Forgetting for a moment the bigger picture context, which the ego always ignores, it can seem like this world makes sense.

The body seems to be able to see the world. Becoming sick seems to be something unwanted and an attack on us. The body seems to have senses of the environment and tells us what's there. The world seems real and outside of us.

But when you reintroduce the big-picture context of what happened before this world as made, it puts everything into a completely different perspective. It give you something to contrast again, to compare, is this true, or is it an illusion?

Before this world, you had vision, the ability to see in the light. There were no obstacles. When you made the world and the body, you created a kind of bubble, populated it with objects, painted the interior walls to shut out sight of God, and then fixated on the forms.

You made a body which was designed specifically to not see God, to focus only on form, to obsess over appearances and to be completely distracted by images seeming real. You made this world and the body to BURY YOUR HEAD IN THE SAND and NOT SEE. The whole purpose of the world is to DENY GOD.

The body was given so-called sensory organs, allegedly permitting you to see and sense the world. It was given eyes to be able to seeming have sight.

But all of this is completely inside out. And the reason and purpose of it is completely backwards.

The body's sight is made to make you BLIND. It is made to PREVENT VISION, so that you will be fixated on appearances, illusions, distractions, so that you DO NOT see. The more that you gain sight of form and bodies, the more blind you become. You SEEM to be seeing "more", but you are seeing LESS.

Similarly, it seems as though sickness is something we don't want and is attacking us against our will. We seem to "not want it". But the Course tells us that in the big picture, we put sickness in place on purpose to DEFEND ourselves against life, We actually think we are defending our SELF because we have identified with a fake ego self, and that self seems vulnerable (because it is an illusion) and needs defenses. So we defend the body in order to try to SAVE OUR LIFE from the attack of truth, which attacks the body and MAKES IT SICK. So now, in the big picture context, sickness is self-attack and a WANTED attempt to die, in the name of preserving your life!

We came into the world not to experience something real, but to get away from reality. We gave our body sensory abilities so as to NOT to sense what exists, but to confuse and block the ability to sense. We created eyesight to SUBSTITUTE for being able to see. The body can't see shit.

In this world, vision is blindness, sickness is self defense, life is death, death is life, what seems it will save you destroys you, defenses are attacks, everything is backwards and inside out and upside down. Nothing is as it appears. Even "nature" is unnatural. Everything about the ego's laws are unnatural. What is "supernatural" is actually natural. Miracles are natural. When they are not happening, something has gone wrong. They are supposed to be happening ALL THE TIME.

To be free of this must entail the undoing and letting go of, dissolving of, disappearing of, all of these illusory forms and things that we MADE UP solely for the PURPOSE of avoiding God. We can repurpose them temporarily and learn from them and use them for awakening, but they are only useful teaching devices for as long as we NEED to be taught, or rather to unlearn. Then we will let them go. Who would want to keep a body which sees only an inversion of reality, blocks vision and defends against God? It is unnatural. It is not needed.

A lesson for me at the moment has two parts to it. One part is realizing that underneath a person there is a completely immortal, invulnerable, innocent being that has absolutely nothing wrong with them and has done nothing wrong. The other part is, connected to this, that therefore I need to learn to 'overlook' the appearance of anything else that they are trying to demonstrate to me as the truth about them and not join with them in it (false empathy).

Being able to overlook the 'obstacle to peace' that other people put in place is a tuff one. But it also means I have to be able to not have obstacles to peace in myself, and that I need to take any kind of 'veil' or 'persona' off of my own mind so that I can see past the personas of other people.

Being able to overlook appearances is forgiveness. When your awareness fixates on looking AT an appearance, AT a body, AT a person's form, this is blinding. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM. This is what happens when the Holy Spirit in you is not allowed to fully extend outward, instead being stopped by the form of another person. But it's not their form that stops your 'vision', it's your belief that it's real - your buying into the illusion of it.

There's sections in the Course that I read not long ago about how the Holy Spirit projects/extends outward PAST your own body and PAST the bodies of other people, to recognize Himself WITHIN the mind of the other person. When your mind is looking past these forms in this way, there is no sickness because the mind isn't getting 'stuck' on form. Fully extending THROUGH and PAST the body is COMMUNICATION, which the Holy Spirit wants to use it for - to join with others beyond their bodies. But if we're fixating on the content of form such as guilt, fear, sin, death, bodies, appearances, etc then this puts a road-block in the way of extension, creating sickness and death. The body then becomes an 'obstacle to peace' - it's in the way we're looking at or past things.

The truth is that the body is never in the way of a truly forgiving mind. The body is not powerful and does not have the ability to prevent the extension of love. The body (mine, or someone else's) also has no ability to snag my mind or get me to pay attention to it. Instead, if my mind is truly forgiving, it will simply see THROUGH and PAST the obstacle recognizing that it is not real and has no ability to prevent extension. Then there will be a recognition of Oneness with your brother.

The issue is that when the mind itself has blocks to awareness, these blocks prevent full extension of Spirit. And that means there's some kind of belief in or attachment to guilt/sin/fear/death/spacetime/bodies etc within the mind. That means, instead of the mind just moving past and extending past everything in form, it instead 'stops' at or becomes fixated on form as though it has some power to block your awareness/sight/vision. You focus on something which is NOT THERE, and you think it is real, and this blocks your awareness. Blocks to awareness manifest as blocks to energy flow and vitality, where ultimately a 'big block' brings about "death".

It's an ongoing challenge to learn not to fixate on form or appearance, especially when you are used to seeing other people as though they ARE the way they appear. So if someone comes along with a sickness or a story about themselves or a really attention-grabbing attitude etc, if I am tempted by that and look AT it and MAKE IT REAL then my mind has become snagged by it, attached to it, and resistant of it, and that will have an affect on my own wellbeing. It will make me sick because I am seeing my brother as sick by failing to overlook sickness. We need to literally see the Christ in ourselves and others in order for our mind to fully extend and to be unhindered and unrestrained. I think in the Course Jesus used a word like "arrested". When the mind is arrested by sight of form we become sick. When the mind is freed from arrest, sickness is loosened up and flow is restored and there is no more death.

It's difficult but I have to learn to look past the ILLUSION that people have something wrong with them, the illusion that people are really sick, the illusion that people are actually able to suffer, the illusion that people really have something to be afraid of etc. And this goes back to the first point.... .underneath all of our shit there is an immortal being that is absolutely unaffected by any illusion and has no faults and is perfectly innocent, invulnerable, powerful and free. If I believe that and know that and experience that and look TO that, then I will overlook all the other illusory bullshit. But if I forget that, or lose sight of that, or fixate on any other DEMONSTRATION as though it is the truth about me or another person, then now I'm into la-la land, hallucinating, suffering, caught up in stories, reacting to appearances and struggling with my own self.

I'm looking forward to absolute certainty. Someday it will appear within and without simultaneously. We are all really free, we just don't recognize it.

(anecdotal. .... People looking down at their iPhones fixated on form, hmm... A great way to make illusions real and to shut out everything else, and they call this a 'communication' device lol it's really an isolation device :-)..depending who you're dialling with ;-)

THE HOLY TRINITY is a major part of ACIM's model of Heaven. More or less, the holy trinity is ALL THAT EXISTS IN REALITY.

"He is part of the Holy Trinity, because His Mind is partly YOURS and also PARTLY GOD'S."

"The Holy Trinity is holy because It is One. If you exclude YOURSELF from this union, you are perceiving the Holy Trinity as separated. "

"The Son of God IS part of the holy Trinity, but the Trinity Itself is One. There is no confusion within ITS levels, because they are of One Mind and One Will."

"Only the levels of the Trinity are capable of Unity. The levels which man created by the Separation are disastrous. They cannot BUT conflict."

"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 is first here only in the sense that He is first in the Holy Trinity Itself. He is the Prime Creator because HE created His co-creators."

"The Holy Spirit is the only part of the Holy Trinity which is symbolic." (note this doesn't mean he isn't real or eternal, he symbolizes heaven in his "perception" while his being remains fixated on God's reality, and he is a permanent creation.)

"Through our creations we extend our Love, and thus increase the joy of the Holy Trinity."

I am told frequently, "let go". And I frequently have no idea what this means.

But I seem to be learning that it means I am more 'involved' in things that I should be. I am engaged with the ego, with the story, with the drama. I've gotten into it and now I am trying to control it.

I need to let go of it, step back, stop interfering, stop being caught up in it. That means being willing to drop it and to stop trying to prevent things from happening, or to force things to happen a certain way.

I feel this in my body and in my mind/emotions. It's as though, when I am not letting go, my mind has projected out like a giant 'sucker' and its latched onto someone or a story, energetically, and now it's fixated on it like I'm connected to it. And whatever happens to it is happening to me. This is because my mind has become involved and caught up in it.

So letting go then means, withdrawing my mind-sucker and just coming back to myself, coming back to just being me, just little me, simple me, detached, just being myself and not carrying burdens or trying to fix people or trying to prevent things from happening.

It's like emptying myself and dropping baggage and not being the one to carry all the weight of the world. It's freeing. I just get to like, sit on the sidelines, and observe, and not get involved. I can just be calm, then, just letting the world do its thing and not worrying about it. Being passerby

To perform a miracle, you must attune your belief and awareness to the state of truth that you are bringing about in the future.

With your mind imagining the future, picture the end result of healing in the state of it having actually happened. This is in effect accepting the atonement, that nothing unreal happened and only God's truth has happened already.

To do this goes against the ego because the ego holds onto what it believes is true now and tries to reinforce it, pulling up the past to prove and keep it.

"Overlooking" (forgiving) current appearances is a key part of miracles. You have to overlook how things seem now, recognizing that the current condition is the result of the past and you can change your mind to produce a new future completely unlike how it is now.

So in a way, overlooking the current state is like looking to the future.

Then, trusting that you have conceived of what the result WILL be like, regardless of how the world or body appears now, you remain fixated on that truth and believe it.

You believe it in the sense that it is "already done". So you bring that future state of "after the healing" back into the present. Believe now that you are already at that future moment, after the healing is already accomplished, putting the obstacles to healing behind you.

Having FAITH that the unseen will manifest as truth even if it is not showing up yet, is a key to miracles. "Miracles are taken first on faith."

Sometimes it's very hard to forgive someone. You become fixated on what they did to you, or what they were supposed to do that they didn't do. And sometimes this might've been something that occurred over a very long period of time, such that you can't even imagine life without this grievance. You just can't see how you can forgive this person.

This way of perceiving someone is very hard to get past especially if the person is important or valuable to you. And especially if your involvement with them has been largely a 'special relationship', or a victim/victimizer role. When all your focus is on how they affected you, you become blocked and unconscious as if there is no other way of looking at this.

So there you are, your mind is fixated on this person, on what they did to hurt you, and you just can't seem to get past this experience. One thing you do need to do is allow yourself to FEEL the feelings that have arisen as a result of what seemed to happen. By not feeling it you are in profound denial. Never mind that you had anything to do with how you perceive the situation, but to even deny that you feel hurt at all is a whole other layer of denial on top of it. Pretending it didn't happen when your whole being is screaming that 'it did' is an attempt to protect yourself from it, to hide it in order to pretend it is healed. But it does not go away, and it will eat a hole in you until you acknowledge it.

So as you gather a little willingness to explore 'healing', you can begin to at first allow yourself to acknowledge more of yourself, of what you are, and of what you believe has happened to you. Let yourself feel. The feeling has to come up for release. Up and out. This isn't necessarily forgiveness, but it is a form of catharsis to release old stuck energies which do obscure your perception. It's hard to see someone with innocence or calm when you're really feeling angry and hurt. Acknowledging and feeling the feelings, by FEELING them, not describing them, is a step forward in your healing.

Once some of that is past, you have cleared the way to experience a new way of perceiving. You may already have experienced cognitive shifts as a result of releasing emotion, like clouds clearing away which expose the sun. But you need to go deeper. Because this whole dynamic of "they did this to me" leaves you a victim, and if you stay there, you are stuck. Almost all feelings besides LOVE arise from perceiving yourself unfairly treated, or outright hurt. Fears, doubts, anger, hurt, suffering, pain, embarrassment, abandonment, etc all arise from 'its happening to me'. You need to move past this way of looking at the situation. But this is where it's hard, because it requires some form of detachment or greater perspective.

This is where Holy Spirit comes in because you're now willing to change your mind/perception about what happened and potentially see it differently, even if you can't yet see how that's possible. Until you take that inward journey you won't discover the answers and clarity that you need. You must seek reunion with God by joining with Holy Spirit and asking for His Help to overlook the way you've been seeing.

Now, what you have to get past is the belief and perception that ALL of your upset is the direct result of, and put there by, the other person. That it's their fault. That they are the sole cause. That you did absolutely nothing to ask for it at any time. That's irresponsibility. You MUST take some responsibility, even if a little at first. You can't be free from the victim role if you are not responsible. So let yourself be a little willing, however small, to open up to the possibility that there might be another way to look at this. Maybe you participated somehow. Maybe you made a decision or chose a way of experiencing the situation, which resulted in the evidence of hurt that you're left with.

Maybe you choose to AGREE with what the person was doing. Maybe you choose to BELIEVE that you deserved the treatment they gave. Maybe you chose to change your own sense of who you are, based on what they seemed to demonstrate was true of you. Maybe at some point in between what they 'offered' and what you 'took' from what happened, there was a little interval of choice where you came to your OWN CONCLUSION about what this means. Maybe you therefore did this formation of a false belief to yourself, USING the situation by taking it personally. Your belief in it, your agreement with it, your perception that it is the truth having lost sight of the real truth about you, WAS the 'attack' that you perpetrated against yourself, regardless of what the person modeled for you.

Ultimately you're 100% responsible for choosing. You made up the belief you're left with, on your own. Maybe you didn't know any better. Maybe you were too young. Maybe you forgot you are unconditionally lovable. Maybe nobody told you and you lost track of who you really are. But if you're 100% responsible for AGREEING to this punishment, then you also have the POWER to "choose again". And you can do that at any time that you are willing to admit to choosing this belief, and being willing to SURRENDER it to Holy Spirit, because it is simply false.

But you can't tell a belief is false just by saying it is. You need to know what is true. You need to transfer your allegiance and faith. You need to therefore open up to a greater truth, perhaps reminding yourself of what is true of you, or how God views you, or what God thinks of this false belief, or how Holy Spirit sees you in His Light. Ultimately, to FORGIVE, you need to get `into` the light of the Holy Spirit, at least a little bit, so that it can "shed light" on your belief and SHOW YOU that it is false. False beliefs simply ARE false, and you only need to see them clearly to recognize this. It's not seeing them clearly that makes you trust them. In the light of forgiveness you can witness the obvious fact that what you thought was true of you, is completely untrue, and THEN you will be perfectly willing to let it go. You'll know it was a ridiculous, untrue belief, not in line with the Truth of God. Or in other words, you'll see the VALUE of the real truth about you, and the LACK of value of what is false, and therefore RECOGNIZE that what is false does not even apply to you.

It doesn't apply to you. Because you're innocent and holy and forgiven already. You're loved by God. You're safe. You're at peace. You're with Holy Spirit. You're whole and healed. That's the truth. This event never happened. The person never really did anything to you. You did this to yourself and now you can see that you don't want to keep doing so. So you surrender. You surrender the false sense that is MADE FROM this false belief.. this false identity that isn't a true description of you. It wasn't really who you are anyway.

Then you remember who you are as God's Innocent Child and receive HEALING.

The Holy Spirit is a SPIRIT.

He is not a metaphor. He is not an idea. He is not a convenient concept.

He is called the Holy SPIRIT, because he is a SPIRIT.

He is part of the Sonship. He has been created FULLY by God to be PERMANENT.

The Holy Spirit is ALIVE. He has a mind. He can think. He can love. He can heal.

The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles. The Holy Spirit can PERFORM MIRACLES.

If you are afraid of Spirit, if you are afraid of the power of the mind, you might not like the idea that Holy Spirit is a Spirit.

He knows everything about you and about God.

He shares the Power and Will of God. There is nothing he cannot do. Just as there is nothing YOUR holiness cannot do.

He is not merely some aspect of your mind, or some metaphor for a "memory of God" or some little bit of "yourself" that happens to remain sane.

He is a BEING OF LIGHT.

He speaks for God because He has been created whole and perfect. He is fixated on God and cannot lose sight of Christ.

The Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and is always aware of Christ, at all times.

The Holy Spirit is the highest communication medium, a perfect "channel" for God. He is UNLIMITED.

Many people think that healing is all to do with fixing your mind and learning the truth.

How about letting the Holy Spirit supernaturally heal you? Is that scary?

How about inviting Him into your mind and body to literally "undo the consequences of your wrong decision". If you will let Him, He CAN and WILL come in and heal your symptoms and problems.

A Course in Miracles is not supposed to be a purely mental exercise. God created the Angels and the Holy Spirit to help you. You could really use their help. You need only be WILLING to ask for and receive it.

You do not have to do all of this on your own. Mighty Companions ACTUALLY can help you. This isn’t all about the ego "doing the course" in isolation. We are too used to being isolated.

Let God and His Creations help you, heal you, undo your symptoms, correct your errors and bring you peace.

When I had an awakening experience in the presence of God, it was so profound. I had no idea it was going to happen and had no idea that God would be so loving, gentle, soft and joyful. I especially did not know that God was not far away, but right under my own skin.

I was aware that God was real and that I was becoming merged with Christ and that my ego self was just about going to disappear. I felt myself "pull back" from the dream as though snapping out of it, into a state of such intense awareness the likes of which I had no idea was possible. I thought I was awake every day of the week when I got up in the morning, but this was a whole other level of wakefulness.

Later, when I had to go back to work, it was surprisingly bizarre how I seemed to be aware of something as though it was totally obvious, and yet nobody else seemed to be aware of it. I couldn't figure out why they didn't know about it.

They acted like they were in some kind of unconscious sleep, seemingly awake but somehow not, totally oblivious to the presence of God which was everywhere. It was like there was this huge elephant in the room that I was aware of, and nobody else even had the slightest idea that it was there.

Trying to interact with people was very peculiar because I had to sort of pretend to be at their level, and all the things they thought were important were not important at all. It was kind of funny how fixated on "small stuff" they were.

It was like looking in on the scene from outside of it, watching the people go about their lives seemingly normally but as though they were half asleep, not even realizing what they weren't realizing.

As I "fell back asleep" over the following weeks, I returned to the same state of mind as them, more or less, and once again was not aware of the presence of God. At this time was quite devastating and I had a huge sense of loss and grief.

But from time to time, God pops in to say hello and I gradually inch my way back to an awareness that I now know is possible. But I can at least understand that when we do wake up, it's going to be a bit bizarre being in a world where almost everyone is still sleeping. I guess we'll have to tiptoe quietly.

If someone tells you that something is medically wrong with a person, your mind will narrow. You'll probably find yourself focusing on their body. You'll feel like you are locked into the situation with no way to escape it. Somehow your whole attention is on the problem and it seems like there is nothing you can do about it.

This sensation that you are locked into a physical state with no way out, means your mind has become imprisoned and it is also imprisoning the other person. It is holding sin against them and giving reality to their body. This means you've entered false perception, which is why you are in fear and feeling powerless. You think the person is their body, so your eyes are now fixated on their body as if it - thus them - has a problem that cannot be fixed.

The problem has to be first recognized in order to resolve it. Because the problem isn't in fact the idea that something is wrong with the body-person, the problem is really that you're seeing them as a body and are being unforgiving. You have confused their body for their self, thus confusing your body for yourself. And now you feel threatened and unsafe and in danger because you've identified with what can be attacked, joining your brother in false empathy and suffering.

To recognize the problem is to realize the problem is not so much what you see, but how you are seeing, or from what vantage point you're seeing from. And false perception will gladly show you that a person is exclusively physical, omitting any sign that they are not a body or any awareness of anything about them that isn't solid. You'll then think this is all there is, and therefore it is the only reality, and this is why you suffer in an unsolvable problematic space.

The problem is that you have lost sight of the truth about yourself and them. They are not a body, and nor are you. They are not a symptom or a sickness. They are not physical. Your physical sight on its own without the input of true vision is blinding you by perception of form, limiting your awareness to a tiny fragment of what's there. Your vision has become dark and narrow and this is why the whole situation seems impossible to solve.

To see physical sickness as real is to be blinded by form. To believe there is something wrong with the body is to anchor you in false perceptions. To regard the body as in danger is to completely ignore the mind. But to recognize nothing real can be threatened is to realize everyone is immortal and cannot be sick. Ultimately, that the body is not really there are all, because only the mind is real.

"Let me recognize the problem so that it can be solved."

"Let me recognize that this problem has been solved."

"Let us be determined not to collect grievances today. Let us be determined to be free of problems that do not exist. The means is simple honesty. Do not deceive yourself about what the problem is, and you must recognize it has been solved."

Although there are some parts of this world which seem appealing, welcoming, pleasant, enjoyable etc.... we need to always contrast.... do I want this, OR do I want God? Because God did not create this world and the home that He created for you is not the world that seems visible here. The visibility of this world was made to conceal the real world and to make you fixated on what is not real.

There are small, little, stupid things in this world which we seem to get upset about which is as if to say, this little tiny thing is more important to me than being with God. So if I'm pissed about someone moving my cheese or someone failing to send me the proper email or someone posted something offensive on facebook or someone stepped on my flower bed, I better be clear that the value I'm giving to these things is in opposition to the value of God. I want these things more than I want God. I think they are more important than being with God.

And when you look at that in that perspective - you're trading this huge amount of love from God for a tiny little speck of illusory rubbish that isn't even important, that really shows you how ridiculous our little world is.

So then next time I have a shit fit about an item being in the wrong place or someone went into the bathroom before me when I needed to pee or a bird crapped on my car window or someone stole my pen, I need to remember... do I want this more than God? Do I want to be right about this more than I want to be happy with God? Is this tiny little insignificant illusory object more important to me than God's love?

What are you worth? The tiny gifts that we give, purchased with "pieces of paper and metal discs" DEVALUE you and say, you are only worth this. And yet these gifts are given as though they raise your worth and establish the ceiling of your worth. You are worth far more than any gifts the world could ever give. You are worth more than any amount of money could ever afford. You are more important to God than these silly little toys and ego offerings that are made to be all sparkly and appealing as if you deserve such things. "You're worth it" marketing slogan is absolute bullshit. It really reads "you're not worth anything more that this chunk of metal with a few sparkly rocks in it".

You are worthy of GOOOOOOOOOOD. You are worthy of immense profound love and happiness. Nothing in this world can offer you even anything remotely close to that. And nothing in this world can reflect your VALUE. Modern society attempts to place tremendous value on objects and things and 'stuff' and to get people to believe that they need this stuff in order to be worthy, when in fact the entire system is training people to devalue themselves and equate themselves with a bunch of junk. You are so worthy to God, you will probably be shocked when you start to allow His value of you to be truly felt and to register.

The PURPOSE of a "course", is that you TAKE the course, so that you can learn how to do something, and then AFTER you have taken the course, you are now ABLE to do that thing WITHOUT needing the course itself any more. A course in "mind training" trains your mind, so that ONCE TRAINED, your mind is able to DO something it could not do before.

But with ACIM, a lot of our focus is taken up with struggling TO learn the course, arguing about what it even says or means, and believing that to learn it is to understand what it says. We're fixated on and lost in the pages instead of USING it to undo the NEED for it.

The whole POINT of it though is to TURN YOU INTO A MIRACLE WORKER. And having GRADUATED from the course, you should then be able to perform miracles and be a teacher of God like Jesus.

We spent a lot of time being hung up with the words, what it says what it means, what the metaphysics are, the implications, taking it like a kind of philosophical study, sometimes using it, applying it, as if applying it or doing the lessons is the PURPOSE of the course. But the purpose of the lessons etc is change your mind to get it into a state WHERE you are THEN able to USE what you have learned.

The lessons teach you something and then LATER you USE what has been taught. And yet people get so hung up on the idea that the lessons themselves, or applying the principles, IS the whole course. Well, within the context of the course itself yes, but the whole purpose of even doing this "mind training" is so that you END UP with a trained mind that CAN ACCOMPLISH something.

We shouldn't get so hung up on the course ITSELF. It's there for a reason to serve as a tool and mechanism to guide and direct us and give us tools to work on our minds and heal our hearts. But that's only within the context of "learning it", ie taking the curriculum. Once you get past the course, so to speak, or you graduate from it, you then are in a position to really USE it consistently AS a miracle worker. That was the whole point of taking it, to FINISH IT, and move on.

Like if you were spending 4 years in college or whatever learning how to be a car mechanic, you don't spend the rest of your life in college learning how to be a mechanic. You go BE one. You take what you learned, you rely on your training, and you USE it to accomplish things you could not do at the beginning.

A Course in Miracles is no different. It's a course in learning how to perform miracles to help those who are less able. If you are just aiming to spend your whole life in a love-affair with its words or dwelling on what it says and how it's written then you are STUCK in the classroom not wanting to go out into the big wide world and "get a job" as a miracle worker. The course is meant to be GRADUATED FROM at some point. You're not meant to become a "lifer" who just dwells on it all the time. Put the wheels on the car and make it go!

"Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

"This course is a beginning, not an end. Your Friend goes with you. You are not alone."

Where could be absolutely no sympathy for victims, IF you could clearly see that the victim is 100% choosing everything that happens to them.

If someone is suffering with sickness and disease, you might feel sympathetic toward them, but would you feel this way if you could clearly see that the person was causing this themselves on purpose? If they were deliberately putting the sickness in place and making it happen, would you feel sympathetic as though it were happening against their will?

If someone is afraid, you might feel sympathetic and sorry for them, but would you feel this way if you knew that this person was completely making up every single part of this fear? That they did not really have any need to be afraid and were just pretending to be afraid?

If someone is feeling guilty, you might feel sympathy for them, but would you feel sympathy if you knew they were totally making up all of the guilt, had absolutely no real need to be guilty, were just pretending to be guilty and it was all just a big lie?

If someone were riddled with sinfulness and remorse over some terrible thing they did, would you feel any sympathy for them if you could clearly see that, in fact, and in truth, they had not only not done anything wrong whatsoever, but also you could see clearly that they were just pretending to be sinful, were putting on a big show, and were totally faking it?

See .... we have all these ways in which we support, protect, reinforce, and make real, all of these layers of suffering... all of these experiences, in which it SEEMS like the person is not choosing, does not want it, did not create it, hasn't contributed to it, and therefore they are this sort of innocent victim.

The fact is that the APPEARANCE of someone being an innocent victim is nothing more than an ILLUSION. It's an illusion, because it seems to paint a picture that could be believable ONLY IF you were unaware of the whole picture of what is going on. You only fall for it and have a response of sympathy, based on the fact that YOU were fooled by their trickery, YOU fell for the deception, and YOU failed to have the ability to see through/past/beyond/overlook what APPEARS to be a "real problem".

Your unawareness causes you to react to things that you see as though they are real, ONLY because you do not recognize that it is an illusion, and you do not SEE what is really going on. You don't have all the information. And only when you are lacking information could you believe, for an instant, that someone is ACTUALLY a victim. If you do not see the ways they are choosing, and if you do not recognize their immense power, and if you forget that they can create anything, and if you are unaware of how they've set up the entire event - EVEN IF within the event it looks totally obvious that the world has transpired against the person - against their seeming will - it's STILL an illusion. The person is STILL choosing it.

Nothing happens against your will. Nothing happens to anyone against their will. Absolutely every event in 'life' is planned, orchestrated, chosen on purpose, and set in place, and set in motion, and ENACTED BY, every person that is involved. Cooperatively, deliberately, and on purpose. Because it serves the overall intention of spiritual growth, learning lessons, proceeding in awakening, and the ULTIMATE goal of returning to God.

This goal is so far-reaching and so long-term and so FIXATED on being accomplished, that we even create scripts in which we suffer and die and have disease and are attacked brutally JUST SO THAT there will be something that will happen to our mind, something that MIGHT just trigger us to take steps towards truth, towards God, towards love. These are just lessons. Horrible nasty painful lessons, sometimes, but STILL chosen. Still agreed to.

The days of the innocent victim are numbered. Its game is up.

When you are in denial, the denial itself paints a picture that whatever it is you're denying is WORTH denying, because it's not good, even though WHAT you are denying is outside of your awareness. Like, as though there really is something there being denied - something you shouldn't STOP denying because then you'll be in big trouble.

It's the same with fear. Fear tells you there's something real to be afraid of, that the fear is justified. The fear says its worth being afraid, because if you aren't, you'll have to confront what it is you area afraid of. Think about that - if you're NOT afraid, you will have to FACE something fearful. Makes no sense.

The ego's basic mind-trick is avoidance of God, avoidance of the truth, avoidance of reality. But the thing is, it doesn't just avoid God. God is love. It isn't really telling you that you are avoiding love. If you knew you were avoiding love, and you remembered what love is, you wouldn't be willing to avoid it. So instead, it tells you you are avoiding something else.

The ego says, you're avoiding an evil God, and you wouldn't want to go anywhere near it. It tells you, you're avoiding real sin and guilt in the mind, and you shouldn't go anywhere near it. It tells you, you have a really big reason to be afraid because God is coming after you, so that you'll be justified in being afraid. All of this is designed to make you believe that you're actually doing the right thing by being in denial, or being afraid, or avoiding God, or going out of your mind.

The lie here is that fear itself INVENTS its own idea of what you are afraid of. And denial itself INVENTS its own idea of what you are denying. Once you enter into denial or fear, you're in a place of hallucinating and projecting ideas based in denial in fear, which out pictures God, or your mind's content, as also being fearful.

Here's the key. It's not that your mind HAS real guilt in it. It's not that you HAVE a real reason to be afraid of God. It's not that you HAVE sinned or that, if you looked within, you'd be confronted with the horrors of what you've really done. The key is.... ITS ALL A LIE!

There IS no reason to be afraid of God. There IS no real guilt in your mind. There IS no sin that you have accomplished. There is no dark icky content lurking for you to discover, to be ashamed or, or to feel bad about. THERE ISN'T ANYTHING THERE. You haven't really done anything. You haven't sinned. You're not guilty. THIS is what the ego does not want you to really FIND OUT when you look within. And this is what it DEFENDS against by telling you it is very justified in making you use denial and fear to protect yourself.

You're innocent. "What if you looked within and saw there was no sin?" - ACIM

So you have to realize this, the ego's devices of avoidance of God/Self/Mind all CLAIM that you should be afraid to look within, they all CLAIM that you've got tonnes of guilt to heal, they all CLAIM you sinned and that you would die if you faced God, but it's all a self-perpetuating myth. They're all lies. They're all defenses against the truth.

Ego defenses never defend you against the TRUTH, because they are designed to OBSCURE the truth, so that you believe you are defending yourself against something ELSE. You could never believe that defense against LOVE is ever justified - you can't hold an awareness of real love in your mind and at the same time believe you would ever not want it. So instead the ego tells you that there IS no love, its been replaced with something dark and sinister, and you need to defend against THAT - the God of hate that the ego made up (as itself).

So all the while you are fixated in your 'issues' about what you did, the sin, the guilt, the fear, all of that is designed to block and distract you from looking at what is BEYOND these things. Before sin there was separation, yes, but before separation there was LOVE. The ego doesn't want to you keep investigating what's real because eventually you'd unearth the love that you buried and realize it still exists AS love. And then it's game over for the ego.

The truth is, you are completely innocent and free. The truth is, when you look into your mind, you might AT FIRST seem to encounter guilt and fear and sin and shame and attack, but only because you still believe these things are real. They're just clouds of illusions. Temporary distractions. They're lies, all of them. Fear is never truthful. Denial is never called for. You don't need any defense from God because God is love.

All of these avoidances are really designed to cover up the ATTRACTION TO GOD which is so intensely powerful and undeniable that if you were to become aware of it, you would rush into God's arms and into eternal life immediately. It is this POWER that you attempt to cover up. It is this LOVE that you attempt to deny exists. It is this VALUE and MEANING that you try to stay away from by making up stories about what it's frightening. God isn't frightening, the ego is.

God is love.

When the mind clearly recognizes that CAUSE is in the mind, and Cause is God, and that the mind extends God's will, God's Power can extend forth to enact miracles.

This means, that God has FULL power over illusions. Or in other words, God is not a victim of illusions and God does not pay any attention to what illusions say can or cannot occur.

Let's talk about it in terms of authority. God is the One Authority. When we are fully aware of and aligned with God, we too inherit Authority. We are now representatives of God, or you could say, a "Teacher of God" or "Advanced Teacher of God".

With authority, you have commanding authority over all illusions, all ego, and all deception. This includes all sickness, and death. If you say that something will happen, it MUST happen. If you command that something be healed, it MUST heal. It must fall into line with your authority.

Now, in this authority there is no sense of paying attention whatsoever to ANYTHING that illusions appear to say. It is as if being blind to illusions (overlooking them completely, which is true forgiveness), not listening to ego, giving absolutely no credit to any grounds for fear, and not even really paying attention to even what the eyes and ears are telling you is happening in the illusion.

None of the things of the illusion, world, body, sickness etc, none of them are important because none of them have CAUSAL POWER over God and His Son (you). The world is NOTHING but an effect. It MUST fall into line and be/do what YOU command it does. This is why there is "no order of difficulty in miracles". The authority you have as a representative of God/Christ, does not listen to the world of form in any way whatsoever, believes in no ego, and completely ignores appearances. Instead it simply ENFORCES GOD'S WILL (that there be healing etc). And there's nothing the ego illusion can do to stop it.

Now, when someone is a victim, what this means is there has been a great reversal of cause and effect. There is also a DIS-EMPOWERMENT. There is a listening to the ego, a paying attention to illusions, a making illusions real, a becoming afraid because of how frightening the illusion SEEMS to be, and a taking it seriously. This is all of course to do with listening to the ego, which means, listening to what the ILLUSION is telling you. What the world is telling you, what the body is telling you, what the sickness is telling you.

So for the victim, what this means is, their attention has stopped being fixated on God, and is now fixated on the world/ego/body and all of its reasons 'why' (justifications, rationalizations) something cannot be healed. All of those reasons are bullshit. They are all temptations. They are all deceptions. We are to NOT listen to them. But for the victim, in the victim's mind, they perceive causal power as outside of them, separate from them, inaccessible, and acting AGAINST them instead of for them. And as such, they perceive and believe, that form/illusions/ego has power over God. This is the reversal of cause and effect.

This is also the AUTHORITY PROBLEM, because the victim has a mistaken sense of who has authority over whom. The ego/victim having authority over God is POWERLESSNESS. Weakness. Fear. Failure. The ego's attempt to be God is its attempt to block God's authority (which some would call aligning with 'hell'). It is also an ignorance of YOUR real authority, which is extended to you by God. A victim is not AWARE of their authority, and that's why they experience themselves as being weak and vulnerable and victimized, and at the same time believe they have a false authority over God.

So, the entire point of waking up, as it were, is the transition from victimhood, where you are allowing the world to dictate "what is" (i.e. to dictate to God a resistance against God, the authority problem, which tries to assert that God has no authority here), to a state where you are ABSOLUTE CAUSE, recognizing the world is ONLY an effect, and therefore it is absolutely under your power and MUST absolutely comply with any change you choose to make to it. And yes, when you are in this mind of cause (Holy Spirit onwards), you CAN change the world/dream/illusion because you have total authority over its deceptions. You recognize the world is a LIE, and therefore it has no power over YOU.

When the Son of God commands with authority and firm conviction and lack of fear and with strong belief (all of which are required!), that the illusion MUST do something, the illusion WILL comply. But it won't comply if you do not have this unshakeable certainty. It won't comply if you are in doubt. It won't comply if you are listening to the ego and fearing that there is a level of difficulty here beyond what can be changed. It won't comply when you listen to your own uncertainties or when you start to 'change your tune', trying out different words and so on. This means you've allowed the illusion to start to encroach on your authority/territory and invade your mind and you're starting to listen to what it's saying and are taking it seriously. This is dis-empowerment. Victimhood.

Your word is your 'wand', and you need to speak to the illusion and command it to heal and so on. You need to exercise your authority over it. Reversing cause and effect back to their proper orientation (which is a correction of level confusion also), doesn't just mean, oh, now you realize cause is 'in' your mind and you're not at the effect of the world. It LITERALLY means, there is now ONLY cause in your mind, and the world is ONLY effect, and IT MUST OBEY. It doesn't just mean the world still has some kind of fixed nature or objectivity, and that your subjective perception is now unaffected yet still 'passive'. It means you are now in command, in charge, you have dominion over it, and you tell it what the fuck to do.

That is how it is possible to enforce God's will, to enact healing, to raise the dead, etc. People being dead bodies is an EGO ILLUSION, a part of the dream world that attempts to put on a really big 'show' about how this is more powerful or important than God. God has power OVER it, and when you are aligned with God's power, YOU have power over it, to literally reverse death. It means not believing a single shred of the ego illusions, appearances, any state of form, any reason 'why' something cannot be changed, or anything else that comes 'from' the illusion/form/ego/body. If you are listening to form, you are listening to the ego. If you are tempted by the severity of form's condition, you are listening to the ego.

This is why we must become single minded, one minded. Absolute certainty. We must have firm 'belief' i.e. conviction that it is TRUE, that healing can, must, and will occur... even in the sense that it HAS occurred and therefore the ego MUST represent this healing, e.g. by the body image 'demonstrating' that there has been no attack. Jesus instructs us many times to demonstrate our brother has had NO EFFECT ON US, which means anything outside of you has NO POWER to do anything to you whatsoever, YOU hold all the causal power, you are NOT at the effect of ANYTHING in the dream (and therefore must be 100% responsible and 100% free of victimhood). We are to demonstrate that the Son of God - you - are NOT at the effect of the dream, the world, sickness, death, the ego's forces, agents of hell, deceptions or lies.

This isn't just about getting our mind straightened out and getting things into their proper order. Once cause and effect are CORRECTED, all the powerlessness that you thought you had will be replaced with POWER. All of the fear that you had will be replaced with CERTAINTY. All of the victimhood you had will be placed with CONVICTION. And you will become CLEAR that everything in form, everything of 'level 1' of the dream, is UNDER YOUR COMMAND. This isn't passive. This means you are an agent of God, you extend God's power (because you stop resisting or blocking it), and your alignment with love produces CONSTANT NATURAL MIRACLES. Where do miracles occur? THEY CORRECT THE ILLUSION (world/body/dream), NOT just the inside of your private inner world.

Miracles are "miracles" because they are 'supernatural' acts which come from a place of inner causality, BEYOND the world, via a clear alignment to and experience of the 'metaphysics' of the truth, and which therefore ABOLISH all of the ego's laws and have absolute power over everything in this world. This means it can defy all sickness and death, it can defy the laws of physics (e.g. Jesus walking on water), it can defy all forms of lack (feeding the 5000), it can defy all disease (healing the blind, raising the dead etc), because we have POWER OVER ALL OF IT.

This is not a drill. This is for real folks. And it's going to be up to you, once you access that authority and power and certainty and clarity, experientially, to decide when and where you might 'exercise' your miracle-mindedness. Maybe you will perform no such miracles. Maybe you will perform many. But they will be natural and effortless and unlimited. Just look at Jesus as an example. He performed even more miracles than are mentioned in the bible. He performed miracles DAILY! And as Jesus tells us in the urtext, "each morning ask me what miracles you would have me perform today, and help me to perform them." Every day folks!

It's a Course in MIRACLES because it's a Course that will lead you to God and will set you free and miracles are your RIGHT!

Amen.

A major way the ego tempts us to seek outside of ourselves and to not find what we are seeking, is to suggest that the truth really is out there somewhere. The belief that you can actually find it outside of yourself, is simultaneously the belief that it does not exist inside of you.

Establishing that the truth is not IN you already, fully and completely, or that you do not have it, is the entire foundation of the ego‘s thought system. Once this is believed, you will cease looking within for it, and start on a quest, which you might even call a "spiritual journey", attempting to "seek" for the truth.

This seeking can show up as very earnest and well-intentioned and an attempt to find the ultimate spiritual answer. BUT, because you are fundamentally looking in the wrong place, you are guaranteed never to find it.

The ego is very sneaky about this. It will tempt you to believe that reality, and truth, are outside of yourself. This means the entire world is real. It also means the world contains the truth. And this then justifies your seeking IN the world to try to find it. The ego has promised you can succeed at this, but it is utterly impossible. The truth is already inside you, where you are not looking, and where the ego will NEVER have you look.

Looking outside yourself CAN also include finding the truth within a book such as A Course in Miracles. Especially if the FORM of the book seems to be more of a truth than other forms. If the words seem to show symbols which don’t even look like symbols, but look like concrete pieces of the truth itself, which is the ego’s way of turning illusions into reality, you can become quite fixated on picking apart the tiniest nuances of what specific words say, become extremely specific, and pull apart even the tiniest of statements, which completely loses all sense of context and increases your insanity. The truth is NOT THERE!

You will go deeply into the Course words and the form of the words. You will not recognize them as mere symbols twice removed from the truth, and will not acknowledge the Course’s holographic nature. You will instead attempt to turn the Course into a linear, finite, concrete piece of "evidence", an attempt to PROVE that the truth is outside of you.

The result of this is an OBSESSION in trying to find the truth. You will feel compelled by the lack of truth in you. And yet, here‘s the problem. The more you seek for it, the more you dwell on what the Coure says, the more you become obsessed with the exact specific words of a given version, the more you dissect it and analyze it and try to figure out what it means based on its form, the more it will slip through your fingers! And the more you do this, the more desperate you will become, because you continue to fail to truly FIND what it is the ego promised you would find there.

The form of the Course IS NOT THE TRUTH. The truth is an inner experience of direct reality with God. It is not intellectual. It has nothing to do with study. It absolutely has nothing whatsoever to do with quote fests or throwing quotes at people to correct them. It definitely has nothing to do with pitting different FORMS of the course against each other. It’s completely nothing whatsoever to do with what exact words were said, who can find the best citations, or who can use the Course as a weapon.

THE TRUTH IS NOT OUTSIDE OF YOU.

There is nothing so blinding as sight of FORM!

The Course is ONLY there to help point you AWAY from the form of the Course and towards an experience of God, which is already in you, just covered up. The more you obsess over the Course’s words the more you are going to get lost in the intellect. And the more you do that, the more you will believe you are "finding" the truth, and are delusional.

The words are just symbols, *representing* a truth that is quite removed from those symbols. When we fight about which exact words are used where, or what they mean, or what they "say", we’re completely forgetting they are symbols and are trying to break the Course out into some kind of direct truth in its own right. This was never how it was intended. This is an ego trap.

Blocks to awareness of the fact that you are ALREADY WITH GOD need to be removed. That’s all. Period. This is nothing more than the undoing of denial and stopping searching outside yourslf, even within the course, for something which is not there. The Course if understood is telling you to do this. You are supposed to leave the Course behind at some point and go within to God with empty hands! You can’t do this, and you cannot experience the truth, while trying to make yourself RIGHT about what exactly the FORM says or seems to prove. There is NO PROOF in the Course. It’s an illusion.

Go within.

Recognize this. The body was made to have permanently false perception. To be permanently unforgiving. It is absolutely incapable of ever forgiving anything. All it can do is sense what it detects seemingly in the world, and report it back as REAL. It cannot question it. It cannot rise above the battlefield. It will NEVER see reality. It cannot get even the slightest glimpse of real light or real truth It is permanently fixated on the physical form of objects, utterly blinded by them and incapable of seeing past them. It takes the form of objects as utter reality and meaning. It is completely convinced by the hierarchy of illusions, orders of difficulty, levels of problems and all manner of suffering. And to the body, every difference or change is real.

Every sickness appears utterly real to its senses. Every death is seen as undeniable proof of termination. It is tempted by literally everything it looks up or senses. It has never made even the slightest progress towards forgiveness, and it never will. It cannot step out of hell, it cannot wake up, it cannot even begin to suspect there is another reality, and it will not ever look upon God. What was made in vegas stays in vegas, and the body is MADE OF unreality.

This is just what the body is. It is a limited piece of biological machinery designed to deceive. It has one specific function of turning illusions into reality. It is an embodiment of the belief that separation is possible, and implements that belief. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh".

It is a reality inverter. It absolutely shuts out all trace of reality and light and truth and God, and only allows illusions and unreality and falsehoods to pass through its filters. And as false things pass through its filters, it regards them as the whole truth. What is false is seen as true, what is unreal is seen as real, and what is evil is seen as holy. This is because it was in an attempt to swap all the properties of what is true with what is false.

The body is a polarizer. It takes what is not true and makes it seem true. It takes what is true and makes it seem false. It denies God's Kingdom of heaven and opens itself up to hell. It makes itself "invulnerable" to eternal life and makes itself vulnerable to death. It is the very idea of exposure to death and to hell, to murder and sin, to suffering and fear. It is the inside-out expression of the desire to be unnatural and uncreated.

The body is always going to be like this. You can change the purpose that you use it FOR, but you cannot change its nature. You cannot make the body see reality, or wake up, or know what's true, or discern facts from fiction. The body is limited. It was made TO limit and to remain limited forever. It is the "lens" through which hell is looked upon and regarded as real, and not for a single second will any body EVER gain access to the light of reality.

The body ALWAYS sees with UNFORGIVENESS. It is absolutely locked into false perception. It constantly makes all unreal things real to itself. It cannot forgive, overlook, see past, recognize, correctly judge, discern, or recognize anything. It is blind to reality, and sees only unrealities.

And because the body itself is made of that same unreality, an unreality seeing an unreality registers as "truth". The body thinks an unreal world is true because unreality is the body's truth. Two negatives seem to make a positive. It does not see the world as opposite to its own nature, and so regards it with agreement. Even though both the body and the world are false. And this makes it utterly biased toward always regarding unreality as real.

The body will not ever show you God. The body will not allow you to be with God. The body will not bridge the gap to God. The body cannot open your mind. The body will never ever see the light of truth, or the real world, or heaven. The body cannot have visions of God or Christ. The body will never see Christ in your brothers. It is NOT CAPABLE. And it will always be incapable. And it cannot love.

The body is only what it is. It was made to confine and to limit and to imprison. You cannot use a prison to experience freedom from prisons. You cannot use handcuffs to know what it's like to be unlimited. You will not EVER turn the body into an awakened being, or get it to look upon reality, or make it able to forgive anything whatsoever. It cannot even BEGIN to forgive because it is absolutely PERMANENTLY HARDWIRED into hell.

There must be a better way, yes? There must be ANOTHER WAY TO SEE. There must be some way that your MIND can choose away from the body and experience without it. A way to escape from hell. There has to be freedom FROM the body. "Do you want freedom of the body, or of the mind? For both you cannot have." If you want your mind to be free, it has to be free FROM the body. The body itself cannot be free because the body IS imprisonment. And there's no point polishing a turd.

We have to then learn to recognize the body for what it is and what it is not. The body is a JUDGER and a condemner. It is an accuser. It cannot stop judging sin to be real. It cannot stop testifying to the proof of sin. The body is utterly selfish. The body is so locked into unreality that the ego actually sees the body as its ally, something it is in "agreement with", because both the body and the ego identify hell as reality. That's why the body became the ego's "chosen home."

As Jesus says, we have to leave the desert. The body has to be transcended and the mind has to open up to ANOTHER WORLD, another vista, through another sight, which does not depend on the body at all. It has to get out of the box and step out of limitation. And if you are going to forgive at all, it CANNOT be that the body forgives. Your mind has to overlook what the body shows it and recognize it as false. Only if all of hell is false can heaven be true.

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

"A sense of separation from God is the only lack you really need correct. This sense of separation would never have arisen if you had not distorted your perception of truth, and had thus perceived yourself as lacking."

Let's be clear. Every single manifestation of form in this world, all problems, all upsets and conflicts, every single sickness, all forms of "life" and death, every event, all people in all bodies, all creatures, all planets, every single civilization, all of time and space... absolutely all of this is a SYMPTOM of lacking God. ie being separate from God.

There is not "God over here" and "a world of problems over there". The world and its problems are not distinct problems, or many problems. Nor are they just random problems or nothing to do with your relationship with God.

EVERY form of matter, every event in time, every spatial relationship, is a symptom of attempting to be without God.

All of these things are built from lack. They are all based on the idea of lacking love. This ENTIRE UNIVERSE, is a picture of the attempted crucifixion of God's Son. Or to put it another way, this entire universe is what we will seem to experience when we try to reject God.

There is absolutely no exception to this. There are not random things in the world that have "other reasons" for existing. There are no sicknesses which have come about for "other reasons". There is no death that happens because of circumstances or free-willed events outside of this one problem.

The separation from God is THE ONLY PROBLEM in this entire universe, and it is the source and explanation for everything in this universe.

This also tells us what the solution is, and what the solution is going to "do". See, the problem is only one problem - believing you are not with God. The solution is coming to recognize this is not true and that you are with God and never left. What's going to happen to all of the SYMPTOMS of separation, when the separation has ended? What's going to happen to the EFFECTS of lack and being without God, on a universal scale - absolutely massive scale, when you return to God?

All of these things are going to DISAPPEAR.

These problems are not going to disappear merely as the result of finding answers or figuring out how to fix broken stuff or building a better toolkit or whatever else. There IS only one problem - separation. When THAT problem is fixed, every other symptom and consequence of this wrong decision will be undone completely by the Holy Spirit.

So let's put it this way. Every sickness in the world is actually being fed by and based on and coming from and symptomatic of, the absence of God. That's the ONLY cause.

Every death that occurs, is entirely related to the attempt to be separate from Life, from God, and to prove there is no God. When this is disproved, what's going to happen to death? It will be undone completely. This is the resurrection.

Every war, every argument, every upset, every mistrust, every state of suffering and lack, every lack and emptiness, is all the absence of God. Period. There is no other lack and no other problem.

All of the FORMS of problems, are designed by ego as illusions, to try to trick you to believing that not only are there many very different problems, but also separation from God is not the problem.

While you're fixated on fixing the leaky pipes in your kitchen, you're probably not noticing that it's got anything whatsoever to do with being away from God. While you're trying to do your taxes, you're probably unaware of the fact that there would be no taxes without separation from God. When you're struggling with a relationship, thinking it's all about the two of you and nothing else, you may not realize it's entirely about how you are failing to relate fully with God.

There is NO PROBLEM in this world, and NO WORLD, other than "within" the BELIEF, that you are separate from God.

Returning to God solves every problem. "There is no problem that trust would not solve now".

Lesson 109 "I rest in God" : ""I rest in God." Completely undismayed, this thought will carry you through storms and strife, past misery and pain, past loss and death, and onward to the certainty of God. There is no suffering it cannot heal. There is no problem that it cannot solve. And no appearance but will turn to truth before the eyes of you who rest in God."

Apparently according to Jesus, if you simply be in God all your problems are solved! It's true.

If you have a bunch of fears, doubts, questions, concerns, worries, and you go try to commune with God for a while... if you let God in even a little bit, if you sense love even a little bit, you might notice something. All your questions vanish. Why?

Why didn't you get your important questions answered with what seem to be the answers or form of answers you were anticipating were needed? Because the questions themselves were the problem. The questions were arising out of a lack of God. They were forms of fear, coming from believing God does not love you. When you receive God's love, you have no NEED for the questions anymore. It all just vanishes.

Love is the answer. Love is all that you need. Love can solve everything. Love is the answer given by God, as the Holy Spirit. It literally is the solution to all separation, and is the solution to this ENTIRE universe, because it literally UNDEOS this entire universe. This whole universe is based on and is the expression of the belief in separation being real. When recognized as unreal, this universe simply has to vanish. ie be recognized as having never really existed.

This is the meaning also of "there is no world". There is no universe here. Only God's creation of Heaven is real. This is why this universe is going to "disappear", ie be recognized as having never really existed at all. It's purely an illusion and an hallucination.

There is nothing in the world that cannot be solved by God. There is nothing in the world that God cannot heal. There is nothing in the world with the power to stop the Son of God from returning to happiness and health. There is nothing in the world capable of preventing the undoing of the universe, because it is God's will that you be with Him forever. And you are.

The seeming battle going on is really between what is true and what is false.

What is true is Holy Spirit's reality. It is all based on truth. Truth means, it is actually real. Factual reality. Perfect honesty and clarity. A truth that is so permanent and absolute that nobody can change it, because God put it in place.

Down below this, in the battlefield, aka 'level 1' or the ego world or the physical universe, it's all about not-truth. Another word for that is 'false'.

In falsety, there is no actual reality, no facts, and nothing is really happening. In falsety, there is only lies, deception, illusion, deceit and distraction away from truth. This 'level' of the ego is a withdrawal away from God and away from truth, attempting to be its opposite.

So down here in the ego's world we're commonly dealing with illusions, lies and deceptions. We're lost in separation, duality, unreality. Things seem to happen which aren't really happening. Problems seem to appear out of nowhere which aren't even really problems. Our vision becomes fixated on form/matter - "the form of error", since all of it is error - untruth, falsety.

So now really your entire 'spiritual path' can be summarized quite succinctly by saying, it is the transition from false to true. It is your movement away from what is false, which means everything ego, and toward truth, which is everything Holy Spirit/God.

The truth shall set you free, as in, if you access the truth you are accessing a plane of freedom. Truth is an experiential freedom. A state of being. You do not so much need to learn to accept what is false, but only to accept that it IS false, and therefore accept that "only the truth is true".

And so this takes a lot of 'sorting out' of what is actually true and what is not true. You do not get to decide what is true. This is what the Course means by "you cannot establish the curriculum". The curriculum is the subject of truth which you need to learn. You do not get to define what the truth is, that's God's job. You only get to learn it, or to decide "when you take it".

And as you're sorting out, you're mostly going to be dealing with the ego in terms of its mess and its idea of how to wake up, which is to shift around between different forms of falsety masquerading as 'more true'. It will try to become spiritual. It will try to wake up. It will try to access the truth. But it cannot. Ego cannot be truth. Ego = that which is not true. So the problem is that we are attached to the ego mindset - to the false, and we want to KEEP it by holding onto it, and take it into a state where truth exists. It cannot go there. It does not exist anywhere in truth. There is no falsety in the truth.

So it's not that we need to change - ie the ego cannot truly change from being ego. That which is false is always false. Sorry ego, you are not allowed in Heaven. But that means, YOU, what you really are, which is not the ego, but the 'decision maker', needs to decide whether to stay with the ego in ego-land, or leave the ego and go to the 'Holy Land' (in your mind, sorry Isreal but you're just a lump of dirt).

So when 'we' are trying to access the truth or wake up to the truth, to reality, 'we' think that 'we' are going to be able to take whatever it is that 'we' think 'we' are, to the truth. But this 'we' comprises the real you PLUS the ego you. Two identities, not one, but pretending to be one. And this is the main mistake we all make, trying to drag the ego along for the ride. Its sole purpose as 'the false' is to drag us away from truth, and that is all it can ever do. We need to 'separate from it' and change hands, and go be with Holy Spirit instead.

It's good to attach to and identify with Holy Spirit. Notice though that 'you' don't really get to have a separate existence. Either you're immersed in the ego's thought system or you are immersed in Holy Spirit's thought system. And each thought system has its own thoughts. Holy Spirit's thoughts come from God. So that means, either you are going to be filled with ego thoughts or God's thoughts. There are no thoughts that are 'yours' separately - that's an ego lie.

Anyway, rambling on a bit. Wake up to truth ;-) It's good for you.

"THE BODY'S EYES SEE ONLY FORM. 4 THEY CANNOT SEE BEYOND WHAT THEY WERE MADE TO SEE. 5 And they were MADE TO LOOK ON ERROR AND NOT SEE PAST IT. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they CAN SEE ONLY ILLUSIONS, UNABLE TO LOOK beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of NOTHING."

Ok so.... the body's eyes, the physical eyes, your eyeballs, are like little machines or sensing devices. All they do is detect sensory input. They do not see. Even in basic scientific interpretations all the eyes do is "send signals to the brain." The body's eyes do not interpret anything. They don't think, they don't "see", they don't have a mind, they don't do anything other than transmit messages beyond themselves. A physical object will still "look like" the same physical object no matter how your perception interprets things.

The body's eyes were made to fulfill a very specific function, just like a machine. They are "locked into" that function. They cannot clean the dishes, they cannot build a house, all they can do is "perceive falsely" and look at illusions. All they can do, is see illusions, errors, sins, surfaces of forms, as if they are real. This is all they were designed to do.

They will not EVER be able to do anything else. You cannot and will not ever be able to make the body's eyes look AT or SEE anything other than a world of forms, bodies, objects, physicality, sin, error, and illusions. No matter how enlightened you are, no matter what kind of interpretation you have, no matter what state your "perception" is in, your body's eyes can ONLY fixate on forms and appearances of physical objects.

The body's eyes are FIXED in a state of permanently seeing HELL, as if it's real. They have FALSE perception. They send signals to your mind, pictures of hell seeming to be real, pictures of forms which block awareness, pictures of bodies moving around in various states of sickness. This will ALWAYS be what the body's eyes do. No matter how advanced you are.

And this is a problem. Because now you've got to find a way of seeing the world in a different way, to interpret these IMAGES and messages in such a way, that you don't keep fixating on form, illusion, sin, error or illusions.

That means your mind has to learn to SEE PAST these images. You have to learn to OVERLOOK what they seem to show. You have to forgive them. You have to NOT BELIEVE what they are showing you. You have to learn to see BEYOND the surface of physical objects, to the Christ, which the objects were made to obscure.

That means learning to recognize that the ILLUSIONS that the body's eyes are ONLY capable of seeing, are NOT TRUE. You have to learn that everything they see is NOT REAL. They ONLY look at illusions as if they're reality. You have to learn that these pictures of illusion seeming real are FALSE, and stop buying into them!

You have to transition away from the physical eyes, which are permanently fixated on illusions, to using the spiritual eye (Holy Spirit's vision) which overlooks everything the body's eyes claim is real, and sees reality BEYOND them. You need a new way of SEEING.

This is how your mind learns to perceive love and light "in" the world BEYOND the world, in spite of the world, overlooking the world, seeing past bodies, disregarding appearances, looking beyond differences, and basically looking THROUGH and PAST all physical forms, as if they do not exist. Because they don't.

Do not believe your eyes!

Your eyes will not EVER show you heaven. But the images they show you of HELL, can be interpreted in a TRUTHFUL way, a correct way, which is the recognition that these images are FALSE ILLUSIONS, and that reality is something ELSE beyond them. God is IN everything you see because God is IN your mind.... God is BEYOND everything you see. You see God IN SPITE OF and BESIDES seeing forms. This does not make forms reality. It proves that forms are ILLUSIONS. And all the physical world has ever been doing is pulling the wool over your eyes and blinding you to reality.

You will never see these images AS HEAVEN. You will never see them as TRUTH. They will ALWAYS be photographs of hell. But what needs to happen is your awareness must expand beyond the physical, beyond forms, beyond the images, to see some other content that the body's eyes CANNOT SEE. To see the presence of God, love and light. You see that additional material IN SPITE OF the limitations that are shown by the body's sight. You don't suddenly turn those images into images of heaven.

You see heaven PAST those images and recognize that those images are not interfering with your vision. You have to learn that your body was made NOT for seeing, and to see using a whole new apparatus of vision which is NON PHYSICAL and does not look at the physical AT ALL.

"Only the mind sees". "Minds do not need bodies to communicate."

Mind by itself has awareness and SEES in the light. It needs nothing else for this seeing to work. This seeing is not perception at all. But when we went into the separation, we invented a separated state where we do NOT see only with the mind, and instead INTERPRET. "Perception is fundamentally judgemental". This interpretative mechanism is like a filter, which is a layer over the mind. Another term for this mechanism is the belief system.

The mind, in a sense, is now looking UPON or "through" the belief system, through perception. At the same time, the body is now sending signals into the mind from outside to report on an illusory world. The body is set up to only see the world with false perception, permanently, and to "see objects" as if they are real. It shows images of these objects to the perceptual mechanism. These are images of hell, an inability to see reality and a blindness by perception of form, regarding physical matter as "really there".

The belief system then INTERPRETS what the body is showing it. The belief system/perception now categorizes various things into separate boxes and labels them per the meaning it gives things, and assigns meanings to them. The mind, looking at these boxes, then "sees" the meaning that perception gave TO what the body's eyes were looking at.

Additionally when the belief system is not one of wholeness, certain images are spiritualized and others are ignored. Fear is used to shut out from awareness whatever the perceptual system does not want to see or believe in, and "acceptance" into the mind is permitted to the things it does want to see and believe in. Jesus says that whatever you VALUE, you will BELIEVE IN, and whatever you BELIEVE IN, you will WANT TO SEE, and because you want to see it, you will make yourself see it IN whatever the body is showing you. Projection makes perception, and obviously that is a state of hallucination.

So the belief system is now giving meaning to what is seen in the world and is interpreting it and hallucinating that it is something it's not. This means the perceptual SYSTEM is now a system/filter based in false perception, the body's eyes are also based in false perception, and so now the belief system is "lined up with" or in accord with/believing what the body reports without questioning it. That is unconsciousness, in which you take whatever the body shows you as "real".

In order to move away from this, the body's eyes continue to report the same photon-based false perceptions of fake objects as before, an illusory world seen as real, but the perceptual mechanism/belief system now REINTERPRETS the meaning and purpose of what is being sent to it. This leads to "true perception", which is a REINTERPRATION of the world "The Holy Spirit is the great re-interpreter of the world you made."

In true perception the belief system has been purified and equalized and all the meaning you gave to a meaningless world has been ironed out. Instead of a fragmented interpretation, there is now an interpretation/filter based in a reflection of the laws of God, which is wholeness. The belief system is still being bombarded with body-world-is real images but it now categorizes them all as UNREAL. It has to, in order to see with love, because the body can ONLY show you pictures of hell seeming to exist (solid objects) and so the mind has to learn NOT to believe what it is being shown. It has to recognize that this picture of crucifixion is actually not true, not real, not really there, and not happening. It looks PAST those illusory images and OVERLOOKS them, which is forgiveness

The mind's belief system now is a system of forgiveness which doesn't fixate on the surface of objects that the body is trying to report still, but instead overlooks those images entirely and sees the face of Christ BEYOND them, because it is now having mind-to-mind perception, BYPASSING the body's sight and practically ignoring the images the body presents. The body's images become like a "thin veil" before the face of Christ, because their LIES are SEEN THROUGH (REASON sees THROUGH the forms of error) so much that they become transparent. The light of Heaven is seen as being BEYOND what the images report, and the forms of matter are recognized as nothing.

All of these REINTERPRETATIONS of "the world you made" and "the world you see" (with the body) that the body is fixated on, with its false perception, are now "seen truly", with true perception, and recognize the illusion AS an illusion, not as reality. It looks past it to the light of Heaven. But what's happening now is the MIND, which is the only thing which SEES, is now looking AT the "reinterpreted images", while also looking through them TO SEE ITSELF, to see Christ. The belief system becomes transparent. The body images become transparent. The light of God is shining through the whole "system" of mind/perception/body and providing a REFLECTION of Heaven in the world. A symbolic representation of "light within darkness". The mind having true perception is looking a this fake world "in quite another light."

At this point though, the mind still is having perception, albeit true perception, and it is still in two minds. It is still having a separated state, perception, with a belief system. It's just that the belief system now is more or less empty, and God's truth is seen truly as true. Only the truth is true. The mind doesn't NEED the perceptual mechanism in order to SEE with Christ Vision, and the body and its signals have now been overlooked ENTIRELY. The whole "world" that the body was reporting as "there" has been SEEN THROUGH. And Christ has been glimpsed beyond the images.

The images of the world disappear, the body disappears, the mind stops having a belief system, perception comes to an end, the "filter" is removed, the separation is undone, and the mind now returns to a state of PURE MIND, in which there is no body and no world and no perceiving. In this state, sight is KNOWING, and knowledge of the Kingdom of God has been restored. This is the "sight of the Son of God." It is being IN Heaven. Recognizing where you really are and who you really are as Christ. And communing with God in fullness, which wasn't possible while the separated state of perception was lasting. Now perception is gone, the world is gone, the body is gone, and all that remains is your natural state of being. The entire world of bodies has literally become TOTALLY INVISIBLE to you and does not exist.

In summary, the mind sees, and while there is body/perception, the mind sees what the perception/belief system SHOWS it, which is an INTERPRETATION of what the BODY shows the perception/belief system. And as the mind sees BEYOND the body and perception, it sees itself as Christ and sees nothing else. This is all supported in various ACIM statements about seeing, vision, perception, sight, body's eyes etc.

They are two MECHANISMS for seeing, and they REPORT in two entirely different ways, and it's to you to decide WHICH OF THEM you are going to listen to. And you cannot listen to them both, fully, at once.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see."

"for they can see only illusions"

"Everything the body sees is an illusion."

"Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception"

The body, has 100% permanent false perception. It is a fixed, PHYSICAL form of perception which CANNOT EVER see anything other than form, error and illusion.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body"

"The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all,"

"Vision adapts to wish, for sight is always secondary to desire. And if you see the body, you have chosen judgment, and not vision. For vision, like relationships, has no order. You either SEE, or not."

"Everyone sees only what he thinks he is."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

Christ vision, also, is a FIXED STATE. It is the spiritual eye. The spiritual eye CAN ONLY SEE THE LIGHT. Can only look upon the real world. It CANNOT SEE BODIES.

"the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled"

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

Let's be clear about this.

There are two worlds. The world of false perception which is the physical world of bodies and sin and forms and errors and illusions. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

There is also the REAL WORLD, where there are NO BUILDINGS, no streets, bodies, forms, errors, not even the sun.

These are two separate fixed STATES.

1) False perception - TOTAL ERROR.

2) True perception - TOTAL SENSE.

The body's form of perception - the *physical sight*, USES the body's physical eyeballs to see. "These eyes made not to see will never see" reality. They CANNOT in any way be adapted to SEE in any way OTHER than they were made to see. They will NEVER see the real world. They are fixated on hell, on the illusory world. Physical. This is a fixed state of false perception.

Christ vision is an entirely different KIND of perception, which DOES NOT rely on the body whatsoever, does not USE the body whatsoever, does not NEED the body's eyeballs, and can SEE WITHOUT A BODY. This vision LOOKS ONLY AT THE REAL WORLD - at the face of christ. It is FIXED, in a position of TRUE PERCEPTION.

Now, this flies in the face of common belief that you "transition your ONE perception" from false to true. False perception is an illusory hell. True perception is an illusory heaven. You however can choose WHICH FORM OF SEEING YOU USE. You can also TRADE OFF one for the other.

Using 60% christ vision causes you to use 40% body sight. Using 90% christ vision causes you to use 10% body sight. You CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS.

So what actually happens is, your MIND is electing HOW MUCH TO BELIEVE in each of these TWO WAYS OF SEEING. Will it believe the body totally? Will it believe the spiritual eye totally? And how much? And as you believe one, you do NOT believe the other.

The spiritual eye is just as much a WAY OF SEEING as the physical eye is a way of seeing. Your MIND elects WHICH to pay attention to. And if you pay attention to one, it is because you have DENIED the other. You cannot FULLY use both at once. It's one or the other. You can't BOTH have physical sight AND christ vision operating FULLY at once.

"The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

So instead of thinking of your perception as being this SINGLE thing that you need to "shift" out of falseness into trueness, instead thinking there being TWO RADIO CHANNELS, you can TUNE INTO one, by TUNING OUT of the other. You can't listen to both. As you TUNE IN to christ vision's station, you begin to see the LIGHT that christ vision can see. As you tune out of that, into the body's sight, you begin to see the WORLD OF BODIES (which is the world of sin). And doing this BLOCKS your RECEPTION of the christ vision station. It blocks your sight.

You cannot EVER make the body see reality. You also cannot ever make christ vision see the body. YOU, as mind, have to choose WHICH of them you will see, and how much. And only when you choose to see christ vision FULLY, will you STOP SEEING THE PHYSICAL WORLD. "The world is forgotten". The VEIL of physical matter becomes transparent and disappears!

"Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

"For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight."

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father."

"Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son."

The physical world THUS VANISHES FROM YOUR MIND. You cease using the body entirely. You stop seeing physical matter. You stop interacting with the PHYSICAL world, which does NOT EXIST.

"Heaven is all that remains."

"Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God."

"here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him.""

Say you have some illusions. Something that isn't true. It could be a physical thing, or some belief or whatever.

If your mind is open, it is open to the possibility of being mistaken, the possibility of not knowing, the possibility that the thing could be true or false. The mind isn't locked into some position or defending some viewpoint or prior belief. It's open to considering possibilities.

This openness allows you to "see" all of what is there, without filtering anything out with some kind of bias. It lets you recognize what things are, without distortions and without preferences. It's just sort of a way of saying, "tell me what you are", "what is this really?". it requires honesty and a willingness to be mistaken.

Open mindedness can allow you to see a mistake, recognize it as a mistake, and recognize that it needs correcting. It is a light which is open to everything, so it can see all sides and all angles, all perspectives. Including being able to see from a perspective of wholeness, which holds things in its light and in its true perspective to reveal what things really are.

Open-mindedness could be said to be the same thing as forgiveness. It's a mind that is willing to accept the truth regardless of what the truth is, and is not deceived by appearances. It's open to questioning what it sees and considering that it may or may not be true or real. It's the same thing as true perception - openness to the whole truth.

Sin on the other hand is a state of close-mindedness, which we could call false perception. You could call it narrow-mindedness as well. The mind narrows down and instead of being open to the whole, to everything, it becomes very focused and specific. It shuts out the peripheral vision, so to speak, and focuses only on what things appear to be on the surface.

A closed mind is not open to considering that anything is mistaken, or to questioning the reality or truth of anything at all. It takes everything at face value. Illusions are taken to be reality, lies are considered truth. Whatever seems to happen is believed to be really happening.

A closed mind also narrows down and homes in on specific things, so will focus on "what someone did" to the exclusion of all else. Even if the person has merit or does good dees in addition to their mistakes, sin focuses only on the mistakes and shuts out the good deeds.

Thus a closed mind becomes a darkened mind, focusing only on what people are doing wrong - given that everything in form is basically a mistake it turns everything into a sin. It mistakes illusions for truth and believes that whatever appears to be happening is permanently irreversibly true.

Sin has no openness to correction, to healing, to another viewpoint. It is very rigid and stuck and fixated on nothingness. It will not budge or allow any change to its viewpoint, or any way by which anything can be questioned. It takes everything as gospel and without question at all, accepting illusions into the mind without any sense of real perspective.

A sinful false perception therefore, a closed mind, does not see that there is even a possibility of mistakenness, a possibility of unintentionally, or of a need for gentle correction. It sees only deliberate evil acts, which appear to be utterly unforgivable, and sees that there is no other way to look at anything. It does not allow any openness to consider its position being flawed, or to register any sense of sin itself being a mistaken view.

As such a closed mind is an unforgiving mind, a mind which will not allow forgiveness because it will not question whether or not what happens is really happening. Whether that it sees is really there to see, or the truth at all. It believes it knows everything already, has all of the truth already, cannot be told anything new, and will not listen to reason. It won't consider the possibility of any alternative viewpoint, because to sin there is only one factual truth - you sinned and you should die for it.

As we awaken, we are moving from the viewpoint of sin - or closed-mindedness, and are opening up the mind and expanding our viewpoint so that we are more inclusive, more open, considerate, willing to question, willing to be mistaken, and willing to recognize that other people's choices are mistakes and not sins. This requires broadening the focal point and expanding it out to see the whole picture. To reframe everything in the light of the whole.

In forgiveness, everything false is recognised as false, without judgement. And everything true is recognised as true without distortion. It recognizes that all illusions are just mistakes, and there is no sin, because there is nothing closed off from the light of truth. The whole is recognised, perception is open to wholeness, and the whole informs everything. To forgive, you must open your mind and question illusions and let go of trying to make everything into a sin. There is no sin.

"What is forgiveness, but a willingness that truth be true? What can remain unhealed and broken from a Unity Which holds all things within Itself? There is NO sin. And EVERY miracle is possible the INSTANT that the Son of God perceives his wishes and the Will of God are One." UrT26H9

"Our lessons now are geared specifically to widening horizons, and direct approaches to the special blocks which keep your vision narrow, and too limited to let you see the value of our goal." UrW180 "Only by doing this is it possible to transcend the narrow boundaries the ego would impose upon the self." UrP3C8

"And if I need but stillness and a tranquil, open mind, these are the gifts I will receive of Him." UrW365

"It is therefore essential that you keep a perfectly open mind, unhampered by judgment, in selecting the things to which the idea for the day is to be applied." UrW3L2

"Accept atonement with an open mind which cherishes no lingering belief that you have made a devil of God's Son." UrW101

"Dwell not upon the past today. Keep a completely open mind, washed of all past ideas and clean of every concept you have made." UrW75L5

"An open mind is more honest than this." UrT12D3

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings." UrW136L16

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds." UrT31G13

"It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is." UrT31E16

The course appears to say that christ vision (true perception) isn't simply a state in which you "do not see the world". It's a state in which you see the forgiven world - the physical world - the world of bodies still, but through christ's eyes. And at the same time, that this vision is so open and inclusive that it sees ALSO beyond the physical, it sees the real world.

I used to think the course was saying we had to simply "look past bodies" ie not see them at all in order to see christ in people. But here it is saying clearly that we are to use christ vision to still look upon the physical world, while also seeing past it.

Christ vision CAN still see bodies, events, happenings, and the whole world as the forgiven world. It is forgiven because it is overlooked or "looked past", to the light beyond, which christ vision does see, but it also still sees the world below. We see the world as a thin veil which we see mostly THROUGH to a light beyond, but still see the veil - until the final instant in which the veil lifts completely.

I think this tells us that essentially your goal isn't to try "not to see" bodies. As per the quote about how it's almost impossible to deny the body, and trying to do so is an unworthy form of denial. Instead, we are trying to find a way to see that is more inclusive and open that can see the light that is beyond the bodies while ALSO translating the bodies into the forgiven world.

I see this as a vision which goes out and acts sort of like an x-ray vision, which is causing the view of this world to become somewhat "transparent" like an x-ray of a body, where you can see through and beyond it to the light shining behind the x-ray, but this also allows you to see the x-ray image properly. Christ vision is fixated on the light beyond but INDIRECTLY still can see and INCLUDE the physical things in its sight, in a forgiven way.

Only at the very very end of the road might we perhaps completely overlook bodies and physicality to such an extent where the veil LIFTS entirely, we see the face of christ ONLY, and then return to heaven. At this final moment the world is forgotten entirely and not seen. We pierce the veil and go beyond. But this NOT going to happen until the very end of the road.

Before we get there, we definitely are meant to be using christ vision to see THIS world in a forgiven way. What this means is that christ vision INCLUDES EVERYTHING in sight, while strictly false-perception body-like perceptions see EXCLUSIVELY and ONLY see the physical, believing it to be real and all there is. Spiritual sight open up awareness to detect and see the subtler light "between the lines" and "beyond the forms", which physical-only sight cannot see.

"Christ's vision ...has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

For a long time I think I bought into the idea of an either/or exclusive approach to this, in which as some people say - if we see the body at all we're not being forgiving. But we're not supposed to not see the body at all until the very end. We are MEANT to see the body, and MEANT to see the forgiven world, THROUGH the eyes of Christ, BEFORE the world disappears from sight. Otherwise we're skipping ahead.

This means that seeing the christ in someone DOES NOT MEAN that we do not still see the body, only that the body is translated in its meaning as a part of the reflection of heaven WHILE also being past it to a light which is growing ever brighter. Seeing with Christ is an expanded more inclusive full-spectrum vision, while seeing through "eyes of fear" ie ego exclusive narrow vision shuts out some of the signal.

This alleviates the rather awkward and seemingly insurmountable "issue" of trying NOT to see bodies at all, or to see only beyond them while excluding them. I don't think Jesus is asking us to NOT see the physical world - until the final moment of ascension. he's asking us to see something ADDITIONAL permeating it and transcending it, in which the physical becomes like a thin veil - still seen but given much less emphasis and belief.

We don't need to be rushing to try to DENY the physical world from our sight. We need to be focusing on seeing it in a different way so that we can arrive at the FORGIVEN WORLD first, which is a more inclusive and whole way of perceiving, prior to the world disappearing from sight entirely.

Trying to "not see the body at all" is an unworthy and unnecessary form of denial, spiritually bypassing the required step of seeing the world forgiven "in another light" first. To just try to "not see bodies" isn't very effective. We need to learn that bodies aren't all there is to see, first, and the strengthen our seeing of the light beyond, AS bodies begin to fade out.

All the bodies ... that the body's eyes see .... are translated into a forgiven world ..... by christ vision ..... seeing the body in a different way.

"Christ's vision ... has power to translate all that the body's eyes behold into the sight of a forgiven world."

And yet christ vision also overlooks and sees beyond the body, to a light beyond it, at the same time.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (yet it just got done saying christ's vision sees bodies differently). It beholds a light beyond the body (as well); an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation (does not dwell on making out that each separate object is truly separated). And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events (all physical bodily things!), without the slightest fading of the light it sees (beyond those things)."

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight."

"Today I let Christ's vision look upon all things for me and judge them not, but give each one a miracle of love instead."

"Christ's vision looks on everything with love (including this world). Yet even Christ's vision is not His reality. The golden ASPECTS of reality, which spring to light under His loving gaze, are partial glimpses of the Heaven that lies beyond them."

"For light must come into the darkened world, to make Christ's vision possible even here. (even in the physical)"

"Christ's vision is a miracle. It comes from far beyond itself, for it reflects Eternal Love and the rebirth of love which never dies, but has been kept obscure. Christ's vision pictures Heaven, for it sees a world so like to Heaven (the physical world forgiven) that what God created perfect can be mirrored there."

"Christ's vision is the bridge between the worlds (false and true perceptions), and in its power can you safely trust to carry you from this world (physical seen exclusively) into one made holy by forgiveness (forgiven world)."

"For forgiveness is the only means whereby Christ's vision comes to me."

"Christ's vision looks through me today. His sight shows me all things forgiven and at peace, and offers this same vision to the world."

"Ours are the eyes through which Christ's vision sees a world redeemed from every thought of sin (the forgiven world)."

"RIGHT-MINDEDNESS listens to the Holy Spirit, forgives the world, and through Christ's vision sees the real world in its place."

"Christ's vision does not use your eyes, but you can look through His and learn to see like Him."

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it (still sees it) as nothing more than just a fragile veil (transparent), so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant (at the end). It is seen at last for only what it is (a veil of illusions). And now it cannot fail to disappear (AT the end when the physical is faded OUT and christ is faded IN), for now there is an empty place made clean and ready. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is the world forgot (the veil lifts, you see ONLY christ, the physical world disappears), with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness from where it came."

You are outside of the world, looking in upon it from the outside in. From this perspective, the body is given no value at all. The world is recognized as completely fictional. The body is used temporarily only as a tool for sensing the vibrations of the illusory world, so as to detect its current configuration and seemingly interact with its inhabitants.

At no point is the body mistaken for your self, nor awarded attributes it does not have. It is not regarded as spiritual or scared or special or worshipped. All sense of personal use of the body has gone. It is rendered nothing more than a functionless instrument through which light may flow into the dream as the light of the world.

In this view, the body is not mistaken even slightly for your sense of self. It's appearance says nothing about who or what you are. Its particular configuration or attributes make no statement whatsoever as to your true nature or creative abilities. It is merely a picture, a portal, into a fake world, through which you briefly peer in order to look at the surface of objects and see bodies moving around.

You recognize that everything the body senses is not real or true. It picks up on vibratory signals of a world that seems to be there but which is not. It shows you pictures of this pretend world, registers sound vibrations, and even seems to be able to touch the surface of imaginary objects. But there is no delusion that any of these things really exist or that these signals are conveying the truth. All they do is relay messages about what seems to be there, but which is not believed in. And so the mind does not use the body to "sense reality", it uses it only to sense unreality.

The dream world continues to depict scenes of fighting, abuse, conflict, physical and mental sickness, trees, buildings, storms, war and chaos, and all manner of activities. Flowers growing and dying, birds eating, fish swimming, and every imaginable form of forms changing form.

The mind observes this through the body senses which register perceptions of such things occurring, but the mind is not deceived by any of them. It knows it is witnessing a lie, a false world, a temporary fiction, which has no inherent truth and absolutely no reality. And it uses the body thus only to temporarily interact with those who see themselves as bodies, that there might be communication, teaching and healing, to guide them similarly to the recognition of a sane perspective on this world and on the bodies they utilize.

For now the mind is standing on the outskirts of the world, not immersed and not lost within its illusions. It is no longer tempted by appearances. It knows with certainty that nothing is happening here, and even when the ego demonstrates its prowess in manufacturing scenes of horror and destruction, these happenings have no influence over the mind. It reacts not and is unmoved and undisturbed by such illusory occurrences. And it continues to look past all of them to the real truth, which these appearances once hid, to the real light and the real show, which is occurring beyond the world entirely.

The mind then has lost interest in the world. It has come to recognize the world has nothing to give. It has surrendered all investment in the world and all attempts to believe it can do or achieve or give anything of value. It is recognized as nothing but a distractor device, made of denial, pretending to be something but is ultimately nothingness. There is no further worshipping of idols, there is no emotional investment, there is nothing that it wants in the world, because it knows the world has nothing to offer. It is nothing but a prison for insane minds who come to suffer and die in dreams of pain. And it is clear there is no such thing as sin.

Such a mind is the light of the world and has come to bless, only because it recognizes the truth and does not fall for the traps and illusions of a world of errors. It does not believe anything the body witnesses or suggests is happening, and realizes the limitations of the senses. It uses them only to serve to the extent they are able and is under no delusions that they represent reality or its experience. The body is known to be only what it is and nothing more, and it is nothing but an illusion. It has no life nor death.

From this view, the world is recognized as nothing. A sphere of un-happenings and illusory events. All events are nowhere. All changes wrought are substance-less. Not one thing occuring has any truth to it. Not even the dying bodies are really dying, nor the sick bodies really sick, nor the living bodies really alive. It is all the same, one illusion, one picture of strange objects and interactions, none of which are real or true.

The hierarchy of illusions has been flattened, and along with it the illusion of orders of difficulty. Nothing is regarded as more or less important or valuable than another, nor more difficult to reverse or change or heal. Nothing is given to the world but the love that would dispel it. And no meaning is attributed it beyond the meaning of forgiveness. Every occurrence has no effects. Every cause seen as an effect of dreaming. And nowhere is there a real consequence believed.

Only for a time does the teacher of God occupy a body thus, using it as a scalpel to dissect the illusions of the world and see beyond them to the truth. The mind no longer loses sight of what is true and real beyond the world, fixated on the reality of light outside the dream. There is no longer deception or temptation capable of inflicting suffering. And not one single aspect of the world has the power to do anything.

The world has been forgiven, overlooked, and not believed. The body is nothing and unnecessary. All the pleasures and pains of the world have been surrendered as useless futilities designed to waste time and avoid the truth. Death has no further appeal, for it is realized it accomplishes nothing real at all and is a worthless pursuit. No one in their right mind chooses to make such demonstrations occur, and what use is a dead body as a tool for communication and healing?

As a teacher of God, you have one foot in the world, but your spiritual eye perceives the light beyond it. Your mind is aligned with the truth but your body is doing body things. You don't fall for the ego's tricks, nor do you react to its worst attacks. You know that nothing can affect you because you have remembered what you are. You are as God created you, and you live outside of the world in another world of light, a world untouched by sin and danger, out of reach of war and pain.

Nothing can disturb you because you are safe in God. The dream of exile is nothing but a strange dream where strange things don't really happen. Where nothing can be believed. And where there is no truth. It is but a desert, arid and empty, a lifeless container of nothingness. And not once has it changed anything real or true. You come a while to offer a message from beyond, to remind your brothers what they believe is not true. You set them free by example and demonstration of your freedom from the world's evidence of irreversible sin. And they see in you a light shining from beyond your body.

This world isn't real. It is not your home. It is false. Nothing in it is true. It holds no value. It is not what you want. And eventually you will learn to recognize it as nothing, realizing that to gain all of heaven you are giving up nothing at all. And not one memory of the dream world will linger as you awaken beyond the world into the reality of the Kingdom. For everything you ever thought happened was nothing and nowhere. Only love is real and only the living world of light is true. And in this light you will know what you are and have always been.

"W-pII.14.1. I am God’s Son, complete and healed and whole, shining in the reflection of His Love. 2 In me is His creation sanctified and guaranteed eternal life. 3 In me is love perfected, fear impossible, and joy established without opposite. 4 I am the holy home of God Himself. 5 I am the Heaven where His Love resides. 6 I am His holy Sinlessness Itself, for in my purity abides His Own."

Most of the time, most of us are trying to perfect our persona-self, the self-image. This is part of the ego. This involves spiritualizing the world in some way, sectioning off the 'good bits' from the 'bad bits' and trying to only keep the good bits.

You try to build up this sort of spiritualized ego persona, which ultimately is the ego trying to attain some kind of 'image' of enlightened God-like status. But to do this, it has to keep only the special, valued, accepted, allowed, preferred parts and reject the rest.

So the main mode of functioning of this ego persona isn't so much to 'acquire' the good stuff, but to simultaneously weed out and get rid of as much of the bad stuff as possible. In other words, it is a function of denial and rejection, based on condemnation and judgement.

So once again the ego is contradictory, in that it *appears* to be seeking to include only the stuff it likes or wants, which it has selected from the big soup of life, but actually accomplishes it by rejecting and condemning and relegating the parts it doesn't want to some kind of waste basket. Fact is you can't select and section-off some part of your self or life without simultaneously rejecting and condemning some other part.

This waste basket lives in the ego as the rejected, suppressed, hidden, repressed, denied, shut-out, blocked out 'stuff', which is nevertheless still there and still functioning. This generally 'dark stuff', or at least, surrounded with beliefs and judgements of darkness, will seem to do the opposite of what the persona wants, and indeed attacks it from time to time.

When the shadow attacks (ie the pain body) you generally will want to get rid of it, of course. Just like any 'pain', even physical pain, it's generally the sensation of something you want to get rid of. But that's a major problem. Because how will you get rid of pain? You'll use the persona. The persona will then be selective and attempt to relegate, reject and condemn the pain, to make it go away. The persona doesn't want to accept the pain or integrate it so that the persona and shadow cancel each other out. The persona wants to maintain a separation.

So it seems I think, that most of us are traditionally fixated on loving the persona, building up the persona, reinforcing the persona, choosing to use the persona to manipulate and get what you want, using the persona to paint a picture of 'everything is great' when it's not, or generally repressing your real Self. And you would not SUSPECT that this alone is the entire problem with the ego, because it then directly produces a large body of repressed pain in the shadow.

The ego persona wants you to think of the persona as all sweetness and nice, so that you would not suspect IT is the big problem, yet alone suspect that it is the CAUSE of everything that is dark and unwanted. Instead it deflects all appearance of the dark icky stuff onto the shadow so that the shadow gets to look like IT is the bad guy, IT is the thing to get rid of, IT is the thing to weed out and destroy.

So on the one hand you have this picture of 'innocence' in the persona (like the innocent victim), which you would not suspect is causing any problems at all, and then you have the apparently 'guilty' shadow which looks like it is the sole location of all the pain and misery and guilt and sin. Are you fooled? Most of us are. I know I am. I am fooled all the time by this. I keep believing the persona and seeking out that innocent, denying self, and trying to get rid of all the nasty icky stuff that I think the shadow represents.

So now all the bad shit in the world seems to be blamed on the shadow, and all the 'good stuff' is credited to the persona. When in fact, all the bad stuff is CAUSED by the persona. We choose the persona first (or simultaneously), and then by choosing it, ie choosing to focus on including only a PART of what is, or a PART of ourselves, we automatically simultaneously are adding more stuff to the shadow part of ourselves. That shadow part, generally seeming to be that which we repress and deny and hate or don't want to feel etc, seemed to be generally held at bay in a sort of 'unconscious' state for the most part, until it rears up into awareness and seems to attack the persona.

But let's look at this. Does the pain body/shadow actually attack the persona? Or does it just seem to behave in the terms of what the persona has given it? If the persona chose 'i want cake not dog shit', and the shadow became 'you are dogshit', then the 'you are dogshit' comes up seeking... healing, and exposes itself to the persona, which generally reacts with its usual relegation and denial and hate and 'get rid of it' attitude, which makes it an UPSETTING experience for the persona, disrupting its facade of pretend specialness and fake innocence. But what if the persona weren't so resistant to the shadow, and instead the SELF (real self) stepped back from the persona and was simply AWARE of what's going on, observes it, and allows both the persona and the pain to basically... be seen to be the same thing, to cancel each other out, then perhaps there can then be HEALING and RELEASE.

Anyway. My main point is this. And you may have heard it before. Choosing to use the persona is a trap, which absolutely guarantees that you will experience pain and suffering, because the persona will create the perception that something is unwanted, painful, and in need of being denied/separated from. This happens the INSTANT that you put the persona mask on, because you can't wear the mask without condemning everything that the mask does not contain. ie the shadow is the 'negative space' of the persona - everything else - which the persona is made to reject. The persona can only 'focus' on what it wants to include by excluding everything else that exists, and that simply becomes the shadow rather than 'extra stuff that never has anything to do with me'.

Morale of the story then is.... you believe you have the ability to choose what you WANT, WITHOUT in any way being affected by or involved with what you DON'T want, but this is a complete 100% ego lie. When you partially included, you partially exclude. Basic fact of a dualistic mindset. Every time you partially include something you have to reject something else and that rejected stuff is. ... ultimately, what is ... which includes the whole you. So as you wear that mask, you are attacking your whole self, suggesting that only some portion of it is acceptable, and that the other portion is unacceptable.

That is like... simultaneous self-eggrandizement and self-attack. Simultaneous ego inflation and a diminishing of Self. It splits the mind in two, shows one half to the world and hides the other, and as it does so, the shown part seems to amplify into 'goodness' while the dark hidden part amplifies into 'darkness'. You cannot escape the presence of this darkness. Just because it is hidden, does not mean it's not there. And some day it's going to manifest as sickness and death. Each time you believe in good and bad, or right and wrong, or any other dualities other than true and false, you are making BOTH a persona and a shadow, and must accept the consequences of both. The persona is your special love, the shadow is your special hate. Both of them are special.

Use the ego persona, get attacked. Use the ego persona, suffer the consequences. Use the ego persona, to make yourself look good, to win, to get, to be successful, to appear to be innocent, to have this fake facade of a person that you aren't even really that, ... be prepared to die. And who will have caused you to die? Yourself. Your own choice did it to you. So it's a good idea not to play with 'fire'... don't play the ego's game, don't live a life where you are constantly trying to 'gain' in manipulative, ego-persona ways. Just be what you are. You're perfect already.

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

Forgiveness proves it is impossible because it sees it not."

In the separation from God, we attempted to make a world completely opposite to God, in every way possible. Where God expressed eternal life, we wanted death. Whether God was permanent, we wanted everything to change. Where God was immortal, we wanted everything to be attackable. Where God was innocent, we wanted everything to be sinful.

We projected out a world, made from the idea of sin and death. "Without the idea of death there is no world." This isn't merely a substitute for heaven, it is heaven's OPPOSITE. Everything about it is opposite. A world more like hell than heaven, where the immortal come to die and the existing come to cease existing.

"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."

Having made a world opposite to heaven, which is "the hell you made", planet Earth, we then populated it with bodies. The body has a very specific design to serve the purpose of trying to make this unreal world seem real. The body was made to deceive us, not just a little bit, but completely. It reports everything that's false (the whole world) as if it is true.

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

It takes illusions and presents them as if they are totally real. It sees things happening which are absolutely impossible in reality, and looks upon them as if they are really happening. It witnesses sins and attacks and wars and murders as if they are absolutely proven, with evidence to back it up as the bodies lay on the ground to show you their truth. And everything the body senses is reported as though absolute undeniable fact.

The body doesn't especially care whether to judge or not, it just judges all the time. It is locked into false perception. "These eyes made not to see will never see." The way the body sees the world, through physical and biological means, based on the "rejection of light" as photons bounce off illusory objects, is entirely designed to give credit to illusions. It is an illusion-detector, which having sensed illusions presents them to the mind as though they are totally real. And it can see nothing else.

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see BEYOND what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and NOT see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see ONLY illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside FORM of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the OUTSIDE of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

The body is actually incapable of seeing actual reality, at all. "The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen." If you think about that for a moment, the body is 180-degrees opposite to the truth, everything it reports is a lie, everything it sees or senses is 100% locked into being blinded by form, and it is absolutely incapable of being "awake" to any kind of real truth. It has its head shoved into a darkened box, permanently.

So then we place ourselves in these bodies and we peer out at a seeming world and the body shows us what's happening. It shows us things which cannot happen, states which are impossible, events which must be nowhere, and people seeming to walk around as if they live there. And not one single shred of this is true or real, or even really exists.

So when we use the body, when we listen to the body's input, when we take its sensory messages and decide what they mean, it is very very easy to be deceived. Not even just a little deceived, but 100% completely deceived. What the body shows you is absolutely TOTALLY OPPOSITE to what is true and real. The body cannot discern, and it never forgives. It is blind, and all it can see is an unreal world, masquerading as though reality.

It's the most bizarre thing, and this is why it's such a challenge for us to wake up. We actually need to find a way to recognize in the mind, that everything the body reports is false. We have to find a way to categorize every sensory input as not true, not real, and not happening. The body CANNOT tell the truth.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal.

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real."

This is SO strange to us. Basically we are immortal beings in heaven who temporarily are placing a part of our minds inside these body devices. The devices show a COMPLETELY BACKWARDS view. They turn reality upside down, they swap all opposites, they make everything that's impossible seem possible, and everything truly possible seem impossible. They hide all real meaning, shut down vision, make it impossible to see reality at all, and lock your entire focus onto the form of objects. As if the form that something takes IS its meaning. They are prisons for the mind, and their every perception is back to front.

Through the body's eyes, every single thing you see is fixated on its form, it shape, its physical behavior. As if you have COMPLETELY failed to forgive, have entered into the most extreme false perception, have had your mind strapped into virtual-reality goggles, and are forced to look at scenes of a world that doesn't even exist. It's like having your head totally buried in the sand. An extreme denial of reality. As if you judged the whole world from a perspective of separation and sin, accused it of being entirely devoid of light, and rendered it a living hell.

That's what the body is equipped to do, and that is all it can do. Its limited senses cannot be expanded. Its eyesight is incapable of seeing reality, ever. It cannot detect real light. It cannot even really think, it has no mind, and can make no decisions. It's like a lifeless automaton, a zombie, with no real life of its own, inert and mute and blind and incapable. The body was made like this on purpose to LIMIT those who are immortal and unlimited.

"It is only the awareness of the body that makes love seem limited. For the body IS a limit on love. The belief in limited love was its origin, and it was MADE to limit the UNlimited. Think not that this is merely allegorical; for it was made to limit YOU."

"God cannot come into a body, nor can you join Him there. Limits on love ***will ALWAYS*** seem to shut Him out, and to keep you APART from Him.""

There is no way to transform the body into a detector of reality. There is no way to change its senses or how they work. There is no way to make it wake up. There is no way to get it to be aware of God. It exists solely as a device for separation and will always be a device for separation. In and of itself, it is just a piece of machinery designed to make hell seem real and completely ignore heaven. It is a "hell validator", utterly biased and completely incapable of questioning anything it senses. "To sense is not to know" - to sense, is to reject all real knowledge.

The only hope that we really have, is the fact that we are not the body, and our mind is free to decide what meaning to give to everything the body tells us. It is the mind that decides whether to believe what it is being shown by the senses. It is the mind that decides whether to give it reality or not. It is up to the mind to be the one to either recognize the body's inputs as true, or as false.

The body cannot determine this for us, because it's going to keep feeding us absolute BULLSHIT forever. We have to decide mentally what to do with everything the body claims, because the body is permanently anchored to the battlefield.

"Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions."

Think about that for a minute. Jesus, as mind, entirely dependent on God, able to see and experience God through spiritual vision, believing he was under no laws but God's, still temporarily utilized a "reality inverter" body, so that he could meet with other embodied people and help save them from their bodies.

And all this time, everything that Jesus saw THROUGH the body, registered to his mind as FALSE. Every single thing he looked at that was physical, his mind said "that is not true". Every sight, every body, every sickness, every situation or location, his mind recognized "that's an illusion, it's false". All sickness was recognized as unreal, all physical ailments as false, all damage as fake, he even recognized that dead bodies were not "really dead".

Can you imagine how profound that is to be seemingly in a world, not of it, and so OPPOSITE to its nature, feeling like it is not your home and you do not belong there at all, that you basically "disagree" with every single thing the body seems to report. Where not one thing you witness to is considered real or true. An entire world regarded as unreality and as false to your awareness. Where the body is used/repurposed ONLY so that you can interact with other embodied people, to use it against itself to undo itself and point away from bodies entirely.

That's where we are heading. Lifting our minds up out of believing what our bodies are telling us, out of hell, out of seeing the world as true or real, and into a state of totally dismissing the entire world as a false unreal world. That's actually forgiveness, because forgiveness recognizes illusions as illusions. The world IS an illusion of a world, and recognizing it for what it IS is to forgive it. And "a world forgiven cannot last" because "illusions recognized must disappear."

We are to simultaneously forgive the world, AND recognize it as FALSE, and NOT believe anything that seems to happen in it, and look upon it through forgiving eyes so that we are not tempted or deceived by any of it. To not believe ANYTHING the body reports, using its inputs ONLY to navigate the physical realm temporarily, knowing the entire place is an illusion. Firmly rooted in ANOTHER WORLD, in another reality, another kingdom, under God's laws only, completely denying the physical world and all it entails.

It is the body that seems to make forgiveness difficult. But only if the mind believes what the body is reporting. The mind does not have to go along with the body's reports. It's like, you have to learn how to receive reports from "the field", handed to you on pieces of paper, take the input and assess it, recognize that none of what it says is true, dismiss it, and then use it temporarily only for the purpose of getting others to leave the world with you.

The body is saying "there's a war out there". Your mind has to be saying "war is impossible, there is no war." So long as you use the body it will STILL report lies to the mind, and the mind is going to have to learn to be COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to how the body functions.

To use denial properly to deny the denial of the truth, which is the basis of miracles. To deny that the world is real or true. "The world you see must be denied, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision." And so we need to develop ANOTHER WAY TO SEE that CAN see reality and DOES recognize the truth and doesn't invert everything back to front.

"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."

To accept the Atonement is to accept that God's truth is the truth. It also means accepting that nothing else is true.

Jesus demonstrates this when He speaks of His own state of Atonement:

"There is nothing about me that you cannot attain. I have nothing that does not come from God. The difference between us now is that I have nothing else. This leaves me in a state which is only potential in you."

We would be perfectly willing to accept God's truth, IF we did not believe that something else is true. We have been listening to another "voice", the voice of the ego (untruth) rather than the Voice of God (truth).

If we believe the ego has some truth to it, it means we agree with it. We will defend it, protect it, want to keep it, and will shield it from God. We'll use it as justification for "why" we believe we cannot accept God's truth as true. This literally makes us perceive that God's truth is NOT true.

This is the meaning of "He who would not forgive MUST judge to justify his failure to forgive." We are busy justifying WHY we cannot accept atonement/forgiveness, in order to keep and protect the ego that we believe is sacred and true and worthy of us.

No-one in their right mind would want to accept something they believe is not the truth. No-one would want anything to do with something they regard as "false". The ego attributes all qualities of falseness to God, including perceiving Him as evil, as a threat, as an attacker, and as willing that we be dead. That's quite a lot of false belief to "reverse" - thought reversal - if we are to become genuinely WILLING to want to be with God.

An unwillingness to accept God's truth comes solely from a willingness to accept the ego's truth. Another way the Course puts this is in terms of faith. We have "faith" in the ego, we have come to TRUST it, we think it is helping us, protecting us, defending us, acting in our best interests, and is "working" for us. We think we WANT what it is offering. This is because we do not RECOGNIZE the ways that the ego is deceptive, a lie, a form of attack, self defeating, suicidal and fixated on death.

When we believe the ego is the truth, we literally become "blind" to the truth, and incapable of discerning that God's truth is true. We see falseness IN it, because there is falseness in our perception. We see reflected in God our own "evil" content, thinking it is his.

For example, whenever we misperceive the truth through the ego, we see it as attacking us, we put up a defense, which implements blocks to life, which produces sickness and death. This production of sickness is an attempt to "save our life" by protecting us from life. This is obviously insane. The ego's efforts to "help" us is actually an attempt to deceive us, to trick us into hurting ourselves "in the name of" helping ourselves. In other words, the ego's advice produces the opposite result from what it promises.

While we believe the ego has truth to it, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. In fact we'll not be able. We can't ACCEPT it, to really deeply abide in it and feel it and welcome it and want it and admit its truth and ALLOW IT to love us. That's because we have allegiance to the ego and "want" what it is offering instead. AND YOU CAN'T HAVE BOTH! You have to choose. This valuing of the ego's offering produces DOUBT. Being in two minds, or even entirely in ego, will make us very uncertain about whether the truth even IS true, and whether we even DO want it.

Failure to discern what IS true, and what IS false, forms the basis of this confusion, which makes us unwilling and unable to accept it. No-one wants to accept what they think will destroy them. It's just that, believing the ego we will believe GOD is the one who is going to destroy us, and the ego is our savior. It simply "makes sense" to us not to accept God's version of events, because His truth does not "make sense" when the ego perceives it.

If we believe there is really death, really punishment, really fear, really victimhood, really guilt, really sin, really separation, really sickness, really suffering, we will not be WILLING to accept the atonement. The atonement says the exact opposite is true. This means we WILL have to become willing to RECOGNIZE all of these illusions for what they ARE, how we are using them to support the ego, and how they are not TRUE or real.

So we are going to have to systematically let go of all belief that there is such a thing as real sickness, real death, real sin, real guilt, real fear, real suffering, real victims, etc. To do this, we will have to be a LITTLE WILLING to believe that the ego beliefs do NOT contain truth, they in fact are FALSE, and something else is MORE TRUE. If any of this ego stuff - illusions appearing to be real - is within our perception, i.e. within our attitude or beliefs about ourselves, it has to GO, BEFORE we will genuinely, deeply, feel WILLING and READY to accept the truth of God.

Each time that we are attempting to perform a "forgiveness", i.e. we're upset and suffering in some way and we want to get back to the truth, to apply the Course principles and heal ourselves, it's going to have to entail the UNDOING OF FALSE BELIEFS. i.e. the undoing of listening to the ego's interpretation, stopping listening to its voice, stopping believing its bullshit is true, discerning HOW and WHY it is not true, and RECOGNIZING the illusions - i.e. the lies - that you are perpetuating. This can take tremendous radical HONESTY. Honesty admits the truth - allows the truth to enter.

Applying forgiveness SHOULD also therefore mean, that you start with wherever you're at, with whatever you are experiencing now, and you need to transition from there ALL THE WAY TO THE ATONEMENT. If you do not go all the way, if you stop short and keep some beliefs, you will not "complete" the forgiveness because you're not getting to the point where you FULLY ACCEPT the truth and FULLY LET GO of the ego.

While over time you generally will move gradually towards truth, on the whole, you actually can take yourself ALL the way to the atonement at any time, on a SPECIFIC topic. For example if you have issues with a parent or a coworker or something, some belief that is getting triggered... to FULLY forgive that issue, or at least a big chunk of it, you need to look at the beliefs involved and undo them, ALL the way until you get to "sin did not happen in reality, there is no sin at all, therefore I'm still innocent".

Taking back a projection, for example, is only a FIRST STEP in forgiving. It only means then that you recognize some measure of responsibility, that it's actually "about you" and not "about" another person. That's a vital step, and taking of responsibility is essential to any application of forgiveness. But that's not the end of the story.

The problem is, even if you can recognize it's not about other people, you may still believe you are afraid, you are guilty, and you are sinful. These beliefs have to be uncovered as well. Part of the problem is, there are various stages of separation: sin > guilt > fear > punishment > death and each stage entails a shitload of DENIAL. That denial makes content in your mind UNCONSCIOUS. That means you don't even REALIZE that you have this stuff in your mind somewhere, buried, behind a wall of illusions.

So if all you do is take back a projection and then sit with it and don't really realize how you have unconscious guilt lurking in your mind, which your state of victimhood was made to cover up and distract away from, you may not even get to the stage of becoming AWARE of that guilt, to undo it. And even if you get to where you are undoing the guilt, you may not even be aware - there is such a things as UNCONSCIOUS SIN. That has to be undone as well. Only when all of these layers of DENIAL in the mind are undone, ONLY then will you find yourself actually WILLING and able and ready to wholeheartedly ACCEPT that the Atonement is true. That is the point where forgiveness is COMPLETE.

You can do this on any given topic. It doesn't have to just be the overall whole issue of separation. Every time you forgive all the way to the atonement you receive a miracle, and then can offer it. Every time you make a genuine effort to becoming WILLING to accept the truth - your innocence, that literally nothing happened in reality - your mind gets healed one more giant leap towards God. As much as you can accept at the time. This will have PROFOUND healing effects on your perception.

There was a woman that I couldn't stand, a social worker, who had poor sense of boundaries and was always overstepping her role. I had fear about seeing her, anger about her behavior and various other upsets. I thought she was the problem. Later I became willing to see how I was actually seeing some unhealed stuff about ANOTHER person, in this person. I applied forgiveness through various steps and went all the way to atonement on this issue about that person. This was a strong healing.

Later, when I saw this woman again, my entire perception of her was so different. She seemed like a completely different person, as though I'd never seen her before. I had no reaction to her and saw no "sin" in her. She didn't seem to bother me and I knew that I'd been accusing her of something that I thought someone else was guilty of, but which *I* was guilty of. The interesting thing is, when you lift off of other people your own sin, it doesn't necessarily make that person disappear. Instead, you see them more clearly for what is there, and what is theirs. It's interesting then how their OWN call for love suddenly becomes obvious, distinct from anything going on in yourself.

Anyway. I have many other examples where when I've gone all the way to really thoroughly undoing false beliefs and accepting God's truth, it's healed my mind in a major way and really cleared up my perception. It has allowed me to see "truth" where once I saw a distortion. Or rather, to see correctly and accurately where I once only saw what I wanted to see.

If you have been forgiving in some way but not going ALL the way to atonement, I recommend giving it a try. Even if it's on just one small topic. Forgiveness is only complete when you recognize there literally has not been a "real sin" in reality, that whatever it was only took place in a dream, and therefore has had no real effects.

Atonement DOES cure everything. There was an accident that happened years ago where I hurt someone. It produced tremendous guilt. A lot of things happened because of it including a major depression, ostracision from society and various other nightmares. I healed a lot of it over the years and rationalized in various ways why it was ok or not ok or whatever. But I could never QUITE really let go of it. That is, until I went to the atonement with it.

Going to the atonement on this, I FINALLY got to the point of realizing that what I thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN in reality. It only happened as part of a dream. All of my other healing efforts had been to somehow justify "what happened" or to explain "why" it was ok. That never healed me fully. I had to undo the belief it happened AT ALL. When I finally could accept and SEE and RECOGNIZE that it is TRUE, and makes sense, that I REALLY DID NOT DO ANYTHING, and nothing real can be threatened, I could actually willingly ACCEPT that God's truth is true. I could ACCEPT how God sees me. I could ACCEPT that I must still be innocent. And then there were tears of joy at FINALLY being able to LET GO of this "sin" and RECEIVE GOD's LOVE!

Only atonement can be said to cure. Miracles express from the atonement.

I used to think I knew what this meant. But the definition is changing right before my eyes.

I used to believe that if I was loved unconditionally, it meant that God loves me regardless of various attributes that I have, even if I keep those attributes. So let's say I have a crooked leg, and I look like I have the hind legs of an ass, I would perhaps say, well, God still loves me despite the fact that I can't walk straight to save my life. And that seemed somewhat comforting. But there was always a certain unease about this because, like, how could there be complete love at the same time as bodily forms or illusions existing?

In ACIM we're taught that only the truth is true and only God's creation exists and nothing else exists. That there is no world. That there hasn't been a separation. That illusions are not real. So that really means, my crooked legs do not exist. So God loving me unconditionally really has to be redefined, because while it is always true that God loves unconditionally, it also has to be true that God ONLY loves that which is not conditional. God cannot be unconditional about conditionality. Having crooked legs is conditional, limited, and an illusion, and the ego wants to run with it and get God's approval.

So this really brings into question, WHO AM I. Who is the `I` or `me` that God is loving unconditionally. Does God love this limited illusory me unconditionally, OR... is God loving some other `real` me that is actually lovable? Does he perhaps OVERLOOK my crooked legs and is fixated only on the Christ in me, the real me, which he loves without condition or limitation, recognizing that the Christ in me is not limited or conditioned? And what happens to my self-hate if I accept his love - do I keep it? No. If *I* want to be unconditionally loved, then I need to identify myself AS my `unconditioned love self`, rather than my ego, or my body, or my behaviors, or how I look, or how I believe I am not lovable, which includes ALL the limiting ideas about myself. Those are not really ME.

It would be nice if my illusory identities as a body, as a behavior, as a set of thoughts etc, would be unconditionally loved. And it is true that God is ALWAYS in a state of loving with no requirements. BUT, and because of His permanent perfect love, He loves the TRUTH of what I am BECAUSE he does not see or recognize or acknowledge the bullshit that I am not. So I am not really a body with a crooked leg, or with a funny walk, or a person with a strange belief, or someone who talks in a weird accent. God isn't loving me unconditionally because of these things, but IN SPITE OF these things, in recognition of who I actually AM and not who or what I think I am.

So I guess there's this ego/new-agey version of unconditional love that says my body is real, my ego is real, I am a separate self, and at the same time, God sees and acknowledges this separate self and gives the old `nod and wink` that this separate self can be kept and loved. But that's not really possible. Here's the truth. If God, as LIGHT, were to shine toward these illusory forms of `myself` in attempt to love them unconditionally, THEY WOULD DISAPPEAR. They would be HEALED. Because all of these forms of self are actually forms of error, forms of separation, and forms of sickness. They are symbols of separation that's aren't real or TRUE and God can't love a lie.

So yes I could be in a transitionary phase where I still have a wonky leg and I somehow open up to some amount of uncondtional love, but as I do so, as I allow that love to enter `me`, it MUST transform me, and MUST go beyond my wonky leg. The unconditional love doesn't say "I love you even with your crappy leg". It says, "I love you BESIDES and IN SPITE OF and BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE a crappy leg." It looks to the real me, the Christ me, the perfect me.

This is how I am seeing unconditional love being redefined for me. As I open up to allow God to love me more, God is reminding me of who I really am and I am 'becoming love', awakening to love, which is transcending all of the excuses and reasons WHY I am not love or not lovable. All my sicknesses are expressions of an attempt to not be loved. All of my sense of separation from God is an expression of my attempt not to be loved. All of my victimization is an attempt not to be loved or to justify staying unlovable. All of these forms and illusions are barriers against love. Yes, love loves all the time, but love doesn't love what doesn't exist. Love doesn't love forms or bodies or illusions or images or thoughts.

Love loves SO THAT these things DO NOT EXIST. It is the same as fore-giveness - fore-giveness looks with love SO THAT mistakes in perception are not made and so that judgement doesn't arise. Similarly love loves uncondtionally SO THAT heaven is always maintained, so that you are always Christ, and so that NOTHING ELSE CAN HAPPEN. Unconditional love sustains reality, it doesn't justify or give a nod of acceptance to illusions. Love loves SO THAT `conditions` do not arise - it doesn't love real conditions! Love loves so that there isn't anything that 'needs' to be loved, because it IS loved, just as forgiveness fore-gives so that there is nothing TO forgive because all IS forgiven.

And yet love is gentle so it can seem like it does this. It can seem I am lovable in spite of my crooked horse legs. But really what I'm doing, if I'm allowing myself to be loved, is actually relinquishing identification with the horse legs and identifying myself AS love. I can't keep illusions if I want to accept a transcendental love.

God loves me - not the body me - my spiritual REAL ME - unconditionally. God loves you unconditionally - the real you. If God were to be ABLE To love your stupid illusions as though they were real, you would be AWARE of unconditional love even while you are separate from God! That's totally impossible. That's why you are asleep - because you do NOT have awareness of who you really are or the fact that God loves unconditionally. God's unconditional love doesn't violate the blocks that YOU put in place to keep that love out, in the name of justifying and glorifying and SPIRITUALIZING the forms of error that your ego is worshipping. The ego wants to spiritualize everything unreal by saying God loves it. Nope. God loves SO THAT ILLUSIONS DO NOT EXIST.

God does not make your illusions real and doesn't 'approve' them for your ego to keep. Otherwise the ego would have perfect justification for staying separate from God. God sees you - who you really are, as Christ, as divine perfection, and it is YOUR REAL SELF that He loves, and it is your real self that you really are. He loves to remind you of who you are IN love, AS love, WITH love. All the rest of 'you' that you want to be loved - your manky body, your crappy illusory life of suffering... its horse shit. You don't love it because you CAN'T. Love it and it must be HEALED. Life sucks BECAUSE you refuse to accept love. Love would literally CHANGE your life, not make it 'acceptable'.

So let's admit it. You don't REALLY want God to love your crooked legs, do you? You don't really want God to come along and say, yup, I see you look like the back end of an ass, and I love you anyway. You don't want that. You'd be like, well, that's nice, but now I still look like a mule. What you want is fricking HEALING. You want to remember you are not a body. You want to be healed in your mind so that your identity can be revealed as Christ - as immortal Spirit, not as some donkey. You don't really want God to unconditionally love your shit. You should want God to lift you into the awareness that you are ONLY LOVE and nothing else. Only the truth is true.

God loves you. God doesn't condemn your illusions because they don't exist. But God does want you to remember how much you are loved, and you can only do that by realizing you are love itself and nothing else. Only love can be loved. All the 'rest' that you think you are 'left with' that God doesn't love... don't worry, it doesn't really exist and it's not who or what you are. Isn't that a relief? Did you really want God to give total approval for your pile of shit ego? He can only love what is real. So let go of what you are not and return to an awareness of love as it really is.

To the ego, its key difference in atonement is that something really DID happen. It then has a form of atonement which involves attempting to make up for what you did, to pay for it. That typically means being guilty for a long time and suffering sufficient punishment and sacrifice.

But there's a problem with that, because no amount of punishment will actually undo the sin. If you're holding out for a pardon or are pleading for forgiveness, good luck. It won't happen. The ego knows this because it has no real intention of ever forgetting that the sin happened. Which means, there really IS no way that you will ever make up for it. Everyone believing in sin will condemn you forever and no-one is going to forgive you on your behalf.

One single little tiny sin to the ego is justification for you to die a horrible death. Make no mistake, it has its eyes fixated on that simply because it is logical. If you DID do something wrong, then you DO deserve everlasting damnation. Because if what you did was REAL, then it cannot be undone. What is real simply is real, and nobody can change it.

This is why the ego creates this scenario where you "really do stuff" in the world, then that stuff gets quickly locked into the past where it cannot be changed, the consequences of it seem real and prove that you did it, and then there is literally no escape. So then you will fear punishment in the future. And that fear of punishment will never go away so long as you still agree that you really did sin.

The ego isn't going to find it in the bottom of its heart to forgive you and let you off the hook, lest it be for a devious purpose of making sure to eventually strike you down at some later date, reminding you of what you did all over again. It has no intention of forgiving you ever. It's idea of atonement is never-ending punishment, and forever in hell is not long enough.

In this world, no matter what you do, it is a sin, and you are automatically guilty until you die. Every time you breathe, every time you move, everything you say, every action and every consequence, is sin taking place. Stuff happening and pretending to be real. Every second of every day condemns you to death, even if nobody points it out. The ego knows what you did and it will not forgive you.

This is the kind of atonement which does not work, you cannot accept it, it cannot bring you freedom or peace, and it will just keep guilt and sin intact. This all hinges around keeping the sin real and believing that it really happened. Everything that comes from that, all of the so-called atonement, is nothing but a fake promise to make you suffer unnecessarily with absolutely no change in its death sentence. Once condemned, always condemned.

There is another atonement which works and which is freely available and which you have access to at any time you want it. This other atonement can set you free of not only the need for punishment or compensation, but can literally cancel out any need whatsoever for you to be punished. This other atonement has the capability of actually finding you innocent, and not after any amount of time at all. The innocence on offer is permanent AND immediate, and there is nothing keeping you from it.

A process of undoing perceptual errors and false beliefs should and must lead your mind to the atonement. It lies on the other side of believing that sin is real. First you must undo all belief that fear or guilt is called for, and then realize also that sin is not the truth either. Whatever you did, you did not do it in reality, and therefore it was not a "real sin". It was a make-believe sin, because there is no such thing as real sin.

This the ego does not want you to know - that you actually cannot sin at all. It's entire story hinges around you believing that your sin was done in, and to, reality, having real effects on something real, effects which are irreversible and unforgivable. Effects which prove and demonstrate that your innocence is destroyed and you will forever be damned to hell. None of that is possible if your innocence is intact, and to be intact it must mean that whatever you think you did, you did not really do.

So this all depends on your willingness to entertain the idea, that sin is not REAL. That whatever happened, wherever it happened, and no matter how it appeared, or what the seeming consequences appear to be, all of that is within an IMAGINARY DREAM. The dream may well seem real, but it is your task to question that *assumption*, because it is entirely based on believing illusions. None of those illusions are reality and there actually is no real proof of real sin.

Anywhere that sin can really seem to take place cannot be real. That is why the world is not real. In reality, real sin cannot happen, because innocence is permanent. So wherever innocence is, that is real, and it is in that place that nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists. To believe that your sins are not REAL, and therefore are forgiven, is to recognize that a world made of sin and which demonstrates sin is also not real.

You have not sinned because the separation from God cannot happen, really, and what appears to be separation from God - a physical universe - is not reality.

You have not REALLY done what you think you've done, and it has NOT, absolutely HAS NOT, had any effect whatsoever on REALITY. It has not hurt God, it has not offended God, it has not made God hate you, it has not changed God's mind about you, and it has not really done anything at all that's actually real. The so-called consequences are all imaginary and happening only in an unreal dream. Regardless of their apparent severity. There is nothing that you can do in this dream that cannot be forgiven.

So sin is not real. That automatically means separation hasn't happened, because sin is the idea that it has happened. If separation has not happened and you have not really sinned, then....... ...... you must still be innocent, right? God must still recognize you as innocent. You must have not sinned at all. You cannot have stopped being innocent because you did not really sin. So your innocence is still intact and THAT means, you are still WORTHY of God's love.

Your own ability to see, agree with, claim, and accept that this is TRUE of you, depends entirely on your willingness to stop believing that you have really sinned. Only then can you yourself allow and accept the truth, that your innocence is guaranteed, your worthiness has not been defiled, and you STILL are forgiven because you have not done anything really wrong. Only when you can accept that will you be able to genuinely admit and accept the truth of the atonement.

Nothing really happened! It was just a dream.

In the acceptance of this atonement, your sins are recognized as NOT being real sins, and in that view your sins are forgiven. This is what true forgiveness means. This is the state of a forgiving mind, shared with Holy Spirit, in which you do not see anything needing to be forgiven because there is no real sin. You BECOME forgiving when you enter this state at the END of your "forgiveness process" or process of undoing or purification.

THEN..... once you have accepted the atonement, it means you have accepted that God loves you, you are worthy of love, you are WILLING to receive love, you will ALLOW love, and you will BELIEVE that love is justified. You will believe that you can be loved, are loved, and can love yourself. THEN, because you are willing to admit to your own lovability, you WILL also admit to the lovability of your brother. You will overlook and forgive them just as you have yourself and now MIRACLES WILL BE JUSTIFIED.

You are now in a position to express love, having received it and accepted it, and having gotten rid of the blocks which were stopping it from expressing. And love will flow through you and be shared with others. And love is powerful. It has within it the power to HEAL and enlighten. It knows no limits and has no boundaries. There is nothing your holiness cannot do. Expressing this love then becomes second-nature, and working miracles is now the "right" that you have claimed entitlement to. Miracles will flow naturally because of your willingness to truly express love, having loved yourself.

Accepting atonement for yourself is your sole responsibility, SO THAT you can reconnect with God and start to SHARE love with your brother. It means the same thing as undoing false perceptions so that your own mind can become willing to be a conduit for love, SO THAT love can then flow through you and extend outward, which will be seen as miraculous in its effects. Illusions will not limit this love and sickness will have no power to stop its healing power. You have taken up your position as a Teacher of God and are now a miracle worker.

"The real world still is but a dream." - section 7 of Chapter 29, section 4 of ACIM.

The real world is what it means to still be IN the world, perceiving with Holy Spirit, recognizing the presence of the *reflection* of truth/God/love, still SEEING earth and the body, but seeing it completely accurately for what it IS.

In this state we are still perceiving, and yet our mind has entered a state of peace where we see peace "in" everything regardless of what happens here. And nasty bad things still happen here, but we see with such forgiveness that we know they are not true, nothing real can be hurt, and nothing is really happening.

It is in a way, a transcendence of a layer of illusions that was covering the Earth, causing you to "not see" the light of truth. Now you see both the Earth and also even more subtly a "container" of peacefulness and certainty. It is like standing on the outer edges of a scene, and looking in on it from a perspective of safety, even while the scene contains wars still raging, people being born into limiting bodies, suffering and dying.

In this "true perception", you are sort of seeing the background fabric of the physical universe. As though there is but at thin veil in between this universe and God, such that God’s light is starting to shine through from the other side.

In perception of the real world, there is an underlying awareness of unity and harmony and peace and gratitude behind everything. When the course speaks of "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind", this is the "level" of perceiving the "real world". We see God seemingly "in" everything, surrounding everything, but it is ONLY a reflection of God.

The mind is still *perceiving* and you’ve reached the absolute upper limit of what perception is capable of showing. It’s like getting a glimpse of heaven from across a bridge. You are still not in heaven, but it seems so close you can almost touch it. You will at this point still be able to walk around the earth and see people and do stuff, but you will also be seeing an interconnecting unity underlying all things, which will indeed seem beautiful.

You looking AT this underlying unity which cradles everything else (all forms etc) "within it", is the "real world" that you will be looking at. You will be fixated on the UNITY, not on the forms.

What this unity will show you, as a *reflection* of truth, is the way in which all of the physical forms within this perception are ILLUSIONS. It will be a perfectly clear RECOGNITION, an ability to see correctly, that everything in this "real world" is only what it IS, not what you would try to make of it as an additional layer of interpretation.

You will RECOGNIZE that bodies are illusions, that mountains and oceans are illusions, that death is an illusion, that birth is an illusion, that nothing is really happening here, and that all of the FORMS - the physical matter of planet earth - are NOT REAL. The "Reality" you’re seeing in the real world itself, the underlying fabric of the physical content, the "container" of all this, will contrast so strongly and clearly in showing you that all of the "phenomena" that is showing up, IS A DREAM and isn’t really happening.

So that means, the underlying truth that you’re seeing BEHIND matter, is a reflection of reality, and it is showing you that the matter ITSELF, seen in its proper context, is NOT reality.

This means the physical planet earth is part of the phenomena that’s showing up as an ILLUSION. It means the physical planet earth is essentially ON TOP OF or INSIDE OF the real world, but it is NOT the part of the real world that is showing you reality. It is a projected image, a dream, a layer, and that layer is NOT what is going to be "translated into heaven".

The layer of physical forms, bodies, earth itself, this physical universe, is NOT what is going to be translated into heaven. And you will know this, because you will be RECOGNIZING clearly that the earth is just an illusion, the "real world" is a SYMBOL of or reflection of truth that TRANSCENDS the illusion of physical matter, and ONLY the reflection of truth is the actual "real world".

And yet, it is not real, because as Jesus confirms, "the real world is still but a dream." And dreams do not exist. And they are not happening. And they are nowhere. And they have no real content. And they do not last. They are ILLUSIONS. And when illusions are recognized, they *disappear* because to overlook an illusion (forgiveness) brings about the recognition that what you thought was there (an illusion) IS NOT THERE.

When God then takes the last step by scooping you up and taking you HOME - meaning that you were NOT experiencing being at home while in the "Real world", the "reflection of heaven" that you saw in the real world (correct perception) is TRANSLATED into heaven, NOT the physical forms and objects and ILLUSIONS which includes planet earth. IT will not get translated into heaven. It will have ALREADY BEEN RECOGNIZED AS NOT BEING REAL, not existing, and having nothing to do with truth. Earth will have been recognized as a DREAM that does not exist. It will NOT be coming along forthe ride.

All the universe along with planets and stars will DISAPPEAR in light. Or lets put that more simply. It will all DISAPPEAR, full. Stop. Not because it has "become light" but because it was NEVER THERE to begin with. This is the meaning of "there is NO WORLD". None. Zip. There IS no earth TO translate. But the "real world" (true perception) IS translated into heaven, ie the mind is taken from a state of "perceiving correctly and recognizing there is no world", to TOTAL AWARENESS OF HEAVEN.

Quotes:

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made. Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness blesses, so they see a world where terror is impossible, and witnesses to fear can not be found. W-pII.8.1:1-4"

Comment: If the real world cannot be perceived except through forgiving eyes, then when you see the form of planet earth, you are NOT seeing the real world. Therefore, logically, the form of planet earth is NOT part of the real world. It is an illusion HIDING the real world.

Quote:

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world; a sure correction for the sights of fear and sounds of battle which your world contains. The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is there. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing there remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself. W-pII.8.2:1-6"

Comment: Just because the real world lets you SEE in a happy way, it does not stop you seeing "battles". It simply lets you see that nothing is really being hurt, because nothing is really happening. Literally you won’t be able to see sickness AS sickness, or death AS death. You will see a kind of unity which spans all of these things and reframed them in a different light. It will show you the "movie reel" of the movie that is playing out, so that you know it isn’t true or real. Objects and bodie will not seem separate. There will be a sense of oneness. But you will STILL not be 100% one with God because you are still perceiving. Perception is a state of consciousness, not a state of awareness.

Quote:

"What need has such a mind for thoughts of death, attack and murder? What can it perceive surrounding it but safety, love and joy? What is there it would choose to be condemned, and what is there that it would judge against? The world it sees arises from a mind at peace within itself. No danger lurks in anything it sees, for it is kind, and only kindness does it look upon. W-pII.8.3:1-5"

Comment: Notice that it says that SURROUNDING murder and death you will see a sense of safety, love and joy. The death is still going to be seeming to play out, but it will be framed in such a way that you will not be upset by it. It will seem like nothing. Bodies will grow and die and you will keep smiling, knowing that it is NOT PROOF that the Son of God can be killed. Seeing this is seeing "the real world", but it is NOT seeing heaven directly.

Quote:

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God's Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father's Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless. W-pII.8.4:1-3"

Comment: At the real world, you will be effectively "fully awake INSIDE the dream". Seeing a reflection of love is a sign of the promise of what lies ahead, it IS only a reflection. Full-on God Oness/permanent eternity CANNOT be experienced inside of perception. You are simply getting ready to go to heaven, and the sights you see now are a very small step away, as small as they can be, from Heaven’s true state.

Quote:

"The Holy Spirit has no need of time when it has served His purpose. Now He waits but that one instant more for God to take His final step, and time has disappeared, taking perception with it as it goes, and leaving but the truth to be itself. That instant is our goal, for it contains the memory of God. And as we look upon a world forgiven, it is He Who calls to us and comes to take us home, reminding us of our Identity which our forgiveness has restored to us. W-pII.8.5:1-4"

Comment: Once you see the "real world", aka, "the world as it actually is without denial or attack", which is still not reality, where "real world" simply means "an undistorted perception of an illusion" - real in comparison to false perception - you will have NO FURTHER USE for it. You have learned everything thre is to learn. You have seen that this world is an illusion, that God did not create. You will recognize that forms are not real.

God now takes the final step to take you OUT of perception and into awareness. OUT of this universe and into HEAVEN. True Reality!

Time has disappeared, space has disappeared, all of the planets and stars have disappeared in light. The "fusing together" of all parts of the illusory universe, as "one content", gives way to such a presence of God, that it shines away absolutely all forms and images. All bodies. Planet earth. All disappears completely. Like being dissolved in water. No trace left.

The final step "takes perception with it as it goes, leaving but the truth to be itself". Ie, everything perceived disappears, including earth, only what is LEFT is the truth. Everything that was covering up the truth does not exist any more. Earth is not turned into heaven or kept in form or made into reality. It has been SWEPT AWAY. It was a BLOCK to awareness, a world made by those mad with guilt, a delusion, and it is now UNDONE.

What is left, after that, is simply, the same thing, that was there, BEFORE separation took place.

What is left, MUST be the same, as what was there BEFORE we dreamed of worlds like the earth.

What is left, can only be, the EXACT SAME heavenly state, that was present and created eternally, which has not been affected in any way, which contains no planet earth, which has no illusions in it, and no forms.

It does not scoop up the earth and merge it into itself. THERE IS NO WORLD. There was no world in heaven before you separated, and there will be no world in heaven when the separation is collapsed. Heaven is a CONSTANT STATE. It will not be blended with earth.

Where there seemed to be "two" states, as in "the two become one", LOVE HAS NO OPPOSITE, and therefore the two become one BY GETTING RID OF THE SECOND STATE which NEVER EXISTED. In other words, separation is undone, and the CONTENT of separation was a one-sided viewpoint which made the earth. Separation is not two sided, heaven is not on one side of it and earth on another. The side of earth is the ONLY side which believes there are two sides! Love has no opposite, so heaven has no opposite, so there IS NO WORLD *TO* translate into heaven.

The entire physical universe is going to disappear in light. Light is going to SHINE IT AWAY. There will not BE a physical universe. And this is simply because, THERE IS NO PHYSICAL UNIVERSE OR PLANET EARTH RIGHT NOW! It’s all an illusion!!!!!! There is nothing TO merge with heaven, because the world (earth) is not real.

"There is no life outside of heaven." (EARTH IS NOT LIFE)

"Heaven is an awareness of perfect Oneness, and the knowledge that there is nothing else; nothing outside this Oneness, and nothing else within" (NO EARTH, NO WORLD)

"The new perspective you will gain from crossing over will be the understanding of where Heaven is. From this side, it seems to be outside and across the bridge. (NOT IN THE EARTH) Yet as you cross to join it, it will join with you and become one with you. And you will think, in glad astonishment, that for all this you gave up nothing! (EARTH IS NOTHING) The joy of Heaven, which has no limit, is increased with each light that returns to take its rightful place within it. Wait no longer, for the Love of God and you. And may the holy instant speed you on the way, as it will surely do if you but let it come to you."

A lie is when something false is presented as if it's true. The false thing is still false, but it is disguised as truth. This false thing is deceptive because it isn't what it seems to be. It seems true on the surface, but it isn't.

If someone presents something false as if it's true, that person is being deceptive. They are hiding what the truth really is, behind a pretend truth, which substitutes for it.

What then seems to be true is actually false, but while you don't recognize it AS false, you are fixated on it. The way that a false thing seems to be true, is what we call an illusion. It appears like truth but isn't. Perhaps its shape, its form, its color, its movement, all are a facade covering up the lie.

To fall for this presentation of something false "as if its true" is to be deceived. The presentation of this illusion is a temptation. It tempts you to believe that something false is true when it isn't. It is lying to you. If you fall for the trick you will buy into it and be convinced. But you can only fall for it by not knowing or recognizing what the truth really is.

The real truth, God's truth, is like a light which frames everything in its proper perspective. In light of what you are aware of as true, it is impossible to be convinced that something false is true. The real truth is obvious, and provided you remain aware of it, you cannot but laugh at the ridiculous efforts of illusions to pretend to be the truth. They are obviously false when you are sane.

As you lose sight of the truth, blocked in your awareness, confused about whether the truth really is true or not, you will enter into a doubting of the truth, and doubt is fear. Being uncertain what the truth is is automatically a state of fear. And so fear (and death) are the nature of all illusions.

To question the truth is the authority problem, an attempt to assert that the truth (God) isn't what it is, and is something else. It's an accusation that the truth is an illusion, that it is deceptive, that it can't be trusted, and is false.

In other words, the deceptive nature of illusions - false things pretending to be truth - is projected onto the truth to try to make out that the truth is deceptive and is "not really true." While claiming that God's truth is lying to you, the ego simultaneously lies to you with untruths masquerading as truth.

Simultaneously, that which is false begins to seem plausible, believable, realistic, convincing, possible, tempting, and seemingly true. You couldn't possibly experience it this way if you were recognizing what the truth really is. "You aren't seriously buying into that lie, are you?"

But because you don't, or have lost sight of it, or it's unclear, false things seem to "make sense", take on an air of reality, and are assumed to be unchallengeable.

The world is a lie. It is false. It was made to oppose the nature of the Kingdom of God. Since the Kingdom is the real truth, the artificial world must take on all the characteristics of something false.

That means the world must be an illusion, it must be deceptive, it must be a lie, it must be made to tempt you to believe it's real, it must seem like reality, it must seem believable based on surface appearances (forms), it seems to true, and it must also seem to block reality.

Lies also have a lot to do with honesty. Someone who is honest does not lie, is not deceived or deceptive, does not tempt sin and does not believe in illusions. An honest person recognizes what is really true AND what is really false. They go hand in hand. Only the truth is true, and everything false is false.

Someone who is honest does not deceive, just as someone who is dishonest does seek to deceive. The ego, as we call it, is a label for an attempt to deceive or be deceived. It is a symbol for "a liar", someone who is putting forth a state of something false, made of illusions, pretending they are the truth. It claims that false things are true and true things are false. It lies to you.

The ego's lies have taken on the form of a physical planet, human bodies, birds in the sky, forests and mountains, lakes and rivers and fish, weather, solar systems, galaxies and the like. These are all false. They are all illusions. They are lies. They are not what they appear to be. They are not the Kingdom of God and they are not real, but they tempt you to believe they are.

Death is a lie. Sickness is a lie. Suffering is a lie. Unhappiness is a lie. Guilt is a lie. Sin is a lie. Fear is a lie. Bodies are lies. Planets are lies. The sun is a lie. Physics is a lie. Cancer and heart disease and strokes and trauma and abuse and pain are lies. Aging is a lie. Time is a lie. Facebook is a lie. Your clothes are lies. This whole universe is a lie. Separation from God is a lie.

It's a lie because it is literally a vast illusory realm of utter nonsense, manufacturer by a "lying" dishonest mind, projected based on the lie of separation, taking on myriad forms of lies, all trying to tempt you to believe the lie. The whole world was made to tempt you to think you are a body, that others are bodies, and that the world is real. It's a big stinking lie.

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, in all its forms, wherever it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach."

The only way not to be tempted by the world, is to not believe in it. And the only way not to believe is to not attribute truth to it. Which means recognizing that it is purely false. To see the falseness that it is made of, recognizing it AS false, and not for an instant giving it the slightest credit as anything true or real.

You might seem to be surrounded and bombarded by a lying world day in and day out but you must not be deceived by it if you want to be aware of the truth. The truth is of God and it is completely opposite to everything this world presents to your senses.

This world is as if someone told the biggest lie that could ever possibly be told, so big, so vast, so far reaching, that it produced an entire universe-sized lie. The world holds nothing that you want. It's not your home. It's not even really existing. The whole idea of "there is no world" is telling you that the world is fiction, a dream, imagined, made up.

All lies are made up. They are like stories. We invent them. We make them out of nowhere, weave them into what seem like feasible meaningful sequences, but they are total nonsense. Like fairtytales. They're not even based on the truth. Just outright total lies. Lies of things happening and people doing things that are impossible. Things that in reality could NEVER be true.

It could NEVER be true that God's son suffers, is sick, dies, reincarnates as a horse, shits on his former grave, and is then blown up by a rocket. It could NEVER be true that anything real be threatenable or damaged or that you could ever sin against it. It could NEVER be true that you can die or really suffer in any way. And it could NEVER be true that THE LIE ITSELF can ever take the place of or have power over the real truth.

It's a world of lies, based on a lie, made of lies, telling lies all the time. The body lies all the time. There is nothing to see or hear or touch or taste or smell. There isn't even a world here. Nothing has even happened.

(Mind).. "it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere."

To be aware of the real truth is to be clear about what really is true, and what is false. It merely is a recognition of the truth. To accept atonement is to accept that ONLY God's truth is true, and there are no lies mixed in with it. It is not mistaken for something it is not.

It is fully embraced as ONLY God intended it, unchanged and unaltered, free of all deceit and denial. It's a state where the truth is recognized as true and false things are recognized as false. To be clear about this is enlightenment.

"Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

You not only have to be extremely honest you have to be ABSOLUTELY perfectly honest. Perfect honesty means fully willing to admit (allow access to) that the truth is true. It means completely accepting and supporting that truth without taking a side against it.

"The peace of mind which the advanced teachers of God experience is largely due to their perfect honesty. It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war. No one at one with himself can even conceive of conflict. Conflict is the inevitable result of self-deception, and self-deception is dishonesty."

"Honesty does not apply only to what you say. The term actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another. Such are the truly honest. At no level are they in conflict with themselves. Therefore it is impossible for them to be in conflict with anyone or anything."

It means honestly presenting and representing that truth without a shred of deception, denial, avoidance, pretense, manipulation, change or distortion. God's teachers are completely honest with themselves and with everything.

Any degree of denial, any block or unwillingness to be aware of the truth, any lack of recognition of what the truth really is (via the real world then heaven), any avoidance of God, any fear, any belief in the world, any movement away from what is, is going into the lie. The state of not truth. Either you want the truth or you want the lie. Either you speak the truth or you speak the lies.

The world simply is false. It is nothing. It is not reality. It is not God's creation. It has nothing to offer. It isn't doing anything. It has no power or meaning. It produces no real consequences. Everything it depicts is false. It has no life. It has no sharing. It has no truth. The truth is not out there in the world. There is no world for the truth to be out there in.

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

"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."

"The Son of God CAN be mistaken; he CAN deceive himself"

"The mind can not attack, but it CAN deceive itself."

"The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

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

The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt.

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.

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

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

THE BODY'S EYES ***CANNOT SEE REALITY*** EVER!

THIS IS A VITAL A COURSE IN MIRACLES TEACHING!!!

THE BODY CANNOT AND NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO LOOK AT REALITY. YOU HAVE TO DEVELOP AN ENTIRELY NEW WAY OF SEEING - VISION - WHICH DOES NOT LOOK AT BODIES OR THE WORLD **AT ALL**.

THIS ALSO WHY THERE ARE NO BODIES IN HEAVEN! THEY ARE ***USELESS***. "To sense is NOT to know."

Many people are trying to "see" Heaven in the world and to look at this world WITH the body, keeping the body, and supposedly SEE reality. YOU CANNOT. The body's eyes are permanently fixated on hell. You have to use an entirely different kind of vision to SEE reality BEYOND the world.

Too many are getting lost in believing this world - Earth - is to be "looked at" in a loving way. It is supposed to be LOOKED PAST. If you look AT IT and SEE IT you are blinded by sight of form. The world WILL NEVER be Heaven. The body will never show you God's Kingdom. Spiritual vision requires mind-to-mind awareness which completely bypasses ALL forms, bodies and planets.

Check out these vital statements from Jesus about how the body is completely limited and CANNOT SEE. You cannot USE IT to see Heaven or reality. You cannot see your brother if you see a body. "To see a sinless body is impossible."

You must choose your method of sight, and what you will look upon. If you choose the body, you will see ONLY hell (Earth). If you choose the spiritual eyes/Christ Vision, you will see ONLY Heaven. You cannot see two worlds. Sight of one denies the other.

The entire PURPOSE of the Workbook is to train you to develop A NEW WAY OF SEEING that doesn't rely on the body!!!! IT says so in the workbook introduction! "The workbook is divided into two main sections, the first dealing with the undoing of the way you see now, and the second with the acquisition of true perception" "The very nature of true perception is that it has no limits. 6 It is the opposite of the way you see now." True perception is not just an alternative perception, it's based on the holy spirit's thought system which is spirit-based and it transcends the laws of the world!

"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."

"You look still with the body's eyes. And they CAN see but thorns. But you have asked for AND RECEIVED another sight. Those who accept the Holy Spirit's purpose as their own, share also His vision."

"Your chosen home is on the other side, beyond the veil. It has been carefully prepared for you, and it is ready to receive you now. You will not see it with the body's eyes."

"Here is a world established that is sick, and this the world the body's eyes perceive. Here are the sounds it hears; the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear. It does not know what seeing IS; what listening is FOR. It is as little able to perceive as it can judge, or understand, or know. Its eyes are blind, its ears are deaf. It can NOT think, and so it cannot HAVE effects. "

"Let not the body's ears and eyes perceive these countless fragments seen within the gap that YOU imagined, and let THEM persuade their maker his imaginings were real."

"The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it."

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

"What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to CORRECT? Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. "

"It is your world salvation will undo, and LET you see another world your eyes could never find."

"Is it not evident that what the body's eyes perceive FILLS YOU WITH FEAR? Perhaps you think you find a hope of satisfaction there. Perhaps you fancy to attain some peace and satisfaction in the world as YOU perceive it. Yet it MUST be evident the outcome DOES NOT CHANGE. Despite your hopes and fancies, ALWAYS does despair result. And there is NO exception, nor will there ever be."

"And what is this decision, but the choice whether to see him through the body's eyes, or let him be revealed to you through vision?"

"And you can want to see a sinless world, and let an "enemy" tempt you to use the body's eyes, and change what you desire. "

"The body's eyes are therefore not the means by which the real world can be seen, for the illusions that they look upon must lead to more illusions of reality. And so they do. For everything they see not only will not last, but lends itself to thoughts of sin and guilt. While everything that God created is forever without sin and therefore is forever without guilt."

"Faith sees him only NOW, because it looks not to the past to judge him, but would see in him ONLY what it would see in YOU. It sees NOT through the body's eyes, nor looks to bodies for its justification. It is the messenger of the NEW perception, sent forth to gather witnesses unto its coming, and to return their messages to YOU. "

"The body's eyes are closed, and as you think of him who grieved you, let your mind be shown the light in him beyond your grievances. "

"But what is there to see by searching for your Savior, seeing Him through sightless eyes? "

"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."

"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."

"That is because your idea of what seeing means is tied up with the body, and its eyes and brain."

"These are among the many magical beliefs that come from the conviction you are a body, and the body's eyes can see. You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea. "

"It is your weakness that sees through the body's eyes, peering about in darkness to behold the likeness of itself; the small, the weak, the sickly and the dying, those in need, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the starving and the joyless. These are seen through eyes which cannot see and cannot bless."

"The strength in you will offer you the light and guide your seeing, so you do not dwell on idle shadows that the body's eyes provide for self-deception."

"Leave, then, the dark a little while today, and we will practice seeing in the light, closing the body's eyes and asking truth to show us how to find the meeting place of self and Self, where light and strength are one."

"You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes."

"How can you judge? Your judgement rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth. This is awareness which you understand, and think more real than what is witnessed to by the eternal Voice of God Himself."

"He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son."

"Properly speaking, this is the release from hell. Perceived through the ego's eyes, it is loss of identity and a descent into hell."

"Let me not look to my own eyes to see today. Let me be willing to exchange my pitiful illusion of seeing for the vision that is given by God. Christ's vision is His gift, and He has given it to me. Let me call upon this gift today, so that this day may help me to understand eternity."

"Beyond His Will lie only illusions. It is these I choose when I think I can see apart from Him. It is these I choose when I try to see through the body's eyes. Yet the vision of Christ has been given me to replace them. It is through this vision that I choose to see."

"You closed your eyes to shut him out."

"How can you become increasingly aware of the Holy Spirit in you, EXCEPT by His EFFECTS? You cannot see Him with your eyes, nor hear Him with your ears."

"You dream of isolation, BECAUSE your eyes are closed. You do not SEE your brothers, and, in the darkness, you cannot look upon the light you GAVE to them. "

"Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word.The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone can "hear." Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless."

"And you look up and on toward Heaven, with the body's eyes but serving for an instant longer now. "

"You do not doubt that the body's eyes can see. You do not doubt the images they show you are reality. Your faith lies in the darkness, not the light."

"Miracles are seen in light. The bodys eyes do not perceive the light. But I am not a body. What am I?"

"The dream of crucifixion still lies heavy on your eyes, but what you see in dreams is not reality. "

"Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold? What need have they of sights or sounds or touch? What would they hear or reach to grasp? What would they sense at all? To sense is not to know. And truth can be but filled with knowledge, and with nothing else.The body is the instrument the mind made in its striving to deceive itself."

"It is because the thoughts you think you think appear as images that you do not recognize them as nothing. You think you think them, and so you think you see them. This is how your "seeing"was made. This is the function you have given your body's eyes. It is not seeing. It is image-making. It takes the place of seeing, replacing vision with illusions."

"Real vision is not only unlimited by space and distance, but it does not depend on the body's eyes at all. The mind is its only source."

"What you see of His Son through the eyes of the ego is a demonstration that His Son does not exist, yet where the Son is, the Father MUST be. "

"There has been some controversy (in human terms) as to whether seeing is an attribute of the eyes, or an expression of the integrative powers of the brain. Correctly understood, the issue revolves around the question of whether the body or the mind can see (or understand). This is not really open to question at all. The body is not capable of understanding. Only the mind KNOWS anything. "

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

"Here are the sounds it hears; the voices which its ears were made to hear. Yet sights and sounds the body can perceive are meaningless. It cannot see nor hear."

"This is because you actually cannot see anything, and it is easier to recognize that no matter how vividly you may picture a thought, you are not seeing anything."

"It is indeed a senseless point of view to hold responsible for sight a thing that cannot see, and blame it for the sounds you do not like, although it cannot hear."

"His vision cannot SEE the body, because it cannot look on sin."

"You cannot see the invisible. But if you see its effects, you KNOW it must be there."

"YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER. "

"We said before that the spiritual eye cannot see error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement."

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. 3 No one who looks on it without the help of reason would try to pass it. 4 The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. 5 Yet reason sees through it easily, because it is an error. 6 The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes."

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give."

"The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

"These eyes, made not to see, will never see. 2 For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. 3 What was its maker's goal but not to see? 4 For this the body's eyes are perfect means, but not for seeing. 5 See how the body's eyes rest on externals and cannot go beyond. 6 Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning. 7 Nothing so blinding as perception of form. 8 For sight of form means understanding has been obscured."

"Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see. 3 Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins and of his body. 4 What is there in him that you would attack except what you associate with his body, which you believe can sin? 5 Beyond his errors is his holiness and your salvation."

I's very important to realize that when you separated from God, it was completely deliberate. There wasn't any victimhood involved prior to this. It was a very clear choice. And no matter how it was experienced as unwanted after that decision, it was completely deliberate from the start.

Without even beginning to get into what happened after the separation, realize that you had a 'plan', a reason, a goal and a desire, which you were attempting to achieve by separating from God.

You wanted to find out what it would be like to be separate from Him. To put it simply, you wanted to PRETEND that it was possible to be something you are not, to be independent, to have your own self-made identity, and to exist without God. This was not possible to actually do at all, so you were basically pretending to make-believe that it was possible. This was your original purpose for the ENTIRE dream of separation, regardless of its content.

This original purpose, this reason for separating, has absolutely stayed with you the entire time that you've been inside the separation idea. No matter what you may experience or feel or perceive within the dream, you still have your mind basically FIXATED on trying to achieve what you set out to achieve from the beginning. It is why you came into the dream to begin with.

In the biggest possible picture, from beginning to end, the whole purpose for your dream is to try to imagine what it would be like to be completely the opposite of God. And that basically means, you have a death wish. It is only a wish, which cannot really be fulfilled, but nevertheless, underneath every single experience you have 'inside' the dream, there is a constant drive to move towards death. And make no mistake, this drive is very ACTIVE and DELIBERATE and PURPOSEFUL, and it overrides all other wishes and decisions and intentions.

You see death as an appealing doorway, the pinnacle of the dream, its culmination, in which your seemingly new identity will suddenly be born into an entirely separate existence. You see death as an achievement, as the way in which you make it "actually possible and real" to be separate from God. Only by completely obliterating (from your awareness anyway) your Real Identity, and Life, can you finally seem to achieve an identity that God did not create.

So let's put aside absolutely every OBJECTION that you have to dying, because the fact is, right from the start of your journey toward death, you have ABSOLUTELY WANTED IT. It doesn't matter what else comes along to seemingly distract you. It doesn't matter how horribly you might suffer along the way. It doesn't matter how terrified you are of this death, or what seems to happen to bring it about. No matter how much you kick and scream and say you do not want it, your attraction to death is EVEN STRONGER than every other possible 'wish' you can imagine.

You would not sacrifice your ultimate goal - your plan to succeed in completely becoming the opposite of Life. You will allow absolutely anything else to happen if it means you can inch closer to it. You could be absolutely horrified by death and want to get as far away from it as possible, AND YET, at the same time, somewhere in your mind there is still a DEATH WISH, an overruling desire to get as far away from God as possible. This is the ENTIRE PURPOSE of your entire dream - to experiment with what it might be like to completely separate from Him. Everything else is inconsequential and less important to you.

So you see, the Son of God is playing with illusions, imagining outcomes, dreaming of dying, and wants to play with the idea of complete and total separation. It's not really possible for Him to be hurt by this, because it is not real. It's not really possible for Him to REALLY die. All He can do is pretend to die, to make-believe that He has, and to put on a really great SHOW within His dream, that makes it LOOK LIKE he did not choose it.

See, death, and suffering, and fear, and guilt, and sin, all require that you appear to relinquish your power of choice. They are all ways in which you give up responsibility for choosing, or at least, ways to HIDE the fact that YOU ARE DOING THIS TO YOURSELF. The entire purpose of every sin, every guilt, every fear, every punishment, and all death, is to PRETEND that you do not want what is happening. It is all part of 'not wanting' God - you use very intense 'not wanting' as a way to push God away, meaning that very strongly not wanting death is actually your attempt to bring a complete separation into being. Death is you pushing God away, on purpose.

So you use all of these DENIALS in order to make the ILLUSION that everything that you are has been taken away from you, denied, repressed, disowned. The ultimate expression of this denial is death - death is just a denial of Life, and not its actual removal. You are trying to deny that you will live forever. You can deny this quite well, but you cannot make it true.

So even though it seems very upsetting to be terrified, or guilty, or ashamed, or sinful, or to suffer, or to be sick and diseased, and indeed to die, even though all these things seem like something you do not want, underneath them all there is a deliberate decision TO WANT all of these things and TO MAKE THEM HAPPEN to you. Even if that seems insane, which it is, you want to die to fulfill the entire purpose of separation.

So you will feel guilty and it will feel like something you don't want to feel, yet which you've accepted that someone ELSE has decided you are guilty, SO THAT you can disown and hide the fact that you are deliberately choosing to be guilty, in order to help you towards your goal. And every time you are afraid, even though fear seems like you're experiencing something you absolutely do not want to be happening, secretly YOU DO, because so long as you are afraid you get to be a victim and you get to disown your power.

It is easy to feel sorry for anyone who seems to have sinned, or who feels terrible about what they did to God. It is easy to feel sorry for anyone who is experiencing guilt or shame. It is easy to feel sorry for someone who is afraid. It is especially easy to feel sorry for someone who is experiencing punishment, suffering or sickness. And it is ESPECIALLY easy to feel sorry for someone who SEEMS to be dying and who then eventually dies. THIS IS ON PURPOSE.

You are MEANT to feel sorry for all of these roles, because their appearance shows you that these people are NOT CHOOSING THIS, and you especially believe this the most strongly about death. Death is the ultimate `non-choice`, in which the person has so completely given up on life (God) that they sort of 'surrender' to death, becoming completely powerless and passive, absolutely incapable of stopping it, and then death 'happens to them'. And secretly, they are absolutely CELEBRATING that they've finally achieved the most extreme form of separating from God that's possible - short of actually doing it.

So yes, I feel like shit when I feel guilty, BUT, my guilt is secretly serving me by allowing me to justify moving further away from God. And even if I feel like i don't like this guilt and don't want it, I secretly do want it, very much. It allows me to maintain the illusion that *I* did not choose this guilt, and that I am guilty because of someone else. This way, I get to disown and hide and conceal responsibility for the fact that it was actually ME who decided to be guilty, and it was not put upon me by anyone.

See we have this very long STORY that we've told about WHY we have to be away from God... it's all to do with believing that God kicked us out of Heaven, that we sinned, that we really did it, and then we HAD to be guilty, and then we HAD to be punished, and then we HAD to die. We actually believe that God wants us dead, and that it is God's will that we die, and that if we go along with this will then we're somehow atoning for sin. It's bullshit, but deep down we believe in it, BECAUSE it's a story that justifies all of our decisions to go from sin to guilt to fear to punishment to death.

Don't be deceived by the appearance that just because you are afraid, or guilty, or suffering in some way, that you did not choose it. Don't be deceived into thinking that what you want MORE THAN ANYTHING is for this fear and guilt and suffering to end. You don't. It's not what you want the most. What you want the most is to fulfill your mission, your dream, your imagining, or what it's like to be dead. That's all. You want to be dead. And the only thing you REALLY want more than death is God. Death is meant to COVER UP your attraction to God, because without covering it up you wouldn't be able to believe that separation is possible or that God has become separate from you.

So you see this is all really a great big farce... that we ourselves are choosing and putting into place. We keep pretending that God and others are there to choose for us, and to 'make us' go through suffering. We keep claiming that the body does stuff to us on its own, and that we have no power over anything. We keep maintaining this story that death is going to inevitably come and therefore we have to just lay down and take it. But this is ALL OUR OWN MADE UP STORY. We're very conveniently PRETENDING that this is al someone else's doing, because this is the only way that death can seem to be possible. We can't die while we have a choice, and we can't die while we are aware that we're the one who is making ourselves seem to die.

So always keep this in mind. If you want to get really honest and purify and look past the illusion of a guilt that seems horrible, or an unworthiness that you think is genuine, or a sin that you think is true, or some horrible experience that you think you didn't want,... think again. Think again, otherwise you really WILL remain lost in your illusion with no way out. Unless you can admit to yourself that you have chosen this, and that you have done ALL of this to yourself, you will have no power. Or at least, you will keep hiding your power from yourself.

You are a child of God. You are unlimited. You are immortal. You are invulnerable. You are powerful. And you are just PRETENDING to be separate from God, like a child playing with illusions, make-believing a long drawn-out story of the how and why of it all happening. But really deep down underneath it, you know that it is not real and you know it is not really possible. So you keep pretending. Until you are done pretending, and want to own up to the fact that it is you that is doing all this, it's your dream, you're the one making it all happen, and then maybe it will lose its appeal. Just like a toy, you will put it aside and remember to laugh. Because really nothing has happened at all.

Let's clear this up.

For the entire time that you have a physical body with working eyeballs, you will physically see the physical world based on the laws of physics. The body functions biologically based on photons of light entering the retina etc and sending messages to the brain and mind.

THIS WILL NOT CHANGE NO MATTER HOW MUCH FORGIVENESS YOU DO, how many workbook lessons, or how much you've read. Your physical eyes will continue to report the same exact differences, conflicts, problems, wars, destruction, sickness and death. This will NOT change. If you point your eyeballs at the physical world, of which they are a part, they will SHOW YOU exactly the same PHYSICAL world.

Meanwhile, you are working on forgiveness, and on changing your mind in order to change your perception. But this is to do with your MIND in terms of what it believes. What it believes determines what it projects in terms of MEANING, and thus how it categorizes the true and the false, the real and the unreal. It puts everything into a category, and so as the body SENDS IT physical messages of physical sights, the mind INTERPRETS those signals.

It is then up to the mind to decide what to DO WITH those signals that are coming in from the physical eyes. Initially, realize that the body is LOCKED IN to false perception. It CANNOT SEE reality and it never will. The body can ONLY look upon illusions and GIVE them reality, regarding them as equally of the same material and nature as ITSELF, and therefore one with them, and thus regarding them as REAL.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

Consider also then that if your mind BELIEVES everything it is shown by the body's eyes, it will categorize all illusions as reality, which is "false perception". A failure to recognize that illusions are illusions, that dreams are dreams, and that the world is not real. Taking the body "at its word" is false perception and unconsciousness.

The mind therefore has to open up to another WAY of seeing, which is the spiritual eye, or the mind's eye. The mind can see directly without photons and does not rely on the body's eyeballs to do this. True vision can see anywhere and everywhere at any time without limit, even the other side of the universe in the past or future. The mind, as it begins to OPEN UP to reality, which requires transcending the physical world, starts to IGNORE the physical sight messages and tunes into another world.

As it does this, the mind is going to start categorizing everything the BODY claims is real, as unreal. It has to in order to awaken and move into true perception. Everything the body reports is a lie because the body is blind to reality. So the mind starts to open up to seeing without the body, and seeing beyond the body, and beyond form, and beyond the world, and beyond space and time. This means it is opening up to seeing light and reality, at the same time as DENYING AND CLOSING DOWN to the physical signals coming in from the body.

However, so long as you have a body, you will STILL CONTINUE to receive signals from the physical sensory equipment. You will STILL be shown images of a broken world, images of faulty bodies, images of war and death and sickness and suffering. The body CANNOT HELP IT but keep showing this to you all the time. As soon as you open your eyelids you're going to be shown this, every single day for as long as you have a body.

So the interesting thing is then that mind is changing but the body is not. Mind is still USING a body, at the same time as learning to see WITHOUT a body. And this means that the mind is going to have to deal with TWO CHANNELS OF INPUT at the same time, in parallel. The physical sight is being phased out, so to speak, while the spiritual sight is phased in, but until you reach total atonement and awakening to heaven's reality you're going to see BOTH AT ONCE. As Jesus confirms:

"Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

So this now means that you as mind are going to be getting inputs from a physical and FALSE sensory apparatus, which is going to KEEP remaining fixated on the PHYSICAL world for as long as it persists, while simultaneously it's going to get inputs from BEYOND the physical which the physical body CANNOT see. The mind is closing off to unreality and opening up to reality's at the same time. So you have a kind of DOUBLE VISION, at least for as long as the body persists.

If you think this is not true then you should consider the fact that you are STILL perfectly capable of reading every single workbook lesson no matter how many of them you've done or for how long. The words on the page have not changed, the color of the text has not changed, nothing about it has changed. It is PHYSICALLY THE SAME BOOK as when you started reading. This is because the physical sight has not changed. But your MIND'S SEEING HAS changed.

So what this means in worldly terms is, you're going to have to deal with the fact that you're going to STILL get input from the unreal physical world, claiming all kinds of things to be true which aren't, while at the same time opening up to a new reality BEYOND the physical world which the body can't even see.

This means that if you see a physical body with your physical eyes and your eyes report an image of that body which has a broken leg and skin cancer and bad hair and a limp and some blubber, you're going to KEEP ON SEEING THAT for as long as it's there physically, REGARLDESS of whether you are more spiritual or not. 10 years from now you will still look upon that same physical body and see the same physical symptoms. But what it MEANS to you will be different and what you make of it will be different, as well as your mind will be opening up to OTHER sights and sounds from beyond the world. Jesus again confirms twice:

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

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

They use PHYSICAL SIGHT to watch the dream figures suffer and die, BUT their MINDS ARE HEALED. They have done forgiveness work. Their mind is opening up to unlimited spiritual vision and seeing BEYOND physical bodies, but the physical body is STILL reporting the same shit as before. This is not going to change just because you're waking up.

So if you see someone with your physical eyes and they report a certain condition or state, that's because your physical eyes are still functioning true to their design. Just because your MIND is different and is seeing from a more inclusive loving vantage point does NOT mean that you will no longer see the same physical sights! It does not mean that graveyards are going to disappear, or that the wars will be gone, or that people aren't writhing in agony and screaming for help. They will still physically do this and your body will STILL physically report it. But your mind will INTERPRET it different because it will OVERLOOK it and look PAST it, beyond it to the light of truth.

So you see, you can't say that "if you see it it's' yours". And you can't say that if you see someone doing something you are judging them. And you can't say that just because you're seeing it your mind is not healed. That's all bullshit. That's a denial of the mechanisms of perception. Many people think that perception is ONE THING and that you change this ONE perceptual mechanism and EVERYTHING you see will just transform and shift away from suffering towards some kind of beautiful world where nothing ever dies. That's SORT of true in that the mind opens up vision to seeing the real world, but it's NOT true in the sense that this causes you to NOT SEE the physical world UNTIL THE VERY END.

That's because you're in a state of transition BETWEEN the two ways of seeing, which will continue for as long as you have a body, and until you see the face of christ, and forget the world entirely, as the veil of illusions lifts from your sight and you see ONLY with vision, and completely VANISH the body from your existence. ONLY THEN will you no longer see the physical, and only then do the physical signals stop bombarding your mind. UNTIL then, until you are DONE, you're going to have to continue dealing with FALSE MESSAGES coming to you from a false world, at the same time as tying to look past them psychologically.

So no, if you see bad physical stuff happening, it's NOT because you are projecting bad stuff. It's not because you are not healed or are guilty. It's NOT YOUR STUFF. Your stuff isn't physical, it's mental. Your baggage of stuff to be healed in your false perceptions, which you project ONTO THE PHYSICAL SIGNALS, is an added layer of meaning which you GIVE TO the signals coming from the physical world. It's how you INTERPRET them. You can read into them and put hate and guilt and sin onto them, or you can OVERLOOK them and diminish their power and see them as false and sinless and nothing.

If I see a person walking past with a broken leg, that's because their leg is broken physically and it will carry on being broken physically whether I'm in a good mood or not, whether I'm lining up with the holy spirit or not, and regardless of anything else I do. OTHER than to say that if I move towards the light I WILL extend healing and this will INFLUENCE the other person, and may indeed miraculously heal their broken leg, but that's a whole other story. If I have physical eyeballs I WILL SEE the physical world. And I will keep seeing it until my mind is 100% totally committed to seeing ONLY reality. That's why you can still find your way to the toilet!

This is the point at which the physical stops showing you pictures of impossible worlds:

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

Note then that spiritual sight only very "lightly" touches upon the physical "veil of illusions", the world, earth, as it LOOKS PAST it and beyond it to the light of heaven or the real world. It sort of lightly sees the forgiven world (to forgive is to overlook) as a result of not looking heavily AT it, and instead looking THROUGH it and past it. This makes the world gradually more transparent until eventually the veil of spacetime lifts entirely, revealing christ's face. ONLY THEN will you stop seeing the physical (forgiven OR unforgiven) world. And then you will use ONLY vision and see ONLY reality.

"By focusing upon the "good" in him, the body grows decreasingly persistent in your sight, and will at length be seen as little more than just a shadow circling round the "good."

So can we please try to stop saying that everything you see is because of how you're seeing, and stop saying that if you see something you're judging, and stop saying that every single claim is a projection, and stop saying that seeing a broken body means your mind is not healed, and stop being CONFUSED about the fact that there are TWO PARALLEL CHANNELS OF INPUT coming into your mind. One of them is true, and one of them is false. And the false channel can and will show you earth EXACTLY AS BEFORE, until you no longer have a body to look at it with. And this has NO BEARING on how healed your mind is other than to say that only in TOTAL healing will you stop USING the body at all.

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

(and why this world is NOTHING like God’s creation)

"For what you are is what He is. There is no love but His, and what He is is everything there is. There is no limit placed upon Himself, and so are you unlimited as well."

Everything about the ego is based on the idea of not sharing anything. This results in everything being completely separate from everything else. What is in a banana, is not in an apple. What is in my house, is not in your house.

Because this ENTIRE UNIVERSE has been made by the ego thought system, every property of matter follows the same law. The ego’s entire statement is "share nothing". Bodies do not share or join. Atoms do not share or join. One mountain is not another mountain. The Earth is not Mars.

In this ego world, absolutely everything is confined to limited FORM. The form or appearance of the surface of objects, fixated on by the body’s eyes, show you a picture of "nothing being shared". Another word for a world where nothing is shared, is DEATH!! This is a world of death, a dream of death, fundamentally. That is why is it OPPOSITE TO LIFE, and OPPOSITE TO HEAVEN IN EVERY WAY. "There is no life outside of heaven" "Only the creations of light are real."

The form of your TV separates and distinguishes it from the form of your chair. Forms seem to have different properties, qualities, identities. This applies not only on the level of the PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, it also applies in all aspects of EGO THINKING.

The ego literally thinks in terms of not sharing. It fundamentally assumes that one thing is separate from another. That one thing is limited by its form and is not something else. There is no oneness. No sharing. No overlap. No unity.

To the ego, there is "only so much to go around". It evaluates the "amount" of something based on "how much form there is". Or in other words, how limited something is. It does not give ANY value to any idea of sharing. It does not count something twice. It does not measure amounts by anything present in multiple objects simultaneously.

This leads to a way of thinking which is anti-abundant, has built in SCARCITY, is fundamentally a thought system of LACK, and therefore produces competition, war and sacrifice. To the ego, there is simply NOT ENOUGH to go around. Not enough of anything. This is the ego saying, God is not enough, God is not sharing, God is nowhere, and love is limited.

It does not simply make this statement or belief on a mental level. It is DEMONSTRATED on the level of PHYSICAL OBJECTS. This entire universe is an idea of lack, deprivation, limitation, scarcity, loss, with nothing being shared, and God being nowhere.

This is because the ego is very very EXCLUSIVE in its thought processes. It *separates out*. It divides. It sees in one part what is MISSING from other parts. If I own the only 1 pound diamond in the world, you do not. If I own the best property in New York, you do not. If I bought all the apples at the store, there are none left for you. There is NO SHARING in the ego. It has absolutely NO CONCEPT of INCLUSIVITY whatsoever.

This is intentional. Because this is the TOTAL OPPOSITE of what God is like. God is not like this AT ALL. This is why "Heaven and earth are opposites IN EVERY WAY". Earth, and this "physical" universe, fundamentally demonstrate the idea of SEPARATION in ALL ITS FORMS. Every form - or object - is the form of ERROR. This world is fundamentally NOT LIKE GOD, down to the subatomic quantum particle. This is why GOD DID NOT CREATE THIS WORLD. It is NOTHING LIKE HIM!!

Here is what God IS like.

God thinks ONLY INCLUSIVELY. God thinks only in terms of SHARING. God thinks only in terms of INCREASE, abundance, availability, unity, creation, an NO form of exclusion.

God does not think, hey, all of myself is over here being shared with Paul, therefore, there’s none of myself left to share with that other person. God does not DECREASE by sharing himself. He is not a quantity. He is not limited. He is not finite. "Nothing real can be increased except by sharing".

Because of SHARING, which the ego has completely opposed, it IS POSSIBLE in God’s world (Heaven) for something to be accessed by multiple individuals simultaneously without ANY LACK. This is because there is no POSSESSION or ownership or exclusivity. Everyone SHARES everything.

This means not simply, there is a limited amount of stuff and we all compromise on how much each gets. That is ego. Rather, each time something is shared, IT INCREASES, because it is CREATED, and this ADDS TO what exists. Each time God shares himself in an act of creation, he puts all of himself into the creation, and yet STILL has all of himself left.

Remember, ideas are INCREASED by being shared or given way. Remember also that nothing real can EXIST UNLESS it is shared and extended. It must extend in order to have PRESENCE, and this makes it shine with radiance. In God’s reality, if you give something to another, you do not LACK it. You do not lose it. You are not left wanting. What you give, YOU HAVE, and you give it only because you have it, and you KEEP IT by giving it. "To have all, give all to all". Giving does not REDUCE. Giving INCREASES.

That means, unlike in the EGO WORLD, Heaven is utterly filled with abundance, everything functions based on SHARING, and sharing does not mean lack or loss. This sharing requires the ability for multiple individuals to OVERLAP, to literally SHARE the same space. Another word for this is oneness. Oneness doesn’t mean "one finite thing" - that is the ego’s version of oneness. Oneness means SHARED WITH ALL AND BY ALL. It DEFIES ego logic.

You being a creation of God, one of many, occurred because God shared the WHOLE of Himself in order to create you. And He created you AS A WHOLE. You have been FULLY created. God thus INCREASED His Kingdom by creating you. You have been ADDED to God. This means that God is IN you, fully, and yet it ALSO is fully present in all other souls. God being in you does NOT limit Him or deprive anyone else of Him. For one simple reason, the one idea and NATURE that the ego hates: SHARING.

You SHARE God with all other creations. You all have access to all of Him, at the same time, with no lack and no private hoarding. This gives new meaning to "whats mine is yours". "One mind contains all minds" "One brother is all brothers". God has One Son AND MANY SONS simultaneously - this is the Sonship. It is REAL BECAUSE it is shared. This is impossible in terms of the ego world of matter, but entirely possible in heaven. "It is the world you see that is impossible" refers to the physical universe, which is a picture of impossibility, a picture of death, a picture of NOT EXISTING because there is no sharing, and a picture of the crucifixion of God’s Son, IN MATTER.

This can be demonstrated through miracles WITHIN this impossible world. Here, it should NOT be possible to feed 5000 people with only a few loaves of bread and a few fish. This is because there is not enough FINITE AMOUNT to go around. The ego says, by its laws, you can only give 5 loaves to 5 people and you have no more to give. This is embedded into the nature of the PHYSICAL OBJECTS.

If there are only a few loaves of bread and a handful of fishes, and there are 5000 people to feed, the ego says there is not enough to go around. God says, YES THERE IS. And through SHARING, at the supernatural level, those loaves and fishes MULTIPLY. The amount INCREASES. All 5000 people get fully fed. This *demonstrates* that what appeared to be finite lack, was an ILLUSION, was not TRUE, was not God’s law, and it was PROVED to be false through a miracle of demonstration. Jesus fed all the people by demonstrating GODS LAW, God’s truth, that sharing increases abundance, there is NO LACK, giving does not diminish, and supply is unlimited.

This is what it means to perform a MIRACLE in this world. To demonstrate that the ego’s ways, the ego’s laws, the very nature of matter itself, IS FALSE, a lie, can be demonstrated to BE a lie, and that God’s power is UNLIMITED. This shows through proof, that this world is lying to you, because its laws of lack and limitation are NOT TRUE. This is why miracles are teaching devices. Jesus didn’t just feed the 5000, he TAUGHT that THERE IS NO LACK, there IS enough for everyone to have ALL of what is available without loss, and what is given to one person is GIVEN EQUALLY to all from an unlimited source.

God shares all of himself with EVERY PART of his creation. There is no competition, no war, no scarcity, no lack, no deprivation, no loss, no reduction, no inability to have everything, no isolation, no exclusion, and no posession. This is why God’s world - heaven - is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the "physicality" or physical NATURE of this entire universe. God CANNOT have created this world of limitation. Next time you don’t have enough money, remind yourself, THE EGO DID THIS. When you run out of food, the ego did this. When you had to SACRIFICE, the ego did this. There is no sacrifice in God. EVERYONE SHARES EVERYTHING FULLY.

There is an abundance of love to go around. Being loved does not mean others are not loved. Getting God’s attention does not mean others are excluded. Receiving a LOT does not mean the supply is reducing. Having a lot does not mean others are being deprived. God has an UNLIMITED SUPPLY OF LOVE. Everytime it is given, it increases. God has FULL LOVE for you, not just scraps of attention or leftovers from what other people have ripped away as their own posession.

Ultimately your SELF is unlimited. You thought you could posess a part of God’s creation and make it your own. You thought you could STOP SHARING and place a limit on your identity. Your individuality is not a problem and is not ego. All of God’s children are permanent and real. The only problem is that you tried to reduce by seeking to be special, to have exclusive interests for yourself. To give yourself more, so that others would have less. This is the opposite of SHARED INTERESTS. Everything in heaven has shared interests.

You being a self is not ego because your self naturally SHARES. You being SELFISH and not wanting to share, is ego. You being an individual is not ego. You believing in sacrifice and lack and deprivation and possessiveness is ego. You being one of God’s Sons is not a problem. You trying to ISOLATE YOURSELF so that SHARING is prevented, and so that there is a LIMITATION on yourself, THAT is the ego. Lack of sharing is imprisonment.

Placing your mind under authority of ego places it under tyrannical rule and leads to imprisonment. It leads to the ego’s thought system of NO SHARING and lack and finite limitations. It leads to BODIES being made to represent the idea that nothin is shared AS physical, limited matter. It makes this universe. It leads to all forms of suffering, lack and sacrifice. And it leads to DEATH. What is starvation but the total lack of sharing or access to what you need? Death is DENIAL OF GOD. Death is DENIAL OF SHARING.

That is not God’s will for you. It is God’s will for you that you HAVE EVERYTHING, and that you share it with ALL OTHERS, AND that you increase it by creating MORE, which ALL SHARE IN. Abundance is your natural inheritance. You will NOT find it in the physical world, which is a world of lack, limits and sacrifice. It is a world of compromise and loss. Although you can DEMONSTRATE it here through supernatural miracles which prove just how UNLIKE God this world is, and that "you are undo no laws but God’s".

Your abundance is waiting for you in Heaven. In God’s world. By Gods laws. God wants to share ALL OF HIMSELF with you, and he already has. That is how you were created and that is what is natural for you. You ARE sharing fully with God, with His One Son, with All His Sons, and with the whole Sonship, FOREVER.

You are loved and provided for by God, UNLIMITEDLY. "There is NOTHING my holiness cannot do."

The body does not really do a whole lot. It is an instrument. It cannot really live without you as a host. It doesn't really have a mind of its own, or a will, or power, or causality. It cannot really create anything or make anything happen. It's a medium, a tool, a device, which is to be used. You can pick it up and put it down. Without you it would do nothing.

"A body cannot stay without illusions"

"The body cannot heal, because it cannot MAKE ITSELF SICK."

"the body CANNOT be used for purposes of union"

"The body cannot KNOW. And while you limit your awareness to its tiny senses, you will not see the grandeur that surrounds you."

"Yet a body CANNOT be guilty, for it can do nothing of itself. You who think you hate your bodies, deceive yourselves."

"The body cannot create, and the belief that it CAN, a fundamental error responsible for most of the fallacies already referred to, produces all physical symptoms." "the body cannot be healed by itself."

The eyes are neutral. As you look around the room the body just reports what's there. It is like you have a video feed coming into you through your face. The eyes just pick up the light signals and pass them on. The eyes themselves are not aware of what they are looking at. They don't judge or decide anything about what they detect, and they don't even "see" what they are picking up because they have no awareness - making them blind. They just faithfully report on what's outside. They are sensors, like a detector, or a scanner.

As you look at different things, or rather, use the body's sensors to detect what is supposedly out there, there is no judgement, there is no meaning, there is no partitioning, there is no accusation, there is only a completely neutral feed of images being transferred. Your eyes are like a camera. They just bring in the data, they don't have any opinion about it at all. It isn't until the mind looks at the data that we start to enter into deciding what something means, our attitude about it and our relationship to it.

It's the mind that "looks at" what the body "looks at". There are therefore two steps in seeing the world. The body sees it first and passes on what it sees. Then the mind looks at the "printout" of what the body has seen. The mind isn't actually looking directly at the world out there. It's looking at the recorded images which have come in through the video stream, through the pipeline of the optic nerves, and which have travelled to the place in the brain where the mind is "attached". And as though on a kind of internal screen, the mind is now looking at the screen on which these images are reconstructed.

This all happens quite effortlessly so it is very easy to be deceived. The body is so non-interfering with sight, unless perhaps the eyeballs or vision apparatus is damaged, that you easily forget that the eyes are even there. This sets up a kind of deception, in which it's very easy to just think that you are looking directly and personally at the physical world. But you in fact are not. You are looking at images which are sent in to you via external sensors on the body's surface, and you are sitting there in the mind, beyond the brain, reading the transmitted images. But you think hey, I am looking at the actual world. No, you're looking at images once removed.

The same happens with sound. The ears do not discriminate as to what they hear. They just hear everything they can. They are like microphones. They pick up and sense the sound vibrations and translate it into a signal, which is sent to the brain, and then it is reconstructed into "sound". And then, the mind listens to the reconstruction, and thinks that it now hears the world. It's almost like the body is a long distance telephone, and it's picking up audio from a world far away, sending the sound along a wire, and now you're at the other end listening in. You're not really out there, in the environment where the sound is picked up, you are removed from it.

All the other body senses have the same properties. They just detect changes and differences and report them to you. You then get to interpret or give meaning to them. Upon receiving the signals your mind could have decided that all the things experienced are absolutely real. That they really exist. As though, because your body sees a car, that there really is a car there. Or because your hands touch the car, that there really is a car there. Or that because you hear the car, the car really must exist. But it's not the body that decides this, nor the brain. It's your mind, on the receiving end of transmissions. It is the mind that decided what it is FOR, or how it USES it.

It is optional, whether you believe in what the body is telling you. It is just a sensory device. In fact, Jesus says in ACIM that the body is not really there to know anything, it is only there to sense. "To sense is not to know." Which means that sensing the world or using physical perception to look at it, is not an act of knowing. It doesn't mean that you know the thing is really out there. It means that your sensors are detecting something and telling you something. And they might be lying.

The problem is, is that the body can lie. Because here you have a physical instrument for detecting things, which can report back that something exists, within the same realm that the body itself inhabits. Which means that the body can also sense itself, can look at and hear and smell and touch itself, and can report back that the body "is really there". But this cannot in any way be reliable. The body is now justifying its own existence and trying to prove itself.

The body can easily lie to you. To rely on an instrument to tell you what really exists, given that the very same instrument is reporting upon its own existence, completely invalidates everything it tells you. It is no longer impartial or neutral, if it is telling you that its own existence has been detected by its own sensors. It is completely biased, then, because it is ALWAYS telling you that physicality is true and real, even if it is not. It is ALWAYS reporting that things exist even if they don't. And if it is going to tell you to trust it when it tells you that its own existence is real, based on its own senses, this is heavily tainted information.

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

"Yet a body cannot evaluate. By seeking after such things the mind associates itself with the body, obscuring its identity and losing sight of what it really is."

What it comes down to is that your mind is sensing a world using an instrument, whereby the signals you receive and are aware of are once removed from the thing you are sensing. But if you buy into them and forget you are using an instrument, you will act as if it is YOU who is doing the sensing, and thus confuse yourself with the body. This is body identification. It's the failure to recognize that the body is a device for sensing, and is not your self. Since the senses themselves seem "transparent" and have no opinion, and since they report what's there all the time, it's easy to forget that you are even using sensory equipment, and instead believe that you ARE the senses. That the body is YOU who is picking up on the world, and YOU who sees it and hears it. It seems so effortless that you forget you even are using senses, which is extremely deceptive.

The mind is not required to believe anything that the body tells it. When it receives neutral images of a world, it can decide what to do with that image. It can dissect it, it can give meaning to it, it can believe in it, it can choose to react to it, it can remain detached from it, it can judge and condemn and attack it, it can love it, it can ignore it, whatever. But we have to realize that since the senses themselves are effectively neutral, it is US who is giving everything we sense all the meaning that it has. It is US who decides whether you believe what we see, whether it is real, and what truth it holds.

"You have given everything all the meaning it has for you." "The body's eyes will continue to see differences, but the mind which has let itself be healed will no longer acknowledge them. There will be those who seem to be "sicker" than others, and the body's eyes will report their changed appearances as before. But the mind will put them all in one category - they are unreal."

"This is the gift of its Teacher; the understanding that only two categories are meaningful in sorting out the messages the mind receives from what appears to be the outside world. And of these two but one is real. Just as reality is wholly real, apart from size and shape and time and place, for differences cannot exist within it, so too are illusions without distinctions."

So the mind is receiving signals from the outside world, through the body sensors, and gets to decide what to make of them. What meaning they have. All such images are illusions because the world itself is an illusion, and all sensory inputs are actually false, because the world they are reporting on isn't real. The eyes are in fact unable to really see actual reality. They are strapped into a virtual reality headset and are blinded to see only the inside of a tiny box. The body is in fact an interpreter, a translator, and it is fixated on an illusory world which isn't reality in order NOT to see reality. And so everything that it faithfully and neutrally reports, is a lie. What it sees is not really there to see, what it hears makes no real sound. And the sensations it sends to your mind for evaluation are all false.

"These eyes made not to see will never see."

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."

It is up to your mind to decide what to make of the signals it is receiving through the body. It is up to your mind to recognize the body cannot really see or hear reality. It is up to your mind to discern that everything the body tells you is happening, is not really happening. It is up to your mind to withdraw all of its dark and twisted and confused meanings, which it projects onto the body's signals, and to instead categorize all body signals as FALSE. It is up to your mind to overlook and not see what the body is telling you is there. And it is up to your mind to recognize the world is nothing but an unreal dream, something to overlook through forgiveness and NOT see, and that BEYOND it is heaven.

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him. Here was perception born, for knowledge could not cause such insane thoughts. But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely. Now mistakes become quite possible, for certainty has gone."

"Let not your eyes behold a dream; your ears bear witness to illusion. They were made to look upon a world that is not there; to hear the voices that can make no sounds. Yet are there other sounds and other sights which can be seen and heard and UNDERSTOOD. For eyes and ears are senses without sense, and what they see and hear they but report. It is not THEY that hear and see, but YOU, who PUT TOGETHER every jagged piece, each senseless scrap and shred of evidence, and MAKE a witness to the world you want."

"Let not our sight be blasphemous today, nor let our ears attend to lying tongues."

"Anger but screeches, "Guilt is real!" Reality is blotted out as this insane belief is taken as replacement for God's Word. The body's eyes now "see"; its ears alone are thought to hear. Its little space and tiny breath become the measure of reality. And truth becomes diminutive and meaningless."

"Rejoice you HAVE no eyes with which to see; no ears to listen, and no hands to hold nor feet to guide. Be glad that ONLY Christ can lend you His, while you have need of them."

"How can you judge? Your judgment rests upon the witness that your senses offer you. Yet witness never falser was than this. But how else do you judge the world you see? You place pathetic faith in what your eyes and ears report. You think your fingers touch reality and close upon the truth."

"The body cannot see this, for the body AROSE from this for its protection, which must ALWAYS depend on keeping it NOT seen. The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

"He will not tell you that your brother should be judged by what your eyes behold in him, nor what his body's mouth says to your ears, nor what your fingers' touch reports of him. He passes by such idle witnesses, which merely bear false witness to God's Son."

"You do not seem to doubt the world you see. You do not really question what is shown you through the body's eyes. Nor do you ask why you believe it, even though you learned a long while since your senses do deceive. That you believe them to the last detail which they report is even stranger when you pause to recollect how frequently they have been faulty witnesses indeed! Why would you trust them so implicitly? Why but because of underlying doubt which you would hide with show of certainty?"

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is."

"Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this. Its eyes perceive it not, its senses remain quite UNAWARE of it, its tongue can not relay ITS messages."

"You strain your ears to hear ITS soundless voice, and yet the Call of God Himself is soundless to you."

"This body, purposeless within itself, holds all your memories and all your hopes. You use its eyes to see, its ears to hear, and let it TELL you what it is it feels. IT DOES NOT KNOW. It tells you but the NAMES you gave it to use, when YOU call forth the witnesses to its reality."

"You who would make a sacrifice of life, and make your eyes and ears bear witness to the death of God and of His holy Son, think not that you have power to make of them what God willed not they be."

"Here is an image that you WANT to be yourself. It is the means to make your wish come true. It GIVES the eyes with which you look on it, the hands that feel it, and the ears with which you listened to the sounds it makes. IT PROVES ITS OWN REALITY TO YOU. Thus is the body made a THEORY of yourself, with NO provisions made for evidence BEYOND itself, and NO escape within its sight. Its course is sure, when seen through its own eyes. It grows and withers, flourishes and dies. And you cannot conceive of you APART from it."

"The mind without the body cannot make mistakes. It cannot think that it will die, nor be the prey of merciless attack. Anger becomes impossible, and where is terror then? What fears could still assail those who have lost the source of all attack; the core of anguish and the seat of fear? Only forgiveness can relieve the mind of thinking that the body is its home. Only forgiveness can restore the peace that God intended for His holy Son. Only forgiveness can persuade the Son to look again upon his holiness."

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

You might think that the only blocks to awareness are in your mind. ie, in your brain. You might think that there is no such thing as a block "outside your body."

But the world you see out there, is coming from your mind. And in fact, your mind has made a world. It is hallucinating a world. This means that effectively, your blocks to awareness will be regarded as outside of you, just as much as internal.

In fact, let's even go so far as to say, that blocks to awareness can be PHYSICAL. Especially since "you maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts" and "both Heaven and Earth are in your mind."

Let's see what Jesus says about this:

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

So Jesus is saying, THE WORLD - Earth, physical matter, is standing like a BLOCK in front of the face of Christ. ie the world's FORMS are BLOCKING your sight of Christ. They are coming between you, getting in the way. This is no mere symbol or metaphor either. Literally you've put what appears to be a PHYSICAL WALL between you and God.

Jesus also goes on to refer to the seemingly solid world as a block.

"Sin is a block, set like a heavy gate, locked and without a key, across the road to peace. No-one who looks on it without the help of reason, would try to pass it. The body's eyes behold it as solid granite, so thick it would be madness to attempt to pass it. Yet reason sees through it easily, BECAUSE it is an error. The form it takes cannot conceal its emptiness from reason's eyes."

Notice how the body's eyes are looking upon this "block of sin" as though it is SOLID GRANITE. Thick and solid seeming. Physical matter. This is "the veil". It is a BLOCK to awareness of Christ. A PHYSICAL WALL, made of thought in your mind.

He also notably tells you that REASON is able to SEE SENSE by OVERLOOKING this block. Recognizing the block as an "error". Which means physical objects are ERRORS. They are the FORM of error, the various forms that error (the separation idea, belief in sin) has taken. And here we are also clued in that physical forms are "forms of error."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not recognize, and does not know if it is there or not. Everything that the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole, without the meaning that the whole would give. And yet mistakes, regardless of their form, can be corrected. Sin is but error in a special form the ego venerates. It would preserve all errors, and make them sins. For here is its own stability, its heavy anchor in the shifting world it made; the rock on which its church is built, and where its worshippers are bound to bodies, and believe the body's freedom is their own."

Jesus also refers to solidity, in equation with illusions. Ie the physical world which SEEMS SOLID, is an illusion.

"If you but recognized how little stands between you and your awareness of your union! Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist. This body only seems to be immovable. This force is irresistible in truth. What, then, must happen when they come together? Can the illusion of immovability be long defended for what is quietly passed through and gone beyond?"

So to the body's eyes, the forms of error, physical objects, solid matter, their seeming "solidity" "weight" "firmness" etc.... these things all seem real. And failing to OVERLOOK them, is a lack of forgiveness. They form "the veil", which covers up the face of Christ. In fact, this world of SOLIDITY is an attempt to BLOCK YOUR VISION. The physical world, including Earth, and all the stars and galaxies, were made as a place where God could enter not. ie, were made as a WALL to BLOCK YOU from God. To come between you. To make it seem like you are not in the Kingdom.

To the body's eyes, "these eyes made not to see will never see" were made so that you CANNOT see the face of Christ. They were designed to LOOK AT the outside surface of nothing, matter, whereby photons are reflected off (denied) and bounce into the eyes to tell you "the world is there, it is solid, it exists." But because the world BLOCKS vision, it is the fact that your sight was BLOCKED BY the solid matter, that you have not ACTUALLY SEEN. You did not OVERLOOK the surface of the physical objects, and so did not see the face of Christ. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

"The body's eyes see ONLY form. They cannot see beyond what they were MADE to see. And they were made to look on error, and not see past it. Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. To this distorted form of vision, the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true."

"It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL."

Here's Jesus is clearly stating that the physical human body's form of sight, can ONLY see forms, and they only look on ERROR, and this error of form they look at is the granite block of SIN. Which means that the physical world is made of sin, and the body was designed to make the sin seem real. The body's vision STOPS at the SURFACE of nothing (forms, objects) and fails to see past it. This forms A SOLID PHYSICAL WALL, which stands between YOU and THE TRUTH (heaven/God/Christ).

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

"How is this done? It is extremely simple, being based on what this little kingdom really IS. The barren sands, the darkness, and the lifelessness are seen only through the body's eyes. ITS vision IS distorted, and the messages IT transmits to you, who MADE it to limit your awareness, ARE little and limited, so fragmented that they are meaningless. From the world of bodies, MADE by insanity, insane messages seem to be returned to the mind which made it. And these messages bear witness to this world, pronouncing it as true. For YOU sent forth these messengers, to bring this BACK to you.

Everything these messages relay to you is quite external. There are NO messages that speak of what lies underneath, for it is NOT the body that could speak of this."

The body can only "see" BLOCKS, and it sees them precisely BECAUSE vision STOPPED at their surface and failed to go beyond. Seeing with the body is thus NOT seeing at all, it is false perception. It is a state of seeing the interior surface of a walled-in room of hell and darkness, as if it's all that exists. A failure to look through or past the walls (with a kind of x-ray vision, christ vision), makes the world seem like it is SOLID and REAL and ALL THAT EXISTS. And believing this is blindness. It's an unawareness that the Kingdom exists, and an attempt NOT to see God.

"The body's eyes will NEVER look on it. Yet they will SEE what it dictates. The body will remain guilt's messenger, and will act as it directs, as long as YOU believe that guilt is real. For the REALITY of guilt is the illusion which seems to make it heavy and opaque, impenetrable, and a REAL foundation for the ego's thought system. Its thinness and transparency are not apparent, until you see the light BEHIND it. And then you see it as a fragile veil, before the light."

So here Jesus is clearly saying, that there is a light BEYOND the veil, beyond the wall of flesh, beyond the granite block of sin, beyond physical matter. By becoming able to SEE this light, you MUST use spiritual vision (christ vision) which is forgiving and DOES NOT SEE BODIES. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." It looks PAST bodies, past the illusion of form, past error, past the WORLD, TO the light. To the face of Christ. The face of Christ is effectively BEHIND the world (really outside of it, because we're inside a bubble of illusions, dreaming of exile).

So what this really adds up to is, BLOCKS TO AWARENESS are not simply your attitude about the world. They are not taking place just "in my head". There quite literally has been a PHYSICAL BARRIER placed outside you as the world, designed to tempt you to believe that THE WORLD is real, so that you do NOT SEE reality. So long as you use the body's eyes to see it, you will be blinded. You cannot look AT it with forgiveness to try to TURN IT INTO a Kingdom of God. It is made of the denial of the Kingdom. The world itself has to be OVERLOOKED.

And that means, blocks to awareness are not just inside your mind in the way you might think of them. The planet is a block to awareness. If you BELIEVE IN IT, your mind agrees with your body's eyes and you become unable to see. You instead perceive hell. This is false perception. The world you made is hell, the opposite of heaven. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." But if your mind chooses NOT to believe what your eyes are telling you is there, it becomes able to OVERLOOK what the body sees to see THROUGH IT, PAST IT, like a thin veil.

You not only overlook a block to awareness "in your mind", you overlook it "out there" also. By not believing in the world, you do not SEE IT. And this is based on the fact that your mind IS LARGER THAN THE UNIVERSE. It must be, because it CONTAINS planet Earth. If size can be considered real, your mind MUST be bigger than your body. In fact all bodies are within it, including all galaxies. And you put them INSIDE your mind to BLOCK awareness of where you really are - in Heaven. To remove the block, therefore, is ultimately to REMOVE THE WORLD.

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

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

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

You must DENY that what the body sees is real. You must OVERLOOK everything it shows you. You must NOT BELIEVE the testimony of the flesh. You must IGNORE it. You must look through its lies, its errors, its illusions, be NOT deceived, and look PAST THE WORLD, past your brother's body, to reality. This is what Christ vision allows you to do, and the development of this overlooking is the whole purpose of the workbook.

"The purpose of these exercises (workbook intro) is to train the mind to a different perception of everything in the world. The workbook is divided into two sections, the first dealing with the undoing of what you see now, and the second with the restoration of sight."

"Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeming and yet surely theirs."

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

Look at that.

Christ vision DOES NOT look up on a body. It does not regard the body as "there". It looks PAST it. That is forgiveness.

It beholds a light BEYOND the body. That light is the face of christ. It's reality, or at least the real world.

It sees NO separation (no forms).

It sees BEYOND all happenings and events that the body seems to suggest are still there, while fixated on the light that is BEYOND it.

BEYOND WHAT CAN BE TOUCHED (the physical).

So as you "remove blocks to awareness", you are learning NOT TO SEE the blocks. To see beyond them. Which means seeing beyond the WORLD, which is really in your mind as AN HALLUCINATION OF A WORLD. To not believe in the blocks allows you to forgive the world, and this means being able to LOOK BEYOND it to reality. Because the world is an illusion, that you made up, to block your vision, so that you would not be aware of God.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

Once the face of Christ is seen, perfectly, the physical world - the veil - which hangs like a block - disappears completely from your sight. The world is forgotten. Perception translates to knowledge and you wake up in Heaven.

"Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the Face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father."

"Now is there silence all around the world. Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only That can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind which God forever knows to be His only Son."

"And now God's knowledge, changeless, certain, pure and wholly understandable, enters its kingdom. Gone is perception, false and true alike. Gone is forgiveness, for its task is done. And gone are bodies in the blazing light upon the altar to the Son of God. God knows it is His Own, as it is his. And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

"The stars will disappear, and night and day will be no more. All things that come and go, the tides, the seasons, and the lives of men; all things that change with time and bloom and fade, will not return."

"The stars will disappear in light, and the sun, which opened up the world to beauty, will vanish. Perception will be meaningless, when it has been perfected. For everything that has been used for learning, will have no function. Nothing will ever change; no shifts nor shadings, no differences, no variations that made perception possible, will occur. The perception of the real world will be so short, that you will barely have time to thank God for it. For God will take the last step swiftly, when you have reached the real world, and have been made ready for Him."

You hear often that 'the world' as a term becomes substituted with terms like "its a dream", "its an illusion", "its not real", "we made it up", "its a projection" etc.

But, this doesn't really grasp what an illusion is. It's not just some word you can replace other words with.

The definition of an illusion is something appearing tobe something it is not, designed to deliberately deceive and block awareness of the truth. It is a device that lies to you and tricks you into believing something that isn't true. But in order to even KNOW that it is an illusion, you have to have enough awareness of what it's like to NOT be deceived by the illusion. You have to be aware of how the illusion works, what it's actually 'doing' to portray an appearance, how it is distracting you, and basically to 'see through it'.

Overlooking illusions is forgiveness. This means being aware of all of the 'tricks' that the illusion attempts to perform, but seeing through them and past them and not being fooled by them. And this is an entirely different state of consciousness and awareness, than to simply stay IN the ego illusion and start labeling it 'illusion'. That's like just switching out the term "planet earth" for "planet illusion". That doesn't really reveal HOW it deceives you.

So the big problem we have is that we do NOT realize how the illusion is an illusion. We do not recognize it AS an illusion. We do not see through it, or past it. We are fooled by it. We are made unconscious by it. It's like being hypnotized or put into an unconscious stupor, in which we take the illusion seriously, at face value, and listen to its appearance as if that is reality. Mistaking an illusion for reality is our only mistake.

Here's an example of an illusion. You are in the dark. The room is unlit. In the room there are objects. One of the objects you touch and it feels really strange and it seems to move as you touch it, and this makes you suddenly afraid that there's maybe a person in the room, and you scream. So you've fallen for the illusion, the impression, that there is something serious and frightening happening. But what happens when you switch the light on, suddenly you have MORE INFORMATION. You are now aware of more parts and pieces that you couldn't even see before, and were not aware of at all. Suddenly you realize that the thing you touched was in fact just a large house plant which you brushed up against, and it's completely safe and not scary at all. You feel relieved, right?

This is what it means to see through the illusion. It means, you have seen the truth, which has revealed to you, by shining a light of increased awareness, ALL of what is present, rather than only a narrow context or portion of what is present. When things are taken out of context they become a nightmare. Meaning becomes distorted. Reality becomes disjointed. We start to hallucinate that things might be happening that aren't really happening. This is how someone experiences insanity - losing touch with the bigger picture and becoming fixated on something whose relationship to real meaning has been distorted and blocked, such that you can no longer tell what anything really is and everything becomes frighteningly animated and motivated by bizarre nonsense forces that you don't understand.

The physical world, in the form that it appears, is an illusion. This does not mean that the physical world of form is being seen 'correctly' and fully, by seeing objects as they are. Or like, you become more aware of how all the objects contain beauty or contain God etc. That isn't seeing through the whole illusion. What you do not realize, because you have forgotten what it means to be NOT DELUDED AT ALL, is that the physical world of forms is, in its entirety, designed to block and distract away from the awareness of the presence of God. Even if you awaken to some 'stage' in which you see God in all things, if you are still seeing forms you are still deluded by the illusion.

"Nothing so blinding as sight of form" - ACIM

"Everything the body's eyes can see is a mistake, an error in perception, a distorted fragment of the whole without the meaning that the whole would give." - ACIM - "T-22.III.4."

Also.. "T-22.III.5. 3 The body's eyes see only form. 4 They cannot see beyond what they were made to see. 5 And they were made to look on error and not see past it. 6 Theirs is indeed a strange perception, for they can see only illusions, unable to look beyond the granite block of sin, and stopping at the outside form of nothing. 7 To this distorted form of vision the outside of everything, the wall that stands between you and the truth, is wholly true. 8 Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? 9 It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived." - ACIM

What you may not realize is, this entire physical universe is a holographic projection, designed SPECIFICALLY and INTENTIONALLY, to distort and block all trace of the nature of God. It is deliberately designed to obfuscate, distort, give an opposite appearance to, and completely make it appear, that God does not exist at all. The form that it takes is DELIBERATELY designed by the ego to show you something that looks nothing like God, has no properties of God, completely diffuses and blocks God's character, and makes you completely BLIND to God. The body's eyes then can only see this form, the appearance of the absence of God, and cannot see past it TO God. The entire physical universe is a DECEPTION!

The way this works is, every 'form', every object, presents to your awareness the idea that all things are different. It presents the idea that all objects are separate from each other, none of them share anything at all including the same space or time, none of them truly are equal or perfectly alike, and all of them are in conflict. Does that sound like a picture of God? No. That's intentional. Form, the form of error, was deliberately made make God not apparent, and to make it seem to your awareness that God does not exist at all anymore. That's the ego's wish. That's why it made this illusion.

So the 'illusion' is, that forms present an image to you which is not the truth, which is extremely deceptive, and which you fall for easily. For example, consider problems. The ego presents to you a specific problem which is usually limited to a handful of forms. It tells you that only these forms are a problem, so you need to solve it. You solve it, but this has no effect on the 50 billion other problems in the world. The ego's solution to problems only seems to apply to a tiny portion of the world, and has no transfer value to other problems.

The ego absolutely hates the idea of it being possible to solve ALL problems with ONE solution - that is the Holy Spirit's attitude. It does not want that at all. So it keeps you focussed on looking at objects as being very DIFFERENT to each other. A dog is not a cat. A car is not a house. An attack by a coworkers is not an attack by a neighbor. The ego makes it all APPEAR different and separate. THAT is how it deceives you. Because in truth, there is only ONE problem and ONLY solution resolves the entirety of it completely.

The abstraction needed to SEE and to RECOGNIZE that all forms are THE SAME THING, the same illusion, takes some significant forgiveness and awakening. Being able to look at all forms and recognize, every single one of the deceptions and temptations that every one of these forms is trying to SHOW me, to try to convince me that they are TRUE, is the SAME LIE, and they are all using the SAME STRATEGY. Ultimately, the entire world is the same ONE illusion, presented by the ONE ego, using ONE set of seemingly diverse and apparently highly fragmented deceptions. Each time that you fall for one of its deceptions and think, hey, yes, this illusion is real and this problem is separate from others, and this object is not one with other objects, and that person is separate from this person etc... that's you FAILING to see through the illusion. That's you FALLING FOR THE TRICK!

So yes, there is a way of seeing, which doesn't just overlook illusions but which is AWARE ONLY OF GOD. There is a way of recognizing everything that is false for what it is - false. There is a way of no longer believing a single thing that any appearance of object or form or separation or expression of fragmentation/multiplicity suggests to you in any way. There is a way of COMPLETELY IGNORING what the senses are shown via external signals. There is a way of absolutely not listening to a single shred of ego consciousness whatsoever. And there is a way of SEEING GOD DIRECTLY AND FULLY. And guess what? God does not look ANYTHING like how the physical world looks, and they have nothing in common at all.

In revelation, the entire world disappears. The entire illusion disappears. All physical objects disappear and are replaced with brilliant bright light and total awareness of love. That is all. This is reality. This is an experience of no illusions. Compare that to the PURPOSE of the world that the ego made, and recognize that forms looks like forms FOR A REASON, and separate objects appear to be separate FOR A REASON, and separate problems appear to be distinct and unique FOR A REASON, and all temptations and deceptions are designed to distract you and lead you into unconsciousness FOR A REASON.

The ego's use of the world is NOT that it is neutral. The ego's use of the world is to create a 'veil', an illusion, a huge TRICK, a distortion of consciousness, a BLOCK to awareness, over your awareness, so that you can no longer fully experience God or recognize His nature. God is the same everywhere. God is in all parts equally. All of God is in every part of God. When you are presented with objects which appears to only contain distinct separate parts in each part and there is no sign of any sharing or oneness whatsoever, in form, THAT is the illusion that there is no God. You have to learn NOT TO BELIEVE YOUR EYES!

This is what illusion means. You have to get out of the illusion to know that it is an illusion. You have to awaken to a greater reality in which you are aware of how God is everywhere, God shares everything, God is in everything fully, all of God is in all parts of existence, there is no separation, and all appearances are a LIE. Lies are not meant to be paid attention to, you are meant to discern that they are lies and not listen to them and not take what they present to you seriously or as though it is even real. Recognize the entire physical universe was made to SHUT OUT GOD, and not just in terms of you having a separate perception OF the world that has errors in it, but that the world ITSELF is an error and has taken on a multitude of forms to completely deceive your comprehension of 'what is'. We fall for this every single day and every time we believe in any kind of differences whatsoever.

There are no forms in God, not even forms that seem like they have God in them. NO FORMS. Complete formlessness. Forms are separation and separation is not real.

Every time we think one thing is not something else. Every time we think one object is not another object. Every time we experience separate problems and separate solutions. Every time we believe that we are separated from other people by bodies. Every time we don't recognize that there is only ONE problem, and only ONE solution is needed once and for all to solve them all, permanently. Every time we fall for this grand illusion and can't find a vantage point in awareness from which we can see 'the whole', the one, we fall for the ego's deception. Truly this world is not just a 'thing' and not just a 'place', it is a mechanism for reality distortion, consciousness obstruction, enforced unconsciousness, fragmentation of mind, and loss of life. This is what we have to see past and not believe what our senses are saying is out there.

"There is no world. This is the central thought the Course would attempt to teach." - ACIM - think about that deeply, the entire physical world is a magic trick aimed at stopping Creation, stopping awareness, and stopping God.

We are immortal Spirit. We are God's creation. We are infinite and unlimited by form. We are equal everywhere. And we are real. And we have no differences. And we are not separate objects. And we are not limited by space or time.

"I cannot see in darkness but in light" - "I am not an illusion but a reality." - ACIM

I'm trying to clarify what the real world is or it not. I'm just going to waffle on about it here as I look at each quote.

"The real world is a symbol, like the rest of what perception offers. Yet it stands for what is opposite to what you made.

This suggests the real world is something perceptual because dreams contain symbols, and since perception does not exist in heaven (only knowledge), this suggests the real world is not heaven. Yet it appears to be a "reflection of reality". (As I typed this, Jesus said "true").

"The real world holds a counterpart for each unhappy thought reflected in your world"

Suggesting it is also a reflection, or at least opposite to all illusions and lies. As real as perception can get?

"The real world shows a world seen differently, through quiet eyes and with a mind at peace. Nothing but rest is there. There are no cries of pain and sorrow heard, for nothing here remains outside forgiveness. And the sights are gentle. Only happy sights and sounds can reach the mind that has forgiven itself."

It sounds quite advanced that in this state of mind, there is no apparent registering of pain and sorrow coming from other people. These things are perhaps seen in a different light, as calls for love, and therefore there is a recognition that there is no "real sorrow". "The sights are gentle" seems to suggest you wouldn't even see war and death happening? But perhaps it is the WAY you look at them which shows them to you in a way which isn't upsetting any more. OR, possibly, the real world is seen AT THE SAME TIME as perception sees the physical world, since it is like "looking at heaven" vs looking at the world of form. This would be similar to the Holy Spirit being "fixated on God" while also perceiving.

"The real world is the symbol that the dream of sin and guilt is over, and God’s Son no longer sleeps. His waking eyes perceive the sure reflection of his Father’s Love; the certain promise that he is redeemed. The real world signifies the end of time, for its perception makes time purposeless."

Again the real world is referred to as a SYMBOL, meaning it is part of the dream. And also it is referred to as a REFLECTION (not the actual thing, but a reflection of it, once removed). This suggests the term "real world" refers not to that state of mind being "real" in the truest sense, but "real-er" than other ways of perceiving.

"Its perception"... tells us it's something perceived, so we are still in the realm of the world and are not in heaven yet.

"Across the bridge, it is so different! For a time the body is still seen, but NOT exclusively, as it is seen here. For the little spark that holds the Great Rays within it, is ALSO visible, and this spark cannot be limited long to littleness. Once you have crossed the bridge, the VALUE of the body is so diminished in YOUR sight, that you will see no need at all to MAGNIFY it. For you will realize that the ONLY value that the body has, is to enable you to bring your brothers TO the bridge WITH you. And to be RELEASED TOGETHER there."

This lingo sort of seems confusing because it seems you cross a bridge and are on the other side (as if in heaven?) and yet you are still in a body, and yet the ability to remain in the body is very limited due to the magnitude of the mind. So this suggests a state of being still in a body and perceiving but being as pure of mind as is possible while in a body. Again a reflection of heaven rather than pure heaven.

"Sit quietly and look upon the world you see, and tell yourself, "The real world is not like this. It has no buildings, and there are no streets where people walk alone and separately. There are no stores where people buy an endless list of things they do not need. It is not lit with artificial light, and night comes not upon it. There is no day that brightens and grows dim. There is no loss. Nothing is there but shines, and shines forever." This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

In this sense, it seems that Jesus talks about the real world as if talking about heaven. If he is being very literal (which he usually is) then a state of mind where there are no buildings and people and stuff, ... does not really sound like the world or forms. Above he spoke of only seeing gentle sights and so on, as a "way" of seeing the world. Here he talks of a "place" where there IS no buildings or streets or other forms. This suggests to me that when He speaks of the real world he is a bit "loose" in terms of what it means. ie, the "real world" literally is Heaven, but when we are in a body and still perceiving we see a GLIMPSE of it and a REFLECTION of it, and so it now sounds "as if" the real world is within perception still, but more like... it is just touching on perception lightly and is actually mostly beyond perception and beyond bodies and beyond this world. Like peeking its head in the door. This also reminds me of "the kingdom of heaven is laid out upon the world but you do not see it" and "god is in everything I see because God is in my mind"... referring to states of perception still (seeing the world) but starting to glimpse a heavenly "reality" or "real world" beyond it.

The one word that confused me here at first was "shines forever". If the real world shines forever, that makes it permanent. If the real world were permanent it must be the same thing as heaven. And so since Jesus uses the term to refer sometimes to the reflection of heaven and sometimes to what is fully heaven, since the "real world" in perception reflects reality, it can seem to imply a real perceived world is permanent, but it is not. Because the UNREAL world is let go and disappears, the real world builds a bridge to heaven, and then the true real world is fully experienced as heaven, forever.

"Yet the real world has the power to touch you even here because you love it. And what you call with love will come to you. Love always answers, being unable to deny a call for help or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it from every part of this strange world you made but do not want. The only effort you need make to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did not make is willingness to learn the one you made is false."

Like here, Jesus says the real world "touches you even here", suggesting that it is NOT here, but is heaven, and yet it is so close that it "touches you" like when two worlds bump up against each other, but you are not yet IN IT. Which again suggests the real world is actually heaven (not this universe whatsoever), but can be "touched upon" while here.

"You will first dream of peace and then awaken to it. Your first exchange of what you made for what you want is the exchange of nightmares for the happy dreams of love. In these lie your true perceptions, for the Holy Spirit corrects the world of dreams, where all perception is. Knowledge needs no correction. Yet the dreams of love lead unto knowledge. In them you see nothing fearful, and because of this, they are the welcome that you offer knowledge. Love waits on welcome, not on time, and the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore, the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have not lost. Praise, then, the Father for the perfect sanity of His most holy Son."

The "dream of peace" also sounds like another way to say that "perceiving" the real world while here in a body is still a dream of reality - that's why its a reflection or symbol, and not the actual thing. The real world seems like a bridge that bridges the gaps between heaven and earth, or at least is a joining place or state of mind which is sort of experiencing both temporarily.

"The bridge itself is nothing more than a transition in your PERSPECTIVE of reality. On this side, everything you see is grossly distorted, and COMPLETELY out of perspective. What IS little and insignificant is magnified, and what is strong and powerful, cut down to littleness."

Jesus does refer to a bridge, which suggests that the perception of the reality (truth, heaven) while still in a body is a glimpse of the real world that is on the other side of the bridge, and you can sort of position yourself on the other side and be very close to having heaven in your awareness, but still remaining temporarily in the world. This also correlates to what Jesus says about the body being able to be supernaturally protected, and a sign of immortality, while it is useful, and when used to bring the word of God to those who have it not.

Also I want to make a note about perspective. When there are clouds, the sun is above the clouds and always shining. When you are up there above the clouds, from that perspective, clouds are not blocking the light (awareness). When you move below the clouds however, from "this side", looking back towards the light having been separated from it, it SEEMS as if the clouds block the light. The bottom of the clouds become dark symbolizing their ability to block light and having resulted in the illusion of darkness.

When you are in a state of perception which is level confused, backwards and upside down, ie in the ego more, you see this way and regard darkness as a real block and as if light is hidden. But when you get past the clouds and are aligned with the light and ORIENTED in the direction the light is shining, then you no longer are limited by the clouds and see only light everywhere. From this vantage point or perspective, this is similar to seeing "from" the real world. So you could say that the bridge Jesus refers to, is really the "transition" from being in the dark to being in the light, shifting from false to true perception, and another word for true perception is perception of the "real world". Being on the "other side" of the bridge thus could be referring to being in true perception, since the bridge is somewhere between true and false perception, rather than between the perceptual world and heaven.

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear."

Here Jesus refers to both the real world and the fictional world as "not true". So again he's saying, the real world is kind of a term for the "slice" of reality which is partly seen while still in the fictional physical world. The glimpse of reality will become real to you and then act like a bridge TO heaven. The real world is what's perceived when perception is true and accurate, showing you that this world is false and unreal, and opening up to see Christ "beyond" it or "in" it. And eventually the world itself disappears and what was "beyond" and "in it" now becomes a fully present (and only) experience.

"God loves His Son forever, and His Son RETURNS his Father’s Love forever. The real world is the way that leads you to remembrance of this one thing that is wholly true and WHOLLY YOURS. For all else you have LENT yourself in time, and it WILL fade. But this one thing is ALWAYS yours, being the gift of God unto His Son. Your ONE reality was GIVEN you, and BY it, God created you as one with Him."

Here he said "the WAY that LEAD YOU TO remembrance"... like a bridge, or as the meeting point of two worlds or sort of the preparation for going to heaven.

"Love waits on welcome, NOT on time. And the real world is but your welcome of what always was. Therefore the call of joy is in it, and your glad response is your awakening to what you have NOT lost. "

Welcoming what always was is sort of an invitation or openness to it, but not necessarily being in it yet.

"Is it a loss to find a world instead where losing is impossible, where love endures forever, hate cannot exist, and vengeance has no meaning? Is it loss to find all things you really want and know they have no ending, and they will remain exactly as you want them throughout time?

The world mentioned here I think is heaven. But it could apply apply to "Real world".

Yet even they will be exchanged at last for what we cannot speak of, for you go from there to where words fail entirely, into a silence where the language is unspoken and yet surely understood. Communication, unambiguous and plain as day, remains unlimited for all eternity. And God Himself speaks to His Son as His Son speaks to Him. Their language has no words, for what they say cannot be symbolized. Their knowledge is direct and wholly shared and wholly one."

Here then Jesus speaks of what happens when you make the transition FULLY to heaven, which is a world that you cannot see while seeing the physical world (you cannot see two worlds, you cannot behold the world and see heaven). In heaven, fully and completely, BEYOND perception, and BEYOND the slice of the real world that you saw as a reflection (also referred to as the face of christ - his FACE, not his WHOLE SELF), is the world God created which is Heaven, where all is one, and the "real world's" lack of buildings and streets and people is fully experienced.

"Can what has no beginning really end? The world will end in an illusion, as it began. Yet will its ending be an illusion of mercy. The illusion of forgiveness, complete, excluding no one, limitless in gentleness, will cover it, hiding all evil, concealing all sin and ending guilt forever. So ends the world that guilt had made, for now it has no purpose and is gone."

Bye bye planet Earth and the physical universe.

"The world will end in joy, because it is a place of sorrow. When joy has come, the purpose of the world has gone. The world will end in peace, because it is a place of war. When peace has come, what is the purpose of the world? The world will end in laughter, because it is a place of tears. Where there is laughter, who can longer weep? And only complete forgiveness brings all this to bless the world. In blessing it departs, for it will not end as it began. To turn hell into Heaven is the function of God’s teachers, for what they teach are lessons in which Heaven is reflected. And now sit down in true humility, and realize that all God would have you do you can do. Do not be arrogant and say you cannot learn His Own curriculum. His Word says otherwise. His Will be done. It cannot be otherwise. And be you thankful it is so."

Our traditional definitions of what the ego IS, may need a rethink, based on what it ACTUALLY says in the course.

Interestingly, the course tells us that we have a SPLIT mind.... and that this division - which IS THE SEPARATION - has produced what seems like TWO selves. And yet it does not say that either of these two selves is the ego.

"And these two halves appear to represent a split within a self perceived as two."

"In a split mind, identity MUST seem to be divided."

"It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING."

"***The Separation is merely another term for a split mind.***"In a way, it more accurately uses "ego" to describe the effort WITHIN the split itself, to perpetuate and increase the separation.

Kind of like an "agent of separation" working to magnify the division or increase the gap between the two halves.It also tells us that the split ITSELF needs to be undone, so that the two parts of mind REUNITE as one mind. Because BOTH parts of mind MUST BE REINTEGRATED.

"They had already split their minds, and were bent on further dividing, rather than reintegrating. ****The levels they introduced into their minds turned against each other****, and they established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersions, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits which they produced."

This has absolutely nothing to do with getting rid of the second portion of mind in order to "heal it", and in fact destroying part of mind is the GOAL of the separation. Healing is entirely to do with undoing the SEPARATION BETWEEN the parts of mind.

So the question then arises, where does the EGO come into it, or the idea of a false self?

Because in truth, the separated off second part of mind, IS NOT the ego. That second portion of mind is to be KEPT AND HEALED and REINTEGRATED with the first part. So we can't say that this second portion IS the ego.

We could more accurately say, that it is the DIVISION ITSELF which is ego. The division is what seems to arise, when there is a SEPARATION, which means there is an INEQUALITY. You can only have a seeming separation, in which there seem to be "two things", when there is something DIFFERENT about each of those things.

This difference, a kind of rift or inequality, produces a kind of "territory" in-between the two parts, a fence around a part of the mind, where we could say that it is "in between" the two parts, or is what defines the two parts as being distinct from each other. And we could call this inner seeming territory the GAP or the SEPARATION. Indeed, we can accurately call it SPACE TIME!

This separation GAP, which is kind of like the "pit of hell", seems to come in BETWEEN the parts of minds, which now appears to be inner and outer, or associated and dissociated parts of mind.

In fact, one part of mind then seems to be on "this side" of physical matter (e.g. inside the brain), while the OTHER HALF of mind seems to be BEYOND "the granite block of sin" or "the veil" that is physical matter - the illusion of separation. This is why you have to overlook (forgive) physical matter and see the face of christ BEYOND it, in order to REJOIN WITH the other half of yourself.

The part of mind you associate WITH, you believe is your whole self, which is the sunbeam believing it is the sun. While the sun is the metaphor for the REST of the mind, or the whole of mind.

The body, for example, becomes a SEPARTION DEVICE, which comes BETWEEN the associated part of mind, and the dissociated part of mind. It stands between you and your brothers, as do all forms and bodies, like a literal physical wall. It symbolizes our separateness, or rather, the separation between you and the rest of you.

But then the question then arises, where or what is the EGO?The course says that the WORLD is the symbol of the separation, and the BODY is the symbol of the ego. This almost suggests, and perhaps it does, that separation in general is not quite the same thing as EGO.

Through separation, we split the part of the mind which is in heaven from a part which seems to be in hell, just as we split the part that seems to be housed in a body from the part that seems outside of it. You could say that separation is a vertical split, while ego/body is a horizontal split. It's almost like saying that the ego is a symbol of separation INSIDE the world, which is itself a symbol of separation. Making the ego twice removed or "within" the realm of separation.

Either way, ego or egotism, is defined in the course as SELFISHNESS. It is synonymous with specialness, uniqueness, differences, favoritism and inequality. Why would we say that this places ego INSIDE the portion of mind that is in the body, and not the part outside? Perhaps because as ego condenses and possesses and claims exclusive ownership for itself, it tends to partition itself off and contract into a specific location in spacetime. Thus ending up AS or IN a body.

We can also though say that the WORLD, is the ego thought SYSTEM. That the whole system of ego thinking, based on differences, visualizes the physical universe. This would associate ego with the entire "realm" of separation ie separateness.

It's important to realize though, that ego is really something that comes BETWEEN, and emphasizes SEPARATION. It tries to INCREASE separation. It also thus increases inequality. So regardless of "where" we try to locate it, it is very much tied to the notion of separating. It might even be valid and useful to relate ego to the idea of "the devil", an attitude WITHIN THE SPLIT, that operates as active thought WITHIN the idea of separation, to lend reality and value to the separation.

Similarly the body, when it is made to be sick, doesn't simply testify that its host is sick, but that the body is trying to attack BOTH the host AND its brothers. "Sick bodies remain accusers". They are attempts to be contagious and to destroy others. So the sickness is bi-directional. Or in other words, the sickness is acting like a SEPARATION. And this happens when the body is being used AS a separation device. ie the more you emphasize the body as a SEPARATING WALL BETWEEN you and others, the sicker it becomes.Either way, for me, I'm finding it makes a lot more sense to think of ego simply as the same thing as SEPARATION in general, rather than thinking of it as ONE SIDE of a separation, or ONE PART of mind, or ONE OF the two "selves" which are formed BY separation.

Ego will in fact play BOTH SIDES of the separation. It takes positions on both sides of every conflict. Because ego is the idea of SELF DENIAL, and therefore self destruction. So it is literally against itself and is the idea of suicide. It has no interest in who WINS any kind of fight or competition, only that both sides are attacking and increasing the inequality and separation between them. It doesn't care how the game of death is played so long as you're playing it.

The thing to realize then is that if ego IS separation, and separation entirely depends on INEQUALITY, then the restoration of perfect equality causes ego to vanish. In fact, since ego is illusion or a shadow, a fake appearance, or a sense of a LACK OF light as in darkness, this lack is based on inequality. ie that one thing lacks what another has. And without this lack, there can be no ILLUSION OF the ABSENCE OF what the other part has. And so as you approach equality, you simply phase out separateness and erase differences, thereby completely undoing ego. And there is no ego AT ALL in an equal state.

To me this makes metaphysical and logical sense. It makes less sense to me, and perhaps is not even supported by the course, to say that ego is some kind of separate person, or ONLY the separate person, or one half of mind, or a made-up self.

The course does refer to a false self and a false self image, but this false sense of self is kind of a side effect of the division BETWEEN parts of mind. This separation - the split mind - results in both parts of mind being seemingly lacking or diminished. The half you associate with maybe takes on more of a sense of "artificial identity" - artificial identification or association. While the other half seems to become unconscious.

But really in the big picture, when you look at it, Jesus essentially just describes "the separation from God" and its undoing through atonement. It describes separation as synonymous with dissociation and the splitting of mind into two parts. So the undoing of this split, the removal of separation BETWEEN the parts, undoes the separation and restores the WHOLENESS of the mind. The unification or oneness of the mind.

One thing to bear in mind though is that in fact, in a split minded state, we do tend to DISSOCIATE a large portion of mind. The part of mind we DO associate with, which seems to be experienced as WITHIN us or inside the body or inside the bounds of its container, looks upon the other split-off part as "outside" of itself.

And this tends to project it and place it external to the body, which it identifies as symbolizing the "perimeter" of itself, making it easy to ASSOCIATE the second half of mind with other bodies. This leads to the effortless CONFUSION WITH other bodies, associating this other half of mind WITH other bodies, and thus believing other people are "where the sin is" or are "who the enemy is".

This then leads to our continued efforts to DESTROY this other half of mind, labeling it as the home of sin and guilt, projected externally, bound to others, as if accusing THEM of our own sin. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins". You then attempt to correct what seems to you to be "them", when in fact it is the OTHER PART OF YOURSELF that you are attacking.

This is especially true on another level as well, in that your brothers ARE you, in a oneness kind of way, and attacking them DOES also attack you. So as you split off part of your mind and label it "not me", by DISSOCIATING from it, you tend to split off the part that is IN YOUR BROTHER or one with Him. And so you then tend to target YOUR BROTHER as the home of sin and guilt.

But all the while, this is all still happening INSIDE the totality of your whole mind. One part of your mind is at war with the other part. And it is by INTEGRATING BOTH PARTS, which results by UNDOING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM, that restores the mind to health and wholeness. In addition to reawakening your awareness of the whole of your identity. Kind of like large "dormant" parts of mind coming online - coming into awareness, because they are no longer hidden behind walls.

What this tells you ultimately is that your egotism is an attempt to REJECT. And ACIM confirms that the separation was an act of REJECTION. And through rejection you rejected God's will and your self and your brothers, simultaneously rejecting the part of your mind which is ONE with and IN them. So it is through acceptance, the undoing of denial, that you are restored to awareness of the whole of yourself, one with your brothers and God.

Ego, or egotism, or selfishness, or specialness, or idol worship, or special relationships, or valuing illusory treasures, or elevating the body etc, is all different ways of EMPHASIZING DIFFERENCE, which is a primary ego function of INCREASING SEPARATIONS. Its only goal is to INTENSIFY the separation, to make you believe you are MORE separate, and to SPLIT your mind further.

All of the egos activities are so fully fixated on this "increase in separation", that you really can equate the two things. Ego is far less some kind of sneaky little devil entity hiding in the mind, and more of a SABATEUR, coming BETWEEN you and your brothers, interfering with relationship, breaking down communication, and trying to SPLIT YOU IN HALF.

You become more split as you REJECT. You become less split as you INTEGRATE. You become more split as you attack. You become less split as you JOIN. You become more split as you hate and hurt. You become less split as you love and heal. And it is really the RIFT between YOUR OWN PARTS OF MIND, that you are working on healing.

One part of your mind you see as an EXTERNAL VICTIMIZER, and another part as an INTERNAL VICTIM. The internal victim puts on "the face of innocence", while the external victimizer puts on the face of evil and sin and death. The secret of salvation tells you thus that your DISSOCIATED part of mind SEEMS to be attacking the ASSOCIATED part of mind. The "outer" self, is attacking the "inner self". And this takes place by backward perception ie the reversal of cause and effect - being at the effect of the "world."

But the truth is you are NOT at the effect of THE WORLD, you are at the effect of the part of your MIND that you have ASSOCIATED WITH the world, projected onto it. It is not some other person who is willing against you, it is YOU using your will AGAINST your own will, in a war against yourself. And this is all happening WITHIN YOU. Inside your mind.

So now you have to realize that the externalized "not me", really IS YOU. It is part of your mind ACTING AGAINST the rest of your mind. And this happens because you have a divided will, due to the SPLIT. It's like having two heads or two conflicting opinions in the same mind. You have to find a way to bring these two parts together into the light. And there you have to see the SEPARATION BETWEEN THEM disappear, so that the two parts are reintegrated as ONE.

This never involves the destruction of MIND or any part of mind. Mind is permanent. All it involves it the removal of EGOIC ATTITUDES,, which produce SEPARATION. The undoing of the separation from God is what atonement and forgiveness is all about. And once YOUR MIND is no longer split, you CANNOT BE ATTACKED.

In fact, it is SO clear that you need to reintegrate the dissociated parts of mind, and that these parts of mind are YOUR ONLY ENEMY, that once you realize that EVERY form of attack against you IS COMING FROM YOURSELF.... playing the part of an INDIRECT victimizer, you realize that you can be FREE from suffering forever if you will stop attacking yourself.

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts."

"It is but myself I crucify."

"Secret of salvation" .... "you are doing this to yourself."In this realization, that the externalized part of mind is WITHIN your mind, and the OVERLOOKING of the "differences" between the parts of mind, which results in UNIFICATION or reunion, you heal the mind's SPLIT and restore its sanity. And this means taking full responsibility for being the one who has been doing everything to you.

This sets you free because it acknowledges you have NEVER suffered except by YOUR OWN hand. No one, nor the world, has EVER attacked you. Every form of suffering has been self inflicted. And it has only EVER been YOUR MIND'S DIVIDED STATE that has produced illusions of suffering. You CANNOT suffer, without a split mind. This is also why it's true that everyone is SELF-destructive in this world.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer." Nor can it be sick, or attack, and NOR does it use the body FOR attack, OR as a separation device. And this heals the body and guarantees its health. So the healing of the SPLIT in YOUR mind is ALL you have to do. This is what it means by accepting atonement FOR YOURSELF. Which has NOTHING to do with other people, until you share and express it. And in the atonement, the ego - the SEPARATION - is erased.

There is one reference to "vertical perception" in ACIM, as part of miracle principle 41. Jesus says:

"41. The miracle is a learning device which lessens the need for time. The sudden shifts from horizontal to vertical perception which the miracle entails introduces an interval from which the doer and the receiver both emerge much farther along in time than they would otherwise have been."

So he introduces this idea that there is a horizontally oriented way of perceiving, and a vertical way. The horizontal way is what you don't want, and the vertical way is what you should be trying to shift towards. But what are these two ways of perceiving?

Let's start by saying the world doesn't exist yet. You are designing a new world inside a computer. You're using some 3D software to model forms and objects and are placing them in a scene. Your intention is to create a 3D holographic movie of various CGI scenes, in which anything goes.

As far as you are concerned, as the director and editor, it's a level playing field. There are no inherent rules or laws as to what is possible or what can happen. There are no laws of physics set up. There are no limitations. Your imagination can run wild.

So you start designing this environment, composed of what seem to be models of objects - cars, buildings, bodies etc. But simply by putting them in the scene, nothing happens. They just sit there. Nothing causes anything. There are no consequences. There are no laws. There are no forces of repulsion or gravity or collisions between things. Objects can exist in the same space overlapping even. There are no chemical reactions. No biological processes.

From this perspective, which we'll call "vertical" or "above the battlefield", you are in a position of vertical causality. The level you are on is ABOVE the level of the world you're making below. Whatever you decide, happens. So if you decide to move one of the models of a car, the car moves. It can't move on its own. But moving it doesn't do anything. There are no effects or limits. You can even move one car to overlap another car, without anything happening. But let's say you want to make it SEEM as if there is a car crash. What do you do?

Well, you're first going to have to CAUSE there to be a scene with two cars in it. You're going to have to cause the two cars to SEEM to move. They will not be moving as a result of having an engine, that's just a pretend engine "for show". Your mind is going to determine where the cars are. You can even pick up the cars and plonk them down somewhere else, or make them float in the air, with no regard for any laws of physics. So you deliberately move both cars in what appears to be a direction towards each other, on a fake road, pretending they are "driving" and making "broom boom" sounds like children at play.

When the cars approach and seem like they should "crash", nothing's going to happen. They'll pass through each other. So you have make up some fictional "laws of physics". You make up some rules which suggest, when this car touches the other car, it will SEEM as if they push into each other, "causing" a crash. One car might be thought of as SEEMING to "cause the crash". But this is entirely illusory. It's on purpose. The car does nothing. The mind that causes EVERYTHING about the car, causes what seems to be the crash.

The director - the true causer - is deciding that car A will crash into car B. And the director also has to deliberately model the way car B will deform to make it LOOK AS IF car A's impact caused bodily damage. So when you now "play the scene", it's going to SEEM as if it's an animation in which the two cars move towards each other on a road - under their seeming own power - not seeing the hidden hand of the director - and collide. Car B seems to become damaged, and it looks like car A was the cause. But it's just an illusion. Everything that happens is orchestrated from above. Did you fall for it?

You know better. You know that NEITHER of the cars has any causal power. You know from this vertical position, looking down on the whole scene from above, as the director, who can pull all the strings and change anything at will, even changing or breaking the laws of physics, that it's NOT TRUE OR REAL that car A crashes into car B. But based on appearances, viewed through a camera (the body's eyes), it SEEMS as if car A causes damage to car B. The camera frames the scene just right to make it seem believable.

This is because when you look at the scene through the camera, which ONLY looks at the **end result** of the director's work, the body's eyes do NOT see that the entire scene is fabricated, they do NOT see that if the director so chooses the car will not be damaged, they do NOT see that there are strings being pulled to create the ILLUSION of laws of physics, and they do NOT see that the movement of both cars is being orchestrated by the ACTUAL CAUSE, the mind. All the laws of physics are EFFECTS, not causes.

Even the damage to car B cannot occur without the higher level mind causing it. It is NOT caused by car A. The illusion that car A has causal power is AN ILLUSION! It's "causality" is ONCE REMOVED from what the REAL cause is. And taken at face value, the body is "blinded by perception of form" and appearances, not looking past them and not seeing the trickery and lies that are producing this illusion. And so it is tempted and deceived by what it sees.

So at the level of the world, which is the scene containing the objects, viewed through the body as the camera, looking at the props and taking them to be not only real but the FIRST ORIGIN OF CAUSALITY, your body assumes there is no other cause that CAME BEFORE, no prior or higher cause, no bigger picture, no author, no orchestration of the world, no secret agenda, no plot to deceive, and just takes it at face value. It thinks then that the car ITSELF had causal power. And now there's reason to blame the car for "causing it".

Seeing the scene this way, is what we call FALSE PERCEPTION. The entire physical world IS FALSE. All the objects are false. ALL the laws of physics are false. ALL of it is a lie. It's a movie set. Every apparent "horizontal causality", where it seems something on this level in the world CAUSES something, or is the true origin or chooser of something, creates the illusion that the world has real consequences, causal power, makes things happen on its own, and isn't being run by a deeper, hidden author.

The DREAMER - the director of all things that happen - goes unnoticed and hidden behind the scenes. He is the cause of the "causes" in the world. He is the one deciding that all objects move. He is the one making up the laws. HE is the one deciding what SEEMS to affect what. HE makes both the causes and the effects that we see as being on the same level. He orchestrates all events and has power OVER everything.

He can also BREAK all the laws and consistencies and illusions of the world through his seemingly "miraculous" freedom and transcending of all illusions. He can rewrite the world. He can make mountains move in an instant. He can reverse death. He can make a pretend body seem to walk on pretend water, as if gravity were total nonsense. He MADE UP gravity, and is not bound by it. He MADE what we call sickness and death, and can ABOLISH both. He is the director. He has the power to dominate all things in the world. There is NOTHING his holiness cannot do. His mind has the power to make WORLDS appear!

To those on the horizontally perceiving level, who are living within the context of ASSUMING the world is real and causal, when the awakened dreamer - a miracle worker - decides to CHANGE the dream in a way that BREAKS the normal order and laws, having shifted into vertical perception, and EXPRESSING a vertical causality, SEEMS to be doing things which are "impossible".

He seems to be breaking the laws of physics. He's walking on water, he's multiplying objects, he's cancelling death, he's curing all sickness, he's moving mountains with his mind, and seems completely unlimited by anything in the world. To those asleep, he appears miraculous. Yet he is just being natural. He is in touch with the power to cause and choose, under NO LAWS but God's. Those fixated on the body's world see him as OUTSIDE what's possible. He breaks their reality. And they do not understand how he can do this.

When you are believing everything the body sees, which is an illusion, the illusory world of form, you are having "horizontal perception". It's the same thing as false perception. And everything in the world, all objects, all laws, are what you see when you are only looking through the camera which was designed on purpose to NOT SEE the secret behind-the-scenes activities. The body fixates only on the story, the appearance, and the illusion. The end result or effect. The dream. "Only the body makes the world seem real."

To horizontal perception, ie false perception, everything in the world seems to be lined up side by side. Like in a crowd of people. All horizontally spaced out. And so if one of the bodies is sick, and dies, the appearance is that not only is the sickness and death "reality", there is also a strong BELIEF IN (being deceived by) these appearances. The divisions between things make the body's appearances seem very tangible and pronounced. Differences are emphasized, so as to blind you to the deeper truth.

Someone operating on the level of false perception believes that sickness is real, death really happens, the world is dangerous, people sin in bodies, stuff is attackable, there are causes to be afraid of, we are victimized by the world, and are at the effect of the world. To them, the FORM of differences are very strongly deceptive, bodies all seem different, problems seem different, and the world is highly fragmented. What the body sees is believed. And then all kinds of coping strategies arise from that perception of horrors.

To move into "vertical perception" ie true perception, you're not merely going upwards above the battlefield and still perceiving in a horozontal way, you're moving OUTSIDE of horizontal causality and seeing from an entirely different perspective. Outside of the laws of space and time and physics. You're lifting up out of the illusory world, the story, the fictional movie. You're taking your perception OUT of the role of "character in a dream", and becoming aware that YOU ARE THE DREAMER. You are that one who MADE the world, made the bodies, made the planets, and invented all the laws. And you recognize you have been "doing it to yourself" - which is the secret of salvation.

You made up bodies, made up a world, made up laws, made up scenarios, forgot who you were, believed YOUR MOVIE was orchestrating YOUR life, that your scene had causal power over you, that you were now a character IN the movie, a body - the hero of the dream, and thought the dream was happening to "you". You lost touch with your vertical causality, the fact you are directing the whole thing from above, and that you are under NO LAWS BUT GOD's!

Your "miraculous" freedom FROM all causality and laws on the horizontal level, allows you to perform "miracles" - or rather, expressions of vertical causality, which BREAK AND DEFY these "second hand" "once removed" causes. Illusions of causes and illusions of laws are nothing to a miracle worker, who recognizes there is no order of difficulty because ALL of the lower orders are at YOUR effect, including what seem to be causes. You are free from all limitations. The hierarchy of illusion is FLAT to you. ALL illusions are the same. Raising the dead is no harder than healing a headache.

From the higher vantage point of vertical perception, looking down on the WHOLE scene from above, the distracting ILLUSION of appearances is SEEN THROUGH. The spiritual eye, Christ vision, looks PAST the movie set. It sees all the props and cameramen and sound crew. It reads between the lines. It sees the glue holding the scene together. It sees the light of the room in which the movie is being edited.

It does not BELIEVE FOR A MOMENT anything that the appearance of the movie would say is true. It doesn't even buy that physical objects are even really there. It pays no attention to appearances of form, shapes, colors, sizes, distances, weights, laws, or supposed differences of any kind. It has the VISION to SEE the WHOLE scene, including all hidden parts and mechanisms and trickery. It recognizes it is all an illusion. It is not DECEIVED by anything at the level of the world. Vertical perception is inclusive, horizontal perception is exclusive.

Mind is cause. World is effect/dream. Mind being causal is vertically positioned above the world. Everything below, in the world, is an illusion of horizontal causality. Nothing about the world is TRUE. Believing it is false perception. When you are in true perception you do not REGISTER the illusions of differences between things. Bodies are not separate. Objects are not real. There is a subtle connectedness that you didn't see before. A light which sparkles between things. A glue which you become aware of. A sparkling unity and sameness that seems to be behind everything.

A vertically perceived world is a forgiven world. Being aware of ALL the information about the scene is awareness of the real world. You cease to project sin and guilt and fear and death onto the scene. These arise only from false perceptions. You don't see it from a horizontal vantage point. You ignore the eyes of the body. You know that nothing in the world is real, so nothing is sick, and nothing is dying, and everything is one thing.

You see death as not an end, at the end of a horizontal linear sequence, but as a dipping DOWN from a higher level to a lower level perception. As an immersion into falseness. And from above, you know death is TOTAL FICTION. Just some arrangement of fake particles that you DECIDED you would call death. Which can easily be rearranged and reanimated if you so choose. It's totally fake. Actors in a movie do not die when their character dies.

Here, above the battlefield, you know you cannot die. You are the author of the world. You are not a body. You are not the story. You make the rules. You can break them. And nothing in the world has any bearing on anything real. Death is now vertically no longer seen as an interruption, but as merely another form of objects on par with all others. Just an effect you have power over. You can choose not to make it happen.

Dead bodies, living bodies, they are all illusions. They have NO inherent meaning. The world has no inherent meaning. You give it all the meaning it has when you design it, projecting made-up stories onto it. The world is nothing but fiction. You are not bound or limited by any of it. You are free. The director of a movie is not bound by ANYTHING that seems to happen. And edits can be made at any time. You have power over the world, because you are its cause.

"W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. 2 Nothing external to your mind (horizontal) can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no cause (at the horizontal level) beyond yourself (who are above it) that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but yourself affects you. (from above) 5 There is nothing in the world (below) that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see (as director, author, dreamer, law-maker) by merely recognizing what you are (from a position vertically aligned above the world)."

Did you know you're living inside a giant hologram?

(this may take a bit to explain, so bear with me)...

Actually, that's only the half of it. There's a reason why you are inside a hologram, and there's a motive for making it that the ego wants to keep a secret.

The purpose of the physical universe, as a hologram (a holographic dream), is to profoundly obscure awareness of God. The ego has used it to create a way of experiencing which seems to be completely devoid of God. The physical universe was made to literally shut God out and to make it look like He does not exist. And it's done a pretty good job, because we all believe it. And you don't even realize you believe it.

As Jesus says in ACIM: "Nothing so blinding as perception of form".

So, how does this work and how does it obscure God, and why is form (physical matter) blinding? And what's this got to do with holograms?

Ok so bear with me as I try to explain, this is VERY hard to explain because it defies a lot of ego logic, so let me know if I lose you.

First we define what God is like.

God is oneness. God is omnipresent, meaning He exists everywhere. And God is whole and completely equal everywhere. What this means is, if you could think of God as occupying 'space', no matter where you are in that space, God is *exactly* the same there as He is in any other part of it. Over here He is God, over there He is God. No matter where you are in God, it's exactly the same as everywhere else.

It's kind of like if you were to take a road trip inside God you'd be driving for a while and then remark to yourself, you know what, this place looks exactly the same as the place we just came from. Exactly. Then you drive some more and it still looks exactly the same. It's almost like you aren't going anywhere. Ok so God is the same everywhere.

Now there's another part to this. This may be hard to imagine, but ALL of God is in all *parts* of God. (NB: The ego will say this is IMPOSSIBLE!) As you think of God as occupying space, and you're driving in that car to different parts of God, and its all the same, you might still be tempted to believe each 'part' or 'location' in God is actually a DIFFERENT part, but just 'looks' the same. Like, as if the whole landscape is a giant set in a movie and its all painted in white paint. You're accustomed to thinking that the stuff 'over there' is not the same as the stuff 'over here', in some way. Its sort of similar with God.

ALL of the properties of God are everywhere. ALL of the awareness of God is everywhere. ALL of the attention of God is everywhere. So then when you ask yourself, what parts of God are 'here', in this location, the answer is, ALL of Him. And when you then ask yourself, well what parts are over there in that other part, the answer is also - ALL of Him. And what about those parts you were driving through 50 hours ago... ALL of Him was there.

To the ego this would have to mean, well, if all of God is here, then there's no other parts left to be elsewhere, so elsewhere there is no God. But in God's reality, in God's 'universe', somehow God is capable of being fully present in every single part of it at the same time. In this sense its almost as if God is PERSONAL, personal and local to every single part of existence, and yet, simultaneously personal to ALL parts at the same time. (Revelations speak of this intensely personal quality.)

You could kind of think of God as though there are trillions of copies of Himself, which the ego mind might be able to grasp. Except that in God there are no separations. Absolutely all of God's being, all of God's mind, all of God's identity, all of God's wholeness, is SHARED by all parts of existence. And when you try to think of this in terms of what you are USED TO, in the physical world, you can only relate to like a large stretch of land that you call 'The United States', within which there are many different distinct places. But if this land were God, everywhere would be the same and there would only be ONE of anything. Hard to get your mind around!

Now, this is where the ego comes up with a device to shut God out.

As we know, the ego's only tool is "separation". What the ego does, is it tries to take the omnipresent oneness of God and start to make it `look like` God maybe ISN'T the same everywhere, or ISN'T fully present everywhere. The only way it can obscure God, i.e. make it seem like God has gone away, or that God does not exist at all, is to go against the nature of God. So if the nature of God is, all of Him is the same everywhere, the ego's attack will entail the idea that only PART of Him is PARTIALLY present in each location. And this implies that God is riddled with contradictory differences. (The ego is contradictory, God isn't).

So now it's kind of like, you're driving in that car through God and you notice that, some of these hills are starting to take on a different shade of color. There's some slight differences in how things look over here than how they looked back there. At first, the separation isn't strong or well defined. In fact it starts out very subtly with just a 'hint' of differences. Then as you keep driving the intensity of the separation increases, and it really starts to stand out that different parts of God are different in quite noticeable ways.

What's happening at the same time is that the ego is now suggesting, by manipulating your perception, that maybe God is not fully present here. Maybe God has some parts of Himself which are sort of 'tied up' elsewhere, or occupied or busy with something else, so he can only be partially present. And also the ego is suggesting God isn't the same everywhere. The way God is over here is not quite the same as over there, and the over-there parts are somehow distracted from being fully present here.

This is how the holographic dream is born. A hologram is the concept that "the all is in every part" - which is pretty close to the way I described God being if God were a 'space'. i.e. All of God is fully in every part of existence. If you want a primer on holograms or whatever maybe check out The Holographic Universe which is quite an interesting book.

Anyway. Basically, at the early stages of the hologram forming, a lot is still shared and things are still almost-one. But the 'density', if you will, of the hologram, increases by continued ego belief in separation. The ego starts noticing and emphasizing the ways in which different parts of existence seem not to be the same. And as this grows stronger, it starts to seem more and more as though only a small part of God is still present here, because all the `other parts of God` are apparently quite different and have become quite finite and specific, and they're all localized to other parts of existence. So what exists over there maybe does not or cannot exist over here.

As this progresses, in the mind, the hologram 'solidifies' more and more. Or another way to describe it is that, formless reality in which everything is the same everywhere starts to 'descend' into localized properties, differences, separations, divisions, fragmented identities. The more separate and clearly defined these differences become, the more the awareness of God's omnipresence, God's total attention, God's total awareness, and God's equal presence everywhere, APPEARS to be shut out of awareness. If it seems true to you that differences are real, and that you start to look AT those differences and breathe reality into them, then you will become fixated on the ways in which God is NOT THE SAME ANYWHERE.

Not only is God not the same anywhere, but this also has a dire conclusion. If you really strongly believe in the reality of differences, you must start to fixate only on the appearance of what's left. All of the different 'forms' of difference. And those forms of difference is what we call PHYSICAL MATTER. The solidification of wholeness into locality, the contraction and density of 'energy' if you will, is what happens in the 'lower levels' of the hologram. The further into separation and differences you go the more 'solid' everything starts to look, and the less there is any evidence or awareness that God is present, even AT ALL. At a certain point you would be forgiven for even believing that God does not exist AT ALL because ALL you can see are the intense, real-seeming differences of physical matter. The physical universe 'stops' God from being able to be in all places at once, or in all places equally, or in all places fully, replaced with the idea that everything is separate from everything else.

So while holograms start out subtle, or what scientists call 'diffused', the lower levels of the holographic 'dream' are much more divided and separated out and form 'images'. When you see the little images on your credit card which look 3d when you see them from different angles - those are a form of holograms. You see an image, and yet when you look from another angle, you see another image. Its as if ALL of the images are somehow 'in' the one location, SHARED. But on the level of physical matter, you can only ever see ONE of the versions of the image at a time. You can't see the 'all'. You can't see all of the angles of the little dove or whatever it is in the hologram, because it is obscured by the rules of the physical universe.

So when the Course is saying, nothing so blinding as perception of form, what it's saying is, physical matter is a very dense level of a holographic interpretation of God, which has the effect of completely obscuring any trace of oneness or all-ness, so that you fixate on only one version of one image, in which it seems like NOTHING is shared and therefore there is no God. 'Sharing' is the same as 'Oneness' so if there is no sharing (co-existing in the same space) then God doesn't exist.

In the physical world, an object does not seem to have anything shared with another object. There is no sense of there being any unity between them. There is nothing 'the same' that is exactly the same in both. This defies the property of God that all of him is everywhere. And then because the stuff that is `in` one object is NOT the stuff that is `in` another object, defies the property of God that all of his same properties are in all objects at the same time. So if you look at that matter and you BELIEVE the illusion that it is trying to SHOW you, its statement of 'what is', you will be blinded from seeing God.

Physical matter LITERALLY was made by the ego to make the properties of God totally obscured and distracted away from. If you believe physical matter does not share anything, you do not have awareness of God. It blinds you. If you do not believe that physical matter contains all of something which is also fully present in other parts of matter, you are blinded to God. Matter, in all its forms, is a giant blanket of the 'undoing' of God's reality, God's omnipresence. It is a physicalization of the idea of separation, but even moreso, the idea that God's law-defying everywhereness is NOT what existence is like, and therefore God does not exist.

It is designed SPECIFICALLY to shut out the awareness of God's presence so that, IF your mind is aligned with it and IF your mind functions according to the 'laws of matter' then you WILL NOT SEE GOD. If you SEE MATTER, you do not see God. Not fully. If you do not see PAST matter, you do not see God. If you fixate ON or look AT matter, you will not see God. Your mind needs to become able to OVERLOOK (forgive) the ILLUSIONS that are presented to you BY MATTER ITSELF.

This isn't just a matter of fixing your mind and staying in the world and not seeing God. Your mind needs to go back `up` the hologram to the point of Oneness, eventually, so that your awareness is able to discern that a) God is fully present, b) All of God is here, c) All of God is everywhere, and d) All of God is the same everywhere. If you believe that MATTER IS REAL or MATTER IS TRUE, then you cannot be aware of God. If the form of matter dictates how your mind perceives or you believe in its ILLUSION, you cannot see God. Matter is BLINDING. That is its function. And it will never have another function until it is undone.

What the ego in your mind does, is it looks at matter and uses it as a 'model' for what is true about your mind and what is true in your perception. Its illusion infuses into your mind and you take it at its word and consider it 'reality'. You buy into its illusion, its way of obscuring God, and its statements of the ways in which God is not here, God is not everywhere, God is not ALL in ALL. That is matter's message. That is the 'state of existence' of the physical universe, designed solely to shut God out - IF you believe it is real.

This also leads to another way to say, the physical universe is just a holographic dream, and it is just an illusion designed to obscure God, and NEVER will it be Heaven (because heaven is formless), and THE WORLD IS NOT REAL. Matter is not real. Separate forms are not real. Bodies are not real. Planets are not real. Physical matter is AN ILLUSION AND NOTHING ELSE. It is the illusion that God is dead and can never be real.

These are all ways of expressing the idea that God is not God, and that can never be true. And this is why eventually the physical universe WILL DISAPPEAR.

I have no idea if I explained this well or conveyed what I wanted to. I had a profound experience a few years ago which SHOWED me an EXPERIENCE of this - I experienced what it was like to go up the hologram in my mind, back toward Oneness, and how this allowed me to be AWARE of God's presence - all of His presence in every part of the dream, and how this totally defied what 'form' was trying to telling me was the truth of existence. So I speak from experience, but these things really defy the ego's logic so it's very hard to put into words. Let me know if I need to clarify something.

All is not as it seems in this world. The physical world ITSELF IS the 'form' of the egos attack on God, and IS its defense. You think you only have defenses in your mind inside your body. But the physical universe as a whole is a giant defense mechanism - IN the larger mind of the Son of God. You're literally looking at the MIND of the Son of God attempting to shut God out. That's what this world is.

"Christ vision" ... "beholds a light beyond the body" ... "looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

Christ Vision is an all inclusive way to see. It's as if to say, you are able to see the entire picture without anything being hidden. You are able to look and recognize what is there, seeing everything as it is, without adding anything or denying anything. Nothing is blocked from view. It is perfect, accurate perception, showing you everything exactly as it is. Everything is included, and nothing is left out.

Let's say that the scene contains two rooms, connected by a door. The rooms have no windows and the door is locked. Inside each room there is a person. Neither person knows what is outside the room, because having been isolated they are unaware of the whole picture.

Now let's imagine that the scene depicts one person trying to open the door, and the person in the other room hears noises and starts freaking out. And now they wrestle with the doorhandle, from either side, in a state of fear and panic, imagining an evil enemy is trying to enter the room.

This would seem to be a valid experience for them given that their vision is blocked, they cannot see the whole picture, and they have been kept in the dark. But what if the ceiling of the rooms was suddenly lifted away, revealing the sky. And what if the floor raised up to position the two people above the walls, so that they can see each other. And what if then they look down and see they were both in the same boat, neither of them is an enemy, both are just afraid of each other, and there is no reason to be afraid any more? And then after a moment's shock, they laugh.

It was the exclusion of information from their awareness that resulted in fear and darkness. It was blocks to awareness which prevented them from recognizing that the person in the other room was their beloved brother. It was the inability to see, which resulted in hallucinations of panic and terror as if under attack by an unknown invader.

This is what happens with the body's eyes. This is what happens with body vision. Because the body's sight STOPS at the surface of objects. It shows you what seems to be there, but NOT what is also beyond it. The body's eyes cannot see past or through anything, and so cannot see the whole scene. This produces a narrower context in which everything is taken out of context. And on the basis of the illusions produced by a lack of information, they hallucinate insane conclusions.

Body sight excludes, as part of specialness and the isolation of identifying with the body. It confines, limits, narrows, restricts, blocks, denies, rejects, and does not see, aspects of the scene which NEED to be seen in order to realize things are not what they seem. That appearances are deceptive. That when you don't have the big picture in mind, illusions form, which seem to suggest things which are not true. The illusions seem true and real because the larger truth is unseen and you don't have all the facts.

So in this world, we start out in false perception (ego body perception) by regarding the world ITSELF, which is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son, as though its appearance is true and real. We fall for temptation. We believe in it, and so we see it this way. We believe physical objects really are there. We look upon bodies. We see sins occurring. We witness attack and are threatened.

This kind of perception is only happening because something has been excluded. Some information is blocked and missing. The whole scene is NOT being seen. There is something present which seems invisible, because it is being blocked out of awareness. There is something HERE, which the body is blind to. It cannot see the real world, and it cannot see Christ.

There is a "fuller" way to see, which is Christ Vision. It is aware of the whole picture. It does not arrive at false conclusions and it does not experience hallucinated beliefs that sin is happening. It sees the pictures of the forms, seeming to do what they do, but it is not deceived by them. It sees people seeming to have sick and dead bodies but it does not give them the meaning of "actually sick" or "real death". It doesn't recoil in horror at what is depicted. It has no reactions. It is not upset. The scene is not disturbing its peace.

You could say, the world you made, the physical world, which is a picture of crucifixion, is a lovely beautiful picture of crucifixion. You could say, it is like a painting, articulated beautifully be a professional artist. The brush strokes depicting the dead bodies are masterfully presented. The arrangement of the sick bodies is eloquent and delightful. Because really, seen in the proper light, this IS nothing but a PICTURE. It isn't an ACTUAL place where actual real bodies are actually suffering. It's all just an image. A flat image of a 3d world.

Christ Vision looks upon this world you made without judging it. Without being horrified by it. Without reacting to it. It does not go INTO the image, trying to "experience" what seems to be happening there. It does not IDENTIFY WITH the bodies that are depicted, or lose sight of identity as Christ. It just looks and judges not, and recognizes this FALSE picture, in which nothing is real or true, and is able to be unmoved by it. To even laugh it away.

It sees not only the writhing bodies and the suffering, it sees also the props and the costumes and the performance. Rather than buying that the "show", the pantomime, is actually a real story, it instead sees the actors, the robes, the lights, the audience, the fabricated scenery propped up by wooden beams, recognizing that this is nothing but a staged and entirely fabricated scenario. When the main character seems to die at the end, Christ Vision recognizes the death is fake. The reality of the actor is not dying. Nothing real is occurring.

It is not deceived by what is seeming to occur, because it does not see it in a way that makes it all seem like a giant cess pool of horrible vents. It does not go down into the battlefield, where walls and barriers seem to block your sight, where bodies are strewn and there are screams of suffering. It doesn't believe anything can be attacked or harmed, so it does not EXPERIENCE these things happening, even if the picture seems to show it.

On the battlefield is where the body's eyes are blinded by perceptions of forms, doing their business. There it appears, as a result of illusions, produced by a lack of perspective, that something is true which isn't really true. Where context has been lost, sight of the truth is missing, deception is happening, temptation has occurred, and things as being believed which are a mistake.

The body is noter showing you the whole picture. It claims to see the whole world, but it does not. It does not see the props back-stage. It does not see the real cause of what is happening. It does not see the mind writing the scripts. It does not see the actors electing to play roles to pretend they are suffering, victimizing or victims. It cannot see past the illusion of the end result of all the arranging of space and time as a deliberate attempt to distract, deceive and delude. It takes the final production-ready, carefully filmed movie verbatim at face value, totally deceived and totally delusional, hanging off every act as it it's happening to real people.

This is the same thing that happens when you watch a tv show or movie. If you are sane, you should recognize that there are no people on the screen, nothing is happening. Its just pixels, or projected light. There aren't any people inside the television set.

But as you watch with the body's eyes, and as you begin to "get into" or "get lost in" the show, which is a deliberately deceptive series of illusions, you lose sight of reality. Your mind literally halucinates and believes that real things are happening to real people. That you are LOOKING AT a person. You start having emotional reactions. You become angry at what's happening, then upset, then relieved. Because you are insane, lost inside a fictional story, believing it's happening to something real. Deceived by the television temptation.

A moment may come where you snap out of it and remember, you are sitting in a room just looking at the tv. Or that moment where you pull out of the movie and start looking at the audience and the surroundings. You remember where you are and what is actually happening. It's just a film. It was made to deceive. You bought into it for a while and went on a journey of suffering with it, where the whole room seemed not to exist. And while you forgot where you were, it seemed real and exciting or upsetting.

The return to sanity, the regaining of the ability to SEE what is really there, the recognition of what it IS and what it is NOT, without your delusions, without your believing that it is real, without taking it seriously, restores you to Christ Vision. This vision is forgiving. It overlooks the image. It does not BELIEVE what the image TRIES to depict. It does not fall for the temptation. It is not deceived. It recognizes the picture of the crucifixion of God's son, which is the world you made, Earth, is false. And really, it is nothing.

Having then withdrawn your false imagined meanings from it, it is now neutral. Just a picture. It doesn't mean anything. It is a meaningless world that God did not create. It is not hated. It is not attacked. It is not offensive. It is known not to be showing anything real. It is very strange, but it is not anything to be upset by. It depicts an opposite to heaven. It is an image of hell, but it is not an image of real hell. And in fact, it's a very lovely image of hell.

Seen correctly, this world of hell does not have qualities of drama. It does not have upset. It does not have guilt. The way you EXPERIENCE it is different. The way you perceive it is different. You don't have a body encounter-suit experience of it, like it's some kind of 3d virtual world, full of threats and dangers. The perception of threat is only experienced in the body's eyes as a result of believing that illusions (a lack of information) are showing you the WHOLE information.

Imagine someone in a dark maze of corridors. There is little light to see. Strange sounds come from nowhere. There are movements in the shadows. The person is screaming in fright and running for their life. They imagine there to be dark monsters lurking. Their life seems in danger. They are insane, because they have lost all sense of context, they cannot see, and they have no way to know what's really happening. They think things are what they are not, and hallucinate what they think is there.

But then suddenly the lights switch on. The whole place is illuminated. The darkness is gone. And they suddenly realize where they are. They can now recognize they were in a restaurant, it's a lovely place, with good food and pleasant decor. And the sounds in the shadows was merely the coffee dispenser. Now that they can SEE everything that is present, they laugh hilariously at having believed what seemed to be a nightmare. Now with all the information at hand, there is no call for terror or threat.

All is well. It's just a room.

The world we made, the physical universe, comprising matter and bodies and walls and blocks of sin, was made WITH the Holy Spirit as merely a harmless picture. A simple dream, an illusory world, where nothing real happens. And His influence made it not simply as a picture of hell but as a beautiful, healed, forgiven, sparkling, fresh, lovely picture, which INCLUDES both an IMAGE of THE LIGHT (symbolic reflection), and the dark. Because it is a picture of opposites. Your contribution in its making was ONLY the dark and narrow.

As if to say, the Holy Spirit supplied ALL of the paint colors, but you chose only to use the darkest ones. And you chose to only look at the darkest ones. And you wanted the darkest ones to be worshipped and emphasized, to blot out the rest. You didn't want to see the whole picture, because in the whole picture it's obvious that the dark parts are no different to the light parts. It's all just as illusion and there's nothing special about the dark colors. But you gave them extra meaning, you blew them out of proportion, and you excluded sight of the rest of the picture. And you made the body to fixate only on the darkness and not see the rest, SO THAT it would seem the world is dark.

The twisted VERSION OF, or false perception of, or exclusive ideas about, or excluding way of looking at the world, the world you made, renders it to you as hell. It causes you to misperceive it, to hallucinate and to experience it like a nightmarish hell. But this perception, these visions, this appearance, which takes on the form of error, which is physical matter being believed as real, is the result of NOT seeing everything that is present. And so it is not really seeing at all. Without seeing the light of Christ, something crucial is missing. Facts are obscure.

To move towards true perception ie christ vision, blocks to awareness have to be removed, false beliefs have to be undone, the belief in real sin has to be removed, and illusions have to be seen through. The world has to be NOT believed for how it appears in the dark, and reinterpreted and seen in the light. The temptation for vision to stop at physical matter has to be transcended. Sight has to go BEYOND the world to the light. To the big picture. Beyond bodies. Beyond surface appearances. Beyond form. Otherwise you cannot REALLY see what is here, and everything will appear to be hell.

Only by overlooking the illusory picture, can you SEE the illusory picture correctly. If vision STOPS AT the picture, it is blocked, and it will not see correctly, and will see hell. Only when vision can MOVE PAST the illusions of limitation, to move THROUGH the body, PAST the body, PAST matter, only then can it properly be IN THE LIGHT, and therefore see the whole picture as it really is. By looking beyond the physical world ("the world of bodies is the world of sin"), to INCLUDE the parts of the picture that were NOT seen in false perception, and without being deceived BY the picture, Christ Vision can recognize the picture of crucifixion as a beautiful artistic image of a fantasy world, and nothing more.

If in the picture there was a scene of utter cruelty, which was your intention in its making, it is now clear that because the cruelty is NOT REAL, it is not seen AS cruel. Love looks upon it and does not buy the temptation. It IS still a picture that contains portions which look like cruelty, with bodies suffering, but there is ALSO MORE besides this, and the MORE reveals that the cruelty is not "real cruelty". Because there isn't simply "one hellish world" here, there are two VIEWPOINTS looking at a single illusory IMAGE, and each SHOWS something different.

True perception shows the whole picture, while false perception only wants to see certain out-of-context aspects, which, taken out of context, appear to be horrors. True perception reveals that even the horrors have a touch of holiness to them, a slight sparkle, a tiny fleck of light which could not be entirely eradicated. And once this light becomes brighter, strange illusions of death begin to look like nothing more than "happy sights".

Blades of grass seem to take on a sheen as though reflecting heaven's perfection. Light begins to sparkle around the edges of objects. Hell starts to be transformed into a reflection of heaven as sights of murder are transformed into visions of harmlessness, due to the REVEALING of information previously unseen. Death is now not death, it is merely images surrounded with sparkles, and only loveliness is seen there.

To Christ Vision, a warzone does not appear in the way it would appear to a terrified soldier. The soldier is having a nightmare. Christ Vision does not see the causality in the bodies. It sees no real death. It recognizes there is simply a bunch of images of a fictional scene. And because it is free from all the baggage of ego interpretation, it isn't seeing the "real bodies" "really suffering". It sees just a transparent veil of illusions, seeming to hang in front of the face of christ. Barely there and easily dispelled. Just a light picture of death, sparkling and shining, free from sin and guilt and wholly unreal.

"The world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant."

Christ vision is Christ, looking at Christ, overlooking that which seems to be IN BETWEEN Christ and itself. The veil of matter, the picture of hell, tries to come between Christ and itself. The veil is the gap of separation. If vision stops at the picture it does not see past it, and instead buys into the temptation that hellish things are happening. This makes the picture real. But as it looks beyond the picture, to the light of Itself, Christ Vision has forgiven the picture and does not fall for its temptations, illusions, or suggestions of what is real.

Christ Vision has to look PAST the veil, in order NOT to be deceived. If it buys into anything within the veil, and becomes distracted by it, it loses sight of the light beyond, which loses perspective, and the veil turns into hell, because light is obscure and a picture of harmlessness seems to take on nightmarish qualities. "To forgive is to OVERLOOK". It is by NOT SEEING or not going INTO or being lost in the veil of physical matter, that it is forgiven. Sight MUST see through it and past it, otherwise it is blocked BY it. Christ Vision is like x-ray vision, seeing THROUGH the forms of error (objects), seeing sense, with reason.

In this light, fixated on the light of Christ, with a vision which moves entirely past the world, this bigger context frames the picture correctly. Essentially, and ultimately, the picture is forgiven by NOT seeing it. By looking beyond it to something else. And only by looking beyond it is the mind perfectly clear about what is true and what is false. As soon as you attempt to look AT the world, which means to NOT SEE what lies beyond, temptation has set in, vision is blocked, context is lost, sanity is interrupted, sight has ended, and you will return to seeing the world of sin. And then you will see sinful bodies, which are the only kind of bodies there are.

"To see a sinless body is impossible."

"Forgiveness does not look upon bodies."

"A world forgiven cannot last."

As you see "the real world", which is the world you made without any judgement on it, you overlook it. Your dream world is seen WITH holiness and love. Holiness looks upon it and sees no sin there. Its differences and forms and appearances have so dissolved into nothing that there are no buildings, streets or bodies walking around. The WHOLE PICTURE is recognized as containing NOTHING of the illusions of hell that you made, and all its forms have vanished. The Holy Spirit has shown you that the forgiven world is UNDONE, and has no reality. All that's left are the sparkles of love that you added unto it.

To forgive it is to not see it. To forgive it is to forget it. The veil must part, to reveal the light of Christ. And when the face of Christ is seen at last, the world is FORGOTTEN. The veil is no more. This means you have not interposed ANYTHING in between Christ and Himself. When Christ is recognizing Christ, there is no world. Without a veil, without bodies, without space or time, Earth does not exist. "Only the body makes the world seem real." Nor is there any dream without it.This perfect vision is true perception, and when perfected it has no further purpose. Its purpose was to lead you home, to return to awarness of Christ as yourself. And now you stand at the gates of Heaven, and are ready to enter, to return to where you never left. Bodies cannot come with you, because they were the veil, and do not exist. The world cannot join you because it has no reality beyond the veil that depicts its picture. Space and time have ended. The world spins into the nothingness from which it came, as you awaken into the Kingdom of God, recognizing that noting has ever happened to anything real. You are safe in God, because you were just dreaming of exile.

When you dream at night, your mind is perfectly capable of creating entire environments in great detail. These dreams are not real, and so are projections of ego thoughts from the mind, but at the time they seem like real places. Your mind is able to create oceans, streets, buildings, people, all manner of creatures and locations.

It's even able to embed an extraordinary variety of subtle feelings into the scene or ways of experiencing what's happening, such that it seems to mean something very specific to you, or so that you get a certain impression from it.

Your mind can create people and experiences which are a perfectly symbolic representation of any idea or feeling or experience it cares to make. It has at its disposal an absolutely unlimited number of variations in both appearance and meaning and emotional content. If you can imagine it, your mind can invent it.

As your mind projects such environments, it can also sometimes project you as a character in the environment in a third-person manner, or sometimes you can also experience it from a first-person perspective. You can manifest any kind of body. The body can also be changed into any form and express any kind of disease or situation regardless of any rules or laws whatsoever.

In your dreaming, objects can be transformed into other objects. You can pass through objects, you can fly, you can control things with your mind, you can communicate telepathically, you can have encounters with any kind of being imaginable, and you can teleport instantly to any location. There is practically nothing that's impossible.

All of this happens inside your mind. All of this is your mind "dreaming", which correlates to Jesus's definition of "projecting". The mind is literally projecting a three-dimensional movie scene down to the finest detail, complete with storyline and all manner of events and interactions. As such, this projection "creates perception".

So as you're in the dreaming state, your mind is literally projecting everything you then "see". So if it projects a beach and an ocean on a sunny day, this projecting manifests those things in full and then you witness them or "perceive" them. The projecting comes first. The perceiving comes second.

Now, in the physical world, you're tempted not to believe this same mechanism applies. You believe certainly that you perceive, and that you perceive what seems to be a world out there complete with people and places and events, but you don't for a moment think it possible that your own mind is projecting it. But it is.

In A Course in Miracles, Jesus speaks of projection and many have come to interpret this to mean that you project ONTO something which is already out there. This is the result of not believing or recognizing that your mind actually makes the world appear in its entirety, or that this world is in fact just another dream. Yet Jesus tells us:

"...What you seem to waken to is but another form of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and your waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. Their content is the same."

However, because we do not recognize or believe that this "physical world" is just another dream environment, that our mind is perfectly powerful enough to create in the finest detail, we think that it must be really "out there" objectively, or that it came to be there from some other powerful cause.

The result of this unawareness as to how it truly comes into being, is the belief that when ACIM talks about projection it's talking about what your mind projects ONTO this pre-existing world. People will then work with their "forgiveness process" to take these projections back and undo them.

There is some validity to that step because even inside of the dream itself, there is a whole other layer of "personal projection" whereby individuals add an extra layer of projection and denial to everything they see in the world. They project extra guilt and sin onto others and onto the environment. So to take back those projections is a very helpful step in owning up to who and what you are.

However, that's not the only form of projection taking place here in this dream. The dream ITSELF is a projection. You could say, your personal projections are coming from your own private mind, as one Son in the Sonship. But the collective Sonship or Christ mind is also projecting this entire world. That's who the dreamer really is.

You can take back all your personal projections and come to a place of clarity or awakening, becoming aware of this world with a clear perception of it. This means your perceiving has been clarified. This is an awakening to true perception. But this does not mean that you have undone PROJECTION. Projection comes before perception because projection makes it possible to perceive.

Once perception is purified and is clear, which will produce an experience of being awake WITHIN the dream, able to perceive the dream clearly, there is then another stage where the projecting OF the dream needs to now be undone. Removing projections onto the dream is the reversal of perception, which is where most ACIM students focus, but we have to realize that the projection that made the "stuff" we are perceiving clearly is also an activity of the mind which needs to be undone.

Undoing the projecting of the world itself - yes the physical world - is the second layer of awakening. It means realizing that you are still dreaming this world, you are still manifesting objects and people and environments, and you are still inside of a dream. You are still subject to every law that the dreaming puts in place, because those laws are established in the projecting of the world. You may be fully awakened to be able to see the dream clearly, but now the dreaming itself needs to stop.

When you are projecting personal stuff onto the world, it's like having a dream within a dream. You are already inside a dream (which you think is a real world) and now proceed to dream within it. Just like a daydream. Your projections at the personal level therefore place your unconscious crap outside of your conscious separate self. But it still exists within the world. Taking all of that back and fully undoing it won't undo the world itself, because the world itself is being projected on a much greater scale by a much bigger mind - the collective Christ Mind.

For you to see a car or a house or a person or a tree means that these forms have been projected by the Christ mind. The Christ mind is unlimited in its power to dream of forms. It has invented an entire universe, just like your little personal mind invents fictional places and characters at night - stories which are entirely believable and which you experience as though completely real.

Therefore, if you are still perceiving at all, if you are still having perception of the presence of objects, forms, people, buildings etc, then this must mean there is STILL projection happening from a larger level of mind. The reversal/healing of that collective projection is the undoing of this entire so-called "world".

This is the level at which the Course addresses when it says "There is no world, this is the central theme the Course would attempt to teach." It literally means that this physical world and everything in it is a dream, a projection, which DOES NOT REALLY EXIST AT ALL, just like how our nighttime dreams do not really exist at all.

Literally, all physical forms are ILLUSIONS, i.e. dreams. They are not there at all. There is no truth to them, no reality to them, they are absolutely completely fictional in every way. The mind is making them up. And when this is fully recognized by the whole Sonship, this entire physical universe will be recognized as having never existed - i.e. it does not exist now, and it never will exist, and there simply is no world here.

This is also why the Course tells us that "at no time does the body really exist." Many students love to keep the body and make it special and explain how the body does exist or how it can be seen in the present moment or used for a holy purpose or whatever. Ultimately, factually, in Jesus's words, it DOES NOT EXIST. It is an illusion at most. It cannot exist in Eternity and it does not really exist at all.

Now, you can see perhaps that in the ACIM community there is a tremendous amount of confusion because of these two kind of "levels" in the making of illusions. The level of the personal individual conscious self and its seeming scope of influence or illusions, and the level of the collective shared mind of Christ which IS responsible for dreaming this entire universe.

For the most part, most students are fixated on and can only really relate to the experience of being a separate self in a separate body, the projections that their personal self makes onto the allegedly pre-existing world, and so their undoing process usually entails taking back projections that are placed onto other people, or changing your mind "about the world" instead of attempting to change the world itself.

This has produced a huge division in the Course community between those who believe the Course is telling us to find a personal sense of peace "in" the world, in spite of the world, in spite of sickness, in spite of death, and those who believe that this ultimately falls short of the whole truth and that the entire world itself is not there. The result is an attempt to be at peace with sickness, to keep the body and deny it through some kind of transcendence, and still results in death. This distortion of the Course then produces two camps.

The first camp basically sees themselves as a little individual body self, who has their own personal stories and projections. They do not consider the world to literally not exist, and cannot conceive of how they might have power over it. What they end up doing is focusing on undoing their personal stories and projections "onto" the world, or "onto" others, as though this is all that the Course is asking them to do.

They will refuse to believe anything beyond the scope of this, and will justify it with various quotes from the Course. Now, the thing is, they are not wrong. The Course DOES teach that at the LEVEL of the personal level, you need to take back projections from others, find peace in spite of what's happening, come to see God "in" the world because God is in your mind, work on changing how you look at the world rather than trying to change the world, never attempting to take the spirituality of the Course to others because it seems like a private process, and just generally everything which fits nice and tidily into this "box" of how the individual separate self perceives an objective world.

There are plenty of parts of the Course which tell us seemingly straight-out that this is what we are supposed to be doing and that this is the truth and will use this interpretation to justify not doing anything outside of this definition. The thing is, A Course in Miracles actually has multiple "levels" of truth, and this is not a contradiction. There are truths which apply on a certain level.

In terms of the personal self, we do indeed need to stop projecting shit onto other people and change how we "perceive" the world, to reach true perception or to have corrected perception. However, this isn't the end of the story. The people who see the Course as saying this, which is easy to do given that this actually is part of the process of complete awakening, will try to fit EVERYTHING the Course says into this box. And this also includes miracles.

To these believers in personal awakening inside the dream, they tend to justify that other things the Course says must fit inside the box of correcting perception, in order for there to seem to be consistency and integrity. And you can sort of find slightly skewed interpretations of what these other parts of the Course say to make them seem to "fit" into that box. And this is what has happened with miracles.

Such people will then explain that a miracle has got something to do with perception shifting, correcting perception, the process of waking up to true perception or is just another way of saying "changing your mind" about the world. This is understandable given that they see the Course as one whole consistent unit and don't realize that it's being presented on multiple levels, or that there are multiple levels of sleeping.

The Son of God, Christ, is the source of the dream of death - the dream of this entire physical universe. And within Christ, within that dream, there is a fragmentation of identity into the Sonship, which comprises many individuals, and each individual has their own separate seeming "private world" of misperceptions. But what they are mis-perceiving is the dream which a HIGHER LEVEL has dreamed, thinking it is a given and is real and is outside the scope of their conscious awareness. Indeed it is outside the scope of their identity, because it's coming from a level of much greater unified identity as Christ - the ONE Mind.

Therefore to try to explain what miracles are or what Christ is, these individuals will try to fit all of the Course's references to miracles and Christ into the same box of "what applies to individual Sons". And that's a mistake. This gives rise then to a complete stripping down of what Christ is, a stripping away of the POWER that must be present to dream an entire universe and make it seem physically real, and a complete diminishing of any concept of "real miracles" which have the power to do anything - including healing the sick, raising the dead, walking on water, or whatever.

Trying to fit all of that inside a "I am a separate Son, one of many" kind of box, to have it make sense TO that one limited identity or scope of awareness, completely glosses over what miracles are or and what Christ's power is. People will then have an awakening up to the level of the maximum scope of their INDIVIDUAL consciousness, i.e. an awareness of being one of many Sons of God, and will refer to that as being Christ or aware of the Christ in others. IT IS NOT. Not in ACIM's definition.

Christ is a mind so vast and powerful that it can dream entire planets, can create a whole universe - or multiple universes. It can put in place an absolutely countless number of particles of matter to form buildings and people and environments which people believe is SO real that it must really be a real world. Seeing the holiness of an individual Son in other individual Sons is not the same as seeing the face of Christ. It is definitely a state of mind of profound unity and oneness, but there is an entire other level to awareness which is vastly beyond this.

To reach this other level of awareness requires a complete transcendence not only of the personal ego self or personality but also moving beyond being a separate Son. It means being THE WHOLE SONSHIP as One. In this, there can no longer be a personality, or a separate mind, or separate thoughts, or reliance on a body. It is a very advanced state.

Such an experience is way beyond the personal body self or what the body self is capable of doing. The Christ Self is vastly powerful, unlimited in the truest sense, and can literally do anything because He is able to dream this entire world. To Him, this world is recognized as not being real at all, being something He Himself is dreaming in its entirety. It does not exist without His dreaming and has no inherent reality of its own. If it were not for Christ dreaming the world, this entire physical universe would disappear instantly.

At this level, which is what forms the second "camp" in the ACIM community, it is recognized that there is an entire level of truth in the Course way bigger and more expanded than the parts which apply to the individual self. At this level, we're talking about a mind and an identity which is truly One, singular, as God's One Son. This mind, this Self, is beyond all Higher Selves and includes them all.

Such a Christ mind is responsible for dreaming this entire physical universe and for therefore putting in place absolutely all of the things, objects, people and events which appear to exist here. Such a mind is so powerful, there is literally nothing it cannot do. Such a mind is transcendent of all bodies and forms, transcendent of all of the laws of the physical universe, and can completely override absolutely anything in an instant. This mind is extremely creative, is totally at-cause, and is not at the effect of ANYTHING in this world whatsoever.

Such a mind is completely invulnerable, literally immortal, unlimited in its power, able to manifest objects - in fact planets and solar systems - out of nothing, and for such a mind miracles of healing and manifestation at a "human level" is practically nothing. THIS is the level of mind which Jesus demonstrated, and it is this level of mind which is responsible for SUPERNATURAL MIRACLES.

You could therefore say, that the level of the personal self-awakening is a level of "natural miracles", and the level of awakening as CHRIST is a level of "super-natural miracles". It is very common that those in the first camp tend not to believe in super-natural miracles because they do not see the parts of the Course relating to or teaching about the Christ-level of mind. Instead they see the watered down, nice tidy little keep-it-in-a-box relating to the individual self interpretation of what miracles are. In other words, miracles are just little changes in perception experienced by an individual. It's not true.

Miracles in A Course in Miracles LITERALLY are super-natural miracles, as evidenced by practically every single thing that the Course ever says about their nature. When correctly understood OUTSIDE of the box of the closed-minded and still "a part of the dream" personal self, everything Jesus teaches about miracles points to their supernatural power, the Power of God, the ability to LITERALLY move mountains, to heal the sick, to undo all forms of disease and suffering, to undo death itself and produce resurrection.

There can be no complete resurrection without this supernatural level of awakening, because death is only fully overcome at the level of the Christ mind, not at the level of the awakened individual Higher Self. There are an increasing number of people waking up IN the dream and staying in the dream who do not exhibit any signs of supernatural miracles whatsoever, because their mind is only just now at the beginning of opening up to the Christ mind.

You will find that all of these people still go through DEATH, because they have not escaped the dream of death and have not fully awoken FROM the dream of death. The absence of miracles, the nature of which Jesus demonstrated, which He has told us in many ways we are perfectly capable of, is the first sign you will see that shows that awakening to the Higher Self or highest individual self is still short of a complete awakening.

The Course will make so much more sense when understood to contain more than one level. This doesn't mean we're dividing up the Course into imaginary levels as such. There ARE different levels because there are stages in separation. Christ, the One Son, is a very different level in terms of scope and power and capability and awareness and identity, compared to the level of one individual "son" in the Sonship. Awakening to the Sonship is profound and an extraordinary experience of waking up from the even littler self - the ego false self. But going from the ego little self to being one of many Sons is not the same thing as being ALL Sons with a single mind, wielding the Power of God to produce real miracles.

A Course in Miracles therefore IS literally teaching us that miracles - supernatural miracles - are not only possible but something that we can become capable of IF we are willing to go all the way to awakening in the dream and then awakening FROM the dream. We might be aware of who the dreamer is, but until we decide to BE that dreamer and realize the sheer power that we have as that dreamer, we will still be subject to all the laws that the dream puts in place, seemingly powerless to stop them or change them. And as such we will not see miracles.

It should be clear then, that the only reason we seem unable to change objects, heal the sick, manifest matter out of thin air, feed 5000 people from a few fish and loaves of bread, to walk on water or raise the dead etc, is only because there is a LARGER MIND which is dreaming this world who has FAR more power than our little personal mind, and it is that larger mind which has implemented the physical world and its laws.

It is that larger mind that is sustaining the physical world and its laws. So if you want to be able to override that dream, you need to become aware of and access that larger mind, from which you will be able to demonstrate truly supernatural miracles. This is why in the dream, we seem so powerless, so unable to change hardly anything, to barely even have a shred of telekinesis, to be incapable of stopping aging or death, and to hardly have any power whatsoever over sickness or suffering. It's because the larger mind is very powerfully "holding" all of those things in place.

If we want to be able to gain access to the power to undo death and sickness and so on, we need to wake up ALL the way to the Christ mind, to the DREAMER, to become total causality. In that mind, in that awareness, and with that Identity of Authority over all illusions, we WILL then have the ability to do absolutely literally anything in this world.

Recognize then that Jesus does speak at different "levels" in the Course and not just all at one level. When He speaks of very high-level Christ-level things, these things cannot be properly applied or understood at the level of individual self. Trying to do so will lead to all manner of misunderstandings and disempowerment of your full potential.

Being able to recognize which level Jesus is speaking at - which level of awareness and identity - helps you to know what applies to the scope or context that you're referring to, and also helps you to make much more sense out of what Jesus is teaching. Without that, trying to smash everything into one little box will severely fall short of what A Course in Miracles is teaching, not to mention producing a lot of confusion and conflict.

The Christ mind is projecting the physical universe. It is a dream. It is not real and it does not exist. The single-son mind is within this dream, as an individual character, and that individual has its own dreaming that it projects onto the dream. Dreams within dreams. When that son wakes up and stops projecting onto the dream, He has "awoken" to an awareness of being One among many sons, and at this level it is possible for other Sons to still be sleeping. But THERE IS MORE beyond this.

The single Son in the sonship must now go further to become aware of the collective Single Identity as God's Holy Son - as Christ - an identity which has so much scope and power that it is capable of unlimited miracles. It is at this level that Jesus refers to when He says just about everything He says about miracles. For example, "miracles should be happening all the time". I could go into this much more deeply but that's for another article.

Realize then there are at least 2 stages in awakening, two levels, and that Jesus speaks to each level in the Course at different times. There are actually at least 3 levels because level 1 is the ego false self identity, level 2 is the Higher Self (one son of God in the Sonship) and level 3 is the Christ Self (the whole Sonship/Christ consciousness). There is actually a little more:

Level 5: Heaven/Spirit

Level 4: Christ/christ universe (creates all of the levels below this)

Level 3: Higher Self/higher universe (where most awakened people actually are)

Level 2: Holy Spirit/spiritual universe/astral plane

Level 1: Ego-self/physical world

The first awakening level typically takes people to level 2 then 3. This is a level where miracles aren't happening very much, but the potential is there. Level 4/Christ is where the demonstrations of Jesus correlate - extraordinarily mild-blowing miracles. And then there is Heaven - the home of Spirit. When Jesus speaks of Spirit He always talks of how it is already in a state of grace forever and nothing has happened to it whatsoever. That's the level of pure reality. Home in Heaven.

It should be apparent then that it is very common for ACIM students to try to relate everything the Course says to the level of "my separate self", within the context of being a body separate from others, and within the scope of "my mind" as in their own little separate conscious self, whose perceptions and projections onto a completely separate world make up the entire focus of their grasp of awakening.

They will then believe that once they experience "waking up", they're done. But they're not done. Where are the miracles? Where is the demonstration that you are dreaming the world and have total power over all illusions and forms? Where is the proof that there is no death? Where is the real resurrection and signs that show that you are immortal?

And yet this undoing of distortions of perception at the individual level only brings us to an awakening that reveals the full scope of our SEPARATE self within the Sonship, it doesn't bring us to awareness of being Christ. There is a whole other level of awakening which is vast and extraordinarily powerful, a single shared identity for whom supernatural miracles are effortless and continual.

I will finish with this final quote which I enjoy, and which is speaking of the level of Christ:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Wake up! Then wake up some more!