In recognition that we are already perfect and were created perfect, it iapparent that we only need to remember and accept that perfection is ALREADY TRUE OF US, in order to awaken.

And so I asked Jesus, what about this entire journey into the dream and all the things we seem to have to LEARN? Is there anything to learn? I expected Him to say yes. He said:

No.

There is nothing to learn. The purpose of being in the world isn't to ACCUMULATE LEARNING. It is simply to RETURN TO the perfection you ALREADY ARE. What can you possibly ADD to Heaven's perfection? What can learning of the ego possibly add unto you who are already whole and complete?

We are simply "learning to" disregard what we have learned in error, to FORGET what we thought was true, and to REMEMBER that NOTHING HAS HAPPENED, NOTHING HAS CHANGED, YOU ARE STILL AS GOD CREATED YOU!

In that recognition is the acceptance of the atonement, that your soul is ALREADY COMPLETE and has no needs and no spiritual path and all of this other stuff.... it's just a delaying maneuver to avoid admitting to it.

It's a journey without distance back to where you never left, to remember that you already had what you were always searching for, and merely needed to acknowledge it.

A few years ago, my wife was diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery.

At the time, this seemed like a big threat. This is because I believed in the hierarchy of illusions, and so it seems like a big dangerous threatening problem.

My initial reaction to the news was actually that I almost fainted and had a panic attack. The perception that this was a serious external threat produced a lot of fear.

During the time at the hospital when she was having surgery, I felt very afraid. It took longer than expected which didn't help, and I felt very nervous about whether she was even going to make it through the surgery in one piece.

My mind started to become flooded with ego fear thoughts. I of course tried to "battle" with these and convince myself that they weren't true or that something else was true, like that she was going to be ok. But it was hard. I prayed fervently and raged at God demanding that He make sure she was ok.

The problem was, I couldn't stop having these fearful thoughts, which were coming in thick and fast. I tried to not think them but couldn't. But then something suddenly occurred to me.

In the midst of the ego "revealing" itself in the open, and showing its viciousness, it inadvertently exposed itself a bit too much. It seemed like it was trying to make me upset on purpose, and some part of me saw this as unnecessary. I realized that the hierarchy of illusions was dictating to me "how much reaction" I should have.

Given the cancer seemed like a big serious external threat, it appeared to correspond that I would have a "big reaction" to that perception. The two went hand in hand. Big problem, big reaction. The moment I saw this, it suddenly dawned on me that I was ONLY having this big insurmountable reaction because the problem seemed so big. And moreso, that I was the one perceiving it to be a big serious problem, causing this fear to erupt.

What this taught me is that I don't HAVE to have the level of reaction that the hierarchy of illusions dictates. I don't HAVE to be severely affected by a severe cause. And that really put my mind into a different perspective, above the battlefield as it were. I had an increase in awareness and started to take steps of forgiveness to see through or not believe that this was a big problem, or that its appearance was the truth. This quickly diminished the presence of the fear thoughts/fear-attack, and the ego quieted down a lot.

She made it through the surgery ok and that was the end of that drama. It was an important lesson. Sometimes you need to be shown the full-on rage of the ego's thought system in order to expose it enough to realize how it is self-defeating. We don't HAVE to have big reactions to ILLUSIONS of big problems. And this is a step towards becoming miracle minded.

I've been starting to read "Life and teaching of the Masters of the far East". It's a collection of books, recounting the stories of travelers who went to the far East and encountered several very spiritually advanced people.

The only other book I've read that's similarly inspiring, or alluding to the potential we have, is Yogananda's autobiography of a Yogi.

In this book, the experiences and explanations that are given are quite eye-opening. If the stories are to be believed, and it's to be expected a lot of people have a hard time accepting it, here is some of what is claimed:

God has a power which He shares fully with us and which we are meant to use, and this power is capable of a) manifesting any object of any kind, b) healing absolutely all sickness, c) overcoming death, d) facilitating the transcendence of space and time for travel, e) being not only immune to but able to control all aspects of events and objects in the physical world, f) being able to materialize and dematerialize the body, g) the instantaneous manifestation of food and money supplied by God meaning you no longer have to rely on any limited resource or sources of objects from others, .... and various other things we'd consider 'miracles'.

Basically, what it's suggesting is, literally, that we are capable of absolutely ANYTHING if/when we join with God. It doesn't just mean that we give up everything and go to God, either, although some people eventually reach such a high position that they never want to leave there, although they can (like Jesus). It means that we can actually 'live forever' joined to an unlimited supply of provision. The people in the book, the masters, are hundreds of years of age, and yet appear to be 30-40 in age, youthful and in perfect health.

These kind of things give me more of a picture of 'whats possible' and clues as to what A Course in Miracles might be saying and meaning.

I realize now that when I read certain things in the Course, even if I THINK I am being absolutely open minded, I am still actually building upon meanings and learning that I had accumulated from before. Even if I think my learning is more open minded than others, it STILL is resting on what I already think I know and that skews the potential meaning. Also I do not know what I don't know... there are things, truths, that I simply am not aware of, and so when I think I am exactly 'getting' what the Course says, maybe I still am not... there could be a context or laws or information outside of my current awareness.

Then when I'm exposed to information like in this series of books, it makes me 'think twice' about what I thought I knew. It's eye opening.

The ego does not exist. It cannot be loved or embraced. It cannot be turned into a friend. It cannot wake up or heal or convert into something spiritual. It is nothing but an artificial idea of impossibility, and as such is impossible. It does not exist, cannot exist, and has no reality. To have a relationship with it is it attempting to have a relationship with itself.

Light dispels darkness. Ego is darkness. Love is light. If you shine your love in the direction of the ego darkness, it simply will disappear, because it does not exist as anything other than the illusion of the absence of love, which is impossible. It's not there. Shadows are not truth, light is truth. And darkness cannot hide the light. You cannot "love your ego" without your love disappearing it.

While it may be a stepping stone to learn not to fight with the ego, since that is the ego fighting itself, and to not resist it, and to not attack the body, and to undo all basis for ego thinking and reactions "to" the ego, this is only so that the ego itself is undone. The ego is already undone, we just are hallucinating that it exists at all. It never existed to begin with.

Eventually we have to look within and be willing to see that not only is there no sin, there is no ego either. There IS no central core of isolation. As the clouds which promised to conceal an underlying artificial identity clear, you discover that there is nothing there. It was not what you expected. There is no ego to go up against or even to really undo. Enlightenment is a recognition and not a change at all.

Holy Spirit knows that the ego does not exist and this does this forgiveness teach:

"T-9.IV.5. Forgiveness that is learned of me does not use fear to undo fear."

(do not use fearfulness or making illusions real in an attempt to relate to or deal with or undo or address the ego at all)

"2 Nor does it make real the unreal and then destroy it."

(do not make the ego a real thing and then attempt to have a relationship with it or deal with it or change it or do anything really about it directly)

"3 Forgiveness through the Holy Spirit lies simply in looking beyond error from the beginning, and thus keeping it unreal for you."

(True forgiveness is fore-giveness, it gives ahead of time. That means, it looks WITH a forgiving attitude, IN ORDER TO ENSURE that it is not mistaken, so that it does not MAKE error or ego, so that there IS no ego or error to have to undo. Only when forgiveness fails do we enter judgement - he who would not forgive must judge - which makes the ego, and so if we simply remain fore-giving the ego does not come into manifestation at all.)

"4 Do not let any belief in its realness enter your mind, or you will also believe that you must undo what you have made in order to be forgiven."

(Pretty straightforward isn't it? If you make the ego real in any way then you will start to fight with it and believe that you have work to do or stuff to fix or whatever, and doing so you will be stuck.)

"5 What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit the effects of error are nonexistent."

(Error does not exist because true forgiveness fore-gives, failing to make errors or perceive erroneously, and therefore RECOGNIZES that there IS no error, therefore there is no ego.)

"6 By steadily and consistently cancelling out all its effects, everywhere and in all respects, He teaches that the ego does not exist and proves it."

(There is no ego, period. Believing there is an ego, is an attempt to make an ego real, which is impossible. Ego is fiction. It's just a useful concept for teaching that it does not exist, and nothing else.)

I think this runs somewhat against the expectations of many ACIM students, but at the physical and personality level we are all considerably different. No two bodies are identical. There are many many sub-types of human bodies, brains, nervous systems, outlooks, orientations, races, gender identities, etc. We are not all the same in terms of human bodies, never were, and never will be. Everything physical is, at best, similar, but not equal.

When there comes to be a social "norm" where we think there's a normal way to be, a normal type of person, a normal interaction style, a normal behaviour, a normal way to process information etc, it becomes a way to create a "closet". People start to feel ashamed for being different, ashamed for having difficulties matching up to the expected behaviour.

An obvious example is in the case of gay/queer people whereby, quite literally their bodies and brains are different. A gay person does not have the "wiring" to produce experiences of excitation and attraction to members of the opposite sex, or at least this "ability" is altered and in a different ratio. A trans-sexual person may have a wildly different sense of gender identity compared to their physical biology. There is science to confirm that gay people have different pheromones, different brain structures, different chemistry.

Another example is in terms of the differences between extroverted and introverted people, or those who are highly sensitive compared to those who are not. The extroverted people find release and stress-processing through social connection and external ways to work through things. This totally does not work for an introverted person who needs to go within, withdraw, process deeply and reflect. When either of these become an expected "norm" the other group becomes ashamed and repressed.

It's far better that we realize that on the physical and personality level, the human level, and to a degree in the mind as well since it is influenced by the brain wiring, that we are a collection of highly discordant, highly differentiated "persons". There is not a norm, there is not a standard, there is not a one-size-fits all, there is not a "we are all one" on this level. There is no such thing as physical oneness or physical equality. The idea of making the human race have a "physical oneness" must be completely destroyed. Oneness only works in the mind, not the body, and trying to make it work for bodies is insane and backwards.

I've been working with ACIM for over 20 years now and have gone through a lot of healing and transformation. But in spite of this, my body is still largely wired the same way it was years ago. It is still highly sensitive and introverted, my nervous system is still wired to process deeply rather than broadly, I still need down time to catch up with the processing, I still at times am shy and finding it harder to push out expressions and open up emotionally. These are physical traits rooted in how my brain is structured, regardless of my spiritual aspirations at the mind level. I work in abstracts and symbols and metaphors and subtle nuances, which is not true of most people.

You'll notice that as people work on spiritual awakening their body stays much the same. It may heal, it may seem more alive, it may seem healthier or younger, but it still has its accent, it still moves with similar mannerisms, there's still the same collection of language, there's the same eyes and mouth, the same height, the same weight, the same muscles and sense of motion. These things aren't really going to change because they're part of the body. Waking up more doesn't suddenly turn your body into a spiritual thing because it can't be that. It's a body, not a spirit.

Trying to expect bodies to be more spiritual is a spiritualisation of the physical, which is a form of level confusion. The physical can't be spiritual because it is not spirit. Trying to expect human physical persons to shed the wiring and uniqueness and differences that are hardwired into their physical makeup is highly unrealistic. Trying to act spiritual or look spiritual or trying to get the body to stop having its quirks is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible.

I would say that to some degree I have become more understanding of, at peace with, and perhaps a bit more masterful of working WITH the limitations of my physicality, but I wouldn't say that the physical has stopped being the way it always was. My mind has changed and that perhaps means that I now operate the body differently, but it still largely looks similar, moves similar, processes information similarly as before. I still have high sensitivity and am easily overwhelmed with too much input. I still fart and pee and shit and sleep and all that.

I see sometimes that people expect that they're going to turn into a butterfly or something as they work on their spiritual path. Doing workbook lessons for example doing meditations, starts to seem like it's going to cause a persons perception to change so much that they become non-physical. And in other words, that they won't be able to function on the physical level anymore. And yet, there they are, using the same physical body and the same eyes and the same brain to physically perceive the same book which still looks exactly the same with the same physical pages as before. The physical stuff barely changes at all.

So I think it would be healthy for us to acknowledge that we each are working with a distinct, specific, limited, quirky, and DIFFERENT type of physical body to everyone else. And this physical body brings with it unique challenges, unique wiring, unique preferences, unique pros and cons, unique talents and limitations. We're NOT all the same on this level. And it's okay to sort of embrace the way that you are different, the kind of body device you are having to work with, and it's okay to treat "your self" with kindness and acknowledgement even if it does not work for other people.

If your body has needs, if your brain has needs, if certain types of interactions or relationships or environments or people or whatever don't work for you, that's fine. It's likely to do with how your body is wired. Yes you can change some things psychologically but the body itself cannot actually ever be whole, cannot be spiritual, cannot be like as swiss army knife, cannot do all things in all ways with all people and all situations, and does not have every ability that everyone else has.

Letting "yourself" off the hook for it to be okay to be NOT like other people, to have your own path, to go your own way, to do things in your own style, to have your own needs and boundaries, to dislike some things that other people like, to not want to participate in certain things that other people tout as ideal, is totally fine. Most of these "preferences" are totally rooted in how the physical body is made up and how the brain is connected, how the personality is structured and what that makes you feel comfortable with (or not).

We're all working on transcending these limits and things but we shouldn't be in denial that the body has its own very unique persuasion which is not very likely to completely match anyone else on the planet. I like most spiritual people want to 'become' or remember being the perfect soul that God created, my true self, my real self, but I highly highly doubt that this is going to change the nature, shape, color, style, orientation, workings, mannerisms, cycles, or character of my physical body in any significant way.

The body is an encounter suit. It's not you, but it IS a major limit and it does have major differences to other bodies. We can't pretend that's not true at this level. We're trying to rise above it and not identify with it and not use that to keep us from God, but at the same time we also don't want to get into people-pleasing and trying to fit into something that we are not comfortable with. It's okay to be different while you're working on trying to become "all the same" and "one" with everyone in spirit.

I've yet to see a single awakening person whose speaking voice suddenly sounds like it's a whole other person. Same accent, same intonations, same pacing, same emphasis, everything. That's not going to change anytime soon. We are not bodies, but bodies ARE bodies.

For me I am going to just be DIFFERENT, and NOT the same, until I can find a way to transcend the LEVEL of differences and be truly equal in mind and spirit. And I do not expect my body will ever suddenly turn into a rainbow, will not tolerate expectations to fit in with any body-oriented category, and will stick out like a sore thumb until the soreness is healed in my mind.

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

"There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently, Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them as you were before." UrW155L1

"The tendency to invest the physical with non-physical properties. This is essentially magic, and tends more toward anxiety-proneness." UrT1C12

"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. " UrM9A6

"Yet, in the dreaming, has this been reversed, and separate minds are seen as bodies, which ARE separated, and which cannot JOIN." UrT28D2

"For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU. Can you who see yourselves WITHIN a body, know yourself AS AN IDEA? Everything you recognize you identify by EXTERNALS, something OUTSIDE itself. You cannot even think of GOD without a body, or some form you think you recognize. The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you." UrT18I1

"The union of bodies thus becomes the way in which you would KEEP MINDS APART. For bodies cannot forgive. They can do only as the mind directs." UrT15H12

There are two things that you can receive from the world when you are being a victim:

1) It does bad stuff to me

2) It does good stuff to me

Both of these are really the same. They both rely on you being a victim.

This means, you have to perceive that something outside of you has power over you, and can affect and change you.

When you have what we call emotional reactions to things, these so-called reactions are actually the 'effects' that are brought about in you to 'match' the causes that you see outside of you. They are like a mirror reflection or an expected, standard response to that external cause. Because you believe and perceive there to be a cause 'out there', that same belief manifests 'changes' in you to match that perception of yourself, and so you literally redefine and re-mold yourself - your experience - and it feels like hurt emotions.

Perceiving there is an external cause with power to do something to you, regardless of whether the reaction you have is good or bad or happy or sad, is a state of victimhood.

The ego will tell you that only the bad stuff that happens to you is part of your victimhood, and that you should decrease those things.

The ego will also tell you that only the good stuff that happens to you are things that you want, and are not part of your victimhood at all. It tells you that you should in fact try to increase and focus on those things as much as possible.

What that actually means though, being a trap, is that so long as you are focused on and dependent on being 'positively affected' by outside causes, you STILL are firmly and squarely inside a perceptual structure, in which you play the role of victim.

Victim means, perceiving that something separate from you, something outside of you, something you have no connection to, has the power to do something to you, which changes you in some way. Usually we focus on this being 'bad stuff' or 'enemies' or 'unwanted events' or 'things which scare us', but that is only half the story.

So the ego is very clever here to deceive you by saying, if you will focus on decreasing the bad stuff that happens to you, and focus on increasing the good stuff that happens to you, this means you are succeeding and improving and gaining a better life. It is an absolute farce. A total trap. 100% lie. The persona part of the ego is saying, keep the good stuff, but reject the bad stuff, which reinforces the sense of separation between the judgements of good and bad, which intensifies the bad stuff, and diminishes the good stuff. So eventually in your effort to increase good stuff that happens to you, you will in fact increase bad stuff happening to you. Focusing on receiving exclusive 'goodness' automatically generates more badness. Go figure. The trap has been set and many of us constantly fall for it.

As you then become dependent on trying to get good stuff to happen to you, so that you can indirectly be 'caused' to be happy, you don't realize it but you're sealing your own fate. In order to get good stuff to happen to you, and to want good stuff to happen to you more, you must buy into the perception and belief that you are at the effect of the world more. You want to experience even more good stuff affecting you and the only way to do that is to position yourself as even more vulnerable and disempowered. The ultimate good thing that can then happen to you is some kind of sacrificial death or 'going out on a high' or escapism. Or like, being sexually pleasured to the point where you practically die from overstimulation.

You don't want this.

There is another happiness. There is a permanent happiness that you can attain, that has nothing to do with what happens to you. It's a happiness in which you are completely invulnerable and at peace and cannot take anything in the world seriously, because you do not position yourself as at the 'effect' of the world. It means surrendering your attachment to getting good things or making good stuff 'happen to you'. Instead it requires you to honestly realize that that's a victim mentality, and that you need to stop seeing yourself as a victim otherwise eventually you will just be attacked. There is no invulnerability in 'good stuff happening'. There is no peace or protection or security there. It's an ego gamble, that maybe you'll temporarily feel happier and then inevitably lose it.

Permanent happiness comes from relinquishing all NEED for having good things happen to you. Letting go of all DEPENDENCE on the world being 'good' to you. Letting go of all aspects of the victim role, which is a role of the reversal of cause and effect. You don't want to be affected positively by the world. You want to realize YOU are the world, you are the cause, and you cannot be affected.

As ACIM says, pleasure and pain are the same thing. Perhaps now you can see why. Pleasure means you are being affected by causes outside of you, made to feel things, caused to have experiences that you can't control. And this relies on you being a vulnerable victim. And so it's the same thing as pain, it is actually hurting you just as much, but it's in a different form to pain, because that's part of how the ego disguises the illusion of it. Pleasure is really an attack disguised as something you want, while pain is an attack disguised as something you don't want. Neither of them are your natural way to be. And you do not need either of them.

Happiness given by God is given permanently and relies on nothing and no other sources for it to exist. It just is. It is there, permanently, underneath all these other deceptions that say it isn't, which are the very same deceptions that lead you away from true happiness seeking for artificial sources of happiness outside of you. Trying to get something separate from you to make you happy is irresponsible and indirect. You can experience direct happiness from God. It is also a far more magnificent happiness than anything, ANYTHING, that you can experience coming at you from outside of you, as an effect of an external cause.

This is where the Course says, "this world holds nothing that I want". Not even the 'good stuff'.

What do you mean, you're not treating me exactly the way that I expect you to? How dare you! lol

"Respect" is a term that egos love to use. It's supposed to be a sign of treating someone right. But there's more going on than meets the eye.

When someone is in ego, they have a lot of insecurities. They're carrying guilt and shame, living in fear, feeling unworthy of love, etc. They are not treating themselves and others with love.

As a result, the person becomes irresponsible, disowning themselves and their power. They project causality outside themselves and attach it to other people. They then expect other people to be the ones who act responsibly toward them.

This is the same as the ego's form of "forgiveness to destroy", in which others are expected to change while the person stays the same.

Effectively the whole world revolves around the person as the ruler of their kingdom, as though they are sitting on a throne and everyone must worship them. If the inferior external people do not measure up or treat them right, anger and murder become justified.

You'll notice that people who NEED "respect" from others, also become intimidating, aggressive, abusive, threatening and violent. Especially if the respect is not given, as they see it.

Only a victim needs respect. Only an attacker demands respect. Only an unloving and truly "disrespectful" person wants others to respect them.

This idea of respect is completely backwards. It says that everyone else is to blame for your suffering, and its all their fault, they're sinners, and they have to change their wicked ways in order for you to be happy.

If they treat you how you think you want to be treated, you'll consider them "respecting you". But what that means is they are agreeing with your evaluation of yourself as some kind of important special figure.

If they go along with your inflated ego, they are "respecting" it, effectively worshipping it like a God. This triggers the special love. If they don't go along with your control and your dominance and your threat of revenge, out comes the special hate.

An immortal innocent holy son of God does not need the respect of others. It does not matter what other people do in their attempts to "treat" you in any way at all, because you cannot BE "treated". You choose what you experience, not them.

Someone who has taken full responsibility for causing everything they experience, including all of their feelings, cannot be caused by others. Not do they have a lack of love, or a need to coerce others into giving it to them.

A self-loving person doesn't become a terrorist, or an intimidator, or a crime boss, or a ruler over people, or a dictator, or a tyrant, or any kind of threatening person who DEMANDS that others AGREE with their evaluation of themselves.

You would actually be doing a service to someone who believes something FALSE about themselves, such as that they don't deserve love, and instead giving them that love.

Giving love is the higher "form" of true respect, but isn't there as some kind of idol worship. It's an agreement as to the true higher nature of a person in spirit, rather than pandering to their ego.

Yes we all want to be "respected" or at least "not attacked", preferably. But this is only a short-term goal. In the big picture we should be working towards NOT NEEDING people to treat us a certain way. We are supposed to meet whatever happens with forgiveness, not revenge.

Yes, sure, let's all be "reasonably respectful" to each other.. as in, how about let's not be trying to murder each other. But at the same time, we have to be careful not to believe that this "treatment" of people is there in order to appease their egos. It's not TRULY respectful of a person to insinuate that they need to be treated a certain way in order to avoid them being "hurt".

We are immortal beings who ultimately cannot be hurt, cannot be upset, cannot be offended, cannot be terrorized, cannot be attacked and cannot be destroyed. This has to be central and foremost in our view of ourselves and others. Recognizing this in others is the only sign of true respect and love.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF. No matter what the form of the attack, this STILL is true. Whoever takes the role of enemy and of attacker, STILL is this the truth. Whatever seems to be the cause of any pain and suffering you feel, this is STILL true. For you would not react at all to figures in a dream you knew that YOU were dreaming. Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes." UrT27I10

"We have emphasized that the miracle, or the EXPRESSION of Atonement, is always a sign of real respect from the worthy TO the worthy. This worth IS re-established by the Atonement." UrT2E3

"An Elder Brother is entitled to respect for his greater experience, and a reasonable amount of obedience for his greater wisdom. He is also entitled to love, because he is a brother, and also to devotion, if he is devoted. It is only my own devotion that entitles me to yours. But you will notice that I have knelt at your altar as readily as I would ever have you kneel at mine." UrT1B40X

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. As you perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness." UrW190L5

The idea that the world is just a dream, may sound very simple. But to fully and completely embrace it is a very tall order. If the world is just a dream, it changes your ENTIRE relationship to everything, to all people and object and events and places. Every single happening is framed differently, every interaction has a different meaning, and every piece of physical matter is up for question.

To accept this idea intellectually is very easy. It makes a lot of sense. If you can see the logic behind it, that we made this world as an opposite to God, and is therefore not real, you can accept that as making sense.

But to live it, to deep dive into it, to apply it everywhere and at all times, to remember it in the midsts of all happenings, to use it in all relationships, and to completely uproot all previous beliefs is long term challenge.

For me, the seemingly logical and clear conclusion that the world is not real, has become so refined and polished that I can see nothing to contradict it. Like, it makes total sense on paper. However, I still have a vast repository of "other beliefs" which have been convinced otherwise over time.

Beliefs in bodies being real. Beliefs in being a body. Beliefs in other people being bodies. Beliefs in events happening. Beliefs in seriousness and importance. Beliefs in value and priorities and hierarchies of difficulty. Beliefs in justified reactions and ego emotions and normality and human nature. All of those things scream that the world is real.

So what I find is that although I understand it in theory, my mind and beliefs still are quite uncertain about this idea. I go towards it a little more only to find other beliefs springing up into awareness saying, "but what about....". And every SINGLE one of those beliefs is rooted in the belief that the world is reality. The basic opposite premise of the dream. Each one of them signals and testifies that this is not just a dream.

So the mind then finds itself pulled in two directions. One direction pulls toward the seemingly glowing new "idea" or light, that it's true the world is just a dream and nothing is happening and no-one has ever sinned. And the other direction pulls towards the old worn out darkness of nightmares and hell, that there is sin everywhere and no hope for salvation.

"Some of your greatest advances YOU have judged as failures, and some of your deepest retreats YOU have evaluated as success."

"If you want to be different, I will wait until you change your mind. I can teach you, but only you can choose to listen to my teaching."

I will go towards the light of the truth, and the ego mind will go into doubt, which is fear. It will say, but what about this, and what about that.... there will be an uncertainty and a "not sure about this" and a "can this really be true?". There is a DIS-BELIEF.

"Ultimately, space is as meaningless as time. Both are merely beliefs. The real purpose of this world is to use it to correct your unbelief."

And the fact is that EVERY single opposition to the truth has to be uprooted and corrected and dispelled in order to have NO OBJECTIONS to accepting the atonement. If there is even a slight reason why you might not trust the truth, or suspect that it is false, or have a slight confusion about whether it is true or false, then you will not whole-heartedly accept the salvation it offers. Atonement can only be fully accepted through TOTAL willingness and certainty.

So I keep "naturally" checking and re-checking, looking at what the course says, reminding myself of its facts, re-considering the possibility that I might be mistaken about this new idea. I can't help but be "open minded" about the possibility that it is WRONG, because my ego already believes it is wrong and this pulls me into entertaining its possibility. And until I am wholly certain of its truth, which has to run VERY deeply and fully, this will keep happening.

"Until this distinction is made, however, the vacillations between free and imprisoned will cannot but continue."

These vacillations are to be expected for anyone who is attempting to awaken from the dream. If the world IS a dream and we have been believing it is NOT a dream, but a reality, then our entire way of believing and thinking and perceiving is going to have to go through a 180-degree transformation. Or as Jesus puts it, the upside-down thought system has to be turned right-side up, and that means nothing short of a complete reversal of your thought system and "world view".

Reversing your thought system WILL entail nothing less than realizing that everything you thought was what you did NOT want, you want. Everything you thought was evil, is good. Everything you thought was good, is evil. And all ego beliefs which claim a lie are actually claiming something else. It requires a tremendous sorting out of what is TRUE and what is FALSE, and in this endeavor you WILL be mistaken throughout the process. Which is why it requires a little willingness to consider the possibility that something else might be true, beyond what you currently believe.

I approach and I retreat. I get closer to accepting and then the ego fear pops up. I use the confusion as an opportunity to find more clarity, and then advance forward again. Each time becoming a little and more convinced, not just in theory but in practice, in direct experience, of the world's unreality. Because if what ACIM says is true, then "awareness of dreaming" and "the body is a dream" must become my new reality, before I can go home to God.

One thing is for sure, the road home to God is winding with spluttering false starts and lurches and gradual progress."I can but choose to wander off a while, and then return. Your loving Voice will always call me back, and guide my feet aright.""He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again."

"Let us return the dream he gave away unto the dreamer, who perceives the dream"

"The Second Coming is merely the return of sense."

This will fly against everything the ego believes, because the ego says that people are supposed to suffer. That guilt is justified. That punishment is needed. That somehow you are breaking the law if you help someone. Surely it's not possible to actually heal another person? To affect their mind? To undo their level confusion? To reverse their mental illness? To remove their blocks to love? Surely it is completely impossible to WAKE SOMEONE UP FOR THEM?!

Well.... think again.

There is a component of free will, in that if someone truly does not want something, they cannot receive it. These barriers are erected in their minds in the form of denial, shutting out love and making them suffer. If this resistance is strong enough, not even the most advanced healer can help and has to wait patiently until they are ready and willing.

"Love does not enter where it is not welcome."

This leads to the fact that at least SOME willingness is needed in order to work around the issue of free will. The person has to in some regard want to participate in recovery, otherwise they will reject all help. And naturally it would be unkind to force them to heal against their will. This is why "a little willingness" is essential. But it does only need to be little. Some willingness is not total unwillingness.

Once willingness is in play, the person has some degree of "belief" in healing. It now becomes possible to help them. And this is where the ego's laws begin to be violated. This is where it starts to become possible to actually lift someone up FOR them.

This is why Jesus says that you should not attempt to use to FORCE someone to BELIEVE, ie to be willing. Miracles should not be used coercively. Doing that would be to use miracles as "spectacles to induce belief." The recipient of miracles has to ALREADY believe, to some degree, so that the miracle helps and isn't a form of manipulation.

"The use of miracles as a spectacle ***to INDUCE belief*** is wrong. They are really used for and by believers. "

Once someone is willing to receive help, it's a whole new ballgame. This is where it becomes possible to actually heal other people. Jesus says the light in your mind is so powerful it can shine into another mind and heal it, just as His can. The Holy Spirit has also been created to Help and to Heal. If it were not POSSIBLE to help anyone who is at least partly unwilling to love, help would be impossible, and everyone would be left to their own devices, ie stuck in hell.

Similarly it is possible for one child of God to heal another, causing that person to be lifted up, corrected, healed, forgiven. It is possible to undo their level confusion. It is possible to remove blocks to awareness. It is possible to change their beliefs. It is possible to alter their perception. And it is possible to heal their bodies as well.

In effect, the ego sees this as "cheating". It's cheating because it makes it possible to get children of God to return home SOONER than expected. It's cheating because people are supposed to suffer and go through long drawn out periods of hell which they justly deserve. It's cheating because the ego has no forgiveness and wants to keep everyone stuck and unhappy forever

It reasons, surely it's not possible to do ANYTHING to another person? Surely YOU cannot AFFECT someone else? If everyone has free will, how is it possible? It's possible when they USE their free will to be open to help. And by being open to help, from heaven or from you, it becomes possible now to BYPASS the ego's laws of required suffering and SHORTEN the suffering of others.

In fact, if you look at this, it means that we all in fact can help each other to wake up sooner. It is NOT God's will that we suffer, and God would have us come home as soon as possible. As each of us HELPS one another, we actually accelerate the "celestial speedup" and bring atonement closer sooner. Jesus says that your mind can ENLIGHTEN another mind. If that mind were willing to receive it, atonement can be shared and GIVEN by another, in accord with their free will.

What we're doing here, in time, is we're breaking all the ego's laws of required suffering, and its long drawn out dirge of death, and actually HAVING AN INFLUENCE on how long it is until the atonement plan is complete. We actually have the power to help our bothers to wake up, be happy, be healed, be whole, be free and resume their function. Not merely through some hands-off means like writing a book for them to read, although that is one method. But through DIRECT HEALING ACTION upon their mind.

You literally have the power to heal other people. "The power to work miracles belongs to you." "It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive." "Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

sThe world in itself is altogether intolerable. It was designed to be a place of limitations and difficulties and problems.

As Jesus says,"Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

That means you can't really expect the world to stop having problems, making things go wrong, being utterly awkward and stupid.

But what you can do is change your attitude.

All your suffering comes from believing that the world SHOULD NOT have problems, that it should work, that perfection is possible, that things will always go well, that every problem has a solution, that you can gain everthinge you want without losing it, and that the world has something truly valuable to offer.

If you believe that, you will be up shit creek, because the world CANNOT function that way. It's not capable of acting like heaven because it was made to be heaven's opposite in EVERY way imaginable. If you want it to function OTHER than how it DOES function, you will fight with it and be at war with it and hate it.

It was designed to be difficult, riddled with problems, totally contradictory, and hard to deal with. It was designed so that all choices are choices for partial things, and never can you get the whole from anything. It was designed to fail and be broken and lacking and special. It was NOT designed to be sane or to have order or to function benevolently. It was meant to be cruel and vicious and malicious and murderous. So let it be that.

If you can accept that the world is completely broken and ridiculously beyond all hope of improvement, then you're onto something. Because now your attitude is not BASED ON the world and not playing by its rules. You are under no laws but God's. You are not dealing with the world on the world's terms, you're transcending its terms.

If you can accept that the world is a completely stupid pile of shit that would be better of flushed down the cosmic toilet, then you'll be better off. Because then you'll allow and RECOGNIZE that it is like this, and not deceive yourself. It's only when you DENY that it is like that that you suffer, because then you are going against its grain and are in conflict with it.

Everything it is made to tempt you into suffering, to believe in death, and become disappointed. But only if you thought that the world would NOT be like this. If you are deceived into thinking that you can have it all, succeed, stop the problems, make everything work right, or prevent everything from dying, then you're going to be VERY upset when it constantly works against you. The world WILL have it's way, and it will fuck you over.

It will then seem that the world is against you because your demand for what you want the world to be like is against the world's nature. And so really you are against yourself. Strangely and paradoxically, if you can let the world be utterly shit and BE OKAY WITH THAT, without resisting it or hating it, without condeming it with sin or judgement, then you can let it be only what it is.

And then even though it is not heaven and is not of God, and continues to completely fuck up at every opportunity, you can now laugh at these mistakes and shortcomings, you can overlook them in forgiveness, you can not let them disturb or disappoint you, and you can therefore transcend them in peace. As Jesus said, you are not then trying to "escape from problems here", but you are instead seeing those problems with a more forgiving view.

The more forgiving view is to recognize that the world was MADE TO be a place of suffering and bullshit and conflict. It functions on the basis of separation. It was projected out from the insane ego mind, made by minds driven mad by guilt. It is not meant to WORK. But because it was designed BY something other than itself, it is NOT really responsible for its shortcomings. It can only be what it has been designed to be, and in that light you CAN FORGIVE IT, because it is not the cause of its own limitations.

The way out then isn't to try to stop the world from being the way it is, it's allowing it to be the way it is to that you are not caught up in fighting against it. Resistance is futile, and all it does is bind you to the world. When you drop the resistance you drop the attachment, and then you are free from the world. The world is not then disappointing you, if you never expected it to work out well. The world is not then doing something horrible that it shouldn't be doing, because that's all it CAN do. And you can just recognize its corrupt and inadequate nature and have pity on it for its inability to work any other way. And in that lack of sin you are set free.

Let the world burn, and be happy. A world that truly works and has order and peace and wholeness and where you can get everything you want without loss and receive perfection and have no problems, is not this world. It is the Kingdom of God, which God created as your true home, beyond this realm of nonsense and impossibilities. Let the impossible be impossible, so that possibility can be possible. Let the world "world" itself to death, while you by passerby and laugh at its unimportance.

"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."

We may not think that people are trying to destroy themselves. People can seem relatively happy, fairly sane, living a seemingly active life, enjoying success in their career, raising families and so on. But the fact of what is happening in the big picture is still there.

God's Kingdom is the realm of creation, of the constructive use of the power of the mind. It is there that life is wholeheartedly supported and sustained eternally. Any degree of suffering or sickness is completely impossible. Everyone enjoys perfection and eternal life and immortality.

But in the separation, all who participated in it did reject the Kingdom, and thus rejected immortality and perfection. This rejection of God was a rejection of life, a rejection of innocence, and a rejection of existence. It thus led to a death wish, or a desire to not create. The opposite of creation is destruction, and it was the destruction of God and Self that was the aim.

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

"The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"This is a dream of death."

And so we entered into dreaming, in which all dreams are based in the rejection of creation and life. And so all dreams are dreams of death. And the physical universe is a system of death. All its laws are based on death, and all its roads lead to death.

We seem to have a seeming escape for a while, a kind of in-between state where we have a "life", before we die. But this is still essentially a period of dying. And it still leads to the grave, which is something we can deny and avoid but this denial doesn't stop it happening.

Nevertheless, this all only happens as a result of choosing death, ie choosing the opposite of creation. Choosing to not be with God. Which means choosing self destruction.

So if you are willing to look, you'll notice that everyone who is here is in various degrees or stages of self attack and punishment. This is not something pretty to look at. Many people are so riddled with guilt they can't even look you in the eye.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

Why does this happen? It happens because each individual person believes they are a sinner. And in whatever way, somewhere in the mind there is a belief that sin is real and true, has happened, has had real irreversible consequences, and that they can never return to God.

But even moreso, we believe we actively deserve to be punished for it. That we want the punishment and want to suffer, because it is expected of us and we agree with it. And so the people inflict self attack upon themselves in all manner of ways and this eventually leads to the death of the body. And all of this is chosen and self inflicted. And if it were not for this, there would be no suffering or sickness or death.

The simple thing to realize then is that this whole world is filled with people who are trying to die. "a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." Where we come to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus doesn't pull any punches on this stuff, he's very blunt about it.

So you've got a world full of sacrificial lambs, people destroying themselves in various ways, all manner of self attack, and all of it is essentially suicide. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent." Which means that all of the sickness, all suffering, all forms of unhappiness, all death, is all a choice made by people who believe they deserve it.

Except that, they don't deserve it. No-one does. No one deserves suffering even if it's an illusion of suffering. No one deserves to be punished in any way. No one deserves to have to go through any kind of psychological hell or experience of pain or disfigurement or disability or disease. These are all forms of self abuse. Every single example is someone trying to hurt themselves.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt."

We're a world filled with self attacking, self hurting, self abusing, self harming, self destructive, self sabotaging, self denying, self hating, self loathing, self corrupting people, all of whom think they deserve to suffer because they're guilty. But they're not really guilty, and the ENTIRE thing is just one huge mistake.

Sin is not real, or possible. Meaning attack on God is not real or possible. Meaning there is never justification for guilt, meaning there is never a PURPOSE for suffering, to inflict just desserts or due justified punishment. There is never a valid grounds for unhappiness or disease or depression or anything less than God's will that we be happy and healthy. The whole thing is a giant mistake.

So all that's really happening is that everyone is seriously mistaken, confused, lacking recognition, insane, unclear, uncertain, afraid, not sure of anything, and really kind of lost in a nightmare of their own making. All as a result of denial and an unwillingness to look at their own innocence. Which in a way is kind of funny, because if we'd just look at the fact that we could never have sinned, we'd stop trying to kill ourselves over it.

"What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."

Death isn't real, and nothing real can be threatened. But we certainly can go through the motions and try to make it happen, to have the experience of being a corrupt body, feeling pain and sensations, torturing ourselves in our dreams. All of which is unnecessary. All that's needed is the awakening to the truth. The acceptance of the facts. The recognition of what really is real and what is not. Because there really is no sin, in reality. And that means there is no grounds for any kind of self punishment, suicide or death.

No-one needs to be dying. No-one needs to be suffering or sick. No-one needs to be unhappy. We all just need forgiveness - the recognition of sin's impossibility, and the continuance of our absolute immortal endless innocence. And those who are innocent can never suffer, nor do they want to or choose to.

Because if you are just as perfect now as when God created you, and if you have never done anything to anyone, and if nothing you thought you did ever even happened, then all that's left is to thank God that you have been given eternal life.

In the past, my wife became disabled and was unable to fend for herself. She became dependent upon me. I had to take over responsibility for her life, her wellbeing, her decisions, her food and cleanliness, her health. I had to keep her alive.

Now, in that scenario there was a lot of pressure. Having developed dementia and brain damages she would sometimes act out, lashing out at people, hitting people, swearing at people. She didn't mean to, she couldn't control it.

Because I took on responsibility for her life, I felt it was up to me to keep her going, to manage her behaviour, to feed clothe wash and support her, to administer medications, to take her to dialysis treatments 3 times a week for years, to get through hospital visits, to defend her against inept doctors and nurses, and to generally try to stop her from dying.

All of this began to produce some ego-creep in me, in which I started to feel guilty, ashamed, embarrassed, and afraid. I felt afraid that if I didn't do the right thing she would die. If I didn't do the right thing, her health would decline. If I didn't do the right thing, there would be judgement and attack, possibly even legal action.

There was shame and embarrassment and guilt when she would act out. There was fear, that if she acted out towards the very same medical people that were providing "life support", she would get herself kicked out and would die. There was fear that she might not make it through the night, that her breathing was poor, that she might do something to make herself worse off. And feelings of guilt crept in that I wasn't doing it well enough.

You could say, as some would, that this was to be expected. Given all the pressure, all the responsibility, all the support and time and management and effort I had to give just to keep her going, to put out fires, to stop things from getting worse, anyone would feel upset and lost, afraid and guilty, ashamed and embarrassed.

But that's not what A Course in Miracles would say. It would say that there is a secret of salvation - that we are doing this all to ourselves. It would say that if I felt guilt or shame, I must've chosen to feel it. It would say that if I was afraid, I must've decided to buy into fear. It would say that if I was resisting death, that was a choice on my part. It would say if I was embarrassed about how she broke the rules today, that was something I was taking personally by myself.

So I had to look at this, because it was all part of me becoming a victim in this scenario, of seeing myself as constantly on the defensive, under attack, fighting against the institutions. I had started to blame myself, that it was my fault. The sense of responsibility was shifting into a sense of personal guilt, that if anything went wrong somehow it reflected on me. That if she acted out or made things worse for herself, it meant I was more ashamed somehow.

Obviously this is not something that was anything to do with me really, was not my fault or my doing. But of course when you have a lot of social and peer pressure and medical pressure and even legal pressure to say, you have to look after her right otherwise the punishment will come, that can be very tempting. I did buy into it to some degree, and I take take it on as a personal thing. And this resulted in my attacking myself.

So in order to apply the secret of salvation, I have to look at that and see, I was NOT being caused by other people, I was not responsible for what she did even if in physical terms I was, I was not guilty for anything that went wrong, I was not shameful for her lashing out at people, and I was not to be blamed for failures and losses and dramas and various other forms of things I couldn't control.

The secret says, that if you are upset, you are doing it to yourself. So that means, I made myself guilty. It means I shamed myself, it wasn't other people doing it. It means I made myself afraid by believing in the body and in death and in threats. It means I chose to be embarrassed, to feel incapable, to feel loss. I did that to myself.

You might also say, it's quite a tall order to expect someone going through such a difficult thing to have to rise up to a state of perfection. To not react at all, to have no investment, to not take things personally, to not feel threatened. Indeed it is quite a tall order. But it's the ego that really makes things feel like hell, it's the lack of responsibility and power that makes you see yourself as victimised and under attack. It's not our natural state to be positioned as a victim like that.

So I take my power back. The power that I gave to these people, the power that I gave to the situation, the power that I gave to her. I take back the power that I disowned by playing a role of caregiver and saviour and protector. I take back the power that said it was my fault, my job, my responsibility, my role and identity, to have to be responsible for another person's life and wellbeing. I take back my power to recognize I chose to see myself as under pressure and attack, threatened by death and its cohorts, and these things have NO power over me.

It is ONLY by taking back your power that you can be not a victim, can let go of the various victim roles like being guilty or ashamed, embarrassed or lost, afraid and powerless. For me it was a profound lesson which actually, overall, did increase my power and my awareness and my sense of responsibility. It wasn't a loss or a failure, it's just that the lesson was so strong that it also knocked me down a few pegs in some areas and became overwhelming.

I am not a victim of the world. I am not a victim of doctors and nurses. I am not a victim of the law. I a not a victim of official rules or requirements or paperwork or legal proceedings. I am not a victim of what another person needs or how they act or what they choose to do to others. I am not responsible for causing my wife's suffering or sickness or behaviours. I am not guilty, and I am not ashamed. I am the holy son of God, guiltless and sinless, pure and innocent.

We must think of ourselves as immortal beings, still as God crated us, still perfect and pure and holy and good. We cannot sin, and have never sinned. We are not guilty, and cannot become guilty. We have never been attacked by anyone or anything in the world. We cannot suffer unless we try to make ourselves suffer. I was not suffering because of the situation, or my wife, or the medical staffs, or family members, or anyone else. I cannot suffer unless I choose to do so, and I had chosen to do so. And now I choose again.

"The Holy Spirit will repeat this ONE inclusive lesson of deliverance, until it has been learned, REGARDLESS of the form of suffering that brings you pain. Whatever hurt you bring to Him, He will make answer with this very simple truth. For this one answer TAKES AWAY the cause of every form of sorrow and of pain. The form affects His answer not at all, for He would teach you but the SINGLE cause of all of them, no matter WHAT their form. And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo."

I have made a pretty big mistake with ACIM, and maybe you are doing the same. Sorry this is a bit long and rambly, I'm still coming to terms with it....

I always believed that the goal in ACIM was awakening to the awareness of God's presence, which was some kind of a singular state of being. As I read and worked with the Course it at first seemed plausible that every reference to 'what truth is like', or the high-level metaphysics, all described a single absolute state of being/mind.

I felt confused by some of the interpretations of this that other people were expressing because it seemed there was a level of truth deeper or 'more true' than what most other people were understanding. So I felt I needed to go deeper into re-reading it and re-learning what it has to say. So I started reading the urtext. And I actually learned a lot, much of which made me question what the status quo understanding was on many topics. I polished and refined my grasp of what the truth really meant, all still within this idea of 'there is only one kind of awakening', like, either you are totally doing it perfectly or you're kidding yourself.

I even saw how some people who claim to be awake were still falling short of what I believed that should really entail. I always felt a certain faith in Jesus and his example, and never could see anyone matching up to that. Yet I felt that in the Course it does directly speak to the kind of total mastery that he demonstrated. This included the ability to heal all sickness, raise the dead, have total mastery over illusions, be capable of changing form, of appearing as any kind of a body, absolute invulnerability (literally), not dying simply because you choose not to etc. I had Jesus practically flying around the room.

The thing is, all of the metaphysics in ACIM seemed to point to this potential and it made total logical sense to me that we "should" be able to wield total power over all illusions. Just like Jesus. So I had in my mind this kind of very high-level 'goal', which was very lofty, which I thought we were meant to strive to achieve. That was my idea of what it means to be fully awake, and anything short of that was not it. I felt frustrated that some people were saying they were awake and yet were clearly not demonstrating Jesus's level of mastery, and so of course that led to judgement but also confusion. Why was the Course saying one thing and then other things were happening? Why were people not matching up to Jesus's level and how is it possible there (obviously) has been an awakening of some kind in some people and yet they still can't raise the dead? The Course clearly spoke of some extremely high-level truths and implications which nobody seemed to be getting.

Well. As it turns out, the Course actually encompasses several "levels" of metaphysics. I had no idea of this, so I was always lumping everything together as a kind of super-level and then trying to attain that. I had no idea about this until Michael Murray started to bring forward this information about "the levels", or rather, the timing of me stumbling upon his videos and being ready to listen. Basically, there is much more going on than it appears, and without this extra information you'll make the huge mistakes I've made.

In very brief summary... this physical universe is only one of several levels or dimensions of the dream of separation. These dimensions are all states of mind but they also, to our senses, appear to be 'places' which have entire universes of their own. The physical universe is the lowest level. Above this there is a "spiritual universe" which is also the level at which the Holy Spirit resides. You might've heard it referred to also as the astral plane or similar. These levels are btw somewhat referred to in Hinduism and some other religions and you might be more familiar with them if you are "new age". Anyway.. above "level 2" the Holy Spirit's mind, there is a level 3 where our "higher self" resides, and also this is where angels seem to exist, the akashic records, and also this is where "the sonship" is - as separate higher selves. Above this level there is a fourth level which is the level of Christ where the sonship is ONE. Jesus 'the higher self' was the first to transcend the previous level and unify as Christ. Then above this level is Heaven - God.

Ok so... here's what I did totally wrong and this is where my spiritualizing ego got totally screwed up, and this is also probably where you are doing the same. Clearly, because there are levels to the dream beyond the physical, there are effectively different levels of awakening. This also means there are different levels of 'capability' and mastery (someone at level 3 does not have mastery over level 3 because to do that you must be on level 4). Also because of these levels, there are certain "capabilities" that are only possible at certain levels and there are certain 'parts' of the Course that are directly related to certain levels, e.g. the 'real world 'is a very high level thing (and nothing to do with the physical world). This also reveals that the Course itself 'speaks' on many different levels, in other words, in relation to different dimensions of the dream and different universes where the experience is on a whole different level. Truths which apply on one level totally superceded stuff on the levels below, so as we ASSUME that all of this is just ONE BIG LEVEL, or 'the one goal', we get really messed up and confused about what's being asked of us.

Also because of these levels, typically in order to go "up" the levels you need to go in sequence. You can't just jump to the 5th level or just pop into heaven when you're still down at level 1. And pretty much most of us are on level 1, me included. So here's the huge mistake I made.

In assuming there were no levels, and lumping them all together, and in becoming aware of the Christ-level truths in the Course, I created for myself an extremely lofty Christ-level goal, comparable to Jesus. Because I can see the parts of the Course which DO speak of/from this level (all of the course comes from the Christ level but speaks OF or as-if from other levels also), this 'highest truth' level became my concept of "the only level" or "what awakening means".

So I was basically down here on level 1, with my big ego, and trying to BYPASS all the way up to the Christ level in one straight shot. I wanted to embody and encompass ALL of the characteristics of Christ, in a kind of all-or nothing grand-master-of-the-universe power-over-everything ultra-mastery i-can-fly-around-the-room-if-i-like-and-there's-nothing-you-can-do-about-it sort of ideal. Anything short of this was "not good enough". So now I had this hugely lofty "should" or how I am supposed to be, or what I'm supposed to get to, or what I need to realize etc. And this also included this HUGE burden of 'what I am responsible for'... as if I caused the entire universe and everything in it, all by my little ego level-1 self, which is NOT true.

Having this extremely lofty goal of "be Christ", bypassing all of the levels that are REQUIRED to go THROUGH in order to get there, put an ENORMOUS BURDEN on my shoulders. A huge weight of guilt at falling short and not even barely being able to accomplish it. And believe me I tried, really hard. I even attained some small ability to bring about healing through Holy Spirit, some of the time, in small amounts. And I KNEW that the parts of the Course that speak of the Christ-level were true. So this kept me dangling from a thread, chasing after this carrot of perfection and power, but falling way short. All this did was put PRESSURE on me (and my wife) to match up to this enormous responsibility which is far beyond what 'I' (level 1 me) am actually capable of. Yes my Christ self IS capable of such things, but that's way above where I'm at or can even GET TO or ACCESS from where I'm at.

The truth is that we are only really capable of going from level 1 to level 2. The first awakening. Some people bypass this and jump to level 3 but only in extreme rare circumstances. The rest of us can only, and are only really asked to, go from level 1 to level 2, which in Course terms meaning letting go of the persona and shadow and aligning with Holy Spirit's mind and letting go of the *physical* world level. This lets us be in the "spiritual universe", or to move up from there. But we can't just jump to the top, especially not WITH the ego. And that's what we're all trying to do - a huge spiritual bypass in which our ego gets to try to be Christ.

So this is a blow to the ego. Here's little me down in level 1 world believing that I'm oh-so-spiritual, advanced, getting ready to graduate, believing that I'm more spiritual than others, and finding out that I actually am probably on this level BECAUSE I am still on level 1. Hah. Not level 2 or 3 or 4 or 5... level 1. Sucks! lol ... BUT the freedom comes from this realization..... you don't need to try to be Christ. You don't need to even try to be the higher self or to jump up to that level. You ONLY need to get to level 2 - the Holy Spirit's mind. So this somewhat lets you off the hook.

It means that you can drop all of huge expectation that you're putting on yourself to be Christ-like. It means you can stop trying to raise the dead or expect yourself to be able to. I have to tell you, I recently got a 'sty' in my eye and it was sort of infected and stuff, unsightly and uncomfortable, and I really dug DEEP into possible causes and unforgivenesses in attempt to heal it, because I was really convinced I was SUPPOSED to be able to just 'make it go away' with my mind. I did some healing, yes, but the dam fucker did not change. It didn't just disappear. So this was a blow to the spiritual ego, which thought it had to be Jesus-like or that it could. And I had to accept I just cant do that. Fuck it.

But this is really a relief. It's a huge relief to realize that you do not have to "try" to be christ. You do not have to be responsible for stuff that is in "the script" - a script written by and powered by a mind far huger than yours is now. You don't have to try to be this dead-raising master. You don't have to turn water into wine or be some extraordinary guru. You're not capable of that until probably the 5th dimensional awakening. You don't have to blame yourself for all the shit that comes from the unconscious mind that you are not consciously choosing, as if it's all your fault. You don't have to own every single little thing that happens as if, just by it happening, it proves that you SUCK and that you're a total course failure. You don't have to keep beating yourself up for "not doing the course right" ie not matching up to the kind of capabilities that you pretty much CANNOT accomplish until you ARE at the Christ level, which is not going to happen until you've at least gone through 2 or 3 other levels of awakening.

So there's all this huge weight of guilt and expectation that we've all been putting on ourselves because we're all trying to live up to this extraordinary goal of being Christ when, in fact, from this level 1, we can only really be expected to get to level 2. It's true that there is no world and its just a dream and that the Christ mind can create planets... ok... but little me, little you... at level 1, no, there isn't going to be any planets getting made. So that's not something you can be responsible for. We have this hugely inflated spiritual ego (ok, speaking for myself, but I bet you do too) that's trying to claim the "power" of being Christ while still being very limited and incapable.

We have to stop putting level 3/4/5+ realities and responsibilities and powers onto our shoulders as level 1 ego folks and stop expecting ourselves to live up to this hugely lofty standard. WE have to accept that we are NOT at the level of Jesus and probably very few people are going to be. We have to accept that even the best of the best of the ACIM teachers aren't even at that level. Not even the enlightened gurus and yogis necessarily at that level. All we need to do is do our SIMPLE job of forgiveness and development of trust in Holy Spirit and come into his mind and accept his truth and his way of perceiving. The other levels and the potency and power of those other levels will follow on from there naturally as the 'next steps'. But we can't just bypass and jump to those steps. And we have to admit we've been doing this, our spiritualized egos are about to POP, and we can take a big sigh of relief that we're NOT supposed to expect such huge things of ourselves.

This should relieve us of all the guilt, all the sense of failure, all of the exasperation at not getting it, all of the fear and guilt and frustration that we have to accomplish Christ-level capabilities otherwise we're going to die, etc. We have to strip it all back. Let go of the highest goals. Focus on the NEXT step which is just getting to level 2 - Holy Spirit's level, and letting go of the idea that our LEVEL 1 EGO is EVER going to be capable of being at the Christ level, LET ALONE even level 2. And yet it's trying. It's been trying hard this whole time to live up to some kind of universe-creating mega goal. It loves to. Even though it's a total failure at it. So we can at least admit, we don't have to think of ourselves as total failures any more because we were never meant to be level-5 ego's to begin with.

All this comes from the clarity that the Course contains levels, that we're on level 1 trying to get to level 2, and that everything else is irrelevant. Yes at some point we will create planets but not today. First things first. One step at a time. We're getting ahead of ourselves and our expectation and fear of not being able to match up to the high-level truths is, thankfully, not even being asked of us right now.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Let's talk about sickness purely as a matter of cause and effect. Your mind is causal, and when sane has no confusion about this fact. It does not mistake its own effects for causes, and especially does not believe its effects are causing it.

When the mind is sick, it uses denial to block out of awareness its own causal power. This is a denial of creative power or authorship. The mind REVERSES cause and effect. It believes it is not the cause of the effects, and it believes the effects are the cause of it.

The mind now perceives itself is "at the effect of" an external, separate cause. There are two very important things happening here:

1) The mind now sees itself as being an effect, and begins to distort the body in order to represent those effects. The mind believes it is caused by, and under attack by, an external cause, and that this cause defines the self. And the mind, under this perception, now subconsciously PRODUCES SYMPTOMS in the body. These symptoms are the expected effects that the mind believes "should" be the result or causal consequence of the external cause (which is secretly the mind itself).

2) In order TO believe that the mind is at the effect of the world or another person, the mind HAS to assign causality TO the world or person. And that means, that person is believed to be RESPONSIBLE FOR CAUSING the effects in your body. By being "the causer", they are effectively "the sinner". And so the mind sees "their will" as causing the effects that it, itself, is putting into the body based on this belief. By seeing itself as under attack, the mind thus ACCUSES its brothers of sin SO THAT it can pin the blame for the effects on your brother.

This results in an unfortunate scenario because now the presence of "effects" in the body, put there BY YOUR MIND, are acting as the "consequences" or cause-effect RESULT, of what SOMEONE ELSE DID TO YOU. This belief is inescapable because it's founded on the reversal of cause and effect. You can't see yourself as victimized and "at the effect" WITHOUT a scapegoat to pin the causality on. And that leads to this simple fact.

"Sick bodies are accusers."

The presence of sickness in your body is part of a dynamic of believing that your brother is the cause of you. And there is another way to put that. Your mind is ATTACKING YOUR BROTHER, by believing that he is the cause of you. Your mind ATTACKS HIM through the body, by assigning to him a causal power OVER you, which he does not have. And because causality is closely tied to sin, the idea of "who did it" .... this is nothing short of accusing your brother of SIN.

And we know WHY a person would accuse a brother of sin. "You but accuse your brother of your OWN sins." Which means that as soon as the mind is going into an attack mode, it believes in its own sinfulness and then PROJECTS this onto your brother THROUGH the reversal of cause and effect. The cause effect reversal is an absolutely essential part of the dynamic and it produces a perception that HE DID THIS TO YOU, and now YOU have the effects to show for it, which act as PROOF that he DID SIN. And this leads to a simple fact.

If your body is showing up as sick and damaged, IT IS accusing your brother of sinning against you, and it's doing so because YOUR MIND is accusing him of causing you. In every case. Without exception. The body's state is part of the mind's accusatory condition. If the mind believes your brother is the cause of your experience, your mind WILL MAKE YOUR BODY SICK TO PROVE IT. And you are now WILLING to suffer and tolerate sickness in the body in order to be able to get away with accusing your brother of sin. And in fact, we will even go so far as to KILL the body through "death" in order to ACCUSE the world or a brother of sin, "suggesting" that we "died innocently" against our will.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries (that means PHYSICAL!) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (body=picture) YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion (that's physical too!) do they seek to kill."

So sickness, all physical sickness, all symptoms, goes HAND IN HAND, with a psychological sickness, which is a condition of believing that cause and effect are reversed. And all such level confusion is EGO. Anyone with an ego is going to attack their own body in an effort to portray themselves as VICTIMIZED, so that OTHERS will stand accused, and thus YOU will appear to be innocent and exonerated. In sickness and damage we then are able to claim, "I DID NOT DO IT, YOU DID". And this is described be Jesus as this attitude:

"Brother, at your hand I die". Ie, because my brother is believed to be the CAUSE of me, and because I have secretly manifested EFFECTS in my body to PROVE it, I now die BECAUSE of my brother. And there IS NO death that isn't "caused" by this precise mechanism. It happens because of the MIND choosing to USE the body for attack against others, which results in sickness and death. This is explicitly stated by Jesus:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies."

"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an ***easy price***, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

So we're talking here about the assumption that you HAVE a body. I'm not talking about whether the body is real or not. *IF* you have a body, HOW YOU USE IT is vital. If you use it for attack, ie belief in sin, thus denial and projection, thus reversal of causality, you are using it to attack THROUGH towards your brother. And he now is seen as the CAUSE OF your sickenss. Or at least, he is now the scapegoat onto whom you BLAME for causing your sickness. And your BODY is forced to be sick BY YOU, and accuses him right along with your mind.

Now the question becomes, what happens if you DO NOT DO THIS?

What happens if you stop using the body for attack? What if you stop reversing cause and effect? What if you stop seeing yourself (mind) as "at the effect" of the very things you are causing? What if you recognize:

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No-one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

Nothing in the world has POWER OVER YOU. Which means nothing in the world CAUSES you. Which means nothing in the world SINS against you. Which means, if you accept this and SEE this way, if your mind is SANE in recognizing IT is the cause of everything ("my self is ruler of the universe"), then it WILL NOT enter into the above described dynamic of USING the body for attack.

This means the mind will now NOT see your brother as causing you. It will NOT see itself as being "at the effect" of the world. It will NOT BELIEVE IN EXTERNAL CAUSES OF SICKNESS. It will not attribute to the world ANY power to cause it to be in any state. It will not see itself as "affected". And what are the CONSEQUENCES of this?

"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

In other words, because YOUR MIND was the ACTUAL cause of THE EFFECTS in your body, as a result of ITS misperception of your brother, and as part of USING the body for attack (to accuse him physically), the removal of this attacking attitude HEALS the body. It takes AWAY from it all the signs of attack and sickness. It stops seeing itself AS "effect". It stops believing in effects. And it stops making itself suffer. This CAUSES love to flow through the body to others. This joins minds. This then RESULTS IN the disappearance of the SYMPTOMS, as PROOF and CONVICTION, that the mind no longer wishes to attack, and therefore **REFUSES** to display signs of attack in the body.

You have to at this point let go of the belief, which is wrong, that the body is CAUSED to be sick BY anyone other than YOU. You also have to let go of the belief that the body can become sick as a result of some cause or power IN THE WORLD. NOTHING in the world has that power to make you weak or frail. Death does NOT OCCUR by accident, NOR does it occur "because of" ANYTHING in the world. Death occurs ONLY by a mind using the body for attack, sending attack through the body, making the body DEPICT ATTACK, and thus destroying it for the sake of some scapegoating.

If there is any shred left in your mind of a belief that sickness is caused by ANYTHING other than your mind's mis-use of the body, you will NOT be able to accept the next step. Which is to realize that when the mind USES the body FOR HEALING, to bring the Word of God to others, to shine light through it, to extend the mind PAST the body, the body actually GETS HEALED. Not only does it get healed, it CANNOT AVOID IT, has no will to choose not to, and MUST heal in order to NOT scapegoat. It cannot be retaining proof of sickness and CLAIM to be coming used by a healed mind.

Once again, explicitly stated by Jesus here:

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

So when you withdraw from your brother in attack, when you see separation in him, when you ACCUSE HIM OF SIN, when you scapegoat him, and when you try to make YOUR body sick so that HE is the accused sinner, you arrest the extension of the mind. The mind begins to fixate on the body and sees itself as the body. The body now is attacked and becomes SICK. Illness is the result, and this illness is a part of the mechanism of accusing OTHERS of sin as part of the scapegoating mechanism.

ALL SCAPEGOATING MAKES YOUR BODY SICK.

ALL FORGIVENESS HEALS YOUR BODY'S SICKNESS.

When the causality is corrected, the mind now USES the body for extension of love, this de-emphasizes the body, it lifts away from the body all PHYSICAL PROOF of attack and pain, and the body now is restored to literal physical heath.

"The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ***ALL signs*** of accusation and of blamefulness." What are the signs? PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS OF SICKNESS. The holy spirit REMOVES the sickness from the body, so that it can ONLY depict health. It now becomes a SYMBOL of eternal life, in the world, which ONLY TEACHES that your brother is INNOCENT. Which means, a HEALTHY body, DEMONSTRATES, PROVES, that the MIND occupying that body IS HEALED, that mind IS NOT STILL attacking, and so the symptoms and signs of attack are gone. If the signs remain, the mind HAS ABSOLUTELY NOT been healed, because the signs ONLY show up when the mind is sick.

The Holy Spirit LITERALLY wants you to SHOW YOUR BROTHER a HEALTHY BODY. A healthy body is a symbol of innocence and forgiveness in this world! This again is EXPLICITLY stated by Jesus:

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, ***the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still***, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

Let's repeat it.

"the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still" ... "THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

That literally means that the Holy Spirit will heal all physical sickness so that your body can ONLY SHOW symbolic innocence and total lack of harm or attack to your brother. Add by doing so, the body now becomes a teaching device, which PHYSICALLY relays a message of healing to your brother.

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and ****by its health**** and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever ***unattacked*** (no physical sickness). And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

THIS is the ONLY appropriate state of the body for a HEALED MIND. God's teachers, God's miracle workers, WILL always have a healed body. If they don't, their mind is not healed.

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind. (all physical effects are GONE, miraculously!) That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. A sick mind WILL attack the body and make it sick and dead, ALWAYS in an effort to ACCUSE others of sin. Sickness is scapegoating! And when the mind STOPS doing this, it sends healing and health through the body which REVERSES the effects and straightens out the cause-effect relationship, thus TAKING AWAY the sickness which the mind put there in the first place.

"They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes (strain and sickness), and can abolish both."

Your mind CAN MAKE SICKNESS.

Your mind CAN REMOVE SICKNESS.

If your body is sick, your mind IS STILL using it for attack. Which is why "a broken body shows the mind has not been healed."

If your MIND is healed, it MUST AND WILL ALWAYS heal the body. Because "a sick body makes no sense."

The mind WILL NEVER keep the body sick on purpose unless it is attacking. The body cannot stay sick on its own. There are NO causes of sickness beyond your mind. Nothing in the world MAINTAINS body sickness. The body is not an end in itself, or a thing, or a living entity. It is a SYMBOL.

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end."

The body only EVER SYMBOLIZES what the MIND is doing. It does not have its own STATE or continuity. The mind is AT ALL TIMES determining the health of the body. And the only way to have the body be constantly sick is to be constantly attacking with it. As soon as you stop attacking yourself, the sickness MUST DISAPPEAR to SYMBOLIZE forgiveness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" - no defense, no sickness!!! If you want TRUTH, you will NOT have defenses, and thus NO SICKNESS.

There are no exceptions.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

Sick mind, sick body.

This is the central lesson.