In the ego's world, having expectations seems to produce stress and upset. We seem to be tasked with dropping all expectations, so that whatever happens, we will be okay with it. It is good not to have attachments to outcomes, or to be trying to control things, or to expect or hope that something is going to turn out a certain way only to have that expectation dashed against the rocks.

But here's what's really going on.

If you have an expectation, with the ego, it is typically a half-arsed wishful thinking, which has no power, and doesn't actually CAUSE anything to occur. Yet the ego believes that its expectations are lining up with how things will be. Then, because of this lack of POWER, when events do not follow the expectation there is anger and frustration and suffering. And so then it seems to be better not to use expectation at all since it always seems to lead to upset. We need to let go of the ego's form of expectation, but we shouldn't throw expectation out of the window altogether because Holy Spirit has his own use of it.

The fact is that you can either be expecting WITH the ego, or you can be expecting WITH Holy Spirit.

Expecting with the ego is what most people are familiar with as expectations. In other words, the ego perception doesn't believe it has any power over anything, since it wants to be a victim, and so makes INSANE expectations which really are a resistance to what is happening. Resistance is the ego's form of magical power, which it thinks it can wield in order to 'make' the world be the way it wants it to be. This is of course denial-based, and a deception, and basically leads to great suffering because it's out of touch with reality. When the ego expects something, it is choosing a wholly SEPARATE version of events than those that will possibly happen, as a form of rebellion, and its degree of belief in things turning out that way is really actually very weak. Resistance is weakness. And so usually it is thwarted and then you end up miserable and angry that things didn't turn out. So yes, it's good not to have ego expectations or ego attachment to outcomes.

HOWEVER ....

Expecting with the Holy Spirit is not like this. Holy Spirit doesn't use resistance, he uses EXTENSION, which is a creative power. Expecting with the Holy Spirit means that you are extending the POWER OF GOD, demanding and requiring that illusions fall into place. Expecting with the Holy Spirit has real authoritative power. Power to heal, power to manifest, power to change the world. Expectation through Holy Spirit means you are lining up with GOD's will, rather than the ego's fictional will, and what God will's MUST occur. It is not a matter of a request that things change, or a desire that things be different. It FORCES them to be different.

God has a constant expectation that there is perfect peace and permanent divine health. If God were to stop 'expecting' this to be true, he would enter into delusions. He is so certain that there will always be immortality, and that no illusion can assail his Kingdom, that he has every right to have ABSOLUTE EXPECTATION. Absolute knowing. Not just like, referring to something and asking it if it might be the way He wants it to be, but CREATION, actually PUTTING INTO EFFECT God's will. Making it so. Creating by His will to produce what he wants to be. There is no room for 'events' turning out any other way in this. There is no room for a conflict between expectation and what is. God's expectation overrides all illusions.

So it is perfectly okay, and encouraged, to expect with God. To expect in alignment with Holy Spirit. To expect that miracles will occur. To expect that there will be an end to death. To expect that a person can live forever. To expect immortality. And that faith isn't misplaced. It's not a delusion. It is law.

Each time, and in each way, that we perceive that someone else is meant to change, that there is something wrong with them, that they have caused us to be upset or changed in any way whatsoever, or that anything outside of us can do something to us, we are being irresponsible for our lives.

This means we are not owning up to the full responsibility we have to be the causal power of everything that we experience. It means we're shoveling off our sense of Self and responsibility for our life onto someone else. We're wanting them to change in order to INDIRECTLY cause us to be happy or in a preferred state, and if they don't comply we get upset.

It is not anyone else's responsibility to live our life for us, to wake up for us, to change to suit us, to match our opinion, to be corrected on our behalf, or to be any way 'for us' in order for us to get what we want.

If you look you'll notice yourself being 'riddled' with this situation, where in small ways and in various relationships, you truly believe that someone else (or reality, or the world) is not meant to be the way it is. This is irresponsibility. It means you are not being responsible for what you are, and so you see everything outside of you reflecting that - that it too should not be what it is.

So when there is irresponsibility in your mind and perception, where you are not squarely owning and being centered in the acceptance of what you actually are, you are going to experience that outside of you in everything you look at. Other people and places and events are going to start to show up to you as being 'wrong' for being what they, that they should be something else, that they SHOULD BE IRRESPONSIBLE for being what they are.

This is why the acceptance of ourselves is an act of responsibility, and is then reflected outside us as the world appearing to be accepted for what it is, also. You can't accept the world if you can't accept yourself.

Quite often when I'm stressing about whether I'm doing the right thing or not, focusing on doing something I think I want to do but feeling guilty about it, Holy Spirit will give me a wide berth of permission. Instead of saying to stop doing it, He'll encourage me. Instead of reprimanding me, he'll suggest I even put aside things I'm "supposed" to be doing and do what it is I want to do.

There are also times when I'm doing something which seems very ego and 'against' waking up or being spiritual, and I might even be stubbornly refusing to listen to Holy Spirit's guidance. Not that he isn't speaking to me often, but that I am ignoring Him or choosing something on my own. Even then, Holy Spirit will say something like ... "its your life."

The sense of being 'allowed' that comes from this is immense. And usually just be experiencing no resistance like this, it will highlight for me and make clear whether I really want to do this or not. Holy Sprit is so non-forceful. Like, zero force. When I am expecting there to be force, or demands, or requirements, or permission, or whatever other form of guilt, He comes through with openness and acceptance.

It always catches me by surprise. I am never expecting His generous response. It's very loving. Instead of making me wrong for anything, even if I am doing something wrong, He makes me feel like it's okay, and then this creates a space in which to see clearly. Usually then when this attachment and resistance is gone, it becomes much more obvious where I really stand. And then I find myself being willing to either pursue what I was pursuing, or surrender it.

I become willing to do what He wanted me to do along, and then he turns around and says, "tomorrow". i.e. carry on doing whatever else.

It's always a blessing.

What's happening with all this projection that everyone is doing, is basically a mass dis-owning of Self and a mass-disowning of responsibility for each person's own experience.

We're all walking around constantly shoveling ourselves and our own stuff onto other people and onto the environment. We're trying to get rid of ourselves all over the place. It's like, we're taking our insides and we're saying to everyone else, here, you take care of this for me, I don't want it. We're saying that we don't want who we are and that we refuse to do anything to change it.

When this gets really strong it turns to gossip, skapegoating, blame, judgement, victimhood, feeling stuck and apathetic. We dis-empower ourselves this way, by giving away this responsibility for ourselves, allowing someone or something else to have 'the power' and the responsibility to decide for us who we are, what we are, what we experience and what our truth is.

We just plain don't want to own our own truth or be true to ourselves. We want to get all lost in everyone else's business, what everyone else is doing to everyone else, and what the whole world is doing to us. We need to take care of our own business and mind our own business. "Be passerby"!

When we're in the irresponsibility role, we are expecting everyone other than ourselves to own up to who we are, for us, and to deal with our upsets and problems for us. And yet at the same time, we don't really want them to do this, because we don't really want this stuff to be fixed. We want to keep believing we are guilty and sinful and yet at the same time demand that other people remove all the experience of that guilt - usually by them having to change. That's the ego's version of forgiveness - continue to suffer while claiming you don't want to. And that's how you be a victim.

So being a victim really means, you deliberately disowning yourself and responsibility for your inner truth and identity, and then shoving it onto someone else's plate and expecting them to change or deal with it for you, while refusing to allow any change to happen, so that you feel like they're not giving you what you need or want. And yet this is all because of your own irresponsibility. This is why taking back that power and responsibility literally makes it impossible to be a victim, because you're getting out of the entire passive-aggressive "I refuse to be me" stubborn resistance.

We're all sitting around complaining about things which we have the POWER TO CHANGE, as if we do not have the power to change, and waiting for someone else to come along and rescue us. You can put a lot of energy into worshipping some idol or teacher or resource hoping for them to be your savior. But at the same time as asserting that you need a savior to 'do it for you' you're also asserting that you refuse to do it yourself, which means you really will refuse to accept that person's help anyway. You'll end up having a clash with the teacher because you are saying you want mega help but really you don't want any. You instead want to hold onto sitting on the fence of your own life and staying stuck and hoping someone is going to be your hero.

You don't think you have the power precisely because you've given it away. And so you don't see your options of freedom because you think they are not available to you. Yet you are only disempowered by giving your power away in the first place and taking back that power/responsibility gives you the tools you need to make any corrections needed. You can get yourself unstuck. You have the power to do it. You have the ability to wake up. You just need the willingness to not be a victim and to OWN your life and your freedom again.

Funny to think you don't own your own life and you think someone else has control over you. This is your life. Own it. Live it.

Did a healing for myself after feeling pain in my hand, which was anger I was holding onto.

After a process of visualizing the healing and commanding it to leave etc, I was again not expecting it but.... there was an angel kneeling at my side holding my hand very gently. It kissed my hand.

I felt extremely touched that a being so innocent and pure would bow down and kiss "me"... the impure. It made me feel very worthy beyond my own unworthiness. It then maneuvered and kissed the back of my hand a few times.

I could feel its presence beside me. Again I did not ask for it to come nor did I in any way imagine that there would be an angel involved in what I was doing. But what I was doing once again attracted the angels to assist me.

All pain has disappeared, such that I didn't even remember that this happened until now.

Clearly when we are fulfilling God's will and are expressing the truth that sickness is unreal and that we deserve healing and love, and actually take steps to bring that about, we "align" ourselves with heaven and do what Heaven would do, and Heaven comes to support us in that!

If you are fully and completely responsible for yourself, for everything you feel, everything you experience, and every causality, then

1) You will not have any reactions because reactions require you to see yourself as a victim

2) You will not see yourself as victimized or caused by anyone or anything else

3) You will be free and invulnerable and immortal

You will know that you and what you experience are kind of .... enclosed... insulated.... invulnerable to.... detached from... shielded from.... protected from.... everything that is 'out there'. It will be like you're walking around completely invulnerable to everything, unaffected by anyone.

"Be passerby"

So if you see that this is kind of the 'goal' of total responsibility and acceptance of yourself and unconditionally being the love you are, then you can see what happens when you DON'T do this.

Without this responsibility you disown, you victimize, you see yourself threatened and vulnerable, you become imprisoned, you develop reactions, you go unconscious, you disown your feelings, you accuse everyone else of being the "reason why" your life now sucks, and you disassociate from your Self, trying to get others to live your life for you. And then instead of being yourself, you will try to be THEM, because now you are reflecting outward what is within - if you are not yourself, and you're expecting others to be you for you, you will start to become other people and lose yourself.

So no matter the situation, no matter what's happening, no matter who is doing what to whom, we need to get to this place of true responsibility where nothing outside of us is seen as the cause of anything we experience, other than God. We need to disengage. Detach from the drama that involves others.

All of the 'involvement' with others in an ego way creases an ego dependency relationship where it feels like you are joined to the other person and are exposed to them and that they can do stuff to you directly. That's the opposite of invulnerability. And that's doing stuff to yourself through them.

"Actions activate God's power." - Mel Bond, miracle worker.

A willingness to fulfill your function as healer, channel for God, invites and brings forth God's power.

But it's not until you ACT, that a flow can be established and God can help.

Taking an action can also happen when someone has prayed for a miracle and Holy Spirit has moved and now the person needs to take a moment of faith to ACT, by moving their body part in a way that was difficult or impossible before, to EXPLORE the POSSIBILITY that healing is present. And in that act of faith, in that "I wonder if I might be healed", that open-mindedness, ONLY WHEN YOU THEN MOVE the body part might the power of God actually come in and back up your actions with HIS healing power.

This is one of the keys in working miracles. You will not act on what you do not believe in. If you trust God and have faith and take an ACTION step, Heaven will back you up and provide the healing support and strength.

That moment of willingness, where you do not know if you are healed, but you act as if you are, expecting it, open to it, trusting it, like a child who is discovering something innocently for the first time, that brings the power of God.

After praying for someone and extending Holy Spirit to them, believing in the truth of their healing, get the person to MOVE. Not to focus on finding out "If it is still a problem", but to focus on, "HOW MUCH BETTER IS IT?". ... look for the betterness, look for the improvement, look for the help. This invites it to work.

Actions activate God's miracle-healing power, because they are acts of faith.

I feel more relaxed and peaceful, which I think is a result of looking at the world's system of failure, unrelenting attack and constant problems.

There was always an effort to resist the world going wrong, a constant tension of trying to stop bad things happening, an expectation that things should be going well all the time, and a desire for nothing to ever turn sour.

These were all forms of denial and wishful thinking. An ignorance about the system of the world and how it functions. It was rooted in a mixed belief that the world was even capable of sustaining anything. That it should, that the norm of life should be that the world "works well", and that problems are occasional annoying exceptions.

If you look at the fact that the world is utterly bullshit and hell-bent on inevitable destruction, that all its roads lead to death, that it disappoints at every turn, and it is literally incapable of being free of problems and difficulties, you actually get more of a sense of its "true nature". Instead of the fanciful denial that attempts to insulate us from it.

We spend a great deal of time and effort trying to make the world more tolerable. We build fancy homes and cities to try to shut out and ignore the weather. We try to farm foods more carefully to avoid contamination. We're told to do healthy things and exercise so as to avoid health concerns. We're told to make money so that we don't starve to death.

And so the drive of "civilized society" is really a REACTION to the fact that the world is raw and wild and cruel and unrelenting in its onslaught of carnage. We've become quite good at making it more "comfortable" and "safe", to a degree, in an effort to make hell more palatable, trying to tame its wicked ways. To form an oasis in the desert where we can be insulated from its "nature" and distanced from its ravages. Even though NONE of this prevents the destruction of all these things.

If we drop all that and just recognize the way the world is, and not just the planet but also the whole fundamental fabric of spacetime, then we can see that it was made to function a certain way. It cannot do what it was not designed to do. Its nature has to remain opposite to heaven otherwise it will cease to exist. It must BE different and separate otherwise it cannot appear to exist at all.

So it has to maintain this system of destruction at all times. If we let go of expecting it to be otherwise, and undo this denial that tries to constantly fight against it, or has an expectation that it's supposed to turn out well at the physical level, then when its nature just "does what it does", we won't be so upset. And we won't have to keep resisting it all the time, or fearing it.

The fear really comes from the "hope" or wishful thinking that it's not going to do what it always does. That it's not going to attack or destroy or make things difficult. And then when it does we're seemingly in shock and upset because our expectation has been destroyed. Without the blindness of believing the world can function like heaven, or that it can operate peacefully, or that it will ever be devoid of its devouring deadly nature, we can actually be more at peace about it.

In sense this a form of acceptance. Not accepting that the world is real and true, since only atonement should be accepted and only heaven should be validated. But an acceptance that the world, as it is, is just the way it is, and it cannot help its nature. A recognition that it's just always going to fuck up and destroy everything, because that's the only way it can function. And then in recognition of this we can actually laugh at it and not be so disturbed or surprised or shocked when everything goes to hell again.

This isn't the same as "expecting the worst", because you can get yourself into a belief that this world is real and it always is just negative and depressing, and therefore there is no hope or alternative. But you can expect the worst in the sense of realizing that the world can't be anything BUT the worst, due to its attacking nature, and can separate your relationship with it into a space of laughing at its hilariously flawed ways. We are, after all meant to learn to laugh at the mad idea that has produced this world.

As I sit here I'm looking out the window - not a perfect window but a dirtied stained window - upon an environment in which the leaves on the trees are all dead. The grass is browned and half-dead as a result of the snow that covered it. The weather is cold and unrelentless. The brickwork on the buildings is uneven. The light of sun is blocked and producing shadows of darkness. Roof tiles are missing. Rocks are weathered and decayed. Electrical power boxes are slightly mis-aligned and a strange ugly color. And the somewhat mutilated fir trees are struggling to stay alive.

But is this unexpected for a world where all things must die because time is change and change is death? No. This is the only way it can be. It is hilariously faulty. Ridiculously tragic, and quite a mess. The world is really kind of like a giant trashcan filled with broken pieces and old rotten shite.

Can it be otherwise? It cannot. It can never be otherwise. The dust of dead civilizations will always be blown by the winds of hate in this world. And recognizing this is its nature can actually set you free. Free from the horrible suffering that results from believing it could be any other way. And free from the constant efforts to put some extra lipstick and bandaids on the corpse, trying in vain to turn a tired old world into a new one. In a sense, let the dead bury the dead, and let death be, that there may be life in the mind.

We are to forgive the world, yes. To do this we have to want another world. We have to tune into another reality. Beyond space and time, a world of light and eternal life. A world where the laws of God do not permit suffering, difficulty, problems or death. And then we bring that wholistic perspective with us as we shine its light upon the broken world and see it from a loving perspective. We don't have to condemn the world in order to see that it is inherently broken. We can forgive it for being the way it is, only because it IS broken. And in forgiveness we can laugh it away.

"The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no-one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone." "The world will end when all things in it have been rightly judged by His judgment. The world will end with the benediction of holiness upon it. When not one thought of sin remains, the world is over. It will not be destroyed nor attacked nor even touched. It will merely cease to seem to be."

"The world will end in joy because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began."

For miracles of healing to function, there must be firm belief that healing will occur.

God's will is permanent healing, and miracles extend this, coming from love. So if there is any way that you believe healing will not happen, that means you don't believe God's will, so are actively working against it.

God has certainty and a complete knowing that healing has already occurred. We need to share in this.

This is why when you go to perform a miracle, you also need to believe in what God believes. You need to have this certainty that healing will and has happened. And what that translates to, is that you need to EXPECT MIRACLES TO HAPPEN.

Expectation comes when your belief is so refined and certain, that you are convinced and sure that it will happen. This puts you into a state of expecting, which in a way is a form of demanding/commanding. It is a refusal to accept any other outcome. Complete certainty.

Expectation is a very firm way of not only believing but of actively EXTENDING the certainty of God that "healing is truth". It's like, "of course it will heal!", or even better, "it MUST heal". No doubt. This is where you are extending God's authority over illusions.

Once all doubt and fear are gone, which is a requirement of miracle-mindedness, expectation results as a perception of certainty. It's not a request, it's an enforcement of God's will.

When there is no doubt left that healing must occur, in which you are merely enforcing God's will kind of like a law-enforcement officer, you KNOW the law and you KNOW what God wants and you KNOW that this is not negotiable. As such, what is left but to completely expect, reliability, certainty, trust... that "it is so". Illusions must bend to this because they have no authority over God.

Expect miracles to happen, believe it totally, pray with God and receive.

Start off by believing that something will heal - that God will heal it. Maybe something in yourself that needs healing, or in someone else.

Get a sense of how 'much' you believe this. How much certainty do you have? How much do are you so convinced that you have absolutely unshakeable doubtless certainty and zero fear?

Now, push your sense of belief into a whole other ballpark by transforming it into expectation. Adopt a perception of EXPECTING that healing must occur. Expect as strongly as you can.

You should notice a sense of your belief changing from 'just a belief' tinged with uncertainty, to a very focused, intent, direct, piercingly certain kind of 'demand'. It transforms into power. It transforms into a sense of REQUIRING that the healing occur. Of commanding it to occur. That it MUST occur. Be as convinced of this as you can.

When I do this I feel a sense of some kind of focus or something come down through my upper body down into my belly area. This could be Holy Spirit or your own Spirit.

The closer you can get to absolute certainty the more likely it is that you will start to feel Holy Spirit start to move and flow. The stronger the sense of expectation the better. It's okay to be practically 'demanding'. This is "Authority".

You as a Child of God have authority over all illusions. Another word for this is "dominion" (biblically, we are told we have dominion over the Earth - this is what it means). You extend the Authority of Christ in a kind of 'legal' way. You legally have the right to command illusions. To command sickness to leave. To command ego to be undone.

As such when you enter a state of firm belief and expectation, you are also joining with Christ. Being One with Christ is an important aspect of miracle working, and is also why you need to ask Jesus what miracles to perform and for him to help you perform them. You need alignment with Christ/certainty in order to perform them.

You also need to remain in certainty regardless of what physical appearances seem to suggest, regardless of evidence or lack thereof that healing has occurred, regardless of any kind of illusions or any signals coming from the ego world that suggest anything contrary to this firm conviction. This is why you must believe it in your MIND, in cause, and the illusion/body must follow to demonstrate what the mind believes is true.

You may believe that you need to get love from someone important. Maybe a spouse or a friend or a child or parent.

But this love that you think you need from them, is a substitute for the love of God.

Your attempt to need or depend on their love is a way for you to claim that you need to get love from outside of yourself, because you lack it, because God doesn't love you.

You'll be upset about how your need for love is not fulfilled by others, and why they are supposed to fulfill it, and why you feel so lost and empty because of their failure to do so.

But this so-called "need" that you have, is really your own belief and assertion that you're not lovable, an attempt to avoid being loved by God, and a way to hide from love.

The external seeking for that love when then look like a really deep desire to be loved and to want love, but it's really in truth a cover-up for an attempt to not want love to be inside of you.

So long as someone else is tasked with providing love for you, and so long as you keep them in that role, you are in denial and are trying to stop yourself from being actually loved.

You do not need other people to love you. You do not need to get special love from them.

Your "need" is a belief in, a choice for, and attempt to bring about, a lack of love, because it's part of your ego's defense against God. For it to then seem to yearn for love externally is a fake motivation, a cover-up story, to pretend to desire love very strongly, as a way to always move away from where love really is.

This so-called "need" for love is a self-fulfilling prophecy, in that as soon as it's put into place, it stops love from being present. It's an avoidance of love, and an assertion that love does not exist. To then proceed to seek for love based on this is to guarantee you will not find it. "Seek and do not find" is your ego's primary mandate.

The only way you are going to experience love is to let all those people off the hook, to stop expecting or needing them to be the ones to love you, to recognize they themselves need love because they are resisting God, and that you need to get your love directly from God within. And the only way to do that is not to fulfill your need for love, but to get rid of your neediness because it's actually what's blocking you from love's presence.

You need to instead open up to accept and allow God to love you directly, to receive it, to experience it, to let it be true, and to be filled up with it from the inside. It means dropping your belief that you can't be loved or that it's someone else's job to do so. You need to learn to love yourself, and in so doing, allow God to love you also.

It's God's love that you really want. It's God's love that is the only real love, anyway.

Although God's kingdom is a state of changelessness and permanence, THIS world isn't. This world is a world of shifts and changes, transformations, beginnings and endings. Nothing here remains the same whatsoever.

In and of itself this wouldn't be a problem if we would LET IT CHANGE. If we would not fight against, resist, or try to control its fundamental changing nature. If we would not hold onto its states and conditions, not want it to be a certain way, not prefer even that it stay in a certain configuration, we would be better off. But to do this we would have to let the entire world go and be attached to nothing.

The world has to be allowed to change because that's all it CAN DO. And it will be a bit of a rude awakening to say this, but, regardless of what you WANT, you WILL NOT be able to stop it changing. And everything that came will go, and everything that arrived will leave, and everything that was born will die.

This is the nature of illusions, of unreality, or dreams. They are not permanent, they are not immortal, they are not eternal. They canont stay the same. They depend on relativity and differences. They have to constantly fluctuate and move and change form in order to seem to exist at all. There is no stillness, no peace, no rest, no constancy of any kind in spacetime.

In order to recognize this and allow the world to be like this, it means you have to stay entirely in the present moment, in which you resist nothing and have no issue whatsoever about how anything else. No resistance against what arrives, no holding on to what is leaving. And that would be enlightenment.

The problem we have is that we tend to live in a way that assumes things can NOT CHANGE. We form relationships, we build houses and cities, we spend time accumulating, we become attached, we develop favorites, we form emotional bonds, we cling to treasures. All of this is an attempt really to DENY that the world IS going to change, to dream a little while that we can find a way to make the world stay the way we want it.

Most of our urges to do something in the world are based on a drive to try to make it permanent in some way. We build the house we want to live in and decorate it and fill it with objects hoping to make a home that will last. We work on relationships and deepening bonds and falling in love with bodies in the hope that they will always be there. But inevitably it all comes tumbling down because the harsh truth is that the world MUST change, and it will.

"It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

The suffering we experience is the direct result of attempting to CONTROL THE CHANGE. To resist it, to deny that the world has a fundamental nature of change, and attempting to keep things how we want them. Every time that we become invested in NEEDING or WANTING something to stay a certain way, we are going to suffer. Because it IS going to change, and then we are going to be unhappy because we've come to depend on it being that way.

We develop expectations that things will stay how we want them. And then our expectations are dashed and smashed. We set the world up to CAUSE US, to give us what we think we want in a certain specific form that we agreed to. And then it changes, and it fails to give, and then we are left hanging.

When there is a disconnect, a gap, a distance of spacetime, a contrast, between how the world IS NOW in its present configuration, and how we WANT it to be, that contrast is LOSS. It is discord and tension and stress and war. The ego says "I want it thus!", and the world just repeatedly says "no". And so the world moves on and you stay in the past, clinging to what once was, hoping it will continue, hoping it will return, and it never does.

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

As such, the world disappoints you over and over again WHEN you are expecting it to be a certain way that you prefer. It can't satisfy your wishes. It can't give you what you want. You can manipulate it and control it and manage it and rearrange it to try to fend off change (death), to try to keep an illusion that it is going to stay the same. You can repaint the walls and repair the rotten wood and redo the garden but again and again the onslaught of time - which is change and death - will keep happening.

The degree to which you have strings attached, psychological investment in, and desire to KEEP the things of the world, to that degree you will suffer when it ignores your wishes and changes anyway. Because it can't help it. You hold onto possessions, places, things, relationships, people, bodies. You resist them changing, you don't want to lose them, you fear loss, you try to preserve bodies for as long as possible, and maybe you don't even conceive of your favorite things coming to an end at some point. But they will.

This is not to be morbid. The world is a dream of death and it can't help but keep recycling itself. It transforms from birth to death and back to birth again. It is utterly incapable of staying the same forever. Expecting that it can and trying to live as though it can will make you suffer.

When something changes "against your will", and you cling to how it was, and live in the past, and don't want to accept the change, you will experience loss and despair. In order to "move on" from the perceived loss and stop perceiving it as a loss, you have to let go of CONTROL, and of wanting things to be how you want them. That means, to move on, is to move WITH the change and let it happen, accepting that change HAS occurred and surrendering to the fact that you can do nothing to stop it.

In a way that seems like beign powerless and a victim, in that you have to accept the change and LET IT change. To let go is to let go of the resistance against change, to admit it has changed, and to stop fighting against it. When you fight change you fight the world. When you fight the world you are also fighting reality and moving away from the present. The only way to live, is to live in the present and go with the flow of whatever happens with no resistance to it.

That means letting go of all your wishes, all your wants and desires and needs, all your dependencies, reclaiming all the power you gave to wordly things to affect you how you preferred, letting all bodies go, letting people come and go, surrendering control and allowing whatever happens. Ultimately you can only fully do that in the present, in the holy instant, in the eternal now. And it means relinquishing all attachmen to everything you value here, because the world holds NOTHING that you want.

It's in the present that you really transcend change, and become changeless, as you observe changes come and go without resistance. It's in the present that you find peace, and God, and love, and become open to what is. It's in the present that you gain "reality contact". And it's in the present that you find freedom from suffering. Dropping the "unreasonable expectation" that the world can be something it can never be, sets you free. Accepting how it is NOW, is the only way.

"Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

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

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

You can see this in stores, where people are standing looking at several shelves filled with basically the same product, wondering which one to pick. And this is also me ;-)

In ego metaphysical terms, what's happening is the ego presents a vast variety of FORMS, each of which presents the ILLUSION that these forms are unique and different. They distinguish themselves as being unrelated to and distinct from each other.

So instead of, you know, going to get the one headache pill, you go and have to wade through 5 different brands each of which has like 10 variations and subtleties, which you were not expecting.

So you enter into confusion. If it's true that these objects are unique and different, then this suggests a great degree of fragmentation. And in order to understand what you're faced with, your mind is going to be in so much conflict, trying to discern or balance the subtle differences as if they are important.

The more ego problems you are given, and the more they seem to present distinctly different options, the more you get lost in trying to find MEANING. Meaning only really comes from oneness, so the more fragmentation there is, the less sense it makes.

It's like being faced with a complicated puzzle, which your mind just doesn't know how to deal with. It scrambles your brain. You are completely befuddled trying to find 'clarity' or 'confidence' or 'certainty' in the face of so many conflicting viewpoints.

So commercialism, in this way, is the ego's way to get people to believe in separate problems. And the more options and choices and 'freedom of choice' there is, the LESS certain you become.

Stores are filled with thousands of brands, millions of products, all vying for attention, trying to prove to you that they are what you want and need, when you really need God. It is a huge ego distraction.

Commercialism and ever increasing choices builds up the ILLUSION that different forms have a different value, or different content. Like, exactly how many different varieties of something does anyone really need?

I work at a company that sells a certain type of product, and there are like over 30,000 products being sold, and honestly, for most people, you would've seen all the majorly 'unique' options within about 50 products.

Take a look at Amazon, millions upon millions of products. Each time I go on there, I can browse for ages and not find anything I want. I'm not too picky ;-)

Anyway, the whole point is, is not to get you to find exactly the perfect item that you really really want....it's to get you so conditioned to think that this is what you want that you end up NOT FINDING ANYTHING. It is another part of "seek and do not find".

If someone wants to hate, they have every right to. Why would you want to stop them?

It seems a popular reaction to just say, they should stop hating, because hating is wrong and if they hate they are guilty.

But they do have free will and if they want to hate that is their freedom to do so.

The bigger question is, does that hate actually have any power to cause someone to be changed against their will.

And this is where we get into who is responsible for causation, who has the power, and who owns the effects.

The secret of salvation would say you can ONLY ever do anything to yourself. So it is possible that someone else's hate can actually do anything to you? Not if you don't USE it to do so.

So then it becomes a matter of, not stopping other people from hating, but becoming immune to their hate.

Ultimately then you're supposed to become invulnerable and immortal, no longer shifting blame and responsibility for your happiness onto others, or expecting them to treat you a certain way.

If you are being responsible for everything you feel and experience, then someone else trying to hate is not a cause of you, and cannot cause you to be hurt.

So then, should they stop hating? Should they stop because you want them to choose for you, because you want them to give you what you want, and because you are manipulating them?

You should let them carry on hating, and instead of teaching that you are vulnerable and weak and easily at the effect of the world, you should teach that you are invulnerable and nothing in the world can affect you.

As the course says, show your brother that you had no hurt of him. It doesn't matter what anyone does even if it seems vicious, it can have no effect on you unless you fail to recognise this is your dream.

And the secret of salvation tells you that no-thing affects you but yourself. You can be attacked by nothing but your own thoughts. Only the self-accused condemn.

So instead of seeing it as hate, with a power capable of actually hurting you, you need to change how you see it and recognize that is it really the other person hating themselves.

It doesn't have anything to do with you. Their attempted attack is self-attack. They are trying to make you responsible for their happiness and wellbeing. They want you to change in order for them to feel better.

That is sickness, just as it would be sickness to react to them in the same way, by wanting them to change in order to make you feel better.

What you really want to be doing is realising that hate cannot apply to you because you are innocent and holy, and therefore their accusation of hate must be incorrect, and something to laugh at.

Then you are strong and not weak, you are certain and not vulnerable. And the attempts by others to hate you has no effect.

You can then recognize that their hate is simply them hating themselves and trying to destroy themselves, while trying to get you to decide for them whether they are loveable or not.

So decide for them that they are loveable and it will dissolve the impact of the hate and make them look at themselves.

The solution to being hated isn't to try to control the haters or to stop them hating or make them wrong for doing so. It's to realize that they are mistaken and what they claim is not true.

Only that can be sanity, not reacting on the basis of believing there is truth to what they say, or by positioning yourself as a victim. Hate is just an attempt to disown and project guilt, having attacked ourselves and hated ourselves first. That's what needs healing, not the projections.

If you react to hate and try to stop and control it, you are also being hateful. You hate hate. That's no better. You have to love hate if you want to be unaffected by it.

Let them hate. Know that it is not the truth of you.

"Hear not the call of hate, and see no fantasies. For your completion lies in truth, and NOWHERE ELSE. See in the call of hate, and in every fantasy that rises to delay you, but the call for help, that rises ceaselessly from you to your Creator."

It's "pride month" which is a sort of pro-queer celebration and revenge-quest rolled into one. People should be happy to be who they really are, without the need for any validation from anyone. It's not necessary to have other people treat us in a certain way or agree with us or even respect us. Insecure people depend on others for making themselves okay. Immortal beings laugh in the face of all judgements and opinions. The world doesn't do anything to us and other people do not define who or what we are.

Often I hear things along the lines of - the straight heteronormative people have told us this, done that to us, treated us this way, and so now we're going to be extremely "loud and proud" as a kind of counter-protest. That isn't really pride, it's an ego thing pretending to be pride. If people were really proud of who they are they wouldn't feel a need to go to war over it because they'd know that no-one and nothing can take it away from them. The pride must be pretty fragile and NOT pride if it depends on other people to reinforce it.

So as usual like most things in the world there's a whole lot of special-relationship bullshit and ego dynamics around this. Many of the pride posts I've seen are nothing short of seeking revenge against perceived persecutors. People trying to insist on their 'right to exist' as a special kind of person. People 'fighting' for something. Nothing natural has to be fought for, it's given by God with no strings attached.

If we get into any kind of need to have other people change to see us, accept us, recognize us, validate us, respect us, treat us well, stop abusing us, etc... anything at all, we're saying that we do not want to be fully ourselves, do not not accept ourselves, and are shifting responsibility for that onto someone else. We don't want that, it's not an improvement. We should all be happy and proud of who and what we are on the basis that we are perfect in God and have no need to get love and appreciation from anything outside of us.

I know there has been a lot of history and conflict surrounding this, and yes still a lot of people are horrendous and murderous in their attitudes about queer people. But ultimately we have to be responsible for our own choice of whether to be happy or not. If we give anyone the power to determine that for us then we give power away and are asking to be victimized. And then going on a sassy middle-finger quest to try to pretend not to care, isn't exactly a solid foundation.

We should not be wanting or needing other people to 'treat us well' in order for us to be happy and who we really are. This is the problem with the world, everyone's expecting everyone else to "do to them" what they want, to "make them happy", to "cause them" to be this way or that way, which is "positive victimhood". It's a way of giving away power and hoping that the world will treat you nice. If you need the world to treat you a certain way your entire mental health is pretty fragile.

You are an immortal being, you do not NEED anyone to treat you nice. You are invulnerable, you do not NEED people to validate you or be respectful toward you. Let them be as vicious as they want, it's not supposed to affect you in any way if you are owning who you are. There is no strength in surrounding yourself with only the people that treat you well. You are not 'treated' well or not well. You are the one who chooses everything you experience.

"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."

"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."

Let's take a good hard look at something that very few people want to ever admit. Something dark and awful, but true.

Planet Earth, and the rest of this universe, were made in a thought of opposition to Heaven. This was an attempt to make hell real, by dreaming up a world that runs completely opposite to the beautiful divine nature of the Kingdom.

To do this, an opposite to life had to be invented - death, and the entire system of thought had to be based on not only the belief in this but the attempt to make it as real as possible. To bring it about. This alternative world was an attempted weapon to destroy the Kingdom and destroy God, if that were possible.

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

Because of this, everything in this world runs contrary to life and is governed solely by the laws of death and destruction. The world is an attempt not to exist and to destroy the Son of God.

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

The world wasn't made in order to have a place to live forever. Heaven is where you live forever. The world was made to kill you. Everything in it, even those things which seem to begin or are born, are automatically infused with death right from the outset.

Death, separation, limitation, spacetime, conflict, attack, are all built into every single part of the system. Even the most beautiful flower, the cutest puppy, the loveliest sunset, are made of the illusion of death. They take on forms whose appearance is designed to tempt you to believe they are desirable, valuable, wanted. But they are nothing but illusions, designed to distract and deceive you and keep you in hell.

The fact is, that everything in this universe dies sooner or later. It does not matter what it is, or how long it takes. Planets die. Galaxies die. People die. Animals die. All of it. Sooner or later, death is going to fully express itself, as the entropy and decay gradually erode whatever illusion of life there is. And as Jesus says, this world is "at best an illusion of life, at worst death", since it cannot be alive at all.

"There is no life outside of heaven."

Jesus asks that we take a good hard look at this, because we seem to be quite deceived and deluded in believing that the world can offer us something valuable. We are constantly tempted by its attractions and exciting adventures. It offers us toys and objects and pointless things to keep us entranced. But most of it, is attempts to convince us that avoiding death here is possible, if we will just put our faith in the ego a little while longer, until death arrives.

And so one of the biggest problems we have, is that we do not recognize this world is ENTIRELY made of death, or that ALL its roads lead to death, or that there is NO ESCAPE from this hell if you play by its rules. The idea of "living here" is ridiculous. It can never be experienced as a true home. And everything it does is a murderous attack on your happiness and wellbeing. The world eats you alive. And it is designed to do nothing but destroy you. At least, eventually, when it's done pretending to be your friend.

The problem we have is that in our deception and rose-tinted blind optimism, we keep believing that this world can be or do something that it can never be or do. We keep trying to turn it into heaven. We keep trying to wrap it up and dress it up to be what it's not. In a state of denial. One more flavor, one more combination, one more appearance, one more new distraction, one more toy, one more desirable temptation to lure you in. And by believing that you can achieve some kind of escape from death through this means, the world has deceived you for a while, and you think you like it here. Until it fails. Which it will.

Make no mistake. This world was designed to result in, lead to, culminate in, and guarantee, one thing only. The death of God and his son. It has no other ambition. It has no other direction. It will always enforce this ambition sooner or later. You might spend most of your life pretending that this is not the case, avoiding the inevitable, but regardless of your outlook the world is run by laws of death.

When you don't recognize the world's "nature", its complete failure to accomplish anything, its automatic built-in destruction, and its inability to be heaven, you enter into wishful thinking, delusions, denial, and start down a fairy-tail road of spiritualized egos and thinking that this time you'll win. If you play in the ego's sandpit you will die, by its rules, when it wants you to die.

Expecting the world to be something it's not, can only make you frustrated, and disappointed. You might hope that it can be something, that you can succeed, that you can have your cake, that you can win, that you can escape somehow, but sooner or later it comes crashing down, it turns out to be an empty promise, something you don't really want, and then it breaks, and it fails, and it dies again. Wanting it to be otherwise will only frustrate you. Not recognizing that this is the only way it can be, and letting go of the wish to have it be different, simply traps you in it more.

The world WILL disappoint you, if you try to build your house on its unstable rock. It WILL disappoint you if you forget for a moment that perfection is impossible here. It WILL disappoint you when you start to become attached to hopes and dreams which are later dashed against the rocks. And it WILL disappoint you when you thought that next toy you buy was going to be your salvation, only to discover it was the wrong one, or it broke, or it didn't quite do what you thought it would do.

Nothing really works in hell, it's all broken. How many times will you have to go through the same lesson of expecting it to not be hell, only for it to result in hell, before you you learn? And no this is not an attempt to make hell REAL, it is a reminder that hell IS AN ILLUSION, and to not fall for its tricks. Because hell's biggest weapon is to make itself seem like heaven, something you want, and somewhere you want to live forever.

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

We need to at least acknowledge this. We need to recognize it, see it, notice it. We need to realize this is its nature. The world is not a perfect living place. It's a place of destruction and conflict and incompletion and damage and problems and everything going wrong. It can't be any other way. All illusions have this nature built into them, because they lack the harmony, perfection and love of the Kingdom.

THE WORLD JUST SUCKS It simply does. It can't not suck. But by recognizing it inherently sucks, you can at least let go of the expectation of it not sucking. Which in fact is a truer perception, a more accurate way of looking at it. The world was made to be hell. If you can recognize that, you can be free of it. NOT recognizing illusions deceives you. And "Illusions recognized must disappear."

You are only trapped in it if you resist it, make it real, believe it's true, consider it heaven, or mistake it for God's creation. And you only keep holding onto it if you think you want it or it offers you something of value. But it cannot. Ever.

"This world holds nothing that I want."

"Teachers of God are willing to give up all the pleasures of the world."

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to give."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. All its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not escape from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to gain that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. ***All of them will lead to death.*** On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

Jesus isn't being negative here. He isn't being judgement or closed-minded. He's not in ego. He's being very truthful and honest and sane. He's simply pointing out what the world's nature is, without flinching or looking away or being in denial about it. The world was made from the idea of death and everything in it is designed to fail and die and cease existing. That's just how it is. It can't be any other way.

Even in the happy dream, or the real world, the laws of the physical world still remain in effect. Trees still die in storms. Animals get eaten. Planets die in supernova explosions. Stars get swallowed in black holes. Your car rusts, your shoes wear out, your food rots, and people die. It's supposed to happen this way. It's not fate, but it is an illusion of fate, based on the idea of sin being real. The wages of sin is death, and everything in this world is designed to make death and sin real.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it."

"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? We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. This is regarded as "the way of nature," not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the "natural" law of life. The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path, - all this is taken as the Will of God. And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this."

When you "get excited" about something, there's a very high likelihood that you will enter into disappointment. Maybe it's a new car. Maybe you're going on a wonder vacation. Maybe it's a new pet or some new food you're trying. And maybe it will seem to you that these things are great and enjoyable and nothing to complain about. But then, maybe ignorance is bliss and you didn't notice the experience of HEAVEN that you did not have, while these falling-short substitutes came to drag you into hell.

I got a new car. Winter came. The snow and salt fucked up the interior. Oh well. I got a new fish tank. A fish died, plants died, it didn't go quite to plan. Oh well. I ordered items online, they came, they were the wrong items. Oh well. This is the kind of stuff that happens here. But if you expect it NOT to happen, you are expecting some kind of spiritualized salvation and external perfection, which is setting you up for total disappointment. The more you worship idols and seek for external saviors, the more you will be let down. And even your most valued teachers have their skeleton-full closets hidden away.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are? Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.*** Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

Even for a teacher of God, a highly healed and awakened individual, the world continues to SUCK AND DIE!

THE WORLD SIMPLY SUCKS ASS! It was designed that way. It will never not suck. Even if you are happy. Even if you are truly forgiving and loving. It will still keep doing what it does until it finally vanishes into nothingness. Waking up doesn't stop the world from killing 130,000 people a day. Waking up doesn't repair everyone's broken limbs. Waking up doesn't make waterfalls flow uphill or prevent planets from colliding. Stuff still keeps ticking over, per the laws of death, and there is no hope here.

This is essentially the crux of the matter. The belief that there is hope, faith, trust, in the ego and its death world. That it has a redeeming quality, some possibility of being heaven or home, and a chance of escape from God. It's this wishful thinking that just maybe, you can get away with murder, just maybe you can be God, and just maybe you can overthrow the Kingdom and prove the Son of God is dead. Or that this world can be perfect. But you can't. And you never will. So the whole endeavor is pointless.

There is no hope in the world. Hope is of God. There is only hop because the wrold is NOT real and its illusions of hell are fictional WHEN RECOGNIZED. If you want hope, you have to look beyond the world, and forget the world and all its twisted ways. We can but recognize the world's limitations and laugh at them. The world will end in laughter because it is a place of sorrow. In laughter we will shine it away because of its fundamentally unhappy nature. The world will never be your home. You do not belong in hell.

Is it not far saner to recognize and accept that no matter what you do in this world, its laws will steer it towards failure? Because if you expect the opposite, you will be disappointed, again and again and again. This does not mean there is no hope at all. Only that trying to find it where it is not, cannot work. God and His Kingdom are your only home and your only happiness.

"The thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."

"A Son of God is happy only when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural environment."

"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."

"There is no life outside of Heaven. 2 Where God created life, there life must be. 3 In any state apart from Heaven life is illusion. 4 At best it seems like life; at worst, like death. 5 Yet both are judgments on what is not life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. 6 Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. 7 Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusion stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. 8 Illusions are but forms. 9 Their content is never true.

T-23.II.20. The laws of chaos govern all illusions. 2 Their forms conflict, making it seem quite possible to value some above the others. 3 Yet each one rests as surely on the belief the laws of chaos are the laws of order as do the others. 4 Each one upholds these laws completely, offering a certain witness that these laws are true. 5 The seeming gentler forms of the attack are no less certain in their witnessing, or their results. 6 Certain it is illusions will bring fear because of the beliefs that they imply, not for their form. 7 And lack of faith in love, in any form, attests to chaos as reality.

T-23.II.21. From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. 2 It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. 3 The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. 4 Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth. 5 Think not one step is smaller than another, nor that return from one is easier. 6 The whole descent from Heaven lies in each one. 7 And where your thinking starts, there must it end.

T-23.II.22. Brother, take not one step in the descent to hell. 2 For having taken one, you will not recognize the rest for what they are. 3 And they will follow. 4 Attack in any form has placed your foot upon the twisted stairway that leads from Heaven. 5 Yet any instant it is possible to have all this undone. 6 How can you know whether you chose the stairs to Heaven or the way to hell? 7 Quite easily. 8 How do you feel? 9 Is peace in your awareness? 10 Are you certain which way you go? 11 And are you sure the goal of Heaven can be reached? 12 If not, you walk alone. 13 Ask, then, your Friend to join with you, and give you certainty of where you go."

Years ago I did a miracle kind of by accident. I didn't even really know how I did this or why, it just kind of happened.

I had this box which had coins in it. I'd used up all the larger-denomination coins and there was only like 1 and 2 pence pieces left (British currency). I knew there was basically nothing in there besides this. I'd sifted through it several times and totally extracted all the good stuff.

But for some reason that day, I needed a couple of `pounds`, and was for some reason in a different state of mind. I kept having this feeling of insisting that there MUST be more money in there somewhere. I turned through the coins with my fingers, looking for it. For probably 30 seconds there was nothing, and I knew from previous checks that I wouldn't find anything. But, something in me was becoming very insistent.

I kept saying to myself, there MUST be some money in here. I built up this kind of ... I don't know if expectation is the word, it wasn't like having a sense of anticipation and then waiting, it was more like, an insistence, or a demand. I demanded that there be money, that this was TRUE, and that it simply must be. For some reason I wasn't paying attention to what my eyes were showing me, I was defying it and insisting there must be something there.

I don't know how I managed to ignore the ego at this point, because normally I would've been like, well, I know there is no higher denominations in there, I would trust my eyes and trust my previous experiences and just stop right there. But this time for some reason I was more miracle minded, and kept on probing the pile of coins insisting that there must be decent money in there.

And then, suddenly, two gold-colored 1-pound coins suddenly appeared out of nowhere. These are in striking contrast to the other coins because the 1 and 2 pence pieces are a dark brown bronze color. The shiny gold-colored coins were suddenly there at my fingertips. They didn't show up because they were hiding, they simply did not exist before. But somehow, they suddenly appeared. They manifested out of thin air.

I think at the time my mindset didn't seem that phased by this, like it seemed kind of natural or something. It didn't shock me. I also did not repeat it, or even attempt to. It didn't seem out of the ordinary, it's just how I was functioning somehow. It seemed to make sense and I just used the money as intended. It hasn't been until looking back on the event that I realized more that this was a miraculous manifestation and that I was doing something with my mind which was not typical.

This really is the tip of the iceberg of what the mind can do. It's going to be fun opening up to more of this.

Some miracle-working basics are embedded in this story....

1) expecting/demanding/insisting/knowing/requiring that the result must happen

2) ignoring all "better judgement" or ego knowledge or even visual evidence

3) being persistent and consistent and not taking no for an answer - you have to kind of resolve to be "done with" tolerating the conditions that are present and resolve to be 100% determined that it MUST change.

Jesus has said in the Course that when the mind is used to focus thought, combined with strong/firm belief, a huge surge of power results which has the power to literally move mountains. Bring it on! This is what miracles really are all about. Ignoring the ego and bringing forth supernatural results.

Seeing yourself as deprived makes you perceive others as taking from you, and that you don't have enough left to give.

For example when I'm having some emotional release/healing, maybe I cried and I'm tired and crabby and feeling vulnerable. Maybe I'm not totally past it all yet and still am feeling whatever the lack is - lack of love, lack of peace, whatever... I'll see myself as being quite 'in need', i.e. needy.

When I see myself this way, I start to perceive everyone else as being needy too. Even if they're not. I'll perceive they're trying to take from me or demand something of me that I can't supply. I'll feel put upon and taxed and offended by the demand I see in them.

And especially if the other person is in a state of need themselves, it'll trigger anger that someone is so insensitively expecting something from me when I apparently don't have anything to give. I see them as trying to 'take take take'.

But what's really happening is I'm seeing myself - the demand in them is ME demanding FROM them. So I'm needy AND demanding, stating that I do not have what I need and someone else needs to give it to me. (Secret side-tip: although I'm saying I am in need and want to GET from others, I secretly do NOT want to get because then I would't be able to see myself as needy).

I'm the one who is actually trying to 'take take take'. I'm trying to GET, in order to make up for the lack that I perceive in myself. I'm accusing other people of trying to take because they're thwarting MY effort to take.

So as I see myself deprived and lacking, it's because I believe I don't have enough love. I believe the love is not in me and that I need to get it from someone else. So if they fail to give it, or if they demand it from ME, then I am left totally empty-handed with no way to resolve my problem, and that produces fear and anger... A sense that 'I can't and I won't... which often is in the form of a lot of reluctance or resistance or, comedically, "I can't take it anymore" (when secretly I am taking big-time).

But the thing is, seeing myself as deprived is actually the CAUSE of my perceiving a sense of lack of love, which led to the feeling of neediness, which led to the drama of being pressured to give what I don't have to needy people.

So an antidote for this... if I'm seeing myself as needy, and realizing it, is simply this:

Give love.

IMMEDIATELY this cancels out and dissolves all trace of a sense of neediness, all trace of not having enough, all trace of anger and reason for fear or resentment.

I'll be honest, I've only remember this a couple of times in real situations. One of them was just now. As soon as I suddenly remembered (after asking Holy Spirit to help) that my neediness is making me try to 'get' because I am seeing myself as deprived, it made me LAUGH. Because it introduces truth at the root of this bullshit and immediately corrected all of the EFFECTS.

I have to learn to remember this more often. When I feel shit and like I am deprived and don't have anything to give and don't want to give..... the way I am feeling is BECAUSE I don't want to give, not the other way around.

I choose to position myself as unloved and in need, which creates feelings of deprivation, which leads to the whole drama. If I choose NOT to see myself unloved by SHARING love (remember giving and receiving are both required, not sacrifice or greed), the whole problem is corrected.

And then, now that I've accepted healing of the actual problem - a lack of love - I can now give love and FULFILL the needs of others, which in fact then disappear, because they were never really needy to begin with. I was just seeing my own neediness projected.

Problem solved.

There is a fundamental difficulty in choosing anything in this world. Everything in this world lacks everything else. Everything has taken a side, has separated itself off, has made itself different, and does not have what other things have. This means that nothing is whole, nothing has everything, and nothing is perfect.

There is a fiction perpetrated that suggests you can have it all, get it all, win everything, find the best, be the best, choose the best option, be on a perfect diet, get the perfect body, etc. These are all make-believe, achieve a dream, conquer the world etc.

The separation even applies to colors. Red lacks green, blue lacks orange, and yellow lacks purple. In order to get one color you have to lose its opposite. Picking one color denies aspects which other colors have. So none of the colors are the perfect whole divine color. And you can drive yourself up the wall trying to choose the best one.

So then as you're trying to choose between options, you find yourself in a state of paralysis. You seek to make the perfect choice, the best choice, and to entirely win and succeed in whichever choice to make. But the truth is that whichever thing you choose, will lack something. Whatever option to take, it's going to be defective and limited and lacking.

This drives you nuts, when you're trying to decide what is the best course of action, or the right thing to buy, or the most appropriate selection, or whether to do one thing or another. Both options appeal with equal potential, and with equal lack. Neither of them is completely ideal. So then most of the time you end up throwing your hands in the air and "settling" for whichever one seems the least offensive. Or whichever one seems to have more pros than cons.

I'll just go with this one. I'll settle for that one. I guess this one will do. That one's probably good enough. So then you learn that in this world you usually have to lower your standards, be willing to accept that everything is limited, be okay with scarcity and sacrifice, and realize that every single choice is a compromise. You cannot get anything without losing something. That's how it's all set up.

Some people will have higher standards and will try to fine-tune the selection process. They will have in their minds the idealistic idea that some choices are actually completely perfect. That you can win without losing. That you can gain without loss. That you can get without having to give. And much of society and industry is geared towards trying to maximize the "return on investment". To get as much of what seems perfect and ideal, with as little loss as possible. There's an art to it, but it can never succeed.

If you are perfectionistic, thus, usually because you see yourself as imperfect and are trying to find what you think you don't have, you'll find this familiar. It drives you nuts trying to ideally look for the absolute best possible outcome, the most amazing toy, the completely perfect choice. It literally can make you more insane by expecting, or rather misunderstanding, that the world has the capability of offering you something that is whole and complete. It can't.

You will feel far more at ease and sane about your interactions and goals in the world if you can recognize that, fundamentally, all physical matter is a state of partiality. It's based on separation, so everything has only a small portion of the whole. Each item is lacking something that the other items have. If you go for the TV with the bigger speakers you lose out on the TV with the cool remote. You can't win everything. You can't have it all.

If you can accept that every choice in the world falls short, every option is incomplete, every possible outcome is not ideal, and realize this is just how a world of separation must be, then you can stop fighting with it or setting yourself up for disappointment. As jesus says in the course, "the world has disappointed you since time began." That's because everything it promises, it fails to deliver. Everything it gives you, it takes away.

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

Nothing in the world is whole. It was designed to reject wholeness. Space is an assertion of the idea that nothing is everywhere and the everywhere (God) is nowhere. Every object, every piece of matter, every physical attribute, every choice, is divided. It is only because there has BEEN a division that you even have two things to choose between, and each of those options is only half of the whole. So at best, any choice you make leaves you empty handed, second-guessing, and wishing you picked the other one. And surely the best of the best will bring you salvation!

The world is two-faced, just as the ego is. It gives and takes away. If you gain you lose. If you win you lose. If you get you lack. If you want not to share anything with anyone you end up with nothing. What you get is taken from you. What you accomplish is destroyed. What you build comes tumbling down. Nothing lasts, nothing is whole, nothing completes you. That's how this world is. The sooner you accept that this is its nature you can work within its limits and use it for a higher purpose without trying to expect it to suddenly act like heaven. Pigs will never be able to fly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had an 'aha' moment today about being a teacher, i.e. being helpful in this world, which probably applies to everyone.

ACIM says that "those who temporarily have more" give to "those who temporarily have less". This is the relationship of teachers to students.

But let's look at what this means.

The teacher has to be someone who temporarily appears to be more aware of truth than the student. And that means if the student can learn anything from them, the student has to be temporarily less aware.

Being temporarily less aware means you must be more insane, and you must believe in less truth, and you must therefore see truth as the enemy.

So this means that, potentially, the student will reject the teacher, i.e. the teachING, at least at first, because there is a clash of belief systems. The student comes to the teacher IN ERROR, seeking CORRECTION.

What this means for the teacher, is that the teacher will very likely experience REJECTION, conflict, attack, misunderstanding, etc. i.e. a lot of confusion and interference, at the beginning, moreso than potentially at the end AFTER teaching has been accomplished.

So here's the problem for the teacher or anyone who wants to be a teacher. And this also applies to anyone who wants to express themselves more fully, anyone who wants to express something that other people may not be able to accept, anyone doing art or creative pursuits, and anyone trying to say anything that might actually HELP or contribute to the awakening of humanity.

The problem is, that there will be a fear of rejection, a fear of judgement, a fear of abandonment, BY the student, i.e. by the audience. And you hear this a lot like people who are artists being afraid of the 'pressure' to have their art be liked, or a writer who gets a block because they are too worried about the audience's reaction. Or a teacher who wants to share and uplift others but is afraid that the teaching will be ridiculed.

The insight I had, about this, which is very freeing, is this. IF you want to in any way help, uplift, inspire, teach, awaken, guide, educate, or cause people to experience something or enjoy something that you created, there absolutely WILL be rejection. At least at first. There HAS to be rejection by the student otherwise the student wouldn't NEED the teaching. The art critic MUST 'not get' the art, at least at first, otherwise the art really has no transformative

power.

In other words, if you as a teacher/artist/creative etc can ACCEPT, that there is rejection built in whenever you step outside the box or attempt to open people's minds, that THEY will not understand because they CANNOT understand, at first, you can perhaps see that it is not PERSONAL. It is not that they are personally attacking you, it's that their .. 'ignorance'... is resisting exposure to what you are offering. And that only means, that they are not as aware, and they have come to you BECAUSE they are ripe for increasing their awareness. "Those who are to meet will meet" - ACIM .... When the student is ready, the teacher will appear (I forget if that's ACIM or not).

So those who have a potential to learn, at least will find the teachers, or the artists, or whoever is offering the expanded mind. The teacher/artist/expresser should EXPECT that there HAS to be rejection, because the student's mind has not yet opened up to the teaching/offering. And so it's not that the teaching is crap, or the art is crap, or the creation is crap... it's that the viewer hasn't yet opened up to it - and that's because of THEIR mind and THEIR unconsciousness and THEIR resistance. It's nothing to do with what you're offering. And really it should be the PURPOSE of the art or teaching, to help that student transform and awaken out of their resistance/rejection, into acceptance and understanding.

So I guess my insight is, which helps me immensely, is.... that instead of being afraid of rejection, and thus hiding from 'coming out' as 'a teacher', I need to recognize that there will be rejection and why, and realize that it will not actually have anything to do with me. Those who are ready and willing to open up will do so, and those who are not will not do so. I need to DETACH from the ego effort to 'force' or 'coerce' others into accepting what I say, therefore indirectly accepting ME. I need to take the ME out of it. Just put it out there for "those who have ears to listen", and just accept that everyone else will fall into the 'rejection' camp. And this is normal. And it's not personal. And it's nothing to do with me.

Expecting that rejection and welcoming it and knowing that it is because of a person's un-readiness or inappropriateness to be a student, takes the burden off the 'false' expectation that *EVERYONE* MUST ACCEPT YOU. You don't need *everyone's* acceptance. Not everyone is ready. Not everyone is meant to meet you. That's not how the plan works. We each have an appointed function. Talents. Gifts. etc. Or as some people say, "just do you".

I guess in a way this means being unconditional in how you express yourself. Being true to yourself and expressing who you are and what YOUR message is, in the knowing that SOMEONE is meant to receive it, and that everyone else is irrelevant. Which means there is absolutely no reason NOT to express yourself exactly how you want to. With freedom. And not with dependency. So what is 90% of people hate your stuff. Let them. Help the rest.

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

Jesus here tells us that this world, Earth, which comprises homes and cities and roads etc, has the mark of death upon it. That even from the start, even when it was made, it already had death and disappointment infused into it. It was made in an idea of death, being the idea of the opposite to eternal life. This is because "Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem." and so an illusory world is really a dream of death.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it ****are the laws of death****."

Recognize then that by death he's talking about the fact that everything in spacetime, including spacetime itself, is founded on the idea of an interruption to life, or an attempt to change the eternal into the temporary. Things coming to an end. Things changing over time. Things decaying and rotting and dying. Things becoming sick. Things lacking and sacrificing and losing. Even things growing and transforming. All various forms of limitation. A limit on life and on eternity. A notion of "not forever".

One thing that I've been doing lately is just accepting the fact that this world's laws, the laws of physics, are just automatically set up to fail. Chaos becomes possible because of the way that objects interact with each other seemingly randomly. Your car breaks down. Objects fall on the ground. You bump into things. Stuff breaks. Your new toy has a mark on it. Your clothes wear out. Your food rots. Your house needs repairs. Your kitchen smells bad. And your clothes are all dirty.

We could struggle against such things as if we have an expectation that the world can be perfect or free from defects. And some people try to control the world and twist it into an illusory palace of perfection. But the problem is, it can't be that. It is fundamentally rooted in the idea of death, of interruption and inconsistency and difference and change and transformation. All the royal castles crumble. Always there is the drive to become something it's not now.

If we try to expect that we can make a life where these things are avoided, or you can make a little oasis or illusion of safety and security, you really are in denial. Sooner or later the grim reaper is coming to look for you and yours. Either in terms of bodies dying or in terms of melting your phone or sickening your pets or scorching your grass or breaking your flowers or freezing your toes or puking in your shoes or whatever.

"Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

It's better to recognize this is the way of the world, based on its laws. It's just how it is. It's how this whole system, this whole universe, functions. There's no point in being mad about stuff breaking, or things falling on the floor, or stuff getting trapped in the door, or physical objects doing their quirky strangely annoying things, especailly when you're in a bad mood. They kind of can't help it. They are governed by rules that force them to "behave" this way, like they always will. Even in a forgiven world, the cookies still crumble.

I've been finding a lot more patience and forgiveness in just accepting that this is the functioning of this whole world. It just is broken from the start. The laws of physics are simply "at it again". Gravity is messing with you. Forces and energies are messing with you. And none of it is really "personal" because it's just doing what it does blindly and mindlessly. To expect it to ever not be like this must be some kind of insanity because a separated world cannot help but act this way.

We do need to accept that we did in fact make a fundamentally broken world. A world that does not really function properly according to the laws of God. A world where stuff is pretty much destined to change and break and grow old and die eventually. Where things collide and conflict and seem to attack, and where you can seemingly even be hurt - a notion which is utterly impossible in heaven's reality.

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

Jesus is clear that you cannot really want this world, because it is not a perfect world. It is not heaven. It was made in a mad idea of rebellion against reality. It is a protest against harmony and peace. It was made to attack God and to attempt to depict the death of his creations.

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

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love."

"Here is the world you do NOT want"

We have to be willing to look at this. The world is not EVER going to satisfy you and make you happy. It is not ever going to give you what you want. It is not ever going to feed your properly. It is not ever going to make you well or heal you or fix your problems. It has a neverending supply of madness and problems and difficulties. ALL its roads are pointed towards change, dissolution and death. Even planets and stars and galaxies die off eventually. And problems are completely built into its chaotic systems.

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur."

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

The world does not really give you any real choice, because ALL of its options are rooted in death. This isn't a pessimistic or negative view either. It is an honest and truthful view. The entire system was set up on a basis of separation and attack. Everything about it is aimed towards punishment for original sin, trying to bring about the death of life and the end of God.

"The ego's laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore, give no obedience to its laws, for they ARE laws of punishment." "The laws of sin DEMAND a victim. WHO it may be makes little difference. But death MUST be the cost and MUST be paid."

"Sin calls for punishment"

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

Can you accept that everything in this world was set up to die, right from the start? That this its inherent NATURE? Because only by looking at that and recognizing "there is no way out", on its terms, can you be willing to seek for a better way.

This is just how the world is set up. There is no point in denying it. There is no point in expecting it to behave differently. The laws of physics work how they work. The only reason we become angry about stuff breaking and things failing and attacks happening and so on is because we have an unrealistic expectation that the world isn't going to be like this. That somehow in the world we can make a little safe corner where the bad things don't happen, to fend off death and keep attack at bay. Good luck with that delusion.

Now, of course if this were the only state of affairs then we would indeed be screwed. But fortunately we are not stuck inside this closed-loop of hell. There is another way. There is another perception and another belief and another reality. This other way, however, isn't a rose-tinted glass of pretending in denial that the world isn't a world of death. Nor is it a form of denial that says it's okay that things die and suffer. Or an attempt to dress up the world or to expect it to be something it's not. The world can't work because it began with an impossible goal.

We can become miraculous, in that we can in fact override the laws of death. We can overcome the laws of physics. We can see past what the world was made to see. We can see with a mechanism of vision that doesn't depend on the physical eyes. We can overlook and not hold the world against itself, or condemn it for its shortcomings. We can recognize that a world made in error cannot help but be mistaken. And we can disregard notions that the world is real in its sin and attack. Indeed we are supposed to do this in order to be forgiving and to be set free from suffering.

For me lately, I have been doing a lot of physical stuff. Rearranging the house, buying and assembling new furniture, throwing out old stuff, cleaning, organizing, moving things around, and to some extent enjoying new stuff. But I've also become aware that all of these things are already fundamentally limited in what they are and can be. I'm not in denial or pretending that they can be perfect.

The furniture with the dents in it, the gaps between the planks of wood, the poorly written instructions, the missing parts, the slightly wrong color, the stuff that doesn't fit, the wrongly shipped item, the misunderstood specs, all the ways that there is shortcomings and failures and forms of death. Lacks of perfection and order.

But I feel mostly unbothered by all these things because I am no longer expecting the world to be capable of better. It is not capable of being perfect, so I now accept that "good enough" or "less than perfect" is the best it can acheive. And then I can let it go instead of trying to find perfection where it is impossible.

We made a broken world. It can't fix itself. And it's not capable of taking on a form of perfection. It will not ever fully satisfy us. And even in forgiveness where it is seen beyond and reflects heaven, even then it still falls short in its forms and its functioning. Ultimately, the world cannot make you happy. It cannot give you peace, or take it away. It cannot be the cause of anything. Nor can it really have any meaning of its own.

At best it can reflect meaning you give to it, and that is all, because by itself it is an empty void. We made a meaningless, chaotic, broken world, and we need to simply recognize this about it. The world is not our home.

"When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

The sooner you realize this the better, provided you also realize what CAN make you happy. What makes you happy is to laugh at the fundamental brokenness of the world. To realize the WHOLE THING is limited and false and can't do what you hoped it could do. The whole world is handicapped and disabled, falling short and incapable of eternal life. That's all it can be. And yet there is another world, a world we want, where this need not be.

"You on earth have no conception of limitlessness, for the world you seem to live in IS a world of limits. In this world, it is NOT true that anything without order of difficulty can occur. The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one."

"But we are thankful, too, the need is done to walk the world of limits, and to reach the Christ in hidden forms and clearly seen at most in lovely flashes. Now we can behold Him without blinders, in the light that we have learned to look upon again."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. Yet the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?

I never really knew how much my 'mind' seems to think that it has an answer about everything. It can't seem to shut up. I am completely addicted to the belief that "thinking equals knowing". And it's becoming apparent that it will come up with an answer even if it has really no grounds for knowing. And it will share that answer like it's some kind of fact. I go around clucking like a chicken making all these mental noises and thinking that I'm actually speaking truth, when in fact all of the things that come out are just stories and ego-based comments. I'm some kind of babbling idiot.

All of these activities seem to make up a 'me' that I really thought was aware and speaking truth. But everything coming from my ego mind is deception and illusion. In every way possible, my mind is constantly attempting to seek for the truth outside of it, and separate from where truth is.

I realize more and more, that God is the ONLY location of truth. The ego quite literally is running around this world believing 'it' knows everything, when in fact it knows absolutely nothing. It thinks it knows what is true, but it absolutely doesn't know any truth at all because truth is GOD!

The ego is not a faculty of knowing and the ego mind is NOT CAPABLE of knowing anything. All it can do is imagine and think and believe that it can obtain and hold the truth. Yet it is not a faculty of connection to Truth (capital T). It is not a device that can even perceive what the truth really is. It is obsessed with finding partial answers in amongst an absolute minefield of fragmented possibilities, seeking deeply to have the 'intelligence' to 'solve' apparent problems by delving into them even deeper, which makes them worse, and which turns into an exasperatingly frustrating experience of loss and failure.

It relies completely on analysis of the situation. In other words, it has already made everything seem real and now goes into detail trying to explain 'why' whatever is happening is happening. And as it digs for this answer in a swampland of confusion, it always comes up empty handed. It never finds any sense of absolute certainty, although instead it comes up with what it thinks is certainty, which is really, honestly, not complete certainty. And no matter how many times I take this trip with it, even if it comes up with what the world would think of as 'the' answer, it STILL is not the answer.

There is still no sense of completion in the search, no sense of complete acceptance, no sense of finding a truth which encompasses everything so fully that there is no doubt left. It is quite literally incapable of finding such a Total Truth within the realm of partial ideas, partially perceived distorted perceptions, false ideas, cleverly imagined possibilities, carefully explained analysis or any other approach to trying to find truth IN the illusion. All the time this ego mind has been looking for truth outside of it, in everything and everywhere other than in God, believing it is actually POSSIBLE to find truth outside of itself.

All of this activity is geared towards a completely impractical waste of time, to always avoid a real solution or answer, to avoid healing, to ignore God and to shut out the correction which would undo the perception of there being a problem in the first place. The ego is absolutely not interested in truly solving any problems whatsoever, or of really succeeding at finding 'the' answer that gives a satisfying and acceptable explanation for 'what is' (i.e. it is not interested in accepting God). It is only interested in dissecting and studying them deeply, wearing a hat which says "worlds best problem solver" on it. It seeks and does not find, all of the time.

It constantly fails to find a real answer, anywhere, about anything, in spite of the fact that it fervently believes it CAN find an answer, which makes it an obsession. And since the answer can never be found, going looking for it (seeking) always comes up empty handed, frustrated, lost and confused, obsessed over why there 'should' be an answer, and simply not letting go of the total absorption with its own reliance on itself.

Absolutely every ego activity, thought, behavior and process, entirely stems from this ... insane search, which is absolutely guaranteed to fail, because the very thing that would actually conclude the search and bring an answer is the very thing which would inherently UNDO the entire ego. God is the answer and God is the only truth. God is the only place where you will experience a sense of wholeness or completion or a sense of peace at having 'found' something which actually completely SOLVES all problems. And the problem is only solved by rejoining and being one with God/Holy Spirit, which the ego has absolutely no interest in.

The ego would have to SURRENDER, which means stopping searching, stopping seeking, stopping looking for, stopping figuring out, stopping imagining outcomes, stopping trying to control the situation, stopping giving energy to fruitless pointless conceptualizing and storytelling, stopping running away from God, and stopping believing in separation in all its forms. The ego mind is only even in a state of doing things 'on its own' BECAUSE OF the separation from God which gave birth to it. The separation from God was a separation from truth, answers, facts, reality and peace of mind. For the ego to believe it can find any of these things is insanity.

It seems to want to now be in the driver's seat, in charge of running the show, playing God, depending on its own prowess and utilizing its own separate intelligence and intellect to solve aaaaaaaaaall of the problems that have arisen because of its own seeming existence. How can the ego solve its own existence when IT is the problem it's trying to solve? How can it be free of a problem when its attempt to solve it creates it? How can it pursue the truth where it is not, expecting to find it, and have any hope of doing so?

The only truth is God. The only answer is love. The only response to any situation is love. The only sane practical solution is to extend God. The only response to the world is unconditional love. The only practical and wise response to any problem is to HEAL IT NOW through the miracle. And the only way for the problems to all 'go away' is for the EGO to go away. It is our very own ego self, our intellectual mind, our reliance on our separate faculties, and our intent to never surrender to actually ASK GOD FOR THE ANSWER, that ensures we will just keep spinning our wheels in suffering.

The ego will never be the truth. It will never find the truth. It cannot know the truth. And it is not the truth. The ego is FALSE. Your ego self is false.

Your TRUE SELF is in God. The truth is in God. And who you really are is in God. The answer to every problem is in God. The end of suffering is in God. The practical application of healing and correction that truly ANSWERS all problems is in God. And God is all there is.

Real Love, is not like anything else in this world. Love, to be experienced, must be shared by all.

Love is a presence that exists everywhere and extends everywhere. It radiates. It flows. It overcomes all separations. It does not and cannot belong to any one individual without simultaneously belonging to everyone. Nobody can put a wall around it and deny it to everyone else.

So if you want to experience love, you can't do it by locking love in a box. You can't do it by being absent of love yourself and expecting someone else to give their portion to you. Love it not limited and finite, or lacking or scarce. It's not like some kind of substance or material or object or commodity that someone exchanges for something else. It's not money used to buy a favor.

The ego believes that if you give something, you will lose it. It thinks that giving produces sacrifice. That you're going to be worse off, and have less, if you give. And especially if you share, there is no way to share with anyone without loss.

To the ego, sharing doesn't exist. It doesn't see how you can share, in any way, without diminishing what you have. And it's enacted this belief in the way that all physical 'forms' appear to behave.

If you want to share your apple, you're going to have to cut it in half and give half away - sacrificing half, and now you will only have half an apple. And you will experience that in the ego as loss, and unworthiness of having the whole. You might think you are sharing the half in kindness or generosity, but to the ego you a secretly jealous and bitter at having 'taken a hit' for the sake of someone else.

And then, to the ego, this form of sacrificing becomes equated with giving. It says, if I give half of this apple, and I do it in spite of the fact that I believe it is a sacrifice, then I am doing some kind of 'good for others'. This then leads to guilt that you are not giving ALL of what you have to others, and that even more sacrifice is called for. Ultimately it would have you give all of your apple to others, and having nothing for yourself.

That is the culmination of its belief system - that you are left with nothing, in total sacrifice and loss. Such is martyrdom. Such is what we commonly think of as 'giving selflessly' when in fact it usually is the ego sacrificing. To the ego, you should just give everything you have to others in order to be 'good' so that you'll meet God's graces, which is bullshit. It is a death wish. If you still have an ego and you are giving in this way without giving equally to yourself (receiving), that's not being a saint, it's being a martyr and an idiot. And it's also not what giving means.

Where in the ego's form of giving is there anything other than sacrifice? How in the ego's world is there anything even remotely similar to real sharing, other than loss? How can the ego give without losing what it has? It can't. Because the ego's idea of what it HAS is an illusion, a false value, and its idea of sharing it is the same thing as NOT sharing it. To the ego, sharing means posession and a transfer of ownership.

Real love is not like this. Real love does not diminish when it is shared or given. Real love doesn't call for sacrifice. Real love doesn't give give give, endlessly from your ego self, in the guise of some kind of 'atoning' or being 'selfless'. Real love cannot be owned by you exclusively, and you cannot give it away without you keeping it. Real love can't exchange hands and be in one place and not in another place at the same time. Real love doesn't leave you empty and lifeless. Real love doesn't ask you to be a martyr or to please everyone else except yourself.

Real love is like a giant vast ocean of love. Love's rule is that you can share in it by opening up to it and allowing it to be in you, but you cannot possess it or own it exclusively. You can participate in it and enjoy it and experience it, but this does NOT prevent others from doing the same. And there is an infinite supply, so there is no way you can have it all to 'yourself' and deny it to others, nor is there a need to get it FROM others because they too have their own access directly from God.

So unlike the ego, where you must 'get' love from others, because you think you lack it, you can't actually experience it even if you could get it, because you're trying to deny it to the other person. You want them to love you, sacrificially, by giving you what they have so that they don't have any left. That bleeds them dry, just as you trying to be an ego saint bleeds you dry. The only way you can experience love, is to get in line with how God has arranged things.

Simply, as ACIM says, "to have all, give all to all". Which means, to experience love fully, fully GIVE LOVE to everyone unconditionally, by EXTENDING what God has given you (unlimited love). In this you receive love from God in unlimited supply, and you extend it to others. But notice this key point:

If you do not extend the love to others, YOU cannot have it either. If you do not radiate the love to others, YOU cannot feel its radiance. If you do not SHARE love with others, YOU cannot share IN it either. Love has to be shared to be experienced, otherwise it is stationary. It needs to be extended and amplified to be what it is, like a radiant shining light. It has to shine outward. So you need to shine it outward, not from a limited supply of your own, but from God. Extend God's love. Extend God's healing miracles.

Simply...

God... help me to love [person's name]. Help me to extend your love to them and see them as lovable.

You will then feel love in your heart, for the other person, and you will feel the love and share in the love. It is the privilege of the loved to be loving.

The world was made to die. It is hell. Bad shit happens, sooner or later. Everything breaks down, suffers, dies in the end. It's an insane world.

However.

When a whole shit ton of bad shite happens, and it keeps coming, at first it seems to attack all the defenses you made against its nature. All your safeties are called into question. All your values are turned upside down. Everything you held dear is threatened. All your expectations that the world can be a great place are shattered. All the bodies that you valued highly are threatened.

You don't realize it at the time but this is a transformation and it's leading somewhere quite useful.

Later when the dust settles, the world has left a very bad taste in your mouth. You think perhaps that you should heal from this by undoing everything that the world did to you, except that you start to notice something.

By turning to vengeance and brutality and cruelty and despair the world (ego) revealed its true nature. It shoved its deadliness in your face. It taunted you with its unfairness and harmfulness. It opened up a chasm of hell and all the voices of sin roared up in front of you. While temptation tried to lead you deeper still into its suffering dirge.

And so now, you got a really good look at the shit hole that it is. It stopped being so hidden and all its fucked-up shite just flew out in the open. And it was hell, but then you noticed.

This is how the world is. Not just "this time". Not just "because it has a grudge against you personally". It's how it ALWAYS is.

And through its destruction of your defenses against this fact, and though its deterioration of the ways this is usually hidden from view, you see the world now more squarely. It's more obvious that it simply, fundamentally, sucks ass. Because it was designed to.

And now a new awareness starts to dawn on you.

While you might've tried to escape from hell's onslaught and veer off into coping mechanisms and avoidance and denial, grasping desperately at the rose-tinted glasses in attempting to scrape together some kind of normality, all of this was brought into question.

And now instead of moving in the direction of trying to dress up the world again, to make it home again, to repair the breakdown, to create another illusion of safety in the midst of turmoil, you instead shift direction.

You notice that you've been doing this your whole life. Building up defenses against death. Believing the world can be a great place to be. Trying to assemble a home to shut out the brutality and attacks of the outside world. Forming special relationships and allegiances to defend against the enemies. All this hiding. All this defending. All this avoiding. It comes to a halt.

And now you realize it wasn't just that the world COULD be a great place, and you just weren't very good at making it one, it's actually that there's a much bigger thing going on here. The world is DESIGNED TO FAIL. Over and over again. It is HELL BENT on death and destruction. It WANTS to end and it wants to end you. This is is NATURE. But no-one told you that, and everyone taught you of its illusory virtues and hopeful outcomes and partial loveliness.

It wasn't you. It wasn't just your efforts and your denials. It's the world. It's not just something you did wrong that kept making things fail. All the times you hoped that things would be better. All the wishful thinking. It was all pointless given that the world, itself, was ALWAYS going to end in the dirt.

And now the disguise has been taken off. The world's bullshit has slapped your face rather too openly, and now you are no longer in the business of defending IT, or dressing IT up to be something pretty, or imagining that ITS nature is fundamentally good. No more trying to turn the world into heaven or expecting that it CAN be that.

There is now a willingness to recognize, to accept, this world just wants to die. And it's always dying. And everything in it dies. It's not you, it's not even personal. It's just how the world is. It's it's nature. Kill or be killed, and kill anyway. This whole planet is going to turn to dust someday, or the sun will explode and destroy it. That's a fact. This is the inevitability of the wages of sin, in a world driven by laws of death.

In a way, the world's onslaught has done you a favor. It's brought into question all your little home-making defenses and all your special values and things you liked about it. It's ripped your life apart and destroyed your idol worship. It's shown itself it be cruel, desperate, unfair, brutal, vicious and deadly. And it cares not. Because it can't do anything but make everything die.

So now you know. Your eyes have been opened. No more denial about this world being a pretty bundle of icecream and kittens. This is the recognition that the world IS hell. It's NOT your home. It's designed to make you suffer and all things in it are cruel and tempt sin and guilt.

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. "

You had taught yourself that this world was your home. You taught yourself it could be heaven. You taught yourself things in it didn't have to die. You taught yourself you could avoid and resist and deny all you want, but eventually it still turns to shit, and there seems to be nothing you can do about it.

Form, flesh, appearances, bodies, animals, nature, planets, galaxies, it's all part of a system of death. Take the veil off. Lift away the lies. See through the temptation to believe otherwise. Undo the confusion, in which you thought this world was heaven. Reverse the lies, in which you thought there was truth and reality and holiness to something which is just a dream of nothingness. See the world for what it IS.

The world is just an illusion of a world, the hell you made, an opposite to life, and designed to do nothing but destroy God's son. There is no way out of it except through forgiveness. There are no roads made of its hellish substrate that lead out of it. Everything dies here. It's what it does. Spacetime makes sure of that.

Recognizing this is seeing through illusions, not being deceived and learning. While hell came to take the truth from you, all it ended up doing was exposing itself. And now that you've had a good hard look at its desperate sucky ness, you can see it's not the dressed-up doll you thought it was. And that's a good thing. You now recognize it's made to die, so you can stop trying to run away from this, or expect otherwise for its forms.

You can indeed certainly become miraculous and overthrow all this, demonstrating that all this can be changed BECAUSE its an illusion. You can show that you are under the laws of ANOTHER world. You can demonstrate this world's fundamental bullshit by reversing its bullshit. But the world is what it is. And it will end because it never really began.

Perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel, or the "gift" that has come of this passage through darkness, is that you can now see, without the blinders on, what this world really is like. And seeing that sets you free, because only denial keeps you bound to the lies. And recognizing the world's nature gives you power over it. It is ONLY what it is, and nothing else. It is ONLY an illusion, not a reality. It is ONLY a dream of death, NOT real life. There is nothing in it worth having or that you want, because everything you really want and value is of God. And that lives in another world.

If you'll take a look, willingly, for a while, you'll notice that everything in the world goes wrong sooner or later.

The food goes moldy. The leaves die off. The cars break down. The tv stops working. The shoes develop a hole. The carpet gathers dirt. The river drowns someone. The volcanos explode. The lightning strikes a cow. Suns go supernova etc.

Do you notice a trend? If you look for long enough without denial?

Are you expecting these things not to happen?

What part of life is it that gets our hopes up that these things won't occur? Have we become clever at building an illusory sense of safety, a little oasis in the desert, a barricade against death?

Jesus says the main purpose of special relationships is to draw a little circle around a portion of hell to keep attack out and create an illusion of safety within. Why do we do that? Some kind of denial that the food is going to go moldy, the house windows are going to break, the trains are going to rust, the babies are going to die?

We find ourselves in this hellish world we made which, if you sit and look at it, you can see it "dying" all the time. If you take off the rose tinted glasses, the hopes and dreams, the wishful thinking, the defenses, the attempts to protect yourself from its onslaught, just sit and watch it. Everything dies here sooner or later.

That isn't pleasant. It's not pretty. It's built into the system.

We can be quite heavily in denial of this. In fact there's a whole lot of motivation and activity in the world geared towards brushing this fact under the carpet. The denial of it, while you go pursue successful careers and happy families and build your houses on ground that will, eventually, swallow them up.

I'm not trying to be morbid here, or negative. I'm not passing any judgement. Just look at it. This is what the world is like. Do we want to stay in denial of this? Do we want to keep pretending it's not how it is, and keep running away from death? Not that we should run towards it either, but we have to be willing to recognize what this world's nature is without flinching.

Jesus says "The world is false perception". He also says "without the idea of death there is no world." He also says "The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen." and "Only the body makes the world seem real."

What this tells you is that this world, which is always in a state of death and dying and decay, is fundamentally ONLY existing in a state of FALSE perception. And when you move toward true perception, opening the spiritual eye, and seeing with Christ Vision, you are looking using a non-body apparatus, a non-false apparatus, a true perception, which looks past this world entirely and looks to reality. And in that reality this world doesn't exist, because you can only see it when your mind is in error. Because it's an hallucination.

The world was made to be the opposite of life. It's a dream of death. It's not a dream of life. It sometimes appears to contain illusions of life, spring, birth, renewal, regeneration, growth and so on. But these are all illusions. Flowers all die in the end, that's a fact. There is no life form anywhere that lives forever. Everything is always transitioning from spurts of what appear to be life, towards death. That's what the world does. It's built in, fundamental to its nature.

Do you think you can make this world stop doing that? By all means you can override this behavior through miracles, because the power of the mind trumps false perception and can easily change illusions. But nevertheless the world will still keep dying, destroying, eating and consuming everything else. It denies even its own existence and is against itself. The world is suicidal. This whole universe is.

The ego has a massive effort to try to save the world. It's a farce. The effort is to suggest that a world which is fundamentally made of death can be made to live. That death can be avoided, even though all its efforts to avoid death attract it and make it real. The world only contains a seeming mixture and the living and dying because we introduced an "opposite to life" into our minds and now try to live in a contradictory world where both life and death happen. And now we've made both life and death into an illusion.

Even as you awaken towards true perception, people will still continue to experience body death and sickness. There will still be wars. In case you didn't notice, doing the workbook does not cause the workbook to disappear. Nor does it change much what's on the news. Pandemics have happened in the lifetime of ACIM students. Because they do, because they're part of this world's functioning. This world has a function of failure and that does not change.

The effort to make this world change or to turn it into a physical form appearance of heaven, is impossible. It's an attempt to spiritualize an illusion and turn a illusion into something real and sacred and worth keeping. If you could do that you'd be stuck in hell forever with no reason to go home. You can't make an equivalent as attractive as God's creation. As Jesus says:

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

There are no roads, in hell, that lead out of hell. Darkness cannot become light while keeping the darkness. Ego cannot turn itself into holiness. Death cannot be alive. And non-existence cannot take on an existence. It's a closed system.

Life isn't here. Life is in heaven. If you want to be where life is, you go to where life is. You don't try to polish up a turd and turn it into something special. Your home and your natural environment are in the Kingdom with God, where you were designed to be. You cannot be comfortable in another world that's alien to you. This world is an alien world and the people on it are all aliens.

Can we let it be what it is, recognize its shortcoming, and turn away from it to the light, knowing that "this world holds nothing that I want"? Can we recognize its offerings of idols, pleasures, toys, temptations, treasures, as nothing but scraps of hell that we do not really want? And can we recognize as Jesus says that you CANNOT really WANT the world? Not really. It's fundamentally lacking.

We are to forgive the world, and shine a light of truth upon it, and recognize it for what it is WITHOUT the judgement that "sin is real" or "its really hell". But this merely lifts away from it any confusion about what it is. We then recognize it is simply false and nothing and not your home. A world of illusions. Not really sinful, not really anything. But not your home. You can love it, unconditionally, but you can't be in love with it if you want to be with God.

The world is dying. It was already dead when we made it.

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER.

Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it.

This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it, into another world. But the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here, BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you."

"The only VALID use of sex is procreation. It is NOT truly pleasurable in itself. "Lead us not into Temptation" means "Do not let us deceive ourselves into believing that we can relate in peace to God or our brothers with ANYTHING external."

"For minds NEED not the body to communicate. The sight that SEES the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship."

Look at this from the perspective of spirit. You as spirit have a mind and you can communicate, ie commune with, any other person in full. You can completely immerse yourself in someone and be one with them. This joining is so full and unconditional and meaningful that there is nothing else more satisfying or enjoyable. It is "truly pleasurable". "All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Then consider what the body is. "The body is a limit on love." "It was made to limit you." So now the body is regarded as this very crude device which filters out relationship, blinds you to false perceptions, and makes illusions real. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

"The body's eyes are not the means by which the real world can be seen."

So take it from the vantage point of a highly spiritual person. This person is able to FULLY relate to another person in total love and union. They share everything that can be truly shared. If one of them was to say, okay, let's not relate like this, let's instead narrow down our relating, stick ourselves inside limiting little bodies, narrow down our perception to where we can't even see each other, rub our bodies up against each other, and see if that's an improvement. ... do you think they will be able to find the same degree of oneness? Of course not.

The body does not ADD anything to the relationship capabilities of spirit. "Think not the world can add anything to the power and glory of God and his holy sons." It does not IMPROVE how you relate to others, it just gets in the way. It's almost like taking an universal unlimited infinite being and trying to shove it inside a dark closed box and expecting it to be enjoy being disabled, impaired, shut down, limited and restricted.

This is why Jesus is saying that the only proper use of the body is for procreation. The body is a biological device and it has reproductive organs, ie a method for self-replication (separation), as all organisms do. Whether it be cell division or male/female relationships, the process here is physical. The only VALID BIOLOGICAL FUNCTION of the reproductive system is to reproduce. It is to function to inseminate and impregnate and produce a baby body. That is its only valid physical purpose.

When you look from the vantage point of enlightened spirit, therefore, a mind which does not NEED a body to communicate fully with another person, and who recognizes that the body will just NARROW their relationship, such a person will have no interest in using the body for "casual sex." Who would choose to restrain themselves and limit their ability to perceive and be with another, in the name of "intimacy"? You can be MORE intimate without the the body than with it. The body just gets in the way.

Furthermore Jesus recognizes and tells us that if you focus on the body in any way, you make the separation real. If you focus on, or EVEN SEE, the body of your brother, you are moving into the ego and into separation and sin.

"Your mind and his ARE joined in brotherhood. His body and his dreams but SEEM to make a little gap, where yours have joined with his. And yet, between your MINDS there IS no gap. To join his dreams is thus to meet him NOT, because his dreams would SEPARATE from you."

"As long as you believe that, to be with a body, is companionship, you will be COMPELLED to attempt to keep your brother IN his body, HELD THERE BY GUILT."

Focusing on bodies joining in any way, makes the separation real. It makes you body identified and produces and ego. It is a state of mental illness. To fixate on your brother's BODY causes you NOT TO SEE HIM.

"Who sees a brother's body has laid a JUDGMENT on him, and sees him not. He does not REALLY see him as sinful; he does not see him at all. In the darkness of sin, he is INVISIBLE."

So Jesus is basically saying, in order for your mind to be sane, and in order for you to be in holy relationship, and in order for you to not make the separation real, and not mis-identify yourself and your brother as a body, and not SEPARATE, you cannot relate to your brother AS a body or on the level of the body. If you have any desire about it, lust for it, adoration of it, affection for its sensations, a valuing of its pleasures and pains etc, then you are in fact mis-using the body for ego purposes.

The only valid use of the body then is for the purposes of the holy spirit, which lifts AWAY from it any purposes it served before. That includes purposes of making bodies real, trying to become one with a physical object, trying to join physically and attempting to gain artificial pleasure. When the mind is sane it has no real use for the body. It does not use the body to get anything, nor does it believe anything the body's eyes see, nor anything its senses report. It steps back and regards the body as having NO FUNCTION.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. "

"Healing is the result of using the body SOLELY for communication."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used ONLY as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function."

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication. "

In this state where the body is healed by the mind, the mind extends PAST the body and does not STOP at the body. This means the mind is supposed to OVERLOOK the body, which is the function of forgiveness.

"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."

"Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

So Jesus is quite literally saying that if you focus on and see and interact with bodies at all you are coming from unforgiveness and ego, making separation real, and using the body for attack which induces sickness.

If a healed mind in a healed body remains, then it is possible at that level to use the body ONLY for communication, which actually bypasses the body itself and ignores it. This means a mind extending PAST its body, PAST the body of another, and joning with their mind. As such, minds bypass the body and do not attempt to join at the physical level. They have NOTHING TO GAIN by trying to join physically. The only benefit then to a physical "act", using the puppet for its inherent functioning, is to use it to make a baby.

This is why Jesus is trying to say that sex is only for procreation. Sane people do not need bodies. Insane people only use bodies for self gratification and reinforcing separation and specialness. Healed minds are limited by using bodies to try to join, and have no need of them. If you can imagine being highly spiritual and enlightened, maybe you can catch a glimpse of the total disinterest that you will have in the body and all its activities.

"The body is nothing." "The body is hardly worth the least defense."

The level of the body is a physical level. The body is a biological machine at this level. It has no mind or thought or decision or desire for another. Using it to make bodies real requires a belief in sin. The only proper use of it is to render itself unnecessary, bypass it, ignore it, overlook it, and therefore allow it to NOT GET IN THE WAY. As such you join with another in holiness and true meaning and validity. Trying to make bodies have a function of joining is level confusion between mind and body. Sex is entirely based on the idea of trying to "make bodies have oneness." Physical joining IS SEPARATION.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in."

"To be without a body is to be in your natural state."

In Lesson 128 Jesus clearly outlines that this world has nothing that you want.

"The world you see has nothing that you need to offer you; nothing that you can use in any way, nor anything at all that serves to give you joy."

"Each thing you value here is but a chain that binds you to the world, and it will serve no other end but this."

He is clearly saying in this passage and many others that the physical world we made, is nothing, is worth nothing, has no value, and no meaning. It can do nothing for you, it can add nothing to God's creation, and you do not want it.

UrT8F2 "The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it. You cannot behold the world and know God. Only one is true."

When you really closely look at the nature and functioning of this world, which is devouring and destroying, the picture can become very bleak and pointless. After all, if everything eventually dies in the end, this invalidates the point of doing anything at all.

Why bother when everything you build will crumble and be destroyed, when everything is futile and nothing lasts? Indeed it is a world of utter hopelessness and empty promises and lost causes. We are asked to look at this and accept that this is its nature so that we can save ourselves a great deal is misery expecting it to turn out differently, because the world has disappointed us even since time began. We need to recognize it is NOT what God wills for us and it is NOT what we want.

However, Jesus goes onto say in the next lesson that we cannot stop there, because if we make the world seem like it's all that exists and we point out its utter bleakness and the shit-show that it is, we will become depressed. If we really are willing to recognize there is NO hope in the world at all, and it has NOTHING to offer, we need something else of greater merit and real hope to choose instead. ie there MUST be a better way, and reality HAS to be better than this.

Lesson 129 "You cannot stop with the idea the world is worthless, for unless you see that there is something else to hope for you will only be depressed."

Many of us do not want to look at the worthlessness of the world and we still have "false hopes" that it can be redeemed. Some of us even want to turn it into a heaven-on-earth scenario. But perhaps we don't realize that the laws of physics will always be the determiner of the way it functions, and is the direct cause of all its deathly ways and cruel scenarios and chaotic outcomes. Because it is governed by laws of death.

UrT1B37AE "The thing to do with a desert is to LEAVE."

Jesus therefore tells us in Lesson 129 that there is ANOTHER WORLD that we do want, a world where there is permanent happiness and peace and love and light and joy forever. A world in which there is no sickness or death. A living world of light in which we have our home in God, safe from all attack and from death itself. That is a world that we can truly have hope for and want and choose instead of the sorry world we made. But why would you WANT to go there if you think THIS world has something worth keeping you bound?

In Lesson 130 we then go on to be informed that we cannot see both of these worlds. When you see one of them it is precisely because you are denying the other. Since they are opposites, the ability to see one of them derives from the "projection makes perception" rule, meaning that you can only see the light while you're not seeing the darkness, and vice versa. Either you see the world of form or the world of spirit. Reality or unreality are your only options.

So that now tells us that if we want to truly find hope of freedom and escape from the hell that is planet Earth, prison planet of death and murder and hatred, then we need to change what we value. We need to want and value and desire to see another world that is sane and true and holy. A world God created instead of a dead-end of suffering and death that we tried to make without him. If we want to see that other world we're going to have to DENY this one.

W130 "It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. Seek for the one; the other disappears. But one remains. They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. The real and the unreal are all there is to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS, for each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have denied the other." UrT12G1

Note that it says it depends on what you cherish, which means what you value and want and find to be your heart's treasure. What is meaningful to you, what is important to you, what you prioritize and want to see more of. If your focus is on vigilance for the Kingdom of God, then it means you love the Kingdom and want it and become one with it, making it a part of you and immersing yourself into it. And by doing so you turn your back on the world and forget it and no longer see it.

W306 "What but Christ's vision would I use today, when it can offer me a day in which I see a world so like to Heaven that an ancient memory returns to me? Today I can forget the world I made."

W198 "Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. "

So basically right now the only reason you are seeing planet earth is because you are still convinced that you WANT TO. You still value something about it. You still therefore think it HAS value, is important, is worthwhile, has meaning, is true, is to be cherished, has something you want, serves you, provides for you, gives you stuff you like, and is filled with your idols. All of this has to be surrendered and recognized as false and nothing if you are to choose another world.

The course therefore is really asking us to turn around and move back towards heaven, back to reality, to the light, to the truth of God and his world. The Kingdom he created to be permanent and loving forever. A Kingdom so unlike this world that at first it may seem alien to you, and yet familiar as your true home. But to see it, we have to learn to develop "vision" and open the mind's eye. And to do that you have to value it and want it.

UrT18B3 "That was the first projection of error outward. The world arose to hide it, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

We're asked therefore to change our focus and fix our sight on God. To try to pierce the veil of illusions that hangs heavily between you and reality. To find a way with your mind and with the Holy Spirit to overlook (forgive) the world, NOT see it, see through and BEYOND it to the light, and therefore look upon reality/the real world.

UrW158L7 "Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

This is what the course is driving at - restoring the ability to see reality again to the sheer extent that the world of illusions, of form and bodies and sin and death, is no longer seen at all. And heaven is all that remains in our sight. Right before you melt back into God, infuse back into heaven, and immerse yourself back into communion with the Sonship.

UrU5A4 "The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for only what it is. And now it cannot fail to disappear, for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

The world can't really offer you a choice, because it really has no choice.

It didn't choose, by itself, what its nature would be.

When we believed the tiny mad idea and believed in being separate from God, we believed in an opposite to God.

An opposite to God HAS TO function in a certain way. It has to be based on separation, relativity, exclusion, lack, imperfection, mortality, etc.

It has no say in this. God's system is one of immortality, perfection, omnipresence, eternal life etc. If you want something opposite to that it really can only take on one specific form.

The premise of God produces heaven. The premise of separation produces hell.

"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is."

The premise of oneness gives rise to the perfect system of heaven.

The premise of separation gives rise to the imperfect system of spacetime, including Earth and bodies.

The nature and laws and functioning of Earth have NO SAY in this. They HAVE TO function the way they do in order to be God's opposite.

The real choice was made in the moment where we tried to deny God's will and produce an opposite kingdom.

That's the only moment where choice was involved. It didn't give choice or the freedom to choose TO the world that was made.

Therefore the world itself has no choice in this, it cannot choose to sometimes work and sometimes not work. It cannot choose to sometimes be perfect and sometimes not.

It has no ability to decide whether to function like heaven or like hell. It is literally locked in to a single kind of system.

As such, the world ITSELF did not choose to be the way that it is. It isn't sitting there deciding whether to be heavenly today or not. It just always has to be like hell - the projection of the ego thought system.

This means that you can't expect it to suddenly flip around and work differently. You can't expect its laws to suddenly change, or its nature to suddenly be different.

It was made and designed for a specific purpose, to oppose God, and that is what is does very well. It stays faithful to that design and cannot deviate from it.

If you therefore think that the world is offering YOU a choice, you are very mistaken. All its roads lead to death. All its outcomes are the same. Its entire purpose is the same. It cannot end up any other way.

There IS no real choice in the world, therefore, because the world ITSELF has no choice, and is not a thing of "choosing". It's a thing that was CHOSEN. The choice is locked in.

The only way there would be a choice is if you choose heaven instead, and indeed you only ever choose between the two SYSTEMS - spacetime or God, heaven or hell.

The world itself cannot offer you ANY real choice, because it has none. It has no choice. It has no say. It just be's how it was supposed to be. It does what it was supposed to do.

What that means though is that, since the world itself did not choose its own nature, and is the result of something ELSE choosing its nature for it - in the mad idea - the world IS NOT RESPONSIBLE for being the way that it is.

This mean the world is not trying on purpose to be sinful - as if it had a choice and could just as easily be not sinful. It is not deliberately choosing to make your life difficult, it can't be help it.

It's just like a piece of machinery which was designed with a certain function and that's the only way it can work. You can't fix it up and you can't change its function and you can't make it work better.

You have to let Earth be Earth, and let heaven be heaven. Let God be God, and let hell be hell. There's no point resisting the world or expecting it to be not the way it is.

If you can recognize that it IS NOT CHOOSING, then you can also recognize that it is not "to blame" for the way it is. It is just the product of a mad idea some of us had. It's not its fault.

In that view, you can forgive the whole world, because it's just following orders and has no mind or freedom of its own with which to choose something else.

YOU have a freedom to choose something else because you are the maker of the world, or the chooser of whether to be in heaven or on Earth.

You can choose between systems, but you cannot choose what those systems would be like. The systems and their nature and functioning ENTIRELY depend on the premise on which they are based.

From the absolute you get a heavenly system. From the relative you get a dysfunctional codependent impossible system of frustration and nonsense and murder.

You can choose between those systems but you CANNOT change the nature of those systems.

So you should let the world be the way it is, and just acknowledge that you made it by mistake, and it was a good effort, but it's not a completely constructive creation. It is an mis-creation, an 'oops' that you made when you were not in your right mind. Like something you came up with when you were drunk.

Allow and accept that the world is the way it is, and then by realising it CAN'T HELP IT, you can forgive it. You can realize you should not hold anything against it, because in this sense it is innocent - it isn't CHOOSING to be this way. It isn't doing it on purpose - it's just fulfilling its original purpose.

You can repurpose it by using it differently and seeing it differently and forgiving it for its shortcomings. But don't expect the ice cream to stop melting, or the tigers to stop eating living creatures, or the seasons to stop producing death, or for bodies to last forever.

The world is a system of imperfection. Let it be.

"The eyes of Christ look on a world forgiven. In His sight are all its sins forgiven, for He sees no sin in anything He looks upon."

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

To the ego, it will not attempt to teach anything that it does not already know. It relies entirely on its own learning or what it already believes is true.

In this sense, everything within the ego thought system has already been there for a very long time and there is "nothing new".

The ego does not therefore really learn anything. It just reveals to itself more pieces of what was already within its thought system, but kept unconscious.

The ego pretends to learn by gradually bringing into the open more information which seemed hidden before, from its vast reserves of useless information, laws and regulations, any anything that sustains its thought system or makes it more real.

The ego does not want you to be open to guidance, it does not want you to trust a source of information outside of its thought system, and it's not really interested in learning. It's entire purpose is to unlearn the truth, to block the truth, and to keep you in the dark. And it can do that very effectively with an ILLUSION of learning, in the guise of learning something which is not really God's truth. And we've done this a lot.

There is a line in the Course for example which says "your mind is a blank". Even though the ego mind seems filled with thoughts and activities, it is really filled with nothing but illusions and so nothing is really happening. Even our ego thinking is not real activity. It is not creation. Plus we're given ourselves what Jesus describes as a "learning disability", an attempt to make our ability to learn more difficult, so that we will resist the truth.

Now, as you become willing to un-learn the ego's bullshit, and reveal the real truth to yourself, you'll begin to develop trust in a source of information outside of the ego's mind. Holy Spirit is there to help, along with many Mighty Companions.

But in order to "learn" what is outside of the ego's thought system, it requires the un-doing or un-learning of the ego, to make room for what's to come IN from outside. And also the rules for learning change as you open up to the Holy Mind.

In the ego's system, it will only attempt to teach if it ensures that you will not learn anything, or it sets you up as solely a teacher who is not a student, a dictatorship basically. The students are considered inferior and the teacher is superior. Teaching or the classroom is then more or less a prison.

It won't let you attempt to teach or even feel confident about teaching, unless you seem to already know everything there is to know, and are certain enough of being in control of that enough to be able to seem to give it to someone else. And when the teaching is occurring, the teacher is not intent on learning at all.

This works differently with Holy Spirit. In order to learn the truth, conditions have to be set up where you are willing to receive new input. But because in the One Mind giving and receiving are equal/one/balanced, there cannot be input without output. You cannot "share" and thus experience the new truth, or learn it, unless you are also willing to have it flow through you and extend out of you. In a way this means you cannot "learn the truth" without the truth flowing through you and being shared, in a "teaching and learning" role.

The Kingdom of God must be extended in order to exist, and that means the truth has to be shared. You have to be open to having that truth come through you, even if you do not seem to know what that truth is going to say. You won't necessarily get a head's up and you aren't going to be able to learn it all ahead of time. Instead, it's going to only be fed to you, shared with you, and shared through and beyond you, in the moment, in the instant that you are actually attempting to give it to another.

This requires that you drop what you think you know, open up to trust in a higher source, and that source may not even be seen or directly accessed yet. This therefore requires FAITH, ie trust that even if you yourself do not know, you're going to be supported and given what you need and told what to do and where to go, spontaneously, as and when it's the right time. In a way it's like being blind or in the dark blindfolded, but trusting someone else to guide you safely to the exact right destination without hurting yourself.

If you are unwilling to "teach" because you don't think you know the subject matter well enough, you will never learn it. Teaching means demonstrating, so it doesn't necessarily have to be through writing or traditional roles, it can just be by being a living example of love. But what is true for you, you will demonstrate/teach. If you stop yourself from TRYING, you won't gain access to support and guidance. You have to take a leap of faith. You have to be willing to be mistaken, and you need to be open to learning AS you teach. You teach, in order to learn.

Basically you just need to show up, be willing, and step into a FLOW. As the flow begins, as you start to express, IF you trust the truth you are attempting to express, MORE TRUTH WILL COME AS YOU GO. The new truth will only enter once the flow is flowing.

It's kind of like plumbing. You've got this water in the pipe, but the only way new water is going to enter the pipe, is when the water that's already in the pipe starts to flow out the other end. Otherwise there is no room, and there's no flow. A lack of flow is a lack of extension. The water can't extend out of the pipe if you won't RECEIVE and if you are not willing to just be open minded to let whatever comes in, come in, just as it's needed, spontaneously.

Heaven's support, and the flow of truth, is very spontaneous. It is ready to act NOW. You don't get the whole download on the spot and then go write about it. You just make yourself flow out the stuff you already know, albeit limited, maybe based on just one little insight, and then you get into a flow about it.

As you do, Heaven comes to support you. The reason is that you are now fulfilling your function. You are aligning yourself with the truth by being willing to have it express through you, you are letting truth sort of align your wavelength to Heaven/Holy Spirit, and the result of that is that Heaven actually rushes in to support and help you. Mighty companions show up. Jesus and Holy Spirit start to wisper in your ear. You start to be told specific words and corrections and things you weren't expecting.

You start to "channel". And as you do this, you receive stuff that you didn't even know beforehand, and you therefore learn, often just as much as anyone else reading or hearing what you expressed. And then you may find yourself going back to read what you wrote because you yourself are its student as well.

This also means you are learning to COMMUNICATE. Communication in the Course is different to the ego's communication. The ego only communicates what it thinks its already knows and nothing else, regurgitating the past. Real communication entails the EXTENSION OF TRUTH, the flow of truth, in true sharing, where receiving and giving are one, and where there is an openness to spontaneously, creatively express from a place that's totally outside the ego. Just in the moment, freely flowing a loving expression.

So it takes an act of faith. Miracles are taken first on faith, because you may come to trust something which is as yet unseen, but which is there, and which has proven it must be there by its witnesses, ie evidence or proof which manifests as a result of taking a leap and putting one foot in front of the next. You don't have to teach alone, and you can't. You can only truly teach truth if you are open to receiving it at the same time, and then it speaks through you.

Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium, in that He is so pure and devoid of ego that he can perfectly "channel God", as it were, to be the Voice for God. You also can become a Voice for God if you are willing to spontaneously flow Heaven and therefore to actually communicate. Just speaking words is not communication, because the ego is very good at just waffling on about bullshit. But when the words are coming from a higher place, extending God as a "Teacher of God", now you are learning God because you are teaching God.

In essence you should ALWAYS be in this state of "learning", not so much a state of accumulating or building up some knowledge base, but being always RECEPTIVE and CREATIVE in the flow of truth without having to know beforehand what's going to be said or what will happen.

As you learn to trust this, you will teach and it will become your own teaching of yourself as well. The best way to learn is to try to teach someone else what the truth is, to prove to yourself what the truth is. If you can communicate, truly, to another, you will learn the truth. The act of attempting to tell someone else what the truth is, causes your mind to become creative and dynamic and spontaneous in visualizing and sort of filling in the blanks as you go. The MODE of mind functioning to "express" puts it into a state of flow, and you just need to get stuff MOVING OUT even if it feels like you are totally winging it, or even "fake it till you make it". Just the act of expressing even without knowing what the next word is going to be, allows guidance to come IN immediately as it is needed.

You only need to start out with a little idea. What I usually am doing is I just had some kind of spontaneous idea or insight, or I just learned some basic thing, or something became relevant for me in the past 24 hours. So I will start to write about it based on what I already know... ego learning.... but I go about it with Holy Spirit/Jesus at hand, and then they start to inject more flow and more idea and more clarifications and as the whole thing unfolds, it ends up being an education not just for others but for me also.

When I get to the end I then have to go back and re-read it myself, to digest it and take it in more, because what came out was usually mind-expanding in some way. This very post itself for example, I was not planning to write whatsoever, until I was inspired by a post that Myron Jones wrote today, and felt this intuitive "excitement" about elaborating on. I did not know how this would come out or in what words until I just started to do it.

So just start with what you think you know and be open to extending truth and just making yourself available, just sit down and start writing something, and so long as you are expressing truth in some way, Heaven will rush in to support you and give you help and put words in your mouth. This is how you learn to "channel" or be a Voice for God.

Speaking or writing the truth gets the attention of Heaven, angels will come to you to help you, and Holy Spirit and Jesus will be right there to support you and guide you. This is also partly how miracles come about, because as you spontaneously trust and start to speak the truth about someone and diffuse illusions and authoritatively command an expression of the truth of God, things line up and you magnetize Heaven's strength to you and through you, and then the earth moves. It's a collaboration. Your willingness is all it takes to get into the flow. Just start somewhere and see what happens as you go. But if you don't start at all, you'll never see the miracles and you won't learn.

Teach like a fool. Teach even when you don't know what to say. Just start doing it. The rest will follow automatically. Seek the Kingdom of God and express it and your way will be made straight and will be held up by Heaven's helpers.

For example, on my website I started a 'questions and answers' service, because I felt that I wanted to be pushed to have to answer things that I did not know how to answer, and wanted people to come up with questions so that I wouldn't be able to premeditate or just write about what was relevant to me at the time. What I found happens is, when someone asks something, it's usually not something I even thought of as being a topic people needed help with.

And then I'll ask Holy Spirit what He wants to say about this, and to please help me with it. And then I start writing about it, and I just get into this place where the most amazing stuff gets written, especially when I didn't really know what I was going to say or what there even was to say about it. It all just comes together because I TRUST that I'm going to be helped and the help shows up. Provided I am willing to just show up and be available and let the truth be written through me.

I should be focusing on how we are all the same, deep down, all one, all perfect. But at the moment I'm finding it quite useful to look at our differences in a more accepting way.

Mainly because we actually have a lot of faulty beliefs surrounding differences - different bodies and personalities - which need to be "cleaned up".

In particular, in our denial of God we have attempted to endow the physical world with all kinds of properties of God. Such as that physical things are perfect, or equal, or eternal, or permanent, or reality, or the truth, or one etc.

For example, in this world, we've given everything all the meaning it has, because it's really a meaningless world. So we have looked at objects and have decided that some objects are sort of similar in some ways - vague ways, and have categorised them.

We've given the categories labels, such as based on materials, or genders, or hair colors, or whatever. All kinds of boxes which are made up. But in truth, on the physical level, NOTHING is exactly alike, nothing is purely equal, nothing is entirely identical.

Even atoms of the same material like gold or silver are not the same. Their subatomic particles are all over the place, their quantum states are fluctuating in different positions, the energy fields and forces are bouncing all over the place. When you get down to it, not a single speck of this world is TRULY identical to any other. Because it is a world of separation, differences and fundamental inequality.

So then that tells us that all these categories and labels we've made up are artificial, and often they serve to hurt people. We keep trying to squeeze everyone into a cookie-cutter box. So now we have all kinds of things like peer pressures and social pressures to fit into boxes. You have to label yourself to 'fit in'.

You have to be a this or a that, you're not allowed or supposed to do this or that, plus there is a huge expectation that we're "all humans" and therefore there is a "standard normal human" and we're all supposed to be like that. And if you're not, there's judgement and hate and insecurities.

So at the very least, if we TRULY acknowledge that all physical things ARE DIFFERENT in every way, including personalities, we might then start to let ourselves off the hook trying to be things that we can't be, to fit into boxes that we don't quite fit into at the physical or personality level.

For example there's a huge myth that everyone is the same. Sameness is a property of God, not a property of matter. Nothing physical is the same. Personalities are not the same. Men are not the same as women. Races and genders and sexualities are not the same. Nothing is the same here.

That means that although humans might be sort of similar in some major ways, sometimes, fundamentally the human being is TOTALLY UNIQUE in every instance. We are ALL INCOMPATIBLE on the physical and personality level in at least some if not a lot of areas. We are ALL fundamentally at war and contradictory, and your best bet usually is to find people who are "the least incompatible" - your besties and special chosen ones.

When you look at that, it's really surprising that anyone can communicate at all, that anyone ever has any common ground, that anyone can stay at peace, and that anyone can have a relationship. When it's based on the body and the personality, where people are identified with and AS those things, we're constantly all stepping on each other's toes. And we must not deny this. We're like square pegs going into round holes all the time, and the world is a minefield of crazy-shaped holes.

If we want to find TRUE equality and true communion and true relationship with anyone, we have to find it above and beyond the level of the physical and of the personality. We have to be operating at the mind level, and beyond. This is what holy relationships are for, with the goal of transcending the superficiality and incompatibilities of the human being - the flesh and bones and its personality traits.

This is also FUNDAMENTAL TO FORGIVENESS, in which we want to find a way to unconditionally love IN SPITE OF differences, in spite of everyone having clunky incompatible bodies, in spite of everyone's personalities rubbing each other the wrong way day and night, in spite of disagreement and conflict and contradiction. To see each other as spiritually equal in Christ.

And perhaps instead of trying to force people to get along, at the physical or personality levels, it would be healthier to acknowledge WE ARE NOT THE SAME on these levels. Perhaps we should be allowing each other to be different on these levels, because we ARE. And expecting people to BE LIKE US AT THIS LEVEL, is unhealthy.

It's indeed fun and wonderful when two or more individuals come together and do share what appear to be superficial "common grounds", can relate, can communicate, can share, can experience something similar together, go through things together, share a common history etc, all of those senses of being on the same page, of being equals and equally important etc. Even though most of this is an illusion of sameness.

But at the physical and personality level this is pretty much never perfect or complete. Even the best marriages have pitfalls and areas where the couple annoys each other. This is not "just you", it is INHERENT to the SYSTEM of space and time. It's part of the laws of physics. All physical things are incompatible at least some of the time, and nothing is ever fully compatible on this level.

Sometimes we might develop an artificial idea that we are all supposed to "love each other" ON this level, as in... gloss over our differences, denying that we have preferences, avoiding the fact that sometimes we like different things, and trying to produce a sort of artificial sense of relationship. A relationship of control and expectation, of demands and dependencies, of special love and special hate, where we try to force our differences to be not different.

This very much happens in special relationships where the two try to force each other to be like themselves, requiring sacrifices and compromises and self repression. This isn't really healthy. People are SO different, sometimes in very dramatic ways.

We can't expect everyone to be on the same page, interested in the same things, having the same values, same beliefs and all this, ticking boxes in every department. We are all kind of mutants at the physical and personality level, sort of distorted disfigured beings, special and lacking, clashing and incomplete.

What would be healthy would be to sort of - give unto caesar what is ceasars - allowing our physical and personality differences to BE different, because they are. ... while giving unto God what is God's - allowing our SOULS and MINDS to join in oneness, transcendent of the physical and personality conflicts.

As the course says, even advanced teachers of God have much the same physical appearance and superficial personalities they had before they even started the course. They may operate their bodies with greater love and gentleness, they might smile and be more relaxed, and have clearer minds, but their physicality and personality traits largely remain the same. Teachers of God still go to the toilet as needed.

We should stop this constant straightjacketing of trying to force everyone to fucking "get along" all the time at the physical and personality levels, and make it okay to NOT WANT TO. This is a form of level confusion otherwise. NO ONE is equal or alike at this level. But we should also focus on FINDING ways to recognize our sameness, our unity, our oneness, AT the level where it is actually possible - in the mind and soul.

This requires FORGIVENESS, precisely because the physical/personality level is somewhat "locked into a war", so has to be overlooked, transcended, given a wide berth, and not used against each other. Physical and personality traits have to be not "held against" people. Forgiveness tries to look PAST the physical and personality levels to find common psychological and spiritual ground, instead of artificially forced forms of fake relationship.

Through forgiveness - rising above the LIMITS of the physical and the personality/human levels, we can move beyond the battlefield, beyond the warzone, beyond the level at which there IS conflict and where conflict CANNOT be resolved except through pretence and sacrifice and discomfort.

People do not really want to be forced to "go along with" things they do not feel compatible with. To do things that clash with their body types, their nervous systems, their brain conditions. People don't want to be forced to experience everything the same, go everywhere, do everything others want to do.

We are NOT compatible beings at this level. We Are compatible beings mentally and spiritually, beyond the fake ego persona and the body and everything that comes with it. One in mind and soul, different in personality and flesh.

"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

"The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. A pure mind knows the truth, and this IS its strength. It cannot attack the body, because it knows EXACTLY what the body IS. This is what "a sane mind in a sane body" really means." UrT3C20

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal. This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions. The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. The one answer to all illusions is truth." UrM9A6

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.

Quite often there are discussions in ACIM circles about whether this world is real or not. Whether the planet earth really exists, or is an illusion. Whether perception overlays on top of it or is just a misinterpretation of its objective reality. Whether the world is the forgiven world or the real world. Whether God created the physical or whether it's really not physical, and whether it will continue to exist after all atonement is done.

There seems to be just so much fundamental uncertainty among people as to whether this "thing" of a "planet" we call earth is actually part of God's creation, and whether it's going to live forever in some way.

For me I often come back to some very simple statements which I find practically impossible to deny. Such as that "God did not create the body". But you'll also get some people questioning what references to "the body" are, and going off on tangents about the body being real or "the body" referring to an interpretation in the mind, or some kind of perceptual psychological body, or whatever else.

Despite the fact ACIM refers to various aspects of the body that are very obvious such as the physical features, limbs, body parts, and their typical physical interactions with the environment. I think one think we can say is true, we've done a darn good job of just twisting and mangling the course's statements as a result of our confusion and uncertainty to the point where, sometimes, it's barely recognizable what it's even saying.

For me I take a fairly honest direct approach to what I'm reading. I think Jesus is super advanced in his mastery and knows exactly what he's saying. I think he is very careful about his word choices and their meanings and I also don't think he's ever expecting us to do major mental gymnastics in trying to understand what he's saying. "Like the Text for which this Workbook was written, the ideas which are used for these exercises are very simple, very clear, and totally unambiguous."

"You have begun to realize that this is a very practical course, because it means EXACTLY what it says."

That means that when he refers to such things as "the body" he's just very simply talking about the physical human body. And when he talks about "earth" he's referring to the physical planet earth. The earth which EVERYONE recognizes as a name for this physical planet. I don't see ANY reason to question that or to suspect that there's some kind of super-subtle esoteric "only for experts" meaning to those terms, where you have to study it for 50 years to finally grasp the nuance of that word is attached to.

A body is a body is a body. Earth is the planet earth. It's simple enough. And I think Jesus would've been a pretty terrible teacher if he were using such obvious terms in some kind of alternative, bizarrely indirect, nebulous way that only very few can ever grasp. It's a bit of slap in his face, to me, when people suggest that Jesus has somehow not been obvious or literal, or plain enough in his language, intending for most people to grasp it as easily as possible.

In light of that, for me personally, I come away from ACIM with a very strong impression that all things physical are fundamentally an illusion, the human physical body is an illusion - as in "the body is a dream" and "God did not create the body" etc, and that planet earth - the spatially separated spherical ball of rock and vegetation and creatures - is all totally an illusion. Not even that it's some counterpart to a higher more spiritual "version" of the planet or that it's some kind of stepped down denser version of some actual planet in heaven. But simply that it is NOTHING LIKE heaven in any way and is an artifact of separation and attack.

When you further look at other references in the course to very obvious well-known physical things, and look at what Jesus is saying about them, it becomes very clear that he really is referring to the physical world. Such as when he talks about children being born in pain, growth attended by suffering, being trapped in the human brain, growing old and dying, being buried in the ground, these are all such obvious references to the physical that anyone with half an ounce of sense has to recognize that's what he's talking about when he's referring to "the body". And in those references it is clear that he's saying "such things" are not like God or of God or anything to do with God. That God would be cruel to have created them.

But for some who knows what reason, some people who think of themselves as advanced experts on the course, seem to still persist in the belief that somehow Earth is heaven and human bodies are God's wonderful creations and all the little cute animals are part of the Kingdom and all we have to do is change how we look at it in order to recognize this. As if to say that true perception of this world is practically the same thing as what you would be aware of when you have KNOWLEDGE of this world. As if they're practically identical.

I see a lot in the course talking about forgiving this world, reflecting in this world, using this world for a purpose of eventually leaving it, and that this world will not last. I even see stuff about seeing it in such a heaven-like way that it seems to be almost part of heaven itself. But I still cannot get past the fact of how this world requires separation in order to show up at all. It is STILL an illusion of a world, like a shadow. It's an absence of a creation. The body is a residue of an idea of not being joined, and a wall that comes between things. I cannot see that a wall of separation can ever be thought of as truly part of heaven, or like God. God does not create limitations.

So for me, at some point earth is going to end. It's going to be forgiven and not condemned and light is going to be seen in it and then it's going to be shone away. It is not going to be able to withstand the light of God once we stop defending it from him. Such as in "eternity will shine away the world." And "the stars will disappear in light". And "The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came." That's the extra step that some people don't seem to like the idea of, that even in its forgiven state this world is going to end. "The world will end in laughter because it is a place of sorrow." I don't think people realize that this still means the world WILL end, because it has a beginning.

Fundamentally it boils down to the fact that you cannot have "separated things", or space, or time, without separation ideas. These are ideas of a lack of love, an idea of sin. A gap or splitting off. These gaps and splits cannot exist when there is total healing. Healing would eradicate the gaps. And that means space will end and so will time. And that also means that now you cannot have physical matter with separate objects and distances and private locations and things being in one place and not another. The whole foundation for a three dimensional planet goes out the window. The body itself can no longer exist WITHOUT separation, it utterly depends on it.

There is also a fundamental fact that you can only forgive something that's an illusion. Some people seem to think if you forgive the world you are taking illusions away from it and seeing it as real. But that isn't forgiving the world, it's forgiving the illusions about the world. The forgiven WORLD, if it is earth, and if we are trying to forgive the earth, is only possible if the earth itself is an illusion. Only illusory worlds can be forgiven, and forgiveness is undoing. This is why anything you forgive MUST DISAPPEAR, because it's not really there. You can't therefore have a forgive world AND KEEP IT. Forgiveness eradicates it.

So either earth is going to remain unforgiven and kept, or forgiven and disappeared. Which means earth is fundamentally an illusion of a world. If we have false perceptions of it we are having illusions about an illusion - two layers of illusion. If we have true perceptions of it, we're having accurate perceptions of an illusion. Just because true perception sees earth for "what it is" doesn't mean "it is real". It is just what it is. It's an illusion of a world. A world that NEEDS separation in order to show up, that RELIES on space and time, that CANNOT EXIST without them. And once they end, it has to vanish. Because without sleep, there is no dream content. And "the body is a dream", and so is the entire environment in which it finds itself.

It's very very very obvious to me that ACIM is teaching us that there is NO EARTH, as in "there is no world." That it is literally an illusion of a world and not real. It's part of a "second order reality" or a second thought system which was invented temporarily in the minds of insane people. It doesn't have real existence, it only seems to. And the only reason to "save it" is to remove sin and accusation from it for the purpose of being able to finally recognize it as NOTHING, so that it can disappear. It still boggles my mind that anyone can come away from reading what ACIM says in such plain terms and still think that the earth is somehow a permanent reality.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there is a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible. Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not. And what you then will overlook will not be understandable to you, just as its presence once had been your certainty."

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

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist. The Holy Spirit, as always, takes what you have made and translates it into a learning device FOR you. Again, as always, it re-interprets what the ego uses as an argument FOR separation into an argument AGAINST it."

WORLD IS STILL HELL EVEN WITH FORGIVING PERCEPTION - YOU HAVE TO RECOGNIZE IT AS A FORGIVEN ILLUSION OF HELL - AND LOOK PAST IT TO HEAVEN.

In the following statements, Jesus talks of how even in a state of true perception, or christ vision, this world is still seen as containing hellish things happening. Not that they are regarded as real, and in fact they are dismissed as unreal. But this doesn’t mean things aren’t still going wrong in the world. There are still sick bodies seen, there is still suffering and death happening, bodies are still attacking each other, murders are still happening.

The point is, just because you forgive the world it doesn’t mean it turns into a place where nothing bad happens. Nor do you become blind to people’s suffering. The important thing isn’t whether or not the world has "improved" in its events and happenings and problems, the important thing is realizing NONE OF IT IS REAL. Those who are expecting to see "heaven on earth" with everyone getting along, are in for a long wait. True perception and forgiveness cannot show you that. Perception is an effect, not a cause.

We will learn to recognize this world is an illusion. We will learn to disregard what seems to be happening in the world. We won’t dress it up in wishful thinking that everyone suddenly is getting along just because you are waking up. True perception is accurate perception, not rose colored glasses. The world, Earth, always remains as it is. Shit still happens in it. People don’t suddenly all start loving each other. Earth, a world of forms of error, cannot be but hell. It is illusion, a dream of everything going wrong.

Your corrected mind must OVERLOOK this world. Forgiveness means not believing this world is really happening. The forms in the world are still going to be in conflict, competition and attack. You can’t stop that. But you CAN come to see that it is NOT TRUE. Everything the body’s eyes report is a lie. Your mind has to learn to disregard these images. To not believe them. To not see the sin and think it real. A forgiven world, however, cannot last, because forgiveness UNDOES IT.

You have to look PAST the world of sin with forgiving eyes and not see "real sin" in it. You must see it as meaning innocence instead. But this DOES NOT stop it from having totally shit things happening in it. You will still see sickness and death, but reinterpret it as JUST A DREAM. Not real. Not heaven. Nothing. At the same time, you are to look PAST IT, through it practically ignoring it, to a LIGHT which is FAR BEYOND IT.

The light is where Heaven is. The light is where love is. It is BEYOND the illusory veil of matter that coves your sight. Your task here is to SEE THE WORLD LESS, and SEE HEAVEN MORE. To tune OUT of the world, and tune INTO Heaven. The aim is to no longer see the world AT ALL, and to ONLY see Heaven. You cannot see both worlds. Sight of one denies the other. More Heaven, less world.

Eventually the world disappears into the nothingness from which it came. All that remains is Heaven, and Earth has left no trace at all in its going. It was always just a dream, always an illusion. It could never be heaven. There is no world. Only Heaven is real. The world is barely even a thin veil across your sight as you look BEYOND it to the face of Christ. It may well seem forgiven and lovely but it is not the direction of your FOCUS. Your eyes are on Heaven, not on the world, and that is why you OVERLOOK it, and that is why you give it NO REALITY, and that is why it looks devoid of attack. That "holy world" is essentially NO WORLD. Only God’s creation has reality.

In summary, corrected perception/Christ Vision shows you:

1) the physical world is a thin veil illusion regarded as UNREAL and ILLUSORY, which appears to be a "beautiful illusion", a forgiven world that is, nevertheless, FAKE. "A forgiven world cannot last" because the forgiven world IS 100% DREAM ILLUSION, and so once the healed mind recognizes it, IT MUST DISAPPEAR. You cannot have your cake and eat it. You cannot keep the world AND SEE IT CORRECTLY. You cannot keep the world AND BE FORGIVING. You cannot keep the world and SEE GOD. "You cannot behold the world and know God."

2) sight of something BEYOND the image of the world, beyond forms and bodies and worlds, a light of Christ. The face of Christ, which shines BEHIND the appearance of physical matter. Seen shining behind the transparent veil. Sight of THAT is what makes you happy. It is because you are looking PAST the illusory world TO reality - a world of light - that you are at peace. Not because the world itself becomes heaven. If you believe what the body keeps showing you, you will NOT SEE the face of Christ. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one (Earth) denies the other (Heaven). You have to choose one. Heaven is your home. It is the only sane choice. Earth is nothing, isn’t real, and doesn’t exist.

"God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice.For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences.The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die.Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

"...When he realizes they are all illusions they will disappear. 8 And so it is with healing. 9 The properties of illusions which seem to make them different are really irrelevant, for their properties are as illusory as they are.

M-8.6. The body's eyes will continue to see differences. 2 But the mind that has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. 3 There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. 4 But the healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal. 5 This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. 6 And of these two, but one is real. 7 Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place—for differences cannot exist within it—so too are illusions without distinctions. 8 The one answer to sickness of any kind is healing. 9 The one answer to all illusions is truth."

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

"It is impossible to see two worlds." (And there are two)

"It is impossible to see two worlds which have no overlap of any kind. 2 Seek for the one; the other disappears. 3 But one remains. 4 They are the range of choice beyond which your decision cannot go. 5 The real and the unreal are all there are to choose between, and nothing more than these."

"It is impossible to see two worlds. 6 Let me accept the strength God offers me and see no value in this world, that I may find my freedom and deliverance."

"A mind and body cannot both exist. 5 Make no attempt to reconcile the two, for one denies the other can be real. 6 If you are physical, your mind is gone from your self-concept, for it has no place in which it could be really part of you. 7 If you are spirit, then the body must be meaningless to your reality."

"5 The body cannot see this, for the body arose from this for its protection, which depends on keeping it not seen . 6 The body's eyes will never look on it. "

"When you made visible what is not true, what is true became invisible to you. 2 Yet it cannot be invisible in itself, for the Holy Spirit sees it with perfect clarity. 3 It is invisible to you because you are looking at something else. 4 Yet it is no more up to you to decide what is visible and what is invisible, than it is up to you to decide what reality is. 5 What can be seen is what the Holy Spirit sees. 6 The definition of reality is God's, not yours. 7 He created it, and He knows what it is. 8 You who knew have forgotten, and unless He had given you a way to remember you would have condemned yourself to oblivion."

"For what you have made invisible is the only truth, and what you have not heard is the only Answer."

"Son of God, be not content with nothing! 2 What is not real cannot be seen and has no value. 3 God could not offer His Son what has no value, nor could His Son receive it. 4 You were redeemed the instant you thought you had deserted Him. 5 Everything you made has never been, and is invisible because the Holy Spirit does not see it. 6 Yet what He does see is yours to behold, and through His vision your perception is healed. 7 You have made invisible the only truth that this world holds. 8 Valuing nothing, you have sought nothing. 9 By making nothing real to you, you have seen it. 10 But it is not there . 11 And Christ is invisible to you because of what you have made visible to yourself."

"The real world was given you by God in loving exchange for the world you made and the world you see. 2 Only take it from the hand of Christ and look upon it. 3 Its reality will make everything else invisible, for beholding it is total perception. 4 And as you look upon it you will remember that it was always so. 5 Nothingness will become invisible, for you will at last have seen truly. "

"By making him invisible, the world of retribution rose in the black cloud of guilt that you accepted, and you hold it dear."

"What witness to the Wholeness of God's Son is seen within a world of separate bodies, however much he witnesses to truth? 8 He is invisible in such a world. 9 Nor can his song of union and of love be heard at all. 10 Yet is it given him to make the world recede before his song, and sight of him replace the body's eyes."

"Hear, then, the song your brother sings to you, and let the world recede, and take the rest his witness offers on behalf of peace. "

"The Thoughts of God are far beyond all change, and shine forever. 2 They await not birth. 3 They wait for welcome and remembering. 4 The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. 5 So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. 6 Yet still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. 7 There was no time it was not there; no instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was.

T-30.III.9. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky that holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure. 2 Its perfect purity does not depend on whether it is seen on earth or not. 3 The sky embraces it and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. 4 It is not the distance nor the time that keeps this star invisible to earth. 5 But those who seek for idols cannot know the star is there."

"Where could the Thought God holds of you exist but where you are? 2 Is your reality a thing apart from you, and in a world which your reality knows nothing of? 3 Outside you there is no eternal sky, no changeless star and no reality. 4 The mind of Heaven's Son in Heaven is, for there the Mind of Father and of Son joined in creation which can have no end. 5 You have not two realities, but one. 6 Nor can you be aware of more than one. 7 An idol or the Thought God holds of you is your reality. 8 Forget not, then, that idols must keep hidden what you are, not from the Mind of God, but from your own. 9 The star shines still; the sky has never changed. 10 But you, the holy Son of God Himself, are unaware of your reality."

"Forget what you have seen, and raise your eyes in faith to what you now can see. 6 The barriers to Heaven will disappear before your holy sight, for you who were sightless have been given vision, and you can see. 7 Look not for what has been removed, but for the glory that has been restored for you to see."

Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone.

This is something I think we've all struggled with. It seems the world is cruel, vicious, hateful, dangerous, murderous, and at times evil. It is filled with horros and torment and suffering and death. How can you love such a place?

It seems that when the world is being evil, you can't love it. More likely you will despise it, hate it, fear it, judge it as wrong, or consider it broken. How can you feel love in the face of atrocities and attack, or when you are witnessing war and destruction?

It then seems even insane to suggest that while the world is being evil, you can love it. Because this implies that somehow you love evil. If the evil is really happening, and it seems real to you, you logically HAVE to despise it. To love evil is itself unthinkable, and seems insane.

What occurred to me today, is that approaching the "how to love it" from this angle, is really looking at a special relationship. We're talking in terms of what the world is causing in us, how we are reacting to it, and how we are affected by it. What IT is doing to us and others, and whether or not IT is CAUSING US to love it. ie we JUDGE it to be lovable.

In specialness, we believe that something outside of us affects us. It can affect us positively or negatively. We believe it causes us and has power over us. We then seem to PREFER that it treat us well, and if it does, we will love it. And if it turns on us, we will hate it.

It's within that framework that we are stuck, when asking how we can love a cruel world. And it seems we can never love the world, because it is always messing up. If the world remains cruel, it is not going to inspire love. More likely it will inspire revoltion and bitterness.

If I allow my relationship with the world to be based on what the world "does to me", and if I'm waiting for the world to be RESPONSIBLE for causing me to love it, then chances are that how I feel about the world will waver by the minute.

Sometimes the world might seem loving, perhaps a lovely sunset or a pleasant smell. We then say that we love it, and become enamored with it. Then we see a car crash and are horrified, just as the smell of death wafts into our noses.

When we are worshipping idols, we are looking for those aspects of the world which "we like" or approve of, or prefer. We may even become obsessed with them, collectors or them, trying to gather them up to surround and immerse ourselves in them. The foods we like, our favorite color, the music we like, our favorite shows, toys and games we like to play with, etc. So long as we avoid the rest and pretend it's not there.

In this mindset we can only sporadically, conditionally, love the world. We love it when it seems to CAUSE us to love it. When it does something TO us that we prefer, we clap our hands. When it seems to meet our rules and does FOR us what we have assigned it responsibility to do.

Responsibility, however, also ties into the cause of sin. If we assign responsibility to the world, and it does not do what we want it to do, we consider it in violation of its duties. And now it has failed to act responsibly, or do what we wanted it to do, and it has now acted against our will, sinning against us.

We can't love the world like this. We can't love it on a basis of what it does to us or for us. In fact we can't love it on a basis of it doing anything at all. It can't be what the world IS that makes us love it. Nor can it be because of what it DOES, whether things we like or not. It can't be some effects we prefer, while despising others. Our love can't be based on the world being RESPONSIBLE for whether we love it or not.

What I'm learning is that a feeling of love or happiness is not supposed to be a REACTION to the world, or something the world causes in me. I shouldn't be feeling love for the world on the basis of what I GET from it or what IT is like. Love based on the world's CONDITIONS is conditional love - special love.

Love actually is supposed to be an outward expression FROM WITHIN, extended from the unconditionality and permanence of God. It is something I GIVE TO what is out there. And this giving should not happen as a reaction, or on the basis of adjusting to external conditions. Nor should I be doing it ONLY when the world lines up with my wishes. Expectation is not love.

The world should be loved, ONLY because YOU are loving, and not because OF the world. We're not loving it for its lovely scenery. We're not loving it's cute animals. And we're not loving it for the things it does for us. These are all special relationships.

We don't want to be getting lost in a state of idol worship or external dependency or only being happy based on worldly conditions. If we jump up and down when the world is in a certain configuration, or cower in fear and hate when it is in another, we are merely on a rollercoaster ride of fake happiness and despair.

The world, itself, is going to keep on being intermittently cruel and vicious and hateful and warring and decaying and deadly. It is going to continue operating within the laws which established it as a weapon against God.

It will try to delight you some of the time, and try to take away your peace at others. It will inspire guilt and fear and continue to attack itself in all its ways. You can't place your happiness or love on such unsure footing, or give the world the POWER to take it away from you when it wishes.

An inner love arises as you forgive yourself and love yourself, applying love at all times. This inner love has permanent qualities. It is unconditional. It is not a REACTION of love. It is not a love you only feel IF or WHEN certain conditions are met. It's a love you just feel, hopefully all the time, for "no seeming reason". "Happiness is a constant state."

It comes FROM WITHIN, and expresses outward. It shines ONTO the world. It is something you GIVE to the world. You PROJECT love onto it. And you then SEE the love you put there, mixed in with the world's cruelty. You enjoy it ONLY because you EN-JOY it, which means to GIVE IT JOY. Love is its own reward.

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who ***offer peace***. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible."

The world IS a world of impossibilities. It cannot represent love or freedom. It cannot be real. It cannot be true. It is its nature to attack and destroy. That was what it was made to do. But to see only this is to judge it and hold it against itself. Only by GIVING peace and love TO it can you FEEL peace and love in relationship with it.

"Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what it is?"

This projected love changes the framing of the world, and what it means. It shows you that the world's cruelty is not true or real. That it is just an illusion of sickness and suffering. That its images of death are not really death, because they are fake, and powerless to change you.

And at the same time, you look upon love IN SPITE OF the world, thus PUTTING LOVE THERE to see. This is the projection of the "real world", with which you OVERRIDE hell with heaven. And what you project you will perceive.

You OVERRIDE the world with your extension of happiness. You remain happy NO MATTER WHAT is happening, not because of some kind of "acceptance of it" but because of your REFUSAL to allow the world to come INTO you from the outside. You have power OVER it and dominate it with what you radiate. You are master of it. And you experience love because you chose to.

You really cannot love the world from the perspective of expecting the world to BE LOVABLE. The world is NOT lovable. No-one can make murder and death real and love it. That would be insane, to be in love with evil.

The only way to love is to recognize the evil is NOT REAL. It is not compatible with love. The world makes love IMPOSSIBLE. The only way TO love is to love it in spite of itself. And as such, you can love unconditionally precisely because you love IN SPITE OF the world being cruel. This also grants you the miraculous power to override its cruelty.

I find myself now, more often, smiling upon the world - upon subtle things, small objects, textures, colors. Feeling an inner sense of projected beauty. A sort of gentle happiness that bestows love, which shines upon, the world. And this is not because of what the world IS or what it DOES. It is because of what I am GIVING to it. Because I am staying IN MY LIGHT and shining it ONTO what I see, even if faced with a twisted hell.

It is more like an inner choice. A choice to love, regardless of what something is. To love something, even if it is a picture of brokenness or damage or malfunction. Not because IT is lovable, in its form or nature, but because I can CHOOSE to love, and will not ALLOW the thing to interfere with whether I am loving or not.

This means a love which is not DEPENDENT upon the world, triggered BY the world, or an EFFECT OF the world. It is not a love I GET FROM the world, and reciprocate, in some kind of bargain.

It is a love which is given outward TO the world, regardless of whether it seems to deserve it. Because *I* deserve it. Because if I stop being love, then I stop experiencing love. If I let my love switch on and off depending on externals, then I am a victim of the world, allowing it to affect me both positively and negatively.

Real love, or let's say, a holy relationship with the world, can only take place by IGNORING what the world suggests, and REPLACING IT with love. Giving it love even when IT hates, recognizing IT as calling for love.

We're told in ACIM that the cruel world is NOT the world God could love. And this makes perfect sense. But it also tells us that God loves the REAL world. God DOES love HIS PROJECTION OF LOVE. He gives peace, and sees peace. He feels love, and so is loving "toward" the world REGARDLESS of what the world is like. He doesn't love it BECAUSE OF what it is. He loves it IN SPITE of what it is. In spite of its evil ways.

If you think about this, it ties in properly with forgiveness. Unconditional love overlooks and ignores what something claims about itself, and sees past its illusion, and sees love instead. And only because it GIVES love and innocence.

Not because the thing is "being innocent". The world cannot be sinless or guiltless. "To see a sinless body is impossible." But we can choose to not believe in sin and guilt, and to thus project forgiveness and light UPON a sinful world. And we then see the reflection of our light, or of God, IN it. Because we PUT it there.

No one can love the world we made, on the basis of it being lovable, or on the basis of it acting lovingly. It is not that, and it cannot be that. It will always be a world of separation and death for as long as it appears to exist.

But we can love ... while the world seems to be there... in spite of what IT says or does, even WHILE it is being cruel, because the choice to love does not DEPEND on the world, or come from it. We can love in the FACE OF cruelty, in spite of the cruelty, which will render the cruelty seen with loving eyes. But this will not JUSTIFY the cruelty, because the love is not BASED ON the cruelty.

This is the only way to "love hell". No one can love hell, on the basis of what hell does to or offers them. The world in fact holds NOTHING that you want, and has NOTHING to give you. It effectively has NO redeeming qualities. Because it is nothing.

"The world can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons"

But you can "love hell" - which does not mean BEING IN SPECIAL LOVE WITH hell, on the basis of what you OFFER TO IT. You be loving, even when surrounded with evil people. You can love unconditionally regardless of whether the world was made from love. It wasn't made of love, and never will be. But this must not stop us from loving. Otherwise we cannot feel happy.

Our challenge is to stay strong IN OUR LIGHT, even when confronted with evil. To remain IN THE TRUTH, even when faced with lies and deception. To remain IN POWER, even when the world pretends to take power away. And to NOT ADJUST to the world in any way, or allow it to cause us to waver or change our decision to love. This is the only way God is able to love the world. To love it, because he can do nothing BUT love, REGARDLESS of whether the world "is lovable" or not.

"The world you see cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world. God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

Let me first just say that I don't intend for this to be a "negative" post. Nor is it being pessimistic. But it's going to point out the inherent negativity of the world. Not to try to make it real or be drawn into despair over it, but to just recognize it for what it is. And there is no need to react to it with assertions of "happier interpretations."

There is a tremendous need for us to stop believing that the world is something we WANT. Or something that can offer us any redeeming qualities or content. Jesus actually wants us to learn to recognize that this world has nothing to offer, nothing to give, does nothing, means nothing, and is nothing.

Jesus frames the world - by which I mean EARTH and its physical neighbors regardless of your perceptions - as nothing. And that we are to recognize its nothingness in order to realize that giving it up is not a sacrifice. And that by giving it up, we stand to GAIN EVERYTHING by accepting the reality of the Kingdom that God created for us.

"The world I see has nothing that I want."

"But if I see no value in the world as I behold it, nothing that I want to keep as mine or search for as a goal, it will depart from me. For I have not sought for illusions to replace the truth."

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give. What can the sacrifice of nothing mean?"

ACIM is teaching that the world is nothing, it has no value, and everything in it is a pain. It says you do not want this world. That even though you made it you do not want it. And even that you made it BY not wanting it - by not wanting what was in your mind, which you projected outward as a world to try to get rid of it.

"the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want."

We are confused and caught up in the world because we keep believing that it can offer us salvation, something of value, something beneficial, something we want. And before you start dreaming up denials via the repurposing of the body and world, let just just clarify that the purpose of the world does not change what it IS.

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

Our problem is that we do believe the world has something to offer. That it is a great place to live forever, and never leave. That it has real pleasures and that its pleasures entail no pain. But Jesus also teaches that even the pleasures of the world are really pains in disguise, because the cost is that by indulging in temptation you are separating from God, and real pleasure only comes from doing God's will. Pleasure binds you to the body and takes you away from reality, just as pain does.

He wants us to recognize that pain IS pain, and pleasure IS pain, because truthfully we actually don't quite recognize what anything is. We think that pain is pleasure. We even think that sickness is saving us from life, and death is salvation. In our confusion we keep trying to dress up this world and frame it as somewhere that you can enjoy the full fruits of heaven. But as Jesus aptly explains, you CANNOT ESCAPE from the world's suffering by staying in it.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

Much of our problem then is that we think there really is a way to be in the world that fixes it up and makes it great and provides room for an entire civilizations to emerge. A massive attempt to tame hell and "civilize" it. But this is really a form of DENIAL. The truth is that ALL of the world's roads lead to death, suffering, loss and disappointment. If you are willing to look at it you'll see this is true. And it will just keep on disappointing you until it disappears. That is its NATURE. It is a device for guaranteeing death.

"The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it"

"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life."

These are the facts. Everything in spacetime is limited, it is not even really life (only eternal life is life), bodies are mostly destined to die, flowers can't bloom without dying off, entire planets cease to exist after a while, there is decay and destruction everywhere, sacrifice is built into spacetime itself, and there is scarcity everywhere. The world is TURD floating in cess-pool toilet-bowl of spacetime. Failure is inherent to the entire cosmos. This is not being negative about it either, it's being honest and truthful. This is a dream of mortality.

"Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

If we go into DENIAL that the world is basically a one-way trip to hell and death, we will start trying to find ways to PRETEND it's not true. We in fact have built up what we call a "civilized society" (a dysfunction), complete with the "comforts" that avoid as much pain as possible, the clever manipulations of matter that result in seeming "fixes" for problems, we've found all kinds of distractions and ways of making life seem "interesting", and have discovered every imaginable toy and play-thing to occupy our time. And yet all the while death can strike at any instant in any number of ways. And no-one knows what the heck they're doing.

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

The world really, in truth, is fundamentally broken, and it was broken from the start. It was made from the idea of the malfunction of reality. It was an attack on order and peace and love and harmony. Its separations are constant and relentless. Its isolation and exclusion are rampant. And not one single particle in all of spacetime is without a form that symbolizes separation, repulsion and rejection. The world is made of denial, and it even denies its own existence.

"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."

If you look, you'll notice that the world has a plentiful supply of problems lined up for you, and even if you seem to solve one using a highly specific customized solution made just to perfectly fix this one problem, it WILL NOT EVER stop the onslaught of all the other problems it has lined up for you. Not to mention death. The one problem that everyone seems to be in TOTAL denial about, as if it doesn't matter because it's off in the future. And so we pretend we won't die, while nevertheless rushing towards it and making sure it happens.

We have to be willing to put aside all of these adjustments, these wishful thinkings, these rose-tinted glasses, the ignorant bliss, the framing the world as heaven, the trying to make it be our home, our adjustments to it and our attempts to make it out to be a great place. It is nothing. It can be forgiven, like all illusions can, but its nothingness is what makes this possible.

"YOU make the world and THEN adjust to it."

Adjusting to the world, trying to cope with the world, trying to make it more palatable, trying to make it softer and safer and seem to be a place that's not all that bad, is all forms of denial. The desire for the nice materials, the riches, the shiny objects, the fancy cars and expensive buildings, it's all an attempt to pretend that the world is desirable and that it WON'T disappoint you, as you seem to enjoy SHORT LIVED temporary reprieves from its hell-bent destructiveness. And as you hide behind the next "new thing" which claims to offer escape from death.

It is an avoidance of the fact that the world is just fundamentally not EVER going to really work correctly. It cannot function correctly because it is based on an idea of death and destruction. It is fundamentally a world of suicide and self-attack. Everything in it will always go wrong sooner or later. Expecting it not to will make you suffer.

This isn't a pessimistic view, by the way. This is a truthful view. I am not saying that we should be sad and unhappy and despairing because of it. Or that there is no alternative. In fact, Jesus is trying to get us to look at this truth SO THAT we can be recognize it is something we DO NOT WANT, so that we will in turn change our minds and choose the one reality that God created for us. And in which we will be infinitely happy forever. We only keep choosing the world because we mistakenly think it is WORTH HAVING, but how can you want a world made of rejection?

The world is not supposed to be your home, the thing you are in love with, your special adored idol, or your salvation. If you watch honestly you'll see that everything just goes wrong, eventually. It happens, again and again. Stuff breaks. Things get lost. Objects fall off tabletops. Food splats on the floor. The clothes become worn. The beds become mis-shapen. The roofs leak and cave in. The cars break down. The rust creeps in. I like to say, "there goes the physics again". And the assault of time, which is the idea of change and therefore death, guarantees that everything comes to an end.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it, for what He creates must be eternal as Himself. Yet there is nothing in the world you see that will endure forever. Some things will last in time a little while longer than others. But the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

Shall we live in denial that this is true, that the world can NEVER BE HEAVEN? Shall we live in denial that everything in the worl WILL END? Or even that it has death built into it from the start? That it can never turn into a perfect society or an ideal civilization or even a safe place? We try to make it safer with our defenses and castles and our potions and rituals and our avoidance of dangers, but it remains an unsafe place. Can you escape a supernova?

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

The world cannot GIVE us what we want. It cannot make us happy. It cannot provide us with peace. It cannot satisfy us. It gives only to take away. It fails in order to disappoint. Every road, path, way, direction, goal, ambition and achievement in the world is pointless. Yet the world can present seeming illusions of "things going well", for a while, before it attacks and destroys what it has given. It can tempt you will fake happiness and fake values and fake salvation, only to fail you once again and deceive you in doing so.

"On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once."

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while."

Jesus is not being negative when he describes the world like this. The world IS like this, isn't it? It's not a matter of how you look at it. There is no real loss in admitting to this, nor is this an attack upon the world. It isn't an unforgiving accusation. It is just a simple clear look at the world we made, its inherent nature, and its limitations. It is a world of limits, not a world of freedom, which is why it is like a prison for everyone in it.

"Are you not weary of imprisonment? God did not choose this sorry path for you."

"If it (mind) does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants."

The world itself is tyrrannical. It is selfish and separate. Each part of it is separate and at war with every other. Even the forms of objects are in conflict, which is why they are different. Conflicting shapes, sizes, colors, textures, they are all forms of war. Everything the body sees is a form of conflict. Every atom is at war. You cannot turn something that is fundamentally conflicting into something that isn't, because this will erase all of its properties and it will cease to exist.

It is by recognizing the world as "the hell you made", that we might be willing to go the other way. It is when we sugarcoat it as "not hell" in a spiritualizing pretense to make it seem wanted and worthy, that we put ourselves to sleep. We are blinded by perception of form and tempted by its luster and flair. Its picture frame of jewel-encrusted death suggests it is not a world of death but our most cherished possession.

We are to correctly identify that the world IS meaningless and IS nothing and HAS nothing that we want and DOES nothing for or to us and ISN'T our inheritance from God and IS NOT real and HAS no power and is basically absolutely NOTHING. The recognition that "there is no world." How can a world which does not really exist appeal to us and be something we want INSTEAD OF God? At the cost of heaven? And in a bargain where we "gain the whole world and lose our soul"?

True escape from the battleground does not entail the faulty belief that the battleground can be made into a pleasant place. You can rise above it, and you can leave the desert, and you can see it in a better light. But you cannot change what it IS. And denying what it is merely keeps you in hell for longer. And that isn't going to make you very happy.

"The world you see must be denied."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see."

"A desert is a desert is a desert. You can do anything you want in it, but you CANNOT change it from what it IS. It still lacks water, which is why it IS a desert." ... "The thing to do with a deserve is to LEAVE."

"Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"That is the only environment in which you can be happy. You cannot make it, any more than you can make yourselves. But it has been created for you, as you were created for it. God watches over His children and denies them nothing."

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

"God's teachers can have no regret on giving up the pleasures of the world. Is it a sacrifice to give up pain? Does an adult resent the giving up of children's toys? Does one whose vision has already glimpsed the Face of Christ look back with longing on a slaughter house? No-one who has escaped the world and all its ills looks back on it with condemnation. Yet he must rejoice that he is free of all the sacrifice which its values would demand of him. To them he sacrifices all his freedom. To them he sacrifices all his peace. And to possess them must he sacrifice his hope of Heaven and remembrance of his Father's Love. Who in his sane mind chooses nothing as a substitute for everything?"

"What is the real meaning of sacrifice? It is the cost of believing in illusions. It is the price that must be paid for the denial of truth. There is no pleasure of the world that does not demand this, for otherwise the pleasure would be seen as pain. And no-one asks for pain if he recognizes it. It is the idea of sacrifice that makes him blind. He does not see what he is asking for. And so he seeks it in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, each time believing it is there and each time disappointed in the end. "Seek but do not find" remains this world's stern decree, and no-one who pursues the world's goals can do otherwise."

"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?"

"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 powers decline 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."

"YOU DO NOT WANT THE WORLD. The only thing of value in it is whatever part of it YOU look upon with love. This GIVES it the only reality it will ever have. ITS value is NOT in itself, but yours IS in you."

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy."