Your ego is a device, a kind of machine, similar to how your car is a machine.
You designed it to perform in a certain way and to carry out your instructions.
Just as a car can only do what it is designed to do, the ego can only do what it is designed to do.
When your car is doing what you ask of it, driving you from A to B, it is fulfilling its function. Similarly when your ego is doing what you asked it to do, it is fulfilling its function.
It was the ego's function, as you designed it, to skew awareness away from God and to fixate on the opposite of God. Its function is to be unforgiving. Its function is murder.
Now, don't expect your ego to carry out some other function. You wouldn't expect your car to suddenly start washing your dishes and cooking dinner. It can only do what it was designed to do. And you would be nuts for condemning it for failing to come up with a 3-course meal.
Similarly with your ego, don't expect it to be not ego. Don't expect it to attempt to do anything other than it was designed to do. It's still carrying out your orders and doing what you wanted. It's something you made, just as people make cars.
Do you think the ego is ever going to turn around and say "you should apply forgiveness now", or "god loves you" or "there's nothing to be afraid of"? It's not meant to. That's not its job function. It's supposed to remind you how separate you are from everything and how death is life and how attack is salvation and all the rest of it, which it does very well.
What you can learn here is not to be afraid of the ego, because it's actually not 'against' you for no reason. It only seems to be against you because you asked it to be. You designed it to be. And its just doing what you wanted at one point in time. What you want now may be different but the ego, like an old machine, is still doing the same old thing that old machines do. They can't change.
So, in a way, don't take it personally when the ego is retaliating or being vicious. Don't think the ego is out to get you or has a will of its own or power over you. You are its master. Also don't think the ego has some kind of say or power over you as if it's deciding 'new things' about you. It's a one-track pony. It just keeps on doing what the ego does. And since you set that in motion yourself, it's actually being very faithful, a faithful servant, giving you exactly what you asked it to give you.
So now the ego is not so much your enemy, or necessarily a friend, but it is a friend in the sense that it is obedient and is doing what you made it to do. Don't be getting all up in its face about why it's being the way it's being, when you're the one who chose it. Recognizing it is serving you helps you to not only be grateful for the opportunities it presents, but also stops you from seeing yourself as victimized by it.
Maybe think of it like someone who has a serious disability or mental disorder and they really can't help it but keep blurting out swearwords... and so there they go again, swearing, but you understand they can't help it, their body is programmed to make it happen. So then it's not personal, and its forgivable because they know not what they do, and you're not a victim of it because you understand there isn't a malicious 'will' or intent that's running this. It's not someone out to get you. It's just a device mechanism behaving in a certain way.
So the ego is not your enemy, because in a way it is helping you to have lessons, to be asleep, to have a chance to choose again whether you want to be with God or not. And you hold all the power and the on-off switch to the ego machine. You get to choose whether to use the ego in the way it was designed to be used - to divide and separate and make illusions real, or whether to use it with Holy Spirit.
To use the ego with Holy Spirit is to look upon the ego simply for what it is, and recognize it as a faulty broken mistaken machine, which has no will or power of its own, which is just ticking along and doing its role. And here you are, in Holy Spirit, hearing the ego's voice and its assertions but taking the opportunity to listen to Holy Spirit's version of events.
Your sole task now is to simply choose not to listen to or believe what the ego is saying. You may hear it still, because it's not going to change its tune, but don't buy into it. Don't get caught up in it. Don't get lost in blaming it or fearing it. And don't keep using it for the original purpose you designed it for. You need to use it for forgiveness and as an opportunity to be triggered into healing, learning to listen to the Voice for God instead. The ego is just a limited mechanical robot. It's really nothing at all.
Thank you ego for being ego and for being a faithful servant of my awakening. And thank you for your efforts to attack so that I have an opportunity to learn to forgive. And thank you for guilt and fear so that I can learn that I am guiltless and fearless if I take those opportunities and work with them correctly. And I accept you as you are for what I made to you to be, and release you in freedom and gratitude.
When you are done using the ego and buying into this notion that it has power to do stuff to you that you didn't ask for, which is like a farmer saying "I didn't plant those stalks of corn" when clearly he did because they didn't get there into neat rows all by themselves, you'll set it aside as a 'toy' that you no longer want to play with or have a use for. It's as simple as that.
You're not a victim of the ego you made.
It's not easy to recognize the need for forgiveness. It's not easy to realize that you're even being unforgiving. It's not easy to notice that the way you're experiencing a situation or problem is you falling for some illusion. And it's not easy to see that you even have "another way" to deal with this.
The ego has been our faithful companion for a long long time. Almost every interaction with this physical world has been according to its perceptions. It has shown us an interpretation of everything that happens, making it seem real and true, and showing us a world where everything goes wrong.
And our use of the ego to respond to this broken world, has to be to use more ego to try to fix it. To solve problems. To correct people. To wrestle with what's happening. To just assume that what APPEARS to happen is real and fixed and irreversible, even though it's not.
And then we come to a sort of middle ground where people say, well, you should just accept what is, stop resisting, stop fighting it, let stuff happen etc. Yes, it's a stepping stone.
But ultimately, that's not the end of the story. That's sort of like saying, I've made my bed now I will lie in it. Or, I invented a prison, now instead of fighting with the prison I will just stay imprisoned and try to see the good in it. Or it's okay to die.
No.
When we're accepting illusions and are still inside illusions and are still responding to the world through the ego viewpoint that things are going wrong and problems are real and people are supposed to be suffering, that's not awakening. Its a form of rationalization.
We are meant to recognize that NOTHING in this world is real or true. This world itself is an illusion. It doesn't even exist. It is not happening. Nothing has gone wrong. Nobody is REALLY doing anything that they seem to be doing. We're meant to not take ANY of it seriously. We're not meant to believe our eyes and take things as though they're factually happening. We're NOT meant to just 'accept' the world.
We're meant to completely DENY the illusion of a world. We're meant to UNDO the world. We're meant to OVERLOOK the world. We're meant to recognize that this world IS AN ILLUSION not a reality. We're meant to RECOGNIZE that only what God has created - only his design - is true and real and valid. And if that is not being expressed here, then MIRACLES are called for.
Divine health. Perfect abundance. Immediate supply. Instantaneous travel. Absolute worthiness. Eternal life. If THAT is not happening, something has gone wrong, because THAT comes from love and miracles come from love and if miracles are not happening, love is not happening, then something has gone wrong.
Someone in your life that you are angry with or upset about, is only there as a skapegoat so that you can cover up your secret plan.
Your secret plan is to find a way to prove why God can't love you.
So you hire people, even before you incarnate, and you ask them to do stuff to you, for you. You ask them to play a role. And then they come into life and you come into life and you both play the roles perfectly. They do you a great service, even if the role they play is one of attacker or victimizer or hater or abuser.
While you have forgotten this sense of responsibility for orchestrating everything that happens to you, you will experience yourself being a victim - unfairly treated. Only by remembering 100% responsibility for this 'deal' you made, can you be freed from this victim consciousness.
Then, whatever that attacking person looked like or what they did to you, IF it's recognized as being EXACTLY what you asked them to do FOR you, then you can hardly hold them accountable or blame them. You literally asked for it. And whatever they did was done perfectly exactly as you requested. This completely lets them off the hook. They are just doing their job. You should be grateful.
Only in seeing it this way can you view the person as completely devoid of any guilt or of having done something against your will. And if they haven't done anything against your will other than perfectly carry out YOUR plan of self-attack, then you will recognize they have not really done anything TO you. It's really you that did this to you by hiring them to do it for you in the first place.
Then you can recognize this person is innocent. They have been faithful to your request. They've done what you asked. And they did not do anything you didn't ask for. So now services have been rendered. And for that you are grateful and you can recognize them as INNOCENT. No longer can you blame them for doing something 'uncalled for', having owned up to being the one who chose it.
Having thus taken back responsibility and power for the decisions against yourself, which were designed to give you really good justifications for being UNLOVABLE BY GOD, you will recognize that the whole point of being attacked/abused/hurt etc is so you will become so preoccupied with how worthless it 'makes you' that you will not be able to accept God's love. You will have really great justifications for why you can't be loved. And you'll have all this evidence and you'll be able to point your finger at this person and blame them for causing it. And all the while this affirms - God can't love me because I'm not lovable because of what this person did.
It's pretty convenient to stay in that mindset. And staying there won't make you happy. What will make you happy is dropping all the projection of blame onto the person who served you, taking full responsibility for orchestrating your life's events, taking ownership of the plan to prove to God that you're unworthy, and then becoming willing to allow yourself to be loved again. You have to drop the game you're playing. You have to get out from under the 'prison sentence' that the victimizer seems to hold you under. It's you holding yourself there so that you can stay way from God.
Then you let God in. You surrender. You drop the self-defeating attitude. You own up and admit to the truth. And then a smile can return to your face as you allow yourself to stop hating yourself and let yourself be loved by God.
Innocence is goodness. If guilt is equated with evil, then innocence is equated with good. In order to forgive someone or something requires looking for the good in them - looking for their innocence. Seeing their harmlessness, their gentleness, their holiness and their perfection.
"Dream softly of your sinless brother, who unites with you in holy innocence. And, from THIS dream, the Lord of Heaven will Himself awaken His beloved Son."
"The good" is also combined with love, and light, and power, and strength. It is the realm of miracles. In effect, evil is a breakdown, malfunction, failure, weakness and a loss. So its opposite, good, is all that can actually work, solves all problems, repairs all sickness and resurrects.
"The good is what works" is a sound though insufficient statement. ONLY the good CAN work. Nothing else works at all."
The Holy Spirit also represents the state of forgiveness and the miracle, as the power of God which performs miracles, as the healer as the resurrector. Therefore seeing the good in your brother for example also equates with seeing the Holy Spirit in him.
"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further."
Jesus encourages us to find the good in things. To "look on the bright side". To make of the world a forgiven world where all is seen as innocent and harmless and guiltless and sinless.
"Have you been similarly grateful to each other? Have you consistently appreciated the GOOD efforts, and OVERLOOKED mistakes?" Indeed forgiveness puts you in touch with your true nature, brings you closer to God, aligns you with your soul, and reawakens the power of God in you. It is your natural divine function to create the good and to do only good.
Ultimately "the good" is God, and anything of God is good. The world, as an illusion, is not good, and can at best only reflect God's goodness. Moving away from evil takes you toward the good of God. And in God, everyone and everything is good.
"Child of God, you were created to create the good, the beautiful, and the holy. Do not lose sight of this."
""I am blessed as a Son of God."
Herein lies my claim to all good and only good. I am blessed as a Son of God. All good things are mine because God intended them for me. I cannot suffer any loss or deprivation or pain because of who I am. My Father supports me, protects me, and directs me in all things. His care for me is infinite, and is with me forever. I am eternally blessed as His Son."
"You have been told that everything brings good that comes from God."
"And as you gave your trust to what is "good" in him, you gave it to the "good" in you. In terms of concepts, it is thus you see him MORE than just a body, for the "good" is NEVER what the body seems to be."
"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good.""
"And look upon the "good" in him, that you may not be fearful of your "evil" thoughts, because they do not cloud your view of him." "ALL things work together for good. There are NO exceptions except in the ego's judgment."
"Man will ultimately look upon his own creations, and will to preserve only what is good, just as God Himself once looked upon what he had created, and knew that it WAS good."
"For what God gives can only be for good. And I accept but what He gives as what belongs to me."
"God is said to have looked on all He created and pronounced it good. No, He declared it perfect, and so it was."
"Something good must come from every meeting of patient and therapist. And that good is saved for both, against the day when they can recognize that only that was real in their relationship."
"And so there is a place for all relationships in this world, and they will bring as much good as each can accept and use."
"We look on everyone as brothers, and perceive all things as kindly and as good."
"The real world can ACTUALLY BE PERCEIVED. All that is necessary is a willingness to perceive nothing ELSE. For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM. The ego sees SOME good, but never ONLY good. That is WHY its perceptions are so variable. It does not reject goodness entirely, for this you could not accept, but it always ADDS something that is NOT real TO the real, thus CONFUSING ILLUSION AND REALITY. For perceptions cannot be partly true. If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."
"The perception of goodness is not knowledge, but the denial of the OPPOSITE of goodness enables you to perceive a condition in which opposites do not exist."
"What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it?"
"But "good" and "deprivation" are opposites, and CANNOT meaningfully join in ANY way."
"Any ability that anyone develops has the potentiality for good." "Nothing good is lost, because it comes from the Holy Spirit, the voice for Creation. Nothing that is not good was ever created, and therefore CANNOT be protected."
"There is always some good in any thought which strengthens the idea that life and the body are not the same."
"The Resurrection demonstrated that NOTHING can destroy truth. Good can withstand ANY form of evil, because light abolishes ALL forms of darkness."
"It is secure in certainty that obstacles can not impede its progress to accomplishment of any goal which serves the greater plan established for the good of everyone."
"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."
"Now close your eyes and see him in your mind, and look at him a while. Try to perceive some light in him somewhere; a little gleam which you had never noticed. Try to find some little spark of brightness shining through the ugly picture which you hold of him. Look at this picture until you see a light somewhere within it, and then try to let this light extend until it covers him, and makes the picture beautiful and good."
"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His."
"The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer.""
"He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings and teach the single lesson which they all contain."
"The Holy Spirit USES time, but does NOT believe in it. Coming from God, He uses EVERYTHING for good, but does not BELIEVE in what is not true."
"Out of Love he was created, and in Love he abides. Goodness and mercy have always followed him, for he has always extended the Love of his Father."
"You can do ANYTHING I ask. I have asked you to perform miracles, and have made it VERY clear that these are NATURAL, CORRECTIVE, HEALING, and UNIVERSAL. There is nothing good they cannot do."
It's very simple.
God is love and we are to have a loving relationship with God.
In love, everything is perfect, holy, immortal, safe and alive.
If you reject God's love, you will introduce hell into your mind. You will invent all forms of suffering, and all forms of objects, and all forms of death. Every conceivable problem exists only within the realm of "God is absent".
God is everything and all truth and all perfection. In God there are no problems.
The ONLY problem is that if you reject God ("The denial of God is the ego's religion"), you invent a false experience of suffering, riddled with problems.
EVERY problem in the ENTIRE universe of space and time is a SYMPTOM of the absence of God. It is entirely logically composed of the attempt to oppose God's love. It exists only while God's love seems to be absent, just as darkness exists SOLELY as an illusion of the absence of light.
You either have God, or you do not. If you lack God, you produce every imaginable problem. Every imaginable problem is made of the belief that God is not one with you, sharing love with you. An entire world of spacetime has been produced within this mad idea.
If all problems are symptoms of the lack of God or love, then REUNION WITH GOD is the ONLY solution to this problem. And union with God will solve ALL problems. Union with God will UNDO the separation. Union with God is the atonement, the acceptance of God and the restoration of oneness with God, recognizing you are in God and never left or changed.
You live in God. If you try to live without God you live in a nightmare. When you choose God again the nightmare ends. The nightmare IS the denial of God's love. When you stop denying God's love the nightmare disappears.
God is the ANSWER to the LACK of God. If God is lacking, the ONLY SOLUTION is to get God back. To rejoin with Him. To commune. To repair the rift in your relaitonship. To close the gap between you. And to become one again.
God GAVE HIMSELF as his answer to the separation, because the Holy Spirit symbolizes his love, power and truth. The Holy Spirit answers the separation by recognizing and holding in mind the fact that you ARE STILL as God created you and are STILL one with Him.
Love solves ALL problems because all problems are the absence of love. When love or light comes along, all problems melt and darkness vanishes. The entire universe of spacetime is UNDONE by love.
It boils down to one simple thing. The cause of, or the whole separation, is the ONLY PROBLEM. One problem, with one solution. A sense of separation from God is the ONLY problem you need correct. Which means, rejoining with God and loving God and letting yourself receive God's love again.
To love God, or not to love God, that is the question. Your ONLY GOAL should be to love God again.
"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects."
"Our efforts will be directed toward recognizing that there is only one problem and one answer. In this recognition are all problems resolved. In this recognition there is peace."
"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution. The problem is a grievance; the solution is a miracle." (miracles are expressions of love)
"Above all, remember that you have one problem and that the problem has one solution. It is in this that the simplicity of salvation lies. It is because of this that it is guaranteed to work."
"Salvation does depend on recognizing this one problem, and understanding that it has been solved. One problem -- one solution. Salvation is accomplished. Freedom from conflict has been given you. Accept that fact, and you are ready to take your rightful place in God's plan for salvation."
"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."
"And so again we make the only choice that ever can be made; we choose between illusions and the truth, or pain and joy, or hell and Heaven."
"It still remains within him to project as God projected his own Spirit to him. In reality, this is his ONLY choice, because his free will was made for his own joy in creating the perfect."
"Sin is the only thought that makes the goal of God seem unobtainable."
"The goal of God is lost in the quest for lesser goals of any kind, and prayer becomes requests for enemies."
"Within the world of opposites there is a way to use forgiveness for the goal of God, and find the peace He offers you."
"In your holy relationship is your Father's Son. He has NOT lost communion with Him. NOR WITH HIMSELF. When you agreed to join each other, you acknowledged this is so."
"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body. Communion comes with peace, and peace MUST transcend the body."
"The miracle sets validity where it belongs. Eternal validity belongs only to the Soul. The miracle acknowledges only the Truth. It thus dispels man's illusions about himself, and puts him into communion with himself and with God."
"The Soul never loses its communion with God. Only the mind and body need Atonement. The miracle joins in the Atonement of Christ by placing the mind in the service of the Spirit. This establishes the proper function of mind, and abolishes its errors."
"Oh come ye faithful, to the holy union of the Father and Son in YOU."
The world can't really be held responsible for its nature. It was given its nature by those who made it. It was made for a purpose to serve them. And it functions exactly as they wanted it to.
Its makers wanted the world to be a place opposite to heaven in every possible way. Whatever was true of heaven, the world we made had to be unlike it in the most extreme ways possible.
Whereas heaven was light and strong and eternal and perfect, the world we made HAD to be dark and weak and temporary and imperfect. There was no real choice in this. Certainly the world itself had no choice in this, because it didn't make itself.
We wanted an opposite to God, an opposite to heaven, an opposite to eternal life. So we made an unreal dream of death and unhappiness. A dream of mortality and impermanence in which all things are infiltrated by death and destruction. A world opposite to creation where creation is impossible.
"Creation is impossible in this world."
The world cannot help this. It was made to be like this. Its nature is the only nature that is even possible as an opposite to heaven. It HAD to be this way in order to be different to the Kingdom.
It's not like the world can actually choose to be heaven, or have a nature that is exactly the same as heaven. Nor is it possible that the world is actually electing which nature to have. It cannot make this choice. It is something we made, and isn't the creator of itself.
This is also why the ego - something else we made, is forgivable. It is just as forgivable as the world because it did not make itself. It has the nature it has simply because it could have no other nature. A device spawned from an idea of separateness COULD ONLY lead a state of selfishness and isolation, exclusion and limitation.
The ego itself had no say in this. In fact it has no say in its own nature. In this sense it too is not responsible for being the way that it is. It was forced to be this way by its makers. And now it is true to its nature and follows the laws assigned to it.
The ego cannot really be accused of therefore doing bad things on purpose as though it could actually ever choose not to. It isn't a device for truth and salvation, nor is it a mind that can make a decision. It certainly isn't its own author, even though it has invented a story about a false God that it thinks made it.
The ego HAD to be the way it is because this is the natural outcome of an idea of separateness. Separateness never looks any other way or functions any other way. The world and the ego and the body simply CANNOT function any other way. They were given a function when they were made and they cannot deviate from it. The reason being that this function derives from a premise which has never been altered.
So in a sense we can't really hold the deeds of the ego, or of bodies, or people, or the world, against them. They are being faithful to their nature. They are just ticking over like a machine which was designed to function a certain way. They cannot do anything about it.
"The ego's voice is an hallucination. You cannot expect the EGO to say "I am not real."
The world cannot suddenly decide to be nice to you. The ego cannot suddenly tell you what the truth is. The body cannot suddenly be immortal. Objects cannot suddenly transcend spacetime. They are all locked into a system. It's a system-wide state of laws and rules by which they were made, they always abide, and they can never escape.
They cannot escape themselves, nor can they offer salvation from themselves. They are not going to change their minds. They are not going to take on a different nature. They are always going to keep running and operating on the same dysfunctional basis because that's the nature that was given to them, and they know nothing else. Nor are they capable of anything else, just as a tool or device can only do what it was designed to do.
So while the world and the ego and bodies attack and murder and destroy, in a sense they cannot help it. It's what they do. It's all that they do. They don't know how to do anything else, nor can they be taught to. Nor can they be kept while they are transformed into something better. They can only ever keep on being the way they were always going to be from the start.
Because they do not know what they do, they are forgivable. Because they did not create themselves, they are forgivable. Because they can only function in fault and failure because they were supposed to, they are forgivable. Because they can't help but break and disrupt and distort and skew and deceive and destroy, they must be forgivable. They aren't doing it "on purpose" out of optional spite, nor are they doing it on a basis of being free to do anything else.
The world can only destroy, and it can only deny, and it can only lose, and it can only fail. That is its nature. It can only disappoint and it can only fall short and it can only hurt. That is its nature. It can only be at war, it can only decay, and it can only die. That is its nature. It was born to die, and never to live except for death.
We cannot hold its nature against itself when it doesn't even have the slightest say in its nature or behavior. We cannot redeem the ego. We cannot redeem the world. The world cannot be saved in this sense because it cannot stop functioning the way it does even if "it wanted to". It is helpless. It is powerless. It has no causal choice. It can make no decisions. It is weak and vulnerable and fearful and nothing. So it can't really do anything of its own volition.
The world and the ego are nothing but puppets on a string being dangled by sons of God playing with sharp-edged toys. The world and the ego won't stop trying to kill you off either. Nor will they suddenly turn perfect or operate with holiness and happiness. The world is a pointless depressing hopeless place because all its roads lead to death. It doesn't know how to live, it only knows how to die. You can have pity for it in that sense. You can even have compassion for it.
"Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home?"
The world will never be other than what it has to be in order to fulfill the function of separation. And the ego will never have a loving truthful nature. They are lost because they are loss. They are faulty because they were not made with love. They are broken because they were not given immortality. And they can only but disappear.
I forgive the world for being true to its maker. I forgive it for being incapable of real change. I forgive it for not knowing how to function better. I forgive it for being only capable of disappointment. I forgive it for attacking and destroying mindlessly and without consideration. I forgive its determined mercilessness, driven solely by its inherent function and its blindness to anything else. I forgive its evil which does not know what it does. And I forgive it for ever seeming to be needed, for a purpose of attack, from which it cannot deviate.
There is no spiritual ego. There is no sacred planet. They don't exist and never will. How can you hold a dream against ITSELF when YOU are the one who dreamed it into existence? It is what you want it to be, and it does what you wanted it to do. And until you stop dreaming it will continue to be a dream of death.
"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."
"Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. And so do all things live because of death. Devouring is nature's "law of life." God is insane, and fear alone is real."
"The world goes AGAINST your nature, because it is out of accord with God's laws. The world perceives orders of difficulty in EVERYTHING. This is because the ego perceives nothing as wholly desirable."
"The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin."
"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. "
"You see the world which you have made, but you do not see yourself as the image-maker. You cannot be saved from the world, but you can escape from its cause."
"The whole purpose of this course is to teach you that the ego is unbelievable and will forever BE unbelievable."
"the world will never give a gift that is not made of fear"
"Everything the world can offer promises some joy that it will never give." "Your ego and your Soul will never be co-creators" "the body may become his chosen home, but it will never be his home in truth."
"The body's eyes will never see except through differences."
"These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see."
"The body's serial adventures, from the time of birth to dying is the theme of every dream the world has ever had. The "hero" of this dream will never change, nor will its purpose."
"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 the ILLUSION of love will NEVER satisfy you. But its REALITY, which awaits you on the other side, WILL give you everything." "It costs the world we see, for the world will never again appear to rule the mind."
"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."
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."
"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness."
"The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love."
Sounds like we need to get a handle on this atonement and forgiveness business because Jesus is claiming it can cure ALL sickness, whether it be mind or body. Sickness is actually rooted in guilt. It's a form of punishment and vengeance.
"Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total."
"Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt."
When there is sickness, it's really that the mind is sick. A sick mind believes it is guilty. It sees itself guilty because it believes it has really sinned. Its guilt demands punishment and projects attack which attacks the body.
"But sickness is not of the body, but OF THE MIND. ALL forms of DISfunction are merely signs that the mind has split, and does not accept a UNIFIED PURPOSE."
"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain." "and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick."
"Unless the mind BELIEVES the body is ACTUALLY acting out ITS fantasies, it will attack the body by INCREASING the projection of its guilt upon it."
"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."
"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."
Clearly there is a theme here that physical sickness is a form of guilt resulting from a sick mind. When there is guilt in the mind, the mind conceives of "sickness" and attacks the body with it. The body becomes sick, taking on the form of physical symptoms. And when the mind is guiltless the body becomes healthy because the mind believes in healing, harmlessness and life.
"The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt."
"It (mind) will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey. Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."
"(Atonement) It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."
"There is no place where holiness is not, and nowhere sin and sickness can abide. This is the thought that cures."
"We will not be misled today by what appears to us as sick. We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt."
And we are reminded again that THE HOLY SPIRIT is the healer and the cure. "We will be still and listen for the Voice of healing which will cure all ills as one, restoring saneness to the Son of God. No voice but This can cure."
"Atonement heals with certainty, and cures all sickness. For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take. Sickness where guilt is absent cannot come, for it is but another form of guilt. Atonement does not heal the sick, for that is not a cure. It takes away the guilt that makes the sickness possible. And that is cure indeed. For sickness now is gone, with nothing left to which it can return."
To be clear, sickness is IMPOSSIBLE without guilt. Guilt IS sickness. The sickness of the body - illness, disease, damage, death, is all a form of guilt projected out as a shadow to disguise the guilt in the mind. "Guilt remains the only thing that hides the Father, FOR GUILT IS THE ATTACK UPON HIS SON."
"Minds ARE joined; bodies are not. Only by assigning to the mind the properties OF THE BODY, does separation SEEM to be possible. And it is MIND that seems to be fragmented and private and ALONE. Its guilt, which KEEPS it separate, is projected to the body, which suffers and dies, BECAUSE IT IS ATTACKED to hold the separation in the mind, and let it NOT KNOW its unity."
By associating a person with a body, believing the appearance of flesh and bones is "them", identifying them as physical, and thus making physical sickness a real and blinding deception, the body is confused with the mind. If the body is the mind then the body can cause sickness, which is level confusion and magic.
Thus to heal, the body must not be thought of as that which is truly sick. The body must not be thought of as the person. And the appearance of sickness must be recognized as an illusion covering up the mind's guilt. It's the guilt in the mind that is producing all physical symptoms. The mind is trying to destroy the body, having confused the body for the mind/self, as an attempt to destroy God's son.
In a sense, the notion of someone being "sick", is another way of saying "there's something wrong with you". Like when you accuse someone of "being sick" because of some disgust you have about what they're doing. The physical sickness is an accusation of guilt and corruption, or being dysfunctional and evil, a condemnation and an accusation of sin.
This is why the body is an effect or symbol of the mind, and its really the mind that is causing the body to die. This is why the body itself doesn't really "need" healing because it is just portraying the mind's sickness, and in and of itself is nothing but an image, faithful to its user and his/her intentions. Heal the mind of its guilt and the body MUST follow.
"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM."
"And nothing that the body says or does but makes HIM manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him, in gentleness and love, to heal their minds."
"Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."
"With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the HEALING of God's Son, and, for THIS purpose, it cannot BE sick."
"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."
"I have forgotten what I really am,
For I mistook my body for myself.
Sickness is a defense against the truth,
But I am not a body. And my mind
Cannot attack. So I can not be sick."
Quite a lot of quotes here about LETTING the Holy Spirit do stuff for you and through you…
“I will step back and let Him lead the way.”
“Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him.”
“Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven.”
“Let Him fulfill the function that He GAVE to your relationship by ACCEPTING it FOR you.”
“When you feel the holiness of your relationship is threatened by ANYTHING, stop instantly and offer the Holy Spirit your willingness, IN SPITE of fear, to let Him exchange this instant for the holy one which YOU would rather have. He will NEVER fail in this.”
“I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty.”
“Trust all things to Him. Let Him reveal all things to you, and be you undismayed because you are His Son.”
“The unredeemed cannot redeem. Yet they HAVE a Redeemer. Attempt to teach Him not. YOU are the learner; HE the Teacher. Do not confuse your role with His, for this will NEVER bring peace to anyone. Offer your empathy to Him, for it is HIS perception and His STRENGTH that you would share. And let Him offer you HIS strength and HIS perception, to be shared THROUGH you.”
“He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today. I do not know my will, but He is sure it is Your own. And He will speak for me, and call Your miracle to come to me."
“The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already.”
“Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face.”
“Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world. His lessons will enable you to bridge the gap between illusions and the truth.”
“Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God.”
“Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him.”
“The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way. His way is very different. He does NOT understand suffering, and would have you teach IT IS NOT UNDERSTANDABLE. When He relates through you, He does NOT relate through the ego to another ego. He does NOT join in pain, knowing that HEALING pain is NOT accomplished by delusional attempts to ENTER INTO IT, and lighten it by SHARING the delusion.”
“The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU. He needs only your willingness to SHARE His perspective, to give it to you completely.”
“Call upon Him, for Heaven is at His call. And LET Him call on Heaven FOR you.”
“God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name. The body's healing will occur because its cause has gone. And now without a cause, it cannot come again in different form. Nor will death any more be feared because it has been understood. There is no fear in one who has been truly healed, for love has entered now where idols used to stand, and fear has given way at last to God.”
“The teacher of God must, however, learn to use words in a new way. Gradually, he learns how to let his words be chosen for him by ceasing to decide for himself what he will say. This process is merely a special case of the Workbook lesson "I will step back and let Him lead the way." The teacher of God accepts the words which are offered him and gives as he receives. He does not control the direction of his speaking. He listens and hears and speaks.”
“And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end.”
“I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you.”
“They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you.”
“I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me.”
“It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to the mirror that is in HIM. He recognizes it, because he has been taught his NEED for it, but knows not where to look to FIND it. Let him, then, see it in YOU, and share it WITH you.”
“Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you.”
“He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will. ”
“The Holy Spirit points quietly to the contrast, knowing that you will finally let Him judge the difference FOR you, allowing Him to demonstrate which MUST be true.”
“The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE.”
“But the Holy Spirit, too, has use for sleep, and can use dreams on BEHALF of waking, if you will let Him.”
“Your creations are protected FOR you because the Holy Spirit, Who is in your minds, knows of them, and can bring them INTO your awareness whenever you will let Him.”
“The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM.”
“For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God.”
“Leave, then, what seems to you to be impossible, to Him Who knows it MUST be possible, because it is the Will of God. And let Him, Whose teaching is ONLY of God, teach you the ONLY meaning of relationships. For God Himself created the only relationship that HAS meaning, and that is His relationship with YOU.”
“Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you.”
“But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away.”
What if everything that's happening in the world is exactly what is supposed to be happening, per everyone's agreement and decision? And there are no accidents or mistakes and nothing is going wrong? And I don't mean, that "bad things" aren't happening, just that they're not happening accidentally or without consent.
On the surface, the world looks like hell. And it's hard to consider that everything is happening according to agreement. But there's more to life than meets the eye.
What if everything that happens can only happen because you agree to it? What if you have to put some kind of contract in place which has to be agreed to by everyone involved, in order for anything to happen? What if everything that happens is completely deliberate, and every single event in the world is deliberately orchestrated and chosen by everyone, on purpose?
What could this purpose be, but to assist you in spiritual awakening?
Before you incarnate, you make agreements with people that they will help you with your spiritual growth by playing certain roles for you. You ask them to do this and they agree freely. A contract is made. The terms of the contract state exactly what the person is to do and that they are to do nothing else. They do not add to the workload or take away from it. They are to play their part faithfully.
This includes contracts that you make with your own ego. You chose, on purpose, to make your ego, so that it would function according to your design and your rules. You wanted it to do certain things for you, to adjust your perception in certain ways, to change your values and beliefs in certain ways, and to fulfill a purpose that you wanted. You wanted the ego to function as a loyal and trustworthy device that would enable you to go through various struggles so that you could awaken spiritually. This is its only purpose.
A lot is said about how the ego is devious and vicious and all of this, pointing the finger at it and making it out to be a horrible enemy. But what role are you playing in that scenario? You are the victim. And this is the lesson. Lessons are there for your benefit to help you to wake up. The ego can be seen as a device for facilitating what's needed in order to awaken, if you perceive it correctly and use it correctly.
A spiritual lesson occurs when there is some part of you which is asleep, or at least that believes it is. This part of you, you put to sleep in the first place. And now it seems to be unaware of some aspect of truth. In its unconsciousness, in certain situations and scenarios with certain people you will suffer and struggle because you do not see the truth. This part of you will act exactly according to how you designed it. The purpose of the lesson is awakening and the solution to the lesson is always to wake up to the truth.
All lessons point to the truth and the outcome of learning a lesson must always be that you come to see the metaphysics or structure or mechanism of the lesson clearly. To step out of the lesson, out of your unawareness into awareness, and out of lies into the truth.
The ego, just like your bodily ailments, just like your relationship woes, just like your enemies, just like your financial struggles, and everything else, is only a device acting under contract to fulfill what you told it to do. It can hardly be to blame for anything when you are the one that made it. And you made it with great intricacy and intelligence, and you could say that it is a beautiful creation. It does for you according to what you wanted it to do for you.
Jesus tells us in the Course not to play down the magnificence of your mind's creative power, or to tell yourself that you are stupid for having created a monster. You must acknowledge and access that your mind is a very powerful creator and that it has been used to create your ego. Regardless of whether the ego is real or not, it is still very impressive - this whole universe is very impressive. You made it.
Also recognize that every person that you encounter, no matter what they do, they are doing because it's part of a lesson in which you asked them, under contract, to come along and treat you this way. Even if they seem to be an enemy, someone that hates you or abuses you or attacks you or even tries to end your life, they are still under contract. There is a spiritual purpose. They are trying to help you. That sounds absurd doesn't it, at least to the unawakened mind. But everyone is in your life because they are playing the roles that you hired them to play. You asked for it. You wanted it.
You wanted it because you wanted to awaken back to God and you need their assistance. You need them to trigger you, to get you to engage with your own ego, to get you to look at your own beliefs, to get you to heal, to get you to learn to forgive, etc. These are valuable lessons. Even the person you hate the most is completely acting under contract with you in agreement with you and according to your will.
Even if you are engaging with them in such a way that it makes it seem you totally do not want them to do what they are doing. Your unwillingness to accept their help is actually the lesson you need to learn. You need to find a way to see them as helpful, as innocent, as serving your highest good, as servicing your spiritual growth, and as being loyal and faithful servants according to everything you wanted.
Initially, asleep, you will react to these contractors with resistance and rebellion, because in your ego state you won't see how they are helping you. And this is what you need to learn... So you need to then transition from your initial reaction, which is blindness and forgetfulness, to becoming aware of a bigger truth, a bigger picture, in which you can see clearly. In that clarity you come to realize how they are doing what you asked, how you are not a victim, how you wanted this, how you contracted it yourself, and how you have been dutifully served.
At some point, when your lesson has been learned, and you have come to recognize the truth, you will see all of the ways that a person who once was seen as your enemy was in fact your best friend trying to help you wake up. You will see clearly, without having to add anything to the situation, that it's actually true that you asked them to do what they did. You will also see clearly that everything they did helped you, that you grew from it, that you gained awakening from it. You will see how it benefited you in the bigger picture of your life.
At this point, with clarity and truth and recognition and having therefore transcended the lesson, you will be perfectly poised to enter into genuine gratitude. This does not mean artificially forced gratitude or people-pleasing gratitude or trying to be positive gratitude. It is a gratitude that involves an appreciation - an understanding - a recognition - of what has really happened. It's the ability to see. It's the ability to recognize that this person has served you selflessly and faithfully according to what you wanted and the only possible genuine response to that is genuine gratitude.
And so you will look at this person recognizing their innocence, because they obviously can't be to blame for doing to you what you asked them to do to you. And you will see their help as welcome. And you will recognize the great benefit it has given you. And you wI'll appreciate their help. And in this moment there is a kind of reverence and sacredness or recognition. It's like the two of you will bow before each other, the fight is over, and you are both in full acknowledgement of a job well done. Services rendered. Contract completed to perfection. No loose ends, no resentments, no ties, no desire to get rid of the person or end their involvement prematurely, no grief or sense of loss of harm, just total appreciation.
And then it's as if you both bow in divine brotherhood and see each other as being absolutely the best of friends and for each other, and set each other free. And it is in this moment of freedom and love that you are finally set free of the contract. This is the only way that you can complete a lesson and be free of a contract. This is what al lessons are leading to - a recognition of your freedom and innocence and truth and equality with all your brothers. No victims. No enemies.
So with any problem you have, be it a person or a body sickness or a financial struggle or a noisy neighbor or whatever it is, while you see the problem as unnecessary, unwanted, uncalled for, inappropriate, unjustified, un-asked-for, or in any way happening outside of your will, you will be lost in the ego. And you will therefore be in the midst of a lesson and will need to learn a thing or two about the truth. You can fight with your helpers all you want, that won't help. You can struggle with your contractors, that won't help. You can try to get rid of the problem, that won't help either. You got what you asked for and nothing else. You put this thing into place, on your own, and nobody put it there for you. So at least admit to that and stop attacking what you made.
So how to do you find freedom when you're in a lesson? Forgiveness. Undoing the ego perspectives. Shifting your perception away from attack and toward welcome. Shifting your way of looking at things as happening for you, not to you. Using it as an opportunity to be triggered so that you can look at and heal what you do not want to look at. Allowing the problem to attack you so that you can see how you believe you are attackable, so that you can learn not to attack. Ultimately the purpose is for you to sort out what is really true from what is apparently false and to receive love in everything that happens.
So if you can shift your viewpoint this way and learn your lesson, you will find that you are in a moment of mutual recognition with the thing you made - the contract you created - the person you hired - the sickness you put in place - the lack you chose etc... where you can acknowledge full responsibility for what has occurred, claim the full benefits of the lesson, recognize the innocence and compliance of everyone involved, and set both you and that problem free in a moment of gratitude and welcome.
What you made cannot leave your presence until you can set it free in gratitude and recognition. Any measure of seeing it as your enemy or unwanted attaches you to it and keeps it hounding you, because then you have not learned your lesson. If you want to be free of something, you have to see how you made it yourself and why you wanted it and what you gained from it. What are the benefits? How did it serve you? Where is the silver lining? What function did you give to it? It's simply a matter of whether you truly want to continue with the need for the functionality of this self-made device or not.
And if your ultimate, very long-term goal is to awaken to God's love, then you'll be perfectly happy to keep your devices and not get rid of them, simply because you know that you still need them until you can learn your lesson. Your priority above all else is to learn to awakening to the truth, to return to God, which is more valuable to you and important to you than anything else. So given that, why would you want to keep getting rid of the very lessons that are helping you to wake up? Not that you must suffer... only if it helps you awakening and only for so long as is needed to learn the lesson. You need not suffer at all.
"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? (W-135.13)" - ACIM
It's all for the best.
Think of the physical body as having a purpose. It has a purpose, because it has a USE, because it has a USER. It is being used FOR something, other than the body in and of itself - because the body is not an end in itself. It is a tool.
"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."
The ego - ie insanity in your mind - can use the body for a negative purpose. This purpose is attack and destruction. When you are using the body for this purpose, the mind uses the body like it's a weapon.
It actually transforms the form of the body into what looks like "a picture of crucifixion." This is a picture of body which has things like damage, sickness, disease, signs of death, cancers and deformities and so on. Basically various forms of DEATH, to try to GIVE DEATH to others.
These are USED by the ego mind to send a message to those who look upon the body. At the same time the ego is using the body to try to ATTACK others. The sickened states that it invents in the body are themselves attempts to reach out and "infect others" with suffering.
"The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."
Not to induce guilt in anyone who might be doing this or experiencing the difficulties of sickness, but the course is indeed teaching that when the ego USES the body it uses it as a weapon to try to inflict suffering on others.
Its primary method is to put sickness "symptoms" into the body so that the body itself, physically, becomes a way to "spread death" to others. In particularly virile forms the body becomes contagious and capable of causing to others what seems to have happened to itself, thus extending sickness and death.
When the body is sick, it also sends a kind of visual physical message to those who witness it, that says "look what you did to me." It induces guilt, it accuses of sin, it projects an egoic message of the proof of sin, and we hold this suffering up for others to see so that they will be accused of causing it. And thus by our own desire to make our own body sick, we're willing to suffer if it means others are accused of sinning against God and can take on the guilt and the punishment.
In effect, a sick mind uses the body to make the body sick so that the body can make others sick. But the mind can also be healed of its sickness and its attempts to attack or to make guilty. And then the mind is more healed and now the mind is still USING the body but it is now using it for a higher purpose.
A healed mind USES the body not as a weapon or to try to project guilt or to scapegoat or to prove others to be the sinful cause of its symptoms. Instead a healed mind sends healing through the body. This healing love literally heals the body and removes from it the signs and symbols of attack and death.
As the body is healed, it now changes its symbolic message, and instead of now showing a picture of crucifixion to another it instead shows a symbolic image of something "unharmed", something innocent and free from attack. Such a healed healthy body sends a broadcast, visually, symbolically, that other people have not done anything to it, and therefore they cannot have sinned. This "physical message", a literal physical embodiment of the mind's belief in wholeness, exonerates those who look upon it, and in turn CAUSES their minds and bodies to be also healed.
"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."
In effect, a sick body provides a powerful TEMPTATION to others to believe that they are guilty because of its suffering. While a healed body provides a powerful LIBERATION to others to believe that they are NOT guilty because the body is obviously unharmed.
What actually happens is an interesting repurposing of things. Given that a person with an ego will believe the body is real, and give a great amount of weight to the FORM that the body takes, they will tend to derive MEANING from the form of the body. As such we might say, because the body has the shape of a cancerous growth, "that means" there has been an attack and a sickness.
And by thus deriving meaning from the body based on its appearance, the mind of the viewer BELIEVES and gives POWER TO that body, making it real to them. And now it cannot escape being at the EFFECT of that body. The unhealed mind of the viewer now sees that body as confirming their guilt, providing their sinfulness, suggesting they must have attacked it, and they basically AGREE with its condition. Entering into false empathy, they cannot help but feel personally responsible - guilty - that the other "real body" is sick. And this cannot be escaped while the person believes bodies are real.
The result of this is that those with egos view sick bodies as offensive and accusatory and harmful and not to be trusted and as attacking and threatening them. I couldn't find the exact quote wording but the course does say the ego hates sick bodies and feels threatened by them.
"That is really why you recoil from the demands of the dependent, and from the sight of a broken body. Your ego is threatened, and blocks your natural impulse to help, placing you under the strain of divided will."
What then happens when your mind is more healed, and thus removes the sickness from the body, is that you TAKE ADVANTAGE of the fact that other people are making your body real still. They still have an ego, their minds are still sick, they still need healing.
When they look upon your body with the same mentality of "making it real", and believing that its FORM defines MEANING, it looks there and sees no evidence of attack, no suffering, no pain, no proof of sin. Because your mind has truly forgiven and has PROVED forgiveness by healing the body of any side effects.
When a sick mind looks upon a healed body, the sick mind still believes the body is real and that its form is meaningful, and thus is "giving its power away" to that body to define FOR IT what is true. When you thus show an egoic mind a HEALED BODY, it taps into THEIR belief that they've given power to your body, THEIR belief that your body defines the truth, and because your body is depicting a healed FORM, they now automatically derive a MEANING from its form that "there's nothing wrong with it."
Because of their own giving away of their own power to your body, they can't help now but be AFFECTED BY your healed body, having given it power over them. And thus your healed body now taps into this dynamic in their mind and gives them the message "I have the power to inform you that you have not sinned."
And by this kind of indirect "back door" in a way, a re-purposing of their belief that your body DEFINES their guilt or innocence, your healed body TEACHES THEM, through its repurposed use of symbolic FORM, that they must be innocent because there is no sign of suffering. That they cannot have done anything. The impact of this teaching has massive amounts of POWER to educate them that, because your body is healed, THEY ARE INNOCENT.
And thus by witnessing that their nightmare has turned into a happy dream, your body has turned into a herald of harmlessness, their mind is now ACCEPTING the message - on their own terms - that they must be innocent. And thus, indirectly, their mind will now allow your body to exonerate them and this (by their own causation) causes them to believe they are innocent.
Thus does a healed body become a messenger to the sick, to tell them that they are not sick, because there is no evidence of them having caused sickness. It shows them they are not guilty, and uses their belief in your body's "power" to tell them what's true, to correct their view of themselves. So they think, I cannot have done anything because your body is in great condition and it is literally inspiring me to believe in life and health and wholeness.
As such their mind now accepts healing, becomes itself more whole, is lifted up, resurrected, and it in turn facilitates the side-effect that it also heals their own body. Thus the miracle of healing which was given to YOUR mind to heal YOUR body, extends and transfers to the minds of OTHERS as they witness your miracle. And thus is your brother HEALED ALONG WITH YOU. And now HIS BODY HEALS AS WELL!
"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you."
"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed."
"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
You will continue to protect, defend, empower, give energy to, support, believe in, have faith in, trust, consider worthwhile, see innocence in, be willing to sacrifice for, side with, cooperate with, and generally try to become one with THE EGO .... so long as you think that it is YOU.
Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't have all of these upholding, sustaining, supporting attitudes about SELF, regardless of what your definition of that self is. If you believe that you are made of what the ego is made of, or that you believe what it believes, you won't care. You will STILL defend and protect and try to sustain it. Even if it kills you.
This is how people choose to die. They are identified with the ego and what it is is made of, what it perceives and believes, thinking it is their SELF, and therefore they are perfectly prepared to do ANYTHING NECESSARY to defend what they think they ARE.
It's a totally "natural" seeming defense mechanism, in the name of trying to preserve your existence, to sustain your "life". Even if it means that by your identity being "the ego", your effort to "defend your life" is actually defending death, and therefore is a choice to die. In trying to save your own life, as the ego, you will choose death.
It's not really that you need to change the ego at all. It's just a sort of machine that is on autopilot doing only one thing, running one story, seeing things one way. It's not ever meant to do things another way. It can't. It's made of the idea of separation. It's made from beliefs in sin and guilt and fear and death. That's all it can ever believe in or be made of. But that has nothing to really do with YOU.
It only becomes something that is to do with YOU - your sense of SELF - when YOU decide to take ahold of it and convert your identity to it. When you believe that what is true of IT, is true of YOU.
So if you believe that for some reason you are sinful, let's say, and are therefore guilty, and therefore afraid of punishment and death, that means you believe that you are MADE OF sin/guilt/fear/death, that these things are TRUE of you, and that's because you've sort of borrowed these things from the ego. You've tuned into the ego and made it YOU. You've possessed it as an identity, to try to change your identity away from your real self, and away from God.
So now that you believe that YOU are sin, YOU are guilt, etc, your belief now is that your *SELF* is these things. And yet, your primary mode of functioning, your "defense of what you are", your "sustaining of SELF" which is completely inherently permanent in the functioning of the mind regardless of your definition of self, will just simply defend that sin and guilt and fear up and down until you're blue in the face. Of COURSE you will defend it because you think it is TRUE of you, and therefore it is your TRUE SELF.
Everyone is defending, protecting, supporting, and trying to sustain, who they believe they ARE. So if you believe you "are" sin, because of something you seemed to do that you thought was really bad, regardless of how much that sucks and feels awful, you will STILL defend that sin up and down like it's the God given truth of you, because if you are IT, it is YOU, and you are just trying to be "true to yourself". It's just that your IDEA of yourself, your view of yourself, is very mistaken and misplaced.
So this is how you latch on to the ego. And because of this, you will defend the ego's viewpoint, you will side with it, you will support it and feed it and give yourself to it, and all in the name of "preservation of my self", you will literally come to believe that death is real for you. That it defines you, describes you, proves you, and dictates you. So you will choose death. This is why everyone who dies has sided with the ego and has CHOSEN death. All death is suicide in the name of "sustaining me".
All people are trying to do is to stay alive - to continue their self - but because they are mistaken about who and WHAT they are, they keep protecting a self that is NOT who they really are, and that self believes in death. So hey presto, death is defended like it's who you are. And what you defend you will get closer to and become one with.
So you don't really actually need to work on changing the ego. The ego is NOT THE PROBLEM. You don't need to defend yourself against the ego. You don't need to, sort of, "undo" the ego as such, because the ego is already an illusion. It' just that you think it is a "real ego" because you have given YOUR reality to it - your sense of real self. The MISTPLACEMENT of yourself is what needs to be corrected.
So like, there's a burning pit of fire with you standing in it the middle of it. Hell. And you have two options how to deal with this. Either a) stay there and try to change hell to put the fire out, or b) get OUT of hell. And those who believe they are their ego will choose a ... they will try to CHANGE hell and to turn it into heaven, by trying to manipulate what the ego IS.
But the ego is ALWAYS, and will always be, a device for death. It does not change. CHANGE is death. The ego cannot change into non-change, and it cannot change into not-death. It is always death. It is always going to be perceiving wrongly, upside-down and inside out. It is always going to see God as evil and it's always going to try to get as separate from God as possible. It is a faithful machine, and that's how you designed it when you MADE it. It's like a car-ride that you invented in you back yard which is hardwired to drive around a fixed track, and that's all it can do. It can't go free-riding across the countryside. It is on rails. It just does what it was designed to do.
Changing the ego does nothing at all. That's a "spiritual ego". That's trying to emphasize the persona and reject the shadow in an attempt to make some PART of the ego be special and good and happy, while the other part is relegated to all the bad stuff. That's not going to work because both parts are still the ego and regardless of whether you try to emphasize the "good or bad" parts of that illusion, it still energizes that illusion and leads to death.
But it's what we've all been doing, trying to be in denial of the fact that the ego is 100% "bad", not 50%. It CANNOT hold the truth. It CANNOT have anything about it that is spiritual. It CANNOT even really exist. Yet here we are trying to dress it up and be selective about it, as if we can somehow redeem it or make it more tolerable or have some kind of option or exception to how it function. The ego is a one-way train to death and THAT IS ALL IT CAN BE.
So your REAL choice, your sensible choice, is to stop believing that YOU are the ego. That is really the ONLY way to wake up from it and be free of it. There is no other way to get off the ride. The ride is going to hell, and you with it, unless you change your sense of SELF. Who you are. What you are. What you are made of.
If you are made of real sin, you are believing you are the ego, and you will die. If you are really guilty, you will be afraid of inevitable punishment. You have no say in changing that dynamic. What you CAN do is recognize that the ego is an illusion, that it is NOT the truth about YOU, and in some way "separate" your sense of identity from it.
You need to get your mind peeled away from the ego, and then hook it back up to God. i.e., to DETACH from the ego thought system, and ATTACH yourself to God's mind/Holy Spirit. Trying to fight with the ego is 100% pointless. It doesn't actually WORK. The only thing that works is letting it go. Not BEING it. Not believing that you ARE it.
That means you must BELIEVE that you are NOT really sinful, you are NOT guilty, you are INNOCENT. God's truth is the truth about you, not the ego's. God's "version" of you is the truth about you, not the ego's version. Your IDENTITY needs to step back and NOT BELIEVE that you are "made of" anything whatsoever that is of the ego. You are not sinful, guilty, weak, afraid, sick, vulnerable, suffering, or dying. Those things cannot be part of your SELF TRUTH. The truth about your SELF. What and who you are.
Your transition away from the ego identity to your REAL identity is what wakes you up. It's your relinquishment of a false idea of who you ARE. A false sense. That's all the ego is, a self that you are NOT. A framework of identity pretending to be an individual, that is NOT who you are, but who you have tried to become through your belief that it is TRUE of you. The ego is not true of you and nothing it believes is true of you. So for you to detach, YOU must be convinced that it is not true of you.
If you are not really sinful, you MUST still be innocent. And if you are not sinful, nothing can have happened. And that means the Atonement principle. Recognizing that IN TRUTH, you are innocent, and therefore CANNOT BE THE EGO. Seeing your real innocent self clearly. That's all you need to get to. The ego will just vanish when you have no further belief in it. It must, because it only seems to exist in your mind because of your belief that you are not yourself.
The aim of our purification, of sorting out the true from the false, is to become fully committed only to the truth. This means purifying or filtering out anything which is not of God, and accepting everything that is of God.
It's kind of like firmly taking sides. You are to fully and completely side with heaven, and completely refuse to accept anything illusory. To become completely 100% clear about what is true, totally distinct from what is false. Having absolutely no false mixed in with the true, and being entirely clear about the difference.
"For if you perceive both good AND evil, you are accepting both the false AND the true, AND MAKING NO DISTINCTION BETWEEN THEM."
Being able to work miracles for example requires maximal love, which is a state in which there is no fear at all. When there is some fear mixed in, you're essentially an unhealed healer, and can only partly heal. You call forth two simultaneous opposing goals, and so you ask for healing and attack at the same time.
"The way out of conflict between two opposing thought systems is clearly TO CHOOSE ONE AND RELINQUISH THE OTHER"
So there is one goal of the Holy Spirit which is pure life, and the ego's goal is pure death. And we're talking here in the extreme of contrast. In accepting truth, we need to accept all of the truth and nothing but the truth. And we need to properly use denial to reject anything that is not true. And you can be sure that ALL illusions will tempt you toward the false.
"It is in the sorting out and categorizing activities of the mind that errors in perception enter. And it is here correction must be made."
"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."
"The first step toward freedom, then, MUST entail a sorting out of the false from the true."
Until we get there, to that place of certainty and doubtlessness, of acceptance and clarity, of clear recognition and the Holy Spirit's perfect judgement, we will find ourselves in a kind of muddy middle ground. We will in our minds have some commitment to some of the truth, and some to lies. We'll be partly convinced by the ego and the body and the world. We'll fall into temptation and be deceived.
"The reason this is upsetting you is because the Atonement is a TOTAL commitment."
"I have no function but the one God gave me. This recognition releases me from all conflict, because it means I cannot have conflicting goals." "Doubt is the result of conflicting wishes."
"You, then, have two conflicting evaluations of yourself in your minds, and they CANNOT BOTH BE TRUE."
When we are in this in-between state we are "in two minds", because it means the mind is split between two masters. It is trying to achieve two opposing goals at the same time, producing tension and thwarting and cancellation of power. In this "untrained" state we are ineffective and disempowered, we keep hurting ourselves by mistake, and we are frequently lost and confused.
"You cannot be faithful to two masters, who ask of you conflicting things."
"An untrained mind can accomplish nothing."
This middle-ground is where most of us find ourselves most of the time, perhaps sometimes moving closer to a clearer unequivocal immersion in reality, and at other times descending into the darkness of false perceptions. In this state we are not certain, which means we are afraid. We are not clear on what is what, so we are confused, and as a result are able to be deceived, and so fall for temptation only because we don't recognize what's happening.
"A mind and body cannot both exist."
"Time and Eternity cannot both be real, because they contradict each other."
"The power of decision is all that is yours. What you can decide BETWEEN is fixed, because there are no alternatives, EXCEPT truth and illusion. And there is no overlap between them, because they are opposites which CANNOT be reconciled, and CANNOT both be true. You are guilty OR guiltless, bound OR free, happy OR unhappy."
Without a clear full and firm commitment to truth and reality and the laws of God, our whole perception falls down into a fight with the world. We see bodies and suffering and enter into false empathy. We become forgetful of who we are. We buy into mortality and fear. And then we have reactions based on making illusions real, trying to solve unsolvable problems and trying to escape from hell.
"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 only reason for this is because we have our feet in two canoes at once, and they're heading in different directions. We want the world and we want heaven. We want the mind and the body. We want bodies but without problems. We want worldly magical solutions to make bad stuff go away so that we can get what we want. And so we are torn and adrift and lost.
It is clear then that in order to really access the power of God, to work miracles, to have conviction and fearlessness, to be certain and empowered, to be not deceived or tempted, we have to more consistently side with God. We have to be more fully vigilant for the Kingdom as the only reality and the only truth. It's always when we're in this no-man's-land of in-between that we can't tell which way is up.
"If you believe in truth AND illusion you CANNOT TELL WHICH IS TRUE."
I find that when I am more firmly siding with the truth I can dispel illusions more easily. I can rise above the battlefield, pay less attention to bodies, be less deceived by what I see and assert more strength and light. When I become out of touch with heaven I sink into the darkness and lose sight of the truth, becoming confused and tempted, deceived and lost, and this arising of false perceptions always leads to suffering.
It's salvation that we really need, and salvation is true perception. It is also miracle mindedness. But we can only get into that state and stay there if we're really fully committed to the whole truth all the time. To get there and stay there will take a lot of purification because every attitude, every grievance, ever unforgiveness, has to be purified of its support for death, its siding with darkness, its choice for fear and for guilt.
"Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one."
We are moving into the light. When we are fully in the light there will be no more hesitation, no more guessing, no more uncertainty or temptation. Until we get there, we will continue to be thrown around on the rollercoaster. Tempted into the belief that the world is hell, and tempted away from the recognition that it is nothing. Only as we rise above and into the light do we regain our sanity.
"Miracles are seen in light, and light and strength are one."
So ideally, in the long run, we want to get into miracle-mindedness and stay there all the time. Into forgiveness, the state of christ vision. To stay above the battlefield, away from deception, identified with spirit, owning of our immortality and siding with God's laws only. That's how you are fully siding with reality and full against unreality. A clear distinction between what is true and what is false.
"The former needs YOUR careful protection, because it is a state of miracle-READINESS. This is what the Bible means in the many references to "Hold yourself ready" and other similar injunctions.
Readiness here means keep your perception right side up, (or valid), so you will ALWAYS be ready, willing, and able. These are the essentials for "listen, learn, and do."
"As long as perception lasts, prayer has a place. Since perception rests on lack, those who perceive have not totally accepted the Atonement and given over themselves to truth. Perception IS a separated state, and the perceiver DOES need healing. Communion, not prayer, is the natural state of those who know. God and HIS miracles are inseparable."
I wasn't intending for this post to be elaborate but I LOVE how this analogy unfolded to explain the body, sickness, death, miracles, and awakening.....I think that I might even write a whole book based on this analogy alone, it's so clear and exact.... Thanks to Holy Spirit for the nudges and corrections.
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Computers are strangely similar in their following of rules as we are in our responsibility for choice. And similarly, our bodies do exactly what we tell them to and nothing else.
A computer doesn't do anything whatsoever without a decision being made. When a decision is made, when the computer is told what you want, it produces exactly that result. The language used to tell it what to do is absolutely specific. And it only produces the exact result that was asked for. It is almost annoyingly specific in its requirement for precise instruction.
The computer doesn't really decide on its own to do anything else. It is very true to the programmer's instructions. If it seems to be doing something else, some illusion of a higher-level functioning has arisen. It's really still just processing binary data, 1's and 0s', yet produces what looks to be much more sophisticated results. Images on a screen, objects moving around, sounds happening, it's all an ILLUSION.
When the computer seems to do something it was not supposed to do, this is actually impossible. If there is a bug in the software, the computer still does what the bug tells it to do. It doesn't decide not to do bugs, and it doesn't decide to do bugs on its own. It faithfully follows instructions. That's all it can do. It has no real intelligence. It is just a machine. You get out what you put in.
The body is similar in that it is your faithful machine, and it literally only does what your mind tells it to do. It does not have a will of its own. It does not invent bugs on its own. It doesn't malfunction on its own. It only follows the program that is given to it. It is always 100% correct in carrying out orders. It does not complain or have an opinion or make judgement about rightness or wrongness of the program. It just EXECUTES.
It is a device, that you use for various purposes. Some of those purposes are malicious and as a result, they lead to the body seeming to produce malicious states of being. But regardless of these states looking like a high-level sophisticated problem, it is still just the body following orders. In this way, the body (like a computer) is completely neutral. It is your servant and you are the one operating it.
This is also exactly the same as the fact that, as Jesus tells us in the Course, you always get exactly what you ask for, you only ever get what you ask for, and you never get anything that you do not ask for. Therefore what you get and what happens is 100% your responsibility. If the body seems to go wrong or do bad things, it is because the programmer told it to.
Just as it is the responsibility of a computer programmer to give it the exact-right specific instructions for behavior, so too do you give your body exact instructions for behavior. This is why as Jesus says, if the body is exhibiting signs of sickness or disease, it must mean that the mind has given it a program where you've asked it to be sick and diseased. It is just following your request, to the letter. A sick body is a sign of a sick mind, because the programmer of the body has to be sick in order for sickness to show in the body.
This also shows us the way out of the illusion of stuff happening that allegedly shouldn't be happening. There is not ANYTHING happening in the entire world that has not been asked for by a mind. There is nothing happening in your body that you have not asked for in your mind. You put it there yourself through your instructions - your creative power and freedom. And you have received exactly what you asked for. It is a TOTALLY reliable system.
"Ask and you shall recieve" does not mean that sometimes you ask and sometimes you receive, it means you are always asking and you are always receiving and it is not even possible to not receive what you've asked for. There also therefore is never a situation where you might not receive what you've asked for, where you are in doubt, or thinking that you have asked the wrong question or don't know how to ask etc. You ask nevertheless, and everything you are experiencing right this very second, you have asked for. You can't blame the RESULTS for being something you do not want. YOU need to find out how and why you are programming the system to produce an output of suffering.
If stuff seems to be happening in the body which you don't prefer, you cannot blame the body for it, and you cannot look to outside causes to find out where the symptoms came from. There is only one program and you wrote it. Symptoms are just correct outputs, based on the program you have given the body and the request you have made.
Sickness is a correct output! Death is a correct output! If you ask for it, you shall receive it. If you say, body, you will die, it will die. If you say body you will live, it will live. This is why the illusion of things being right or wrong is 100% bullshit delusion, because there is nothing BROKEN about this system. You are giving it instructions unconsciously to produce HELL, and if that's not what you want, you need to program something else.
As explained in the Song of Prayer, you are constantly praying, constantly asking, and constantly receiving what you are asking for. Therefore, learn to pray a higher prayer. Prayer is PROGRAMMING! As Jesus says, prayer is the medium of miracles, because prayer is the act of CHANGING THE SOFTWARE! This also means that in the prayer you do not beg or request or have fear about what you are asking, you CHOOSE the results you would receive with total certainty that the system MUST produce what you have requested, and therefore you believe 100% that you MUST receive it, and YOU SHALL RECEIVE THE MIRACLE!
This also explains why really nothing has gone wrong and nothing is really happening at all. If the computer is just faithfully doing what you TOLD IT TO, nothing has gone wrong, even if what you told it to do (express a world of separation) was a pretty wacky idea for a program. This also shows why you have not gone off the path, plus there is no reason to be afraid that you cannot get back Home, because it is ALWAYS true that you are receiving what you're asking for and you can always choose again. Therefore, by choosing God's "program", you need not produce programs of suffering and death. NOTHING CAN STOP YOU FROM CHOOSING NOT TO PROGRAM DEATH! All death is a choice. All death is suicide.
This is why there is never anything out of place, there are no accidents, nobody dies without their own consent, and nothing happens without you making it happen. You are causal. You cause things. You produce. You direct. It is all extremely specific, 100% specific. Every single thing that seems to happen in illusions is put there on purpose. There are absolutely no victims whatsoever. Every notion of victimization, accidents, right/wrong, good/bad, should have happened or not, things unwanted, events you resist, etc.. it's all an effort by an unconscious programmer to fix the program by fighting with the output, instead of changing the program!
You have dominion over the body and over the Earth. You have power over all sickness and death because you MADE THEM with your programming, and you can UNMAKE them just as easily. If stuff is happening which, when you look at the results, you do not want, then you need to change your programming. You need to erase the instructions that you keep giving (false beliefs, delusions, ego), and replace it with a higher, more orderly program (Holy Spirit's mind, right-mindedness, sanity, truth).
Your body does not have bugs. Your programming of the body has bugs. Your life does not have bugs. Your programming of your life has bugs. You need to go fix your errors, your mistakes in thinking, which are producing exactly the correct output given the input. If you don't like the output, change the input, don't fight with the output like some victim that has no power to choose again.
You cannot keep looking at the output and saying, this output is not supposed to be happening, this output is wrong, this output is not what I asked for. That's a victim, which is a mind who has forgotten that they are the instructor and the INPUT to the system, and they are the ones who are causing the OUTPUT from the system, but they've forgotten that they're doing this. It's like they fed in a program (the script), walked away from the control system/terminal, and looked at the screen to see what results were coming out, saw something crazy coming out, and then having forgotten that they ASKED FOR IT, start freaking out and blaming the problem on 50 billion other reasons why the output is wrong.
The output is ALWAYS CORRECT based on the input, even if its an output of death. So who is really RESPONSIBLE for writing dodgy programs?! You are.
What you put in, you get out. If your mind is feeding input to your body and your life with unloving, unforgiving intentions, then you are going to be writing scripts which are filled with chosen suffering. You're going to be writing scripts, programs, which contain outputs that are unpleasant. You're going to even write scripts which create illusions that you're not the script-writer and that you did not ask for the output. You can even produce outputs which disguise the fact that there was ever a programmer!
So once you start getting SHIT come out of your printer, you probably can tell that shit was fed INTO the printer and you need to correct that. It's not the printer's fault. It's not the body-computer's fault. It's not other people's fault or life's fault or the environments fault or food's fault or anything's fault.
This is just a simple cause-and-effect system. It functions like a computer. There are decisions being made, there are inputs being given to the system, and it is producing exactly the output that was requested. There is not even a single interference with that. There is no corruption on the disk drive, there are no viruses infecting things, it's all running perfectly. EVERY prayer is being answered. EVERY request is being granted. You just keep making stupid-ass requests!
This is why if you really want to change the output, i.e. change the world or the body or any other effects, the ONLY real way to do that is to get back to the mind - to the programmer, get the programmer's mind corrected so they're not writing ridiculous programs, and then feed a new program into the system. A more truthful, orderly program. And this MUST (not sometimes, not maybe, but MUST) produce a corrected OUTPUT in the form of the "symptoms" or "effects" seen as the body. Remember Jesus's principle, "If miracles are not happening, something has gone wrong" - meaning, there is NEVER a wrong output given the input, so if you are not seeing a miracle, YOU CORRECTLY ASKED FOR SOMETHING OTHER THAN WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE ASKING FOR! And you WILL receive it.
Even in the bible it says that if you ask, and believe that you have received it, you will receive it. This suggests it's possible to not receive if you do not believe enough, which is not true. The correction for this is to realize, YOU MUST and ARE receiving exactly what you actually are asking for, so if it "looks like" you are not receiving what you want, you MUST be the one who is out of touch with what you want, and you're asking for stuff unconsciously that your conscious mind is in denial of.
Attempting to mess with what output you got, or what your body state is, or what your life looks like, from the end of the system that is the output of instructions, you are hitting your head against a wall and are attempting to perform magic. Magic means that you are believing that the output came from a non-obvious source, that the system is broken, and that you need to "patch it up" with some kind of bypass that messes with the output and mangles it to make it look like what you thought should have come out. That, however, does not fix the faulty PROGRAM, or the programmer that's nuts who is writing the faulty program, and so it will likely still keep producing the same output eventually. You can actually remove the effects of "sin" but if the person continues to "sin", i.e. write programs of separation, they will keep reproducing the same effects and symptoms.
A miracle, is simply the mind choosing to cause a different output. Writing a different program. Fixing bugs in its own software. When these changes show up in the output, it's amazing, like someone just rewrote all the rules, all of the old rules were broken, and the design of the whole system has been overridden. We call this miraculous. Some "super-natural" power from outside of the entire "matrix" of the system has just flipped some switches and changed the INPUT, and therefor the output has to fall into line.
Another way this can show up as miracles is that the programmer of the system can decide to rearrange space or time, can insert and remove objects from the scenery, can manipulate any piece of 'data' in the system, can modify absolutely anything in the system, and can convert anything into anything else. These are the powers that Jesus has demonstrated through miracles. He got in touch with the programmer's chair, sat down and started rewriting the programs. Everyone has the freedom to do this, we just have to get back into the chair and write programs from love!
We are not getting anything out of this system that wasn't put in, or that wasn't asked for. The computer is not broken. The hardware is not broken. We have a software problem. We keep writing faulty software. Software is PERCEPTION. The content of spacetime is DATA. Software operates on the data. True perception means seeing the program clearly and being able to do anything to modify it at will, producing different data - a different output.
We need, therefore, to tap into the assistance of a superior software writer, aka Holy Spirit, Jesus, God, who are capable of not only writing or changing portions of our program for us (collapsing time, rearranging space, etc), but can also guide and assist us with "correction" of our programming expressions. Thus we gradually can write a happier dream, leading up to a final climax.
The ultimate release from this whole CLOSED SYSTEM (it's closed because it's all happening inside of God and there are no hidden rules or secret wills and everything is very exact), is when you decide to ERASE ALL PROGRAMS. A complete reboot. A total fresh start. A renewing of everything. Not just a correction of all software bugs, but a complete realignment of the state of the system with God's truth. When this happens, basically the hard drive (body) is erased, the memory (ego) is erased, and all that is left is the hardware.
Then, the only thing running is the operating system - GOD, who has programmed Christ - the perfect program, to produce the perfect output - Heaven.
The great lie of the world is that we are all separate. Each of our bodies testifies to this. I have my own body, my own feelings, my own mind, my own thoughts, my own beliefs. It seems that you have your own as well, and mine is separate from yours. We don't seem to really share anything. And any changes I make seem not to affect you.
This is what bodies were designed to do. They were meant to be "separation devices", to separate me off from you, to isolate each of us in our own little prisons, keeping us apart. They were made to imply that nothing is shared, what is mine is not yours, I am not like you, we are not the same in any way, I am unique and so are you. We're cut off and different. What I have you lack. What you have I lack. And thus we have no oneness.
But this is utterly completely opposite to the nature of spirit and mind as God created it. It's utterly opposite to your true nature, and mine as well. We're not meant to think of ourselves as separate from each other, sharing nothing, not overlapping, or kept at arm's length. We have to transcend the limits of the body entirely.
The truth is that there is a part of you which is shared by me. And there is a part of me that is shared by you. Kind of like one thing which has two people controlling it simultaneously. Kind of like siamese twins, with two heads and one torso. There is actually some of you in me and vice versa. There are actually aspects of your self which is what I am, and aspects of my own self which is you.
In truth we are joined together as one. In truth we share everything. And this is not in any way the same thing as sharing between two separate people, where they remain separate but there is some kind of transfer between them to bridge the gap. It's a real sharing where I literally am overlapping with where you are located, and vice versa. Where we are literally fused together as one thing, but from two vantage points. One mind, with two focal points.
Because of this, we are actually part of a collective consciousness. And the really big thing is this. Everything that I do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. And everything you do or think or feel or choose or believe, affects the entire universe. If I lift myself up, it must lift you up in some way as well because I am a part of your self. If you lift yourself up, I must be lifted up in some way because part of me is you.
We are NOT isolated, alone, separate, cut-off, imprisoned, separated, orphaned, divorced, abandoned, relegated, split apart or confined. Everything that we each do, affects us both. And even affects the whole sonship beyond us. What that means is that there are no private thoughts. Not simply from the vantage point of there being two separate people who send thought transmissions across the gap between them which they pick up on, but where my mind and your mind are literally welded together such that when I think something YOU think it with me. Part of your thought process is taking place in my mind and vice versa.
Jesus teaches similarly that if I am healed, I am never healed alone. If some kind of healing takes place for me, it is also on behalf of the whole universe, which is the sonship (not spacetime). Jesus also tells us that we are not alone in experiencing the effects of our thoughts. That if I have a thought, both me and you are affected by it. And your thoughts affect me. Not in terms of you sending them over to me across a brick wall but in terms of part of me BEING you and vice versa, SHARING those effects as one, transcendentally of space of time.
Jesus is even telling us that vision transcends all spatial limitations, depends not on any thing physical, can see and experience without regard for distance or seeming remoteness. Simply because you can BE everywhere, in everyone. This is the true nature of mind, that it is not really naturally limited to any one location at a time. Or to any one person at a time.
What this also leads to is a matter of responsibility. Anything that I think affects the whole world. Anything you think affects the whole world. In that sense, and given that these thoughts are never private or isolated from anyone, everyone experiences the effects of our thoughts, and therefore I have to consider that I need to "think responsibly", and without guilt, because my thoughts are actually affecting everyone.
I think on behalf of everyone, just as you do, and just as everyone does. And all our minds are joined. Which means that we're sort of like this one tapestry where each of us seems anchored to the fabric of it in different places, but if I pull upwards I'm pulling you all with me. And if you pull down you're going to drag a lot of others down with you. Unless of course they are pulling up at the same time. This means that we really are all a TEAM. Because we have to now consider that EACH PART of the sonship INFLUENCES THE WHOLE.
You ARE part of a holographic system and since you are the whole of the sonship at the same time as being part of it, your relationship INCLUDES everyone. It affects everyone. Every thought is offered to everyone. Every healing brings peace to everyone. Maybe in ways they might not entirely be aware of but in some way on some level, everyone affects everyone.
This also brings me to the proper understanding of why joined minds produce the healing of sickness in others. A part of your mind is actually my mind. And my mind is part of your mind. We are NOT separated off with entirely isolated minds. Our minds overlap and are shared. I actually manipulate part of your mind, so to speak, and you manipulate part of mine. Our minds are actually one and shared. Mutual minds. Like two people driving the same bus.
So let's say you believe in your part of the mind that you are sick, which is really an attempt to believe the whole sonship is sick. And then let's say that normally this belief would attempt to weaken me and others. But then let's say that I'm in a particularly loving space in my mind which is more powerful than your assertion of weakness.
If I choose to believe that there is nothing wrong with you, while you are believing there is something wrong with you, I override your belief. The part of your mind which is shared with me, which is my mind, changes your belief FOR you. Part of your mind is in me. If I change my mind, I am literally changing a part of your mind. And that actually influences what you might think of as the rest of your own mind.
As Jesus says, when you do not believe the falsehoods that your brother believes about himself, you weaken his own belief in being faulty. And so you weaken his sickness. If your mind, which is part of his, and his as part of yours, asserts strongly that your brother and you are not sick, then you are actually taking a part of HIS mind (as yours) and are causing it to not believe in sickness. And so he cannot get "his" mind to project sickness onto his body because YOU, as part of his mind, are not allowing it.
This is why Jesus says that you are your brother's keeper. This is why he says you should not allow your brother to be sick. This is why you are in a sense responsible for everyone, because your contribution to their experience is part of the fact that your minds are shared.
It's not simply that you are joining minds, because God actually joined all minds together in the creation. But moving away from the belief in being separate/isolated and returning to an awareness that your minds ARE joined, naturally, lets you tap into the ability to influence the minds of others more consciously. And naturally this openness to sharing is rooted in love, so can only be used for good.
So instead of seeing ourselves as separate people, living separate lives in separate bodies, as if everything we think and do is utterly isolated and affects no-one else, we need to really think of ourselves as part of a combined mind-mesh, part of a team, part of a collective hive mind, and there isn't anything we can think without it being shared by everyone in that collective. And any effects which those thoughts might produce are going to be shared by everyone.
This is also of course the foundation for shared interests. Because if mind is really yours AND your brother's, then what you use it for is being used on his behalf as well as your own. As per the golden rule, whatever applies to him applies to you equally. This is also why Jesus says that forgiveness is not real unless it brings a healing to both your brother and yourself. Your healing IS HIS healing. When you heal, HE ALSO is healed along with you in a very direct way - because he is part of your self.
And further, this also tells us that forgiveness is not just a gift of healing you give to yourself, it is also something that extends and is given to everyone. If you are healed you become an instrument of healing. If you are the light you shed light into other's minds and enlighten them. If you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can fill others with the Holy Spirit. If you are whole you can make others whole. And atonement is a lesson in sharing, not a lesson in isolated enlightenment.
When you forgive, you actually do heal both yourself and the mind of your brother. When you forgive and undo your belief in someone being sick, you do actually in fact undo some of their belief in being sick. This is sort of tied into the idea of "holding them in the light", not through some wishful thinking that the light might rub off on them but much moreso the fact that since you ARE them, you being the light "forces" them to be the light also.
Your mind influences other people! Your mind is not JUST your mind. It is yours AND it belongs to others. You are thinking on behalf of everyone. Your whole resurrection is for the benefit of the entire sonship. This is why Jesus's resurrection reconnected the ENTIRE sonship to God, and why in his awakening YOU woke up in some way to some degree as well. How could the whole world not be affected by such an event? Jesus did in fact "save you" from the belief in sin, through his own atonement.
I am you and you are me and we are one and everyone is us and we are all the collective sonship family of God. If I choose the light, you're coming with me.
"And as you let yourself be healed, you see all those around you, or who cross your mind, or whom you touch, or those who seem to have no contact with you, healed along with you. Perhaps you will not recognize them all, nor realize how great your offering to all the world, when you let healing come to you. But you are never healed alone. And legions upon legions will receive the gift which you receive when you are healed."
"Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."
"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. "
"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself."
"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be. So is he healed, and in his healing is his pupil healed with him. The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself. Atonement means correction, or the undoing of errors. When this has been accomplished, the teacher of God becomes a miracle worker by definition."
"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."
"Two minds with one intent become so strong that what they will becomes the Will of God. For minds can only join in truth."
"When two minds join as one, and share one idea equally, the first link in the awareness of the Sonship as one has been made."
"Whoever says, "There IS no gap between my mind and yours," has kept GOD's promise, NOT his tiny oath to be forever faithful unto death. And by his healing IS his brother healed. Let THIS be your agreement with each one; that you be one with him and NOT apart."
"Do not accept your brother's variable perception of himself, for his split mind is yours, and you will not accept YOUR healing without his. For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours. To love yourself is to HEAL yourself, and you cannot perceive part of you as sick and achieve your OWN goal. Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together."
"Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."
"You will forsake yourselves and your God if you forsake any of YOUR brothers. You are more than your brother's keeper." "Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"
Lesson 54: ""I am not alone in experiencing the effects of my thoughts." ... I am alone in nothing. Everything I think or say or do touches all the universe. A Son of God cannot think or speak or act in vain. He cannot be alone in anything. It is therefore in my power to change every mind along with mine, for mine is the power of God."
If we describe the Holy Spirit as having the power of God, of knowing everything, of having a healing solution for every problem, of being able to guide us specifically and tell us what to do, to make all decisions for us, and be an authority, then this should clearly position us in a receptive frame of mind to listen, learn, and do.
If we are unclear as to the absolute and total strength of the Holy Spirit, we will think that there are some things he cannot do, is not equipped to do, and cannot be trusted to do. And then we will doubt him, and we will start to trust our own egos. And then we will usurp his functions and take over control, unwilling to listen to or follow instructions. This means we basically are not giving him enough credit or acknowledging fully what his function is.
Part of the problem is that our egos are inflated and we want to be gatekeepers, in control of everything, making all decisions, knowing what everything is, being special and important, and all the rest of it. All of this clouds our dependence on the Holy Spirit and makes us be in competition with him. We do not want his help and we won't seek it out, listen to it, accept it or welcome it. We think we know better and don't need him.
We need to very fully and clearly spell out precisely what the Holy Spirit's function is and what he is capable of, so that we are in no way mistaken about what his duties and functions are. Only if we can be clear about exactly what he's supposed to be doing, can we be clear about what we are supposed to be doing. What is his role, and what is our role. Otherwise we will have a blurred boundary and the ego will step in.
If I acknowledge that the Holy Spirit has all of the power of God, this power is unlimited, it can heal every sickness, it can solve every problem, he knows absolutely everything that is going on with everyone all the time, he knows exactly what every problem is and how to solve it, has access to all information and facts and variables in the past present and future, and is squarely in a position to KNOW, then this tells me clearly that I can depend on him knowing. He knows how, he is fully equipped, he cannot fail, and he can be depended upon. That means I do not NEED to know everything because I can LET HIM do his part.
This then tells me that I can depend upon him and work with him as a team member, utilizing him for his function and turning to him TO help in all the ways that he is equipped and assigned to do so. Then I will not look to MYSELF to try to fulfill those functions, recognizing that I am not in a POSITION to do so. This tells me that it isn't my function here to know everything, to decide everything, to heal anything, to correct anything, or to pretend that I have all the information. I should be turning to him for that and letting him advise and help.
This also opens up the door for easier trust, because if you are now clear about what He is supposed to be doing and are acknowledging that he CAN do it, you will have more FAITH in him. Part of this entails recognizing that he has the power of God, he is absolutely unlimited in his power, and there is nothing he cannot do. To admit and acknowledge that might, to your ego, strike you as frightening. So you're going to have to work on that and get past it. If you can acknowledge and be comfortable with the Holy Spirit being immensely powerful, and on your side, then you can go forth with greater confidence knowing He is backing you up.
Since he shares God's power, he more or less can be thought of as an extension of God. And that means you should be having faith and trust in him to the same extent and in the same way that you would with God. The Holy Spirit has been appointed by God to help us, on purpose, AS the answer to the separation, TO guarantee our return home to heaven. He knows how we got into this mess, he knows how to get us out of it. We have to learn to let him do that. He also knows how to solve all problems, heal all sickness, and reverse death. We have to learn to let him do that.
Now that you know just how helpful and powerful the Holy Spirit is, you can make room for him and work alongside him as a partner rather than work against him vying for attention. You can let him help you, heal you, resurrect you, and enlighten you. He can solve all your problems and undo all your suffering.
"I will step back and let Him lead the way."
"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL
the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM.
I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."
"You know not where you go, but One Who knows goes with you. Let Him lead you with the rest."
"I will step back and let Him lead the way,
For I would walk along the road to Him."
"Then let him turn within to his Eternal Guide, and let Him Judge what the response should be."
"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."
"I rest in God today, and let Him work
In me and through me, while I rest in Him
In quiet and in perfect certainty."
"And so I give all judgment to the One You gave to me to judge for me. He sees what I behold, and yet He knows the truth. He looks on pain, and yet He understands it is not real, and in His understanding it is healed. He gives the miracles my dreams would hide from my awareness. Let Him judge today."
"That is because I do not yet realize that God has placed the answer together with the problem, so that they cannot be separated by time. The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him. And I will understand it is impossible that I could have a problem which has not been solved already."
"Let Him be Judge of what you are, for He has certainty in which there is no doubt because it rests on Certainty so great that doubt is meaningless before Its Face"
"Let Him be Judge as well of everything that seems to happen to you in this world."
"Let Him evaluate each thought that comes to mind, remove the elements of dreams, and give them back to you as clean ideas which do not contradict the Will of God."
"Follow His light and see the world as He beholds it. Hear His Voice alone in all that speaks to you. And let Him give you peace and certainty, which you have thrown away, but Heaven has preserved for you in Him."
"The CAPACITY to empathize is VERY useful to the Holy Spirit, provided you let Him use it in His way."
"The Holy Spirit asks only this little help of you. Whenever your thoughts wander to a special relationship which still ATTRACTS you, enter with Him into a holy instant, and there, LET HIM RELEASE YOU."
"God's Voice alone can tell you how to heal. Listen, and you will never fail to bring His kindly remedy to those He sends to you, to let Him heal them, and to bless all those who serve with Him in healing's name."
"And now I place you in His hands, to be His faithful followers, with Him as Guide through every difficulty and all pain that you may think is real. Nor will He give you pleasures that will pass away, for He gives only the eternal and the good. Let Him prepare you further. He has earned your trust by speaking daily to you of your Father and your brother and your Self. He will continue; now you walk with Him as certain as is He of where you go; as sure as He of how you should proceed, as confident as He is of the goal, and of your safe arrival in the end."
"I place you in His charge, and let Him teach you what to do and say and think each time you turn to Him. He will not fail to be available to you each time you call to Him to help you."
"Let Him uncover the hidden spark of beauty in your relationships, and SHOW it to you."
"Then turn to Him who shares your function with you, and let Him teach you what you need to learn to lay all fear aside, and know your Self as Love Which has no opposite in you."
"He is the strong protector of your innocence, which sets you free. And it is HIS decision to undo EVERYTHING that would obscure your innocence from your unclouded mind. Let Him, therefore, be the only guide that you would follow to Salvation. He knows the way, and leads you gladly on it. WITH Him, you will not fail to learn what God wills FOR you IS your will."
"Then let Him teach you quietly how to perceive your guiltlessness, which is ALREADY there."
"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."
"The Holy Spirit knows NO-ONE IS SPECIAL. But He also perceives that you have MADE special relationships, which He would purify, and NOT let YOU destroy. However UNholy the reason why you made them may be, He can TRANSLATE them into holiness, by removing AS MUCH FEAR AS YOU WILL LET HIM. You can place ANY relationship under His care, and be sure that it will NOT result in pain, if you offer Him your willingness TO HAVE IT SERVE NO NEED BUT HIS."
"And yet he is NOT crucified. For here is both his pain AND his healing, for the Holy Spirit's vision is merciful, and His remedy is quick. Do not HIDE suffering from His sight, but bring it gladly TO Him. Lay before His eternal sanity ALL your hurt, and LET Him heal you. Do not leave any spot of pain hidden from His Light, and search your minds carefully for any thoughts which you may fear to uncover. For He will heal every little thought that you have kept to hurt you, and cleanse it of its littleness, restoring it to the magnitude of God."
"Thank God that He is there, and works through you. And all His works are yours. He offers YOU a miracle, with every one you LET Him do through you."
"Do not make the mistake of believing that YOU understand what YOU perceive, for its meaning IS lost to you. But the Holy Spirit has saved its meaning FOR you, and if you will LET Him interpret it FOR you, He will restore what you have thrown away. As long as you THINK YOU KNOW its meaning, you will see no need to ask it OF Him. You do not know the meaning of ANYTHING you perceive. NOT ONE THOUGHT YOU HOLD IS WHOLLY TRUE."