE OF the crucifixion of God's Son."
"The world was made as an attack on God."
But it's no more really an attack on God, than it is an actual crucifixion of God's son. It's an illusion of this. It's a NON attack, appearing as an attack. It's a NON-crucifixion, seeming to look like a crucifixion.
This is why sin is an ILLUSION. And this is why illusions are DECEPTIVE. And if you believe the appearance of the illusion without realizing HOW it is deceiving you, you are being TEMPTED by it and fall for that temptation. And then all you SEE is the surface appearance, like seeing a puzzle that you can't solve.
Falling for temptation is buying into sin as though it is real and possible. It is the belief in real sin and therefore real evil and death.
Even what APPEARS to be a physical murder, with the seeming "proof of sin" staring you in the face, CANNOT BE that. To take that at face vale is to fall for temptation. To just "buy it" based on how it appears, is delusional. Believing it is the temptation to believe in sin and thus be sinful yourself.
Nothing real can BE murdered. So how can the murdered thing even BE real in the first place, if it SEEMS to have been murdered? And how can there even seem to be a depiction of murder, when real murder (the destruction of reality) is IMPOSSIBLE?
Whatever the situation SEEMS to be, whatever it looks like, if you look only to its physical appearance, you are "blinded by perception of form". The form, the shape, the evidence, the colors, the smells, the proof, all tell your body senses a LIE, that actual real sin has taken place. And it seems undeniable, if you believe it.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The body's eyes see ONLY form."
"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not."But a a dead body cannot be true. And a sick body cannot make any sense. And illusions of suffering cannot be real suffering.
"A sick body makes no sense."
Even suffering which you supposedly inflict upon yourself, cannot ACTUALLY be real suffering. In fact, even suffering is actually impossible. Nothing real can ever suffer.
"There is no pain in God, and therefore none in me."
"I am not a body I am free, for I am still as God created me."
"You are immortal and you cannot die."
So what does it mean if I SEEM to be suffering? It can only mean that I SEEM to be temporarily experiencing an ILLUSION of suffering, which seems LIKE suffering, or a PICTURE OF sickness, but IS NOT THAT. It can't really be that. It has to be something else, pretending to be suffering. Even unhappiness is fake unhappiness, covering up your happiness.
So what this tells you is that ALL illusions, incuding sickness, death, pain, unhappines, any kind of suffering at all, MUST NOT BE what they appear to be. And in fact that means there are TWO possible interpretations of the thing. Because you can either be DECEIVED BY an illusion or not.
"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."
The false interpretation - "false perception" - looks at an illusion and falls for temptation to believe it is verbatim first-hand reality and therefore true. This is completely delusional and a total failure to be aware of the big picture. This is naive and irresponsible "spiritual blindness."
The true interpretation - "true perception" - looks at the same illusion and SEES THROUGH ("to forgive is to overlook") the LIE, does not fall for the temptation, sees DEEPER and BEYOND the surface appearance, and does not STOP its vision at the physical form.True perception or "accurate perception" is what we use in SANITY, to correctly evaluate "what this thing is". And a correct evaluation of anything that looks like a sin, is that IT IS NOT REALLY THAT. It CANNOT BE what it appears to be. It cannot be AT ALL.
A correct evaluation of any illusion is that you can see the "workings" of its DECEPTION, and you are not deceived by it. You can RECOGNIZE how and why it SEEMS to present a picture of sin and death and suffering, but is in fact simultaneously SOMETHING ELSE. This means recognizing that it is FALSE and UNREAL and UNTRUE.
What it IS, is NOT a reality, but a fiction. What it IS, is a lie. An audiovisual lie. Like an hallucination. A mistake in perception and understanding.
All illusions are two-faced because the ego is two-faced. It is never just what it appears to be on the surface. Murder is not "actual" murder, or "just murder". It is a deceitful lie about something happening which CANNOT possibly happen in reality, IS NOT happening now, and CANNOT BE what it appears to be.
"There is no death, the Son of God is free."
A dead body CANNOT BE a real dead body. It can only be a LIE of a dead body, appearing like a dead body, AS IF dead bodies were possible, when they're not. Bodies don't even exist yet alone dead ones. All death is fake.
So sin, everything physical ("the granite block of sin"), is an ILLUSION which APPEARS to be something - an entire world, but is not REALLY that. The whole physical world, Earth, the sun, the stars and galaxies, it is all a deception. The world is a lie.
"The body is what you made in attempting to deceive yourself."
"There is no world."
"There is no sin."
It's all an attempt to dream up what "real sin" MIGHT be like, IF it were possible, and to try to make it SEEM not only possible but completely real. To make sin believable. But sin is unbelievable, and not believable, to one who sees through its bullshit.
This world is not really a world. This body is not really a body. Sin is not really sin and guilt is not really guilt. Sickness is not really sickness. Death is not really death. Nothing in this world is what it seems, because this world is an ILUSION of a world and NOT REALLY A WORLD.
"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not created it, for what He creates must be eternal as himself. And the time will come when everything you see will have an end."
In the physical world we often think of quantum physics as the pinnacle of scientific success in describing "reality". The more you dig into it the more subtle it becomes. Quantum flux, string theory, unified theories of gravity, multi-dimensional realities, anti-matter and dark-matter, black holes, notions of how consciousness plays a part in forming spacetime etc.
But here is the truth of it. Quantum physics is the study of an illusory world, using separation-based scientific mathematics, confirmed using illusory physical experiments, studied by illusory bodies, drawing conclusions based on a MASSIVE assumption that this world has any reality at all.
It seems at times that the physics tells us truths which might previously have only been the domain of religion or mysticism. Such that the physical nature of objects isn't wholly real, matter comes in and out of seeming existence, particles have probabilities of location which only forms into matter when observed, etc. They've done all kinds of experiments which seem to reveal at least some of the properties of spacetime.
This then leads to the idea that quantum physics is a kind of new scientific spirituality, or that it's proving things that transcend the illusory nature of the world. But we have to be clear here. It is still a mathematical scientific study of a dream world. Even at the lowest level.
Beyond quarks and muons and all manner of exotic particles, beyond the quantum fields and flux, this is all still part of a dream. At some level they still believe that the basis of all of this is reality, even if they are willing to entertain the idea that the surface layers are illusory. They never actually go so far as to say that the universe is absolutely nothing and does not exist. They won't touch ever on the idea that God is real, and they always stop short of heaven.
Here is the main problem. All of this theoretical physics is based on extremely advanced math. Math is based on the idea of separation, that one thing is not another thing. That all the numbers are separate in their values and are not the same. 1 is not 2 and 2 is different than 3. These are the 'quantum' building blocks of the physics itself. Provided numbers remain separate, then you can do math with them. You can calculate things and come up with equations. But what if numbers themselves are flawed?
In heaven's reality, the truth is that 1+1=1. And no matter how many times you "add one" (create a soul), the sum total is still 1, because they are still "one with God". There are all kinds of ways that this plays out. For example the idea that you can share an idea and retain the idea and yet both people now have the idea - the idea that giving and receiving are one, and that you lose nothing by giving everything. This is TOTALLY incompatible with the idea of numbers.
I have 1, and I give 1 to you. And now you have 1, I should have 0. But I don't. We both have 1. And moreso, it's the same one. It shouldn't ever be possible for me to have the whole of something, while you simultaneously have the whole of something, and it be the same whole. In the world of separate numbers, transferring value to you takes it away from me, and to give is to sacrifice. I lose by sharing. 1+1=2 really means separation and separation produces two separate things. It does not speak of oneness.
The entire system of math is fundamentally based on laws of separation, which is based on the ego thought system of separation from God. So that means that now we're trying to do mathematical physics based on laws of separation, trying to describe a reality that is beyond separation. All we end up doing is describing THE separation, ie a separated state, and regarding it as the whole of reality. This is what quantum physics is doing. It is blind to God and blind to heaven's nature.
When God extends the whole of himself, he gives all that he has to his creation, and yet he ALSO retains it all. He does not lose anything by giving it. He shares. Now his creation has everything, and so does he.
This would also suggest to the ego and to math, that if that first created being has everything, there is nothing left for anyone else to have. And yet God can create a second creation by sharing the whole of what he has with it, giving it everything, and now it ALSO has everything. And now two have everything. Two have the same value. And equal value is the Golden Rule.
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
You can't describe that using math other than to say 1+1=1. Or you can even say 2=1. Well, now if the value of 2 is the same as the value of 1, and those two things ARE each other, because they are totally equated, then ALL numbers equal 1. That's what oneness is about. The many created children of God sharing everything and therefore having the same whole and the same value. That means ALL numbers equal 1.
You cannot DO math when all numbers have the same value. You cannot do quantum physics or ANY kind of physics. Heaven is NOT quantum physics and it is not run by quantum physics. It's laws transcend all of space and time and the laws of separation.
So you have to be kind of careful when you put the ego's triumph of extremely complicated analysis and calculations on a pedestal and call it "reality". They are not even studying reality, they're studying an illusion of a world that doesn't exist, under the assumption that it has reality. They don't even know what reality means. It's all a calculated guess, and it's all mistaken. Just as all beliefs in separation are mistaken.
E=MC squared which supposedly tells you the relationship of mass and energy vs speed of light and how time changes relatively and so on.... it's all made up. It might seem to roughly and closely correlate to a world of separation. Yes. Because THIS world, this illusion of a world, IS based on separation.
So it naturally SEEMS to line up with separation-based physics. The math SEEMS to correlate. AND the whole separate system of spacetime is so seemingly stable, most of the time, that you can even do experiments IN spacetime that seem to prove or correlate to what the theory says should happen. That's how they "validate" their physics. But all this is really doing is taking an illusory world, studying it with illusory means, using its illusory nature to correlate to illusory predictions, and then when they match up they claim that this is truth. It is nothing of the sort.
All that quantum physics can do is describe roughly and incorrectly and from a very false-perception vantage point, what appears to be the nature and workings of an hallucinated unreal world, without truly acknowledging its unreality. All of the "laws of physics" such as gravity, seem to be observable phenomena because of the fact that Newton got bopped on the head with an apple one day. But there are no apple trees in heaven and stuff doesn't fall on people's heads.
What this really boils down to is, the body is being used to try to tell you what the truth about the body is. And on that matter, the body is entirely biased and ONLY will tell you that the body IS real. We are using a device to try to discern whether the world exists, based on the fact that the body MAKES the world seem real.
"Only the body makes the world seem real." And then we're assuming that its reality can be studied and verified and proven. All we're doing is using a biased apparatus to make a REFLECTION of the world and are calling it a unified theory of reality. But a reflection of hell is not the truth.
You cannot look to science to tell you what is ultimately true. You CAN look to science to tell you in most cases what seems to be true in a fairly "stable" unreal world. You can use it to measure your body. You can use it to evaluate the redshift of starlight. You can use it to calculate approximately the motion of objects. But you CANNOT use it to tell you, in the big picture, ANYTHING REAL.
"I am under no laws but God's".
"There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you."
"I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."
"I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's. His laws release me from all grievances, and replace them with miracles. And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond."
"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."
I've been finding an increasing awareness that there are some things we invented which are not God's way.
Sin. Guilt. Fear. Sickness. Suffering. Death.
Mentally I tend to arrange these things into levels, vertically. God is at the top (symbolically in the sky), then below is the separation and sin, then a layer of guilt, then fear, then suffering, then death at the bottom (symbolically buried in the ground).
But the fact is, that all of these layers except the top one, are actually not a part of the top layer at all. All of these other layers are fictional.
And yet the whole word is spinning based on belief in the normality or justifyability of these other ideas.
I used to think, well, I need to undo my guilt and heal my sense of having sinned. But it actually goes further than this.
It's not just about undoing my guilt. It's about undoing the belief that there is any truth to guilt AT ALL, anywhere, for anyone. The entire idea of guilt itself is fictional. It's not just "am I guilty or not?" or "is there guilt in me or not?"... it's more like... is guilt even real, EVER? is it even possible?
I guess in the past I thought, well, if I undo my guilt, then I will not have guilt, but there will still be such a thing as guilt, and other people might still have guilt. But this is not the case.
Instead, I'm bringing into question whether guilt is EVER justified, whether it EVER has a foundation or if it is even supported by God in any way whatsoever.
It's not just that there is such a thing as being guilty and we get to choose whether we are guilty or not. It's more like, God does not believe in guilt AT ALL and has absolutely no place for it, and so the entire fundamental concept is actually make-believe.
That means, I invented. Or, we invented it. We invented the entire concept of being sinful or guilty or afraid, and invented all suffering and sickness and death.
The stark contrast between what is of God, and what is not of God, reveals that if there is any guilt happening, we MUST be doing it to ourselves. If there is any sense of sin, WE must have invented sin in the first place and have now condemned ourselves and are pretending somehow that God shares the sentiment.
It seems actually a kind of blasphemy, in this world's thought system, to suggest that you should NEVER believe in sin or guilt. Society is steeped in it. Duality supports it. Illusions weave stories which justify who sinned and why and explains their worthiness of guilt and punishment.
It's as if we believe there is some universal standard "law" written into the fabric of the universe, that there is such a thing as real sin and guilt, established by God, and set in stone. And since sin and guilt seem real, and therefore are associated with permanence, it's as if to say, no-one in the entire universe can escape this "law". Either you obey the law and stop being sinful, or you are a sinner.
But the truth is, that this so-called law, this assumed "natural" framework for deciding whether you are "guilty or not", or "sinful or not", is not anything to do with God at all.
So now we're in a position where we have to actually withdraw our belief in the "option" of being guilty or not. It means we have to embrace an entirely new idea, a unified idea.
The idea is simply that God is not interested in guilt or sin whatsoever. He does not support it. And in contrast to that, this society is very very twisted and sick in its dedication to this doctrine. Even the idea that you can have a "guilty conscience" or that you are supposed to be well behaved or follow rules or not do bad stuff etc, is part of the story our egotism has invented.
So let's see. You make a mistake, you do something "wrong", and..... you're supposed to be guilty. Nope. You're innocent. Can you hear all of society's combined ego roaring with protest as you suggest that you are innocent when you make mistakes, that you do not deserve punishment, that guilt is never justified, that it is impossible to be condemned of sin, and that God STILL loves you fully and happily regardless of what you think you did?
Or how about, that the idea of it ever being even POSSIBLE to sin or be guilty, is a totally bullshit idea? This is not at all how the world thinks. And because the world has become embedded in my mindset as though "normal" and natural, I have to work to undo this.
I need to recognize that God is not the kind of God that this thought system made Him out to be. God is not a God of judgement or of condemnation, He is not the slightest bit interested in finding ANYONE guilty, He isn't even remotely interested in guilt or sin at ANY time, and to Him the entire idea of sin or guilt is a total joke. He laughs in the face of death, at its sheer ridiculousness, as if it could ever oppose eternal life.
So if God does not believe in sin or guilt or fear or suffering or death, why am I believing in it? It's not just a matter of me healing and removing these attitudes from myself. I must undo the very belief that there even is such a thing a sin or guilt or death. That it even exists. Or has any merit at all. Anywhere. At any time. In relation to anyone.
These are made-up fictional lies which have formed the foundation of a way of life riddled with attack and punishment and suffering. It is a LIE that anyone should ever be guilty.
The aim of guilt is not to establish that someone is guilty. The aim of guilt is to establish that guilt ITSELF is permanent law and is not to ever be questioned.
The aim of sin similarly is not so much to establish who is or who is not sinful. It's to establish that sinfulness ITSELF is supposedly reality and truth and a law by which all things are judged (by God), should never be questioned and is a valid way to evaluate what something is or isn't.
Fear does the same thing. It distracts all attention away from ITSELF, projecting attention outward and onto other things, so that you'll be in a mode where you're asking yourself, whether you are "afraid or not". It's not a question of whether you are afraid or not. It's a matter of fear being a lie in the first place, fear being impossible, and that buying into the belief that you even CAN or SHOULD be afraid is the real problem.
We're just accepted these things like permanent laws. Somewhere on a mountain sits the God of sin, the God of guilt, and the God of fear, all "real", all used as references to determine whether anyone is sinning or guilty or fearing or not. Woebetide anyone who might question whether any of these Gods are valid at all. Who would question their reality?
If sin is real, then all the others are real too. It's not a matter of... have I sinned or not. Once you're playing that game you've already assumed the fundamental error, that sin is even possible. And this is what has to be undone now. Not just whether you sinned, but whether sin is even possible in the first place. Whether you can even BE guilty in the eyes of truth.
And as it turns out, God has absolutely no interest in and nothing to do with sin or guilt or fear or suffering or sickness or death. Absolutely no interest at all. These things play NO PART in Heaven. They do not exist. So all these beliefs that we have about them existing or being the measure of character or something that keeps you in check or modifies your behavior or whatever. It's all bullshit.
We have to undo the belief that it's even possible to sin at all. Which means questioning this and giving up this belief, even if everyone else on the planet still insists on believing in it, and realizing that to be with God does NOT entail being "sinless". It entails accepting that you CANNOT sin, you have not sinned, and sin ITSELF is a lie.
Believing in sin and trying not to sin has made sin real which means YOU ARE a sinner regardless of how well behaved you are. It's not your guilt or guiltlessness that's a problem. It's that you believe in guilt AT ALL. God does not believe in guilt. God does not believe in sin. Even when we think that we are SUPPOSED to be guilty or that we HAVE sinned, we have to question THAT, because that is a lie, and it takes some undoing of this belief in our minds to let go ENTIRELY of what is merely a CONCEPT of sinfulness being possible.
Isn't it freeing to know that God does not include sin? That God sees you ONLY as holy and innocent? That all stories about real sin and justified guilt are part of the EGO, NOT part of the laws of reality? Isn't it good to know, that not only are you sinless, but that sin ITSELF is an impossible lie, that it applies to NO ONE and it is NEVER justified?
It literally means now that no matter what you are doing, if you are inclined to feel guilty about doing it, you are going to have to learn to question that. And you are going to resist that, and in fact you are going to feel like you're being even MORE sinful when you question the validity of being guilty for what you've done. It will seem to suggest that if you do this thing WITHOUT GUILT, that you are somehow MORE guilty and evil. That's how the ego thinks.
But the truth is, that your use of this thing to make you guilty was a lie in the first place. It does not prove you are guilty. It does not mean you are sinful. It does not justify condemnation. It calls for FORGIVENESS - the recognition that THERE IS NO SIN, and that you HAVE NOT sinned. To tell yourself and believe it, that you have not sinned, when you do something that you feel guilty or ashamed or sinful about, is quite challenging. Surely God finds this guilty? Surely God would say, you shouldn't be doing this you guilty little fucker? NO.
God finds you worthy of love and does not see sin or guilty in ANYTHING. We need to learn to see ourselves in the same light.
Only the truth is true. Only love is real.
God and his Kingdom are unlimited. They are EVERYTHING. In the separation from God, we tried to be opposite to God. We made-up a world opposite to everything. The opposite of everything is NOTHING At the same time, we confused the true with the false, and so believed that the nothing was actually SOMETHING. This is the entire problem to be corrected. It is a lack of recognition that the world is absolutely NOTHING. It is because you believe it is SOMETHING, that you think it has something to offer, or something to do to you.
What is nothing has no real effects because it is not really a cause. The world isn't right or wrong or good or bad. The world isn't anything at all. It is meaningless because of this nothingness.
God's Kingdom is all meaningful and means everything to you. The world you made means NOTHING AT ALL. But you tried to GIVE IT meaning that it does not have. Because it is NOTHING it can reflect the meaning you project onto it. But of itself it has none. Of itself it has nothing of anything. The world is not a something, it is an ABSENCE.
Our task then is simply to see through the lies and appearances produced by the wishful thinking, ie the denial, that the world IS something, when it isn't. To stop believing it can BE something it is not. Or indeed that it can be anything at all. There is nothing there. It's not really a world. It's an illusion of a world. A smokescreen. A hallucination of a world. It is unreal and does not exist. There is no world at all.
To recognize it AS nothing requires seeing through illusions. It requires correctly discerning that the world is NOT what you thought it was. It also requires the recognition of what it IS, which is nothing. You are not really afraid of nothing because, being afraid of nothing means you have no fear at all. You are afraid of nothingNESS because you think it's something you can experience - as if it is somethingNESS. Yet it cannot be both something and nothing at the same time.
Jesus asks us merely to come to our senses and realize that the world is nothing whatsoever. The body is nothing. Events are nothing. Nothing is happening. Or indeed, the nothingness is not happening. It's only because we think there really is a world there that we suffer. It's only because we give the body roles and duties and laws and purposes that it seems to become sick. We keep trying to twist a world of nothing into a dedicated something, which it cannot be. And so this denial attacks it.
Let the world be nothing. Only by it being nothing can you truly let it go. Its meaninglessness, emptiness, nothingness and absence must be recognized. What is absent CANNOT BE THERE. what is nothing cannot be the truth of everything. What is nothingness CANNOT HAPPEN. There is no world.
The world is not a guilty world or a sinful world. Nor is it an innocent world or a holy world. It is not a forgiven world or an accused world. The world isn't anything at all. To forgive it is to overlook it and to not see it. And so the world must disappear because it is not there to be seen or believed. Only the Kingdom of God remains.
"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real."
"Symbols which but represent ideas that cannot BE, must stand for empty space and nothingness. Yet nothingness and empty space can NOT be interference. What CAN interfere with the awareness of reality is the belief that there is SOMETHING THERE."
"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. And so it seems to be a thing with power IN ITSELF. As something, it CAN be perceived, and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself." ... "Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."
"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."
"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick. In your demand that it be MORE than this lies the idea of sickness."
"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been. Let, then, the empty space it occupies be RECOGNIZED as vacant, and the time devoted to its seeing be perceived as idly spent, a time unoccupied."
"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned it has any meaning in the Mind of God."
"Dreams are dreams, and every one is equally untrue. This is the only lesson to be learned. Yet will fear linger until every one is recognized as nothingness, and seen exactly as it is and nothing more."
"Now the hosts of Heaven come with us, to sweep away all vestiges of dreams and every thought that rests on nothingness."
"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."
"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."
"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see." ... "See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."
"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. 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 "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different. Illusions are illusions; truth is truth."
"God's Will is all there is. We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven."
"Such is the choice. What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"
"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."
"But hold out your JOINED hands and touch this heavy-seeming block, and you will learn how easily your fingers slip through its nothingness. It is no solid wall. And only an illusion stands between you and the holy Self you share."
"What is the SENSE in seeking to be safe in what was MADE for danger and for fear? Why burden it with further locks and chains and heavy anchors, when its weakness lies, NOT in itself, but in the frailty of the little gap of nothingness whereon it stands?"
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."
"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."
"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly."
"Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."
"Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."
"And the alternative you think you chose seems fearful and too dangerous to be the nothingness it actually is."
"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it? How can the truth of miracles be RECOGNIZED, if murder is your choice?"
"There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based."
"To mean these words acknowledges illusions are in vain, requesting the eternal in the place of shifting dreams which seem to change in what they offer, but are one in nothingness."
"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death"
"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."
"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."
"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt."
"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."
"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made."
"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."
"Only the ANTICIPATION will frighten you, for the reality of nothingness cannot be frightening."
"Very simply, then, you may BELIEVE you are afraid of nothingNESS, but you are REALLY afraid of NOTHING. And in THAT awareness you ARE healed."
"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."
(And why the idea of only one son, one dreamer, one perceiver, no individuals, non-duality, etc are bullshit)
"Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time."
(This means God's will is not forced upon YOUR will, you CAN choose when to take the curriculum, or to delay it as long as you like, it's YOUR CHOICE. People have used this statement to justify a sense of "having no choice" and no freedom, as if the curriculum is handed down like a commandment from God. It should be obvious that your "freedom to elect" IS a use of FREE WILL. Even "the script is written" does not prove you don't have free will, because you have to CONSENT to it and are FREE to ignore it.)
"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."
(Having free will does not mean you are an ego, but when you attempt to imprison your will, that's when you produce ego. In other words, by trying to have a will which wills differently to your natural will, you create the illusion of there being an alternative "real choice" but simultaneously puts your will into a prison of UNWILLINGNESS. Yet, you are FREE to be un-willing - that is a USE of will).
"It is not your will to be imprisoned, because your will is free. That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is never God Who coerces you, because He shares His Will WITH you."
(See, the ego is the attempt to repress your personal freedom, not to establish personal freedom, but it makes an illusion of personal freedom to cover it over. Also notice, VERY IMPORTANT, "It is never God who coerces you." - meaning that YOUR WILL is not enforced by God, because you are free and independent!)
"Free will MUST lead to freedom."
(This also means freedom from a tyrannical ruler. God is not a tyrannical ruler, he loves you, and has given you a gift of freedom to choose for yourself to willingly want to will like Him, in unison, co-creatively).
"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING."
(Willingness is required in order to want to be with God. It is the EGO that lacks willingness and lacks freedom and lacks true independence. Ego means imprisonment and loss of self, not gaining of self. It is an illusion of gaining self while simultaneously losing it. It is also an illusion of willing independently while isolating your will. You can only be with God WILLINGLY, which means freely, which means no coercion and not being forced by God. Love does not enter where it is not welcome) .
"In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."
(YOUR free will was given you by God for YOUR own joy in creating the perfect.)
"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."
(Ok so now not only do you have the position of co-creating with God, which means you COLLABORATE WILLINGLY AND FREELY AND INDEPENDENTLY, but also you co-create with your brother. Guess what happened when you co-created with your brother in an egoic way? You CO-DREAMED the dream!)
"It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."
(God Himself has established you and others as co-creators with Him. That means it's not just God creating everything on His own, or that the son is just an effect of Him, or that the son is forced to do God's will like some kind of robot. We participate joyfully in sharing God's will, sharing the same interest, sharing the same desire to create.)
"And it is the AGREEMENT of their Thought that makes the Son a co-creator with the Mind Whose Thought created him."
(See, what makes you a co-creator and what makes you "do God's will" isn't that His will forces you, it's that you AGREE WITH HIS WILL FREELY. Doing God's will is VOLUNTARY.)
"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son. Yet must this Son have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed, nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."
(I think this is talking about YOUR creations. Note that it also says that the creation you create is a PERFECT BEING, and since it is LIKE YOU, you also are a perfect being.)
"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."
(This is clear. God's will DOES NOT BIND YOU. He created you as a WILLING, FREE-WILLED INDIVIDUAL, who is capable of desiring to and agreeing freely to will WITH God and in alignment with what God wants to create. He will keep YOUR WILL forever limitless, meaning that even Himself and His own will does not impose limits on your will.)
"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it."
(See. Now, if God will not go against YOUR will AT ALL, ever, not even a tiny bit, this MUST MEAN, that you are effectively a SEPARATE INDIVIDUAL in heaven! It MUST also mean that your own will is FREE to choose WHETHER to will the same thing as God wills or not. Because it's only possible that you MIGHT do something God would oppose, by virtue of you being ABLE to will something ELSE. You can will to "try" to make something UNLIKE God's will would create, which is what produced the separation. And God does not OPPOSE your will to do that, although He offers help and guidance for you to return to Him and will like Him, freely. If God does not go against your will, YOU MUST HAVE INDIVIDUALITY. Note Jesus also says YOUR WILL is as free as HIS... meaning that THERE IS NOT JUST ONE SON, and you cannot oppose His will anymore than He can oppose yours, because you RESPECT each other's individual freedom!)
"Would God let this be real, if He did not will to be alone Himself?"
(God did not will to be alone! So He CREATED YOU! This is because nothing real can be real unless it is given, because it has to be given in order to have HAD it to give, so God automatically creates YOU!)
"They remind you that you are the co-creator of all things that live."
(Remembering that "there is no life outside of heaven", you have co-created WITH God, freely, all things that LIVE, because everything in heaven is alive, including your soul.)
"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy. Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."
(There you have it plainly and simply, God created "separate" distinct beings who have everything "individually", have their own free will, and WANT to share what they have in order to increase THEIR joy. Note is also says that nothing real can increase except through sharing - sharing means extension or creation, and also making sort of "room for" something ADDITIONAL, which is why God ADDED you to creation, increasing it, and He did this because it brings him joy to apply what He is - to create.)
"God does not need revelation returned to Him, which would clearly be impossible, but He DOES want revelation brought to others. This cannot be done with the actual revelation, because its content cannot be expressed, and it is intensely personal to the mind which receives it. But it can still be returned BY that mind through its attitudes to other minds which the knowledge from the revelation brings."
(Information about revelations helps us to see that God communicates directly to individual PERSONAL selves, he does not and cannot communicate directly with an EGO, so it must be to the SOUL, and yet is personal, because there are OTHERS. Many sons, many brothers, many souls, many minds. "God is praised whenever any mind learns to be wholly helpful.")
"The truly helpful are God’s miracle-workers, whom I direct until we are all united in the joy of the kingdom."
(God has MANY miracle workers!)
Clearly there is SIGNIFICANT PROOF here that God created many individuals who are independent and HAVE THEIR OWN FREE WILL.
This leads to having to re-evaluate many other beliefs and conclusions that people have FALSELY come to, such as that there is only one dreamer of the dream, that other people are literally you, that you are responsible for other people's choices, that your perception's correction makes it impossible to see other people's poor choices, that your acceptance of atonement undoes the entire dream for everyone, etc... these are ALL false conclusions based on the DENIAL OF FREE WILL and the DENIAL OF INDIVIDUALITY IN HEAVEN.
Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about. If you believed this statement there would be no problem in complete forgiveness, certainty of goal, and sure direction. You would understand the means by which salvation comes to you, and would not hesitate to use it now.
Let us consider what you do believe in place of this idea. It seems to you that other people are apart from you, and able to behave in ways which have no bearing on your thoughts, nor theirs on yours. Therefore your attitudes have no effect on them, and their appeals for help are not in any way related to your own. You further think that they can sin without affecting your perception of yourself, while you can judge their sin and yet remain apart from condemnation and at peace.
When you "forgive" a sin, there is no gain to you directly. You give charity to one unworthy merely to point out that you are better, on a higher plane than he whom you forgive. He has not earned your charitable tolerance, which you bestow on one unworthy of the gift because his sins have lowered him beneath a true equality with you. He has no claim on your forgiveness. It holds out a gift to him but hardly to yourself.
Thus is forgiveness basically unsound; a charitable whim, benevolent yet undeserved; a gift bestowed at times, at other times withheld. Unmerited, withholding it is just, nor is it fair that you should suffer when it is withheld. The sin which you forgive is not your own. Someone apart from you committed it and if you then are gracious unto him by giving him what he does not deserve, your gift is no more yours than was his sin.
If this be true, forgiveness has no grounds on which to rest dependably and sure. It is an eccentricity in which you sometimes choose to give indulgently an undeserved reprieve. Yet it remains your right to let the sinner not escape the justified repayment for his sin. Think you the Lord of Heaven would allow the world's salvation to depend on this? Would not His care for you be small indeed if your salvation rested on a whim?
You do not understand forgiveness. As you see it, it is but a check upon overt attack, without requiring correction in your mind. It cannot give you peace as you perceive it. It is not a means for your release from what you see in someone other than yourself. It has no power to restore your unity with him to your awareness. It is not what God intended it to be for you.
Not having given Him the gift He asks of you, you cannot recognize His gifts, and think He has not given them to you. Yet would He ask you for a gift unless it was for you? Could He be satisfied with empty gestures, and evaluate such petty gifts as worthy of His Son? Salvation is a better gift than this, and true forgiveness, as the means by which it is attained, must heal the mind that gives, for giving is receiving. What remains as unreceived has not been given, but what has been given must have been received.
Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed. But the Help you need is there. Give Him your faith today and ask Him that He share your practicing in truth today. And if you only catch a tiny glimpse of the release which lies in the idea we practice for today, this is a day of glory for the world.
Give fifteen minutes twice today to the attempt to understand today's idea. It is the thought by which forgiveness takes its proper place in your priorities. It is the thought that will release your mind from every bar to what forgiveness means, and let you realize its worth to you.
In silence close your eyes upon the world which does not understand forgiveness, and seek sanctuary in the quiet place where thoughts are changed and false beliefs laid by. Repeat today's idea, and ask for help in understanding what it really means. Be willing to be taught. Be glad to hear the Voice of truth and healing speak to you, and you will understand the words He speaks, and recognize He speaks your words to you.
As often as you can, remind yourself you have a goal today; an aim which makes this day of special value to yourself and all your brothers. Do not let your mind forget this goal for long, but tell yourself:
"All that I give is given to myself.
The Help I need to learn that this is true
Is with me now. And I will trust in Him."
Then spend the quiet moment, opening your mind to His correction and His Love. And what you hear of Him you will believe, for what He gives will be received by you.
If we describe the Holy Spirit as having the power of God, of knowing everything, of having a healing solution for every problem, of being able to guide us specifically and tell us what to do, to make all decisions for us, and be an authority, then this should clearly position us in a receptive frame of mind to listen, learn, and do.
If we are unclear as to the absolute and total strength of the Holy Spirit, we will think that there are some things he cannot do, is not equipped to do, and cannot be trusted to do. And then we will doubt him, and we will start to trust our own egos. And then we will usurp his functions and take over control, unwilling to listen to or follow instructions. This means we basically are not giving him enough credit or acknowledging fully what his function is.
Part of the problem is that our egos are inflated and we want to be gatekeepers, in control of everything, making all decisions, knowing what everything is, being special and important, and all the rest of it. All of this clouds our dependence on the Holy Spirit and makes us be in competition with him. We do not want his help and we won't seek it out, listen to it, accept it or welcome it. We think we know better and don't need him.
We need to very fully and clearly spell out precisely what the Holy Spirit's function is and what he is capable of, so that we are in no way mistaken about what his duties and functions are. Only if we can be clear about exactly what he's supposed to be doing, can we be clear about what we are supposed to be doing. What is his role, and what is our role. Otherwise we will have a blurred boundary and the ego will step in.
If I acknowledge that the Holy Spirit has all of the power of God, this power is unlimited, it can heal every sickness, it can solve every problem, he knows absolutely everything that is going on with everyone all the time, he knows exactly what every problem is and how to solve it, has access to all information and facts and variables in the past present and future, and is squarely in a position to KNOW, then this tells me clearly that I can depend on him knowing. He knows how, he is fully equipped, he cannot fail, and he can be depended upon. That means I do not NEED to know everything because I can LET HIM do his part.
This then tells me that I can depend upon him and work with him as a team member, utilizing him for his function and turning to him TO help in all the ways that he is equipped and assigned to do so. Then I will not look to MYSELF to try to fulfill those functions, recognizing that I am not in a POSITION to do so. This tells me that it isn't my function here to know everything, to decide everything, to heal anything, to correct anything, or to pretend that I have all the information. I should be turning to him for that and letting him advise and help.
This also opens up the door for easier trust, because if you are now clear about what He is supposed to be doing and are acknowledging that he CAN do it, you will have more FAITH in him. Part of this entails recognizing that he has the power of God, he is absolutely unlimited in his power, and there is nothing he cannot do. To admit and acknowledge that might, to your ego, strike you as frightening. So you're going to have to work on that and get past it. If you can acknowledge and be comfortable with the Holy Spirit being immensely powerful, and on your side, then you can go forth with greater confidence knowing He is backing you up.
Since he shares God's power, he more or less can be thought of as an extension of God. And that means you should be having faith and trust in him to the same extent and in the same way that you would with God. The Holy Spirit has been appointed by God to help us, on purpose, AS the answer to the separation, TO guarantee our return home to heaven. He knows how we got into this mess, he knows how to get us out of it. We have to learn to let him do that. He also knows how to solve all problems, heal all sickness, and reverse death. We have to learn to let him do that.
Now that you know just how helpful and powerful the Holy Spirit is, you can make room for him and work alongside him as a partner rather than work against him vying for attention. You can let him help you, heal you, resurrect you, and enlighten you. He can solve all your problems and undo all your suffering.
"I will step back and let Him lead the way."
"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL
the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
"You know not where you go, but One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest."
"I will step back and let Him lead the way,
For I would walk along the road to Him."
"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be."
"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."
"I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty."
"And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today."
"That is because I do not yet realize that God has placed the answer together with the problem, so that they cannot be separated by time. The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already."
"Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face"
"Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world."
"Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God."
"Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him."
"The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way."
"The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU."
"God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name."
"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end."
"I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you."
"Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and SHOW it to you."
"Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you."
"He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will."
"Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there."
"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
"The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS."
"And yet he is NOT crucified. For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God."
"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."
"Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE."
Forgiveness-for-salvation has one form, and only one. It does not ask for proof of innocence, nor pay of any kind. It does not argue, nor evaluate the errors that it wants to overlook. It does not offer gifts in treachery, nor promise freedom while it asks for death. Would God deceive you? He but asks for trust and willingness to learn how to be free. He gives His Teacher to whoever asks, and seeks to understand the Will of God. His readiness to give lies far beyond your understanding and your simple grasp. Yet He has willed you learn the way to Him, and in His willing there is certainty.
You Child of God, the gifts of God are yours, not by your plans but by His holy Will. His Voice will teach you what forgiveness is, and how to give it as He wills it be. Do not, then, seek to understand what is beyond you yet, but let it be a way to draw you up to where the sight of Christ becomes the eyes you choose. Give up all else, for there IS nothing else. When someone calls for help in any form, He is the One to answer for you. All that you need do is to step back and not to interfere. Forgiveness-for-salvation is His task, and it is He Who will respond for you.
Do not establish what the form should be that His forgiveness takes. He knows the way to make of every call a help to you, as you arise in haste to go at last unto your Father's house. He will direct your footsteps surely, and your words sincere; not with your own sincerity, but with His Own. Let Him take charge of how you would forgive, and each occasion then will be to you another step to Heaven and to peace.
Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you. What you have chosen still can be undone, for prayer is merciful and God is just. His is a justice He can understand, but you cannot as yet. Yet will He give the means to you to learn of Him, and know at last that condemnation is not real and makes illusions in its evil name. And yet it matters not the form that dreams may seem to take. Illusions are untrue. God's Will is truth, and you are one with Him in Will and purpose. Here all dreams are done.
"What should I do for this, Your holy Son?" should be the only thing you ever ask when help is needed and forgiveness sought. The form the seeking takes you need not judge. But let it not be you who sets the form in which forgiveness comes to save God's Son. The light of Christ in him is his release, and it is this that answers to his call. Forgive him as the Christ decides you should, and be His eyes through which you look on him, and speak for Him as well. He knows the need; the question and the answer. He will say exactly what to do in words that you can understand and you can also use. Do not confuse His function with your own. He is the Answer; you the one who hears.
And what is it He speaks to you about? About salvation and the gift of peace. About the end of sin and guilt and death. About the role forgiveness has in Him. Do you but listen, for He will be heard by anyone who calls upon His Name, and places his forgiveness in His hands. Forgiveness has been given Him to teach, to save it from destruction and to make the means for separation, sin and death become again the holy gift of love. Prayer is His Own right hand, made free to save as true forgiveness is allowed to come from His eternal vigilance and Love.
Listen and learn, and do not judge. It is to God you turn to hear what you should do. His Answer will be clear as morning, nor is His forgiveness what you think it is. Still does He know, and that should be enough. Forgiveness has a Teacher Who will fail in nothing. Rest a while in this; do not attempt to judge forgiveness, nor to set it in an earthly frame. Let it arise to Christ, Who welcomes it as gift to Him. He will not leave you comfortless, nor fail to send His angels down to answer you in His Own Name. He stands beside the door to which forgiveness is the only key. Give it to Him to use instead of you, and you will see the door swing silently open upon the shining face of Christ. Behold your brother there beyond the door; the Son of God as He created him.
This is possibly the most threatening and mind-blowing teaching in A Course in Miracles. There is in fact NOT a world here! It's not even a matter of who made the world, it's the even higher truth that it DOES NOT EXIST. Earth is in fact NOTHING.
"There is no world! This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it"
"There is no world because it is a thought apart from God, and made to separate the Father and the Son, and break away a part of God Himself and thus destroy His wholeness. Can a world which comes from this idea be real? Can it be anywhere?"
Everything that happened in the separation from God, involves a belief in something existing which does not exist, something being true which is false, something being real which is unreal.
For example, we made a separate self which seems to have free will to do as it pleases. However, this self is in fact the DENIAL of self, which is why it results in death. But it APPEARS to be the presence of a self. This is why it's an illusion - it seems to be showing you something which is not there, as if it is. It's supposed freedom of will is in fact an imprisoned will, which is not free, but SEEMS free.
Take a look at the body. "The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist." The body SEEMS to picture "you", presenting an appearance and form, it seems to positively exist and move and do stuff. But, the body is NOT you, it is a replacement for you, and is only an image of what you THINK you are. What it SEEMS to be, is the opposite of what it actually is. The body is the ABSENCE OF YOU. And you do not look like your body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."
It is the same thing with regards the difference between light and darkness. Darkness is not possible. Where there seems to be an absence of light, there must be an ILLUSION of darkness. If you believe the darkness is real, you are giving it false reality and are claiming it "is a something." But a shadow on a wall is not the PRESENCE of darkness, it is the absence of light. It appears to be a something, but is really the lack of a something.
It is also the same with regards to sin and error. Error or mistakes are just illusions of impossibilities, recognized as false. In their "true form" it is clear they cannot be true. But if you invest belief in them, are deceived and tempted by them, and buy into them, they turn into sin. And now it seems that they assert that something has REALLY happened, and something is REALLY possible, that isn't. So sin is really a lie, depicting stuff happening that CANNOT happen, as though it is really happening. It is deceptive.
The same applies to this world. This world is in fact NOTHING. But by believing in it and investing it with reality, it turns from an illusion of a something to an ACTUAL something. It seems to exist. It seems to host events and happenings. Things in it seem possible. But the world is impossible, and the things which happen are impossible, and sin is not real. The world was made to try to prove that sin and guilt are real.
"Their aim is to fulfill the purpose which the world was made to witness and make real. They see in its illusions but a solid base where truth exists, upheld apart from lies."
"The world of bodies is the world of sin."
So basically, we have a world that SEEMS to be here, which is made of sin, which testifies and proves that impossible things are possible, which hosts the idea of the death and murder of reality, and SEEMS to have real consequences. But it has none. And it does nothing. And it causes nothing. And it has no power. And it isn't really there at all.
"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."
"The world does nothing to him."
"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."
The really deep thing to realize is this. The world is in fact, the ABSENCE OF EXISTENCE. It is the antithesis of heaven. It is the LACK OF HEAVEN. It is a HOLE, which we call the spacetime bubble, in which are housed impossibilities and unrealities. It is an hallucinated world, because it seems to be there to see, but isn't. You are projecting it and making it up as you go along.
The idea that there is no world isn't simply that the world "exists" and it has to be "undone". It's really the RECOGNITION that the world you thought was here, does not exist. And this doesn't mean there's a better view of it. It means the WHOLE THING IS GONE. It has no reality at all. No presence. No life.
"There is no life outside of heaven."
"Without the idea of death there is no world."
"He does NOT realize that HE MAKES THIS WORLD, for there IS no world outside him."
Through unwillingness, we resisted God. We failed to create. We wanted not to shine. We tried to end eternal life. We wanted to stop reality. We opposed the Kingdom. We attacked will. We tried to deny our own existence. We blocked awareness. We tried to destroy. And ultimately this is all a matter of TRYING NOT TO EXIST.
In so doing, we seemed to make a world which SEEMS to exist, which is really actually the LACK OF A WORLD. It's like you took a part of heaven and DRAINED IT of all life. Held it back and prevented its extension. As though you could attack heaven and remove its presence. This world, which includes the Earth, is the ANTI-world. It is a mis-creation. It is empty and it is nothing.
We have GIVEN the world, the fake world, all manner of belief in trying to MAKE IT BE SIN, so that it is GIVEN reality, so that we can try to make it exist. It's our attempt to give it life and immortality. But we can't. We tried to make the world be a cause. We tried to make it have power. We gave our power to it to try to animate it. We tried to make it appear to be alive with "life forms", which are illusions of life. We tried to imagine it has a mind and alien will of its own. We tried to make ourselves subject to it and affected by it, to confirm its reality. We made bodies to sense it and to tell us that it is there.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."
Quite simply, this world, this planet, this galaxy, all the stars, all bodies, all animals and "life forms", are NOTHING. They are life's ABSENCE. They are the LACK OF LIFE. They are something that is really NOT there, appearing to be there. Like an hallucination. A lack of light, appearing to be the presence of a real darkness. And to believe in it is to believe that evil is real, asserting that the world has power OVER heaven. That the world CAN CAUSE immortal beings to die. Believing this world is real is level confusion.
Our task in forgiveness, then, is not to find a way to give EXTRA reality to the world, but to recognize ITS UNREALITY, and see finally that it SO NOTHING, that it disappears and fades into nothingness. All it is is a veil of illusions, a block, hanging in front of the face of christ, pretending to exist. Our guilt makes it seem solid. Our fear gives it reality. Our belief in sin anchors it in our minds. But it is not there at all. It is an empty shell.
"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist."
"What can the causeless BE but nothingness. The picture of your brother that you see is wholly absent, and has never been."
"Sickness is a demand the body be a thing that it is not. Its NOTHINGNESS is guarantee that it can NOT be sick."
"The body that is asked to be a god WILL be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. "
"Yet its nothingness IS your salvation, from which you would flee."
"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death."
"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real"
"The final judgment on ****the world**** contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, ****it merely slips away to nothingness.****"
"Your faith is placed in the most trivial and insane symbols; pills, money, "protective" clothing, "influence," "prestige," being liked, knowing the "right" people, and an endless list of forms of nothingness which you endow with magical powers."
"To recognize this is to recognize nothingness when you think you see it. As such, it is the prerequisite for vision."
"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it WERE a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else BUT form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."
"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."
"But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."
"To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO."
"The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. 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 "changes" the ego seeks to make are not really changes. They are but deeper shadows, or perhaps different cloud patterns. Yet what is made of nothingness cannot be called new or different."
"We can but go from nothingness to everything; from hell to Heaven." "What loss can be for you in choosing not to value nothingness? This world holds nothing that you really want, but what you choose instead you want indeed!"
"***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."
"What is the ego? Nothingness, but in a form that seems like something. In a world of form the ego cannot be denied for it alone seems real. How could God's Son as He created him abide in form or in a world of form?"
"What can correct illusions but the truth? And what are errors but illusions which remain unrecognized for what they are? Where truth has entered errors disappear. They merely vanish, leaving not a trace by which to be remembered. They are gone because without belief they have no life, and so they disappear to nothingness, returning whence they came. From dust to dust they come and go, for only truth remains."
"The bleak little world will vanish into nothingness, and your heart will be so filled with joy that it will leap into Heaven and into the presence of God."
"God wills salvation be received today, and that the intricacies of your dreams no longer hide their nothingness from you."
"Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly." "Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it."
"All that is veiled in shadows must be raised to understanding to be judged again, this time with Heaven's help, and all mistakes in judgment which the mind had made before are open to correction as the truth dismisses them as causeless. Now are they without effects. They cannot be concealed because their nothingness is recognized."
"How can a battle be perceived as nothingness, when you ENGAGE in it?" "There is a silence covering the world that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well."
"Pursuit of the imagined leads to death because it is the search for nothingness, and while you seek for life you ask for death.
"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death."
"The more complicated the results become, the harder it may be to recognize their nothingness, but it is not necessary to examine ALL possible outcomes to which premises give rise to judge the PREMISES truly."
"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth.""
"EVERY illusion carries pain and suffering in the dark folds of the heavy garments with which it hides its nothingness."
"And so is ALL time past, and everything EXACTLY as it was before the way to nothingness was made. The tiny tick of time, in which the first mistake was made, and ALL of them within that ONE mistake, held also the Correction for that one, and ALL of them that came within the first. And in that tiny instant time was gone, for that was all it ever was. What God gave Answer to IS answered, and IS gone."
"Specialness is the idea of sin MADE REAL. Sin is impossible even to imagine, without this base. For sin rose from it, out of nothingness, an evil flower with no roots at all."
"In the Divine psyche, the Father and the Holy Spirit are not incomplete at all. The Sonship has the unique faculty of believing in error, or incompleteness, if he so elects. However, it is quite apparent that so to elect IS to believe in the existence of nothingness. The correction of this error is the Atonement."
In this world, sin is an EVENT. In fact, it is anything that seems to HAPPEN. Any physical change, any transformation of materials, any movement, any action, anything bodies of any kind do, any chemical interactions of particles, it is sin.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin."
Sin is also insanity.
"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"
The whole world, all of spacetime, anything the body can see, is a model of sin and punishment for sin. "Everything the body sees is a form of error."
"And FROM this error does the world of sin and sacrifice arise. This world is an attempt to prove your innocence, while cherishing attack."
"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 that seem to govern it are the laws of death."
The physical world, matter, is also referred to in the course as a granite block of sin. The illusion of physicality, rooted in the idea of PHYSICAL SIN. This is why sin requires a BODY, because only bodies can PHYSICALLY SIN.
"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would try to pass it. ****The body's eyes behold it as solid granite****, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it (x-ray christ vision) easily, BECAUSE it is an error."
"And ***they were made to look on error, and not see past it***. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."
So basically, the entire physical universe is formed on the idea of sin. Everything that seems to transpire is sin. Breathing, eating, sleeping, working, laughing, milking a cow, sucking a milkshake, it's all sin. Even just the appearance of an illusion or a physical world AT ALL is sin.
It's sin in that sin is the idea of "something happening" or "something existing which doesn't", or "the impossible seeming possible", that "affects" something else seemingly against its will. Like a collision of two forces. And this is fundamental to the laws of physics.
When one thing "hits" another, it is the idea of sin taking place, that there can be a conflict, a war, a collision of interests, in which one thing is impacted seeming from outside of its own will.
And when sin occurs on this level, in this realm of spacetime, physical matter seems to change, reacting with effects and consequences. Materials change, properties change, objects change their locations, atoms rearrange, forces and counter-forces interact, and the whole picture shifts and changes and suffers and dies.
If anything CAN be changed, it CANNOT be real, because nothing real can be threatened. So that means that any change that occurs in anything, is artificial evidence that SIN IS HAPPENING TO IT. It is an illusion of sin, and not reality, but in THIS world it appears to "really happen".
This is why in this world, when you attack something, and it produces a "change" in any way, the change now TESTIFIES that "sin has occurred." If something happens to something else, and it is modified, and now it is different, and it seems to DEMONSTRATE that it is different, and maintains its "new state" for anyone to point a finger at and say, "look there, SOMETHING HAPPENED TO IT" .... this changed state is a PROOF OF SIN.
It then does not matter how you frame it. If the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE is still there to look at, to point out, to touch and see and evaluate, then it PROVES that SIN DID TAKE PLACE. You can't have effects without causes. This is how the ego "locks in" the consequences of sin, and uses physical evidence to PROVE that sin has occurred. If you can measure it, it's a sin.
This means that if you are playing in the realm of illusions, of physicality, you are automatically dabbling in sin. Because the WHOLE WORLD is founded on the idea of sin.
"The body is the idea of sin made flesh"
So let's say that someone seems to attack your body and this produces a CHANGE in the body. Maybe some kind of wound is inflicted, some kind of damage. The body is bleeding and there is a hole. Well, this physical appearance PROVES beyond a shadow of a doubt to anyone looking at it and thinking it real, that SIN HAPPENED. It testifies to it. You can't deny if, if you think it's reality.
You cannot claim that sin did not happen IF THE RESULTS ARE STILL THERE. If I can point a finger at it and say, well, it doesn't matter WHAT you claim, the EVIDENCE is still there, the body IS STILL WOUNDED, then it STILL SHOWS that SIN HAPPENED. There is no getting around this. Changing your perception to recognize that "there is no sin" also isn't the same thing as REVERSING THE CONSEQUENCES.
"Thus does the ****miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone.**** And hopelessness ***and death MUST disappear*** before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."
When attack is taking place, or more to the point, when a person REFUSES TO HEAL the effects of the sin, to reverse the physical symptoms of sickness, or to REMOVE the PROOF OF SIN from the body, then there is still ACCUSATION OF SIN HAPPENING. Because if the body is STILL damaged, the UNDENIABLE PROOF is still sitting right there staring you in the face. A damaged body is STILL testifying that NO MATTER what the state of mind is, or how forgiving you think you are, SIN STILL HAPPENED. I can look at it, I can see it, I can touch it, sin has NOT been undone. I can't claim to be holy while showing you PROOF THAT YOU SINNED!!
"For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. ***He holds not the proof of sin before his brother's eyes.*** And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS healed. And in his (mental AND physical) healing lies the PROOF that he has truly pardoned, and retains no trace of condemnation that he still would hold against himself or any living thing."
"Only the mind AND body need atonement." ---- AND THE BODY NEEDS ATONEMENT!!
Do you see here that Jesus is literally saying that you MUST heal the body of any signs of attack, otherwise it STILL PROVES that sin happened?
If you hold a "proof of sin" before your brother's eyes - the wounds, the scars, the fallout, the consequences, the broken limbs, whatever. If you hold it in front of them you are SHOWING HIM consequential, cause-effect PROOF, that because this EFFECT is here, A CAUSE MUST HAVE BEEN HERE ALSO. And that testifies in a way that cannot be denied that you HAVE NOT forgiven him or yourself.
This is why Jesus says that forgiveness is not complete, is not real, and has not been finished, IF the PROOF OF SIN has not been removed. That means, the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE HAS TO BE UNDONE. THE BODY HAS TO BE HEALED, otherwise you HAVE NOT forgiven him.
This vital paragraph tells you exactly that.
"***Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself.*** ***YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real.*** How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."
To demonstrate his sins were NOT REAL, you must SHOW HIM that THE EFFECTS ARE GONE.
You can only attest his sins had NO EFFECT on you, or your body, by REMOVING THE EFFECTS. If you still have the effects to show him, you are not only still accusing him ("sick bodies remain accusers"), you also HAVE NOT finished forgiving. Because effects REQUIRE an ONGOING CAUSE, and if the effects remains, you are STILL ATTACKING HIM for it. This is what the course is saying. You must heal the body in order NOT to accuse your brother of sin.
Forgiveness HAS TO INCLUDE the UNDOING OF PHYSICAL PROOF OF SIN. If it does not bring a physical healing along with it, and if all the signs and effects of the DOING OF SIN are not COMPLETELY OBLITERATED, the mind HAS NOT been healed and it still harbors attack thoughts and a purpose for accusation.
"A damaged body shows the mind has not been healed."
So you cannot say you are DONE forgiving, if PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS still remain. You cannot say you are DONE forgiving, if the BODY is still sick. You cannot say that a healing has taken place, if the BODY and the ENVIRONMENT testify in ANY WAY, to the PRESENCE OF PROOF that "something happened."
It has to be that all of the proof vanishes. If I spill milk on the kitchen floor, and there is STILL milk on the kitchen floor, IT PROVES that I MUST have spilled the milk. I cannot deny that. So long as the milk is ON THE FLOOR, there remains proof. The EFFECTS IMPLY that there WAS A CAUSE. Because you cannot have effects WITHOUT a cause. If the effects remain, it PROVES that a CAUSE did happen. And causation is tied to sin.
"Nothing can have effects without a cause"
And in this world, cause is SIN. So if someone CAUSES your body to be wounded, they CAUSED a sin. And the effects are the wound. And until the WOUND IS GONE, the sin is still PROVEN, which ACCUSES your brother and damns him to hell. This imprisons his mind and curses him to death.
So Jesus does in fact ask that even in this world, even in bodies, even if it's an illusion, and even if it seems to be meaningless, that you HEAL THE BODY of all effects of attack, IN ORDER TO exonerate your brother and TEACH HIM of his innocence. WHILE you have a body.
If he attempted to attack your body, chopping off your arms, and then you return and your ARMS ARE RESTORED.... HE has no way in his mind to connect cause and effect, he sees that HE CANNOT HAVE SINNED, and that your HEALING PROVES HIS INNOCENCE. And thereby he now recognizes that the SYMBOLIC HEALTH of your body TESTIFIES to his innocence, and this PROOF OF INNOCENCE ... HEALS HIS MIND. Physical health EXONERATES your brother, just as sickness is an ACCUSATION OF SIN.
"For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers." "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 (mind and body) 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.****"
This is using the physical body as a communication device FOR HEALING! Using it as a symbol of innocence. And using it to AFFECT YOUR BROTHER'S MIND. Your healing and your health IS your brother's healing and health. When you are healed, you are not healed alone, EVEN on the physical level.
This is what Jesus's physical resurrection was all about. "SHOW your brother you had no hurt of him."
It is NOT difficult to understand the reasons why you do not ask the Holy Spirit to solve ALL problems for you. HE has not a greater difficulty in resolving some than others. Every problem is the SAME to Him, because each one is solved in just the SAME respect, and through the SAME approach. The aspects that NEED solving do not change, whatever FORM the problem seems to take. A problem can appear in MANY forms, and it will do so while the problem lasts. It serves no purpose to attempt to solve it in a SPECIAL form. It WILL recur, and then recur again and yet again, until it has been answered for ALL time, and will not rise again in ANY form. And ONLY then are you RELEASED from it.
The Holy Spirit offers you release from EVERY problem that you think you have. They are the SAME to Him, because each one, regardless of the form it seems to take, is a demand that someone suffer loss, and make a sacrifice that you might gain. And, when the situation is worked out so NO-ONE loses, is the problem gone, because it was an error in perception, which now has been corrected. One mistake is NOT more difficult for Him to bring to truth than is another. For there IS but one mistake; the whole idea that loss is possible, and COULD result in gain for anyone. If THIS were true, then God WOULD be unfair; sin WOULD be possible, attack be justified, and vengeance fair. This ONE mistake, in ANY form, has ONE correction. There IS no loss; to think there IS, is a mistake.
You HAVE no problems, though you THINK you have. And yet you COULD not think so, if you saw them vanish one by one, WITHOUT regard to size, complexity, or place and time, or ANY attribute which you perceive that makes each one seem different from the rest. Think not the limits YOU impose on what you see can limit God in ANY way. The miracle of justice can correct ALL errors. Every problem IS an error. It does injustice to the Son of God, and therefore is not true. The Holy Spirit does not evaluate injustices as great or small, or more or less. They have NO properties to Him. They are mistakes from which the Son of God IS suffering, but needlessly. And so He takes the thorns and nails away. He does not pause to judge whether the hurt be large or little. He makes but one judgment; that to hurt God's Son MUST be unfair, and therefore is not so.
You who believe it safe to give but SOME mistakes to be corrected while you keep the others to yourself, remember this: Justice is total. There IS no such thing as partial justice. If the Son of God is guilty, then is he condemned, and he DESERVES no mercy from the God of justice. But ask not God to punish him because YOU find him guilty, and would have him die. God OFFERS you the means to see his innocence. Would it be fair to punish him because you will not LOOK at what is there to see? Each time you keep a problem for YOURSELF to solve, or judge that it is one which HAS no resolution, you have made it great, and past the hope of healing. You deny the miracle of justice CAN be fair.
If God is just, then CAN there be NO problems that justice cannot solve. But YOU believe that some injustices ARE fair and good, and necessary to preserve yourself. It is THESE problems that you think are great, and cannot BE resolved. For there are those you WANT to suffer loss, and NO-ONE whom you wish to be preserved from sacrifice entirely. Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness. And you will ASK no sacrifice of him, because you could not will he suffer loss. The miracle of justice you call forth will rest on you as surely as on him. Nor will the Holy Spirit be content until it is received by everyone. For what you give to Him IS everyone's, and BY your giving it can He ensure that everyone receives it equally.
Think, then, how great your OWN release will be, when you are willing to receive correction for ALL your problems. You will not keep ONE, for pain in ANY form you will not WANT. And you will see each little hurt resolved before the Holy Spirit's gentle sight. For all of them ARE little in His sight and worth no more than just a tiny sigh before they disappear, to be forever undone and unremembered. What seemed once to be a SPECIAL problem, a mistake WITHOUT a remedy, or an affliction WITHOUT a cure, has been transformed into a universal blessing. Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss.
He cannot BE remembered until justice is loved INSTEAD of feared. He cannot be unjust to anyone or anything, because He knows that EVERYTHING that is belongs to Him, and will forever be as He created it. Nothing He loves but MUST be sinless and beyond attack. Your special function opens wide the door beyond which is the memory of His Love kept perfectly intact and undefiled. And all you need to do is but to wish that Heaven be given you instead of hell, and every bolt and barrier that seems to hold the door securely barred and locked, will merely fall away, and disappear. For it is NOT your Father's Will that you should offer or receive LESS than He gave, when He created you in perfect Love.
In this world, God's Son comes closest to himself in a holy relationship. There he begins to find the certainty his Father has in him. And there he finds his function of restoring his Father's laws to what was held OUTSIDE them, and finding what was lost. Only in time can anything BE lost, but never lost forever. So do the parts of God's Son gradually join in time, and with each joining is the end of time brought nearer. Each miracle of joining is a mighty herald of eternity. No-one who has a single purpose, unified and sure, can BE afraid. No-one who SHARES his purpose with him can NOT be one with him.
Each herald of eternity sings of the end of sin and fear. Each speaks in time of what is far BEYOND it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one. And in that single heart beat is the unity of love proclaimed and given welcome. Peace to your holy relationship, which has the power to hold the unity of the Son of God together. You give to one another for EVERYONE. And in your gift is everyone made glad. Forget not Who has given YOU the gifts you give. And through your NOT forgetting this, will you remember Who gave the gifts to Him to give to you.
It is impossible to over-estimate your brother's value. Only the ego does this, but all it means is that it WANTS the other for ITSELF, and therefore values him too little. What is inestimable clearly cannot BE evaluated. Do you recognize the fear that rises from the meaningless attempt to judge what lies so far BEYOND your judgment you cannot even SEE it? Judge not what is invisible to you, or you will NEVER see it. But wait in patience for its coming. It will be GIVEN you to see your brother's worth, when all you WANT for him is peace. And what you want for HIM, you will receive.
How can you estimate the worth of him who offers peace to you? What would you want EXCEPT his offering? His worth has been established by his Father, and you will RECOGNIZE it as you receive his Father's gift through him. What is in him will shine so brightly in your grateful vision, that you will merely love him, and be glad. You will not think to judge him. Who would SEE the face of Christ, and yet insist that judgment still has meaning? For this insistence is of those who do NOT see. Vision OR judgment is your choice, but never BOTH of these.
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. Why should it take so many holy instants to let this be accomplished, when one would do? There IS but one. The little breath of eternity that runs through time like golden light is all the same. Nothing before it; nothing afterwards.
You look upon each holy instant as a DIFFERENT point in time. IT NEVER CHANGES. All that it ever held or will ever hold is here right now. The past takes nothing FROM it, and the future will ADD no more. Here, then, is EVERYTHING. Here is the loveliness of your relationship, with means and ends in perfect harmony ALREADY. Here is the perfect faith that you will one day offer to each other, ALREADY offered you. And here the limitless forgiveness you will give each other is ALREADY given; the face of Christ you yet will look upon ALREADY seen.
Can you EVALUATE the giver of a gift like this? Would you EXCHANGE this gift for ANY other? This gift returns the laws of God to your remembrance. And merely BY remembering them, the laws that held you prisoner to pain and death MUST be forgotten. This is no gift your brother's BODY offers you. The veil that hides the gift hides him as well. He IS the gift, and yet he knows it not. No more do you. And yet have faith that He Who sees the gift in BOTH of you, will offer and receive it for you BOTH. And through His vision will YOU see it, and through His understanding RECOGNIZE it, and love it as your own.
Be comforted, and feel the Holy Spirit watching over you, in love and perfect confidence in what He sees. He knows the Son of God. And shares his Father's certainty the universe rests in his gentle hands in safety and in peace. Let us consider now what he must learn, to SHARE his Father's confidence in him. What IS he, that the Creator of the universe should offer it to him, and KNOW it rests in safety? He looks upon himself not as his Father knows him. And yet it is impossible the confidence of God should be misplaced.
The body does not really do a whole lot. It is an instrument. It cannot really live without you as a host. It doesn't really have a mind of its own, or a will, or power, or causality. It cannot really create anything or make anything happen. It's a medium, a tool, a device, which is to be used. You can pick it up and put it down. Without you it would do nothing.
"A body cannot stay without illusions"
"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK."
"the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"
"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."
"Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves."
"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms." "the body cannot be healed by itself."
The eyes are neutral. As you look around the room the body just reports what's there. It is like you have a video feed coming into you through your face. The eyes just pick up the light signals and pass them on. The eyes themselves are not aware of what they are looking at. They don't judge or decide anything about what they detect, and they don't even "see" what they are picking up because they have no awareness - making them blind. They just faithfully report on what's outside. They are sensors, like a detector, or a scanner.
As you look at different things, or rather, use the body's sensors to detect what is supposedly out there, there is no judgement, there is no meaning, there is no partitioning, there is no accusation, there is only a completely neutral feed of images being transferred. Your eyes are like a camera. They just bring in the data, they don't have any opinion about it at all. It isn't until the mind looks at the data that we start to enter into deciding what something means, our attitude about it and our relationship to it.
It's the mind that "looks at" what the body "looks at". There are therefore two steps in seeing the world. The body sees it first and passes on what it sees. Then the mind looks at the "printout" of what the body has seen. The mind isn't actually looking directly at the world out there. It's looking at the recorded images which have come in through the video stream, through the pipeline of the optic nerves, and which have travelled to the place in the brain where the mind is "attached". And as though on a kind of internal screen, the mind is now looking at the screen on which these images are reconstructed.
This all happens quite effortlessly so it is very easy to be deceived. The body is so non-interfering with sight, unless perhaps the eyeballs or vision apparatus is damaged, that you easily forget that the eyes are even there. This sets up a kind of deception, in which it's very easy to just think that you are looking directly and personally at the physical world. But you in fact are not. You are looking at images which are sent in to you via external sensors on the body's surface, and you are sitting there in the mind, beyond the brain, reading the transmitted images. But you think hey, I am looking at the actual world. No, you're looking at images once removed.
The same happens with sound. The ears do not discriminate as to what they hear. They just hear everything they can. They are like microphones. They pick up and sense the sound vibrations and translate it into a signal, which is sent to the brain, and then it is reconstructed into "sound". And then, the mind listens to the reconstruction, and thinks that it now hears the world. It's almost like the body is a long distance telephone, and it's picking up audio from a world far away, sending the sound along a wire, and now you're at the other end listening in. You're not really out there, in the environment where the sound is picked up, you are removed from it.
All the other body senses have the same properties. They just detect changes and differences and report them to you. You then get to interpret or give meaning to them. Upon receiving the signals your mind could have decided that all the things experienced are absolutely real. That they really exist. As though, because your body sees a car, that there really is a car there. Or because your hands touch the car, that there really is a car there. Or that because you hear the car, the car really must exist. But it's not the body that decides this, nor the brain. It's your mind, on the receiving end of transmissions. It is the mind that decided what it is FOR, or how it USES it.
It is optional, whether you believe in what the body is telling you. It is just a sensory device. In fact, Jesus says in ACIM that the body is not really there to know anything, it is only there to sense. "To sense is not to know." Which means that sensing the world or using physical perception to look at it, is not an act of knowing. It doesn't mean that you know the thing is really out there. It means that your sensors are detecting something and telling you something. And they might be lying.
The problem is, is that the body can lie. Because here you have a physical instrument for detecting things, which can report back that something exists, within the same realm that the body itself inhabits. Which means that the body can also sense itself, can look at and hear and smell and touch itself, and can report back that the body "is really there". But this cannot in any way be reliable. The body is now justifying its own existence and trying to prove itself.
The body can easily lie to you. To rely on an instrument to tell you what really exists, given that the very same instrument is reporting upon its own existence, completely invalidates everything it tells you. It is no longer impartial or neutral, if it is telling you that its own existence has been detected by its own sensors. It is completely biased, then, because it is ALWAYS telling you that physicality is true and real, even if it is not. It is ALWAYS reporting that things exist even if they don't. And if it is going to tell you to trust it when it tells you that its own existence is real, based on its own senses, this is heavily tainted information.
"Only the body makes the world seem real."
"Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is."
What it comes down to is that your mind is sensing a world using an instrument, whereby the signals you receive and are aware of are once removed from the thing you are sensing. But if you buy into them and forget you are using an instrument, you will act as if it is YOU who is doing the sensing, and thus confuse yourself with the body. This is body identification. It's the failure to recognize that the body is a device for sensing, and is not your self. Since the senses themselves seem "transparent" and have no opinion, and since they report what's there all the time, it's easy to forget that you are even using sensory equipment, and instead believe that you ARE the senses. That the body is YOU who is picking up on the world, and YOU who sees it and hears it. It seems so effortless that you forget you even are using senses, which is extremely deceptive.
The mind is not required to believe anything that the body tells it. When it receives neutral images of a world, it can decide what to do with that image. It can dissect it, it can give meaning to it, it can believe in it, it can choose to react to it, it can remain detached from it, it can judge and condemn and attack it, it can love it, it can ignore it, whatever. But we have to realize that since the senses themselves are effectively neutral, it is US who is giving everything we sense all the meaning that it has. It is US who decides whether you believe what we see, whether it is real, and what truth it holds.
"You have given everything all the meaning it has for you." "The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."
"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions."
So the mind is receiving signals from the outside world, through the body sensors, and gets to decide what to make of them. What meaning they have. All such images are illusions because the world itself is an illusion, and all sensory inputs are actually false, because the world they are reporting on isn't real. The eyes are in fact unable to really see actual reality. They are strapped into a virtual reality headset and are blinded to see only the inside of a tiny box. The body is in fact an interpreter, a translator, and it is fixated on an illusory world which isn't reality in order NOT to see reality. And so everything that it faithfully and neutrally reports, is a lie. What it sees is not really there to see, what it hears makes no real sound. And the sensations it sends to your mind for evaluation are all false.
"These eyes made not to see will never see."
"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."
It is up to your mind to decide what to make of the signals it is receiving through the body. It is up to your mind to recognize the body cannot really see or hear reality. It is up to your mind to discern that everything the body tells you is happening, is not really happening. It is up to your mind to withdraw all of its dark and twisted and confused meanings, which it projects onto the body's signals, and to instead categorize all body signals as FALSE. It is up to your mind to overlook and not see what the body is telling you is there. And it is up to your mind to recognize the world is nothing but an unreal dream, something to overlook through forgiveness and NOT see, and that BEYOND it is heaven.
"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."
"Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sounds. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and UNDERSTOOD. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not THEY that hear and see, but YOU, who PUT TOGETHER every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and MAKE a witness to the world you want."
"Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues."
"Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word. The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone are thought to hear. Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless."
"Rejoice you HAVE no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that ONLY Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them."
"How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth."
"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."
"He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son."
"You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?"
"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is."
"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."
"You strain your ears to hear ITS soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you."
"This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it TELL you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the NAMES you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its reality."
"You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be."
"Here is an image that you WANT to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It GIVES the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. IT PROVES ITS OWN REALITY TO YOU. Thus is the body made a THEORY of yourself, with NO provisions made for evidence BEYOND itself, and NO escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you APART from it."
"The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear? Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness."
"A mind and body cannot both exist. Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. If you are physical your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. If you are Spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."
We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS. The ego does not know what a REAL question is, although it asks an endless number. But YOU can learn this, as you learn to question the value of the ego and thus establish your ability to EVALUATE its questions. When the ego tempts you to sickness, do not ask the Holy Spirit to heal the body. For this would merely be to accept the ego's belief that the body is the proper aim for healing. Ask rather that the Holy Spirit teach you the right PERCEPTION of the body, for perception alone can be distorted.
ONLY PERCEPTION CAN BE SICK, because perception can be WRONG. Wrong perception is DISTORTED WILLING, which WANTS things to be as they are not. The reality of EVERYTHING is totally harmless, because total harmlessness is the CONDITION of its reality. It is also the condition of your AWARENESS of its reality. You do not have to SEEK reality. It will seek you and FIND you, WHEN YOU MEET ITS CONDITIONS. Its conditions are part of WHAT IT IS. And this part only is up to you. The rest is of Itself. You need do so little, because It is so powerful that your little part WILL bring the whole to you. Accept, then, your little part, and LET the whole be yours. Wholeness heals BECAUSE it is of the mind.
All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual. "Rest in peace" is a blessing for the living, not the dead, because rest comes from waking, not from sleeping. Sleep is withdrawing; waking is JOINING. Dreams are ILLUSIONS of joining, taking on the ego's distortions about what joining means, if you are sleeping under its guidance. But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.
How you wake is the sign of how you have used sleep. To whom did you give it? Under which teacher did you place it? Whenever you wake dis-spiritedly, it was NOT of the Spirit. ONLY when you awaken joyously have you utilized sleep ACCORDING TO THE HOLY SPIRIT'S PURPOSE. You can indeed be "drugged by sleep," but this is ALWAYS because you have MISUSED IT ON BEHALF OF SICKNESS. Sleep is no more a form of death than death is a form of unconsciousness. UNCONSCIOUSNESS IS IMPOSSIBLE. You can rest in peace only BECAUSE YOU ARE AWAKE.
Healing is release from the fear of waking, and the substitution of the will to wake. The will to wake is the will to love, since ALL healing involves replacing fear with love. The Holy Spirit cannot distinguish among degrees of error, for if He taught that one form of sickness is more serious than another, He would be teaching that one error can be more REAL than another. But HIS function is to distinguish ONLY between the false and the true, REPLACING the false WITH the true.
The ego, which always WEAKENS the will, wants to SEPARATE the body from the mind. This IS an attempt to DESTROY it. But the ego actually believes that it is PROTECTING it. This is because it believes that MIND IS DANGEROUS, and that to MAKE MINDLESS is to heal. But to make mindless is impossible, since it would mean to make nothing out of what God Created. The ego DESPISES weakness, even though it makes every effort to INDUCE it. IT WANTS ONLY WHAT IT HATES. To the ego this is perfectly sensible. Believing in the power of attack, it WANTS it.
You have begun to realize that this is a very practical course, because it means EXACTLY what it says. So does the Bible, if it is properly understood. There has been a marked tendency on the part of many of the Bible's followers, and also its translators, to be entirely literal about fear and ITS effects, but NOT about love and ITS results. Thus, "hellfire" means burning, but raising the dead becomes allegorical. Actually, it is PARTICULARLY the references to the outcomes of love that should be taken literally because the Bible is ABOUT love, being about GOD.
The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME. This is not my name alone, for ours is a shared identification. The name of God's Son is One, and you are enjoined to do the works of love BECAUSE we share this oneness. Our minds are whole BECAUSE they are one. If you are sick, you are withdrawing from me. But you CANNOT WITHDRAW FROM ME ALONE. You can only withdraw from yourself AND me.
I would not ask you to do things which you CANNOT do, and it is impossible that I could do things YOU cannot do. Given this, and given this QUITE LITERALLY, there CAN be nothing which prevents you from doing EXACTLY what I ask, and EVERYTHING which argues FOR it. I give you NO limits, because God lays none upon you. When you limit YOURSELF, we are NOT of one mind, and that IS sickness. But sickness is not of the body, but OF THE MIND. ALL forms of DISfunction are merely signs that the mind has split, and does not accept a UNIFIED PURPOSE.
The unification of purpose, then, is the Holy Spirit's ONLY way of healing. This is because it is the only level at which healing MEANS anything. The re-establishing of meaning in a chaotic thought system IS the only way to heal it. We said before that your task is only to meet the conditions FOR meaning, since meaning itself is of God. But your RETURN to meaning is essential TO HIS, because YOUR meaning is PART of His. Your healing, then, is part of HIS health, because it is part of His Wholeness. He cannot lose this, but YOU can not know it. Yet it is still His will for you, and His will MUST stand forever and in all things.
God's Will is your salvation. Would He not have given you the means to find it? If He wills you to HAVE it, He MUST have made it possible, and very easy to obtain it.
Your brothers are everywhere. You do not have to seek far for salvation. Every minute and every second gives you a chance to save YOURSELF. Do not lose these chances, NOT because they will not return, but because delay of joy is needless. God wills you perfect happiness NOW. Is it possible that this is not also YOUR will? And is it possible that this is not ALSO the will of your brothers? Consider, then, that in this joint will, you ARE all united, and IN THIS ONLY. There WILL be disagreement on anything ELSE, but NOT in this. This, then, is where peace ABIDES. And YOU abide in peace, when you so decide.
But you cannot abide in peace unless you accept the Atonement, because the Atonement IS the way to peace. The reason is very simple, and so obvious that it is often overlooked. That is because the ego is AFRAID of the obvious, since obviousness is the essential characteristic of reality. You CANNOT overlook it, unless you are NOT LOOKING. It is PERFECTLY obvious that if the Holy Spirit looks with love on all He perceives, He looks with love on YOU. His EVALUATION of you is based on his knowledge of what you ARE, and so He evaluates you truly. And this evaluation MUST be in your mind, because HE is.
The ego is also in your mind, because you have ACCEPTED it there. ITS evaluation of you, however, is the exact opposite of the Holy Spirit's, because the ego does NOT love you. It is unaware of what you are, and wholly mistrustful of EVERYTHING it perceives, because its own perceptions are so shifting. The ego is therefore capable of suspiciousness at best, and viciousness at worst. That is its range. It cannot exceed it, because of its uncertainty. And it can never go BEYOND it, because it can never BE certain.
You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE. You do not yet realize how COMPLETELY different these evaluations are, because you do not understand how lofty the Holy Spirit's perception of you really is. He is not deceived by ANYTHING you do, because He NEVER forgets what you are. The ego is deceived by EVERYTHING you do, even when you respond to the Holy Spirit, because at such times ITS CONFUSION INCREASES. The ego is, therefore, particularly likely to attack you when you react lovingly, because it has evaluated you AS UNLOVING, and you are going AGAINST ITS JUDGMENT.
The ego will begin to ATTACK your motives as soon as they become clearly out of accord with its perception of you. This is when it will shift abruptly from suspiciousness to viciousness, because its uncertainty is INCREASED. But it is surely pointless to attack in return. What can this mean, except that you are AGREEING with the ego's evaluation of what you are? If you are willing to see yourself as unloving, YOU WILL NOT BE HAPPY. You are condemning yourself, and MUST therefore regard yourself as inadequate.
Would you look to the ego to help you escape from a sense of inadequacy it has PRODUCED, and must MAINTAIN for its own existence? Can you ESCAPE from its evaluation of you, by using its methods for keeping this picture INTACT? You cannot evaluate an insane belief system from WITHIN it. Its own range precludes this. You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST. Only BY this contrast, can insanity be judged as insane.
With the grandeur of God in you, you have chosen to be little, and lament your littleness. Within the system which DICTATED this choice, the lament IS inevitable. Your littleness is TAKEN FOR GRANTED there, and you do NOT ask who granted it. The question is meaningless WITHIN the ego's thought-system, because it OPENS THE WHOLE THOUGHT-SYSTEM TO QUESTION. We said before that the ego does not know what a real question is. Lack of knowledge of ANY kind is ALWAYS associated with UNWILLINGNESS to know, and produces a TOTAL lack of knowledge, simply because KNOWLEDGE is total. NOT to question your littleness is, therefore, to deny ALL knowledge, and keep the ego's WHOLE thought-system intact.
You cannot retain PART of a thought-system, because it can BE questioned only at its foundation. And this MUST be questioned from beyond it, because WITHIN it, its foundation DOES stand. The Holy Spirit judges against the reality of the ego's thought-system, merely because He knows its FOUNDATION is not true. Therefore, nothing that arises from it MEANS anything. The Holy Spirit judges every belief you hold in terms of where it comes from. If it comes from God, He knows it to be true. If it does not, He knows it is meaningless.
Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me." Remember this when the ego speaks, and you will not hear it. The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you. Choose, then, what you want in these terms, and accept nothing that you would not offer to God as wholly fitting for HIM, for YOU do not want anything else. Return your part of Him, and He will give you all of Himself, in exchange for your return of what belongs to Him, and renders Him complete.
I have been noticing in myself lately that I keep being judgemental. My thoughts feel like judgements. Even just basic thoughts of "what something is" feels like a judgement. I wondered to myself why I seem to be judging all the time. I hadn't realized just how judgmental I seem to be all the time.
This could be in the form of just having some opinion about everything. It didn't even necessarily need to be in terms of anger or projecting blame, just a kind of incessant "believing I know". Just constantly and consistently labelling everything in terms of what I believe it means.
I would just keep labeling everything in course terms. "That's an illusion", "They're level confused", "This is unreal", etc. I seemed to be just using the whole course to add a layer of naming and shaming to everything I was aware of.
I noticed also that I couldn't seemingly just look at something without "coursifying it". I couldn't just enjoy something or do normal activities without having to have an ACIM commentary running alongside it. Just constantly trying to "counteract" the world and everything I see with statements, trying to deny it, trying to change it, trying to push it away.
This also seems to be tied into a general sense of unhappiness about everything. My ego would sometimes really flare up with attack thoughts which clearly were attempts to increase separation. It increased a sense of being alone, and further justified a sort of seeming "bitterness" about the world. It kind of felt like kind of slipping down further into hell rather than rising out of it.
I also have been growing weary of ACIM, quite honestly. I've chewed on its words and metaphysics and have written about it to such an extent that I was becoming tired of it. Tired of thinking about it. Like I'd done it all and seen it all and there was nothing left to figure out. As if figuring it out, or understanding it, was the whole point.
I wanted some kind of more direct, simplified experience. Something more practical that works. Something more direct, that didn't have a layer of interpretation or second-hand thinking alongside it. I didn't want more affirmations or course statements flying around in my mind. I didn't want just another commentary or people just parroting the course's words as if knowing what it means. I and I didn't want to keep doing forgiveness on the basis of some bunch of statements, trying to use words to fend off ego attacks.
I had to step away from all this for a bit to just settle down and get a sense of something more basic and simple and fundamental. And this is when I started opening up to wanting the Holy Spirit to inform me of a better way. I wanted to see things how he sees things and to join with him more, to just very simply take some small little step that would be enough to fix my mind without all the psychobabble. Some kind of simple something I could just "do" that would produce a happier experience without all the course crap alongside it.
I saw that having conversations about the course just wasn't really working. Everyone's just talking about it. We use its statements as if they are magic wands. But I wasn't seeing a satisfying effect from this. Just figuring out what it means and repeating its words didn't do much. I didn't want to be just another parrot regurgitating the same stuff while staying entirely confined in this same "way" of trying to apply it. I wanted something much closer to my being, that I didn't have to think about. Something much more basic and intimate that I could "live" without mental gymnastics.
This is when I started to discover that I was in general laying an entire interpretation of everything on top of it. This interpretation was based on my thinking that I knew what things were. An attempt to understand it. I saw that I was giving everything meaning through this interpretation. I was deciding that things sucked or were negative and was then reacting to my own decision as to what I thought it was. My interpretation of everything was being mistaken for the thing itself.
So then I considered the fact that every single time that I was less than happy in any way, it was a part of this "way" that I was interpreting. I was filtering or translating or changing, twisting, whatever was "out there", into some kind of decided-upon "version" that I was then experiencing as my "perception of it". Because if you remember, "perception is a result not a cause" and "projection makes perception".
It's really what I project that produces perceptual issues. If I perceived a result or conclusion of "unhappy", I must have projected and wanted that. If I was interpreting that something happening "meant" that I should be afraid, I must've decided that it meant this. I gave it this meaning. And this meaning changed my perception and produces "experiences" or effects which were generally unpleasant.
In the truest sense, I was doing this to myself, as in the secret of salvation, because it was this whole "layer" of interpretation, coming in between me and the world so to speak, that was responsible for causing my "experience" of the world to be faulty. I was willing to consider that any time I was not happy I MUST have mis-interpreted and had come up with some kind of MISTAKEN opiniion about what it MEANS.
I had to be willing to recognize that it was my chosen interpretation that was entirely responsible for the "effects" of that interpretation upon myself, the seeming ego reactions or fears or upset emotions or any kind of annoyance or disturbance. All of my suffering was really rooted in that layer of interpreting, NOT in what lied "beyond it" as the world. And that meant that I was making a lot of mistaken interpretations, resulting in a lot of unhappiness.
Light a light-switch, I then found that simply by recognizing I had made an interpretation, and just being willing to admit that it was the entire reason why I was not happy, my mind would become open to just "letting that interpretation go." I didn't seem to have to do anything else for this to happen. As they say, "illusions recognized must disappear." My interpretation IS the illusion. It was a way of turning "reality" into something it's not. Just recognizing it as an illusory, self-made, made-up, filtered "view", was enough to make it disappear.
As soon as it would just disappear, immediately my mind would light up with light and happiness. It would seem as though a higher me, rooted in the "back" of my mind, would suddenly shine outward. It was as if secretly behind all my ego upset sense of self, there was this higher me that was just always happy and filled with light and wasn't taking anything seriously. It seemed to already be there. I didn't invent it myself. Perhaps this was the real me.
This has started a revolution in my mind and in my outlook and in my way of experiencing the world. It isn't a forgiveness based on some kind of long-winded, elaborate story that I have to tell myself, trying to deprogram myself, trying to counteract perceived problems with a long litany of affirmative statements, or trying to remember course principles, or trying to grasp at straws to make it go away.
It was very very simple. It was much more a sort of change in how I EXPERIENCE what's going on. And that was far more immediate. More like just a kind of attitude change. Not something "thought about", or arrived at through understanding, or made out of complicated metaphysics, or logically deduced. It was a kind of forgiveness that was just a much more intimate matter of psychological engagement.
Either I was interpreting or I wasn't. Either I had chosen to invent some kind of "meaning" for something, or I had let it go. Either I was filtering and believing I knew what something was, or I was just willing to stop doing it. It wasn't a matter of replacing it with something or justifying it or explaining it or writing a book about it. It was kind of like just stepping back. Getting out of my analysis. Stopping my self-made attempt to determine what something is.
The bizarre thing is just how effortless it is and how immediately a whole world of low-level ego experience, suffering, upset and darkness, is immediately overruled by a much much higher bright light of happiness and lightness.
It almost seems wrong, in that the light-heartedness of it doesn't even seem to care to "address"the many doubts and fears and concerns that the ego had. It just sort of leaps above it and pays no attention to it. Like, who would have thought THAT would be a solution? Not to change the ego but to just get OUT of it? To just leave the desert without even dealing with all the many loose ends and questioning fears.
I think for a ton of years now I've generally been locked into the ego mind. Regardless of how lofty my thoughts have been, and regardless of efforts to forgive. It's always still been accompanied by ego feelings, upsets, emotions, fears, reactions, ego rebounds.
I was just kind of getting fed up with the fact that every time I tried to do anything with the course, it ALWAYS had a stupid ego rebound afterwards. Catharsis, release, upset emotions, fear reactions etc. It was just so annoying. I was kind of getting tired of the course in this sense because I couldn't seem to do any of it without having this sense of ... I just don't want to do this. My ego self or whatever just is wired against God and does not want to wake up, and can't. "I", mixed up in that sense of lower-suffering-self, couldn't stop being the way it was.
So there's been this tug of war between the part of mind that just basically couldn't care less about the course and just wants to live a normal life in a body, versus this constant barrage of attempts to awaken to some kind of higher life and perspective that's totally incompatible. The contrast between the two was becoming very acute and I couldn't find a way to satisfy both. I had to even take a break from ACIM for a while and just be in "my ego" to just be normal and stop hitting it over the head with a hammer of spirituality.
But I think what's come out of that now is this very very unexpected movement in which I let the ego stuff remain ego and just seem to step outside of it. It's quite odd. Because I now see that within myself there's this sort of self-contained internal bubble of my suffering self, complete with all the ego emotions and upsets, which is generally most of the time unhappy, riddled with fears and grief and uncertainty and so on. And it seems like this is all within my body. And then somehow there's this higher me that is totally outside of all that, shining a light from a vantage point of not even trying to understand or interpret anything.
It has raised questions of, who even am I. What aspects of myself or of my experience actually is "the ego" and should be something to "get rid of", versus what aspects of this is actually a permanent part of my true nature? Are my emotional reactions just an ego thing? Is this sense of "me suffering" the ego? In particular, where do I draw the line?
But I'm finding that maybe I don't actually have to answer that in terms of a description of it. Because what I seem to be realizing is that ALL of that internal seeming "struggling self" is entirely sort of the "byproduct" of this whole "thinking I know" thing. This whole interpretation of everything. Having a judgement about what everything is. Labelling everything in course terms. Trying to describe everything in explicit detail.
That whole approach of trying to "understand" the world and everything in my experience, is precicely what CAUSES all of the suffering. It's as if, when I try to interpret "reality", it produces generally negative forms of consequence, in a cause-effect kind of way. And the outcome of that is what we might call "the ego" in me. It's this collection of reactions, emotions, upsets, perceived threats, fears, guilts, etc... which all seem to revolve around victimhood and being at the effect of something. That all seems to actually be the END RESULT OF, my minds attempts to INTERPRET reality.
So I put out some kind of negative faulty mistaken interpretation or effort to understand what something is, this results in a false perception, which in turn results in a bunch of suffering, which in turn assembles as a collection of unhappy elements that bundle together as an "ego experience". And that ego experience seems like it's somewhat outside of me. And when my mind is going there, it seems that I am the one having this experience, that my identity IS the suffering, that I AM the upset and the unhappiness. And that anchors and confines and limits my whole awareness INSIDE OF that whole viewpoint.
So if my view is so narrow and limited and false, producing heavy false dark perceptions, then my whole sense of self seems to become imprisoned and confined, alone and afraid, small and weak and vulnerable. It seems like my entire life has been spent accumulating sufferings in this little internal storehouse, surrounding and forming this confused and separated-off sense of self or of "my experience" of life. All gathered up in a ball, even which seems to be housed within my body and especially within the "emotional center" in the stomache area.
If this ENTIRE experience of life is the end RESULT, ie perceptual consequence of, the various mistaken MEANINGS that I keep putting onto things, then it stands to reason (lol) that if I fundamentally CHANGE my entire approach and alter the process of "giving meaning", then it's going to totally override that ENTIRE realm of expeirence.
It's going to basically switch off the ego experience, it's going to totally override all the upsets and reactions, all the unhappy emotions etc. Because it was as though, all along, all this time, ALL of my sufferings have been the RESULT of the meaning that I'VE been giving to everything.
I've become very good at describing things, explainig things, analyzing the world, picking apart illusions, labelling stuff, counter-attacking attacks, and generally just reacting to MY OWN decisions. And suddenly I seem to be embarking on an entirely different ballgame. I guess it can be described as moving above the battlefield in a way. It's like a HUGE stepping back and just stopping trying to fucking figure everything out. Not just because it can't be figured out but because the act of trying to do so is BLOCKING me. It shuts down my light and decreases my awareness and turns me into a judger.
So now for me, this whole course thing, it's turning into something very very simplified. It's just some basic sort of flip of the switch thing, between whether I want to carry on with my faulty judgements/interpretations/translations of what's going on, or whether I want to just let those go.
As I let them go, it's like a huge cloud of psychological blockage is lifted away. A bright HAPPY light switches on out of nowhere, as if I'm getting back in touch with the REAL me that is in the back of all this, and has been there all along covered up by all the mental distortions. It immediately feels remarkably happy and light, regardless of how heavy and dark the ego experience was "before" I stepped out of it.
What the ego is, I think it really is just the "effects" that are produced when we try to "narrow" (Jesus interjected) reality down to being this or that, to describe it, to judge it, to assess or evaluate what stuff "is". The labels and meanings we keep trying to give things. And then mistakedly confusing that effort for reality, believing that reality now inherently IS the meaning that WE decided it has. That produces all the ego reactions, all suffering, all unhappiness and dissatisfaction.
When we stop producing these illusions of interpreation, trying to think we know what things are, trying to understand the ego and the world, trying to filter what's happening, trying to insist that something is what we think it is, trying to be right about our labels and projections, all that just immediately switches off the "ego effect" and puts our mind back in touch with cause.
We settle back into reality, we return to our baseline, we get back in touch with who we are BEHIND all these layers of interpretation, and the clouds part and the light comes shining forth. And it feels SO much happier than the deluge of suffering that ALL interpretations produce.
So it's not a matter of trying to get "that ego" to change and grow and wake up and become spiritual, the ego is just the result of "shutting down". If we are to "open up" we have to be willing to actually be open all the time. Because any time we judge or label or describe or analyze or think we know about or seem certain of what stuff is or means, we are actually narrowing and closing down, casting anchors into the wind. And that just diminishes our light and makes us feel dark and alone and afraid.
We step out of the ego by stepping into the light of "not knowing", of forgetting what you taught yourself, or letting go of thinking you know, and of learning NOT to try interpreting anything. When you stop projecting your made-up meanings onto everything, you leave an open space for the Holy Spirit and God to project THEIR meaning instead, in the emptiness that you've left there. In the space you've provided for light to shine through you. Really it's more like, getting out of your own way.
I am finding this is what forgiveness means to me now. It's the simple movement away from having made the mistake of deciding what something must mean, which is pretty much always in error and leads to suffering, and just being willing to not do that. My own meanings are what blocks my sight. My own judgements of reality are what keeps reality from me. This is how we undo perception itself, by undoing the basis for judgement. And it takes no more than a slight willingness to recognize my self-inflicted suffering is coming from my self-imposed meanings, to let them disappear to reveal the light within.
Yesterday I saw for the first time, myself just pivoting differently, in a situation where someone had clearly "done something wrong", breaking some rules. I could've "held it against" the person, and yet somehow I remembered that this entire experience of it being "wrong" or sinful was a meaning I was giving it, and as I stepped back from that I found myself expressing that the person was still lovable regardless of this mistake, and it was only a mistake. It was as kind of "experiential forgiveness", so basic and simple, a psychological act of just "withholding judgement" in a way, that I felt it produced some kind of miraculous effects afterwards. And it felt good.
Ultimately it all boils down to the simple idea that we have en experiential realitionship with truth and reality, and we are either going to be fully open it and let it be what it is without trying to define it, or we're going to narrow our perception and lay judgements and labels on it, trying to dissect it. And as soon as we do that we will shut down our light and go into darkness (ego). If we want light and happiness, we have to learn to just accept reality in the fullness of "what is" (not the world as such), by not "having an opinion about it". Not laying a meaning on it. So that the light can fully shine and illuminate our happiness.
"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, ****nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes.**** It merely looks and waits and judges not. ****He who would not forgive must judge****, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must ****learn to welcome truth exactly as it is.****"
"If you could accept the world as meaningless and ***let the truth be written upon it for you****, it would make you indescribably happy." "In the world you, can become a spotless mirror, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."
"The reflection of God NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but the mirror, and the message which shines forth from what the mirror holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you. Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."
"Let us not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed from reality." ALL words in ACIM are symbols TWICE removed from the truth.
The word "apple" is twice removed from reality. The thing it represents, the actual apple itself sitting in your fruit bowl, is once removed from reality. Notice that words are symbols OF SYMBOLS. Therefore the apple itself is a symbol, and is NOT reality. Everything in this world is symbolic, just as all dreams are made of symbols.
"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are."
"The body DOES appear to be the symbol of sin"
"The body is the symbol of the ego"
"As nothingness cannot BE pictured, so there IS no symbol for totality."
"Give welcome to the Power beyond forgiveness, and beyond the world of symbols and of limitations."
"The body can become a **sign** of life ... and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that ***it represents***." (symbolizes)
Symbols are not an end in themselves. They don't have their own identity. They represent something else. They serve as a reflection or representative for something they point to. The body for example is not a THING in its own right, it is not an end. It SYMBOLIZES something else, and therefore is an effect of something else.
"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end. "
The metaphysics of ACIM does not really exist at the level of words twice removed. The metaphysics is once removed from reality. The words themselves, SYMBOLIZE, the metaphysics. They are expressions FROM or structured BY the metaphysics. Behind the words, deeper than the words, there is a core metaphysical structure which the course's expressed statements are BASED ON or coming from.
Or to put it more accurately, the ACTUAL metaphysics takes place as STATES OF MIND, as REALITIES, as WORLDS, playing out in the mind as SYSTEMS of logical thought. A THOUGHT of separation produces an ENTIRE WORLD representing that LOGICAL STATE. So what is this "deeper" metaphysics? There is a perfectly pure LOGICAL SYSTEM, underlying both reality and illusions. But the system is not a concept. It actually takes places as STATES of mind. As experiences of "realities". Conclusions have effects because PREMISES ARE CAUSES!
Both God's thought system and the ego's thought system are based on a LOGICAL premise. God's premise is Himself. His nature establishes the laws of what is TRUE. As He expresses/creates, His thought SYSTEM functions, and follows the laws established in his nature. The OUTCOME or "logical conclusion" of His system of thinking, MUST be in accord with his nature and be THE ONLY possible outcome that could come from such a starting point.
Because God is eternal, the outcome of His thinking must be eternal. Because God is alive, His thoughts must be alive. Because God is love, His thoughts must be made of love. Because God is happy, His thoughts must be happy and lead to happiness. Because God is a creator, the living beings He creates must be creators also (co-creators).
Everything that comes FROM Him is in accord with His Will and nature, and is in his perfect LIKENESS. It HAS to be in His likeness because in a logical system, everything that comes from the ORIGIN of the system stays WITHIIN the confines of the system and thus is governed by the same laws.
These FACTS, have nothing to do with interpretations, ideals, made-up spirituality, theory or theology, or any other kind of conceptual make-believe. These are ACTUAL FACTS of reality. And "metaphysics" is based on irrefutable FACTS. It is a fact that God is a creator, and therefore it MUST be a fact that God's creation is also a creator. Regardless of whether ACIM ever mentioned that in its words at all, that HAS to be true.
ACIM happens to say "A co-creator with the Father must have a Son." But you can DEDUCE this, LOGICALLY, by following God's system of thought. Simply, God is a creative father. He passes on Himself to whatever He creates. Therefore, logically, if God Himself has a nature which results in a Son, then the Son MUST have a nature which results in a Son of a Son. YOU, as a Son, MUST therefore have creations. This isn't true just because ACIM says so in its words. It's true LOGICALLY. And that is the deeper metaphysics. Jesus has BASED those quoted statements ON that logic.
Let's look at another example, the separation from God. Without even considering anything ACIM says about separation, let's assess it with purely impeccable logic and see what we get.
Ok so God wills eternal life because God IS eternal life. God wills happiness. God wills a total lack of limits because He is unlimited. God gives freedom, because God IS freedom. The co-creative living entities that God MUST create, therefore must have His freedom. But this also means, they are free FROM any kind of limitation or restraint. The only truth is that they must function WITHIN the system of God. They cannot leave God. BUT, they can exercise their co-creative ability to freely choose to try to DENY or oppose God's will and nature, thus opposing their own. What would HAVE to happen if you did that?
Look at it purely logically. Reality is ..... light, life, happiness, peace, love, unlimited, constant, unchanging, equal/harmonious, permanent, truthful, open, immortal, etc. BECAUSE, this is what God is. So everything IN God's system must be this too. What would an OPPOSITE to this be? What would you get, if you DENIED this system and tried to bring about an OPPOSITE system?
Well, an opposite system would have to be based on the "belief" that all of the nature of God is NOT true or real. It has to be a PREMISE, that OPPOSES God's premise. So the premise is, ... darkness, death, unhappiness, conflict, hatred/fear, limitation, change, inequality/difference, impermanence, everything is false, closed, mortality, etc. Because these are the LOGICAL opposites to God's nature. And if this collection of "unpleasant" CONDITIONS is the PREMISE of the entire ego SYSTEM, everything WITHIN this "line of thinking" MUST RESULT IN, all of these things. DEATH, is the logical outcome of the ego thought system.
So the question is, does this logical conclusion LINE UP with what A Course in Miracles says. And the answer is YES. It does. In fact Jesus even says so.
"From the belief in sin (the premise), the faith in chaos MUST follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a ***logical conclusion***; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos ***DO follow neatly from their starting-point***. Each is a different form in the **progression** (logical thought process) of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror, and away from truth."
"The Holy Spirit uses logic as easily, and as well, as does the ego, except that HIS conclusions are NOT insane. They take a direction EXACTLY opposite, pointing as clearly to Heaven as the ego points to darkness and to death."
"The logic of the world MUST therefore lead to nothing, for its GOAL is nothing."
So what you find is, if you can get a grasp of the PURE LOGICAL BASIS of God's system, and if you can then grasp the idea that the "separation" is simply the idea of AN OPPOSITE TO REALITY, you can LOGICALLY come to conclusions. And the fact is, that these conclusions EXACTLY MATCH what Jesus has described in A Course in Miracles. WITHOUT ERROR. They totally correlate to the separation, the result of separating, the OUTCOME of starting on a basis of sin.
"The wages of sin is death - ie, if you start with sin (which is the idea "an opposite to God is possible", you must end with death". Death is the suppression and denial and NEGATING OF, God's reality. It is the "end of life" because it OPPOSES GOD'S WILL which supports life.
Therefore, and this is a metaphysical FACT.... a belief in separation MUST LEAD TO a seeming "world" or "logical state of mind", wherein everything is based on an idea of sin and death. e.g. "Without the idea of death there is no world." "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son" - ie its the idea of God's LIVING son, pictured in a condition OPPOSITE to living. Similarly "the world was made as an attack on God" is based on the LOGIC that by trying to OPPOSE THE TRUTH, you "attacked" the premise of the truthful thought system (God), by trying to establish another SYSTEM that was totally opposite.
For example, Jesus says "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way". Why is Earth OPPOSITE to Heaven? Because it is part of a "world" or STATE of OPPOSITION to THE TRUTH. The world is thus a logical outcome of the ego thought system. It is MADE OF DEATH. It is made of denial. It is made of sin. This isn't something I need to say based on ACIM saying it. I can make this "claim", IMPERSONALLY, WITHOUT OPINION, because the METAPHYSICS accurately indicates that this MUST be the case.
Now, here is the interesting thing about metaphysics. The underlying core logic describes VERY accurately, PERFECTLY, not only the nature of God's "system" or world, and the nature of any world that tries to oppose it. Through LOGICAL REASONING, which must be "impeccable", you can actually make "statements"- symbolic word expressions once removed from the metaphysics, that were never written IN the Course itself, but which are TOTALLY in line with it. This is not an opinion or a matter of making something up. The LOGIC tells you, BY ITSELF, WHAT MUST BE TRUE.
For example we could say, anything that is opposite to God who is eternal life must be incapable of living forever. It doesn't necessarily explicitly SAY that in the course, but it MUST be true. It does however say basically the same thing in other words, e.g. "there is no life outside of heaven."
We could also say, "everything in this world opposes reality". It doesn't necessarily say that in the course. But it MUST be true. The metaphysical LOGIC, the impeccable reasoning, TELLS YOU, that it MUST be true because it is perfectly sound logic. And this world IS A LOGICAL SYSTEM BASED ON AN ENTIRELY LOGICAL PREMISE.
The really interesting thing is, the metaphysical LOGICAL SYSTEM completely removes the need for OPINIONS. Of any kind. If God is truth, anything not of God is not true. That is purely logical. It's not an opinion. In fact the LOGIC is such a COMPLETE system, with no strange fuzzy exceptions or loopholes or things unaccounted for, totally black and white in its perfect clarity and precision, that it leaves NO ROOM for ANY INTERPRETATION. NONE.
And this is why the multitude of "interpretations" of the course, ALL of which are NOT really based on pure logic, are faulty and OF THE EGO. And this inevitably results in conflict and arguments because it inherently leads to CONTRADICTIONS. The ego cannot even reason correctly. Our normal ego thought processes don't even typically function "LIKE GOD THINKS", and therefore comes to FALSE conclusions about His system of logic. Frequently. And you can see by all the debate and WAR in this forum the sheer extent of this CONFUSION, which has resulted from NOT SEEING THE METAPHYSICAL FACTS CLEARLY, errors in logical reasoning, and false conclusions that EGOs have arrived at. There is ONLY ONE TRUTH.
All we can do is look at the logical system and let IT TELL US, what the truth MUST be. If we don't, and we start trying to MAKE UP TRUTH, or DECIDE what the truth is, we are now delusional and are not following the logic and are not having REASON. We then will not MAKE SENSE and this leads to all confusion. That means, the logical conclusions being drawn here, or by anyone who can reason impeccably, COMPLETELY TRANSCENDS opinion. It REFLECTS the truth. It is FACT. That means it is not MY opinion, or yours, or anyone's. It is how things actually are.
Therefore, if you can grasp this and SEE the sense in it, you can USE the metaphysical logical BASIS of everything the course says as a TOOL. You can USE it, practically, to inform you of what the course MUST BE MEANING. You can actually hold up a quote, and COMPARE IT, to the metaphysical structure, and provided your grasp of the structure is accurate, it will TELL YOU the context in which the quote is placed, the meaning of the references, what it is referring TO, and thus what it MUST MEAN.
If you get used to doing this, you will find gradually that everything Jesus says in the course is BASED ENTIRELY ON logical reasoning. Jesus is an absolute MASTER of this. And you will then realize that all of the WORDS in the course are in fact expressions OF the metaphysics. The number of ways and forms of expression OF those FACTS, is largely unlimited. Jesus wrote a huge book expression FROM the facts. He could've written more. If you "get the facts straight", and are not in denial or making logical errors, you can evaluate everything the course's WORDS say, and CORRECTLY RECOGNIZE what they MUST MEAN, in light of what the logical truth says MUST be true.
This however is one area that we are all struggling with, because most of us do NOT think logically or impeccably enough. We make a lot of errors. And the main reason for that is simply NOT SEEING the core logical BASIS behind the ENTIRE metaphysics of the course. And so instead, we'll try to "put together the pieces" from the bottom up, starting with loose ends, trying to assemble a cohesive picture, and making a lot of errors along the way. We then depend too heavily on the WORDS. The wordings. The phrasing. What it SEEMS like it says. And we will find that sometimes the CHOICE of words can seem misleading, when you compare it to the metaphysical meaning.
What the logic can do for you though, is it can provide you with a powerful tool for discernment, it can guide you, it can tell you what Jesus's words mean, it can clarify what the words CANNOT mean, and it can help you to get past all the nit-picking arguments and disagreements that come from MULTIPLE OPINIONS, all of which result from a LACK OF true facts and too much faulty reasoning or "blindness" to the LOGICAL METAPHYSICS. All of the discussions about "is it this or that" come from this "difficulty" with seeing the logic behind it.
Does A Course in Miracles line up with a PURELY LOGICAL set of conclusions, a logical system of black and white conclusions? YES. It totally does. Was this world made as a result of a LOGICAL conclusions? YES. Does death occur because of the conclusion that MUST come "inevitably" from a premise of real sin? YES. Would we make BODIES as a logical CONCLUSION in a thought system? YES, because they are the "natural outcome" of WALLS THAT BLOCK TRUTH, as "separation devices". Bodies ARE the idea of the rejection of wholeness. They ARE limitation, as an experiential idea or state of mind.
The atonement is logical too. It is nothing but the recognition that only the truth is true. There is no real sin. An opposite to what is all encompassing does not exist. It is the TRUTH. It represents God's PREMISE and therefore results in the resuming of the extension of creation. IT HAS TO. That's part of its logical basis. This is also why by "denying the denial of truth", you LOGICALLY cancel out the denial. Because you took what is FALSE, and you tried to make it TRUE, in order to deny that the truth is true. So if you REVERSE that by DENYING that the false is true, you deny the denial of the truth, restoring the truth as the only truth. This is entirely logically based.
To restore you to reality, you must UN-OPPOSE God. You must stop "negating" the truth". You must stop believing in sin, which is the idea of God's system having been destroyed and opposed. You must surmount death, which means resurrection is nothing but an assertion of TRUTH, which is life. Everything to do with God's creation, everything to do with the separation, everything to do with the descent into the ego and death, and everything to do with healing and awakening to reality, is all ENTIRELY the interplay of PURELY LOGICAL SYSTEMS or states.
Awakening is even logical and inevitable because you, being an effect of God, must FOREVER be an effect of God, since God never changes, and therefore CANNOT ever stop being God's son. Your reality is SECURED as a result of the logic of the system. The ending of death is just as inevitable, because when you get yourself into a logical STATE of ONLY TRUTH, there cannot be a state of an opposite to life, and death is therefore "snuffed out" as Jesus puts it.
Jesus's choice of words is masterful, but sometimes potentially misleading. There is a lot of material to digest. There seems to be a lot of stuff to figure out. Sometimes things seem contradictory which are not. And our egos make a TON of logical errors. Error, ie sin, is nothing but a logical mistake. You cannot oppose God's will, so it is "error", logically, to CONCLUDE you can. Healing is therefore the undoing of error, by re-establishing the facts of reality and accepting God's premise as the only true one.
This is all the metaphysics. It's behind the words. When you GET it, you can express FROM it, and be coming from the truth. You can express 100,000 books BASED ON this and every single one will be in line with ACIM. We're inside a logical system of thought, albeit based on a FALSE starting point, resulting in FALSE experiences, and FALSE outcomes. A false outcome is SUFFERING. Suffering is inevitable when the entire SYSTEM is founded on opposition to health and life. Suffering means you are "suffering from" being mistaken about the facts of reality.
If you want eternal life and happiness, you must open up to accept the REASONING of the Holy Spirit, which is the SAME as God's SYSTEM or WAY of thinking. Thought BASED ON TRUTH will set you free.
ALL of the conflict in the ACIM community is based on NOT SEEING and NOT ACCEPTING the purely LOGICAL CORE TRUTH in A Course in Miracles. All of the disagreement about what it says, what it means, what it implies, is all based on NOT being logically sound. ALL OPINIONS ARE MUTE! Your opinion has no value, and nor does mine. We are supposed to get away from having opinions. We are supposed to recognize the FACTS OF REALITY, instead of trying to MAKE UP interpretations. Interpretations are entirely ego. The course HAS NO INTERPRETATIONS. The course is based on FACTS. It is based on TRUTH.
And truth is not an intepretation. It is an expression FROM THE PURE LOGIC SYSTEM OF GOD'S THINKING. When everyone finally recognizes this and accepts the ONE CORRECT metaphysics, there will be no more NEED for conflict, no more BASIS for confusion, no more REASON to fight about it, and no more DEBATE about what it means. Behind all the seemingly varied WORDS in the course, behind all the many EXPRESSIONS, behind the choice of phrases and the language and the way Jesus speaks, there is a PURE METAPHYSICAL CLARITY.
Do not be DECEIVED by the ILLUSION OF DIFFERENT FORMS in the course. Do not be deceived by taking the WORDS too literally. The WORDS ARE NOT THE METAPHYSICS. They are only based on it. And if you base your entire understanding on THE WORDS, you will very likely come to false inconsistent conclusions. When you get bogged down in isolated quotes, inconsistent reasoning, things taken out of context, and all the rest of it, you are missing the CLARITY of the course's truth.
Go deeper. Get behind the words. SEE the logical structures. Recognize the metaphysics. It's beyond words. It's beyond those symbols. The course is PURE TRUTHFUL FACT and it is totally consistent without contradiction. If you are confused, wondering about meanings, uncertain about structures, or any other reaction to what's said, you are not using logical reasoning and so are using blind ego interpretation. If you see contradictions, you made a logical error.
If something doesn't fit, you haven't seen the logic behind it clearly enough. And if you conclude things OUT OF ACCORD with what the LOGIC says, you are mistaken, regardless of what the words seem to say. Jesus is 100% perfectly ACCURATE in every single thing he has expressed FROM a PERFECT GRASP of the PERFECTLY CLEAR metaphysical basis of truth. HE has not made any errors. His expressions in words are not erroneous. He is PERFECTLY CORRECT. Our only challenge is coming to SEE, RECOGNIZE and ACCEPT, the CORE TRUTH behind the entire course. REASON will allow you to literally SEE SENSE.
"The introduction of reason into the ego's thought system is the beginning of its undoing. For reason and the ego are contradictory. Nor is it possible for them to co-exist in your awareness. And reason's goal is to make plain, and therefore obvious. You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."
No one can judge on partial evidence. That is not judgment. It is merely an opinion based on ignorance and doubt. Its seeming certainty is but a cloak for the uncertainty it would conceal. It needs irrational defense because it is irrational. And its defense seems strong, convincing, and without a doubt, because of all the doubting underneath.
You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?
How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth. This is awareness which you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice of God Himself.
Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt.
This thing it speaks of and would yet defend it tells you is yourself. And you believe that this is so with stubborn certainty. Yet underneath remains the hidden doubt that what it shows you as reality with such conviction it does not believe. It is itself alone that it condemns. It is within itself it sees the guilt. It is its own despair it sees in you.
Hear not its voice. The witnesses it sends to prove to you its evil is your own are false, and speak with certainty of what they do not know. Your faith in them is blind because you would not share the doubts their lord can not completely vanquish. You believe to doubt his vassals is to doubt yourself.
Yet you must learn to doubt their evidence will clear the way to recognize yourself, and let the Voice for God alone be Judge of what is worthy of your own belief. He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son.
He recognizes only what God loves, and in the holy light of what He sees do all the ego's dreams of what you are vanish before the splendor He beholds. Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face. Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness.
Whom He has judged can only laugh at guilt, unwilling now to play with toys of sin, unheeding of the body's witnesses before the rapture of His holy Face. And thus He judges you. Accept His word of what you are, for He bears witness to your beautiful creation and the Mind Whose Thought created your reality.
What can the body mean to Him Who knows the glory of the Father and the Son? What whispers of the ego can He hear? What could convince Him that your sins are real? Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.
He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain.
He will select the elements in them that represent the truth, and disregard those aspects which reflect but idle dreams. And He will reinterpret all you see, and all occurrences, each circumstance, and every happening which seems to touch on you in any way from His one frame of reference, wholly unified and sure. And you will see the love beyond the hate, the constancy in change, the pure in sin, and only Heaven's blessing on the world.
Such is your resurrection, for your life is not a part of anything you see. It stands beyond the body and the world, past every witness for unholiness, within the Holy, holy as Itself. In everyone and everything His Voice would speak to you of nothing but your Self and your Creator, Who is One with Him. So will you see the holy Face of Christ in everything, and hear in everything no sound except the echo of God's Voice.
We practice wordlessly today, except at the beginning of the time you spend with God. We introduce these times with but a single, slow repeating of the thought with which the day begins. And then we watch our thoughts, appealing silently to Him Who sees the elements of truth in them. Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.
Give Him your thoughts, and He will give them back as miracles which joyously proclaim the wholeness and the happiness God wills His Son as proof of His eternal Love. And as each thought is thus transformed, it takes on healing power from the Mind Which saw the truth in it, and failed to be deceived by what was falsely added. All the threads of fantasy are gone, and what remains is unified into a perfect Thought that offers Its perfection everywhere.
Spend fifteen minutes thus when you awake, and gladly give another fifteen more before you go to sleep. Your ministry begins as all your thoughts are purified. So are you taught to teach the Son of God the holy lesson of his sanctity. No one can fail to listen when you hear the Voice of God give honor to God's Son. And everyone will share the thoughts with you which He has retranslated in your mind.
Such is your Eastertide. And so you lay the gift of snow-white lilies on the world, replacing witnesses to sin and death. Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt. Now do we lift our resurrected minds in gladness and in gratitude to Him Who has restored our sanity to us.
And we will hourly remember Him Who is salvation and deliverance. As we give thanks, the world unites with us, and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry 'round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.
Although in truth the term sacrifice is altogether meaningless, it does have meaning in the world. Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary, and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came when there is no more use for it. Now its real meaning is a lesson. Like all lessons it is an illusion, for in reality there is nothing to learn. Yet this illusion must be replaced by a corrective device; another illusion that replaces the first, so both can finally disappear. The first illusion, which must be displaced before another thought system can take hold, is that it is a sacrifice to give up the things of this world. What could this be but an illusion, since this world itself is nothing more than that?
It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean? It cannot mean that you have less because of it. There is no sacrifice in the world's terms that does not involve the body. Think a while about what the world calls sacrifice. Power, fame, money, physical pleasure; who is the hero to whom all these things belong? Could they mean anything except to a body? Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is.
Once this confusion has occurred, it becomes impossible for the mind to understand that all the "pleasures" of the world are nothing. But what a sacrifice,- and it is sacrifice indeed - all this entails! Now has the mind condemned itself to seek without finding; to be forever dissatisfied and discontented; to know not what it really wants to find. Who can escape this self-condemnation? Only through God's Word could this be possible. For self-condemnation is a decision about identity, and no-one doubts what he believes he is. He can doubt all things, but never this.
God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?
What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise.
You may believe this course requires sacrifice of all you really hold dear. In one sense that is true, for you hold dear the things that crucify God's Son. And it is the course's aim to set him free. But do not be mistaken about what sacrifice means. It always means the giving up of what you want. And what, oh teacher of God, is it that you want? You have been called by God, and you have answered. Would you now sacrifice that Call? Few have heard it as yet, and they can but turn to you. There is no other hope in all the world that they can trust. There is no other voice in all the world that echoes God's. If you would sacrifice the truth, they stay in hell. And if they stay, you will remain with them.
Do not forget that sacrifice is total. There are no "half sacrifices." You cannot give up Heaven partially. You cannot be a little bit in hell. The Word of God has no exceptions. It is this that makes It holy and beyond the world. It is Its holiness that points to God. It is Its holiness that makes you safe. It is denied if you attack any brother for anything. For it is here the split with God occurs. A split that is impossible. A split that cannot happen. Yet a split in which you surely will believe, because you have set up a situation that is impossible. And in this situation the impossible can seem to happen. It seems to happen at the "sacrifice" of truth.
Teacher of God, do not forget the meaning of sacrifice, and remember what each decision you make must mean in terms of cost. Decide for God, and everything is given you at no cost at all. Decide against Him and you choose nothing at the expense of the awareness of everything. What would you teach? Remember only what you would learn. For it is here that your concern should be. Atonement is for you. Your learning claims it and your learning gives it. The world contains it not, but learn this course and it is yours. God holds out His Word to you, for He has need of teachers. What other way is there to save His Son?
All magic is a form of reconciling the irreconcilable. All religion is the recognition that the irreconcilable cannot BE reconciled.
Sickness and perfection ARE irreconcilable. If God created you perfect, you ARE perfect. If you believe you can be sick, you HAVE placed other gods before Him. GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made.
Reality can dawn only in an unclouded mind. It is always THERE, to BE accepted, but its acceptance depends on your WILLINGNESS TO HAVE IT. To know reality MUST involve the willingness to judge Unreality FOR WHAT IT IS. This is the RIGHT use of selective perception. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to LET IT GO. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and CANNOT be known by PART of a mind.
The Sonship cannot be perceived as PARTLY sick, because to perceive it that way, is not to perceive it at all. If the Sonship is ONE, it is one in ALL respects. ONENESS CANNOT BE DIVIDED. If you perceive other gods, YOUR mind is split, and you will not be able to LIMIT the split, because the split IS the sign that you have removed part of your mind from God's Will, and this MEANS that it is out of control. To be out of control is to be out of REASON, and the mind DOES become unreasonable without reason. This is merely a matter of DEFINITION. By DEFINING the mind wrongly, you perceive it as FUNCTIONING wrongly.
God's laws will keep your minds at peace, because peace IS His Will, and His laws are established to uphold it. His are the laws of freedom, but yours are the laws of bondage. Since freedom and bondage are irreconcilable, their laws CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD TOGETHER. The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist.
"Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them.
All this has never been. Nothing but the laws of God has ever operated, and nothing except His Will will ever be. You were created through His laws and by His Will, and the manner of your creation established you AS CREATORS. What you have made is so unworthy of you, that you could hardly want it, IF YOU WERE WILLING TO SEE IT AS IT IS. You will see nothing at all. And your vision will AUTOMATICALLY look beyond it, to what is IN you, and all AROUND you. Reality cannot BREAK THROUGH the obstructions you interpose, but it WILL envelop you completely, WHEN YOU LET THEM GO.
When you have experienced the protection of God, the making of idols becomes inconceivable. There are no strange images in the Mind of God, and what is not in His Mind CANNOT be in yours, because you are of One Mind, and that Mind belongs to HIM. It is yours BECAUSE it belongs to Him, for ownership is sharing to Him. And if it is so for Him, it is so for you. His definitions ARE His laws, for by them He established the universe as what it is. No false gods you attempt to interpose between yourself and your reality, affect truth at all. Peace is yours because God created you. And He created nothing else.
The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal.
In many, only the spark remains, for the great rays are obscured. But God has kept the spark alive, so the rays can never be completely forgotten. If you but see the little spark, you will learn of the greater light, for the rays are there unseen. Perceiving the spark will heal, but knowing the Light will create. Yet in the returning, the little light must be acknowledged first, for the separation was a descent from magnitude to littleness. But the spark is still as pure as the Great Light, because it is the remaining call of Creation. Put all your faith in it, and God Himself will answer you.
(this will be a fairly long post, so please bare with me)
The ego thought system is based on separation. Separation resulted in space and time. In space, spatial relations are HOW the ego thinks. The physical universe IS its thought system.
This includes physical objects, which are separated out, where an object is EITHER HERE OR THERE, (but not in both places). This is a "natural" ego thought process. One thing seems to exist in one location only and not all locations. One thing is NOT something else, and all things are DIFFERENT, separate, and kept apart.
The entire physical universe is arranged according to this WAY that the ego thinks. It regards the entire thing as structured by SEPARATIONS. One object versus another. One location versus another. And then it draws comparisons, and has reasoning, and finds conclusions, based WITHIN the framework of separation.
So you, in your ego thought processes, then start to THINK this way. You think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. And this seems to make SENSE to you because it maps directly to how the world is arranged. It then becomes "second nature" to think of anything in the world in SEPARATE terms.
For example, I parked my car in the first spot, not the second. I ordered the fries instead of the onion rings. My car is red, not blue. This is my body, not your body. Earth is not Mars. etc.
Our whole WAY of thinking runs according to these rules, based on SEPARATING things out, sectioning them off, isolating them, keeping them APART, emphasizing their differences, and locking them up in little prison boxes. And we think this is a natural way to think, to relate, to communicate, to reason.
Then we go about USING this way of thinking, to think about EVERYTHING. Not just to think about things which ARE based on a thought system of separation, but even to think about things which are completely BEYOND the ego thought system.
"It is the part that believes your existence means you are SEPARATE. Everything the ego perceives is a separate whole, without the relationships (sharing) that imply BEING."
This may not seem to present any problems when you use SEPARATION-BASED reasoning to discuss the things of space and time, but it COMPLETELY misses the mark when you think this way about heaven, God, creation, sonships, sons, souls, etc.
The Kingdom of God is a thought system, and God similarly has a WAY of thinking. His WAY of thinking is NOT based in the idea of separation. It is NOT based on the limitations of space or time or spatial relations. It does NOT separate things off, make them different, put them in SEPARATE BOXES, or keep them apart.
God's thought system/reality also does not demand that something HAS to be separate from something else. It does not require something to be EXCLUSIVE to one box and not another. Nor does it assert that everything that exists MUST be partitioned off into EITHER one state OR another. God simply does not THINK in terms of "either this or that".
God's mind, his creation, his way of THINKING, is actually based on a totally different kind of reasoning. This reasoning is INCLUSIVE, rather than exclusive. It also completely embraces the idea of SHARING. The ego's thought system completely blots out ALL suggestions of sharing, overlap, simultaneity, unity or oneness.
In God's system, it is NATURAL for there to be one thing, which SHARES all of itself with another. It is natural for one thing to GIVE all of itself and STILL RETAIN all of itself without loss. It is natural for TWO things to BE one thing. It is natural for one thing to be in ALL locations simultaneously. It is natural for one thing to be in one box, AND in another box, at the same time. It is natural for something to SPAN and TRANSCEND separations.
The Golden Rule, the law of God and of equality, simply states that what is true of one thing is true of another. Whatever is true of God is true of His Sons. Whatever is true or me is true of you. This is equality. God treats all his creations the same way. The Golden Rule reflects this, because it is a rule based on INCLUSION. We are both included in the same truth. The ego however is COMPLETELY AGAINST sharing and inclusion. And so is this world.
In reality, God THINKS in a holographic way. In a hologram, the whole is in every part, and every part is a whole in its own right, and every part shares the entirety of the whole with the whole. ACIM confirms that this is the way by which God thinks, and NOT through a process of separation:
"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you."
This means for example that GOD IS WHOLE, being infinite. And God as a creator therefore extends and creates ANOTHER WHOLE. His Son, is a WHOLE SON. A full creation. As described here:
"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."
"There can BE no disinherited parts of the Sonship, for God is whole, and all his extensions are like Him."
"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."
However, for God to BE whole, and to CREATE wholly, and thus to create another WHOLE.... becomes TOTAL NONSENSE to the way that the EGO thinks. And if you think in the same separation-based way that the ego thinks, this FACT registers to you as total nonsense. You will reason, "how can it be possible that there are TWO wholes, that makes no sense!". It makes no sense to a thought system of separation, yes. But God's reality is NOT based on that kind of system. God is not limited by separation or spacetime.
In order to recognize AND accept, that God's mind and creation DO NOT follow the ego's rules, and that God does not THINK or create like the ego would, and God's Kingdom is NOT spatially separated out like the physical world is, you will have to become willing to think massively outside the box. You CANNOT use separation-based logical reasoning to evaluate the truths or falseties of reality.
Let's look at what happens when you try to shove God into a box-based thought system. God for example gives ALL of Himself when he creates. His Son inherits EVERYTHING. But... if you are thinking with the ego, you SHOULD conclude that by God giving all of Himself AWAY, there SHOULD be nothing left. Thus God should snuff out of existence and only His Son should remain. This is LOGICAL to the ego because the ego believes in SACRIFICE AND LOSS, which is inherent to a box-based world. But it is complete nonsense.
Similarly, you could suggest that if God gives EVERYTHING to ONE SON, there is NOTHING LEFT to give to another Son. This is how the ego would think in finite terms. However, God has ALL of Himself left to give again to ANOTHER son, and another, and another, without any reduction at all in Himself. And this is how the Kingdom INCREASES. And by giving ALL of himself away, reality is increased. As stated here:
"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."
"To have all, give all to all."
You can see that if you think in exclusive, separating terms, you WILL come to FALSE conclusions about what's happening in reality. You'll conclude that if I have everything, you have nothing. But in reality, as Jesus describes in ACIM, me having everything DOES NOT prevent you from having everything also. How is it possible that we BOTH simultaneously have everything? Because we SHARE IT. And this sharing does NOT mean compromise or that we each only get half.
Sharing is the way by which God's Kingdom INCREASES. Because if it weren't for the ability to share, there would be no logical way for God to ever create anything more than just God, because he is already unlimited and everywhere. As this states:
"Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing."
If SHARING, INCLUSION, BOTH/AND is the natural thought SYSTEM of Heaven's reality, and it follows that thought PROCESS when it reasons anything, then SELFISHNESS, EXCLUSION, EITHER/OR, SEPARATION is the natural thought system of spacetime. And they are TOTALLY opposite. They are opposite because "this not that" is a direct reflection of the separation idea of "ego not God" or "death not life" or "non-existence not existence." The ego thought system is the NEGATION of reality.
If God creates two sons, who are brothers, and both are whole beings who have and share everything, co-creating with God, and then we look at this fact WITH THE EGO, we will see false conclusions. For example we'll say that there can't BE two sons. Or that if there are two sons, that's "duality", because now the two sons are KEPT APART in separate boxes meaning duality.
But this is not how it works at all. The fact that there are two, WHO SHARE, violates the boundaries of those boxes. One son is IN the other son and vice versa because they share everything. So there are two sons, who are ALSO each other.
"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth."This also extends to the relationship you have with God. Those who think LIKE the ego, will reason that EITHER.... God is all there is, OR there is a separation. Or similarly, EITHER God and I are one thing, OR we are two things. Or that, if you get rid of all separations, you will end up with oneness.
There is a major flaw in that reasoning. The ego first establishes that you MUST think in a separating way, in which there is duality, and all things are kept apart. THEN it has you DESTROY all of the other parts except for one of them, by getting rid of the idea of separations between the parts. But it will not have you get rid of the ego thought process. Then it concludes falsely, that when you remove the separations, you end up with ONE THING. And this one thing is thought to mean "oneness", or to represent God.
This however is a false conclusion, because now "separate boxes" have been mapped onto God, and God has been shoved into a separate box, all by himself, and there is no creation and no sonship and NO SHARING. And the ego rejoices that it has imprisoned God this way, in the name of freedom.
When you look at what ACIM says, Jesus DOES NOT say that God is alone, or that he is separated off from creation, or that he has no creations. Instead it tells you in fact that God has a huge family and is simultaneously one with them. And that His oneness DOES NOT ERASE their manyness.
"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."
"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."
"The Kingdom of God includes all His Children and their creations."
This does not mean the Kingdom is duality or that it contains separate boxes. It means it contains overlapping shared beings who ALL have everything and ARE everything, seemingly as OPEN boxes who are not in any way confined, yet are still many things. HOW that's possible, is due to heaven's miraculous nature.
Ego thought processes do not allow this to be true. Nor does ego thinking allow it to be possible that when you are "one with God", you still have an individual self. EGOS then become AVERSE to any notion of individuality, which is self destructive, which the ego loves. You being one with God, DOES NOT ERASE your individuality.
"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."
There ARE STILL "separate parts" in the statement, AND in some ways God is NOT totally like His sons, in terms of function or role. Meaning, YOU still exist as a distinct entity, AND God exists as a distinct entity. And what you SHARE between you, is your oneness with each other, AS TWO BEINGS. That is what ACIM teaches. And its definition of oneness is not "one thing being alone", it is EQUALITY. Being of THE SAME KIND. And an equality which is more than just two separate boxes next to each other - an equality where you SPAN the boxes.
Similarly, the ego will falsely conclude that if God and His Son are TWO things, this is duality. It is not, because we're again jumping the gun and projecting separate boxes onto heaven. Just because they are TWO, does NOT mean they do not share, and does NOT mean there is no unity. The Father and the Son are one, but there is still a Father and a Son. Just as WE will ALWAYS be brothers even in heaven.
In fact, the way by which God is everything, AND YET, His children are also FULLY created beings, who are also everything, is the course's definition of MIRACULOUSNESS. This miraculousness is completely alien to the ego thought system and all separation-based reasoning. The ego has NO CLUE, how it is possible, that God could have even created ANYTHING, yet alone multiple beings who somehow have been added-on to an already infinite reality. Nevertheless:
"MIRACULOUS CREATION was his own Source, and also his own real function.""Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human (ego) thinking"
"Miraculousness", is the nature of God's reality. UN-miraculousness is the nature of spacetime. Everything in God's MIND and reality is permanently miraculous. It is miraculous because it makes possible what the ego says is IMPOSSIBLE. Just as the ego is the idea of impossibility.
For one soul to be a whole being, that shares everything with another whole being, as brothers, and with God, without a loss of self or individuality, and without ceasing to be "separate", and without being CONFINED to separate boxes, is miraculous.
This miraculousness is also reflected in THE MIRACLE. And in true perception. And in learning to THINK LIKE GOD, which the course asks you to do. In order to think like God, you have to TRANSCEND the "separating off and putting in boxes" nature of the ego and its thoughts. And that includes thinking of souls as separate bodies.
This entails overlooking separations and seeing unity beyond it. It requires you to not be blinded by perception of form, because form is anchored in separation. Your whole perception has to become similar to heaven's reality, which breaks all the ego laws. And this is also why miracles break all the laws of space and time AND of ego reasoning.
Becoming able to THINK LIKE GOD, requires you to align with the truth of the Golden Rule, in holy relationship, where what is true of you is true of all others. Where differences are completely ignored. Where no-one is IMPRISONED in a box. And where your whole way of REASONING is LIKE God's.... that is, based on "paralogical reasoning" - or AND/BOTH reasoning, rather than either/or.
We could say, THE ENTIRE COURSE is geared towards developing this BOTH/AND kind of perception, thought and experience, for all students. We are supposed to stop thinking with the ego, OR LIKE the ego. And we are supposed to learn that we are undo no laws but God's, and HIS laws are NOT laws of separation, exclusion, spatial relations, or limitations.
In order to fully grasp ANYTHING that ACIM says about the pre-separation state, God, the Kingdom, oneness, sonship, sons, souls, creation, extension, holy spirit, etc..... any of that non-ego stuff, you CANNOT USE the ego-based reasoning method. If you do, you will fail. Guaranteed. And you will see truth that is false, and what is really true will appear false to you. That's how BACKWARDS the ego thought system is.
Any conclusions you come to about God or oneness etc, if it's rooted in "either this or that", IS WRONG. Guaranteed 100%. Only when you start to think in terms of BOTH.... me AND you.... WE.... only then do you start to approach the NATURAL way of thinking like God, which is a miraculous state of mind. And ONLY by thinking that way will you understand and grasp the metaphysical facts of God's nature.
Non-duality for example is complete bullshit. It is bullshit because it is the result of an EGO thought process. The ego reasons, well, I believe all things are separate, so if we attack all the parts and end up with one victor, this ONE THING that's leftover, which is practically nothing, but is a single thing, symbolizes God. Because to the ego "less separation" is equated with spirituality or simplicity. So it will then map this "one thing" idea of oneness onto God and claim God is one thing - that there is NOTHING ELSE other than God. That God is SEPARATED OFF. That is NOT what ACIM teaches at all!
God is not only a creator and a father, God has a HUGE family of whole beings, all of whom are co-creators with each other. You and your brother co-create your creations. You and God and your brother co-create together. Even the holy spirit is a co-creator. And we all have this HUGE family of created beings in heaven. This is utterly incompatible with both the traditional idea of "oneness" and the idea of "non-duality".
And ALL of those beings are of ONE KIND, and SHARE EVERYTHING, and yet ARE SIMULTANEOUSLY MANY. Because that is HOW GOD THINKS. A holographic thought system in which the whole has created many parts and each part shares the whole with the whole of the rest. That is what ACIM says! And in order to INCLUDE all of what ACIM says, WITHOUT EXCLUDING any material or any factual statements, you will ONLY be able to accept ALL of what it says if you think in a non-separating way.
As soon as you get the simple idea that heaven's reality is based on BOTH/AND, rather than either/or, it will all fit into place and become clear. Because everything real is based on a both/and system of reason and thought processes. Creation ITSELF is based on sharing between two. God SHARES HIMSELF, in order to create, and He does not will to be alone. The natural logical outcome of that is that WE, as many permanent brothers, in the sonship which God DIRECTLY created, are all "one" (equal/sharing) because we share everything.
If this does not make sense to you, it is because you are thinking with the ego. If it seems like nonsense, it is because the ego is projecting its separation ideals onto it. If you cannot follow it, either I explained it poorly or you can't get past your ego thinking. But either way, God's entire reality is NOT LIKE EARTH, and you have to learn to RADICALLY think WAAAAAAY outside the realm of boxes if you want to recognize its true nature. Heaven is not spacetime!
"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."
This is more than just another way to think or use the intellect. This ties into how you should PERCEIVE, how you experience the real world, how you tune into the miraculous state of mind, the nature of the miracle and the atonement, all holy relationships, living by the golden rule, holy spirit's thought system etc.. It's all based on heaven's nature which is NOT based on a world of separate boxes.
"The separation IS the notion of rejection. As long as you teach this, YOU still believe it. This is NOT as God thinks, and you must think as He thinks if you are to know Him again. Any split in will MUST involve a rejection of part of it, and this IS the belief in separation."
"Exclusion and separation are synonymous."
"Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize."
"To you the miracle cannot seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your mind has made it so unnatural that it does not remember what is natural to it. 2 And when you are told what is natural, you cannot understand it. 3 The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part is perfectly natural, for it is the way God thinks, and what is natural to Him is natural to you. 4 Wholly natural perception would show you instantly that order of difficulty in miracles is quite impossible, for it involves a contradiction of what miracles mean. 5 And if you could understand their meaning, their attributes could hardly cause you perplexity."
"God's miracles are as total as His Thought, because they ARE His thoughts. God shines in them all with perfect light. If they recognize this light anywhere, they know it universally. "
"For you cannot understand Wholeness unless YOU are whole, and no part of the Son can be excluded,"
"the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."
"For in your part lies ALL of it, without which is no part complete, nor is the whole"
"One brother is all brothers. One mind is all minds. Such is the truth.""If they are deprived, their perception becomes distorted. When this occurs, the whole family of God, or the Sonship, is impaired in its relationships.""Though every aspect IS the whole, you cannot KNOW this, until you SEE that every aspect IS THE SAME, perceived in the SAME light, and THEREFORE one. "
The world, meaning the larger physical universe and everything in it, is fiction. It's a dream, coming from a dreaming mind. The mind is dreaming of states of being in which there is degradation, decay, change, entropy, uncertainty and death. This shows up as what we call the universe. It's an image, an illusion, picturing what God's creation (His Son) would be like if it were NOT what it is like. It's the idea of the opposite of Heaven (reality), and is hell (illusion).
"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."
"He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."
As a dream, it's not real. It's actually entirely nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It's merely an illusion of something. It's not there. At most, it is completely neutral, in that it causes nothing and has no effect on anything real. It is nothing but a thin "veil" of illusions, covering up reality. It has no mind, no will, no self, no soul, no power, no causality, no identity. It is not life and nothing in it lives forever. It has no real properties at all. Made of darkness, it is the illusion of the absence of light. When light comes, it disappears.
"Eternity will shine away the world."
"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."
"It is at best an illusion of life, at worst, death."
"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."
You are the dreamer of the dream. The cause of the manifestation of the illusory universe. It is in your mind and coming from you. You put into place everything that happens and everything the world contains. This is "the world you made".
"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways"
"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source."
"My self is ruler of the universe."
"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."
"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."
Now. You as a dreamer, the cause of the dream world, have within your power the ability to choose whether to believe God's true reality is the one reality, or whether to put belief into the world you made. The only way to believe that the world you made has any truth or reality to it at all, is to believe God's world is lacking in truth and reality. This requires you to confuse what is really true, with what is false.
The false world you made (which includes planet Earth), by believing it exists at all, seems to take on properties of its own, as if it exists, as if it causes, as if it is happening, as if time and space actually occur. Through a reversal of cause and effect, believing that the effect of you is the cause of you, that your dream world is dreaming you, this forces your mind to "perceive" itself as being "caused by" the universe. This level confusion takes you out from "above" (or prior to) the world and places you seemingly "within it" (below it).
This is the foundation for incarnation into or the making of a body, which pictures you as if you have been "made by" the world, at the effect of it, and anchored in space and time like a prisoner. The body depicts the idea that the world is causing you, rather than that you cause the world. And now you seem to perceive in, through, and with the body.
Without this reversal of causality, there is no body. This also means everything the body "perceives" is false, perceived in a false way, confusing a false world with truth, and therefore perceiving it as if it is really there. This is what the senses were made to report (lies). They were made to look upon illusions of forms ("the forms of error"), and NOT see past them, taking them to be real objects and things.
"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."
"Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body."
"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception"
"Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality."
"Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it"
"The body's eyes will NEVER look on it." (reality)
"The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There IS no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream, in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed."
The perceptual function of the body, through the body's eyes and senses, reports illusions to the mind as if to suggest these illusions are really there to perceive. The body relays images of a *false world* to the mind. These are neutral images with no real meaning. Snapshots of a fake world. Pictures of nothingness seeming to be something. It is then entirely up to the mind to determine what to make of these messages.
The body always and only perceives what is false. It can ONLY look upon false things. Everything it sees MUST be false (the world is false). It is literally incapable of perceiving reality or truth of any kind. It's vision is locked into hell, for as long as it seems to exist. It cannot see light, reality, heaven, or God. It was designed not to AND it never will, regardless of your state of mind. The body sees only sin. The world is made of the idea of sin and death. Every form, object, body, planet, galaxy, is made of the idea of separation, sin and death, being a dream of death. Physical objects are sin - illusions of separations seeming to happen.
"The world of bodies is the world of sin."
"The world was made as an attack on God."
"These eyes made not to see, will never see."
"endless list of forms of nothingness that you endow with magical powers."
"For sin arose from it, out of nothingness"
"Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."
So there's the body, showing you pictures of sin and hell, constantly. That's all it can do. Anything it "sees" is a result of vision being blocked by illusions, unable to overlook (forgive) anything. Unable to see through the block of solid physical sin (matter). Repulsed by it. Imprisoned by it.
The mind however, is the only thing that sees. "only mind can see". The mind "looks upon" the images of hell that the body relays to it through the senses. The mind is the location of the belief system. The mind is where any kind of distortion of reality is happening, and it's where you assign meaning or value or "reality" to illusions. Depending on what the mind accepts as true and real, determines how it will interpret the images of a fake world. It will either believe they are real, or will believe they are not real. But so long as the body persists, it WILL continue seeing the false world.
When the mind wants to believe (value) illusory things as real, it misinterprets what the body is showing it. It is confused. It confuses unreal things for real things. The mind, therefore, has a false perception ABOUT, the images being sent to it by the body's eyes. Since the body is showing you images of the FALSE WORLD, and the mind is believing these illusions are real, the mind is now having "false perceptions about" a FALSE world. The body only shows the mind images of "hell is real". If the mind agrees with the images and is convinced these images are indeed real hell, the mind too has false perception.
Believing the body's eyes is false perception. The body is always seeing falsely, but the mind can choose whether to be confused about what it's being shown (taking it as real), or to recognize that these images are false. Images of a false world, a fake world, an untrue world, a world that is not real, or happening, a world where the sin it is made of is recognized as not real. Not true. The mind decides what meaning to give to what the body is seeing.
"Nothing I see means anything."
"I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me"
"Therefore ... will to change your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, and not a cause."
Note that just because you change your mind ABOUT what the body is showing you, DOES NOT MEAN that the world is inherently real or true. It does not mean the world is REAL behind your misperceptions of it. It does not mean the world is suddenly the Kingdom of God if you would just stop projecting stuff onto it. The world is NOT REAL, IN ADDITION TO, your false perceptions "about it". You have false peceptions ABOUT a false world, which makes that false world SEEM like a real world. Therefore believing the world (which is an illusion of a world) is real, or created by God, IS FALSE PERCEPTION.
A mind that believes the world is real, is having false perception. This is a false perception about a false world. The world is false, because you invented it to oppose God's truth. It is the OPPOSITE of truth. Perceiving a false world falsely, you regard it as a true world or a real world, you take it seriously, you think you live in it, and that you are at the effect of it. A true (corrected, healed) perception of a false world, reveals to you that the world IS in fact false. This is *recognition*. It is a recognition and a correct identification that this world IS in fact illusory, false, unreal, untrue, not happening, not real sin, not causing anything, not existing.
"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that 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 healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."
"Illusions recognized must disappear."
"Earth, heaven's OPPOSITE in every way."
"Enlightenment is but a recognition"
Just prior to total awakening from the dream, having sorted out what is really true and really false, having come to recognize illusions as illusions, not being confused about what is real, the mind is very much healed and still uses the body temporarily as a teaching device. It is used by the Holy Spirit to communicate healing and to symbolize immortality. This is the state of being "a teacher of God."
A teacher of God is still in the world, still dreaming, still causing the body as a result of slight cause-effect reversal, but almost awake ("those who perceive still need healing." The teacher of God still looks using the body's eyes, upon a fake world, where nothing is real. And it still remains in a world that continues to function according to ego laws, space and time, change and death, war and conflict, sickness and suffering. The world is still a picture of crucifixion. But the development of true perception is the development of the "spiritual eye" which overlooks these illusions and does not believe them. It looks PAST them, through them, beyond them, to the truth of reality, ignoring the illusory world and not believing in it.
"To forgive is to overlook."
"Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"
"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is ***no more real*** than to regard it as healthy and beautiful."
In this state, the mind is becoming aware it is making the world. It is the dreamer of the dream. It is causing the world. It has power over it. Miracle mindedness allows for the breaking of all laws. There is nothing you cannot do. The mind here is still perceiving, and the body is still showing it pictures of hell (bodies sick and damaged, people unhappy, death and decay etc), but having *recognized* the truth (God's) it now sees things in their proper perspective.
It's a recognition that a false world IS false, illusions ARE illusions, sickness is NOT REAL, and everything you're seeing in the dream IS nothing but a dream. If you see sick bodies, you do not BELIEVE they are really sick, even though they still APPEAR as illusions of sickness you can perceive. The body can still show you broken legs. You just RECOGNIZE that they are not REALLY broken legs. They are false images, and you are not deceived by it.
The distinction is simple. Failing to recognize that a false illusory world is exactly that, confuses the mind and makes the world seem real. Recognizing it for what it is, overlooking it, not buying into it, or believing in it, reveals its FALSE nature, BECAUSE you know what is true. What you used to believe was true, real, valuable, causing you, now clearly appears to be interpreted as doing nothing, having no reality, causing nothing and producing no real effects. The illusory world is recognized as not *really* sinning. It's sin is fake. It's sicknesses are not true of anyone. And death can be abolished at will.
"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."
"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."
"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth."
"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself."
In this state of mind the world becomes "the forgiven world." It is forgiven because you are seeing truly. True perception is ACCURATE perception. To accurately see the world you made reveals its "true nature" or "the reality of it". The reality of the world is that it is NOT real. "The real world" is Heaven. Seeing a false world truly, recognizes this world is nothing. False things are seen, but not believed.
Realize that this is a state of continuing to perceive the world and all its ills. It cannot help but be a dream of death. Being in true perception does not in any way change the laws of physics, unless you perform a miracle. The world still spins regardless of how you look at it. Blood falls to the ground regardless of how you look at it. How you look at it is NOT a cause, it is a RESULT. Perception does not cause anything. Perception is *feedback*. It shows you what YOU MADE. It shows you the dream that you're causing.
So you are still seeing the hell you made through the body's eyes, BUT you are no longer believing it is real or confusing it for reality. False perception is a failure to *recognize* an illusion when you see one, and the world is made of illusions. And illusions are not "only" your perceptions "about" the world. The world and the body are both illusions in their own right. You will still look upon them or with them but without the confusion that they are reality.
"The body is a dream."
"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."
"God did not create the body."
"The world you see is an illusion".
"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."
It's important to realize then that when your mind is almost 100% healed, you will still see a world of death. You will still see bodies being sick. You will still see (illusions of) war and suffering. The body keeps showing it to you per the ego's laws of physics. Just because you see this stuff, it DOES NOT MEAN that you are sick or believing in sickness. Just because you see someone suffering, it does not mean you are making them suffer. Just because you see your neighbor with a broken leg, it does not mean you are believing in broken legs. The key is whether you BELIEVE IT IS REAL. Whether you confuse it for truth. NOT "whether or not I see it."
Having truer perception DOES NOT MEAN "I will no longer see bad stuff." It does not mean "I will not be able to see sickness, otherwise it means I am still sick." It does not mean you cease being able to perceive death. It ONLY means you REINTERPRET what you see. You change what it MEANS to you. You change how you evaluate or judge it. You change whether you BELIEVE it is true or false, real or unreal. That has nothing to do with "whether I see it" UNTIL you attain 100% Christ Vision and the world disappears.
"The Holy Spirit is the great re-interpreter of the world."
You will continue to see this world until you ascend to Heaven. That's a fact. You being near enlightened will not change the way that the sun rises or the fact that oceans still are polluted or that death seems to happen. What changes is who you see it WITH and whether or not you *recognize* it for what it actually is. You either recognize a broken body is an illusion of a fictional broken body, pretending to be sick but being actually nothing but a fake image which you can easily change, OR you fail to recognize it and take it to be real, seeing a "real need", regarding it as "sin really happened", taking it seriously and reacting with fear. If you make the sickness real to you by believing in it, you are failing to recognize illusions and are now in need of healing yourself.
True perception, aligned with the Holy Spirit, aka Christ Vision, aka Spiritual Eye, is a clear and direct and un-distorting accurate way of seeing, which recognizes TWO things. Not just what is true, but also what is false. You must learn to recognize the false stuff AS false, and you do that by learning what is really true. In light of what is true, in the big picture, discerning, clearly recognizing, illusions are recognized as false and reality is recognized as true. BOTH occur simultaneously. You don't get to ONLY see "the truth" or "Reality" UNTIL you ascend to Heaven. Until then, you see both.
The false is seen for a while, but as false. The truth is also seen, becoming increasingly obvious as true. There are two perceptions happening at once. Body eyes and spiritual eyes. What is true (Heaven) becomes able to be seen BEYOND the thin veil of the false illusory world. The world becomes thin. Transparent. Illusions are overlooked. Bodies are not believed in. Fake causes are laughed at. Miracles demonstrate you are under no laws but God's, and break all the illusory laws of this world, including space, time, gravity, atomic forces, size, weight, distance, etc. These are all fiction.
The world seems to become forgiven, in that you no longer ADD attack to what it is. The world, when seen with forgiving eyes, isn't a REAL world, but is a NOT BELIEVED world. NOT believing that the world is real, or sinning, or attacking, or guilty, or anything at all, can make the illusory world seem lovely. It can seem lovelier than a world onto which you overlaid your projections of sinful belief. BUT, it is not lovely due to being real. It is lovely because it has no sin projected onto it. It becomes seemingly "innocent", BUT IT IS NOT REAL INNOCENCE. It becomes seemingly "holy", BUT IT IS NOT HOLINESS. It is NOTHING. It is seen merely as a thin veil, a picture of illusions of attack, which isn't really attack, and so sparkles with light as if clean and new and free from accusation. BUT IT IS STILL UNREAL. A forgive, yet STILL STRANGE world made of illusions.
"To see a sinless body is impossible. For holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego."
"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."
Then the veil parts. Christ is seen. The world is forgotten. The illusory world DISAPPEARS. The body vanishes. Death is snuffed out. There is no world. No perception. The mind awakens in Heaven's reality and continues Creating with God, where it left off, as if nothing ever happened. Because it was just a dream. And now it is gone. And everything made of dreams has disappeared. Now you are Home. Now you are awake in God.
"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."
"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."
It's really impossible to separate from God, given that God is everywhere and there is nowhere else to go. But the ego mind believes that the impossible is possible. It thinks it can actually succeed in being separate and can have an existence somewhere that God doesn't exist. To be separate from God, if it were possible, would have to mean you exist somewhere that God is absent, and that is why following the separation, God seemed to no longer be present.
But this is all really an illusion, being impossible in truth, and only by some illusory interpretation of what is happening could you believe that you have actually succeeded in achieving this separation. It's as if you found some kind of loophole or exception or special interpretation which allowed the impossible to become possible. There must be an illusion that God does not exist, otherwise you couldn't possibly believe that separation is possible, it would make no sense, and you would not believe it. Only by hiding or denying the truth does an illusion seem to make sense to you.
This mentality carries on through all stages of separation from sin to guilt to fear to death. At every step, we actually believe that if we buy into the ego's illusion, we're actually becoming capable of succeeding at doing something impossible. We then believe that doing it actually "works", that we're actually getting away with it. And because in this illusion there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't do this, it seems justified and as though you have the freedom to do it. Nothing therefore seems to be stopping you from getting away with murder - the murder of God and His Holy Son.
It's not that you're an inherently evil person. You don't automatically see things in a twisted way. You're not fundamentally broken. You actually keep with you at all times an attempt to maintain some semblance of truth. You also always retain an attempt to make sense out of what you are experiencing, using some kind of logic or reasoning to explain it, to come to conclusions based on it, and to then act on those conclusions. Decisions are actions based on all previous conclusions.
You're actually just in the business of trying to make sense of your experience of reality (or unreality), and base your conclusions on all of the information that you are aware of. You look around you at everything you can see, and you look within at everything you aware of taking place within yourself, and you look at other people, and often it seems to just make sense that they must be the cause of your upset. You do not see what the real cause is because you do not see fully, or the whole of what is happening, but you believe you do.
At all times you believe that whatever is within the scope of your awareness is all that exists, is all that is true, and is all that is happening. This is true whether you are fully with God or whether you are hiding in a dark corner in an unconscious state. The extent of your awareness determines what you can SEE, and therefore the scope of your idea of "wholeness". You believe, even if you are not whole and are in denial of a great many facts, that you are a whole person, with a whole perception, seeing the whole situation clearly.
Given that you believe this is true, and you do not suspect there is anything hidden from you, you then attempt to make sense from the evidence. You look at it and examine it and judge it and then conclude certain things based on that. The trouble is, you're not really in a state of wholeness or full awareness, and there are many important facts and pieces of truth which are hidden from your awareness.
Whatever the scope of your awareness is, you'll also find that this correlates to your sense of identity. You will ALWAYS be believing that you are a whole self, regardless of how limited you are. However, when you become more conscious, to be aware of parts of you that you were blind to before, you become aware that you are more than you thought you were.
Your awareness uncovers not only the truth that love is present, but it also uncovers the rest of your hidden identity. And if you are unaware, you do not fully or clearly perceive who you really are, and so do not see all of your motivations or beliefs, or the full extent of your will, or the full extent of what you might be doing in the situation.
If you are having any kind of experience of unhappiness, unlove, unforgiveness, fear or guilt, punishment or suffering or upset, it is guaranteed that you must be in some kind of state that isn't really whole. Love and forgiveness and happiness come from true wholeness, so if this is absent, then immediately it means that you have some blocks to your awareness which are preventing you from being aware of those conditions. And yet you will believe that you are whole, in your partiality, and that there is nothing more to see.
Whatever is outside of your awareness you will believe does not exist at all, and you might not even suspect that there IS anything else. Whatever is unconscious to you is outside of your conscious awareness, as though it is nowhere, and so you do not see it. Any evidence it might provide you will dismiss. That is, unless you are willing to look deeper for the truth.
If you are upset or unhappy, and given that happiness is wholeness, you cannot truly be whole. There must be something blocked or something you are unaware of. But you will believe you are aware of everything. You don't see what you're choosing or why you're choosing it. You don't see what you're doing to yourself. You don't see who is truly responsible for what you are experiencing. You don't see how you might be using your reactions or behaviors for a secret motive. And you don't remember having asked for suffering.
Along comes what appears to be a situation which seems to attack you, and you look inside the confines of your awareness to examine all the possible causes or influences or reasons why it is happening. You use your ego mind's logic to try to come to some kind of understanding, to try to make sense of what you are experiencing. This is quite natural and everyone does this at all levels of awareness. Whatever you are aware of and are experiencing is the truth to you - reality, and its truth equates with 'sense' or with rationality or sanity, and so you attempt to make sense out of your limited viewpoint.
So you're now experiencing attack and you look around, you do not see that you are involved, you do not see that you're choosing it, you do not see that you're using the other person as an opportunity to get rid of a hidden sin, and you don't realize what you're doing to yourself. You see this other person is present and when they showed up the attack seemed to start and you started to suffer, and not seeing your involvement it seems to "make sense" that they are the cause of it. You seemed innocent, being unaware of any guilt or causality on your part, so it MUST be their fault.
It simply makes sense to you, based on your limited evidence which you think is the whole evidence, that they are the culprit and so you are now justified in being angry. You didn't seem to ask for this, it was unwanted and uncalled for, and it seems real. Given this fundamental basis for your deciding what the truth of the matter is, it seems only logical, sensible, understandable and rational, to be upset about what this other person apparently is doing to you against your will.
Anger becomes justified and so does a counter-attack, which is an attempt to defend yourself. You believe you are acting in self-defense, given that you did not seem to be the one to start all this. You see yourself as upholding your innocence, as having been needlessly and unfairly treated, at which you are outraged. You do not in any way see that your anger has another motive, or that it is self destructive, or that it does not work to alleviate your suffering. Instead, your unawareness of some key facts has led you to be MISTAKEN, so now you actually believe that your angry retaliation can succeed in achieving the impossible, once again.
If you could retaliate against the attack and prove them wrong, it would seem to prove you right, and thereby uphold your obvious innocence and keep you justified in maintaining your sense of identity and wholeness. Your enemy came to attack your truth and you must defend it. The trouble is, the goal being the defense of yourself and the maintaining of your truth, all of that is thrown into jeopardy as soon as you justify your anger.
Your belief in attack attacks yourself and undermines your innocence. Your counter attack therefore renders you guilty, which destroys your innocence and shakes the foundation of your truth. What you thought would "work", does not work. And yet in unconsciousness you may not even realize it is not working, and will just carry on with this device believing that it is helping your situation.
Only with a lack of information and a lack of truth could you continue using a device which is broken, does not work, isn't bringing about the peace you lost, and is working against your own goal. Yet you won't stop using it while you continue to fail to correctly recognize the faults in your system, the lack of truth in your reasoning, and the mistakes that you are making. You don't see them AS mistakes because you believe you're totally logically, naturally, and inherently justified.
This is how we continue to use the ego in the same way we did at the separation from God, all the way through our progress towards death, believing that whatever we are doing with the ego makes sense, is understandable, is justified, it works, it can succeed, and that if you will just do more of it you will reach your goal. It is extraordinary, however, that given how obviously the ego's promises are lies, and how they constantly fail to deliver, and how they always make your situation worse while pretending they will help, that we can so easily "overlook" the truth and believe that we're getting away with the impossible.
We'll keep using the ego this way, keep falling for its traps, keep reacting with anger and justification, and keep remaining in denial, simply because it all seems to make sense and seems rational given what we're aware of. So long as we are keeping our illusions and keeping the truth out of awareness, we're really just doing our best to respond to situations in a way that makes sense to us.
We're simply very mistaken and are making "errors" in perception and judgement, without realizing it. It's not as though we are fully aware of the whole entire truth and are then making a deliberate decision to defy it and ignore it and act in insane ways. We do not SEE them as insane. We've blocked out so much truth that we simply are not aware of the ways that our beliefs and perceptions are mistaken.
If we had all the evidence of what's really going on, and were aware of it, it would once again make sense. We'd evaluate it and look at all of the pieces and see how they fit together. Without any denial, it would be obvious and clear exactly who caused what to happen, why it happened, and what the effects were. There would be no confusion within that context. Everything would be completely clear and obvious and easy to accept.
And you would accept it, because you will always be accepting of whatever you have ALLOWED into your awareness. Whatever is inside your awareness and not outside of it, you have accepted into your mind, and it therefore becomes part of you and is your truth. You can only accept what you believe is true, and anything you believe is not true or of which you are not aware, you will see as false and dismiss it as false evidence.
If you had the whole truth, you'd see the part that you play in all of your experiences. You'd see exactly who it is that is doing things to you - it's yourself. And you'd see the entire chain of cause and effect stemming from your own initial decision to separate from God and all the way through to all of the forms of suffering you are experiencing. You would not be ABLE to deny that it is all coming from you. It would be so obvious. The only sensible conclusion you would be able to draw from it is that you did all of this to yourself and no-one else was ever to blame.
The trouble is, key evidence and key truth has been blocked from your awareness. You do not know what you do not know. And even in a state of profound denial and unconsciousness, whatever little amount of awareness you have left seems to you to be "all" that there is. And whatever you see, from that perspective, seems to show you a reflection outside of you which you also believe is "all there is". And since that is truth to you, that presents to you a world which seems hostile, unfair, confusing, dramatic, upsetting and unsafe.
These are conclusions which you must come to, albeit mistaken. You can't conclude anything else because you have no other evidence to the contrary. All of these beliefs and perceptions about how the world is against you, life is unfair, people are victimizing you, you are alone and afraid, you're suffering against your will, you're constantly in conflict with other people, etc... it all comes solely from a lack of awareness and a lack of truth. It all seems to make sense to you and you believe in it, even if it is very upsetting.
People believe in the inevitability and un-avoidability of death, simply because of a lack of truth and a block to awareness, which seems to show them that they have no say in the matter and no power to choose otherwise. Such power is unconscious, such ability to decide is unconscious, and such truth that shows them that they cannot die because they are really immortal is also unconscious.
Without those key facts, death seems like something that happens to you against your will and it just "makes sense" to you that you must die. You see no other way out of the dark maze of hell and will therefore ACCEPT it and allow it, even if you seem not to want to.
This is also why when things happen to you seemingly against your will, you experience them as upsetting and unwanted. And yet, simultaneously, you experience them. You can't seem to make them go away, because you don't see that you are choosing them. You'll be very upset or afraid or suffering and experience it as though you really, really do not want this and are not in any way choosing it. And death is the ultimate expression of this - the idea that you are not choosing what you experience whatsoever, and therefore have become a passive victim of fate.
You'll experience these upsetting situations as being so against your will that you resist them and hate them and wish they would stop. You'll kick and scream all the way to the grave as though someone else is deciding for you what will happen to you. You seem not to want to be a victim, that you don't want to be afraid, you don't want to be sick, you don't to suffer and die. But it seems to be happening. And given you are unaware of the secret fact that you can CHOOSE for or against all of this, you don't believe you have any power to stop it. And that is terrifying and very upsetting.
You'll then set about trying to change others, trying to stop events, trying to resist life, trying to prevent bad stuff from happening, and trying to defend yourself from all the ways that some "other will" - an unexplained influence - seems to be deciding when you are or are not happy. You want all those bad influences to just go away so that you can carry on being innocent and harmless, to enjoy your "life", but bad stuff keeps cropping up. You don't see what you are doing to yourself so it seems entirely unwelcome and you just wish it would stop. Why is life so unfair? Why can't they just leave you alone and let you live in (an illusion of) peace?
These dramas and stories of suffering and unfairness will continue until you become willing to look at how you might be mistaken. It takes for you to become a little bit open minded about the possibility of something which seems very unlikely. If you are experiencing that you are a whole person, that you are fully aware of everything that's happening, and that you know everything there is to know about what is causing what, then you may not be willing to entertain this idea. But the idea is, that you MIGHT NOT BE WHOLE, and you MIGHT NOT BE FULLY AWARE, and there MIGHT BE MORE TRUTH than you are currently aware of.
Sometimes this is expressed in the form of "there must be a better way". This can be a natural reaction to the experiences of unfairness and strife and misery which all SEEM to happen for no good reason, which perhaps after a while don't seem to make sense, which perhaps seem so unbearable and stupid that it surely can't be the truth. When life becomes too painful and unmanageable, there can be a stirring of awareness or a desire for peace of some kind that prompts you to start to question whether what's happening - your experience of it - is really the truth, or whether there must be some kind of "deeper" truth or meaning that you just aren't seeing.
This requires a willingness, however small, to consider that you MIGHT be mistaken about what you're experiencing, or about the conclusions you keep coming to based on the evidence you have. It means literally a willingness to question your SELF, your own righteousness and your own sense of knowing everything. It even means questioning the truth of your identity - who you are - and what is the basis for yourself. To the ego this seems like self-attack, but in truth it is a willingness to dismantle your false self to reveal the "True You".
It's the beginning of humility, it's the beginning of honesty, and it's the beginning of opening up to a possible truth that exists in 'addition' to your current idea of Self. In other words, you are beginning to make ROOM for the truth in your life, creating a space where a larger truth can dwell where you are not filling that space with all of your own egoic conclusions and interpretations. It means you are making room for God, stepping aside a little bit from your ego mind and becoming willing to LOOK AT the situation from a slightly different perspective. And that means, you are starting to ALLOW a bigger truth to enter your awareness - therefore you are starting to wake up.
Illusions will be kept so long as they make sense to you, so long as you do not see their real purpose, and so long as they seem to work. Or at least, even if they don't work, you keep them because you believe they CAN work, if you will just use them hard enough. You think for example that in your justified anger, your anger will somehow bring about happiness.
If you can be angry enough at someone else for what they did, and thus prove that you are right and justified, then there will be some kind of acceptance by the other person, a backing down of their attack on your truth, and you will get the respect and recognition that you believe your truth deserves.
In their acceptance and admittance of how they were wrong and you were right, you'll feel vindicated and satisfied having "proven" that your truth is true. It's as though you need others to admit to YOUR truth and accept it and humble themselves, in order for YOU to believe your own truth more - that you've given them the power to accept your truth for you, which is what you want because it's part of your disowning of responsibility for you own decision-making.
You think then that you'll find peace and satisfaction from this. But does anger ever produce peace and happiness? No. It does not really work. Getting someone else to admit to your truth for you will not cause you to be happy indirectly, but you think it will. And most likely their ego will not be humble enough to accept your truth on your behalf, meaning you cannot gain the happiness that lies in their hands. To admit to that fact is to admit to the truth, which means you are allowing a greater truth to shine its light on this response and to show that it is false.
Everything that you do in the ego thought system has a justification, a purpose, a reason behind it, a motive, a secret plan and an attempted goal that it would achieve. Just as in the truth everything you do is deliberate and intentional, producing exactly the results you ask for every time, this still holds true in your use of the ego. Every decision you make to believe in the ego's interpretation and follow its advice, is based in a deliberate, intentional decision to do so. You have a purpose and a use for every ego device you use.
Generally speaking the overall purpose of the entire ego thought system is to get rid of yourself by becoming an artificial self that doesn't exist. To replace yourself with non-existence. To replace God with death. And because your attempt to do this is based in your belief in SIN, the attempt to get rid of your sin is just another part of your attempt to get rid of yourself. Every step of the way, in every ego device that you use whether it be denial or projection or anger or reactions or suppression of guilt or punishment or death, all of these "tools" have a purpose for you, in furthering your attempt to get rid of sin and to get rid of yourself.
So when you are angry with someone, even though you are angry because it seems completely justified and sensible, given the (lack of) facts, this anger is actually also serving this goal. It is an attempt to get rid of sin by finding someone else guilty. Behind this anger, in greater truth, you actually are the one who believes YOU sinned, you have accused yourself of a horrible crime, and subsequently felt extremely guilty. You are trying to cover that up and get rid of it, because you believe deep down that YOU are the one who "did it".
When someone comes along and SEEMS to be the one who must have done something to you, instead of seeing that you believe that YOU are the sinful one, you take the opportunity quickly, based on the lack of awareness and the presence of denial, to scapegoat the person and put all your sense of guilt onto them. You might seem as though you are projecting onto them because "clearly" they did something to you against your will, and it therefore seems justified, but the rest of the evidence shows that you actually are USING that person to get rid of your sin and ultimately yourself.
In light of that additional information, it would also show you that your attempt to use them to get rid of sin is actually an attack on YOUR part, towards someone who is NOT the cause of your sin, and they in fact are the one who is innocent. So now you have committed a further crime, for which you will feel guilty. Even if you think your anger is justified, you will not be able to explain why you feel remorse and guilt and "bad" about having done so.
The truth would also reveal that you in fact WANTED that person to "seem" to attack you, because you wanted to have an opportunity to get rid of your sin. Even if it seems to you as though you did not want it, did not choose it or ask for it, and that it was completely uncalled for, you in fact DID call for it, ask for it, and were given what you asked for. You hired the person to play the role of attacker so that you could use them. Even if you suffered, even if you didn't SEEM to want it in your semi-conscious state, you really DID want it. You wanted to be hurt so that you could make out that you are not the one who is guilty.
Without this key information, without the awareness of what you are doing to yourself, without realizing and recognizing how you are using these ego devices for an ego purpose, and how everything is a deliberate part of your plan to get rid of yourself, it is easy to see how and why you would conclude what you do. It also then becomes easy to see why you are MISTAKEN, and are making an error, and why you therefore need CORRECTION. You need the truth in order to see what is REALLY happening here, and to have any hope of being set free.
If it is true that you did not ask for suffering, then you are stuck. Suffering is going to happen against your will and you will not be able to stop it. If it is true that you did not ask for death, then death will happen against your will and you will have no power over it. But if it is true that you made sickness and death and suffering, and have chosen them, and are using them for a special purpose (to get rid of yourself), and you want them, and you yourself are using them against yourself, then at least now there is potential for you to CHOOSE AGAIN and to decide to stop doing this to yourself.
It also means realizing that because you are doing this all to yourself - this is the truth which you have been keeping hidden from yourself - there is a possibility now for SALVATION. If you are doing it to yourself, you can change your mind. You can stop your self attack. You can forgive yourself. Your mistakes can be undone and corrected by your willingness to become more aware of the whole truth, and you can be free of all suffering and death. It also means you will realize that no-one else ever attacks you, there is no other will acting against you, and therefore you are perfectly safe forever.
The secret to salvation is that you are doing this all to yourself. But until you can become aware of and admit to this truth, allowing this truth into your awareness, you will not be aware of it and will not be able to use it to make sense out of what you are experiencing. If it also remains in the realm of intellectual concepts, you will not be able to experience it and know it and feel it and trust it.
You have to actually be willing to shift your experience by expanding your awareness, becoming more conscious of what was unconscious, admitting to or owning up to what you have been doing yourself, and bringing your unconscious mind back into your conscious awareness. That is only going to be possible if you are willing to question or doubt your current experience, reconsider whether what you think is true is really true, undermine your own beliefs which hold the truth prisoner or judge it wrongly as "false", and be willing to be corrected in your mistakes.
Essentially this means you need to be willing to surrender and let go of your ego's illusions, its holding onto false truths, its blame and denial, and its various ways of convincing you that you can actually get away with or succeed at using its tools to produce a desirable outcome. It is only because you do not see what the ego's outcomes are (always worse, leading to death), that you think they must work. And even if they don't work you'll still keep using them, insisting that they MUST work because they seem to make sense to you. You won't question what makes sense to you because you trust it as the basis for your whole reality.
But what makes sense in a limited ego consciousness makes no sense in a greater expanded awareness. And even if you believe that you know all there is to know or are aware of all there is to be aware of, both within you and without you, you need to be willing to question that. There IS stuff outside of your conscious awareness, stuff you have denied, stuff you have forgotten, stuff you have deliberately avoided wanting to admit to or allow into awareness.
Even if you see yourself as whole, complete, innocent, truthful, loving and caring, or seeing completely clearly, be assured that if there is something in your unconscious mind - if you have an unconscious mind - your facade of innocence and perfection WILL NOT hold up to the truth. And it will not be capable of stopping bad stuff from happening to you. Being ultra perfect and ultra pure is not going to stop your unconscious separate will from attacking you, and it's not going to keep you safe, and it's not going to prevent you from attacking yourself indirectly.
So if you think you are perfect and your life is still filled with suffering of any kind, you must KNOW that this means you have something outside of your conscious awareness, some way that you are attacking yourself and therefore you need to become willing to question whether your idea of perfection is really sound. There must be some way that you are in denial and there must be some truth you do not want to admit to. There must be some false belief you have which you think is true but which is not. And your sense of identity - of who you even ARE - must be not quite whole or complete or as true as you thought.
It can be difficult to look more deeply for a greater truth, and it can seem at first to be pointless given how much you are convinced you are all of yourself. But you have attempted to get rid of yourself, in a big way. You are Christ, maker of this universe, pretending to be a little suffering self in a body that dies.
There is much more to who you are than you are AWARE of, and that means that there is more to BE aware of than you are aware of right now. And that means it is highly likely you are going to be mistaken and come to false conclusions about what things mean and what sense it makes. It means you will act and respond to "reality" based in false perceptions and will make errors, and these will seem to hurt you against your will. But there is a way out.
The Holy Spirit, maintainer of truth in your mind, protector of your connection to Truth as God, is always with you and is the very truth in which you are recognized as being set free. Even your sin isn't real. Even your self attack isn't happening. And even your real identity has not been lost or changed or damaged. There is much truth that awaits you in which you literally will be set free from all suffering forever. There is no real death. There is no real sin. The Son of God is free.
A little willingness is all it takes to invite the truth into you - to invite Holy Spirit into you. A little willingness to put aside your ego identity and make room for the truth. A little willingness to open up to receiving a truth from beyond your little ego self, which also means receiving love. A little willingness to let go of what you thought was real, what you valued and what you thought was important, based only on false conclusions you came to just because you didn't have all the information.
There is more to your identity and more to your sense of self than you may be currently aware. Even if you think you are the whole of you, there is more to you than this. You are bigger and more magnificent than you realize. And you are far more free from suffering and death than you realize as well. There is no cause for fear because sin is impossible and separation is impossible. There is only cause for gratitude to God, that because of what God is, you can never be anything other than how He Created you.
You are innocent and holy, forgiven because you have done nothing wrong, are immortal and invulnerable, and permanently reside in Heaven as One with your Creator. And all is well.
Learning will be commensurate with motivation, and the interference in your motivation for learning, is EXACTLY the same as that which interferes with ALL your thinking. The happy learner CANNOT FEEL GUILTY ABOUT LEARNING. This is so ESSENTIAL to learning, that it should never be forgotten. The guiltless learner learns so easily, BECAUSE HIS THOUGHTS ARE FREE. But this entails the recognition that GUILT IS INTERFERENCE, NOT SALVATION, and serves NO useful function at all.
You are accustomed to using guiltlessness merely to offset the pain of guilt, and do not look upon it as having value IN ITSELF. You believe that guilt AND guiltlessness are BOTH of value, each representing an ESCAPE from what the other does NOT offer you. You do NOT want either alone, for without both, you do not see YOURSELVES as whole, and therefore happy. You are whole ONLY in your guiltlessness, and only in your guiltlessness, CAN you be happy. There IS no conflict here.
To wish for guilt in ANY way, in ANY form, will lose appreciation of the value of your guiltlessness, and push it from your sight. There is NO compromise that you can make with guilt, and escape from the pain which ONLY guiltlessness allays. Learning is living here, as creating is Being in Heaven. Whenever the pain of guilt seems to ATTRACT you, remember that, if you yield to it, you are deciding AGAINST your happiness, and will NOT learn how to be happy. Say, therefore, to yourself, gently, but with the conviction born of the love of God and of His Son:
What I experience I will make manifest.
If I am guiltless, I have nothing to fear.
I choose to testify to my ACCEPTANCE of the Atonement,
NOT FOR ITS REJECTION.
I would accept my guiltlessness by making it manifest,
and SHARING it.
Let me bring peace to God's Son from his Father.
Each day, each hour and minute, - even each second, - you are deciding between the crucifixion and the Resurrection; between the ego and the Holy Spirit. The ego is the choice for guilt, the Holy Spirit the decision for blamelessness. The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives, EXCEPT truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled, and CANNOT both be true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy.
The miracle teaches you that you have chosen guiltlessness, freedom, and joy. It is not a cause, but an EFFECT. It is the natural result of CHOOSING RIGHT, attesting to your happiness that comes from choosing to be FREE of guilt. Everyone you offer healing TO, returns it. Everyone you attack, KEEPS it and cherishes it, by holding it AGAINST you. Whether he DOES this, or does it not, will make no difference. YOU WILL THINK HE DOES. It is impossible to offer WHAT YOU DO NOT WANT, without this penalty. The cost of giving IS receiving. Either it is a penalty from which you suffer, or the happy purchase of a treasure to hold dear.
No penalty is ever asked of God's Son, except BY himself and OF himself. Every chance given to him to heal, is another opportunity to replace darkness with light, and fear with love. If he refuses it, he binds himself TO darkness because he did not choose to free his brother, and enter light WITH him. By GIVING power to nothing, he threw away the joyous opportunity to learn that nothing HAS no power. And, by NOT DISPELLING, darkness, HE became afraid of darkness AND of light. The joy of learning darkness has no power over the Son of God, is the happy lesson the Holy Spirit teaches, and would have YOU teach WITH Him. It is HIS joy to teach it, as it will be YOURS.
The way to teach this simple lesson is merely this; guiltlessness IS invulnerability. Therefore, make your INVULNERABILITY manifest to everyone, and teach him that, WHATEVER he may try to do to you, your perfect freedom from the belief that you can BE harmed, shows him HE is guiltless. He can do NOTHING that can hurt you, and by refusing to allow him to THINK HE CAN, you teach him that the Atonement, which you have accepted for yourself, IS ALSO HIS. THERE IS NOTHING TO FORGIVE. No-one can hurt the Son of God. His guilt is WHOLLY without cause, and, being without cause, CANNOT exist.
God is the ONLY Cause, and guilt is NOT of Him. Teach no-one he has hurt you, for, if you do, you teach YOURSELF that what is NOT of God, HAS POWER OVER YOU. THE CAUSELESS CANNOT BE. Do not attest to it, and do not foster belief in it in any mind. Remember always MIND IS ONE, and CAUSE IS ONE. You will learn communication with this Oneness ONLY when you learn to DENY the causeless, and accept the Cause of God as YOURS. The power that God has given to His Son IS his, and nothing else can His Son see, or choose to look upon, without imposing on HIMSELF the penalty of guilt, IN PLACE of all the happy teaching the Holy Spirit would gladly offer him.
Whenever you decide to make decisions FOR YOURSELF, you are thinking self-destructively, and the decision WILL BE WRONG. It will hurt you, because of the CONCEPT of decision which led to it. It is not true that you can make decisions BY yourself, or FOR yourself alone. No thought of God's Son CAN be separate, or isolated in its effects. Every decision is made for the WHOLE SONSHIP, directed in and out, and influencing a constellation larger than anything you ever dreamed of. Those who accept Atonement, ARE invulnerable. But those who believe they are guilty, WILL respond to guilt, because THEY THINK IT IS SALVATION, and will NOT refuse to see it, and side WITH it. They BELIEVE that INCREASING guilt is self-PROTECTION. And they fail to understand the simple fact that, what they do NOT want, MUST hurt them.
All this arises because they do NOT believe that WHAT THEY WANT IS GOOD. Yet will was given them BECAUSE it is holy, and will bring TO them ALL that they need, coming as naturally as peace that knows no limits. There is NOTHING their wills will not provide, that offers them ANYTHING of value. But, because they do NOT understand their will, the Holy Spirit quietly understands if FOR them, and gives them what THEY will, without effort, strain, or the impossible burden of deciding WHAT THEY WANT AND NEED ALONE. It will never happen that you will have to make decisions FOR YOURSELF. You are NOT bereft of help, and HELP THAT KNOWS THE ANSWER. Would you be content with little, which is all that YOU ALONE can offer yourself, when He Who GIVES YOU EVERYTHING will simply OFFER it TO you?
He will never ask what you have done to make you worthy of the gift of God. Ask it not therefore of yourselves. Instead, accept His answer, for He KNOWS you are worthy of everything God wills FOR you. Do not try to escape the gift of God, which He so freely, and so gladly offers you. He offers you but what God gave Him FOR you. You need NOT decide whether or not you are DESERVING of it. GOD KNOWS THAT YOU ARE. Would you deny the truth of GOD'S decision, and place your pitiful appraisal of yourself, in place of His calm and unswerving value of His Son? NOTHING can shake God's conviction of the perfect purity of everything that He created, for it IS wholly pure. Do not decide AGAINST it, for being of Him it MUST be true.
Peace abides in every mind that quietly accepts the plan that GOD has set for his Atonement, RELINQUISHING HIS OWN. You know NOT of Salvation, for you do NOT understand it. Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it. Every decision you undertake alone but signifies that you would define what Salvation is, and what you would be saved FROM. The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend.
He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. WITHOUT His guidance, you will think you know alone, and will decide AGAINST your peace, as surely as you made the wrong decision in ever thinking that Salvation lay in you alone. Salvation is of Him to Whom God GAVE it FOR you. He has not forgotten it. Forget HIM not, and He will make EVERY decision for you, for YOUR Salvation and the peace of God in you.
Seek not to appraise the worth of God's Son, whom He created holy, for to do so is TO EVALUATE HIS FATHER, and judge AGAINST Him. And you WILL feel guilty for this imagined "crime," which no one in this world, or Heaven, CAN POSSIBLY commit. God's Spirit teaches only that the "sin" of SELF replacement on the throne of God is NOT a source of guilt. What CANNOT happen, can have no effects to fear. Be quiet in your faith in Him, Who loves you, and would lead you out of insanity. Madness may be your CHOICE, but NOT your reality. Never forget the Love of God, Who HAS remembered you. For it is quite impossible that He could ever let His Son drop from His loving Mind, wherein he was created, and where his abode was fixed in perfect peace forever.
Say to the Holy Spirit only, "Decide for me," and it is done. For His decisions are reflections of WHAT GOD KNOWS ABOUT YOU, and in this light, error of ANY kind becomes impossible. Why would you struggle so frantically to anticipate all that you CANNOT know, when ALL knowledge lies behind EVERY decision that the Holy Spirit makes FOR YOU? Learn of His wisdom and His love, and teach His answer to everyone who struggles in the dark. For you decide for THEM AND for yourself. How gracious is it to decide all things through Him, Whose equal love is given equally to all alike. He leaves you no one OUTSIDE yourself, alone WITHOUT you. And so He gives you what is yours, because your Father would have you share it WITH him.
In everything be led by Him, and do not reconsider. Trust Him to answer quickly, surely, and with love for everyone who will be touched, in any way by the decision. And EVERYONE will be. Would you take unto yourself the sole responsibility for deciding what can bring ONLY good to everyone? Would you KNOW this? You taught YOURSELVES the most unnatural habit of NOT communicating with your Creator. Yet you remain in close communication with Him, and with everything that is within Him, as it is within YOURSELF. UNlearn isolation through His loving guidance, and learn of all the happy communication that you have thrown away, but could NOT lose.
Whenever you are in doubt what you should do, think of His Presence in you, and tell yourself this, and ONLY this: "He leadeth me, and knows the way, which I know not. Yet He will never KEEP from me what He would have me LEARN. And so I trust Him to communicate to me all that He knows FOR me." Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there.
Bill has asked lately how the mind could ever have made the ego. This is a perfectly reasonable question; in fact, the best question either of you could ask. There is no point in giving an historical answer, because the past does not matter in human terms, and history would not exist if the same errors were not being repeated in the present. Bill has often told you that your thinking is too abstract at times, and he is right. Abstraction DOES apply to knowledge, because knowledge is completely impersonal, and examples are irrelevant to its understanding. Perception, however, is always specific, and therefore quite concrete.
Perceptual distortions are not abstractions. They are merely confusions. 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. Their interaction IS a process which literally alters both, because they were not made either BY or WITH the unalterable.
It is particularly important to realize that this alteration can and does occur as readily when the interaction takes place IN THE MIND as when it involves physical presence. THINKING about another ego is as effective in changing relative perception as is their physical interaction. There could be no better example of the fact that the ego is an idea, though not a reality-based thought. Your own present state is the best concrete example Bill could have of how the mind could have made the ego. You DO have real knowledge at times, but when you throw it away it is as if you never had it. This willfulness is so apparent that Bill need only perceive it to see that is DOES happen. If it can occur that way in the present, why should he be surprised that it occurred that way in the past? All psychology rests on the principle of continuity of behavior. Surprise is a reasonable response to the unfamiliar, but hardly to something that has occurred with such persistence.
An extreme example is a good teaching aid, not because it is typical, but because it is clear. The more complex the material, the clearer the examples should be for teaching purposes. (Bill, remember that for your own course, and do not avoid the dramatic. It holds the student's interest precisely because it is so apparent that it CAN be readily perceived.) But, as we have said before, all teaching devices in the hands of good teachers are aimed at rendering themselves unnecessary. I would therefore like to use your present state as an example of how the mind can work, provided you both fully recognize that it need not work that way. I NEVER forget this myself, and a good teacher shares his own ideas, which he himself believes. Otherwise, he cannot really "profess" them, as we used the term before.
With full recognition of its transitory nature, (a recognition which I hope you both share), Helen offers a very good teaching example of alternations between Soul and ego, with concomitant variation between peace and frenzy. In answer to Bill's question, it is perfectly apparent that when she is ego-dominated, she DOES NOT KNOW her Soul. Her abstract ability, which is perfectly genuine and does stem from knowledge, cannot help her because she has turned to the concrete which she cannot handle abstractly. Being incapable of appropriate concreteness perceptually, because her ego is not her natural home, she suffers from its intrusions, but NOT from complete lack of knowledge.
The result is a kind of "double vision", which would have produced an actual diplopia, if she had not settled for nearsightedness. This was an attempt to see the concrete more clearly through the ego's eyes, without the "interference" of the longer range. Her virtual lack of astigmatism is due to her real efforts at objectivity and fairness. She has not attained them, or she would not be nearsighted. But she HAS tried to be fair with what she permitted herself to see.
Why are you surprised that something happened in the dim past, when it is so clearly happening right now? You forget the love that even animals have for their own offspring, and the need they feel to protect them. This is because they regard them as part of themselves. No one disowns something he regards as a very real part of himself. Man reacts to his ego much as God does to His Souls, -- with love, protection, and great charity. The reaction of man to the self he made is not at all surprising. In fact, it duplicates in many ways the way he will one day react to his real creations, which are as timeless as he is.
The question is not HOW man responds toward his ego, but only what he believes he IS. Again, belief is an ego-function, and as long as your origin is open to belief at all, you ARE regarding it from an ego viewpoint. That is why the Bible quotes me as saying, "Ye believe in God, believe also in me." Belief DOES apply to me, because I am the teacher of the ego. When teaching is no longer necessary, you will merely know God.
Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self. Helen always had this idea, but it merely confused her. Bill, you were more capable of a long-range view, and that is why your eyesight is good. But you were willing to see because you utilized judgment against what you saw. This gave you clearer perception than Helen's, but cut off the cognitive level more deeply. That is why you believe that you never had knowledge.
Repression HAS been a stronger mechanism in your own ego defense, and that is why you find her shifts so hard to tolerate. Willfulness is more characteristic of her, and that is why she has less sense than you do. It is extremely fortunate, temporarily, that the particular strengths you will both develop and use are precisely those which the other must supply now. You who will be the strength of God are quite weak, and you who will be God's help are clearly in need of help. What better plan could have been devised to prevent the intrusion of the ego's arrogance on the outcome?
Undermining the foundation of an ego's thought-system MUST be perceived as painful, even though this is anything but true. Babies scream in rage if you take away a knife or a scissors, even though they may well harm themselves if you do not. The speedup has placed you both in the same position.
You are NOT by any means prepared, and in this sense you ARE babies. You have no sense of real self-preservation and are very likely to decide that you need precisely what would hurt you most. Whether you know it now or not, however, you both HAVE willed to cooperate in a concerted and very commendable effort to become both harmLESS and helpFUL, two attributes which MUST go together. Your attitudes, even toward this, are necessarily conflicted, because ALL attitudes are ego-based.
This will not last. Be patient awhile, and remember what we have said once before; the outcome is as certain as God! Helen used to perceive the quotation "To him that hath shall be given" as a paradox that bordered on the ironic. She also had a similar reaction to another related one: "Faith is the gift of God." We have re-interpreted both of these statements before, but perhaps we can make them even clearer now.
Only those who have a real and lasting sense of abundance can be truly charitable. This is quite obvious when you consider the concepts involved. To be able to give anything implies that you can do without it. Even if you associate giving with sacrifice, you still give only because you believe you are somehow getting something better so that you can do without the thing you give.
"Giving to get" is an inescapable law of the ego, which ALWAYS evaluates itself in relation to others' egos, and is therefore continually preoccupied with the scarcity principle which gave rise to it. This IS the meaning of Freud's "pleasure principle." Freud was the most accurate "ego psychologist" we ever had, although he would not have preferred this description himself. His ego was a very weak and deprived concept, which could function ONLY as a thing in need.
The "reality principle" of the ego is not real at all. It is forced to perceive the "reality" of other egos, because it CANNOT establish the reality of itself. In fact, its whole perception of other egos AS real is ONLY an attempt to convince itself that IT is real.
"Self esteem," in ego terms, means nothing more than that the ego has deluded itself into accepting its reality and is therefore temporarily less predatory. This "self esteem" is ALWAYS vulnerable to stress, a term which really means that a condition has arisen in which the delusion of reality of the ego is threatened. This produces either ego-deflation or ego-inflation, resulting in either withdrawal or attack. The ego literally lives by comparisons. This means that equality is beyond its grasp, and charity becomes impossible.
The ego NEVER gives out of abundance, because it was made as a SUBSTITUTE for it. This is why the concept of GETTING arose in the ego's thought-system. All appetites are "getting" mechanisms representing ego needs to confirm itself. This is as true of bodily appetites as it is of the so-called "higher" ego needs. Bodily appetites are NOT physical in origin, because the ego regards the body as its home, and DOES try to satisfy itself through the body. But the IDEA that this is possible is a decision of the ego, which is completely confused about what is really possible. This accounts for its essential erraticness.
Consider the inevitable confusion which MUST arise from a perception of the self which responds: When I was completely on my own I "had no idea what was possible."The ego DOES believe it is completely on its own, which is merely another way of describing how it originated. This is such a fearful state that it can only turn to other egos, and unite with them in a feeble attempt at identification, or attack them in an equally feeble show of strength. The ego is free to complete the stem: "When I was completely on my own" in any way it chooses, but it is NOT free to consider the validity of the premise itself, because this premise is its FOUNDATION. The ego IS the belief of the mind that it is completely on its own.
The ego's ceaseless attempts to gain the Soul's acknowledgement and thus establish its own existence are utterly useless. The Soul in its knowledge is unaware of the ego. It does NOT attack the ego. It merely cannot conceive of it at all. While the ego is equally unaware of the Soul, it DOES perceive itself as rejected by something which is greater than itself. This is why self-esteem in ego terms MUST be a delusion.
The creations of God do not create myths, but the creative efforts of man can turn to mythology, but only under one condition. What man then makes is no longer creative. Myths are entirely perceptions and are so ambivalent in form, and so characteristically good and evil in nature that the most benevolent of them is not without fearful components, if only in innuendo. Myths and magic are closely associated, in that myths are usually related to the ego origins, and magic to the powers which the ego ascribes to itself. Every mythological system includes an account of "the creation," and associates this with its particular perception of magic.
The "battle for survival" is nothing more than the ego's struggle to preserve itself and its interpretation of its own beginning. This beginning is always associated with physical birth, because nobody maintains that the ego existed before that point in time. The religiously ego-oriented tend to believe that the Soul existed before, and will continue to exist afterwards, after a temporary lapse into ego-life. Some actually believe that the Soul will be punished for this lapse, even though in reality it could not possibly know anything about it.
The term "salvation" does NOT apply to the Soul, which is not in danger and does not need to be salvaged. Salvation is nothing more that "right-mindedness" which is NOT the one-mindedness of the Soul, but which must be accomplished before one-mindedness can be restored. Right-mindedness dictates the next step automatically, because right perception is uniformly without attack, so that wrong-mindedness is obliterated. The ego cannot survive without judgment, and is laid aside accordingly. The mind then has only ONE direction in which it can move.
The directions which the mind will take are always automatic, because they cannot BUT be dictated by the thought-system to which it adheres. Every thought-system has INTERNAL consistency, and this does provide a basis for the continuity of behavior. However, this is still reliability and NOT validity. Reliable behavior is a meaningful perception, as far as ego thinking goes. However, VALID behavior is an expression which is inherently contradictory, because validity is an END, and behavior is a MEANS. These cannot be combined logically, because when an end has been attained, the means for its attainment are no longer meaningful.
Test constructors recognize that there are different kinds of validity, and also that they are of different orders. This means that they do not mean truth and do not pretend to mean it. Test validity can be judged by logic, by theory, and by practice, each being regarded as a different dimension. In each case, the amount of confidence is expressed in some form of percentage, either quantitatively, or merely in terms of "high," moderate, and low. But a hypothesis is tested as either true or false, to be accepted or rejected accordingly. If it is shown to be true it becomes a fact, after which no one attempts to evaluate it unless its status AS fact is questioned.
EVERY idea which the ego has accorded the status of fact is questionable, because facts are in the realm of knowledge. Confusing realms of discourse is a thinking error which philosophers have recognized for centuries. Psychologists are generally quite deficient in this respect, as are many theologians. Data from one realm of discourse do not mean anything in another, because they can be understood only WITHIN the thought-systems of which they are a part. This is why psychologists are concentrating increasingly on the ego, in an attempt to unify their clearly unrelated data. It need hardly be said that an attempt to relate the unrelated cannot succeed.
The recent ecological emphasis is but a more ingenious way of trying to impose order on chaos. We have already credited the ego with considerable ingenuity, though not with creativeness. But it should always be remembered that inventiveness is really wasted effort, even in its most ingenious forms. We do not have to EXPLAIN anything. This is why we need not trouble ourselves with inventiveness. The highly specific nature of invention is not worthy of the abstract creativity of God's Creations.