Originally, God created us and flowed all of His love to us. We were completely open to receive it and we flowed it onward, completely naturally, extending the Kingdom.

When the 'separation' happened, we put various forms of distance between ourselves and God. We closed our heart to God. We shut God out of our lives and out of our minds.

We then found ourselves 'cut off', disconnected, lost, alone, abandoned, as if the 'cord' that connected us to God had been severed. Now of course, this was very upsetting (and still is).

Because of this, it then seemed that we were disconnected from the SOURCE of life. And because we saw ourselves as cut off, what we were left with was the perception that we did not originate IN God. Instead, we believed we must've just come into being spontaneously by some other means as orphans (symbolized by birth).

So now, without a connection to God, we are all alone, desperate, afraid, confused, we don't know what the hell is going on, and we have very limited resources. Our power is hugely diminished, we're hallucinating, we're insane, scrambling around in the darkness trying to make sense of it all.

So without acknowledging that a source (God) is extending/creating us, we come to believe it all seems to start with ourselves as the source - that WE are the source. Thus is born the ego - the starting point of separate existence. And by this token, we have separated the Father and the Son.

What I mean is, in Heaven, God the Father extends His Fatherhood to His Son and His Son also therefore possess a nature of Fatherhood as well, by which the Son also extends Creation. The Son is a Father to the Son's Children.

Get this... When the separation happened, Father and Son were separated, not just in terms of being separate beings but in terms of their shared nature where the Son is also a Father. This now means that the Son does not SEE Himself as the 'Son' of God, he only retains the idea that he is the Father. He sees Himself as retaining fatherhood but of not retaining sonship. He retains 'output', if you will, but shuts off 'input'. So now he thinks of Himself as 'the' Father, since he Himself does not seem to have a father, and this is how the ego believes IT is God. The ego is 'Fatherhood' without 'Sonship'. In a way, you could also think of this as 'giving without receiving', which produces 'making' (creating stuff that didn't come from God) and 'sacrifice' (losing everything and not receiving at all). It is by this method that the ego then MAKES its own Father, out of itself, because it is fatherless, and this newly appointed Father is the ego's OWN version of God - its fake God, a God of hate and death. The ego then idolizes this fake God, who calls for sacrifice, and the ego now both worships and fears this (and all other) substitute for God. It should be apparent how insane that is.

An interesting bit of metaphysics there!

Anyway... So now we see ourselves as the source, which means we think that we have to govern existence, run the universe, obtain power, control everything, force things to be according to our own separate will, and act like God. Classical ego.

So.... what we need to do now... the whole point of doing A Course in Miracles.... is to heal the separation - or at least, all of the belief that it has really happened. But we DO believe it and it does SEEM real. We really do SEEM to be experiencing the horror of being without God, of being Fatherless, of being disconnected from God deep in our hearts, of having been abandoned or rejected, or being absent of REAL LOVE, of not having a SOURCE, of being without unconditional love, of having to do everything ourselves and failing miserably.

We need to HEAL this sense of separation between the Father and the Son, between God and us. And this is a very heartfelt matter. It's not intellectual. It's not just on a mental/mind level. Love is FELT and EXPERIENCED! What we really want is to experience the love of God. Period.

So to do that we need to get back to the kind of relationship, the kind of 'structure' of the relationship that we originally have with God. That means, restoring our CONNECTION to God through communion and healing and openness, being open to RECEIVE guidance and healing and love from God again (which we have been sorely missing and doing terribly without!), becoming able to SHARE in what God is offering, and to then extend it once again through creative acts (miracles), to extend the Kingdom.

Father and Son need to be reunited and set back in their proper place and arrangement where God is the Source of Life, Life has extended itself AS the Son, and the Son extends it further. This is the only NATURAL condition. The physical world's 'nature' is NOT natural. Or perhaps some people refer to this divine holy relationship as SUPERNATURAL. This is what we need to restore, for ourselves, in direct relationship with God, for real.

God loves us. We've denied Him. We need to open to receive His presence.

In ACIM we're told we have an authority problem. If you read ACIM it speaks about us having an issue with "who authored who".

We're told that God is the author of us, because he is our creator and cause. We're told we are forever an effect of God. This means God is the author of us and he has authority over us. And because he IS AN AUTHOR (creator), we HAVE BEEN authored (created).

"I, who am host to God, AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling- place in me created it ***as He would have it be***."

"When God GAVE Himself to you in your creation, ***He ESTABLISHED you*** as host to Him forever. He has NOT left you, and YOU have not left HIM."

This means that in terms of heaven's reality, we are really SECONDARY creations, and thus co-creators. We did not come first. We did not create ourselves. We did not have any say in who or what we are. It is entirely up to God to create and sustain us. You have a REAL PARENT!

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

You are not the primary creator. You are not "God" in this sense. You are A CREATION of God, and a co-creator with him. You have a father, therefore. You are a CHILD of God. This puts you in a position of being second-in-command, not commander-in-chief. You are his "number two".

In the separation, we as second-generation creations, rebelled against our creator. We rebelled against the idea of having been created by God. We wanted to believe we could overpower God and be his equal, to rebel against him, to overthrow his kingdom, and to have authority at least as equal to if not greater than his. We wanted to be the CAUSE OF HIM, and not his effect, thus separating cause from effect (father from son) and inventing the idea of sinning against God.

This meant throwing his authorship out the window and believing that he was NOT the author of you. This meant that you believed you were the author of yourself, in a position to define and create and redefine yourself according to your wishes. And it was this wishful thinking which made the ego, a SECOND SELF designed to deny you are a SON of God and to portray yourself as ruler of a world where God doesn't exist - as though you had destroyed him and his son through death.

"The world was made as an attack on God" ... "A place where God could enter not."

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has an "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself."

This led to the curious belief that you actually are convinced that God is not your father, that you are not a child of God, and that you have therefore not really been created at all.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

"being uncertain of their true Authorship, men believe that their creation was anonymous. This has left them in a position where it SOUNDS meaningful to consider the possibility that they must have created themselves."

You then replaced God with a false God - a God of judgement and vengeance. An ego God and a God of sickness. A god unlike God. A god of suffering and evil.

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

So now we have a problem with God's authority. We think we are orphans (separated fatherless selves). Our egos do not want God to have authority over us. We don't want to be second-in-command. Wd don't want to admit that we ARE A SELF that is SECONDARY to God, he having created something other than himself, and that therefore we are NOT HIS EQUAL.

"This is because God and man are NOT equal."

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

We need to kind of bow-down and accept that God is greater than us. That we do exist as "lesser beings" in a sense. We are his effects. We are his creations, his children. There is something above and beyond us which is bigger than us, of which we should have awe. This requires HUMILITY to accept that your REAL SELF is NOT GOD in this regard, and thus heaven contains you AND God.

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"But it WAS emphasized that awe IS a proper reaction of the Soul in the presence of its Creator."

"You who are in the image of the Father need bow only to HIM, before whom I kneel with you."

We don't want to admit to having been created "against our will." We don't like the idea that God was the only one who could decide what we are. We want to redefine ourselves and imagine that we're something we're not. And we reject God's will as if it means we're going to be forced to do something we don't want to do.

In order to undo the authority problem, it does in fact entail having to accept that God is your creator. God has to be seen as the source of you, the cause of you, the creator of you, and the reason WHY you are the way that you are in reality. If you are to be "still as God created you", then you have to accept that you are immortal BECAUSE OF him. You are his son, not his equal!

God maintains you in his mind forever and gives you eternal life. He shares his innocence and his power with you. He handed down everything he had to you in your creation, and you therefore share everything with him. But to get over your power-trip you will have to acknowledge that you COME FROM GOD. That you did not create yourself, and have no say in what you are.

This is where acceptance of atonement comes in, because now we're talking about your willingness to put aside all attempts to define yourself, to decide what is true of you, or making it your business to be the one who says what is real. This requires a surrendering of ego and a surrendering of the position of "I want to be first" and "I want to rule God" and "I will do everything without God" and "I want it thus."

To accept atonement and thus undo the problem with authority, you have to be willing to acknowledge that God has authority above you. He has the authority to create and cause you. Everything you are and everything you have not only comes from him but is chosen BY him. You have to accept that you have no say in your nature, what you can and cannot do, who you are, or what you are. You have to be willing to simply accept what you have been GIVEN with gratitude.

That means an end to inventing artificial identities, an end to identifying with bodies, an end to believing stuff about yourself that is out of line with God's will, an end to trying to portray yourself as mortal, and an end to acting like you're not Christ.

This isn't about you just being true to yourself or knowing yourself, it's also about you acknowledging that everything you are and have COMES FROM GOD, and therefore he is your creator and father and you acknowledge him as having power over you. Not a power that coerces or manipulates or dictates, but nevertheless you have NOTHING other than what HE decides you have. And you have to be okay with that.

Thankfully God has given everything good, and everything worth having, and everything meaningful. He has given you his own power and strength, his own light and love, and his own happiness and joy. He has given you the ability to create life and also in this world to heal and resurrect. And he ultimately is all that you want and what you want to be like.

You are literally the will of God. God has willed what you are. You therefore are what he wills. And you are thus an extension of his will. Your free will therefore wills like his and wills for the same things that he wills, ie the creation and sharing of eternal life. To align your will with God's is to accept your place in heaven, orient yourself to filling the shoes he made for you, and lining up with the "way of living" that he designed for you in perfection.

God has GIVEN you what you are, where you live, what is true, what is real, and how you can function. He has defined you, decided for you, created you, chosen you, wanted you, and maintains you forever. You are what you are BECAUSE OF him which is why your soul is grateful to him eternally. You have to RECEIVE him to host him. And you have to acknowledge that you have a REAL PARENT, which means you have to get over all your authority issues and be willing to BE A CHILD.

Then, by acknowledging that God is your father, and you are his holy child, you are now in a position to recognize that you are also a co-creator WITH him, and that he creates through you. By your extension you now create your own children and are father to them, just as God is father to you. And thus accepting HIS fatherhood you accept YOUR fatherhood and become reacquainted with your own children in heaven.

"A son of a father must have a son."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

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

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self."

"Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

Your natural state of being is:

1) God is the source of love and extends you

2) You receive everything from God and extend it further

3) Your own creations receive from you

Another way of putting it is:

1) God is the Father and extends you as His Son

2) Since he shares everything He is with you, you also inherit the ability to be a father

3) You therefore father your own creations which are your Sons

And another way of putting it is:

1) God is the source of love and love is miraculous

2) God creates you miraculously and shares miraculousness with you

3) You extend God's miraculous love and perform miracles

In this arrangement, which is the way things are in Heaven, and which is the perfect condition of your relationship with God, you RECEIVE everything from God. God just loves you unconditionally all the time for no reason other than to love you. You receive that, and appreciate the awesome gift that it is, and you joyfully extend it.

Now, when the 'separation' happened, the Fatherhood of God was separated from the Sonship of the Son. The son stopped experiencing Himself as the Son of God because, having cut off God's role as His father, He no longer could see Himself as a Son. However, the former Son of God retained the outward creative fatherhood properties He was given. So He continues to try to create, except that having disconnected from the Father he is no longer EXTENDING God's creation, but instead tries to be the SOURCE of what He creates. That means creating without God, which is MAKING.

The former Son of God also then sees Himself as orphaned from God and, having no source for Himself, is left only with 'Himself' to deal with His situation. Instead of receiving love and support from God, this 'separated self' has to invent its own support and its own substitute or love. Having separated from God, this separated self is now alone and afraid and lacking and limited. He is also powerless and weak. He attempts to continue the behavior of extension but without sourcing 'what to extend' in God. So instead he INVENTS, makes up, dreams and projects an imaginary creation (the world) which does not really exist, which is not sustained by God's love, and which therefore must perish.

Clearly, what's gone wrong in the separated Son's life is the disconnection between Himself and God... the shutting off the FLOW that comes FROM God to sustain Him, to provide for Him, to protect Him, to nourish Him, and to give abundantly to Him and to BE everything for Him. That's what the separation shut out of His mind. So now His mind seems intent on going off on its own tangent, running its own life, deciding everything alone, doing everything alone, and generally failing and suffering a lot. There is only one problem - separation from God, and there is only one solution - repairing the separation from God.

So now we find ourselves in this dreamworld of unreality, with separated lives and separate wills, with everything going to shit, and we wonder why. And we wonder how to get back to peace. And then we start doing our forgiveness and our thought management and so on, but you need this bigger picture in order to realize WHY you are doing all this and what the overall goal is. The goal is to UNDO THE SEPARATION FROM GOD completely. And that must mean, the restoration of the dynamics of the relationship that you had with God before the separation.

So this means, your mind/self now needs to transition from being alone, separate, making up lies and doing everything yourself, to RECONNECTING to God, opening up to receive supply/abundance/safety/love/protection/guidance FROM God again, becoming willing to extend what GOD has created (His love), allowing Him to be the source/God/origin instead of you having to invent stuff on your own, and then EXTENDING that outward to all of creation, acknowledging that this 'ex Son of God' is once again THE Son of God, restored to perfection.

So this means having to learn to surrender all of the side-effects that came about from becoming a separate self, which includes surrendering thinking for yourself, deciding for yourself, controlling life, regarding your life as 'your life' that you own in exclusion/exile, giving up the ways that you block the flow of love/miracles, undoing all sense of judgement/attack/separation/sin/guilt/fear that comes between you and God, opening your mind to RECEIVE from God His guidance and love and support, and weaning yourself off of all the ARTIFICIAL SOURCES of support and coping and replacements for what you lost (special love etc), which you MADE to take the place of God.

So as we RECLAIM our rightful place as Son of God again, and restore the relationship with God, and re-open ourselves to receiving the flow/extension of God's love/miracles, we are returning to being Christ and we're letting go of the 'circumstances' of how things ended up after separating from our Father. All the ways that we 'coped' with the separation need to be undone and replaced with getting our supply from God again.

A few quotes coming to mind...

"God goes with me all through the day"

"I am sustained by the love of God"

Denial itself is a defense, but it can be used positively or negatively. In its negative use it is used to deny God, reality, truth. In its positive use, it is used to deny the denial of truth, to deny ego, to deny illusions and unreality.

The entire separation from God is simple a misuse of denial. Blocks to awareness are denials of what is true in God. The ego is nothing but denial of reality. All sickness and death are denials. The world is the denial of heaven. Bodies are the denial of the soul. The opposite of denial is acceptance - ie the acceptance of the truth and reality of God - the atonement.

Here are some interesting quotes about how we use denial in the wrong way, in support of ego and in denying God, reality, and truth....

"Denial of Life perceives its opposite, as ALL forms of denial replace what IS, with what is NOT. No-one can really DO this, but that you can THINK you can, and BELIEVE YOU HAVE, is beyond dispute."

"It is the DENIAL of the spark that brings depression, and whenever you see your brothers WITHOUT it, you ARE denying God."

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"Arrogance is the denial of love, because love shares and arrogance withholds."

"What makes this world seem real except your own denial of the truth which lies beyond?"

"For the separation is only the DENIAL of union, and, correctly interpreted, attests to your eternal knowledge that union is true."

"Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth. If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH."

"Projection arises out of FALSE DENIAL."

"But in every hurtful thought you hold, wherever you perceive it, lies the denial of God's Fatherhood and your Sonship."

"Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"Accepting His Son as guilty is denial of the Father so complete, that knowledge is swept away from recognition, in the very mind where God Himself has placed it."

"YOUR denial of reality precludes ACCEPTANCE of God's gift, BECAUSE YOU HAVE ACCEPTED SOMETHING ELSE IN ITS PLACE."

"Guilt hides Christ from your sight, for it is the denial of the blamelessness of God's Son."

"Denial of light leads to failure to perceive it. Failure to perceive light is to perceive darkness."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."

"Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation. While the miscreation is NECESSARILY believed in by its own creator, it does not exist at all at the level of true Creation."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made."

"Yet this is what denial DOES, for BY it you ACCEPT insanity, believing you can make a private world, AND RULE YOUR OWN PERCEPTION. But FOR this, light MUST be excluded."

"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."

"In the darkness you have obscured the glory God gave you, and the power that He bestowed upon His guiltless Son. All that, lies hidden in every darkened place shrouded in guilt, and in the dark denial of innocence."

"For eternity is NOT regained by still one more denial of the Christ in him."

"And therefore those who look on sin ARE seeing the DENIAL of the real world."

"This is not difficult to realize in some forms which these self-deceptions take, for the denial of reality is very obvious."

"Can the ego teach truly, when it overlooks truth? Can it perceive what it has DENIED? Its witnesses DO attest to its DENIAL, but hardly to WHAT it has denied. The ego looks straight at the Father and does not see Him, for it has denied His Son."

"This is a very primitive solution, and has led to a denial of the spiritual eye, which always depends on light."

"DENIAL of the error results in projection."

Here in ACIM Jesus talks about the devil. He describes it is another other than our own self denial and what we do to ourselves. He makes it clear, it is not an external power. It is nothing other than our own egotism. By this reasoning, "the devil" as a distinct entity does not exist. It is another word for your own denial of God, which you have full power to undo.

This is in direct contradiction to Christianity.

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet, he ATTRACTS men rather than repels them, and they are perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all.

This makes absolutely no sense. The whole picture is one in which man acts in a way he HIMSELF realizes is self destructive, but which he does NOT WILL to correct, and therefore perceives the cause as beyond his control."

-&-

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

-&-

"Attacking misidentification errors is neither MY function nor YOURS. Destroying the devil is a meaningless undertaking. "

-&-

"Lucifer" could be literally translated "Light Bearer". He literally PROJECTED himself from Heaven. Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically."

-&-

"After all, Lucifer fell, but he was still an angel. He is thus the symbol for man. Atonement is the knowledge that the belief that angels can fall is false. It is true that mind can create projections as well as miracles, but it's NOT true that projections are REAL."

-&-

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit."

ACIM uses the term "sons" referring to God's many directly-created REAL sons, 82 times. Here are some of the quotes which are so blatant in their statement that God has created MORE THAN ONE SON.

"*PERCEIVE him correctly, so that your Soul can KNOW him. Right perception is necessary before God can communicate DIRECTLY to his own altars, which he has established in His Sons."

"*It is the final lesson that I learned, and God's Sons are as equal as learners as they are as Souls."

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

"*Holy indeed are we, because our Source can know no sin. And we who are His Sons are like each other, and alike to Him."

"*God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

"*All the Sons of God are waiting for your return, just as YOU are waiting for THEIRS."

"*Could you hear His answer except as He answers all of God's Sons?"

"*We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"*Only one equal gift CAN be offered to the equal Sons of God, and that is FULL APPRECIATION."

"*Your creations cannot establish your reality, any more than YOU can establish God's. But you can know both. Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him. But you must also know all He created to know what they have shared. Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know all Creation."

"*You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY."

"*God is not a stranger to His Own Sons, and His Sons are not strangers to each other."

"*Because God's equal Sons have everything, they CANNOT compete."

"*The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons."

"*When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed…the Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless their creations and keep them in the light of joy."

"* If all His creations are His Sons, every one must be an integral part of the whole Sonship."

"*If you believe that all of the Souls that God created are His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul must be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

"*The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind. When the Atonement is complete and the whole Sonship is healed, there will be no call to return, but what God creates is eternal. The Holy Spirit will remain with the Sons of God, to bless THEIR creations and keep them in the light of joy."

"The problem which everyone MUST decide is the fundamental question of his own authorship. All fear comes ultimately, and sometimes by way of very devious routes, from the denial of Authorship."

The "authority problem" is where, in heaven, you who are an effect of God and a co-cause of creation, attempt to turn around and CAUSE GOD, while also DENYING YOU ARE HIS EFFECT. You deny his fatherhood and causation of you, you reject everything he has therefore GIVEN you, and therefore ORPHAN yourself - "separate yourself off" from sharing everything with him, collapsing your oneness and trying to "go it alone."

You then proceed to try to AUTHOR YOURSELF, which leads to you trying to reinvent yourself and make a self (ego), while simultaneously believing you have not BEEN authored, and this begins the fear that you DO NOT EXIST - which is the basis of all fear.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

All fear is the fear of not existing - the fear of death - which is the same thing as the belief that you have not been created - that you have no source, and are therefore fundamentally UN-CAUSED, and not a co-cause, and so must be purely an effect/victim that is ceasing to exist.

AS you begin to open up to hand back to God HIS FUNCTION, in which you acknowledge that you share everything with him, what you have is what he has GIVEN you, you have nothing OTHER than what he has given you, he is your cause and creator and father, and you RECEIVE what he has given you by reclaiming your shared inheritance, you are once again acknowledging that God is the AUTHOR of you, and therefore the AUTHORITY in terms of causal power that has CREATED you. You as a creation are SECOND to him - his son, not his father.

Essentially this is a movement toward giving the role of God back to God, reinstating God as your creator, recognizing that you have BEEN created, allowing yourself to receive everything from God again, and to therefore recognize that you ARE LOVED, you are BEING given, and therefore your existence is being CAUSED BY something other than yourself. Which means that you do not establish or maintain or put in place the continuation of your existence - which you tried to do driven by the fear of death, but instead that God is the one who is causing you to exist FOREVER, and THEREFORE, you absolutely exist and will always exist. Which IS THE END OF FEAR - the reclamation of your GOD SUSTAINED immortality.

"The issue of authority is really a question of authorship. When an individual has a "authority problem," it is ALWAYS because he believes he is the author of himself"

"The authority problem remains the ONLY source of perceived conflict, because the ego was MADE out of the wish of God's Son to father HIM."

"The authority problem IS "the root of all evil."

"We spoke before of the authority problem as involving the concept of USURPING His power. The ego believes that this is what YOU did, because it believes it IS you. It follows, then, that if you identify WITH the ego, you MUST perceive yourself as guilty."

Let's just be VERY, VERY clear for a moment. Heaven and Earth are definitely TWO VERY DISTINCT STATES/PLACES in A Course in Miracles. If they were the same place there'd be no point Jesus referring to them as opposites or as two things. Or as "in heaven" or as "on earth". THEY ARE TWO PLACES. You cannot be in, or see, both of them, at once. THEY ARE OPPOSITES, diametrically opposed in every way.

This is important to realize, because Jesus frequently states how Heaven is DISTINCT from Earth and being IN Heaven is very different to being ON Earth. And yes folks, EARTH DOES MEAN THE PLANET EARTH, not some strange twisted metaphoric interpreted labelling of your inner ego interference "about" a world. The only way the Earth is "about" anything is in that it is an attack on Heaven.

Heaven and Earth. TWO PLACES. Earth has "place" because it is inside spacetime. Heaven is "not a place" only in that it has no FINITE LOCATIONS, because IT IS EVERYWHERE, and so transcends spacetime. It is STILL A PLACE WHERE YOU CAN EXIST AND LIVE!!!

If you EVER think that Earth is Heaven, you are stuck and have totally missed the obvious. Anyone reading theses statements SHOULD, using NORMAL LANGUAGE, get the impression and message that Jesus literally means TWO WORLDS, and that they can never be one because they are OPPOSITES. And only Heaven really exists. If someone reads these and doesn't get that? Read it again and take it literally.

"He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"Only this is the real world, and perceiving ONLY this will lead you to the real Heaven, because IT WILL MAKE YOU CAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING IT."

"For you share the real world as you share Heaven, and his healing IS yours."

"Because my feet are on the ground and my hands are in heaven, I can bring down the glories of Heaven to my brothers on earth."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego."

"Both Heaven and Earth are in YOU, because the call of both are in your wills, and therefore in your minds."

"It was only my DECISION that gave me all power in Heaven and earth."

"The Holy Spirit is the way in which God's will can be done on earth as it is in Heaven."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Whom he called down upon the earth after he ascended into Heaven, or became completely identified with the Christ, the Son of God as He created Him."

"All power in Heaven and earth is therefore given him and he will share it with you when you have completed yours. "

"Just under Heaven does he stand, but close enough not to return to earth."

"As your function in Heaven is creation, so your function on earth is healing. God shares His function with you in Heaven, and the Holy Spirit shares His with you on earth."

"You have been told that your function in this world is healing, and your function in Heaven is creating. The ego teaches that your function on earth is destruction, and that you have no function AT ALL in Heaven."

"The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here."

"The golden ASPECTS of reality which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"As miracles in this world join you to your brothers, so do your creations establish your fatherhood in Heaven."

"Deny a brother here, and you deny the witnesses to your fatherhood in Heaven."

"The miracles you do on earth are lifted up to Heaven, and to Him."

"This is the ONLY justice Heaven knows, and all the Holy Spirit brings to earth. "

"Reason will tell you that there is no middle ground where you can pause uncertainly, waiting to choose between the joy of Heaven and the misery of hell. Until you choose Heaven, you ARE in hell and misery."

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there."

"The sky embraces it, and softly holds it in its perfect place, which is as far from earth as earth from Heaven. It is not the distance nor the time which keeps this star invisible to earth. But those who seek for idols cannot know this star is there."

"For that is changeless, and has no effects which anything in Heaven or on earth could ever alter. But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change."

"No one on earth can grasp what Heaven is, or what its one Creator really means. Yet we have witnesses."

"There is no place for hell within a world whose loveliness can yet be so intense and so inclusive it is but a step from there to Heaven."

"I give You thanks for what my brothers are, and as each one elects to join with me, the song of thanks from earth to Heaven grows from tiny, scattered threads of melody to one inclusive chorus"

"There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not. Yet here on earth, it has a double purpose, for it can be made to teach opposing things."

"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. But let us again remember that both are in you."

"It but acknowledges the Will of God is done on earth as well as Heaven. It unites all wills on earth in Heaven's plan to save the world, restoring it to Heaven's peace."

"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love which as it is in Heaven has no form."

"His will is done because all power is given him in Heaven and on earth."

"And you will have conviction then of Him Who knows the function that you have on earth as well as Heaven. "

"Just as your light increases every light that shines in Heaven, so your joy on earth calls to all minds to let their sorrows go, and take their place beside you in God's plan."

"There is no sorrow still upon the earth. The joy of Heaven has come upon it."

"It is the bond by which the giver and receiver are united in extension here on earth as they are one in Heaven."

"It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"No-one outside of Heaven knows how this can be. For understanding this is Heaven itself. Even the real world has a purpose still beneath creation and eternity."

"God limits not. And what is limited can NOT be Heaven. So it MUST be hell."

"Now a quiet time has come in which we put away the toys of guilt, and lock our quaint and childish thoughts of sin forever from the pure and holy minds of Heaven's children and the Son of God. We pause but for a moment more, to play our final happy game upon this earth. And then we go to take our rightful place where truth abides and games are meaningless."

"Father, in Heaven it is different, for there, there are no needs. But here on earth the miracle is closer to Your gifts than any other gift which I can give. "

"His Words contain all hope, all blessing and all joy that ever can be found upon this earth. His Words are born in God, and come to you with Heaven's love upon them."

Many many times in the Course it talks about the importance of *extension* - that if you do not share what you have you cannot have anything. 'Having' to the ego means not sharing. 'Having' to Holy Spirit means sharing. But why is this?

God extends Himself AS you to Create you and sustain you. You are His Creation. And because He gives you all the properties of Himself - his 'Fatherhood', you also therefore would naturally be a Creator and express your own fatherhood by further extending. So provided there is all this extension going on, everything is natural and normal. It's when we refuse to extend, that we enter into ego, because we're trying to stop Creation.

Now, Course stuff is sometimes hard to really understand using our regular language. In Heaven there really isn't any time or distance and there isn't a before-and-after scenario. But the idea of extending you can't really get a sense of it unless you put it sort of a chronological order like that, i.e. God extends from him to you, then you extend from you to others etc.

So I asked myself, if it weren't for this way of looking at it, how would I understand extension and why does God even extend at all.

I see it as... God radiates everywhere. Like a glow of light. It is his Presence (I'm hearing). Presence everywhere, God everywhere. God being everywhere. It's not like, God is separate from you and he shines outward onto you or through you. It's more like, God radiates His Presence everywhere and you ARE this 'radiation', somehow. I know we really can't properly put it into words, but.

So God being everywhere shares Himself everywhere. This idea of 'sharing' really means... God is present everywhere. There is nowhere that God is not, so that must mean he is 'fully shared'. The opposite of that would be that God is absent somewhere, so that would mean God does not 'share in' that part of existence (thats the ego's idea). So sharing has a lot to do with presence and Oneness and wholeness.

So God shares himself, be's whole himself, shines himself everywhere, and that is extension. The Course then says God did not will to be alone. By this I assume it to mean alone as in lonely. The Course also describes being alone a an ego concept of being separate. God doesn't will to be separate. But God is ONE, and whole, so it's not like God's sitting there twiddling his thumbs wondering if anyone is going to show up to play with. But for some reason, at least in Course terms, he 'creates' a Son. The Son is this idea of the 'end result' or effect of His Cause.. but really cause and effect are One and this doesn't happen over the course of time. The effect is always present forever because God causes/sustains forever.

But how do we explain that God created a Son out of the need to not be alone? Perhaps this means that God didn't will to not receive. He willed to both give and receive, and in a sense, what he receives 'from' - although it is One with Himself - is what the Course is calling 'the Son'. The feedback, if you will. But again there is no separation or time involved here. God shines everywhere and the radiance of God upon Himself is the Son.... even though this again suggests a gap of separation of time or separate caused and effects etc... this is why it's impossible to really describe.

Anyway. God extends us and we therefore must be extenders also because we are like Him. When we withhold extending or deny extension, we're trying to put a stop to Creation and to being an end to Life. That is the ego's choice for death. So to choose Life you must extend in the same natural way that He Created you. This means God radiates 'through' you, in a sense, although again there is no space or time involved here. God doesn't broadcast and then the broadcast travels through space and time a bit and then is received by you or relays through you. There is no spacetime. Extension is His shared Presence. Extension is the idea that God is already everywhere.

So when we have blocks to love, are trying to deny God, are trying to stop Life's extension, are trying to bring about an end/death, we're standing in the way of Creation and suffering. When we lift those blocks away and ALLOW GOD, everything 'flows' naturally and there is no blockage, thus no sickness or death.

Sometimes God's suggestion to me is.. ... "shine".

So here I am, shining a bit.

Let's get back to 'having'. If you don't extend you can't have anything. What this means is... the presence of God is blocked when it is not extended, so it if is really thoroughly inhibited, this essentially prevents God's presence. God's presence is WHAT IS, which means that's what you can HAVE i.e. experience in reality, so you can't join in that experience if God's presence is not being allowed to extend. So in effect it's like snuffing out a candle... if you stop the light you can't have the light. If you stop God you can't have God. And you can't really have anything other than God because nothing that He didn't Create exists.

So if you want to 'have' you have to "give all to all" i.e. give God - all that is - to God - to everything. This sharing, giving, extending of presence, shining, radiating, allows God's presence and thus for you to 'have' and own your real Self, which is One with Him. You can have all of your real self by extending it. It gives because it shines and is present everywhere. Without shining/extending you have nothing - by not extending, you prove there is nothing to extend, which implies you have nothing to extend.

Something like that.

Resurrecetion and salvation is all about finding freedom from GUILT. Which means reclaiming your INNOCENCE. Guilt is the subtrate of the ego, of all sickness, all forms of suffering, the world, and even death. Without guilt there is no separation, no misery, no spacetime and no ego. Guilt is death just as innocence is life. The attraction of guilt is the opposite to the attraction of God. Guilt is hell, innocence is heaven. We must purge ALL GUILT from our minds and reclaim the innocence that was hidden!

"****Release from guilt is the ego's whole undoing.****" "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."

"Teachers of innocence, each in his own way, have joined together, taking their part in the unified curriculum of the Atonement. There is no unity of learning goals apart from this. There is no conflict in this curriculum, which has ONE aim, however it is taught. Each effort made on its behalf is offered to the single purpose of RELEASE from guilt, to the eternal glory of God and His creation."

"His real escape from guilt can lie only in the recognition that the guilt has gone. And how can this be recognized as long as he hides it in another, and does not see it as his own?"

"From everyone whom you accord release from guilt, you will INEVITABLY learn YOUR innocence. The circle of Atonement HAS no end."

"Only the Resurrection became my part in it. THAT is the symbol of the RELEASE from guilt, by guiltlessness." "With everyone whom you release from guilt, great is the joy in Heaven, where the witnesses to your fatherhood rejoice." "The Atonement has always been interpreted as the release from guilt, and this is correct, if it is understood."

"The real world is the state of mind in which the ONLY purpose of the world is seen to be forgiveness. Fear is NOT its goal, and the ESCAPE from guilt becomes its aim."

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did. Nor does he do anything to the world, because he was mistaken about what it was. Herein is the release from guilt and sickness both, for they are one. Yet to accept this release, the insignificance of the body must be an acceptable idea."

"Through your transfiguration is the world redeemed and joyfully released from guilt."

"In the crystal cleanness of the release you GIVE, is YOUR INSTANTANEOUS escape from guilt. You MUST be holy, if you OFFER holiness."

"The ego teaches you to attack yourself BECAUSE you are guilty, and this MUST INCREASE the guilt, for guilt is the RESULT of attack. In the ego's teaching, then, there IS no escape from guilt. For attack MAKES GUILT REAL, and if it is real there IS no way to overcome it. The Holy Spirit dispels it simply through the calm recognition that it has never been."

"Nothing can keep FROM you what Christ would have you see. His will is like His Father's, and He offers mercy to every Child of God, as He would have YOU do. RELEASE from guilt, as you would BE released"

"How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well."

"God's Son could never be content with LESS than full salvation, and ESCAPE from guilt."

"The Holy Spirit KNOWS that ALL Salvation is escape from guilt. You have no other "enemy," and against this strange distortion of the purity of the Son of God, the Holy Spirit is your ONLY friend."

Here is the simple LAW OF GOD’S EXTENSION.

1. God can ONLY create (cause) that which is LIKE HIM (as the source), made OF HIM (same substance), with the same inherited abilities.

2. What God creates must be able to do what God does. It must SHARE all of God’s properties, AND pass them on fully to its own creations.

3. God does NOT create ANYTHING that is NOT LIKE HIM. He can only create based on Himself, using Himself, expressing Himself. He can ONLY create in his own likeness.

4. What is not LIKE God’s true nature is NOT OF HIM, and MUST be an illusion. What is not eternal, permanent, perfect, powerful, everlasting, holy, loving, infinite, unlimited, omnipresent, etc CANNOT BE HIS CREATION.

5. What God does not Create does not exist, has no reality, is not alive, and must be false. Anything you attempt to create NOT LIKE HIM, MUST be all illusion and CANNOT exist. Or be real.

6. God cannot create trees, or buildings, or bodies, or planets, or galaxies, or mountains, or food, or humans, or animals, or planet Earth, because He would HAVE TO BE LIKE THEM IN EVERY WAY. God has no end, does not decay, has no form, is NOTHING LIKE this world. Therefore God cannot have created it.

7. God cannot create planets because God is not a planet. The planet cannot inherit its nature from God. The planet is not n extension of a "God planet". God is not a planet. God does not create planets. The planet is not a creation of God. There are no exceptions to this law of perfect extension. God only creates more God!

"The world you see (Earth) is an illusion of a world. God DID NOT CREATE IT. For what He creates MUST be eternal as Himself, and the time will come when all things visible will have an end."

"Earth, Heaven’s opposite in every way". Earth is therefore NOT LIKE GOD. Because Heaven IS like God. And so are you.

"what God creates is eternal."

"There is no death because the Son of God is like his Father."

"His will is like His Father's"

"God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His."

"The Son's creations are like his Father's."

"And He is like His Father."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore will not die."

"I see my own thoughts, which are like God's,"

"Without your Father you will not know your fatherhood. The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father."

"God creates only "that which, or one who, is of surpassing excellence or merit". Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator."

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable"

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

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

"Anything that God creates is as true as He is. Its truth lies only in its perfect inclusion in Him Who alone IS perfect. To deny this in any way is to deny yourself AND Him"

"While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"What is the same as God IS One with Him."

"We have said many times that ONLY what God creates, or what man creates with the same will, has any real existence."

"It is BECAUSE he is God's Son that he must ALSO be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"God created nothing beside you, and nothing beside you exists, for you are part of Him. What except Him CAN exist? Nothing BEYOND Him can happen, because nothing EXCEPT Him is real."

"There is no death because what God created shares His Life."

"No accident or chance is possible within the universe as God created it"

"Forgive the world, and you will understand that everything that God created cannot have an end, and nothing He did not create is real."

"Everything God created KNOWS its Creator. For this is how creation is accomplished, by the Creator, and by His creations."

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God gave your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His."

"The Son that God created is as free as God created him."

"I and my father are one."

You can decide only this:

a) I am caused by God.

b) I am caused by the world.

When believing you are at the effect of the world, upset by someone, hurt by something, vulnerable in some way, offended, attacked, damaged, sick, etc.... you are believing that you are CAUSED BY the world, and thus that the world is your creator. It means you have forgotten that you are ONLY the result of God creating.

Anything true of you, anything about your nature, your condition, what you are, who you are, is entirely OUT OF YOUR HANDS. Who and what you are is purely God's decision and you have absolutely no power to change that. You can however deny that you are as God created you and pretend to be something else, but to do that you HAVE to make yourself be caused BY something else, hence needing an entire world and false God to be your new daddy.

Essentially, by rejecting God as your father and source of your inheritance, you are forced to see yourself as a victim of the world. You can't be denying God's fatherhood and expect to "get away with it" by being in a world but not attacked by the world. Either God will cause you, or the world will cause you. The only choice you have is which thought system you want to be caused by or a part of.

To know yourself is to recognize and remember that you are ONLY what God created, you a AS God created you, you have NO desire to make anything else of yourself, you cannot and have not changed, and you are STILL the perfect divine innocent being that HE chose to create. Accepting your real identity and nature, is accepting God as your father, and therefore accepting the truth about you.

You don't get to be the source of yourself, nor do you get to redefine who and what you are. As soon a you try to do so you deny God and your own self and invent an illusory identity. This is a state of denial, and so your false self is rooted in denial of yourself. It can hardly function in any healthy way when it is constantly attacking itself.

Either you can be in self attack, thus see yourself as caused by the world, or you can be healthy by seeing yourself as caused by God. If you are caused by God, you cannot be sick or dead or unhappy or vulnerable. If you are ONLY as God created you, and are under NO laws but God's, you are not under the laws of the world, nor are you caused BY the world or anything in it.

"Nothing in the world can bring oppression"

"I am not at the effect of the world I see."

"I am not a victim of the world."

"I am under no laws but God's."

"I am still as God created me."

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

Reality, Heaven, the Kingdom of God, God's mind and thought system, real existence, Creation, your Divine Home, the Sonship, and the dwelling place of all the Creations of Light, is "structured" as a perfect hologram.

If you don't know how a hologram works, I'll try to simplify it. First of all we're not talking here about a projected 3D image like you see in the movies. Those are not holograms. They are just regular projected images.

First consider a photograph. A photograph contains a surface which has a number of locations on it. At each location there is a drop of color. When you view the entire surface you see a picture. But there is only one drop of color at each location. So when you move the 2D image in 3D, the image is still the same. Each part only contains part of the image.

Holograms are not like this. The difference is, a hologram stores an ENTIRE set of information, ir the whole picture, AT EACH location on the surface. So all of the picture is encoded in one tiny area, and another tiny area, and another. The entire surface is covered with "copies" of the entire image. The WHOLE image, is in each part of the image.

What this allows, in terms of images, is that you can encode "multiple viewpoints" of a 3D object, onto a single 2D surface. When you then move and tilt the surface, you actually see a DIFFERENT viewpoint. It's as if there are thousands of images all stored within one image, all at different angles, making the hologram appear to move in 3D.

This is based on the holographic principle that "the whole is in every part. and every part is whole".

The whole of whatever was the source object, is represented FULLY in EACH part of the second object. This also produces an interesting scenario in which, you can cut that surface in half with scissors and you don't actually LOSE any information, because the WHOLE of the image is stored in the remaining parts. And you can still see the "other sides" of the object as you move the surface, even if previously they were in the part of the image that was cut off. (But that's not really relevant to what we're talking about here.)

Now. In heaven, God is whole. God is everything, everywhere, unlimited. So God's fundamental nature is wholeness. He is the WHOLE of everything. All of it.

Then, God is a creator. "God did not will to be alone". "Divine abstraction takes joy in application". "God is first cause." Therefore, God creates by extending himself. This form of creation takes whatever is IN God, AS God, and places it into "another". God creates a second being, or what we call a Son of God, or soul.

Since God is whole, God can only create "wholly", and when He creates He FULLY creates (wholly), and gives EVERYTHING of Himself to his creation. The WHOLE of God is extended to the Son. This results in a situation where the SON is WHOLLY created, is FULLY created, is WHOLE in and of himself, HAS wholeness, AND shares the whole of God with God. The Son is a "standalone" entity but the Son is NOT CUT OFF from God - it is FUSED with God and SHARES what God has directly.

"The soul has not only been created perfect, it has been FULLY created. There is no lack in it."

This relationship between God and His Son, is what we call INHERITANCE. The son, inherits everything he is, from God. In fact, God is IN the son. "You are forever host to God." The son is also given God's freedom, and given TOTAL freedom, and so this establishes the son as "free". Bound to God, in terms of oneness, but FREE "from God" in its own right, as an individual being. And since God is the WHOLE of being, God HOSTS this Son WITHIN himself by SHARING his wholeness with His Son. The Son is "separate", but ALSO joined.

"All loving creation is freely given."

"God who encompasses all being (the whole) nevertheless created separate beings (free whole beings) who have everything individually (shared with God) and want to share it (like whole beings do) to increase their joy."Now, SHARING becomes the fundamental attribute of all things in heaven, because God creates via a process of SHARING himself. "Nothing real can be increased, except by sharing." God hosts us within His being. So we SHARE what God HAS. e.g. "To recognize that all power is of God is to gain all power."

A son of God, who is a PART of God, and is also a WHOLE, SHARES all of itself with God, INHERITS everything from God, and therefore hosts the whole of God. Being a fully created free-willed being, this son of God is now established in a position of CO-CREATOR. This is because God is a creator, and the Son INHERITS fatherhood/creatorship/authorship. So the Son can now "do" what the Father did.

"God created the Sonship. You were created to add to the Sonship."

"It is this Thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

God does NOT stop at "only creating one child." "God did not will to be alone, and did not will that you be alone." Other Sons of God are also co-creators with God, and WITH YOU, and as such you AND God AND your REAL PERMANENT BROTHERS co-create together, because you SHARE EVERYTHING with each other as unified wholes.

"You will never know that you are co-creator with God, until you learn that your brother is a co-creator with YOU."

"Decide but to accept your rightful place as co-

Ok so, some people think it's not that big of a deal whether you think ACIM is non-duality or not. But it can have significant mental health effects which are no joke.

Let's remember that ACIM is a course in mind training, it is affecting and uprooting your whole belief system and bringing into question all your values. It's making you think about who and what you are, your identity, you relationship to others and the world. If you're going to undertake this course it's going to seriously threaten your sense of self and your worldview and everything you believe. This is THERAPY, and you're messing with your MIND here.

If you believe for example the non-dual lie that "there is no one out there", you become sociopathic. You stop caring about people, you start treating people like they don't matter or don't exist, and you stop respecting people's free will. You become apathetic and depressed and lonely. That is not good.

If you believe that no-one really has a self and your self does not exist, you will enter self denial and self destruction. You'll reason that it's the ego false self that doesn't want to be undone, but this far too often gets lumped in with not having any kind of a self at all. The son of God gets thrown under the bus. This produces self repression and depression.

When you also believe that there are no others or no real brothers or no permanent individuals, it radically affects how you relate to "people". You stop respecting people's free will because apparently they don't have any. Your sense of relationships breaks down. The people in your family that you love are all suddenly regarded as mindless illusory robots. None of this is good for your mental health.

Believing that you are one with everyone and there is only one of you here, that you are everyone, also can lead to massive guilt. You will start taking on responsible for everything that's happening in the world as though you are the one who is choosing it and making it happen. And now you have to carry the burden of everyone else's suffering, which can produce massive guilt.

There is merit to opening up to oneness but not at the expense of the self. Jesus refers to a massive expansion of the self (e.g. in the holy instant) - an expansion, not an annihilation. When oneness is taken too far to mean "you don't exist at all" or "you were never created', we're now into the authority problem. We're denying God's fatherhood, we're rejecting being his creation, we're denying that anyone else was ever created, and we're basically attacking the sonship. None of that is healthy for the mind.

People will claim it's not a big deal what you believe, but if you believe something that is so against the truth and start following that and living like it and behaving based on it, your entire relationship to the world and other people is going to change. And not for the better. If you're believing that ACIM is telling you you don't exist, other people don't exist, you were never created, there is no holy spirit, jesus is a metaphor, and other such nonsense, and you're believing it, you're going to be far WORSE off.

Can you imagine how distorted your mind will become when you start trying to regard all of the other people in the world as 100% fake? That they don't even have real minds or spirit or anything beyond the body? It's as bad as the belief that God made the world of illusions. It's going to send your mind down a totally wrong path towards even more ego, under the guise of trying to reduce the ego. It's going to split the mind further and make your mental health even worse.

I've had more than one person come to me in a state of feeling like near suicide because of gross misunderstandings about the course. One person was using our oneness as justification for why everyone's suffering was all her fault and felt horrendously guilty and paralysed. Another saw that the death of their partner was somehow a part of the non-duality teaching and was having horrible grief that they couldn't reconcile and so began to blame God for making the partner go away, harming their relationship with God and their own self.

Many quite serious and quite harmful things can come about if you get your facts misaligned and start following a belief system that is fundamentally flawed. There are people doing this course who for example develop physical sicknesses as defences against the truth. Just as it describes in the book. We're not just playing with ideas here. This isn't about discussing and debating on facebook. People's actual lives and minds are being distorted and damaged and made to be more insane by incorrect beliefs about what it's teaching. Some people are quite seriously lost and distraught and feeling awful because of the non-duality lie.

I know I was. I bought into it and believed it. I believed, just as some prominent ACIM teachers taught, that I didn't really have a self and other people didn't really exist. All in the name of being more 'oneness'. And I felt depressed by this. And I was told that this was just the ego not wanting to be found to be non-existent. An attempt to justify it. But when I finally realised this is NOT what ACIM is teaching, I felt such incredible relief that I cried with joy at realising that I actually AM a child of God, permanently. And I never looked back.

We need to stop perpetuating bullshit lies about A Course in Miracles. It is not just a matter of being right or debating or having heated discussions or following what people think it means. It's having significant affects on people that believe and follow these models of reality. It's not helping anyone to tell them that they don't exist and that everyone they love doesn't exist and no-one is out there and there's no basis for miracles and no reason to help anyone and all you gotta do is selfishly accept atonement and get out of here.

"I trust my brothers, who are one with me." W181

"In the holy instant, God is remembered, and the language of communication with ALL your brothers, is remembered WITH Him. " UrT15G8

"YOU, who are NOT at war, must look for brothers and RECOGNIZE all you see AS brothers, because ONLY EQUALS ARE AT PEACE." UrT7E2

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone." UrT10B3

The idea that you are totally equal to God, is what's called the Authority Problem. Actually it's also the idea of sin. Some who think their relationship with God is to be "one" with Him, and thus completely equal with Him, are not understanding that God came FIRST. Or that oneness does not actually mean "you are Him".

He is the creator of you, you are not the creator of Him. He created the Sonship and you were created to ADD TO the Sonship. But you cannot create God or cause God or add to God Himself. That makes you "below" Him in a sense, or as Jesus says in the course, "the Father is GREATER".

It is also appropriate to have AWE of God because He IS greater and above you, and not to have awe of your brothers who ARE your equals. God is GREATER because He is all encompassing, and you are within God, as a part of God, caused BY God, as one of His thoughts, and He therefore spans more than just your own soul.

The idea that being one with him means total equality completely ignores these dynamics and suggests you are as much the creator of God as he is of you. And that unfortunately is where the tiny mad idea began, where you as an effect of God attempted to be the cause of Him, and where the entire ego thought system started. His Kingdom also cannot increase at all if you are God's exact equal because you and God would be in a deadlocked power struggle.

You have to be a son, in order to set up the dynamic that "A Son of a Father must have a Son", establishing God's fatherhood and your sonhood. And being like the father you too become a father, thus co-creator with Him. But your co-creatorship does not allow you to co-create God Himself, and yet God Himself does create you.

And so you are not equal to God in all ways and functions, but you ARE like Him in terms of mirroring the ability to create, IN ADDITION TO what already has been created BY Him. The notion that you have equal creative function with God is to suggest you are capable of creating yourself, and that is what the ego believes is true.

You can add your creations to His Kingdom, but you cannot overthrow the Kingdom itself. Nor can you attack or destroy what HE already created, that being yourself, your brothers, the Holy Spirit, and the angels. All of this "state of the union" is somewhat more elaborate than simply to say that "it's all just oneness", and it certainly is not compatible with an idea of non-duality which implies "no sons at all."

God has a family, and you are part of it. God is a creator with many creations and those creations have many creations and all of them co-create together. This is what A Course in Miracles teaches, not that we're all going to just dissolve into nothing, with no self and no creative function. God has established you as a free-willed co-creator forever.

In fact, if you weren't a SON of God and not God's equal, you would have INHERITED NOTHING, and would never be a HOST to God Himself. God GAVE you everything He had in your creation, thus extending His Self to you, sharing His will and mind and power, and establishing you as SHARER of his being. Because God is your father, you have an inheritance which is waiting for you to reclaim it.

"The world, in its original connotation, included both the proper creation of man by God, AND the proper creation by man in his Right Mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"Think not He wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but keep your will forever and forever limitless."

"My mind holds only what I think with God. That is a fact, and represents the truth of What you are and What your Father is. It is this thought by which the Father gave creation to the Son, establishing the Son as co-creator with Himself."

"Revelation is NOT reciprocal. It is always FROM God TO man (souls). This is because God and man are NOT equal. "

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER."

"The creative power of both God AND His Creations is limitless, but it is NOT in reciprocal relationship. You DO communicate fully WITH God, as He does with YOU. This is an ongoing process in which you SHARE, and BECAUSE you share it, you are inspired to create LIKE God. But in Creation you are NOT in a reciprocal relation TO God, because He created YOU, but you did NOT create Him. We have already stated that only in this respect your creative power differs from His."

"I have repeatedly emphasized that awe is not appropriate in connection with me (Jesus), BECAUSE of our inherent equality."

"The word "Awe" should be reserved only for revelations, to which it is perfectly and correctly applicable. It is NOT appropriately applied to miracles, because a state of true awe is worshipful. It implies that one of a lesser order stands before the Greater One. This is the case only when a Soul stands before his Creator. Souls are perfect creations, and should be struck with awe in the presence of the Creator of Perfection."

"Equals cannot be in awe of each other, because awe ALWAYS implies inequality. Awe is not properly experienced even to me (awe of Jesus). That is why in that short introductory vision, I knelt beside you, FACING the light."

"Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for your creation. They do not leave you, any more than you have left your Creator."

"He (God) does nothing last, because He created first and for always. It must be understood that the word "first" as applied to Him is not a time concept. He is first in the sense that He is the First in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator, because He created His co-creators. Because He did, time applies neither to Him nor to what He created. The "last step" that God will take was therefore true in the beginning, is true now, and will be true forever. What is timeless is always there, because its being is eternally changeless."

"Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet, without effects, there is no CAUSE. The cause a cause is MADE by its effects; the Father IS a father by His Son. Effects do not CREATE their cause, but they ESTABLISH its causation. Thus the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and RECEIVES the gift that he has given Him. It is BECAUSE he is God's Son that he must ALSO be a father, who creates as God created him. The circle of creation has no end. Its starting and its ending are the same. But, in itself, it holds the universe of all creation, without beginning AND without an end."

The entire "separation from God" is nothing more than an attempt to reverse cause and effect.

God is the Cause (Creator) of You. You are God's effect (Creation).

You tried to reverse that. That's all. The entire ego thought system and separation and universe of dreams is contained entirely in this one idea.

You tried to cause God and produce effects in Him (which is the idea of sin), while also denying that you are the effect of Him or His Creation (which has imprisoned your Will).

The authority problem is entirely described this way also - your attempt to usurp God's will is just another way of saying you tried to be the cause of God.

Level confusion is the same thing. It's what you get into when you think God is your effect and you are His cause. You are now confused and this produces "inverted perception." And this is the same thing as magic.

Seeing God as the effect of you and you as His creator, requires you to deny that you are as He created you, meaning you must deny what you are in order to deny what God is. This self-denial or denial of self/soul eventually results in death.

When people come along and attack you and you seem to be at their effect, still this is the same thing playing out. It's you perceiving backwards, that God who is your cause is now against your will, or rather, you are now willing against what's happening and seeing yourself as a victim.

The ONLY correction that is needed, to correct the ENTIRE ego thought system, all sickness, all death and everything of form, is to restore cause and effect to their proper sequence.

The Atonement is nothing more than the correct awareness, recognition and acceptance that God is the cause of you, you are His effect, and this is simply a fact. Accepting it recognizes you are still as God created you because you're acknowledging you did not change you OR God.

This also reveals that sin is a lie because you CANNOT be the cause of God or make Him affected. Therefore you have not done so, and therefore you are still innocent. In this recognition is also the true definition of forgiveness - that you have not sinned, sin is not real, and God still loves you.

This is a course in cause not effect, meaning you have to also recognize that while God is the cause of YOU, YOU are the cause of your creations, and you are a co-creator with Him. He does not oppose your will, he wills WITH you. You have your own creations. In your own causality YOU are the cause of everything you experience, but you are not the cause of God.

When you see yourself as an effect, you will make yourself a victim, because you are not recognizing that God shared His causal power with you. That means you are literally choosing everything and causing everything that happens. That's the secret of salvation - that you are doing this yourself.

It's all about cause and effect. It's very very simple. Get the facts straight in your awareness about who is the cause of what, and you're done. At that point you are no longer at the effect of anything but God and nothing has any power over you, not even death.

There are a few parts to this. And it is highly paradoxical.

1) God is the first cause creator of us and we are SECONDARY creations, as his effects. We are co-creators with him as sons of God/souls. This does imply a kind of separation between us and God. In this respect you are NOT GOD. God is greater than you.

2) You are still one with God because you share the whole of everything and are part of God. God is not just in you, he is you. So in this sense, you ARE GOD. You are made of God, sustained by God, extending God.

3) If you play at being God you are being ego, which is an attempt to replace and reject God. In this sense you are not being God, and are supposed to be God. This is where you claim you are all of God and God who was God has stopped existing.

4) If you claim to be God in an attempt to get out of ego, this claim is so exclusive that it rejects the fact that you are also a creation of God's. Then you are still being ego and playing at being God. This "oneness" must recognize that you are secondary in creation also. Just being the oneness or non-dual isn't the whole story.

So yes. You are God, and you aren't, at the same time. It's paradoxical. You are both separate and one. It is arrogant to claim you are God alone, as if you are all of God and no-one else is and there is nothing else. But it is also arrogant to claim you are not God, because you are one with and part of himself. You are nothing without him and everything with him. He is everything you are yet you are yourself also. You are an individual being who shares God's being entirely.

It's important thus to realize YOU ARE GOD, in order to overcome the sense of separation and fear that keeps you from being ONE with Him. But at the same time, you also have to realize that you are simultaneously NOT GOD in order to acknowledge God as your father and undo the authority problem. Yet jus because God is the CAUSE of you doesn't mean you aren't one with him.

"I choose the second place to gain the first."

"I am forever an effect of God."

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU. Created by God, He left neither God nor His creation. He is both God and you, as you are God and Him together."

"God is not in you; YOU are part of HIM."

"The insane, thinking they are God, are not afraid to offer weakness to the Son of God."

"Let me remember I am one with God."

"There is one life, and that I share with God."

"I welcome them into the home I share with God, because I am a part of Him."

"Now are we one in shared Identity, with God our Father as our only Source, and everything created part of us."

"Communication with God is Life."

"God is the Mind with which I think. I have no thoughts which I do not share with God."

"In Timelessness, we coexist with God."

"The Soul never loses its communion with God."

"It is as like your real relationship with God, as equal things are like themselves."

"And can one who is one with God be unlike Him?"

"The therapist in no way confuses himself with God."

"But in the holy instant, you unite DIRECTLY with God, and ALL your brothers join in Christ."

"Your mind IS one with God's."

"Meditation is a collaborative venture with GOD."

"For what is yours IS everything, and you share it WITH God."

"The Revelation unites Souls directly with God."

"In the beginning was the thought, and the thought was with God, and the thought WAS God."

"I and my Father are one with YOU, for you are part of us."

"Your fatherhood and your Father are One."

"Those who receive the Father are one with Him, being host to Him Who created them."

"This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."

"I light the world, I light my mind and all the minds which God created one with me."

In the separation from God we made what seems to be a world, opposite to God - space and time and bodies etc. But we're told this world is unreal. What does "unreal" mean? Because while we're told it's unreal we're also told we believe in it, and that by believing in it it becomes real to us.

Being unreal is a way to say it's not ultimately true and isn't how God creates. So in a sense, it is dream-like. But people DO have dreams, and the mind IS dreaming of a world of space and time. This dream can seem very real and solid and effectual to the dreamer.

As such even though the world is ultimately unreal, which would seem to write off anything that seems to happen in it, while we are still in it believing in it we do still have experience of it AS IF it were real. In fact we can make it extremely real to ourselves and have a horrible nightmare.

"anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

But nightmares do in fact seem very real and frightening and full of suffering and stress to the believer. To the believer, even if they are hallucinating, even if what they experence is total fantasy and not possible in God's laws, it nevertheless can seem VERY real and true to a mind that belives in it.

How do we overcome this nightmarish experience of a world in which everything suffers and dies? What is NEEDED? What is called for? If the problem is that the mind is believing in it and giving it power, then the mind has to withdraw that power and stop believing in it. And by not believing in it, the mind will ultimately stop seeing it.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

Here the course doesn't say that the remedy or approach we're supposed to take is to just write the world off with labels like "unreal, illusion, nothing, doesn't exist" ESPECIALLY when the mind IS honestly still believing in it and giving it reality. That's a form of denial. Instead it says we are to use RECOGNITION to realize that the world isn't real and isn't true, WHILE still in it. That's different from PRETENDING TO BE OUTSIDE IT.

A hallucinated world will disappear only when RECOGNIZED that it is a dream and not a reality. This is what "awareness of dreaming" is about. Awareness of dreaming isn't denial. It's in fact a state in which you are still asleep and dreaming, but you have the awareness of what you're doing.

We're not supposed to keep bypassing the world in an attempt to overcome or escape it. In fact, Jesus's remedy for us is to CHANGE PERCEPTION so that we will come to first see this world from a different vantage point. That does require us to "love the world" and to find peace in the world. Before we can leave it. As the course says:

"First you will dream of peace, then you will awaken to it."

If we try to skip the dream of peace, or the happy dream, or the forgiven world, and just try to jump from false perception to knowledge, we're doing a bypass.

"Knowledge is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception. It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning with the end to lead to Oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."

Those who use non-dual-seeming statements like "the world doesn't exist so it doen't matter what you do", "the body isn't real so don't bother healing it" etc... are trying to use truths from the level of KNOWLEDGE, to correct the problem. But Jesus says this will not really work. THE ONE CORRECTION for false perception is true perception. We can't skip having true perception. We have to find a way to forgive this world and everything in it first instead of trying to jump ahead to being what is only really experienced AFTER we complete the curriculum.

"Miracles are thought-creations. Thought can create lower-order or higher-order realities. This is the basic distinction between intellectualization and thinking. One creates the physical, and the other the spiritual, and we believe in what we create."

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

"You have expressed surprise at hearing how VERY different is reality from what YOU see. You do not realize the magnitude of that ONE error. It was so vast and so COMPLETELY incredible, that from it, a world of total unreality HAD to emerge."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

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

"The separation is merely a faulty formulation of reality, WITH NO EFFECT AT ALL. The miracle, without a function in Heaven, IS needful here. ASPECTS of reality can still be seen, and they will replace aspects of UNREALITY. Aspects of reality can be seen IN EVERYTHING and EVERYWHERE. Yet only God can gather them together by crowning them AS ONE with the final gift of eternity."

"The world was made as "a natural grand division," or a projecting outward of God."

First of all, the use of "OR" here means there are two ways of saying this. A natural grand division is the same thing as a "projecting outward". Which is the same thing also as extension and creation. When God projected outward from Himself he Created "the world". This is the world of heaven, having nothing to do with the physical universe.

"That is why everything that He created is like Him."

So we know that everything God creates is LIKE Him. Like a copy. "Heaven and Earth are opposites in every way" - so we know God did not create Earth.

"Projection, as undertaken by God, is very similar to the kind of inner radiance which the Children of the Father inherit from Him. It is important to note that the term "project outward" necessarily implies that the real source of projection is internal. This is as true of the Son as of the Father."

The clarification here is that what God is, internally, is "distinct" in a NATURAL way, from the "projecting out" (creating) that God performs. His CREATION, is "naturally divided" from Him. This reflects in the idea that God is the FATHER, and His Creation is HIS SON. He is Cause, His creation is Effect.

This is considered a NATURAL division. Because it is natural, it is not alien, it is not an attack, it is not ego, it is not separation, it is not a dream, it is not artificial, it is NATURAL and normal and healthy.

All of God's children (plural - many) inherit this same ability to create which is the ability to radiate outward from their being, to create things which are NATURALLY DIVIDED from themselves, in terms of the relationship of cause to effect. All children are CAUSE of their Creations, which are their effects.

The natural division between Father and Son tells us Father creates the Son, but the Son does not create the father. If there was no "division", the Son would indeed create the father. The Son is INCAPABLE of doing that, because He is the EFFECT of the Father, so He is "divided off" from being able to BE the "Cause of God'. But he Himself inherits Fatherhood abilities, meaning He can "father" (create) His own creations.

To create His own creations he MUST be given free will. God is freedom and God only creates that which is free. If the Father has even ONE Son, that son MUST have FREEDOM. A free will. Bestowing complete freedom upon the Son is basically a MIRACLE, because in a way it means the Son is DISTINCT in His own ability/independence/individuality to Will either WITH the father or to try to will against Him. FREEDOM gives Him that "right" or ability.

"The world, in the original connotation of the term, included both the proper creation of man by God and the proper creation by man in his right mind. The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will because all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in these statements implies any sort of level involvement or in fact anything except one continuous line of creation in which all aspects are of the same order."

There is nothing UNNATURAL about these divisions. Effect is not cause. However God creates so fully and so freely and gives so unconditionally that He gives ALL of His abilities to His Son, endowing Him with both FREEDOM and the ability to CREATE FREELY. As the quote says, this is all in one continuous LINE OF CREATION, in that, the SonS (plural) and THEIR creations (and the creations of their creations etc) are all one simultaneous timeless eternal creation. It has all always been.

That there are NATURAL DIVISIONS, particularly between cause and effect or Father and Son, doesn't necessarily mean that there is anything blocking the Son from being completely equal to and "one with" the Father. There is no "difference" that comes between them. But they are still distinct. They are as close to each other as close can be, to the point where they practically disappear into each other. But they are still divided! Like, they can HUG!

An UNNATURAL division, is what the course refers to as SEPARATION. An unnatural division is unhealthy and incorrect and is an error. It's an artificial division that isn't supposed to be inherent to the nature of Creation. It is a wall, a block, a barricade which attempts to cut off some portion of Creation and keep it in the dark. This is the ego's separations. Divisions in heaven do not keep anyone from SHARING with each other. Ego separations BLOCK SHARING. Every ILLUSION of multiplicity, every ego form of attack, every wall or block or unnatural separation, these are UNNATURAL. This is not the same thing as a NATURAL division.

Heaven has NATURAL divisions. There is a kind of hierarchy of cause and effect: God > Many Sons > Son's Creations > Creations of Son's Creations etc.

Even the idea of God having ONE Son suggests a hierarchy: God > Son. Yet the ego would say, noooooo... can't have heirarchies or any concept of separations or multitudes in Heaven. YES YOU CAN. And they are NATURAL, meaning they are not WRONG to be there, and they are not attacks, and they are not ego.

In ACIM, there is no real devil. However, he does describe our BELIEF in the separation, or the denial of God, as "the devil". It's like putting a label on our authority problem. Since "the ego is part of your belief about yourself", and its a belief in something opposite to God and Christ, the BELIEF can be said to be "evil". It's a belief IN evil, or an attempt to be "anti-christ".

"An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ which constitutes a gap BETWEEN the Christ and what you see."

"All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. And fall before His Face like a dark veil which SEEMS to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness."

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

"For anti-Christ becomes more powerful than Christ to those who dream the world is real."

"And you ask help of Christ or anti-Christ, and which you choose WILL join with you, and tell you what to do." Someone whose mind believes in separation from God, or who denies God, or who wants to overthrow the Kingdom, or who tries to attack the unattackable immortality of God, is in effect trying to be evil. They are becoming "a devil", or have a devilish attitude. This attitude is destructive instead of creative, and it also holds within it all the perspectives and behaviors that we might describe as "evil" in the world.

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

So Jesus is saying that our belief in separation from God, in sin, in death, in illusions, in sickness, in bodies etc, which is really our mental illness ie insanity, is "the devil". Another way of saying that is our egotism is the devil. The ego isn't really a real entity either, any more than the devil is. If you are being egotistical, ie "the ego is the idea of selfishness", which includes beliefs in specialness and so on, then you are effectively TRYING TO be evil. This means you're trying to change yourself from christ into the anti-christ.

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." "Behold him now whom you had seen as merely flesh and bone, and recognize that Christ has come to you. Today's idea is your safe escape from anger and from fear. Be sure you use it instantly, should you be tempted to attack a brother and perceive in him the symbol of your fear. And you will see him suddenly transformed from enemy to Savior; from the devil into Christ."

In effect, if we deny God and reality, we attempt to turn ourselves into devils. We are trying to oppose the Kingdom, to oppose life, to oppose the truth. The word we'd properly use for that is "evil". But evil isn't REAL, in the big picture. It's a mistaken sense of what is real. It's really a state of insanity in which that which is true is swapped with that which is false. The attributes of nothingness are assigned to God, while life's attributes are assigned to death. Hell is thought to be heaven, and heaven is hell.

This also gives rise to what you might call satanism ie a kind of rebellious attitude against God, which wants nothing to do with God. A system of thought which is seemingly unholy and dark and destructive and vengeful etc. A way of believing that is distorted and sick, giving rise to inhumane and insane ways of relating to others. Ways which you might call evil, or unnatural.

But such minds which seem to be "hell bent" are simply mistaken minds that are mentally ill. They are out of touch with reality. And these are the minds of christs, sons of God, who temporarily believe they are not themselves. You can see here Jesus talking about the devil ... ie our belief in hell and separation and death, in terms somewhat similar to those laid out in christianity.

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet, he ATTRACTS men rather than repels them, and they are perceived as willing to "sell" him their Souls in return for gifts they KNOW are of no real worth at all."

All of these aspects are in fact metaphysically sound and in keeping with ACIM's principles. Devilishness is an attempt to oppose God, to use the power of the mind to actively being in combat with God. This produces "the ego" mindset or belief system in which everything unreal and untrue attempts to TEMPT you to believe it is real and true. And thus temptation is part of the evil, just as the belief in sin is.

This "evil" tries to keep you in hell by tempting you to believe it is heaven, ie reality, and that you want it. And therefore it tries to offer you to gain the whole world and thus lose track of your soul. In being unaware of or not remembering who you really are, in insanity, you then "lose your soul". Of course, souls cannot really be lost.

This egotism is a lie, just as the very notion of evil or ego or devil is al ie. They are NOT real, or even possible. But you can BELIEVE things which are false and this believing IS "the devil at work". It is even said for example that if a person is "a sinner", ie is indulging in some kind of unholy belief or action, then this gives "the devil" permission to enter that person and manipulate them.

This is a rather ... storytelling take.... on a simple principle. ie if you BELIEVE sin is real, then you are "being a sinner", and this makes your mind seem unholy, which means you believe in and WANT destructive beliefs. And that means you see yourself as sinful, therefore deserving of punishment and suffering. And indeed this is an invitation to insanity, which could be easily blamed for a whole host of bizarre behaviors which, in less civilized times, would have been likely described as the activities of "demons" or "the devil."

Basically then the devil is your "ego beliefs". It's you being devilish, in your attempts to reject God. It's your way of rebelling by denying reality and moving into insanity. It is indeed a twisted, backwards, self destructive, self harming, suffering-inducing, attacking, seemingly unholy, tormented, dark, hellish nightmare of an experience. Because that's what minds experience when they are out of touch with God.

"Man is capable of this kind of creation, too, being in the image and likeness of his own Creator. Anything else is only his own nightmare, and does not exist. Only the Creations of Light are real."

"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."

So when you deny God, you are rejecting his fatherhood, and therefore rebelling against heaven, and are trying to convince yourself that an opposite to holiness is possible. That evil can exist, or that you can attack or kill, or that suffering and death can happen. These are beliefs in sin being real. That punishment is inevitable.

People who believe in such seemingly evil things, are in effect "sinners". But not in the sense that they are REALLY sinners, because they are really just mistaken. Their mental illness is just confusion about who their father is and who they really are. Anyone in touch with the love of christ in them couldn't possibly believe any of this. Jesus does refer to sinners a little.

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

"The magic of the world can SEEM to hide the pain of sin from sinners, and deceive with glitter and with guile. Yet each one knows the cost of sin is death. And so it IS. For sin is a REQUEST for death, a wish to make this world's foundation sure as love, dependable as Heaven, and as strong as God Himself."

"Love is the basis for a world perceived as wholly mad to sinners, who believe theirs is the way to sanity."

"To the world, justice and VENGEANCE are the same, for sinners see justice ONLY as their punishment, perhaps sustained by someone ELSE, but NOT escaped. The laws of sin DEMAND a victim."

"Love is NOT understandable to sinners. BECAUSE they think that justice is SPLIT OFF from love, and stands for something else. And thus is love perceived as weak and vengeance strong."

Being "a sinner" is just a temporary state of being mistaken. And mistakes can be corrected without punishment. This is why sin does not have to be punished, even though the ego/devil would say otherwise.

"We lay aside the arrogance which says that we are sinners, guilty and afraid, ashamed of what we are. And lift our hearts in true humility instead to Him Who has created us immaculate, like to Himself in power and in love."

"Forgiveness is the only thing that stands for truth in the illusions of the world. It sees their nothingness, and looks right through the thousand forms in which they may appear. It looks on lies but it is not deceived. It does not heed the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt. It looks on them with quiet eyes, and merely says to them, "My brother, what you think is not the truth."

"No-one is "punished" for sins, and the Sons of God are not sinners."

We are not really sinners, but we BELIEVE we are. And that is our attempt to turn ourselves from Christ into the anti-christ or devil. It is an attempt to make an ego of ourselves, to try to replace the soul. And in this belief system we make a world of hell and attack it and destroy it in attempting to enact the wages of sin. Sins that we think we are guilty of that deserve nothing short of death. This is all a mistaken state of mind and nothing more. A simple

insanity that needs healing. And it also means that in the big picture, THERE IS NO EVIL. There is no ego, and there is no devil. There is no sin and there is no death.

"What has no effect does not exist, and to the Holy Spirit, the effects of error are TOTALLY non-existent. By steadily and consistently canceling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

What we call evil is nothing but the seeming LACK of love, or the seeming absence of light. It's just a distortion of mind. It isn't really dark any more than darkness can make light go away. It's just a lack of light. It's just confusion. Those who seem evil are not really evil, but they may seem that way. They are just mistaken. What they believe is not true. And they do believe they are sinners, which is a call for love and forgiveness.

In the separation from God, we basically denied God and tried to reject him. We tried to will against his will, reject his fatherhood, block awareness of his love, and hide in the darkness. We did not want God to love us, and wanted to hide our love for him.

This means that now, in our separated ego state, we are actually in a position where we are not allowing ourselves to be aware of God. Or to put it another way, we're trying to shut him out of our mind.

This means ultimately that we're trying NOT to be loved, to block and limit love, and are trying to resist being loved or loveable. We have to suppress our love and lovability in order to shut God out, because God himself IS love.

Before the separation, and in our creation, God gave ALL of himself, all of his immense unlimited unconditional love to us, and loved us with an endless deep love. We received this love and ARE this love. We are created as entirely lovable to God, loved BY God, and we are THE love of God.

In the separation, in the authority problem, we tried to deny this love and therefore also this lovability. But now we find ourselves feeling empty, lacking love, unlovable, unworthy, not good enough, and feeling that we don't love ourselves.

The thing is, that we can't love ourselves WITHOUT including God in that love, and that means that any willingness to love ourselves will have to also be a willingness to LET GOD love us as well. It means being willing to RECEIVE LOVE.

The problem we have is that we basically have stopped letting ourselves RECEIVE, and have placed great emphasis on giving without receiving, which is sacrifice. We don't love ourselves in isolation, and can't love ourselves while trying to be separate from God.

The secret then is that in order to feel loved and loving, you HAVE to let God love you. You have to let God in, into your mind, into your awareness. You have to be willing to allow yourself to RECEIVE LOVE from God, acknowledge that God has already GIVEN total love to you, and have gratitude that it has been given so that you can give it back as well.

You can't feel loved unless you share and flow love. You can't flow love unless God is its source. You can only share the love of God. You can only feel loved if you let God love you and are willing to extend it to others. You can't find love in isolation or exclusion, nor can you find a love in yourself that you can love yourself with that is other than God's love.

This is why when you try to love yourself you fail, because you cannot create love out of nothing. You have to get it from God. There is no love other than God's love, so you have to let God in and let him love you in order to feel love. And when you do... .... you feel loved and safe and happy and strong, and have love to give.

"And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

"For we will learn today what peace is ours when we forget all things except God's Love."

"Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God's Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me to my home."

"Yet is the world of hatred equally unseen and inconceivable to those who feel God's Love in them. Their world reflects the quietness and peace that shines in them; the gentleness and innocence they see surrounding them; the joy with which they look out from the endless wells of joy within."

"The only part of your mind that has reality, is the part that links you still with God. Would you have ALL of it transformed into a radiant message of God's Love, to share with all the lonely ones, who have denied Him with you? GOD MAKES THIS POSSIBLE. "

"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."

"I am sustained by the Love of God."

"Put all your faith in the Love of God within you, eternal, changeless and forever unfailing. This is the answer to whatever confronts you today. Through the Love of God in you, you can resolve all seeming difficulties without effort and in sure confidence."

"I am surrounded by the Love of God."

"I feel the Love of God within me now."

"If you feel the Love of God within you, you look out upon a world of mercy and of love."

"To all who share the love of God the grace is given to be the givers of what they have received."

"You who could give the love of God to everything you see and touch and remember are literally denying Heaven to yourselves."

"I bless you, brother, with the Love of God which I would share with you. For I would learn the joyous lesson that there is no love but God's and yours and mine and everyone's."

"Sacrifice is gone. And in its place, the Love of God can be remembered, and will shine away all memory of sacrifice and loss."

"If you would but let the Holy Spirit tell you of the Love of God for you, and the need that your creations have to be with you forever, you would experience the attraction of the Eternal. For no-one can hear Him speak of this, and long remain willing to linger here. For it IS your will to be in Heaven, where you are complete and quiet, in such sure and loving relationships, that ANY limits are impossible."

"For the special relationship is THE RENUNCIATION OF THE LOVE OF GOD, and the attempt to secure for the self the specialness that He denied."

"But the sane KNOW that only attack COULD produce fear, from which the love of God COMPLETELY protects them."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you. YOU do not love what you have made, and what you have made does not love you. Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker. You cannot conceive of the real relationship that exists between God and His Souls, because of the hatred you have for the Self you have made."

"You cannot understand how much your Father loves you, for there is no parallel in your experience of the world to help you understand it. There is nothing on earth with which it can compare, and nothing you have ever felt, APART from Him, that resembles it ever so faintly."

The physical world was made as a projection of a false idea. Everything in it is false, untrue and unreal. It therefore depicts a lie, a deception, an illusion, and an attempt to ASSERT that something false is true. That something impossible is possible. That everything which CAN go wrong HAS gone wrong, or is about to.

Everything it does and says and expresses is fiction and make-believe. This is because you made it by WANTING to believe that something untrue was true. And so you produced a world which constantly asserts the idea that an impossible evil exists. And now everything in the world is there to try to convince you that this is true.

If you consider the idea of hell, and you think of a place where everything in it is trying to PULL YOU DOWN, to SUCK YOU IN, to PERSUADE you, to try to get you to BUY into it, to KEEP you there, whispering evil lies in your ear, then you have an idea of what temptation is.

It's like the "devil" telling you things which are utterly untrue and heinous and blasphemous, trying to get you to side with it, so that you'll stay and give it your strength. To talk you into believing it instead of trusting God's word. It wants your soul in exchange for all of hell to be yours forever.

Be not mistaken that this whole world is set up to do this. And the body was made in attempting to deceive yourself thus. And now the world acts as a picture of total utter bullshit and madness, in the hope that you would convince yourself with it and fall for the trap, buying into illusions as if they are real, rendering yourself insane.

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. "

"Nothing the body's eyes seem to see can be anything but a form of temptation, since this was the purpose of the body itself."

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

If your mind gives any BELIEF to the world, to the body, to anything physical, then you are falling for temptation and are not in forgiveness. If even a speck of it seems TRUE to you, has validity, is worth listening to, is actually happening, or is anything you WANT, then you are falling for temptation.

"Lead us not into temptation" really means, help us to not believe that anything in the world is true. Help us not to fall for the ego trap of believing in hell. The world we made IS hell, but can only gain our support if we GIVE it our support. And we do that by buying into it, wanting it, believing it, trusting it, having faith in it, valuing it, giving it power, giving it credit, and siding with it. If you side with Earth, you are siding with an illusion of evil and are trying to make sin real.

"your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects." (not both)

"He (Holy Spirit) will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."

Make no mistake then, in the separation from God we DID attempt to make hell itself. The hell we made, the world we made, including bodies, is the opposite of heaven. Its whole nature was an attack on God and an attempt to deny eternal life. Which is why it has produced a dream of death and corruption.

We may not RECOGNIZE it as "actual hell" because of our silly ideas of fire and brimstone and pitch forks, but earth basically is the opposite of heaven. And heaven's opposite IS hell by definition. You are in hell right now, or so it seems.

"...and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

"The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible."

"The body is the ego's idol; the belief in sin made flesh, and then projected outward. This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time, beholden unto death, and given but an instant in which to sigh and grieve and die in honor of its master."

Fortunately, your experience of the world of temptation, of a hell which at every turn is blasting you in the face with IMAGES OF SIN, trying to TEMPT YOU to believe that evil really is possible and sickness can happen and death is inevitable, depends entirely on your mind GIVING it power over you.

You give hell power by believing in it, valuing it and wanting it. If there is hell IN YOU, then you are supporting the world of temptation. What you accept as true becomes your reality. Heaven and earth are both in your mind, and you can SIDE WITH one or the other. But you can't have both because they are opposites.

If you side with spirit/heaven, you are denying earth and the body. You are giving up nothing to gain everything. Because hell, ie earth or the world, is really nothing in and of itself. It's just a fiction sitting there doing nothing until you decide that it is more than that. And then you give it all the meaning it has. Changing your mind about is remains entirely possible.

"This world IS a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. And until you realize that God's Son CANNOT be crucified, this is the world you will see."

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile (hell), but perfectly capable of waking to reality."

So hell - the world - is there to POTENTIALLY tempt you, or to at least very strongly lean in the direction of being a demonstration of "real evil" and impossibilities. A picture of the opposite of God, or the anti-christ. But if you decide not to BELIEVE it, then you stop supporting it, and it loses its seeming power. Because it has no power other than what you give to it. It NEEDS your support in order to even seem to exist at all, because you are dreaming it.

This means the way "out of hell" is to learn to side with God, with heaven. To be vigilant for the Kingdom, ie to put all your focus and value and wanting and trusting onto what is actually real. Which means denying the world and not falling for temptation.

"The world you see must be denied"

"True denial is a very powerful protective device. You can and should deny any belief that error (hell) can hurt you. This kind of denial is NOT a concealment device, but a correction device. The "Right Mind" of the mentally healthy DEPENDS on it."

As you side with reality/heaven, you side against the illusion of an evil world. You become more identified with spirit and stronger in the truth. You learn that only God's truth is true and learn to better catch yourself when you fall for the potential trap of ego and external salvation.

To NOT believe that the world is REALLY hell, is to be saved from it. Because it in truth is not really anything. It is only an illusion of hell pretending to be hell. And it has no reality or truth or strength or anything at all APART from what you give it. Apart from your wishes. Yet if you choose to believe in it, you will become very confused and lost and deceived.

It's like a world of smoke and mirrors which can do nothing unless you give it your faith. And by doing so you go into it and become confused. To get out of it you literally have to learn to say NO to everything the world says is happening or possible, and say YES to everything that God says is possible. Ultimately, ONLY God is possible, and the world CANNOT exist at all.

The simple recognition that only the truth is true, is the culmination of a process of purification which leads to the atonement, and to enlightenment. It is the simple recognition that hell is nothing and there is nothing in it that you want, and therefore nothing in it can tempt you or hurt you in any way.

You are done with your window shopping for death's costumes and now are ready to move on to reality and to eternal life.

The authority problem is an issue of authorship, power, and causality. ie, who is the author? Who caused? Who has the power to do so? Why has the authority to decide what the truth is?

God is the primary authority who has the power and is the cause of His creations. When he creates his children in Heaven he uses his authority to do so. But he also extends His authority to them, giving them their own true authority, which means they too now have the authority and power to create - to author. It is because souls have authority that they are co-creators with God. Every Son of God has authority and power because God is in them.

"Souls were given their own true authorship"

The problem came in the separation idea, where souls attempted to be the author of God. Simultaneously they attempted to deny that God is the author of them. And therefore that the author of themselves is anonymous or unknown.

This then opened up the possibility for souls to believe that they could invent their own definition of God, their own definition of truth, their own definition of who or what authored them. And so they themselves were now attempting to be the one to define their own selves, as though they had authored themselves and could determine what they are. Or to put it another way, they wanted to be God and to change, cause, or alter God, which is the idea of sin.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

By denying the author of you (God), you invented an author of yourself, by yourself, and thus found yourself in a kind of split minded state of being under the power of a made-up false God, while also attempting to BE a false God. This all hinges on the belief that you can author God, can cause God, can change reality, and therefore have power over Him. It's an attempt to establish what the truth is, to decide what it is and to use this power to redefine or deny God's truth.

"First, the assumption is implicit that what God has Created can be changed by the mind of Man.

Second, the concept that what is perfect can be rendered imperfect (or wanting) is intruded.

Third, the belief that man can distort the Creations of God (including himself) has arisen, and is tolerated.

Fourth, that since man can create himself, the direction of his own creation is up to him."

You then form this ego viewpoint that you are God, you have power over God, you are the author of yourself, you don't need God, you don't derive from God, you are not like God (or yourself), and you can "make up" or invent whatever you think you want to be. This also then positions you as believing you are an authority, for whom there is no higher authority. Which means you are now unwilling to accept or share God's truth, mind, or will, and have "gone rogue".

By trying to be an authority over God, who is the authority over you, you enter into level confusion. You who are an effect of God, authored by God, deny this inheritance and claim to be able to cause/author God. You are now like a resistant child who doesn't want to cooperate and is digging in its heels with a superiority/inferiority complex.

This level confusion forms the root basis for the entire ego thought system, which is entirely level confused, is infused with the authority problem throughout, and leads to the making of a world in which you play God. "The world was made as a place where God could enter not", SO THAT you could be God without God in this world and try prove your authority does not come from Him.

As "children without a father" (the separation between Father and Son, Cause and Effect), we now act as if we're God in this world, a gatekeeper, a definer of truth, he through whom all things must be approved and agreed if they are to be "authorized." We attempt to define our own self, to establish our own truth, to invent worlds, to make-believe stuff into reality.

We're then busy not listening to God, not receiving, denying inheritance, rejecting guidance, wanting to be right, and are so in denial that we have trouble being willing to accept correction.

You can see this in anyone who is doing A Course in Miracles, and indeed everyone else. The attempt to be God. Nothing is authorized or approved unless it is cleared by us. Nothing is allowed to be agreed to as "the truth" unless we say so. We have to be the one to figure everything out on our own. We are unwilling to be mistaken because our reliance on our own self and abilities is too high. We depend on our belief that we are so accomplished and important and authoritative that anything challenging our self-defined truth is rejected.

This also leads to a kind of maniacal, tyrannical, domineering, resistant, stubborn, power-hungry, competitive, war-mongering, intimidating nature. These are all forms of artificial authority. They are all based on the belief in a lack of authority and insecurity. They all require a lot of reinforcement, and in the worst examples produce a desire to literally force others to comply with one's wishes. You can see this in leaders of some countries for example, in murderers, and in those who project and scapegoat and blame.

As far as A Course in Miracles is concerned, we come to it with an authority problem. We come to the truth with this egotism of self-centered "I must control", "I am right", "it's not true unless I say it is" kind of approach. And this also means initially that we will attempt to change the course to make it match what we want the truth to be.

We think we have more authority than someone who has accepted that God is their author, such as Jesus, and who has authored the Course from his position of true authority. This doesn't mean that Jesus has authority OVER us. He is an equal. He temporarily is like an older brother due to his acceptance OF authority and the reclaiming of his TRUE authority and power. But this does not mean he aims to force or dominate.

God similarly is not forceful ("God does not coerce" "even God would not go against your will"), and His authority isn't a domineering tyrannical rulership of forced control, but the ego cannot help but fear this authority. It reads into it its own authority problem and sees it as a threat, or as an attempt to have power over you. There will then ensue a power struggle for dominance, for who is right, between you and what the truth says is true.

This usually leads to a tremendous amount of attempts to redefine the meaning of the truth. New ideas which seem to threaten one's God complex will be frowned upon or treated suspiciously. We will try to change the truth and the course to fit whatever we believe is true already. We might though gradually become willing to surrender and let go of this need to have authority over true authority.

What we find in the Course is an expression from a Master who has authority and knows the truth. Ego doesn't like this. It wants to be the gatekeeper through which all things must be approved otherwise they are considered false. We have to become willing to surrender this position and becoming open to receiving a truth which may contradict our beliefs. And that means a willingness to be mistaken, not just about what we've concluded but even that we are in a position TO define what God's truth is.

Basically we're being exposed to God's truth and authorship, while believing we are the truth and authorship of ourselves. Believing we don't need God or his stupid truth. So there's going to be a tug of war on our part. There's going to be resistance. But ultimately we need to shift from trying to be the one who defines the truth, to being one who accepts HIS truth.

To do this is an act of surrender, and the development of trust. A willingness to be mistaken. An openness to BE taught. To be a student. To learn of Him. To ALLOW His truth to become the authority. To align with God's will. To surrender the ego and let go of being right. It means regarding the Course's truth as FIXED TRUTH, meaning that YOU are the one who needs to adjust to correlate to it, rather than IT being the one to change. It means TRUSTING Jesus's words. If HE says something is true, YOU need to accept it, even if that means letting go of beliefs which say the opposite. Without this trust there is no willingness to allow Jesus to be your teacher, or to accept the truth of God.

This is where you become humble. This is where you surrender the fight. This is where you are willing to let God tell you of Himself. This is where you learn to receive love. This is where you let go of controlling yourself, your life, and others. It's where you become willing to do God's will. To set aside your attempts to oppose His guidance. To hand over authority to your soul, receiving its truth from God. Where you plug your mind back into spirit and acknowledge that God is your father again. That you have no other God's. That you are open to receive your inheritance and recognize yourself as God created you.

It entails allowing God to be the one who has defined who and what you are. To recognize you cannot and have no changed yourself. That you have never sinned because you did not cause God and have no desire to do so. To realize you must still be as God defines you to be. AND this does not mean, as it does to the ego, that you have to merely begrudgingly cooperate "against your will". We have to unlearn the belief that God is trying to force us, require us, or manipulate us. We have to learn he does not have an ulterior motive or that he's trying to dominate.

We can only come to God through our own free will. It entails a willingness to accept God's truth is the only truth. That it offers you an extraordinary inheritance, freedom, power and joy. That doing God's will will make you happy. That forgiveness offers everything you want. And this all requires you to trust God and surrender your self-authoring control issues. If you suspect God of trying to force you to do something you don't want, it's because you are forcing yourself and others against their free will. We have to re-learn that God can be trusted, and that He still loves us.

Upon relinquishing false authority, or rather, an attempt to have authority without or against God, as a rebellious nature which seems to throw yourself into hell, we can resume our TRUE authority as co-creators, with the power TO create, to ADD TO the Kingdom, and to Create WITH God USING His power which He has shared with us in our own creation. We now happily and willingly resume the extension of God's spirit to increase our joy and to fulfill our function. God knows what's best for us.

A willingness to accept God's authority of us doesn't necessarily mean having to accept that you are under coercion. "God does not coerce." God has granted you free will and co-creatorship. He wants to create WITH you. Through you.

It also doesn't mean you have no power or no authority. The Sons of God have authority over all illusions. They also have authorship, shared with each other and with God, of their creations, to and through whom they extend their authority from God. God is not trying to take your power away. He's trying to give it back to you. It's just that He wants your power to the be the power HE gave you. He wants your truth to be the truth HE established in you, which is true of you. He wants you to let go of the truths you invented and to allow His truth to be your truth. In this way, you reclaim your inheritance of truth from Him.

This means that as you become more truthful, opening up to receive truth FROM Him, you put aside your OWN opinion. You let go of the truths you invented to replace his. You become a messenger of His truth, an extender and sharer. You now become authoritative in His truth, able to express it, but this truth didn't come from you. It is not OF you.

This means that while you are being authoritative, you also recognize that the truth you express is not "your own". We are not accustomed to the idea that someone's statements of truth are not necessarily THEIRS alone. That what they are saying has been inherited FROM another source, and is not their own opinion. We have to separate out the truth we share, from the messenger.

Just because you communicate this truth to others doesn't mean it is your OPINION. Having authority does not mean you are trying to be right, if it is based on truth inherited from God. When you have transitioned from being an inventor of truth, to being a relay or medium through which trust extends, you become a PART OF the Kingdom, a representative of God's authority, a way for His truth to transfer and extend to others. You have the truth, but you did not create the truth. The power of your word has the power of God in it, but you did not give it this power. As a representative of God, your truth also is His.

The light in you is what God put there. He shared His will with you in your Creation. He gave you his power. He put authority into you. He created you with His truth. And he etablished your permanence by knowing you forever. Everything you really are has been defined by Him, sustained by Him, and kept safe by Him.

You are worthy because He says you are. You are permanently at peace because He says you are. You are free to love and create because He says you are. What you are you cannot define. All you can do is accept and rejoice that He created you good and you are perfect and happy in the function He gave you. And by simply being true to yourself and natural in your expression, you are a perfect child of God, created to create the perfect.

Accepting your function is accepting God's authority. Having authorship by God does not make you a slave. You are an author, and you do have creations. But these creations were not created WITHOUT Him, or using anything not OF Him. Of yourself you are nothing, because you are not of yourself. You are not from yourself. But you DO have power, shared with Him, because He put it there. You are the medium through which this power can extend, per your free will. And when you will in accord with God's will, the power of God moves through you, with you.

"The power of God, and NOT of you, engenders miracles. The miracle ITSELF is but the witness that you HAVE the power of God in you."

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power. The image you made of yourself has none. The Holy Spirit knows the truth about you. The image you made does not. Yet, despite its obvious and complete ignorance, this image assumes it knows all things because you have given that belief to it. Such is your teaching, and the teaching of the world that was made to uphold it."

"I am forever an effect of God."

"In the Creation, God projected his Creative Ability out of Himself toward the Souls which He created, and also imbued them with the same loving wish (or will) to create."

"The Soul, because of its own likeness to its Creator, is creative. No Child of God is capable of losing this ability, because it is inherent in what he IS."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world." "Do His works."

"I am the model for rebirth, but rebirth itself is merely the dawning on your minds of what is already in them. God placed it there Himself, and so it is true forever."

"For no one can forget what God Himself placedin his memory. You can DENY it, but you cannot LOSE it."

"The communication link which God Himself placed within you, joining your minds with His, CANNOT be broken."

"His is the ONLY Fatherhood, and it is yours only because HE has given it to you."

"Thus the Son gives fatherhood to his Creator, and RECEIVES the gift that he has given Him."

All credit goes to God for what you are and what is in you. Without Him you are nothing. All credit goes to God AND to you and your brothers for what you express TOGETHER in co-creatorship and joint power.

Without an acknowledgement of God's power, you have none. By acknowledging it, it becomes yours. And so long as you remain plugged into His power supply, the Power of God is in you and is yours to extend with Him. Through His power, you work miracles. The power, peace, joy and love of God is your natural inheritance, and yours to pass on to the children of your will.

Here a beautiful and inspiring collection of short quotes all to do with going BEYOND. Beyond the body, beyond appearances, beyond forms, beyond sin, beyond the world. This is the goal of the course. To return home to Heaven.

"Beyond all idols stands his holy will to be but what he is."

"Beyond the body"

"Beyond this world there is a world I want. I choose to see that world instead of this, For here is nothing that I really want."

"You can only GO BEYOND it, and look back from a point where SANITY exists, and SEE THE CONTRAST."

"It must reach out beyond itself, as you reached out beyond the body to LET yourselves be joined."

"Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them."

"Understanding IS beyond perception, because it introduces meaning. But it is below knowledge, even though it can grow TOWARDS it."

"Not yet is Heaven quite remembered, for the purpose of forgiveness still remains. Yet everyone is certain he will go beyond forgiveness, and he but remains until it is made perfect in himself."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception."

"Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look beyond them, understanding what they are, not what they would maintain."

"We go beyond the veil of fear, lighting each other's way. The holiness that leads us is WITHIN us, as is our home."

"I DO go before you, because I am beyond the ego. Reach therefore for my hand because you want to transcend the ego."

"Appearances deceive but can be changed. Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all. And if you fail to see beyond appearances, you ARE deceived. For everything you see will change, and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. Reality is thus reduced to form, and capable of change. Reality is changeless. It is this that makes it real, and keeps it separate from all appearances. It must transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

"Your brother has a changelessness in him beyond appearance and deception both. It is obscured by changing views of him which you PERCEIVE as his reality."

"Each speaks in time of what is far beyond it. Two voices, raised together, call to the hearts of everyone, and let them beat as one."

"And It must use all learning to transfer illusions TO the truth, taking all FALSE ideas of what you are, and leading you BEYOND them to the truth that IS beyond them."

"Beyond the body, beyond the sun and stars, past everything you see and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes. "

"Your destiny and purpose are far beyond them, in the clean place where littleness does not exist."

"You whose hands are joined have begun to reach BEYOND the body, but NOT outside yourselves, to reach your shared identity TOGETHER."

"Desiring to look upon their brothers in holiness, the power of belief and faith goes far beyond the body, SUPPORTING vision, not obstructing it."

"ITS effects are changelessly eternal, BEYOND fear, and PAST the world of sin entirely. "

"NOTHING beyond yourself can make you fearful or loving, because nothing IS beyond you."

"One instant of complete belief in this, and you will go beyond belief to Certainty."

"The holy instant's radiance will light YOUR eyes, and give them sight to see beyond ALL suffering, and see Christ's Face INSTEAD."

"Who stands before a lifeless image when a step away the Holy of the Holies opens up an ancient door that leads beyond the world? You are a stranger here."

"Do not defend this senseless dream, in which God is bereft of what He loves, and you remain beyond salvation."

"Truth is so far beyond time, that ALL of it happens at once. For as it was created one, so its oneness depends not on time at all."

"Sink deep into the peace that waits for you beyond the frantic, riotous thoughts and sounds and sights of this insane world. You do not live there."

"He will enable you to go far beyond the healing YOU would undertake, for beside your small willingness to make whole He will lay His Own COMPLETE Will and make YOURS whole. What can the Son of God NOT accomplish with the Fatherhood of God in him? "

"And now the mind returns to its Creator; the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all."

"But from within me it will reach beyond, and everything I see will but reflect the light that shines in me and in itself. "

"He leads you steadily along the path of freedom, teaching you how to disregard, or look beyond everything that would hold you back."

"It is this that makes it holy and beyond the world. It is its holiness that points to God. It is its holiness that makes you safe."

"This thought has power to wake the sleeping truth in you, whose vision sees beyond appearances to that same truth in everyone and everything there is."

"Now he seeks to go beyond them, recognizing that another dream would offer nothing more than all the others. Dreams are one to him."

"The universe beyond the sun and stars, and all the thoughts of which you can conceive, belong to you."

"How far beyond this world my Self must be, and yet how near to me and close to God!"

"If they understood what is beyond them, they would not BE handicapped. You do NOT know the meaning of love, and this IS your handicap."

"Then turn to one who laid all limits by, and went beyond the farthest reach of learning. He will take you with him, for he did not go alone."

"No-one but must accept this thought as true, if he would leave this world behind and soar beyond its petty scope and little ways."

"Who, then, can say which one can be healed of what, and what must remain beyond God's power to forgive?This is insanity indeed.It is not up to God's teachers"

"Look, then, BEYOND error, and do not let your perception rest UPON it, for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. "

"Otherwise, you still are free to choose a goal that lies beyond the world and every worldly thought, and one which comes to you from an idea relinquished yet remembered, old yet new; an echo of a heritage forgot, yet holding everything you really want."

"He is here because He wills to be, and what He wills is present now beyond the reach of time."

"He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle Face of Christ in all of them."

"But what is that to those who have been given one true relationship, BEYOND the body? Can they be long held back from looking on the face of Christ?"

"Only joy increases forever. Joy and Eternity are INSEPARABLE. God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit. "

"When truth has come it harbors in its wings the gift of perfect constancy, and love which does not falter in the face of pain but looks beyond it, steadily and sure."

"It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did not do them."

"What lies beyond them cannot BE attacked."

"For His answer is the reference point BEYOND delusions, from which you can look back on them, and see them as insane."

"It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never died, but has been kept obscure."

"They choose for all mankind; for all the world and all things in it; for the unchanging and unchangeable beyond appearances; and for the Son of God and his Creator. "

"For power is not seeming strength, and truth is beyond a semblance of any kind."

"NOTHING is beyond His will for you. But signify your will to remember Him, and behold! He will give you everything but for your asking."

"The picture of light, in clear-cut and unmistakable contrast, is transformed into what lies BEYOND the picture."

"Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness. We are creation; we the Sons of God."

"Its holy purpose stands beyond your little range. When vision has shown you the holiness that lights up the world, you will understand today s idea perfectly."

"The power set in you, in whom the Holy Spirit's goal has been established, is so far beyond your little conception of the infinite, that you have no idea how great the strength that goes with you."

"Yet, for all its might, so great it reaches past the stars and to the universe that lies beyond them, your little faithlessness can make IT useless, if you would use the faithlessness instead. "

"For the words we use are mighty, and they need no thoughts beyond themselves to change the mind of him who uses them."

"You will go far beyond it. Our direction is toward perfect safety and perfect peace."

"Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. "

"Nothing will be beyond your healing power, because nothing will be denied your simple request."

"Today we will make our first real attempt to get past this dark and heavy cloud, and to go through it to the light beyond."

"The mind that serves the Holy Spirit is unlimited forever, in all ways, beyond the laws of time and space, unbound by any preconceptions, and with strength and power to do whatever it is asked."

"Knowledge is far beyond your individual concern. You who are part of it, and all of it, need only realize that it is of the Father, NOT of you."

"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."

"Today's exercises are an attempt to go beyond these differences in appearance, and recognize a common content where it exists in truth."

"From you salvation radiates with gifts beyond all measure, given and returned. To you, the giver of the gift, does God Himself give thanks."

"And it is given us to look past death and see the light beyond."

"It is the world s most lofty aspiration, for it leads beyond the world entirely."

"It is past the clouds, and in the light beyond. Remember that you will have to go through the clouds before you can reach the light."

"Help him go in peace beyond it, with the light of his own innocence lighting his way to his redemption and release."

"But it begins within the world perceived as different, and leading from this fresh perception to the gate of Heaven and the way beyond."

"Grace is not given to a BODY, but to a MIND. And the mind that RECEIVES it, looks INSTANTLY beyond the body, and sees the holy place where IT was healed."

"Far beyond his dreams is his reality. But he must learn he is a Savior first, before he can remember what he is. And he must save who would BE saved."

"There is no Thought of God that does not go with you to help you reach that instant, and to go beyond it quickly, surely and forever."

"Accept these little gifts of thanks from us, as through Christ's vision we behold a world beyond the one we made, and take that world to be the full replacement of our own."

"You have many times been urged to look beyond the body, for its sight presents the symbol of love s "enemy" Christ s vision does not see."

"And so they need a teacher who perceives their madness, but who still can look beyond illusion to the simple truth in them."

"We go beyond appearances today, and reach the source of healing from which nothing is exempt. "

"The Creator of life, the Source of everything that lives, the Father of the Universe, and of the Universe of universes, and of everything that lies even BEYOND them, would you remember."

"The fourth obstacle to be surmounted, hangs like a heavy veil before the face of Christ. Yet as His face rises beyond it, shining with joy because He is in His Father's Love, peace will lightly brush the veil aside and run to meet Him, and to JOIN with Him at last."

"From BEYOND each of these OBSTACLES to love, Love Itself has called, and each has been surmounted by the power of the attraction of what lies BEYOND. Your WANTING fear SEEMED to be holding them in place. Yet when you heard the voice of love BEYOND them, you answered, and they disappeared."

"No mad desire, no trivial impulse to forget again, no stab of fear, nor the cold sweat of seeming death, CAN stand against your will. And what attracts you from BEYOND the veil, is also deep WITHIN you, unseparated from it, and COMPLETELY One. "

"Communion is another kind of completion, which goes beyond guilt BECAUSE it goes beyond the body."

"This One can teach you how to look on time differently and to see BEYOND it. But NOT while you believe in sin."

There is no real evil in God's reality so it does not really exist.

But evil is an illusion of something being true that isn't. It's what you get when reality is confused with illusions, and the truth is confused with what is false. Everything becomes switched around. You mistake an illusory thing for a real thing. You think stuff is happening that isn't. You think you can do things that you can't. And you become very confused.

The end result of the whole ego thought system, of its whole process of descent into hell, is total confusion.

"The Kingdom is the result of premises, as much as this world is. You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING. "

When you are totally confused about everything, you have completely mis-identified what everything is. You have no clue what is really real any more. You have no idea of what to trust. There is no sense of actual truth, no sense of reality or sanity. There's a total breakdown of all sense and reason.

A person in this state is essentially highly insane, highly confused, hallucinating, completely out of their mind, and now believes that everything is what it is not. For example death is now seen as eternal life. Heaven is believed to be hell and hell is heaven. Sickness is saving your life. Murder is seen as justified forgiveness. Attack is considered deserved. Hate is now love. And you believe you will find peace by dying.

Such a state of mind is truly what we might call evil. It isn't real evil or absolute evil. But it has all the hallmarks. It's so twisted and backwards. And if a person is close to this state, they WILL likely act in what we call evil ways.

There is such confusion and insanity that the person is likely to become murderous, but at the same time as believing they are not even remotely murderous. They are likely to attack on a whim, become vicious, and vengeful. They will attempt to tempt everyone. They will be deceptive and full of lies. They will undermine and sabotage. They will happily sin against anything. They will celebrate the sacrifice of innocence and life. And they will become lost in the body.

They will think they are the body and develop very twisted special relationships, which ultimately become sick and muderous. They will use people, control people, imprison people and kill people, but not because they think this is what they are doing, they will think they are saving them, helping them, or are justified because of what the person is doing to them. They see themselves as justified victims who are not even remotely victimizing, but yet are victimizers. They may even think they are saving everyone by destroying others.

This is what we call evil or "satanic". It's simply the backwards and totally confused failure to recognize reality and truth. It's the opposite of being close to God. And it signifies such mental illness that love is blotted out. It is a dark and twisted state of mind, resulting in literal states of what we would commonly call mental illness and insanity. And in this state of mind a person seeks to destroy in order to save.

There is so much separation from others that the person is cut off and special, lacking all empathy and sense of connection, lacking all joining, alone and isolated. There is no sharing. There is internal competition between all those who are in a similar boat, because they all want to be special and to be God and have power over everything else. It's everyone for themselves, in a free-for-all of selfishness and conflict. It's a state of war and a state of self attack.

We would consider this "evil" because a person in this state would indeed come across as corrupt, deceptive, untrustworthy, dangerous, sinful, indulgent, selfish, vengeful, and all the qualities that you might associate with some kind of "devil". This so-called "devil" is simply a state of being very confused about what is true.

And the person in this state is VERY mistaken. And remember that mistakes are not sins, they are errors, which call for forgiveness, not punishment. Which means that evil must be forgiven. It must be recognized as a call for love. It must be recognized as a state that needs healing and is just a state of denial, confusion, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, desperation, loss and unconsciousness. The evil person needs love as much as anyone does, and is perhaps even more in need than most.

People who are confused, who thus believe in separation from God, and in sin and death and guilt and fear, are "evil". But they are not REALLY evil, because this evil is nothing more than being very mistaken. These people have mental illness and need correction. They are calling out for love. Which is why God has provided Love in response to heal them and guide them back to sanity. They believe they are really evil, but they aren't. They believe they are sinful monsters, but they aren't.

Everyone deserves forgiveness no matter how evil they may appear to be, because everyone is still a child of God whose REALITY is still perfect innocence and truth. "The ego" is just another word for the idea of "the devil". It's not a real entity, or anything other than a label for insanity. When someone is possessed of the devil they are merely confused and are in the ego.

These mental illnesses were misunderstood and labeled as "devils". The ego in people CAN become very "evil" and vicious, totally backwards and deranged. It can be very twisted. Look at the murderous infectious shit it's done in the world. But it isn't real and it can be undone.

Those who are mentally ill therefore are trying to be evil, in an evil dream. They also want to possess and take from everyone else what they think they lack, being in a state of emptiness and desperation. They see scarcity and danger and fear everywhere, and try to destroy others to take from them what they think is theirs.

They would try to "possess your soul", or have you trade in your soul in some kind of bargain. And ultimately they would call for sacrifice in an offering to a false God that wants even its followers to die. They worship false idols and participate in meaningless magical rituals which attempt to curse and destroy and control. They hide in the darkness and remain in denial, unwilling to look at their belief in their own sinfulness.

They see themselves as innocent and just, yet they are bitter and corrupt. And they cannot remember what love is or who the really are. To them, God and love have become enemies to be destroyed, mistreated, unwanted and undeserved. The Holy Spirit becomes a threat, Jesus is seen as evil, and God Himself is considered blasphemous.

This is nothing but a dream of insanity, in a world made by those driven mad by guilt. There is no real guilt and no world and no evil. Only the good exists. Only God's Kingdom is true.

Here is what Jesus says:

"The "devil" is a frightening concept because he seems to be extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of His creations. The devil deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms in which everything is in direct opposition to God. Yet he attracts men rather than repels them, and they are willing to "sell" him their souls in return for gifts of no real worth. This makes absolutely no sense."

"The mind can make the belief in separation very real and very fearful, and this belief is the "devil." It is powerful, active, destructive and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Look at your life and see what the devil has made. But realize that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation is a lie. Your creation by God is the only Foundation that cannot be shaken, because the light is in it. Your starting point is truth, and you must return to your Beginning. Much has been seen since then, but nothing has really happened. Your Self is still in peace, even though your mind is in conflict. You have not yet gone back far enough, and that is why you become so fearful. As you approach the Beginning, you feel the fear of the destruction of your thought system upon you as if it were the fear of death. There is no death, but there is a belief in death."

Let's start with a simple fact, "an opposite to God does not exist." God is everything, and the opposite of everything is nothing. Nothingness DOES NOT exist. You cannot go there, experience it, live in it, or have it. There is no nothing.

However, in the separation, the tiny mad idea asserted that THERE IS an opposite to God. It was an attempt to believe that you CAN go into a nothingness, experience it as if it exists, and live in it. This produced a fictional world, or "lack of God", which the mind believes really exists. Believing this is obviously a mistake.

So we've now "made a world", whose nature is opposite to God's nature in every way, and which does NOT really exist because it's impossible, but the mind BELIEVES that it does. And whatever you believe in your mind will accept as "reality".

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

This world also comprises planet Earth.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made " .... "and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way"

Every single attribute of God is opposed. Whatever God is NOT, this second world seems to BE. God is possible, the world is impossible. God is permanent, the world is temporary. God is changeless, the world can only change. God is immortal, the world dies. God includes, the world excludes. God loves, the world lacks love. God shares in oneness, the world separates and fragments.

So this sort of "fiction of a world", an assertion that an opposite to God exists, seems to have properties which are totally opposite to God's nature. A world of limitations, suffering, sickness and death. A world of opposition and conflict, of war and attack. This is the physical world, including the Earth and the galaxies etc. It is space and time.

By believing that an opposite to God does exist, we have thus made a world which "depicts" what it might be like IF that opposite really existed. As if nothingness, in all its ways, were something to be experienced. But it is still NOT really total nothingness itself, because that totally does not exist.

"Actual nothingness" WOULD be the total extermination of God and his creations. It would be a complete lack of existence, a total negation of life, an absolute permanent end to creation, and oblivion. We could say that the proper name for that is the idea of "hell." A true opposite to heaven.

One of the things that happens when you oppose God, is you oppose what is true. You make out that what is true is false. You also make out that what is false is true. You take what does not exist and believe it exists. You take what does exist and try to kill it off. As such the true and the false become SWAPPED, which results in total confusion and insanity.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

This total confusion is part of the state of mind of believing in being separate, ie opposite to God. It is a total lack of recognition of what anything actually IS, and so is out of touch with reality, and is therefore insane. This is what comes from the "mad" idea. A mad world in which everything is nonsense.

The mind that believes that separation is possible, is insane. It forms what we call "the ego", which is really just the belief in nothing. A belief in total opposition to God. When mind rejects all truth and asserts everything that's false, it becomes very "twisted". This twistedness is what we might call evil. This belief in God's opposite becomes something along the lines of "satanic" or "devil worship" or "death worship."

"The denial of God is the ego's religion."

Evil is the state of mind in which the truth is completely denied and opposed. A mind that does not want God and sees God as evil. Such a mind is very very confused. It sees death as life, separation as joining, hell as heaven, heaven as hell, conflict as resolution, attack as healing, guilt as forgiveness, and punishment as atonement.

Such a mind is "sick", in every sense of the word. This is extended into what we would call depraved, disgusting, murderous, torturous, manipulative, hateful, vengeful, deceitful, etc. All these characteristics arise from opposing God's nature, leading to a seemingly "evil" sense of identity (lack of) and a completely backwards and distorted attitude. "The evil self I made."

"The devil is a frightening concept ONLY because he is thought of as extremely powerful and extremely active. He is perceived as a force in combat with God, battling Him for possession of Souls. He deceives by lies, and builds kingdoms of his own, in which everything is in direct opposition to God."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made."

This ego projects itself ONTO the "believed in" world, the world that was made in an attempt to oppose God. The world is a void and an emptiness and a lack, so it has no inherent meaning. Our mind has to give it meaning. Earth can thus reflect back to us, like a mirror, whatever meaning we GIVE to it, regardless of whether that meaning is unholy or holy.

"Earth can reflect heaven or hell, and always as you wish."

When ego, whose nature is THE SAME as the nature of nothingness, and THE SAME as the nature of physical world, projects onto the physical world, it EMPHASIZES and AMPLIFIES its nature. It hones in on separations, differences, appearances, inequalities, conflicts and attacks. It takes sides, pitting one part against another. It reduces identity to physical form ie bodies, and completely shuts out and kind of abstract level of mind.

The ego thus "projects hell" onto the Earth, and then perceives it IN the Earth. Earth itself isn't hell, but it is an illusion of or FORM of hell. It symbolizes hell in its form and function, but isn't inherently anything - good or bad. Ego MAKES it bad or evil, turning it into an experience of hell, psychological hell, by USING it to BELIEVE IN hell.

So the belief in the mind that believes that an opposite to God IS REAL, and does exist, and can be experienced, MAKES an otherwise neutral nothing illusion of a world into what SEEMS to be an actual existing happening world. As such in its view of this world, of Earth, the ego sees the world as actual fact, as true, as a creation, as God, as heaven, as existing, and as really being experienced.

It is this engagement with, investment in, belief in, choosing of, siding with, and USE OF the nothing world, to try to MAKE IT BE something, that converts what would BE nothing into seemingly something. It then takes on "a life of its own", the world is thought to be causal, it is now doing things to you, you are now under attack as part of it, and your whole sense of its reality blots out the mind and God.

Earth is now experienced AS hell. At first merely an empty symbolic image depicting what hell (nothingness, opposite to God) might be like, but then made vivid and meaning what it appears to be, turning it into an actual happening hell, to your mind. Now you are having a nightmare, in which an opposite to God seems to really exist, really happen to you, and really threaten your existence, robbing your peace of mind and disturbing you.

So first we make an illusory empty world which is not really anything but appears to have a form which symbolizes laws opposite to God's, then our mind turns to ego and invests it with reality, making it appear to be a living hell. Identifying AS a body puts you on the battleground, in the midst of war and chaos and conflict of forms. And everything that happens threatens your life, stresses you it, frightens you and seems unfair.

Our mind can in turn transform into thoughts of heaven, wholeness, healing and God's love. It can project this onto the neutral Earth just as the ego did. It can use the neutral Earth for a higher purpose. That higher purpose is to use it to remind you of how an opposite to God cannot exist. This projects God's actual truth onto the "opposite of God", producing a reflection of God seen "in" the world.

This also entails revealing and RECOGNIZING the nature of this world. In this recognition the world is seen only for "what it is", which is an illusion of nothing pretending to be something. It is not seen AS hell, but as a strange hell-like world that you made by mistake in your attempt to bring about God's opposite. It is seen with love, which reflects love in it, but also reveals that such a world cannot exist.

This recognition, which is enlightenment, finally perceives that this world - opposite to God - is not a real hell, real hell does not exist, only heaven exists, only heaven is reflected in it, and no longer do we need it. The world then slips away and fades into nothingness, into the idea of nothing which it came from. The idea of an opposite to God vanishes and the whole world along with it. We wake up in God, knowing as we always have that an opposite to God does not exist, and "heaven is all that remains."

"That is why the healer's prayer is, "let me know this brother as I know myself."

In truth we are all part of a collective family. It's like a kind of collective consciousness or hive mind. We each have full access to everyone and our minds are joined. Our identity is shared as the one Christ, the "one Son" of God. We share everything and are everything and have everything all at once.

This means your brother is a part of yourself. A part of your actual being and soul, a part of your identity. Not that when the two of you meet you annihilate the fact that you have your own soul and they theirs, but your souls join and merge into a oneness so deep there is no exclusion between you.

ACIM is literally trying to get us to remember that WE are shared beings. Our minds overlap. Our identity isn't supposed to be exclusive, special, isolated or different to others. There aren't supposed to be special rules that apply only to myself, or special truths that apply only to you.

We are asked to remember and re-access a shared state, a truly shared open intimate state, in which we literally experience each other as a part of ourselves. That we actually recognize and see "what I am" within other people. There is something in you and something in me which is the same one thing. And this is reflected in the Holy Spirit, who is in both our minds, keeping them joined as one.

You have to learn to recognize that other people are part of yourself. Your neighbor is you. Your friends and relatives are you. Your family and loved ones are you. Even strangers and people in far off lands are you.

In order to tap into this unity and reunite with yourself and with others, with whom you have been estranged and at war, it requires you to become more inclusive. It also requires you to expand your sense of identity - the sense of who you are, what you are, what is included in yourself, and where the boundaries of your identity are. In fact, ultimately you are the whole universe.

When the boundaries of your identity stop at the body, or the identity of others is confined to a physical form, you are in separation. If mind believes and perceives itself to be excluded from other minds by a body separation-device, it does not know itself. To regard others as "not me" is to regard yourself as "not you". You do not know yourself in truth when you do not know your brother IS yourself.

We have to expand our minds, expand our sense of self, expand our idea of what is included within ourselves. Only if your brother's interests become part of your own can you have shared interests. And only when they are part of you will you value them as much as yourself.

Miracles require a joining of minds, a reuniting with a brother, a shared identity, an openness and intimacy of relationship. If you think that two bodies being together is intimate, you have not seen anything yet. To transcend bodies and join in mind in total absorption and merging and oneness is an intimacy beyond any physical contact you can ever imagine. And that is a holy relationship and the way to work miracles.

Jesus is asking us to love ALL BEINGS. The only way to love all beings truly is to include and welcome them into yourself, to recognize and actually experience that they are a part of yourself, and know them as part of you. It is not merely a matter of trying to love some strange person that you don't really know. It is more a matter of merging with them so fully that they are literally a part of you and you love them because they are in no way rejected from your own being.

Total union is the way to know who they really are. Total union is the only way to know who you really are. There is a part of you in them. If you do not love that part of you that is in them, you do not love all of yourself. Loving everyone as a part of yourself incorporates and integrates them into yourself, and you then love them as you love yourself. And you love yourself because you love everyone who is one with you. This is the only path to resurrection, to atonement, to miracles, and to ascension.

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself."

"You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole."

"The law of Creation is that you love your creations as yourself, BECAUSE THEY ARE PART OF YOU."

"The message and the messenger ARE one. And you MUST see your brother as yourself."

"It is no dream to love your brother as yourself. Nor is your holy relationship a dream."

"When you have seen your brothers as yourself, you will be RELEASED to knowledge, having learned to FREE yourself, of Him who knows of freedom."

"And would He give a Brother unto you except he be as perfect as yourself, and just as like to Him in holiness as YOU must be?"

"But love EVERYTHING He created, of which YOU are part, or you cannot learn of His peace and accept His gift FOR yourself and AS yourself. You CANNOT know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created LIKE you."

"Look at your holy brother, sinless as yourself, and let him LEAD you there."

"It is the gracious acknowledgment of everyone as a Son of your most loving Father, loved by Him like you, and therefore loved by you as yourself. It is HIS Love that joins you, and FOR His Love, you would keep no-one separate from YOURS."

"For sin would keep you separate, but your Redeemer would have you look upon each other as yourself."

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself. Answer HIS call for love, and YOURS is answered. Healing is the love of Christ for His Father, and for HIMSELF."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self."

"For he is part of me and I of him, and we are part of You Who are our Source, eternally united in Your Love; eternally the holy Son of God."

"Fail not your brothers, or you fail yourself. Look lovingly on them that they may know that they are part of you and you of them."

"If your brothers ARE part of you, will you ACCEPT them?"

"If what you do to my brother you do to me, and if you do everything for yourself because we are PART of you, everything WE do belongs to you as well. Every Soul God created is part of you, and shares His glory WITH you."

"If you unite with anyone in prayer, you make him part of you."

"Every altar to God is part of your Soul, because the Light He created is One with Him. Would you cut a brother off from the Light that is yours?"

"If your brothers are part of YOU, and you blame THEM for your deprivation, you ARE blaming yourself. And you cannot blame yourself WITHOUT blaming them."

"The beautiful relationship you have with all your brothers is a part of you BECAUSE it is a part of God Himself."

"A holy relationship is one in which you join with what IS part of you in TRUTH."

(rejection of) ... "This is your brother, focus of your hate, unworthy to be part of you, and thus OUTSIDE your self, the other half, which is denied."

"By accepting the Atonement for YOURSELF, you are deciding AGAINST the belief that you can BE alone, thus dispelling the idea of separation and affirming your true identification with the whole Kingdom as literally PART OF YOU."

"And thus IS every living thing a part of you as of Himself."

"Your teaching has already DONE this, for the Holy Spirit is PART OF YOU."

"But see the love of God in you, and you will see it everywhere because it IS everywhere. See His abundance in everyone, and you will know that you are in Him WITH them. They are part of you as you are part of God. YOU are as lonely without understanding this as God Himself is lonely when His Sons do not know Him."

"He is in need of your acceptance of himself as part of you, as you for his."

"you will realize that it is a sudden UNawareness of the body, and a joining of your self and SOMETHING ELSE, in which your mind ENLARGES to encompass it. It becomes PART of you, as you UNITE with it. And BOTH become whole, as NEITHER is perceived as separate."

"Brother, we heal together as we live together, and love together. Be not deceived in God's Son, for he is one with himself, and One with his Father."

When I was trying to understand the true nature of oneness as given in ACIM, Jesus kept substituting the word "sharing". I didn't at first understand why that would be the same thing, but now I do.

We're told first of all that...

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it."

If you think on this, you'll realize why. God is infinite and unlimited. He is everywhere. He is the first cause and the first and only whole. He is the whole of everything. There is nowhere else unoccupied to put anything new. God cannot create anything unlike himself that we might call "different". And everything that exists already exists forever.

On those terms, it should be IMPOSSIBLE for God to create anything anywhere. He is already the "one whole". He is already perfect and complete. Nothing can be added to that, or can it?

There is a clause, you see, which Jesus gives - "EXCEPT by sharing it."

IF God were to SHARE himself, this bypasses the initial rules of reality and of wholeness, and allows an "increase" to occur. God can ADD something, provided that it obeys the rules of sharing, and doesn't violate any of the previously mention rules about everything existing already.

To be shared, something has to inherit ALL of what exists already. It cannot have anything new or anything unlike what already exists. What exists has to be entirely inherited as its own and as itself. What it has, it has to receive from God. It has to receive ALL of God. AND it has to give everything it has received.

In effect, God is capable of "adding sharers" within himself. These sharers MUST have a nature like his own of being fully wiling to SHARE everything they have and are.

They have FULL access to everything, at the same time as God does. How is THAT possible? You might think that if a created being has everything, this deprives God of everything. Or that only one of them can have everything at a given time. As if a son and a father are in competition. But in reality it is possible for this son to simultaneously have what the father has, and without limits, provided they SHARE IT WITH HIM.

Another way of describing this sharing is OVERLAP. The two of them are literally sharing the same space. They both have access to the same ONE WHOLE. Yet there are two of them. God has extended himself, giving all of himself fully, because that's the only way he can give. He gives ALL to FULLY create a son. And this son, IS a second being. BUT, this son can only exist so long as it SHARES all of God, sharing the SAME WHOLE at the same time.

This sharing between the two of them, is what oneness means. Oneness means direct simultaneous FULL access to the same one whole. This sharing does not allow the son of God to be "separate", in the sense of EXCLUSIVE, because any kind of exclusion is not an idea of sharing. The son is not excluded from God. The son is INCLUDED WITHIN God. He can exist BECAUSE God can share, and he can only exist SO LONG AS sharing is possible.

"real creation gives everything since it can only create like itself."

"In the state of being, the mind gives everything always."

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

If God can share himself once, ADDING a son within his own being, which shares and HOSTS him and has everything that God has, and shares the SAME ONENESS with him, there is no reason why God cannot share himself again and again and again. In fact God is unlimited in how much he can share. He can share himself INFINITELY.

"Heaven is the sum of all God's thoughts, in number infinite."

What has happened then is that God has created many "separate beings" who ARE many fully whole creations, whole and complete in and of themselves, but only because they ALSO SHARE THE ONE WHOLE. There IS one whole - which you could call oneness - but that whole IS SHARING, and HAS SHARED itself, producing many. We could almost say there are "many wholes", but each of these wholes shares the ONE whole.

This is precisely and exactly the definition of the holographic principle. In a true hologram, there are parts, and each of the parts contains THE WHOLE, and therefore IS fully whole in its own right - fully existing. But at the same time, there is only ONE ultimate whole, which each of the whole parts share and contain (host), and this produces a holographic relationship.

Holgorams SHARE a single whole with the same one whole, and yet are many. That is reality's nature. Because God is a creator and HAS created many wholes, who share the same whole. Each whole is a son of God - a soul, a member of the ONE SON, and thus the whole of the sonship - which is the whole kingdom. This is the truth in ACIM. That God has many sons who are simultaneously one because they are FULLY shared.

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." "One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"God created every mind by communicating His Mind to it, thus establishing it forever as a channel for the reception of His Mind and Will. "

This IS fundamentally different to the idea of "separate selves". A separate self is a part of the whole which DOES NOT SHARE with the rest of the whole. A separated off part. A part which does not want to share, and is therefore selfish. A part which was whole but decided to disconnect itself from wholeness. A part which now sees itself as only partly whole, partly existing, and APART from everything. This selfish self does not want to share because it is the idea of the OPPOSITE of sharing - the opposite of reality. That is what we call an ego.

God does therefore have separate sons, many creations, many minds, but at the same time they MUST share ALL of God, sharing the same one whole, which is why they are ONE. They are one AND many, just as in a hologram the many whole-containing parts are each THE same whole, even though they are many parts. This is a transcendental idea which ignores the rules of spatial separation.

These "separate sons" are not separate in the EGO sense because they are not separated by a lack of sharing. They are not SELFISH separate beings. They are SHARING separate beings. That is the ONLY difference between the nature of the Kingdom and the separation from God. In the separation all that happened was that individual SHARING beings who shared everything with each other and with God, became selfish, and tried NOT to share, thus "separating themselves off" - seemingly fragmenting away - from the holgoraphic shared union of the sonship.

Ending the separation, therefore, is actually a return to SHARING. "Atonement is a lesson in sharing." To resume relationship and communication is to return to a state in which EACH OF US SHARES EVERYTHING at the same time. Where we OVERLAP with each other. Where we return to being ONE WITH each other, sharing ONE identity as Christ, while still being many beings. It is the end of SELFISHNESS, not the end of SELF.

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

This is why the movement away from selfish egotism towards holy union and sharing, is a movement towards resumimg being a MEMBER of the sonship. It is also an EXPANSION of identity, because now a part of God which tried to see itself as NOT WHOLE, by denying the parts of itself it SHARES with others, now has to reintegrate OTHERS into itself and SHARE with them in oneness and equality. The sense of identity has to expand to INCLUDE OTHERS within itself, WITHOUT destroying the fact that God has many sons.

A return to your SOUL is a return to the sonship. "The sonship is your soul." The WHOLE sonship is your soul, while your soul is also YOUR soul. You are a part of God and all of God. You are a part of the sonship and all of the sonship. You are a part of the kingdom and all of the kingdom. You are part of heaven and all of heaven. That is the SHARED nature of reality. That is ONENESS in A Course in Miracles. It is not the end of yourself, but a return to BEING ONE WITH the father and with your brothers, SHARING everything with them forever.

"You who are host to God, are also host to THEM."

"I trust my brothers who are one with me."

"So would I look on everyone today. My brothers are Your Sons. Your Fatherhood created them, and gave them all to me as part of You and my own Self as well. Today I honor You through them, and thus I hope this day to recognize my Self." "I thank You, Father, for these holy ones who are my brothers as they are Your Sons."

"Let me remember I am one with God,

At one with all my brothers and my Self,

In everlasting holiness and peace."

"You who were prisoners in separation are now made free in Paradise. And here would I unite with you, my friends, my brothers, and my Self."

God and his Kingdom of Heaven are the truth. God's laws are the only laws. Anything which is true is true of God and his creation. There is no other truth because God's truth is absolute and all-encompassing.

In the "separation from God", we tried to make an opposite to this. We wanted to oppose the truth. The opposite of what is true, is clearly what is false. It must be false if it does not share any of the properties of what is true, and claims the exact opposite.

And so we actually made up a world, a fiction or fantasy world, which depicts things AS IF they are true, but which are inherently false. Since what is true is also what is real, and alive, the world that we tried to invent is both unreal and unalive.

It is also true that God and his truth are the only meaning. God is fully meaningful because he is fully truthful. That means he is honest, and accepts only the truth as true. He does not confuse what is true with what is false.

This also means that the world we made is meaningless, because we wanted to oppose meaningfulness. And so we made a meaningless, unreal, false, untrue, artificial world. A world which isn't really what it seems to be.

Another word for what is false, is a lie. Or we can also call it a deception. All illusory unreal things deceive because they cannot be true, but attempt to assert that they are. This effort to be something they are not, is what we call temptation. It is the temptation to believe that what is false is true, what is unreal is real, and what is impossible is possible.

This is why the world depicts a great many things which seem like they are possible, are happening, are true, are real, as if the world is even alive and existing. This cannot BE true, because the world opposes all of these things. It opposes possibility, truth, reality, and existence.

What this basically boils down to is that the world is a fiction and everything in it is impossible. It is a lie. A huge gigantic universe-sized lie. Absolutely everything in it is not true. Not one single thing that seems to be happening is happening. Not one single thing that seems possible is possible. Not one thing which seems to prove evidence that it HAS happened, has happened at all.

So now you have a world which is fundamentally a mistake. We were mistaken when we made it, because we believed the impossible was possible - in the tiny mad idea. We made it "by mistake" in the sense that we thought it could be achievable, even though it wasn't. And so all we really did was wish and dream for a world that cannot ever exist.

Ultimately then, heaven is in a state of perfection, reality and truth, wherein everything there is happening and does exist and is alive. Everything there is completely natural and permanent. There is nothing wrong with it, nothing ever goes wrong with it, and it cannot be affected or attacked by anything.

In that truth, which is the only truth, everyone is permanently safe. No one is ever really sick. No one ever dies. There is no suffering of any kind. No-one has any real unhappiness. There is no attack or war or grounds for murder. Everything is permanently perfect and everyone knows it.

So then what we have in front of our physical false faces, is a depiction of a lie, an idea of something utterly impossible, which isn't really there and isn't really happening. All the things you see in the news. All the wars and conflicts, arguments and attacks, people with sicknesses and pain, murder and deaths, and all the claims of "the proof of sin" that say "it really has happened" are entirely lies.

So yes that means that even if there seems to be a dead body laying on the ground PROVING that a murder did happen, and there is police evidence, this is STILL not true. There is not really a dead body anywhere, or even a ground. And so the world is riddled with what we call the "proof" that sin is happening all the time. The seemingly undeniable in-your-face look-at-it-and-don't-deny-it lies which are held up as victory over God and over reality.

NONE OF THIS IS REAL. IT IS ALL A LIE.

The weird thing then is that we have a reality of the Kingdom of God which is perfectly happy and joyous and filled with love and peace and celebration, in which everyone is utterly perfect and harmonious. And then we have "over there" this "picture of crucifixion" which depicts all manner of horrible nightmares and upsetting events transpiring. And only one of these can be true.

Either God's reality is true and there is no nightmare of any kind, or the world is real. Either there are only God's permanent laws, or the laws of physics are true. Either we are immortal unlimited beings or death is real. Either sickness is utterly impossible or sickness is completely happening all over the place.

This is the choice we are making all the time, between heaven or hell. It is the only choice there is. Are we going to be CONVINCED by this LIE OF A WORLD, or are we going to be convinced of the truth of heaven's reality? Is God correct, or is the ego? Is eternal life the only possibility, or is mortality and suffering and death the ultimate truth? You have to pick a side because they can't both be true.

If the world is indeed a lie, then NOTHING IN IT IS TRUE. And learning this fact and accepting it is the recognition of enlightenment. It means being faced with an illusion and SEEING THROUGH it. "To forgive is to overlook." And the world that you forgive has to disappear. "Illusions recognized must disappear." "A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies, but forgiveness looks past bodies."

Heaven asserts, nothing has ever gone wrong, and everything is still perfect. Everything real is still perfectly immortal and unharmed and undefiled and there is absolutely nothing to be upset about. The Earth asserts, everything has gone wrong, it's all falling apart and going to hell, everything dies and there is no escape. Which are you going to listen to? The ego represents the shrieking voice of hell and evil, while the Holy Spirit represents the Voice that speaks For God - in favor of God.

Only one truth can be true. Are you going to trust, have faith in, believe, side with, and adopt God's truth as the only truth, or are you going to allow a completely fictional false world to masquerade as reality?

All miracle workers must recognize the world IS FALSE, and everything in it IS UNREAL. That sick bodies are faking it. That dead bodies are not really dead. That there is nothing they cannot do because they rest on the unlimited laws of God. They dispel and disbelieve any claims by anyone that there is anything wrong with them, disregard all symptoms as lies, and refuse to acknowlege the lie that death can happen. And through this strength of conviction their miracles come forth and resurrect the sleeping and the dead.

"The world is false perception. It is born of error, and it has not left its source."

"You looked upon the unreal and found despair. But by SEEKING the unreal, what else COULD you find? The UNreal world IS a thing of despair, for it can never be."

"But appearances are shown to be unreal BECAUSE they change." "This is the great deception of the world, and you the great deceiver of yourself."

"Judging truth as something they do NOT want, they perceive deception and block knowledge."

"But to give illusions to Truth is to enable truth to teach that the ILLUSIONS are unreal, and thus enable you to ESCAPE from them."

"to overlook the truth in an unfounded effort to deceive yourself by making an illusion true."

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

"Fear is deception. It attests that you have seen yourself as you could never be, and therefore look upon a world which is impossible."

"the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"We try to hide from Him, and suffer from deception."

"Except for God's teachers there would be no hope of salvation, for the world of sin would be forever real. The self-deceiving must deceive, for they must teach deception. And what else is hell?"

"Pain is a wrong perspective. When it is experienced in any form, it is a proof of self-deception. It is not a fact at all. There is no form it takes which will not disappear if seen aright. For pain proclaims God cruel. How could it be real in any form?"

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?" "Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The WISH to make it IS incredible."

"Each thing you look upon you saw but for an instant, long ago, before its unreality gave way to truth."

"Let not the world deceive you. It was made to be deception. Yet its snares can be so easily escaped a little child can walk through safely, and without a care that would arrest its progress."

"this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

"Sickness is not an accident. Like all defenses, it is an insane device for self deception. And like all the rest its purpose is to hide reality, attack it, change it, render it inept, distort it, twist it, or reduce it to a little pile of unassembled parts. The aim of all defenses is to keep the truth from being whole. The parts are seen as if each one were whole within itself."

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind, because you were AFRAID of it."

"The real world was given you by God, in loving exchange for the world YOU made, and which you SEE."

"Leave ALL deception behind, and reach beyond all attempts of the ego to hold you back."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

"You are no more a slave to time than to the world you made."

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

"It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond."

"If the center of the thought system is TRUE, only truth extends outward from it. But if a lie is at its center, only DECEPTION proceeds from it."

"The mind can make the belief in Separation VERY real and VERY fearful. And this belief IS the devil. It is powerful, active, destructive, and clearly in opposition to God, because it literally denies His Fatherhood. Never underestimate the power of this denial. Look at your lives and see what the devil has made. But KNOW that this making will surely dissolve in the light of truth, because its foundation IS a lie."

"Side with me CONSISTENTLY against this deception, as we have sided against it briefly already."

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

"Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within YOU, there is a force which NO illusions can resist."

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given." "You have need to use the symbols of the world a while. But be you not deceived by them as well."

"Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the "reality" of any changing form."

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

"For the mind which understands that sickness can be nothing but a dream is not deceived by forms the dream may take." "Fail not in your function of loving in a loveless place, made out of darkness and deceit, for thus are darkness and deception UNdone."

"Leave it behind. Do not listen to it, and do not preserve it. Listen only to God, who is as incapable of deception as are the Souls he created. As teachers and therapists, release yourselves and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourselves TO others, or accept such a picture OF them yourselves."

"Illusions serve the purpose they were MADE to serve. And FROM their purpose, they derive whatever meaning that they seem to have. God gave to ALL illusions that were made ANOTHER purpose that would justify a miracle, WHATEVER form they took. In every miracle ALL healing lies, for God gave Answer to them all as one. And what is one to Him must BE the same. If you believe what is the same is different, you but deceive yourself. What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

"Be not deceived by what appears as many choices. There is hell or Heaven. And of these you choose but ONE."

One thing has been a constant throughout your whole life. You have always been you alone. You have always been a separate person, autonomous within the confines of a body, and not once has there been anyone in there with you. Everyone else is just like you, in that they are unlike you, and unlike everyone else. And never have you found anyone who is the same as you.

This experience comes with a sense of "I am only me", completely cut off from others by a wall of bodies. And that seems to suggest "I am wholly myself." And yet, it is not an experience of knowing who you are, but of being out of touch with who you are. It's an experience of "I don't know who I am" while at the same time clutching at straws to define who you are. Looking for something to identify with, to convince yourself it is your self, because you have lost yourself.

You have been lost, confused, afraid, alone, lonely, weak, powerless and constantly bombarded with attack. And every time it has been "only my self" that has experienced this - the poor-me victim. And every time you have been unhappy it has seemed you are unhappy alone, afraid alone, suffering alone, sick alone, guilty alone, dying alone. And not once has it seemed that anything you have felt within yourself has been the same as that of anyone else at all. You haven't even had the slightest clue what anyone else is thinking or experiencing.

This is the experience of what we might call someone who is "being an ego". It is the automatic experience of anyone whose sense of self is a "separated off" self. A self that is excluded, isolated, imprisoned in a body, kept apart from sharing anything with anyone, and thoroughly limited to what the body dictates.

"This produces what SEEMS to be a wall of flesh AROUND the mind, keeping it prisoner in a tiny spot of space and time" Such a person has not really changed in terms of their perfection, but they have changed in terms of their relationship. There has been a communication breakdown between themselves and others. The body depicts this breakdown as a tremendous hurdle which filters and translates everything into confusing symbols. This is a person who once was free, but who has been locked up inside a body and has forgotten what it means to share. Their mind seems isolated and unaware of anyone else's mind.

Let's say there is no such thing as "an ego" at all. There are only people. And some of these people have decided to try to cut themselves off from others. They have done this by placing themselves inside a prison cell, and have tried to identify with that prison cell so that their whole sense of self narrows and confines to within its walls. They are a self which once was glorious and magnificent, expansive and unlimited, which has dimmed its light and condemned itself to a dungeon, to die alone and in solitude.

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real. "There is no man who does not feel that he is imprisoned in some way. If this has been the result of his own free will, he must regard his will as if it were NOT free, or the obviously circular reasoning of his own position would be quite apparent."

"For his belief in limits HAS imprisoned him."

"An imprisoned mind is not free by definition. It is possessed, or held back, by ITSELF. Its will is therefore limited, and not free to assert itself."

It is unnatural to be only yourself. Some people will model what ACIM says on the basis that, when you are awake, you are wholly yourself. And therefore when you are in ego, you are not entirely yourself, or are unwhole. But this is not entirely accurate. It is more accurate to say that when you are in ego you are ONLY yourself to the EXCLUSION of others, and when you wake up you are waking up to being MORE THAN just yourself. You are a whole self AND MORE THAN a whole self.

The entire premise of being "in ego" or "in separation", is that you are excluded from others. You are not sharing with them. You are not identifying with them. You don't regard them as part of you and you see yourself as a standalone, independent, self-reliant being. Not that being self-reliant is wrong. In fact you were created to be wholly sufficient and complete and lacking nothing, sharing the power of God. It isn't that you are "capable" that's wrong, it's that you try to be capable ON YOUR OWN.

This means that fundamentally the separation is really about you rejecting your inheritance from God. It's about you not wanting to be an effect of God. A rejection of God as your father. An unwillingness to acknowledge that you ONLY have what he has given you. That you do not have anything, nor can you BE or DO anything, WITHOUT him. That everything you are, comes from him, and is part of him and shared with him. Rejecting all that God has given is what makes you "separated off".

As soon as you are separating yourself off, to be a powerful being who does not want power, you immediately disempower yourself. You immediately enter into fear, because you know deep down that you have actually stripped yourself of power. You know you are not capable anymore. You can't successfully do ANYTHING on your own, although you can try. It will fail in some way. Anything you make will die. And all your mis-creations will crumble. You can't give immortality to anything because you are denying it in yourself.

You can be with God and be guaranteed of success. Or you can be without God and be guaranteed of failure. Realize then that everything that you try to do ALONE, WILL FAIL.

Everything. You are fundamentally in a state of fear whenever you try to be without God, think without God, do without God, see without God, think without God, live without God. You are fundamentally rejecting success, and life, and power, and happiness, and health, by trying to go it alone. Imprisonment as a solo-self is not freedom.

What this reveals then is that, for your whole life, you've been acting LIKE an ego. You've been trying to independently figure everything out, to understand what everything is, to give meaning to everything based on your whims, opinions and beliefs, and there is nothing that you've ever done that wasn't a solo effort. Even when you did things in a team or with others, you were still alone. And even your efforts to be a part of something bigger than yourself kept you in the dark.

This means there is a logical premise at work, behind every failure, and guaranteeing everything you do will fail. And it goes like this: IF you are a separated-off self, you LACK EVERYTHING. And therefore everything you do will be a mistake, will break, will be wrong, will upset you, will make you suffer, and will be depressing and frustrating. Being alone IS a limitation.

IF you are a separated-off self, you are automatically in a state of fear and anxiety which you will not be able to get rid of. It doesn't matter how much you work on it. It doesn't matter what path you take, what you believe, what choices you make, what thoughts you have, how you feel. Nothing you do will work completely, if you do it separately. Doing it separately CAUSES you to suffer. Doing everything alone PUTS YOU IN PRISON. There is NO freedom there. Or as some may put it, "there is no rest for the wicked."

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

See how Jesus confirms that if you are a "separated one", you WILL experience all manner of unhappy things. Note that he also says that since the separation, no-one has been sure of ANYTHING...

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

We have quite literally entered into a state of FAILURE, by participating in the separation. It is a state of being flawed, of fundamental attack, insecurity, unholiness, suffering and despair.

The problem then comes when you start to believe that there is something you can DO about it, WITHIN the confines of this situation, that will make it better. You will try to fix it yourself. You will try to think your way out of it with your own thoughts. You will try to do techniques on your own. You will be the one who decides what you prefer and what will work for you. You will make all the wrong choices. And you will always be the central figure in every single thing that you do. Your whole life will revolve around yourself, and you will be trying to SAVE this self at the same time.

This self will do A Course in Miracles. This self will pray. This self will try to become more spiritual. This self will try to become separately enlightened. This self will try the latest techniques and sample the spiritual buffet-line, looking for something it thinks it needs, something it has lost. Some kind of salvation, which will save it from all the fuck-ups and failures that continue to plague it. And as it seeks for this, it will not find it.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

"Yet the ego, though encouraging the search very actively, makes one proviso; - do not FIND it. Its dictates, then, can be summed up simply as, "Seek and do NOT find."

The problem is that it is this very sense of being an isolated self that is the ENTIRE problem. The confinement, the walls that surround you, the body, the gap, the lack of communication, the broken relationship, the isolation and the exclusive specialness, all CONTINUE the problem. Being "separated" is the problem, the problem is NOT being a self. Because when you are separated, you are NOT being yourself.

This "self" that you are working WITHIN the confines of, trying to get IT to be holier and more awakened, just stays WITHIN those confines and does not want them to ever be questioned. It doesn't consider that ITSELF, or, its way of identifying itself as "separated", is the whole problem. It's the ONE problem behind all problems. The one issue that isn't getting solved. You think you are already all of yourself, and only yourself.

So then some people will say that you have to GET RID OF, ie KILL AND DESTROY, this self, in order to be free. In order to be truly spiritual, it has to die. This is utterly bullshit. It's just another in a long line of solutions which separated selves have come up with for how to deal with their suffering. The whole act of trying to BE separated off is an attempt to destroy the unlimited nature of yourself, in the first place. So making the self FULLY dead is just a continuation of that. Self needs to expand, not die.

"The sudden EXPANSION of the self that takes place with your DESIRE for it, is the irresistible appeal the holy instant holds."

The self does not need to be destroyed. The self needs to EXPAND its definition of its identity. It needs to realize that it is MORE THAN the confined limited sense of self that it has been living under. That it is MORE THAN ITSELF.

Because ego really is just a notion of selfishness or being self-absorbed, as though to say, putting your whole attention on YOU EXCLUSIVELY. If you being exclusive is the problem, destroying you isn't the solution. What you need is freedom from exclusivity.

"You have made much progress, and are really trying to make still more, but there is one thing you have never done; not for one instant have you utterly forgotten the body."

What Jesus is saying here is that the one thing we have never really done is question THE PRISON that we're in, the sense of what it is that has defined us as "separated". We have not brought into question whether we actually ARE separated, and have not been willing to realize that ALL our suffering has been CAUSED BY that sense of isolation. If I am ONLY me, then I have become separate.

Identifying WITH the body has made us narrow and limited. The body is narrow and limited. It's like an anchor in time and space. When we think of it as "my self", we have to think of ourselves as narrow and limited. And now we are small and special and selfish and cut off. We have to forget the body in order to expand the sense of self beyond the separation. The body symbolizes the separation (as a separation device), so we have to open up to being MORE THAN a body. And if I am more than ONE body, I am more than JUST myself.

Before the separation, every soul that was created by God in heaven, was whole, and also overlapped with each other. Everyone shared everything including identity. Christ is the one identity of every soul, and every soul is a member of that identity. I am christ and you are christ and we are one as two christs. The fundamental premise here is that everything is shared including yourself. You are you, but YOU ARE ALSO me. You are everyone. Therefore you are more than JUST a separate being - you are not just ONE creation of God, you are all of them.

It is natural therefore that you should regard yourself as ... fully wholly yourself, AND fully wholly everyone. This is a normal sense of identity. You are the whole sonship. You are in fact the entire Kingdom of God. And all its contents, every part of it, all its beings and creations, are a part of your self. This is what a natural identity is supposed to be. You, as an individual whole being, are ALSO one with everything.

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"The sonship is your soul."

"Is he the Christ? Oh yes, along with you."

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds."

"The separation" was nothing more than a WITHDRAWAL of the parts of you which are shared with others, a retreat into fear, into being small and scared and vulnerable trapped in a little tiny body in a corner of spacetime. It was simply your unwillingness to SHARE YOUR SELF, and an attempt to have exclusive ownership and control over who you are. It was just your attempt to break away from the family unit and orphan yourself, like a black sheep who has become estranged and unwanted.

After the separation you simply wandered off "alone", as though you had been unplugged from the hive mind, disconnected from the input of spirit/soul, and unable to communicate with God anymore. You saw yourself as lacking everything and absent of anything. And so you were starting out empty and bereft. You had nothing left but your little sense of "there's only myself left". And this "only me, not you", formed your sense of identity. This is what we call "an ego". It's not really something new you made, it's the self God created that has been locked in chains.

The one thing we therefore need to do for salvation, and the one thing we may never have done in our entire lives, is consider that we are NOT JUST OURSELVES. We are more than just ourselves. To really truly SHARE with anyone we have to BE them. We have to open up to an identity, a sense of self, that INCLUDES OTHERS. Others have to actually become a part of you again. Not to the exclusion of you, nor calling for your destruction. You are a self who is whole, who must also reconnect to the whole.

If your every effort to go it alone and do everything independently of God has meant AUTOMATIC FAILURE, in every case, then your ONLY salvation from all forms of suffering is to stop doing everything on your own. The end of separation is simply the end of "trusting in your own strength" to the exclusion of all else. It means waking up from a sense of "I am only me", to "I am us." From ME to WE. From individual, to mutual. This is what shared interests are about.

Only if I am willing to let God decide WITH me can I be sure that the decision will be accurate and wise and certain of success. Only if I am willing to let the Holy Spirit judge the meaning of everything for and with me, can I be sure that the meaning I SEE is correct and sane. Only if I admit that everything I do alone WILL BE FUCKED UP, by default, can I be open to allowing myself to be HELPED. Opening up to His Help is opening up to RECEIVE.

The Holy Spirit is there to HELP us. He is the help, because he is the notion of being more than limited. He is unlimited, as we are in truth. And to remember our unlimited nature we have to be open to allowing something MORE THAN JUST ME to participate in everything I do, think, feel, plan, decide, pursue, live, say, etc. Only by allowing God back into our lives, in effect, can we resume our natural state of DOING EVERYTHING WITH HIM. And therefore, no longer being alone.

Everything you have ever done alone, no matter what it is, no matter how intelligent you've been, no matter how much you planned and schemed, no matter how much you figured out or understood, no matter how many concepts you came up with or how accurate they were, ALWAYS produced suffering in one form or another. Because all of them were attempts to narrow and confine yourself. And always because of the simple fact that YOU DID IT ON YOUR OWN.

That was ALWAYS the problem, because being alone is unnatural. God did not will that you be alone, so to be yourself you must rejoin the brotherhood of light.

"For you dwell in the Mind of God WITH your brother, for God Himself did not will to be alone."

"To be alone is to be separated from Infinity, but how can this be, if Infinity has no end?"

"There IS no end to God and His Son, for we ARE the universe. God is not incomplete, and He is not childless. Because He did not will to be alone, He created a Son like Himself. Do not deny Him His Son, for your unwillingness to accept His Fatherhood has denied you yours. See His creations as HIS Son, for yours were created in honor of Him."

"He is the Voice for God, but never forget that God did not will to be alone. He SHARES His Will with you; He does not thrust it UPON you."

"To be alone MUST mean you are apart, and if you are, you cannot BUT be sick."

"To be alone IS to be guilty. For to experience yourself AS alone, is to deny the Oneness of the Father and His Son, and thus to ATTACK REALITY."

"God would not have us be alone because HE does not will to be alone. That is why He created His Son and gave him the power to create with Him."

"The gratitude of God Himself is freely offered to everyone who shares His Purpose. It was not His Will to be alone. And neither is it YOURS. Forgive your brother, and you CANNOT separate yourself from him, nor from his Father."

God is wholeness, or Holiness. He is the whole of everything, everywhere. There is no lack in Him. He is unlimited and infinite. He is omnipresent. He is the all in all.

"The mark of Wholeness is Holiness"

"God is all in all in a very literal sense. All being is in Him because He IS all Being. YOU are therefore in Him because YOUR being IS His."

Every part of God contains all of God. All of God is everywhere. All of God is shared, within Himself, with all of Himself. All of God has access to all of God. And all of God is God.

"The Will of God is without limit, and all power and glory lie within it. It is boundless in strength and in love and in peace. It has no boundaries because its extension is unlimited, and it encompasses all things because it CREATED all things."

God cannot access anywhere that He does not exist, and there is nothing outside of God. He already exists everywhere, so there is nowhere to be added, and no space to add into.

"Heaven is not a place nor a condition. It is merely an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else. Nothing OUTSIDE THIS Oneness, and NOTHING ELSE within."

God cannot create an external space, nor can he add a separate thing outside of Himself. He cannot "tack on" any kind of a creation to the outside of Himself.

The internal nature of God, however, is one of sharing. God fully shares with Himself. He is fully open. He loves Himself, and therefore gives Himself to Himself.

"Nothing that is real can be increased EXCEPT by sharing it. That is why God Himself created you. Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

Within God, within His mind, within His being, there is total unlimited sharing. This sharing is a transcendence of space and time and limitation. It enables God to be a host, and to share Himself by giving Himself.

"Everything He created is given ALL His power because it is part of Him and shares His Being WITH Him."

"Being is known by sharing. Because God shared His Being with you, you can know Him."

"Oneness is simply the idea God is. And in His Being He encompasses all things. No mind holds anything but Him."

"You cannot separate your SELF from YOUR Creator, who created YOU by sharing HIS Being WITH you."

"I am forever host to God."

God wants to give Himself because it is His nature to share everything. This giving is what we call love, or life. It also leads to what we call projection, extension, or creation. Love loves itself.

"God shares His Fatherhood with you who are His Son"

"God shares His function with you in Heaven"

"Divine Abstraction takes joy in application, and that is what creation MEANS."

"projecting outward of God. That is why everything which He Created is like Him."

God is able to share Himself, within Himself, and can extend Himself as what we call Thoughts or Creations. These thought-creations can only occur provided they inherit the whole of God, and in turn share His will to share the whole of themselves.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit. Only Love creates, and only like Itself."

"God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul." "ALL princes INHERIT their power from the Father"

"the Children of the Father inherit from Him"

"Glory is your inheritance, given your Soul by its Creator, that you might EXTEND it."

Any thought-creation of God can only share what they are given, and can only give what they inherit. They also must create by sharing, and can only create by sharing, by hosting within their own being.

"By CREATING all things, it made them PART OF ITSELF. YOU are the Will of God, because this is how you were created. Because your Creator creates only like Himself, you ARE like Him."

"accept the Thought of God as its inheritance."

"Perceiving the majesty of God AS your brother is to accept your OWN inheritance."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

Creation, therefore, really occurs as a kind of internal expansion, or a giving inward. God shares the whole of Himself, which produces creative thoughts, which must inherit the whole of God, and be wholly like God. "The Father and the Son are not identical, but you CAN say "Like Father, LIKE Son."

"GOD gave you the function to create in eternity."

"God gave Himself to BOTH of you in equal love"

"God GAVE you Heaven"

"God GAVE you all there is."

God also can only share wholly, or fully. He cannot only partially give, or partially create, or partially share. When He shares, He creates wholly, and creates only wholeness. And anything He creates must be completely whole. "Each part you remember adds to YOUR wholeness, because each part IS whole." "which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"That is the law of God, for the protection of the wholeness of His Son." "God created His Sons by extending His Thought and retaining the extensions of His Thought in His Mind. ALL His Thoughts are thus perfectly united within themselves and with each other because they, were created neither partially nor in part."

This means that any creation of God, any extension of God, MUST be a completely whole creation. It must be fully given, fully established, fully sharing, and fully created.

"This is the ONLY love that is fully given, AND FULLY RETURNED."

"We have also emphasized that man, insofar as the term relates to Soul, has not only been fully Created, but also been created perfect."

This leads to the FULL creation of living thought-beings, ideas of children, which are the living thoughts of God. Each is a miracle, and each inherits absolutely everything from God. Each HAS everything, and IS everything. "You ARE the Kingdom of Heaven"

"You had everything when you were created, just as everyone did."

"God and HIS miracles are inseparable."

Absolute wholeness is passed down and is SHARED by every creation. Therefore, two things become true. 1) Every thought-creation is a completely autonomous being who is a whole fully-created being, and 2) Each being shares AND IS the whole of creation.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

This results in a scenario where each Son of God literally IS God, and is PART of God, and IS EACH OTHER. There can only truly be one whole, which must be shared by EACH whole. And therefore each whole is the one whole. This is what oneness really means.

"The wholeness of God, which IS His peace, cannot be appreciated EXCEPT by a whole mind, which recognizes the wholeness of God's creation and BY this recognition knows its Creator."

"God's wholeness IS the wholeness of his Son."

This means that each Son of God IS the other Sons of God, as well as being an individual Son of God. "Individual" does mean "undivided". And thus each brother is all brothers. And every soul is part of God. And every child of God is every other child of God. And all of them share the same whole - all of themselves - with all the rest.

"One brother is all brothers. Every mind contains all minds, for every mind is one. Such is the truth."

"For your Father wills you to know your brother AS yourself."

"to know your brother IS to know God."

This produces the Sonship, which is the family of God, the Kingdom of Heaven. And having inherited everything from God, as His perfect extensions, each Son of God is a fully created being and has SO much freedom and autonomy that they are established as TRUE co-creators - free-willed "separate" beings.

"the Sonship is your Soul"

"you are part of God, and the Sonship is one"

"in a relationship in which ALL the Sonship is together blessed"

"Think not HE wills to bind you, Who has made you co-creator of the universe along with Him. He would but KEEP your will forever and forever limitless." "If you believe that all of the Souls that God created ARE His Sons, and if you also believe that the Sonship is One, then every Soul MUST be a Son of God, or an integral part of the Sonship."

This doesn't merely mean that they just do God's bidding, or that he dangles them like puppets, or that they are slaves to His will. They have been WHOLLY created, and therefore do in fact have free independent will. But remember that, at the same time, this will is ALSO shared with everyone. And to remain free it has to be shared, yet still retain freedom.

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

Blessed with free will, in a sense "free from God", or as "separate beings", individuality has been established. They are individual because they are whole in and of themselves. Yet they are one because they share everything.

"For thus am I led past this world to my creations, children of my Will, in Heaven where my holy Self abides with them, and Him Who has created me."

"be reminded of His Son, our holy Self, the Christ in each of us"

"every member of the family of God must return"

They now proceed to naturally share everything that they have, because this is their one nature. They can only share everything because it is by the sharing of everything that they exist at all.

"You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"We said before that WHAT you project is up to you, but it is NOT up to you WHETHER to project, for projection is a law of mind."

"Every mind MUST project, because that is how it lives, and every mind IS life."

So in turn they create their own creations by sharing everything and hosting them within their own mind and being, just like and with God. And as such the Kingdom continues to expand internally as a continuous line of extension and creation.

"all loving creation is freely given. Nothing in either of these statements implies any sort of level involvement, or, in fact, anything except one continuous line of creation, in which all aspects are of the same order." "As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations."

"YOUR creations belong in YOU, as YOU belong in God. You are part of God, as your sons are part of His Sons. To create is to love. Love extends outward simply because it cannot be contained. Being limitless, it DOES NOT STOP. It creates forever"

"YOUR creations add to Him, as YOU do. But nothing is added that is different, because everything has always BEEN"

Wholeness, within wholeness, shared by the whole, in which each whole is the one whole, and all wholes are one. And yet at the same time, there are many wholes because God constantly shares itself. And all living beings therefore continually create and extend and think and give, and the increase of the Kingdom is endless.

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"And BEING loving, they are like the Father, and therefore cannot die."

"A co-creator with the Father must have a Son (your creations). Yet must this Son (your sons) have been created like Himself. A perfect Being, all-encompassing and all-encompassed (by you and your brothers and God), nothing to add and nothing taken FROM; not born of size nor weight nor time, nor held to limits or uncertainties of ANY kind."

"You do not know YOUR creations, because you do not know your brothers who created them WITH you."

"for in him you will find your creations, because he created them WITH you."

The simple fact that God, who is whole, gives the whole of himself, wholly, to wholly create whole beings, who share the whole of himself, alignes exactly with the holographic principle. That the whole is in every part, and every contains and IS the whole, and every part is the SAME whole. And therefore all the wholes are one.

This is why heaven is a truly holographic structure. Not holographic in the sense of 3d projected images - which have nothing to do with holograms. But in the sense that the whole of God is in every creation of God, and every creation of God IS the whole.

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

This is what heaven is like. It is not some singular blob that sits there by itself. It is not just some kind of singular oneness which doesn't create or extend. It isn't populated by God alone. It is not devoid of individuality. Nor is it devoid of relationships or free will. It is host to an entire family of unlimited thought-beings, and every part of it is part of God, and part of you, and of your own spirit-children.

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually"

"Each Soul knows God completely."

"By HIS willingness to share it, He becomes as dependent on you, as you are on HIM."

"God is as dependent on you as you are on Him, because HIS autonomy ENCOMPASSES yours, and is therefore incomplete WITHOUT it."

"TOTALLY dependent on their One Creator for EVERYTHING"

"God and the Souls He created ARE symbiotically related. They are COMPLETELY dependent on each other."

"God created Souls so He could depend on them BECAUSE He created them perfectly."

This is why certain other conceptual models of reality are not a good fit. Traditional ideas of oneness don't quite cut it, because they fail to acknowledge that oneness MUST share itself, MUST extend, and MUST be given to create.

Ideas of non-duality don't cut it either, because God is a creator and HAS to create whole expressions of Himself, forming a divine family. He does not will to be alone, or that you be alone, or that you will beings that are alone. All of heaven is about creation and sharing and openness and inter-dependence.

"the whole family of God, or the Sonship"

"the Holy Family"

"If you created GOD and He created you, the KINGDOM could not increase through its OWN creative thought. Creation would therefore be limited, and you would NOT be co-creators WITH God. As God's creative Thought proceeds FROM Him TO you, so must YOUR creative thoughts proceed FROM you to YOUR creations. In this way only can ALL creative power EXTEND OUTWARD. God's accomplishments are NOT yours. But yours are LIKE His. HE created the Sonship, and YOU increase it. You HAVE the power to ADD to the Kingdom, but NOT to add to the Creator OF the Kingdom."

"The Kingdom is forever extending, because it is in the Mind of God."

"Your gifts TO the Kingdom are like His to YOU."

"God extends outward beyond limits and beyond time, and you, who are co-creators with Him, extend His Kingdom forever and beyond limit."

"And His Sons, who create LIKE Him, follow it gladly, knowing that the INCREASE of the Kingdom depends on it, just as THEIR creation did."

"The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation."

"The Kingdom of Heaven IS you."

"You, too, have a Kingdom which your Soul has created."

"I have a kingdom I must rule."

"God HAS kept your kingdom for you"

"Your Kingdom is not of this world because it was given you from BEYOND this world."

"Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the dwelling place of the Son of God, who left not his Father, and dwells not apart from Him."

"His Kingdom has no limits and no end, and there is nothing in Him that is not perfect and eternal."

"For Christ DOES rise above the ego and all its works, and ascends to the Father and HIS Kingdom."

"The inheritance of the Kingdom is the right of God's Son, given him in his creation."

"My Kingdom is not of this world, because it is in YOU. And YOU are of your Father."

"Because you are all the Kingdom of God, I can lead you back to your own creations"

"What God calls one will be forever one, NOT separate. His Kingdom IS united; thus it was created, and thus will it ever be."

"The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself."

I really like this term - "sinlessness". It feels good. It feels the way "there is no sin" feels when I say it. That my sinlessness is guaranteed by God, is right up with there "I am still as God created me." It specifies not only what I AM, it also specifies what I am NOT. I am not sinful, because I am sinless. I am free from the sinfulness that I am not.

Sinlessness is more than merely the absence of sin, as well. It is the presence of immortality. It is strength and innocence. It is invulnerability and fearlessness. Where there is sinlessness there is no reason to be afraid. If your brother is sinless, he is not threatening you. If the world is sinless, it is doing nothing to you. Sinlessness is safety. Sinlessness is your purity as Christ!

Sinlessness is also the end result of forgiveness. When forgiveness is completely, you are in sinlessness. When you have forgiven your brother, you recognize and can see his sinlessness. The sinlessness in him is your own. It is the light of Christ. It is the guaranteed purity of God, which was given you in your permanent creation. You are sinless because God created you sinless forever.

The juicy quotes...

"Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Over and over this must be repeated until it is accepted. It is true. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. Nothing can touch it, nor can change what God created as eternal. The self you made, evil and full of sin, is meaningless. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God, and light and joy and peace abide in you."

"Salvation requires the acceptance of but one thought; you are as God created you, not what you made of yourself. Whatever evil you may think you did, you are as God created you. Whatever mistakes you made, the truth about you is unchanged. Creation is eternal and unalterable. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God. You are and will forever be exactly as you were created. Light and joy and peace abide in you because God put them there."

"If a situation arises which seems to be disturbing, quickly dispel the illusion of fear by repeating these thoughts again. Should you be tempted to become angry with someone, tell him silently:

"Light and joy and peace abide in you. Your sinlessness is guaranteed by God.""

"Brother, come and let me look on you. Your loveliness reflects my own. Your sinlessness is mine. You stand forgiven, and I stand with you."

"If you but knew how much your Father yearns to have you recognize your sinlessness, you would not let His Voice appeal in vain, nor turn away from His replacement for the fearful images and dreams you made. "

"True light is strength, and strength is sinlessness. If you remain as God created you, you must be strong, and light must be in you. He Who ensured your sinlessness must be the guarantee of strength and light as well. You are as God created you. Darkness cannot obscure the glory of the Son of God. You stand in light, strong in the sinlessness in which you were created, and in which you will remain throughout eternity."

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there. Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness. Now you are holy and perceive it so."

"The state of sinlessness is merely this: The WHOLE desire to attack is gone, and so there is no reason to perceive the Son of God as other than he is."

"And so you walk toward Heaven or toward hell, but NOT alone. How beautiful his sinlessness will be, when you perceive it! And how great will be YOUR joy when he is free to offer you the gift of sight God gave to him for you."

"Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him. For peace will come to all who ask for it with real desire and sincerity of purpose, SHARED with the Holy Spirit, and at one with Him on what salvation IS."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision, and give you joy. And place NO value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is. It is HIS desire to see his sinlessness, as it is YOURS. And bless the Son of God in your relationship, nor see in him what you have MADE of him. The Holy Spirit GUARANTEES that what"God has willed and given shall be yours."

"My sinlessness protects me from all harm."

"My sinlessness ensures me perfect peace, eternal safety, everlasting love, freedom forever from all thought of loss; complete deliverance from suffering. And only happiness can be my state, for only happiness is given me. What must I do to know all this is mine? I must accept Atonement for myself, and nothing more. God has already done all things that need be done. And I must learn I need do nothing of myself, for I need but accept my Self, my sinlessness, created for me, now already mine, to feel God's Love protecting me from harm, to understand my Father loves His Son; to know I am the Son my Father loves."

""You who created me in sinlessness are not mistaken about what I am. I was mistaken when I thought I sinned, but I accept Atonement for myself. Father, my dream is ended now. Amen.""

"I choose to see my brother's sinlessness."

"I choose to see what I would look upon, and this I see, and only this. My brother's sinlessness shows me that I would look upon my own. And I will see it, having chosen to behold my brother in its holy light."

""What could restore Your memory to me except to see my brother's sinlessness? His holiness reminds me that he was created one with me and like myself. In him I find my Self, and in Your Son I find the memory of You as well.""

"I can attack but my own sinlessness, and it is only that which keeps me safe."

""Father, Your Son is holy. I am he on whom You smile in love and tenderness so deep and dear and still the universe smiles back on You, and shares Your holiness. How pure, how safe, how sacred, then, are we, abiding in Your smile, with all Your love bestowed upon us, living one with You, in brotherhood and Fatherhood complete; in sinlessness so perfect that the Lord of Sinlessness conceives us as His Son, a universe of Thought completing Him.""

"Let us not, then, attack our sinlessness. For it contains the Word of God to us, and in its kind reflection we are saved."

"Remove your focus on your brother's sins, and you experience the peace that comes from faith in sinlessness. This faith receives its only sure support from what you see in others past their sins. For their mistakes, if focused on, are witnesses to sins in you. And you will not transcend their sight and see the sinlessness that lies beyond."

"Therefore, in practicing today, we first let all such little focuses give way to our great need to let our sinlessness become apparent."

"We enter in the time of practicing with one intent; to look upon the sinlessness within."

"And we will also use these thoughts to keep us safe throughout the day. We do not seek for long-range goals. As each obstruction seems to block the vision of our sinlessness, we seek but for surcease an instant from the misery the focus upon sin will bring, and uncorrected will remain."

"The world which once proclaimed our sins becomes the proof that we are sinless. And our love for everyone we look upon attests to our remembrance of the holy Self Which knows no sin, and never could conceive of anything without Its sinlessness."

"Our sinlessness is but the Will of God. This instant is our willing one with His."

"The self you made is not the Son of God. Therefore this self does not exist at all. And anything it seems to do and think means nothing. It is neither bad nor good. It is unreal, and nothing more than that. It does not battle with the Son of God. It does not hurt him, nor attack his peace. It has not changed creation, nor reduced eternal sinlessness to sin and love to hate."

"I need but look upon all things that seem to hurt me, and with perfect certainty assure myself, "God wills that I be saved from this," and merely watch them disappear. I need but keep in mind my Father's Will for me is only happiness, to find that only happiness has come to me. And I need but remember that His Love surrounds His Son and keeps his sinlessness forever perfect, to be sure that I am saved and safe forever in His arms. I am the Son He loves. And I am saved because God in His mercy wills it so."

"Father, Your holiness is mine. Your Love created me, and made my sinlessness forever part of You. I have no guilt nor sin in me, for there is none in You."

"Behold his sinlessness and be you healed"

"Father, today I would let all things be as You created them, and give Your Sons the honor due their sinlessness; the love of brother to his brother and his friend. Through this I am redeemed."

"I will forgive all things today, that I

May learn how to accept the truth in me,

And come to recognize my sinlessness."

"In holiness were we created, and in holiness do we remain. Your Son is like to You in perfect sinlessness, and with this thought we gladly say 'Amen'."

"And with this choice I see my sinlessness, my everlasting Comforter and Friend beside me, and my way secure and clear."

"Forgiveness looks on sinlessness alone, and judges not. Through this I come to You. Judgment will bind my eyes and make me blind. Yet love, reflected in forgiveness here, reminds me You have given me a way to find Your peace again." "Surrounding me is perfect safety. Can I be afraid, when Your eternal promise goes with me? Surrounding me is perfect sinlessness. What can I fear, when You created me in holiness as perfect as Your own?"

"In quiet may forgiveness wipe away my dreams of separation and of sin. Then let me, Father, look within and find Your promise of my sinlessness is kept; Your Word remains unchanged within my mind, Your Love is still abiding in my heart."

"Today I would behold my brother sinless. This Your Will for me, for thus will I behold my sinlessness."

"I am the means by which God's Son is saved, because salvation's purpose is to find the sinlessness which God has placed in me. I was created as the thing I seek. I am the goal the world is searching for. I am God's Son, His one Eternal Love. I am salvation's means and end as well."

"Our Father, let us see the face of Christ instead of our mistakes. For we who are Your holy Son, are sinless."

"Now let His true perception come to me, that I may waken from the dream of guilt and look within upon my sinlessness, which You have kept completely undefiled upon the altar to Your holy Son, the Self with Which I would identify."

"And we, God's children, rise up from the dust and look upon our perfect sinlessness. The song of Heaven sounds around the world, as it is lifted up and brought to truth."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. What further sight is needed? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love behind all forms, beyond all purposes."

"Their patients can but be seen as the bringers of forgiveness, for it is they who come to demonstrate their sinlessness to eyes that still believe that sin is there to look upon. Yet will the proof of sinlessness, seen in the patient and accepted in the therapist, offer the mind of both a covenant in which they meet and join and are as one."

"The prayer for enemies thus becomes a prayer for your own freedom. Now it is no longer a contradiction in terms. Rather it is a statement of the unity of Christ and a recognition of His sinlessness. And now it has become holy, for it acknowledges the Son of God as he was created."

"Now, without needs of any kind, and clad forever in the pure sinlessness which is the gift of God to you, His Son, prayer can again become what it was meant to be."

"Creation is the opposite of all illusions, for Creation is the truth. Creation is the holy Son of God, for in Creation is His Will complete in every aspect, making every part container of the whole. Its oneness is forever guaranteed inviolate; forever held within His holy Will, beyond all possibility of harm, of separation, imperfection and of any spot upon its sinlessness."

"What he has done now must God's Son undo. But not alone. For he has thrown away the prison's key; his holy sinlessness and the remembrance of his Father's Love."

"I am God's Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. I am the holy home of God Himself. I am the Heaven where His Love resides. I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His own."

"Now prayer is lifted from the world of things, of bodies, and of gods of every kind, and you can rest in holiness at last. Humility has taught you how to understand your glory as God's Son, and recognize the arrogance of sin. A dream has veiled the face of Christ from you. Now can you look upon His sinlessness."

"He will hear his sinlessness proclaimed around and around the world, setting it free as God's final judgment on him is received. This is the judgment in which salvation lies. This is the judgment that will set him free. This is the judgment in which all things are freed with him."

"In His perception of the world, nothing is seen but justifies forgiveness and the sight of perfect sinlessness. Nothing arises but is met with instant and complete forgiveness. Nothing remains an instant, to obscure the sinlessness that shines unchanged, beyond the pitiful attempts of specialness to put it out of mind, where it MUST be, and light the BODY up INSTEAD of it."

"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created. Now He can speak the Word of God to listening ears, and bring Christ's vision to eyes that see. Now is He free to teach all minds the truth of what they are, so they will gladly be returned to Him. And now is guilt forgiven, overlooked completely in His sight and in God's Word."

"All that is real proclaims his sinlessness. All that is false proclaims his sins as real."

"Do you not see the OPPOSITE of frailty and weakness is sinlessness? INNOCENCE IS STRENGTH, and nothing else is strong. The sinless cannot fear. And fear of any kind is weakness."

"It is HIS sinlessness that eyes that see can look upon. It is HIS loveliness they see in everything. And it is HE they look for everywhere, and find no sight or place or time where He is NOT. Within your brother's holiness, the perfect frame for YOUR salvation and the world's, is set the shining memory of Him in Whom your brother lives, and you along with him." "In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"Your special function is a call to Him, that He may smile on you whose sinlessness He shares. HIS understanding will be YOURS. And so the Holy Spirit's Special Function has been fulfilled. God's Son has found a witness unto his sinlessness, and NOT his sin. "

"To serve THIS end, the body MUST be perceived as sinless, BECAUSE the goal is sinlessness."

"The means of sinlessness can know no fear, because they carry ONLY love with them."

"Your home is built upon your brother's health; upon his happiness, his sinlessness, and everything his Father promised him. No secret promise you have made INSTEAD has shaken the Foundation of his home."

"His holiness gives life to you, who CANNOT die because his sinlessness is known to God, and can no more be sacrificed by you than can the light in you be blotted out because he sees it not."

"And as we see the sinlessness in him come shining through the veil of guilt that shrouds the Son of God, we will behold in him the Face of Christ, and understand that it is but our own."

"Give me your blessing, holy Son of God,

I would behold you with the eyes of Christ,

And see my perfect sinlessness in you."

"Consider once again your special function. ONE is given you to see in him his perfect sinlessness."

"You still are holy with the Holiness which fathered you in perfect sinlessness, and still surrounds you in the arms of peace. Dream now of healing. Then arise and lay all dreaming down forever. You are he your Father loves, who never left his home, nor wandered in a savage world with feet that bleed, and with a heavy heart made hard against the Love that is the truth in you. Give all your dreams to Christ and let Him be your Guide to healing, leading you in prayer beyond the sorry reaches of the world."

"Only Christ forgives, knowing His sinlessness. His vision heals perception and sickness disappears. Nor will it return again, once its cause has been removed."

"Yet it is He Who gives the means by which perception is made true and beautiful enough to let the light of Heaven shine upon it. It is He Who answers what His Son would contradict, and keeps his sinlessness forever safe."

"Your question should not be, "How can I see my brother without the body?" Ask only, "Do I REALLY wish to see him sinless?" And, as you ask, forget not that HIS sinlessness is YOUR escape from fear. Salvation is the Holy Spirit's goal. The means is vision. For what the seeing look upon IS sinless. No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation. And what he sees he did NOT make, for it was GIVEN him to see, as was the vision which made his seeing possible."

"The sinless give as they received. See, then, the power of sinlessness within your brother, and share with him the power of the RELEASE from sin you offered HIM."

"What danger can assail the wholly innocent? What can attack the guiltless? What fear can enter and disturb the peace of sinlessness?"

"No one remains in hell, for no one can abandon his Creator, nor affect His perfect, timeless and unchanging Love. You will find Heaven. Everything you seek but this will fall away, yet not because it has been taken from you. It will go because you do not want it. You will reach the goal you really want as certainly as God created you in sinlessness."

"Christ cannot doubt Himself. The Voice of God can only honor Him, rejoicing in His perfect, everlasting sinlessness."

"Defenselessness is all you need to give Him in return. You lay aside but what was never real, to look on Christ and see His sinlessness."

A glossary of christianity terms reinterpreted and clarified by Jesus in A Course in Miracles.

Here are some elements of ACIM which may sound christianity-oriented, but of course Jesus redefines and clarifies their meaning.

1. Heaven - is the kingdom of God which God created one with Him and which is immortal and eternal. You are part of it, as is everyone. It is reality. It is a living creation in which all things are alive forever. It is not Earth.

2. Hell - the attempt to oppose heaven, reality, God, yourself and others, by believing in a state which really does not exist, as if it does. A state opposite to the nature of God, which lacks everything and is therefore devoid of meaning. Onto this empty shell you can project ideas of hell or or heaven, which are seen as a reflection. A belief that hell is real turns the nothingness into hallucinations of something evil. Earth is part of the empty shell, the veil of illusions.

3. Being cast out of heaven - if you are not in heaven, you are dreaming of being exiled. God didn't cast you out, you left. Or at least, you believe you are no longer where God is. This produces an illusion of a world outside of heaven, which includes the Earth. God didn't abandon or reject you, you wanted to not have him be your father and to receive nothing from him. You became the prodigal son who thought he could be better off on his own.

4. The devil - anyone who denies God is against God. They are also against Christ, making them the anti-christ. Being against God you are attempting to turn yourself into a devil. The devil is your belief in an impossible opposite to God. It is your ego. Every separated individual is the anti-christ. But these states are not real. They are make-believe fiction and fantasy in which someone who is confused believes they are something they can never be. Thus there is no real devil or anti-christ, only people with mental illness.

5. Sin - the idea that separation is possible and real and has real consequences. That you can cause reality, therefore you can cause God. Therefore you have committed the "original sin" of trying to attack God. Except nothing real (immortal) can be attacked, so sin is really just a mistaken belief that sin is possible. When correctly recognized as a mistaken belief, it is regarded as error, and errors can be corrected without punishment. If sin were real, punishment by death is inevitable. But if sin is a false idea, then there is no death.

6. Salvation - to the ego-oriented person, salvation is anything opposite to God which takes you further away from God. In this light death is seen as salvation from life. In truth salvation is the return to God through willingness and acceptance that only his truth is true. To be saved is to be free from sin, ie error. Which means simply to be sane and to recognize correctly what is really true. Salvation is the same thing as atonement, true perception and true forgiveness.

7. Atonement - to the ego-oriented person, this is punishment for sin, demanding death. To pay for what you did. Ego says you attacked life so your life will now be attacked. Real atonement is the recognition that attack is impossible, there is no sin, and only what God created really exists. Atonement is the final miracle in which you recognize reality for what it is and reject anything not of God. Where you realize that only God's Kingdom exists and there is no world. That you are still as God created you, causing you to wake up from your dream and return to reality.

8. Evil - the notion that some power other than God exists and can cause changes in the immortal. Evil is nothing but mental illness, insanity, confusion, and just a belief in an opposite to God. It's an attempt to overthrow the kingdom and rebel against reality, making a person seem insane. Believing truth is false and false is true, all properties of nothingness and evil are assigned to God, while all properties of God are assigned to nothing. This produces hallucinations of enemies and attack and hell. There is no evil because it is nothing but a false belief in something impossible.

9. Repentance - you must repent of sins, or choose to stop being a sinner. In truth you cannot really be a sinner because sin is not possible. You can believe you are a sinner, however. And it is this belief that must be undone. To "choose again" is to repent by aligning yourself closer to God and rejecting the ego/devil.

10. Confession - really means to admit the truth, but only to admit the truth of God is true. To admit to having seemingly done something that is impossible in reality, may seem like honesty, but it's really admitting to something unreal. A true confession admits that you are christ and are purely innocent forever.

11. Word of God - the true nature of God expressed and manifested in creation. God's authenticity and honesty and trustworthiness. The expression of God's love, his voice, and his creations. It is the whole kingdom and its truth. 12. Faith - similar to trust, in terms of who or what you are placing your faith and allegiance in. Faith in the ego/devil means trusting a lie and moving towards death. Faith in God means trusting the turth and moving towards life. It's also tied into what you give "credit" to, and therefore what you value or want. If you value God you want God and credit him with being true. Therefore you trust him and side with him, and therefore have faith (know) that his laws are the only laws.

13. Resurrection - A return to life, meaning a return to immortality and eternity. This is possible only in the context that currently those who reject God are to some degree "playing dead" and are trying not to live. Resurrection is the assertion of pure life and is the opposite of choosing to die. It surmounts death and abolishes it and has power over it. It might be expressed or demonstrated as in Jesus's resurrection in which he showed through physical form that death has no power over him. It also includes the power to abolish sickness and death in all its forms, including physically in self and others.

14. Savior - Jesus is an example of a savior in that he united his will with God's, therefore uniting the will of the whole sonship with God's for us. Part of us therefore became united with God again in Jesus's resurrection. In this sense he has now in a position of being able to save ie help us - to become saviors.

15. Prayer - Ultimately communion with God in which everything is given and received. Love is received and love is expressed. It is a request for and an acceptance of everything. In its lower forms it devolves into specifics and requests which include a wish for some kind of attack or control or special favor.

16. Revelation - a true revelation is a state in which fear is totally abolished. It is a one-way communication from God to a child of God, and is like being imprinted with God. In the experience it is deeply personal and there's only you and God there. It does not include others. But its content can later be shared with others. It is not a mere insight or download or slight upgrade, it's a powerful world-blotting-out intense expression directly from God.

17. Soul - God created many souls which are individual beings who comprise the sonship and are the Kingdom. They are simultaneously all one as the Christ, also known as the one son of God. They are not children of Christ, they are children of God. They share everything with each other and therefore are each other. Souls are permanently perfect co-creators with God and create their own kingdoms of living beings together. You have a soul which is your real self/identity in christ, and you have your own kingdom of creations in heaven, which are your children.

18. Christ - Christ is also referred to as the one son, a part of the holy trinity, but christ is also EVERY son of God. Each soul is christ and you are christ just as Jesus is. Which means you are also part of Jesus and vice versa. We are all joined together in christ. Christ is the perfect holy state of being of all souls and the christ-mind is shared by all minds.

19. Trinity - Before the separation from God there was a duality, ie God and his Sonship. But in the separation God also added the Holy Spirit, producing a trinity. The Holy Spirit is the call to awaken, God's Voice speaking to His Son, which guarantees his healing and his return to reality. All three aspects of the trinity are now permanent and only the trinity is real.

20. Holy Spirit - God's creation which was added in the separation to keep a link between God and his children so that they could never be lost. It is God's guarantee of their union with him and the permanent potential for their return home to share everything with him. He bridges the gap between parts of mind that seem united in christ and parts which seem separate. He is the appointed friend and help and corrector and therapist and comforter and healer God has designated to lead us out of hell.

21. Forgiveness - really the recognition that there is nothing to forgive. In this recognition is the clear sane recognition of what is true and what is false. And only God's truth is regarded as true. In that truth sin is utterly impossible and nothing real can be changed. Therefore it's the acknowledgement that everyone is as God created them and nothing has ever happened to change God's will. It disregards all notions of an opposite to immortality and shines a beacon of light in the darkness for all those who think they are unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflection of your immortal nature, and therefore entails invulnerability in which no-one can ever be accused of doing anything to you.

22. Angel - beings created by God as part of the Kingdom. They are created below the sons of God (or from?) and act in roles of protection and guidance and healing. You can communicate and work with them even while on earth.

23. The fall of man - the separation from God, which was an attempted belief that separation is possible, a tiny mad idea, took place in the minds of souls. But also some angels became involved and believed in the separation. This produced what is termed "the fall" in which we exiled/projected ourselves from heaven, into a fictional realm of exile outside of heaven, which is not really anywhere. Lucifer, an actual angel, was included in the fall. He symbolizes the devil perhaps but all separated souls are just as much the anti-christ. This was an actual rebellion in heaven against God and a desire to be God, producing the authority problem and the rejection of God's fatherhood/authorship. A desire for their own kingdom they could rule without him. This produced spacetime, the world, and earth, which was the idea of hell as heaven's opposite.

24. Blasphemy - technically real blasphemy is impossible because God cannot be opposed or offended. But you can believe things which are seemingly against God's nature. Any form of fear, suffering, sickness, death, an annoyance, even a slight lack of joy, unhappiness, lack of peace, are all blasphemous in that they claim something that is not true in God's reality. Therefore they are trying to work against God's truth and oppose his laws. This is of course all a fantasy and there is no sin.

25. The last judgement - God's evaluation of you is the same as it was when he created you perfect, which is that you remain exactly as you were intended to be and nothing can change you. Therefore you are worthy of God and are perfectly innocent forever. Nothing has ever been done to affect your entitlement to his love and you have never sinned or attacked anything real. You merely dreamed of it in a nightmare of your own making, where you deceived yourself. The last judgement upon the world we made (earth etc) is that it is nothing and does not exist.

26. Church - perhaps a term best used as a synonym for the sonship or the kingdom, which are the same thing. The body of God, if you will, is the outer expression of God - his creation. All members of the sonship are part of the church of christ, and this membership is permanent.

27. Communion - while "holy communion" may be a symbolic act, real communion takes place in heaven as the perfect symbiotic union of God and his children. It is the total immersion and openness to God, receiving from Him and expressing in return. To commune is to know, to be, to share. On Earth this devolves into "communication" which can have varying degrees. The separation from God was really a communication breakdown, ie an unwillingness to receive or to see eye-to-eye. Miracles raise the level of communication until communion becomes possible again.

28. Creation - a term only applicable to what takes place in heaven and not on earth. It requires the perfect total whole extension or giving of what the creator has, to what the creation is. The creation inherits everything of its creator and has nothing else. It shares everything with him, having not left him, and therefore can only exist to share it. All creations are co-creators therefore because they inherit the ability to create. Creations are living beings of light, and can only create living beings of light. They cannot create physical objects or forms of matter or energy or other elements of spacetime. Earth is not a creation because it cannot create more earths. Everything in spacetime is a "dead end".

29. Crucifixion - while Jesus's activity on the cross is mostly referred to as "the crucifixion", crucifixion itself really means the attempt to crucify christ, which is everyone, through allegiance to the ego and to death. It's the attempt to prove that God's immortal son can be killed. Every form of fear and suffering and unhappiness and death is a form of crucifixion. This includes the making of an entire seeming universe of spacetime which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son ie kingdom. It depicts all possible forms of death and is run by laws of death. Being hell, everything in it is crucified and crucifying. Ressurrection marks the ascension back to heaven.

30. Disciple - someone who freely wills to follow someone who may be more advanced, above, or wiser than themselves. Jesus does state in ACIM that if you were not to follow someone of greater wisdom you would be unwise. This indirectly suggests you should follow Jesus as his discipline and learn from him, but is not a mandate. We're also told that Jesus told the disciples to be physicians of the lord, that is to go out and heal the sick and raise the dead, and to heal themselves, with the power of the holy spirit. It is again implied that we are asked to do the same.

31. Garden of Eden - originally really the state of heaven, in which there was no need or lack of anything. Everyone had everything. It wasn't literally a garden with apple trees in it. Adam and Eve were just a couple of God's children. The tree of knowledge of life and death is symbolically the ego thought system, which if believed in (partaken of, eaten, consumed, believed) seems to "poison" the mind, make a person self-conscious of their shameful existence, and attempt to hide in the bushes of the darkness of the mind, to hide from God. They seem then to be expelled from heaven but really have believed in their own expulsion because they want to be exiled, having bought into temptation by believing the tiny mad idea of "the serpent" (ego).

32. God - of course, the prime first creator, the absolute reality, the only true law, the infinite immortal being who shares everything of himself in order to express and apply himself through creation. The father of all eternally living beings and the source of all existence. The all in all. The guarantee of eternal peace and perfection. God relates to every child fully and personally while relating to all children the same way, making him both personal and impersonal. Everyone knows God.

33. Holiness - related to wholeness and purity, innocence and the lack of belief in sin. A state of alignment with God's reality and with truth. Sanity, harmlessness, gentleness, light, healing, power, certainty and openness. Just one of many synonyms for the state of being in heaven.

34. Miracle - in the big picture everything real is permanently miraculous. Miraculousness is the nature of reality in which one thing is all things and all thing are one. This breaks all rules relating to limitation and separate boxes and isolation and exclusion. All expressions of love (God) are miraculous. God creates miracles. You are a miracle of God. God extends through you, God works miracles. You are a miracle capable of creating miracles. Miracles are expressions of life. Even in the world of dreams, on earth, miracles mirror creation in heaven, and are thought-creations which give life, provide love, fill a lack, resurrect, and correct the mind from its mistaken beliefs, producing healing. Since their nature is extension, they are received from God and given to your brothers. There are without number or limit and there is nothing they cannot do. They are truly supernatural - above the nature of the world, based solely on the laws of another world (heaven).

35. Temptation - really just the way that illusions of nothingness seem to symbolically assert and represent things which are opposite to God, as if to try to persuade you to buy into and believe in them. Illusions present themselves as things happening which cannot happen in reality, sins occurring, attacks having effects, real suffering, to "tempt you" to believe further that such things are possible. If you give them your belief, you buy into it and are deceived. If you see through the illusion and frame it in the truth, you deny it and reject its lies and do not believe in it. You can be tempted but not coerced against your will. Being tempted to believe sons of God are bodies is a major hurdle to be overcome because it is not true, but difficulty to recognize as false. The ego/devil is said to tempt souls deeper into hell, which is our own mind/beliefs making faulty decisions.

36. Commandment - not talked about much in ACIM except to say that God's will cannot be opposed, his laws are unbreakable, his nature has permanently established reality, and you cannot do anything to interfere with it. What God has created, no man can put asunder. This does not include the rather social-religious commandments or "guidelines for behavior" on earth. God does not coerce. Thou shalt be free. Thou shalt love your brother as yourself. Thou shalt live forever. Thou shalt come to no harm. Thou shalt be always happy. Thou shalt give and receive as one. Thou shalt share everything with everyone.

37. Worship - Appreciation and awe of God is appropriate, as is loving God and thanking Him, but he does not have an ego with which to receive any kind of praise. You cannot tell him how great he is as if to give him something he does not have. He cannot receive offerings of sacrifice or exalting words. He has no need of anything. But you can celebrate what has been given and rejoice and be glad that only his truth is true. You can thank him for what you are and for what you have been given, and for what your brothers have as well. But you're not supposed to idolize him or your brothers or jesus or turn anyone into a figure "above" you. Only God is above you and that's why you have awe of him.

38. Healing - in ACIM this usually refers to the transformative process of change whereby something begins in a less healed state and moves towards a more healed state. Miracles can induce healing but a "miracle of healing" is a level confusion. Miracles are a remedy, like a drop of detergent upon dirt, which causes the dirt to be removed. Healing is the result, but the miracle itself is not the healing. This is also why miracles can cause shifts in perception but are not the shifts, because the shifts are part of the healing effect, not the miracle that caused them. To heal you give healing and learn to receive healing as you give it. All those who become healed become instruments of healing. Your function on earth is the healing of the sonship as a miracle-worker.

39. Christian - apparently someone who follows christ, but you should recognize that you are christ as well. You are supposed to return to the state of owning up to being christ, recognizing that everyone is christ. Acting as christ and being christ-like is to be christian.

40. Second coming - really has nothing to do with a singular person coming down from heaven for a second time for a second go-around. It's really what happens when all those on earth are choosing to return to heaven and, of themselves, become the christ. The first coming was Jesus showing the way to return to heaven, and the second coming is us actually implementing and following that and doing the same.

41. Eternal life - really granted by God the instant he created you and everyone. It means permanence and the impossibility of anything ever happening that could interrupt, damage or change that permanence. This means it is a state of total immortality and invulnerability. Everything real lives forever.

42. Eternity - a state of heaven and reality in which everything real always exists, is always the same, never changes, and exists here and now and forever. There is no "time" involved, only presence.

43. Golden rule - Not an optional rule, but really the unbreakable law of God that you are everyone. Therefore how you treat them you are immediately and directly and personally treating youreslf. The part of you that is in them is the receiver of what you give, because giving and receiving are one. This produces an incentive for only shared interests and for giving only love, otherwise you will hurt yourself by trying to hurt another. What you do unto others you do unto yourself. By treating them how you would want to be treated, you directly do treat yourself that way and directly receive that treatment, regardless of whether other opt to reciprocate or not.

Some ACIM quotes...

"I told you that I could reach up and bring the Holy Spirit down to you. But I can bring Him to you only at your own invitation. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your own right mind. He was also mine. The Bible says, "May the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus," and uses this as a BLESSING. It is the blessing of miracle-mindedness. It asks that you may think as I thought, joining with me in Christ-thinking."

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic. He is referred to in the Bible as the Healer, the Comforter, and the Guide. He is also described as something separate, apart from the Father and from the Son. I myself said, "and if I go I will send you ANOTHER comforter, and he will abide with you."

"The Bible enjoins you to be perfect, to heal ALL errors, to take no thought of the body AS SEPARATE, and to accomplish all things IN MY NAME."

"The Bible instructs you to "KNOW thyself," or BE CERTAIN. Certainty is always of God. When you love someone, you have PERCEIVED him as he is, and this makes it possible for you to KNOW him."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing. The Tree of Knowledge, again an overly-literal concept, (as is clearly shown by the subsequent reference to "eating of the fruit of the tree") is a symbolic reference to some of the misuses of knowledge referred to in the section immediately preceding this one."

"The Bible repeatedly states that you should praise God. This hardly means that you should tell Him how wonderful He is. He has no ego with which to accept thanks, and no perceptions with which to judge your offerings. But unless you take your part in the creation, His joy is not complete because YOURS is incomplete. And THIS He does know. He knows it in his own Being and its experience of His Sons' experience. The constant GOING OUT of His love is blocked when His Channels are closed, and He IS lonely when the minds He created do not communicate fully with Him."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

""No man cometh to the Father but by me" is among the most misunderstood statements in the Bible. It DOES NOT mean that I am in any way separate (or different) from you, EXCEPT IN TIME. Now, we know that time does not exist. Actually, the statement is much more meaningful if it is considered on a vertical rather than a horizontal axis. Regarded along the vertical, man stands below me, and I stand below God. In the process of "rising up", I AM higher. This is because without me the distance between God and man is too great for man to encompass. I bridge the distance as an Elder Brother to man, on the one hand, and a Son of God on the other. My devotion to my brothers has placed me in charge of the Sonship, which I can render complete only to the extent I can SHARE it."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own."

"I have been correctly referred to in the Bible as "The Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world."