There is part of you which is already in heaven with God. It never left.

That means your spirit-self is already awake and one with God.

Jesus says that like you, He has everything that God gave Him. The only difference between Him and us, is that He has nothing else.

So there is a part of who we think we are, which is "foreign" and not *actually* who we are.

Our only job is to clear away the illusion of that "extra self", a second self, which pretends to be the only self, to reveal the True Self that you are already.

There is already a "second self" - your higher self, which exists already, in "addition" to your ego self. It seems like it does not exist at all, or that it is separate from "you". But you are it, and the "rest of you" that is ego is not.

You cannot make yourself become spirit, or therefore cannot "become" spiritual. You also can’t turn your ego into spirit. You can only stop trying to be something you are not. What is left after the fight against God is surrendered as not necessary, is who you always have been.

You are already immortal spirit. Your confused identity which thinks it is either partly or entirely something else, could in fact communicate with your spirit-self (or higher self) right now, here in the dream. I have even seen an apparition of someone’s "spirit" a couple of times.

Your awakened self already is awake and already exists. Holy Spirit loves to look upon the face of Christ. You as Christ can already communicate with "you as ego", in terms you might accept.

I’ve spoken with my own ‘higher self’ on occasion. I’ve also spoken with the higher self of other people on occasion. It’s interesting that they respond when I am thinking about or talking to some person who is ‘in a body’ and their already-awakened self steps in and says something.

Strange dynamic isn’t it, that the awakened self we are trying to "become" already exists. We are just waking up TO it, not building it from scratch for the first time.

This is also why God/Holy Spirit can communicate with you even while you are in the dream. You don’t have to "make" a Holy Spirit in order to do this.

You are already as God created you, and you are still as God created you. This real self is simply a bit covered up with some illusions which pretend that you are something else. You cannot remove or change what God created, you can only deny it.

This is also why you cannot make yourself die, in the biggest picture. What God has created, no man can put asunder. You cannot change God’s will, thank God.

Become who you already are.

There is part of you which is already in heaven with God. It never left.

That means your spirit-self is already awake and one with God.

Jesus says that like you, He has everything that God gave Him. The only difference between Him and us, is that He has nothing else.

So there is a part of who we think we are, which is "foreign" and not *actually* who we are.

Our only job is to clear away the illusion of that "extra self", a second self, which pretends to be the only self, to reveal the True Self that you are already.

There is already a "second self" - your higher self, which exists already, in "addition" to your ego self. It seems like it does not exist at all, or that it is separate from "you". But you are it, and the "rest of you" that is ego is not.

You cannot make yourself become spirit, or therefore cannot "become" spiritual. You also can’t turn your ego into spirit. You can only stop trying to be something you are not. What is left after the fight against God is surrendered as not necessary, is who you always have been.

You are already immortal spirit. Your confused identity which thinks it is either partly or entirely something else, could in fact communicate with your spirit-self (or higher self) right now, here in the dream. I have even seen an apparition of someone’s "spirit" a couple of times.

Your awakened self already is awake and already exists. Holy Spirit loves to look upon the face of Christ. You as Christ can already communicate with "you as ego", in terms you might accept.

I’ve spoken with my own ‘higher self’ on occasion. I’ve also spoken with the higher self of other people on occasion. It’s interesting that they respond when I am thinking about or talking to some person who is ‘in a body’ and their already-awakened self steps in and says something.

Strange dynamic isn’t it, that the awakened self we are trying to "become" already exists. We are just waking up TO it, not building it from scratch for the first time.

This is also why God/Holy Spirit can communicate with you even while you are in the dream. You don’t have to "make" a Holy Spirit in order to do this.

You are already as God created you, and you are still as God created you. This real self is simply a bit covered up with some illusions which pretend that you are something else. You cannot remove or change what God created, you can only deny it.

This is also why you cannot make yourself die, in the biggest picture. What God has created, no man can put asunder. You cannot change God’s will, thank God.

Become who you already are.

The world is full of advice. Some of it seems useful, most of it is bullshit.

The son of God does not need any advice. This is because He does not need to 'get' anything from anyone because He is not lacking anything in himself. He has been completed by God's presence in Him.

All he does is extend the truth that is already within Him.

So what happens when someone else comes along and starts telling Him.... you should this... you need to that..... you can live longer if you eat this..... you can live longer if you don't do that.... 5 tips for losing weight..... 10 tips for being a better this and that.... etc... all bullshit. All unneeded.

You do not need anyone's advice. You do not need anyone to tell you what you do, or to give their so-called "opinion". You do not need suggestions for how to live or how to exist or how to behave or what to do to be yourself. You don't need anything.

When I was in the middle of having an experience of God, I felt like I did not need anything. And I mean that literally. I felt like I did not need to eat food. I had to eat a meal but I felt like I was shoving lumps of material into my mouth for absolutely no reason and that it was completely foreign. I also felt a great amount of joy radiating out of me toward others - extending to others - such that it was all give give give give give. It wasn't take take take or get get get or need need need. I had no needs. And yet all these people kept trying to "help" and kept offering advice and suggestions and trying to tell me what I should do or who I should be. And I was like, why are they doing that, I don't need anything.

You don't have any real needs other than God's love. All of the other advice is bullshit. You don't need any "teachers" to come along and tell you what's what. The only teacher you need is the Holy Spirit who speaks for God.

You especially don't need to be inundated by a society that is chronically judgemental and insane, constantly shoving shit down your throat to tell you that you have to be this way or that way, or you're not enough of a person if you're not doing this, or most people do that, or you should be doing this more often. We're addicted to being told what to do. Victims. And people are addicted to telling each other what to do. Look at me... sitting her typing this shit and offering more 'perspective'. Disregard!

You're already you. Stop listening to the ego.

Do you notice when people most likely give advice? It's when you show that you are suffering or upset. It's when they look at you trying to make guilt real and they make it real right along with you and then come across as being a savior and rescuer. And then comes all the advice. If I post something on here and I say, well, I've had a pretty rough time lately or feeling shitty and confused or something like that, people will suddenly chime in and start giving advice. The response SHOULD be to remind me of how I'm mistaken and how I am loved and to offer true correction for my mistaken perceptions, not buying into my bullshit story. But this isn't how people function. They launch into an instant hero role and start telling you what to do. We're addicted to this. And it's just another part of the way we skapegoat - conveniently finding poor broken sheep in the flock and then targeting them either with our fears and guilts or with our judgements and rescue attempts.

Bleh.

Earth is in fact an alien world, and human bodies are alien bodies. Given that our true natural state or "home world" is The Kingdom of God (Heaven), Earth represents the total opposite to what is natural and is alien to it.

That which is is "alienated" is that which is separated or exiled or unlike. That which is "alien" is that which is so unlike your nature that it seems completely against it.

Jesus also refers to "alien" in the sense of heaven's truth being "alien to" how you are on earth, because it is so different. Here's what he has to say about you trying to be an alien in an alien world...

"Grievances are completely alien to love."

"If I hold grievances I am attacking love, and therefore attacking my Self. My Self thus becomes alien to me. "

"Try to avoid the tendency toward self-directed selection, which may be particularly tempting in connection with today's idea because of its wholly alien nature. Remember that any order which you impose is equally alien to reality."

"What is your Self remains an alien to the part of you which thinks that it is real but different from yourself."

"Stranger yet, he does not recognize to whom he comes, and yet maintains his home belongs to him while he is alien now who is at home."

"For in his home his Self remains. It asked no stranger in, and took no alien thought to be Itself."

"A memory of home keeps haunting you, as if there were a place which called you to return although you do not recognize the Voice, nor what it is the Voice reminds you of. Yet still you feel an alien here, from somewhere all unknown. Nothing so definite that you could say with certainty you are an exile here. Just a persistent feeling, sometimes not more than a tiny throb, at other times hardly remembered, actively dismissed, but surely to return to mind again."

"Yet there is a Child in you Who seeks His Father's house, and knows that He is alien here."

"For He would bring you back with Him, that He Himself might stay, and not return again where He does not belong and where He lives an outcast in a world of alien thoughts."

"Go home with Him from time to time today. You are as much an alien here as He."

"Yet it is up to us when this is reached; how long we let an alien will appear to be opposing His."

""Let me not separate my function from my will."

"I would not use this for an alien purpose."

"Today's idea, completely alien to the ego and the thinking of the world, is crucial to the thought reversal which this course will bring about."

"Today we try to understand the truth that giver and receiver are the same. You will need help to make this meaningful because it is so alien to the thoughts to which you are accustomed."

"When you GIVE UP peace, you are EXCLUDING yourself FROM it. This is a condition which is so ALIEN to the Kingdom that you CANNOT understand the state which prevails WITHIN it." "In your FORGIVENESS of this stranger, alien to you and yet your ancient Friend, lie HIS release, and YOUR redemption WITH him."

"The mind can think it sleeps, but that is all. It cannot change what is its waking state. It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source. "

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."

"Yet your defense sets up an enemy within; an alien thought at war with you, depriving you of peace, splitting your mind into two camps which seem wholly irreconcilable. For love now has an "enemy," an opposite; and fear, the alien, now needs your defense against the threat of what you really are."

"Its alien nature, TO THE EGO, is proof you will NOT find the answer there."

"Reason is ALIEN to insanity, and those who use it have gained a means which cannot BE applied to sin."

"The constancy of joy is a condition quite alien to your understanding."

"What NEEDS interpretation MUST be alien. Nor will it EVER be made understandable, by an interpreter you cannot understand."

"This child will teach you what you do not understand, and make it plain. For his will be no alien tongue."

"If you think about it, you will see that, while this kind of thinking is totally alien to having THINGS, even to the lower mind it is quite comprehensible in connection with IDEAS."

"He is not attempting to force an alien will UPON you."

"If you did not have divided wills, you would recognize that willing is salvation because it IS communication. It is impossible to communicate in alien tongues."

"Light is not of the world, yet you who bear the light in you are alien here as well. The light came with you from your native home, and stayed with you because it is your own."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy. And now you MUST believe you are not you, but something alien to yourself and "something else," a "something" to be feared instead of loved."

"The Eternal Guest remains, but His Voice grows faint in alien company. "

"Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."

"Without its function then, it has no peace, and happiness is alien to its thoughts."

"It is not the purpose of an alien power, thrust upon you unwillingly."

"And you WILL deny your Self, and walk upon an alien ground which your Creator did not make, and where you seem to be a "something" you are not."

"He would have no separation, like an alien will, rise between what He wills for you, and what YOU will."

"You know not what you say, and so you know not what is said to you. But your Interpreter perceives the meaning in your alien language."

"The seeds of sickness and the shame of sin He CANNOT bridge, for He cannot destroy the alien will that He created not."

"Nothing is so alien to you as the simple truth and nothing are you LESS inclined to listen to."

"He does not see the Christ in him who calls. What answer can he give to one who seems to be a stranger; alien to the truth and poor in wisdom, without the god who must be given him?"

"Herein lies the basis of all errors, for all of them are but attempts to compromise by seeing just a little bit of hell. This is a mockery so alien to God that it must be forever inconceivable. But the insane believe it because they are insane."

"Dreams of any kind are strange and alien to the truth."

"Sin has no place in Heaven, where its results are alien, and can no more enter than can their source. "

"If you will consider WHAT you have taught, and how alien it is to what you THOUGHT you knew, you will be COMPELLED to recognize that your Teacher came from BEYOND your thought-system, and so could look upon it fairly, and perceive it was untrue."

"It is hard to teach the mind a thousand alien names and thousands more. Yet you believe this is what learning means; its one essential goal by which communication is achieved and concepts can be meaningfully shared."

"God's Will does not oppose. It merely is. It is not God you have imprisoned in your plan to lose your Self. He does not know about a plan so alien to His Will."

"Let us not try longer to impose an alien will upon His single purpose."

"And no thought ALIEN to His Oneness can abide with Him there."

"The ego does not know the difference between grandeur and grandiosity, because it does not know the difference between miracle-impulses and ego-alien beliefs of its own."

"There is no thought in all the world which leads to any understanding of the laws it follows, nor the Thought which it reflects. It is as alien to the world as is your own reality."

"Perceiving something alien to itself in your MIND, the ego turns to the body, NOT the mind as its ally BECAUSE the body is not part of you."

"The world began with one strange lesson, powerful enough to render God forgotten, and His Son an alien to himself, in exile from the home where God Himself established him."

"Nothing at all has happened, but that you have put yourself to sleep, and dreamed a dream in which you were an alien to yourself, and but a part of someone ELSE's dream."

"The son of man perceives an alien will, AND WISHES IT WERE SO."

"You were at peace until you asked for special favor, and God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son."

"To value specialness is to esteem an alien will, to which illusions of yourself ARE dearer than the truth."

"By adopting the ego's viewpoint, you undertook an ego-alien journey WITH THE EGO AS GUIDE. "

"Salvation does not seek to use a means as yet too alien to your thinking to be helpful, nor to make the kinds of change you could not recognize."

"Vengeance is alien to His Mind BECAUSE He knows of justice."

"To the world, generosity means "giving away" in the sense of "giving up." To the teachers of God, it means "giving away" in order to keep. This has been emphasized throughout the text and the workbook, but it is perhaps more alien to the thinking of the world than many other ideas in our curriculum."

"Teaching devices which are totally alien to a learner's perceptual system are usually merely disruptive."

"Each Soul knows God completely. This IS the miraculous power of the Soul. The fact that each Soul has this power completely is a fact that is entirely alien to human thinking, in which if any ONE has everything, there is nothing LEFT."

"All your time is spent in dreaming."

Do you ever get the feeling everyone is just making stuff up as they go along? Or do you experience yourself doing this?

From time to time I *think* that I know what I want to do, and sort of talk myself into it, and do it, and it seems right, then later I am disillusioned and don't know what I saw in it. I add justifications and reasons why, in order to "convince myself", and later these turn out to be empty and hold no weight.

This world is insane. And we try to "give it all the meaning it has". We use scapegoats to justify doing or not doing things. We make things into enemies in order to deflect our decision making in a certain direction. And no-one knows what the fuck they're doing.

Half the time it seems all the medical people are just making shit up and don't know what the heck they're doing, cus every solution they come up with has awful side effects. The ads on TV for medications are utterly ridiculous.

People tell you what you eat and why eating this or that is better for you. Turns out none of them have the truth and none of them can agree to anything. Everyone and their cat has an opinion.

I get convinced for a while that doing something is "what I want to do" and get all lost in it and then something interrupts me, and then some time passes, and I come back to it and have no idea why I would want to be doing that thing. What I thought was "salvation" turns out to be another completely meaningless wild goose chase.

In a way, it's like trying to find "real meaning" in a meaningless world. ACIM says the world is meaningless, and we put all the meaning onto it. So when we start weaving a story about "why" something is or is not a good choice, it's all made up. It's all ego bullshit. There is no truth here.

In a way that leads to realizing, there is nothing meaningful in the world. And meaning must be deeper within somewhere. And that also reveals that the world is entirely a senseless, insane illusion that has no truth and doesn't mean shit.

If I choose to make something happen, let's say I decide and go make it happen. Well, now I made it happen cus I force it it to happen. Totally meaningless.

I'm looking around for a sense of "that's really what I love to do" sort of thing, only to find that even the things I thought I loved to do are just empty containers onto which I project various fake motivations and ideas, to try to "dress them up" and explain why they're so great. There's nothing there.

The world seems like a blank canvas. It has nothing inherent to it. It's a effect. So it can't really "do" anything "for" you. It can't save you, or make you happy or sad. It does what you make it do. And that means it has no real opinion, or value. If you don't make it valuable, it's not valuable. If you don't read into it, there's nothing to it.

It's like we're living in some kind of giant snow globe pretending it's an amazing real place with built-in value and importance but it's really all just a pile of tosh, lol.

"I do not know the thing I am."

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

Hah!

"I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself."

Yet in learning this is salvation born. And what you are will tell you of Itself.

Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places and in alien forms that have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here.

God’s welcome waits for us all, and He will welcome us as I am welcoming you. Forget not the Kingdom of God for anything the world has to offer."

Projection makes perception and makes the world you see. You put it there. You give it its meaning. It has no real meaning at all. This is all just a big lie we keep telling ourselves. THERE IS NO WORLD!

"This is a very simple course. Perhaps you do not feel that a course which, in the end, teaches nothing more than that only reality is true is necessary. But do you believe it?"

Before the separation from God and the fall of man, quite simply you were only as God created you, happily co-creating with God in joy and love in Heaven. That is reality. You live there forever.

But then you went into denial and believed in things which were not possible, as if they were. You denied God's will and shut out your freedom. This put your mind into a kind of sleep state. Within this state, you have dreamed of a planet, walking around its surface in a pretend body, wondering who you are and where you came from.

All that needs to happen is for you to wake up to Heaven's reality again. To simply stop sleeping, stop dreaming, come to your senses, return to sanity, and merely recognize what is actually true. God's truth is the only truth.

All you have to do is accept that the dream has not happened at all, and nothing in it means anything nor has any consequences. Who you are, in Heaven, outside of your dream world, has not changed or been affected. You still remain as God created you.

The instant that you wake up to reality, the entire dream and all its contents will be forgotten, as if they never happened. No matter how radical that seems or what it entails, the entire undoing of the universe, it will be like nothing even happened. You'll just carry on co-creating with God.

Jesus encapsulates this simple overview in this eloquent way:

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

So there is a really simple fact. Reality, The Kingdom, is totally real and totally safe and totally permanent. Everyone in it is happy and alive forever. Those who are seemingly sleeping find themselves in a giant dream world that they think is really happening, but is not. Not even slightly.

So what is spiritual awakening? It's merely coming to remember and recognize that only God's reality is real and there is no other reality. There is no dream. There is no sin. There is no death or sickness. There are no illusions. There is only the Kingdom. Everything is fine as it always was. You have just been having hallucinations for a while in a long drawn out dream state, so long you mistook it for permanence.

It's like, there's a giant party happening in Heaven right now A huge creative celebration. You're down here in hell pretending to be suffering and unhappy. None of this stuff even exists. There is no world. There's only the Kingdom.

It's like, there's a street party outside your window, but you're stuck indoors occasionally catching glimpses of what's going on. You long to be able to join them. Someday you fling open the door and realize there never was a wall or a house or a reason not to celebrate. You merely enter the flow of the procession of creation.

It's like, you're in your bedroom and you fall asleep and start having an elaborate dream, featuring a heroic body and all kinds of happenings. You mistake the dream for the only reality. Then you wake up, and the entire dream disappears and you suddenly remember you are in your bedroom where you really live. Nothing carries over from the dream state.

So it's kind of funny because, Heaven is totally okay right now. God is absolutely happy. All the souls and angels are having a great time. They're totally finding this whole dream world hilariously silly, laughing at how everyone down here is taking it all so seriously. Knowing from their perspective that the Heaven they are in is real, and the world we seem to be in is totally fictional. A strange realm of fantasies and imaginings.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to the strange world you made."

Everything is fine. Everything real is still as God intended. Nothing has ever gone wrong. Nothing real's been hurt. You haven't sinned. No-one ever died. We're just having a bad dream and someday we'll wake up and laugh that we ever thought God's Kingdom could be attacked or changed in any way.

When you examine what is true, real and possible, it is very obvious that this world should not be possible at all.

For example, reality is permanence, and God is permanent. Anything real is eternal. Nothing real can ever die or be attacked or threatened. Permanence is forever.

How then is it possible that this world seems to depict that attack, sin, murder, sickness and death are POSSIBLE? How is it they are even happening?Similarly since God is permanent, God cannot be attacked or changed. This also means God is innocent because He cannot attack his permanent nature. And it also means sin is impossible for anything real, or towards anything real.

How is it then that in this world is seems as though sin is real, possible, has real consequences, has proof and provides evidence of happening?What's clear is that whatever it is that this world SUGGESTS is possible, STILL is not possible. It cannot be possible for anything real to be attacked. Therefore if anything that seems to exist can be attacked, it cannot be real, and it cannot be a real attack.

What the world DEPICTS, is the idea of THE IMPOSSIBLE, as though it were possible. This is why the world was made in a tiny MAD idea, an insane idea. It's the idea that the impossible is possible, that you can for example exist without God, that you can do things which are impossible in God, and that things can EXIST which CANNOT exist in God.

There is no such thing as pain or suffering or sickness or death in God. God has eternal life. All real things are eternal and immortal. So what's with the things of this world seeming to SUGGEST, that something is not eternal, is mortal, can be attacked and sick and suffer and die? These things CANNOT BE TRUE.

Everything which this world says is possible, IS IMPOSSIBLE. Everything which this world testifies and TRIES to prove, even by creating illusory evidence that seems convincing, IS A LIE. Nothing real can be sick or die. Nothing real can suffer. So if something is suffering or dying, it cannot be real.

This is the extent of madness and illusions. We have literally DREAMED of (imagined) a world in which it seems that ALL impossible things have BECOME possible. That things which are ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE are not only possible, but are happening, have happened, and have produced lasting effects.

Can you get a sense of just how BACKWARDS this world is, therefore? Just how much of a LIE it is? It's TOTALLY OPPOSITE to the truth. It is a blasphemy. Everything that seems possible in it is NOT really possible. Everything it shows as being true is not true. Everything it claims is happening CANNOT really happen.

This world, is the opposite to reality, to possibility, and to truth. Anything it shows you and tries to prove to you, even if it provides physical evidence, MUST NOT be real. It has to be a deception. It has to be an "assertion" that something is true which isn't. This is why the world was made TO TEMPT YOU to believe that something is true which is not.

That anything can suffer and decay and die is a TEMPTATION to believe that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening. The fact that impossible thing seem to happen is the entire reason why you are upset by them. "I am upset because I see something that is not there." You are upset because you are seeming to experience something which you know, in God, SHOULD NOT be possible. As though something has gone terribly wrong with reality.

This is also why we have to learn through forgiveness to NOT be deceived by this world, to overlook it and look to a reality which is not of this world. We need to not fall into temptation. And we need to not be CONVINCED by anything that seems to happen here. Even a dead body should not convince us that death "has happened". In reality, in God, death is IMPOSSIBLE. So how can it be possible that death has happened? It cannot be real death, it MUST be an illusion pretending to be death.

This is why this world is rooted in the ego's idea of evil and death and opposition to God. It was made as an ATTACK UPON God's true nature. As an attack upon reality and truth. Everything it shows is FALSE. Everything it proves is fake. Everything that seems to happen is not even really happening.

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

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"Actually, a meaningless world is impossible."

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

"Impossible indeed; but every mind that looks upon the world and judges it as certain, solid, trustworthy and true believes in two creators; or in one, himself alone."

"Where there is death is peace impossible."

"No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them."

"How long can contradiction stand, when its impossible nature is clearly revealed?"

"God did not make the body, because it is destructible, and therefore not of the Kingdom. The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

In ACIM, Jesus teaches in many ways that the body, the ego and the world are nothing. Even that they don't really exist at all in reality. But another major part of the teaching is that we've invested these things with meanings, laws, rules, values, powers, which they do not have.

"It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body. What is alien to the mind does not exist, because it has no source."

As a further step, Jesus goes on to say that if you give the body power or meanings or roles that it is not supposed to have, being nothing at all, this is what makes it sick. The body becomes sick because your mind is trying to distort it from being nothing into being something else. It is putting pressure onto the body, trying to manipulate it into serving made-up causes.

"You might ask how the voice of something which does not exist can be so insistent. Have you ever seriously considered the distorting power of something you WANT, even if it is not true?"

As Jesus says, if you believe that the body has an ability to create, meaning an ability to cause something, your mind will be sick and it will manifest this sickness upon/as/in the body. Since the body is nothing, it does not have an ability to cause anything. If you believe the body can or is causing something, your mind is sick, and this will make the body sick.

"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 same applies to the world. It's easy to say we're not at the effect of the world, but we need to also realize we've invested the world will all kinds of powers, casual abilities, creative powers, trying to make it be something, with false values and credit where it's not due etc. And these things distort the world and effectively results in a sick mind, a sick body, and a sick projected world. The world has to be recognized as absolutely nothing, rather than believed to be something of importance.

"As "something", is the body asked to be God's enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. It is HIS loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate. For if He be the sum of everything, then what is NOT in Him does not exist. And His completion IS its nothingness."

It may seem odd at first, but Jesus wants us to recognize that all bodies are nothing. They are not something. They are much closer to being emptiness and lack, being the idea of sin. We need to stop giving power to them, stop giving value to them, stop making them out to be something they're not, and stop trying to give them worth.

"The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

Jesus even says that they are so worthless as to be not even worth defending, and that if you defend the body you will make it sick. By this worthlessness he does not mean that the body is judged as evil or that we project guilt onto it or make it out to be a victim or a perpetrator. It doesn't mean we value it as low and hated and so on. He simply means that because it is neutral it is nothing, and its neutrality means that you cannot give it any attributes at all, either positive or negative.

"As nothing, which it IS, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego. EITHER must be an error, for both would place the attributes where they cannot BE."

The body is essentially not there. It is not real. It does not exist. It's an hallucination, empty, void, pretending to show up as something but isn't even a real creation.

"At no SINGLE instant does the body exist at all. It is always remembered or anticipated, but NEVER experienced just now. Only its past and future make it seem real. Time controls it entirely. For sin is never present."

Jesus goes on to suggest that if you can recognize the body as nothing at all, withdrawing all artificial beliefs, uses, roles, laws, meanings and so on from it, the body will actually become a picture of health. The reason is that the mind is becoming "clear" and empty of illusions, and therefore the picture of the body begins to fade and disappear, at first infused with light and healing and love, but eventually eradicated by it.

From the state of a healthy mind and body, the body will go on to disappear entirely into the light, consumed by it and erased by it. Recognizing your brother's body as nothing is the way for your body to be free from sickness and death. Regarding a person as a body is a form of separation-belief, and so is an attempt to be split off from life. Your brother's body, your spouse's body, your children's bodies, your neighbor's bodies, they are all absolutely nothing and worth nothing all. Mistaking these people for their bodies is an attack upon who they really are.

"His body's nothingness releases yours from sickness and from death. For what is yours cannot be more NOR less than what is his."

"Perhaps you do not realize that this removes the limits you had placed upon the body by the purposes you gave to it. As these are laid aside, the strength the body has will always be enough to serve all truly useful purposes. The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible."

Finally, Jesus suggests that if you take this all the way, if you deprogram your mind from belief that the body and the world and the ego are ANYTHING, and recognize them as nothing at all, they will disappear. What is recognized as nothing cannot really be there, and this causes it to not be there. In truth, there is no body, there is no ego, and there is no world.

"To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. What is understood as nothing must disappear."

We are tasked with nothing short of erasing the world, ending space and time, and returning to the complete recognition that they are not there, they never were there, and only God's Kingdom really exists.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

We here in spacetime are accustomed to living well within the confines of the ego thought system. This whole world, this universe, was made in a thought of separation. It IS the ego thought system - a system of thought which seems like an order of reality, founded on sin.

All of space and time and its contents embody the idea of sin being real. It was made to tempt you to believe that sin is happening and has happened, with lasting irreversible effects. "The world of bodies is the world of sin."

But the thing is, outside of this bubble, sin is seen in quite a different light. In truth, sin is impossible. God is real and permanent and eternal, making it impossible to affect Him. In fact it's impossible to attack or change anything real. Reality is changeless and unassailable. Which means it is literally impossible for you or anyone to sin against it.

So the notion that you can sin, are sinning, or have sinned, or will sin, is completely nonsense. It's a totally mistaken wishful-thinking belief. From this perspective, Jesus refers to it as an "error", not a sin. It's a mistake to even BELEIVE in it, and nothing more.

It's a mistake to believe that, given sin is literally impossible, that you can sin. It is a mistake to believe that, given nothing real can be threatened, that you have in fact sinned against God by attacking Him against His will. It is a mistake to believe that, given you cannot sin or change anything real, that you have in fact produced irreversible consequences in something real.

To believe that you can or have done this is obviously a completely FALSE belief. It's utterly not true. There is no truth to it whatsoever. The belief that it is true is completely mistaken. It literally is false and always will be false.

The thing is, once you go INTO the ego thought system, and enter into the bubble of spacetime, and start to BELIEVE that what is impossible is actually possible, which is an insane idea (a tiny 'mad' idea), it starts to look AS IF sin is real. You see a world of sin, a world of sinful bodies, a world of sinful happenings, evidence of irreversible attack, and everything seemingly real can be threatened.

Since we've been living "inside" this bubble of sin for so long, confined by it, tempted by it, upset by it, we're not used to the idea that the ENTIRE THING is mistaken. That NONE of it can be true. All of our ego reactions, all of our upset feelings, all of our stresses and dramas, all sickness and suffering, seem to prove that sin is real and permanent.

We're so used to this and so blinded by the mere idea that sin IS possible, that we are not used to thinking COMPLETELY outside this box. This is where forgiveness comes in. Because forgiveness, as the atonement, shows us a doorway which borders on true reality, allowing us to step OUTSIDE the bubble of sin and death, and peer into heaven, to recognize that the idea of sin is utterly bullshit.

When you can get your mind to move to a perspective PRIOR to "sin is real", which is required to accept atonement, it makes total sense to realize that sin is impossible. Forgiveness recognizes that you literally have not sinned, cannot sin, and nor can anyone else. Just even the BELIEF that sin is possible, is a mistake. It's a false conclusion.

It's a conclusion that we must've come to by making an ERROR in reasoning. We must've had to have turned a blind eye to facts, and imagined, and defiantly and absurdly WANTED sin to be real, in spite of the hugely obvious reality that sin is forever impossible. There is, in truth, NO real sin ANYWHERE in reality. And God's Kingdom has not been changed in the slightest by any kind of sin.

This is why the belief in sin, the separation, the tiny mad idea, WAS an insane idea. It is insane to even suggest that reality can be attacked. It is insane to believe that you can exist where God does not exist, given God is all encompassing. It is insane to believe you can attack what is permanent. And it is insane to believe you have a power stronger than God's will to affect His will against His will.

But this is what we did. We defiantly, stubbornly, ridiculously, mistakenly, simply made a huge MISTAKE, a silly childish choice, to BELIEVE that we COULD do what we could NEVER do. Even faced with the facts of reality that sin is impossible, we INSISTED that sin is possible. You DEMANDED that sin be possible, even though it is not. Like some rioter or picketer making a huge pointless protest for something that can never happen, against the truth, in defiance of God.

To do this is insane. And it is what made us go into a state of insanity. It is insane to believe the impossible is possible. And in this insanity we believe and thus perceive that sin is real, happening, permanent and seemingly solid. But we are ONLY mistaken. It's just a big ERROR that we made.

We are mistaken for believing sin is possible. We are mistaken for believing we attacked God murderously. We are mistaken for believing God is affected by our will. We are mistaken for believing we have a power capable of overthrowing reality. We are mistaken for believing we can be anything other than innocent. We are mistaken for accepting the ego into our minds, believing that it is the truth. Were's simply mistaken. And mistakes can forgivingly be corrected without punishment.

The whole world is false. There is no truth in it at all. The entire separation idea is false. The whole of spacetime is false. Every single supposed sin is a false sin. There is no sin! Real sin is not possible and does not exist. No one has ever sinned. You have never sinned nor have you ever been sinned against.

The bizarre thing is just this sensation, this familiarity, that sin ACTUALLY is real and has happened. We believe in it too much. We seem to experience it every day. Stuff happens against our will. We do stuff against the will of others. The world attacks us. There is no safety anywhere. And all of spacetime seems hell-bent on murder and self destruction. We have become used to this. We think it's normal, but it's not.

We have to get our minds OUTSIDE of the idea, the belief, that sin is real. It is necessary in order to complete forgiveness. It is necessary in order to correctly FRAME sin in its PROPER light, recognizing it for what it IS, not for how it appears when you are trapped "inside" it. Sin has to be recognized as impossible. It has to be correctly identified as having never happened. And the truth of reality's immortality and perfect changelessness has to be acknowledged.

God is laughing at our belief that sin is possible. If you go look at reality, you will find that there is no trace of proof that you ever attacked anything real. God is unharmed. Heaven has not skipped a single note in its song. All the Children of God are perfectly protected. There is not a single stain or bruise or blemish or hint of attack anywhere in reality. And all of Heaven is exactly as perfect now as it always was. God's world is STILL PERFECT!

This seems alien to us. The idea that reality is utterly unaffected and unchanged. That God is totally happy with us. Given how much we believe that sin is happening and has happened. But accepting and recognizing the constancy of reality is vital to accepting atonement. The ENTIRE belief in sin is mistaken. It has not one shred of truth to it. All who believe in it are insane. All who think it proves something are mistaken.

"Sin is insanity."

"Reality is a constant state."

From God's perspective, all of us here are simply having a bizarre, fictional dream, filled with strange twisted worlds and meaningless environments. Not one single thing has really happened. Every single sin, every evidence of attack, is a lie. We're all just very confused, mistaken people. We have a belief in something which is completely false. We want it to be true for ridiculous reasons. But the facts remain. There is no sin anywhere, sin is impossible, and you are still as God created you.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"What difference does the content of a dream make in reality? One either sleeps or wakens. There is nothing in between."

I thought it was interesting in lesson 140 - only salvation can be said to cure - talking about a cure vs the world's remedies etc. It says that we need to awaken FROM the dream world. In this awakening, it does not matter what the dream contains. Nor does it matter to especially change the dream to some other form, in such a way that doesn't awaken you FROM the dream.

It says you can cause bodily healing on the form level but without awakening the mind FROM the dream, and therefore not really enacting a real change. You can thus DREAM OF healing, in which there may be bodily changes, but WITHOUT the mind changing. True healing, and the true and only cure, is to cure the mind in God, such that the mind is waking up from the entire world. Getting your head out of the sand.

It says to me that our forgiveness really is a very GLOBAL function that applies to everything all at once. Like when we say that "nothing in this room means anything." We have to realize that the ENTIRE CONTENTS of the world means nothing, or is not true, or is false or unreal. Not just some parts of it. Not just certain people. We need to realize we are HAVING a dream, and EVERYTHING the body sees is part of that dream world. The WHOLE THING is false and we should to believe ANY part of it.

We need to awaken from the whole world, from all of space and time, and from the whole universe. That kind of global perspective is a universal perspective, just as the course says that "miracles are a universal blessing from God." We need a more "blanket statement" kind of approach to forgiveness which renders everything in the world as EQUALLY UNREAL. The people's bodies, the events, the speeches, the behaviors, the happenings, all of it must be put into a single category of unreal.

We thus need to assert that not one single bit of this world is true. As in "nothing the world believes in true." That not one single body is real. That there is no one single shred of REAL sickness or death anywhere. That all appearances, all forms, all events and happenings are NOTHING and nowhere. Nothing in this room is really happening right now. Nothing that you see really exists right now. Nothing that bodies are claiming is true right now. None of this world is reality. Mind needs to wake up OUT OF this dream realm.

Awakening is truly a movement AWAY from the ENTIRE world. A movement into "awareness of dreaming". A movement in the direction of God away from spacetime, away from Earth, and away from bodies. The WHOLE THING has to go.

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

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"My body, Father, cannot be Your Son. And what is not created cannot be sinful or sinless; neither good nor bad. Let me, then, use this dream to help Your plan that we awaken from all dreams we made."

"Do you believe that truth can be but SOME illusions? They are dreams BECAUSE they are not true. Their EQUAL lack of truth becomes the basis for the miracle, which MEANS that you have understood that dreams are dreams, and that escape depends, NOT on the dream, but ONLY on awaking. COULD it be some dreams are KEPT, and others WAKENED FROM? The choice is NOT between which dreams to keep, but ONLY if you want to live in dreams, or to awaken from them. Thus it is the miracle does not select SOME dreams to leave untouched by its beneficence. You cannot dream some dreams and wake from some. For you are either sleeping OR awake. And dreaming goes with only ONE of these."

"Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes return again to bless the world he made. In error it began. But it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And we will sleep no more and dream of death."

"Forgiveness is the key to happiness.

I will awaken from the dream that I

Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

And know I am the perfect Son of God."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it."

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see. They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful. Unity alone is not a thing of dreams. And it is this God's teachers acknowledge as behind the dream, beyond all seeing and yet surely theirs."

This is a pretty deep and abstract passage from lesson 167, "There is one life and that I share with God." It speaks of how immortal mind is permanently awake, it thinks of being asleep in which it dreams of a world of spacetime, everything in that dream is nothing with no consequences (there is no world) because it’s a dream of NOT existing and NOTHING happening, and then it simply awakens, the dream world disappears, and it resumes creation with God. You have to read it slowly to really get a feel for it. So I added some commentary...

"The mind (shared with God in heaven) can ***think*** it sleeps, but that is all (has a THOUGHT of sleeping - tiny mad idea). It cannot change what is its waking state (can’t change the truth). It cannot make a body, nor abide within a body (cannot make a REAL body). What is alien to the mind does not exist because it has no source. For mind creates all things that are (all creations in heaven), and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. It cannot make the physical (literally impossible to REALLY create the physical). What seems to die (the illusion of the physical) is but the sign of mind asleep (mind can only imagine physicality, it cannot create it as a permanent creation, and we are currently "living" within that IDEA).

The opposite of (eternal) life can only be another ***form*** of life (a real opposite is impossible, the physical is not completely opposite, it’s still within God - safe in God, dreaming of exile). As such, it can be reconciled with what created it, because it is not opposite in truth. Its form may change; it may appear to be what it is not. Yet mind is mind (mind is still mind even if it experiences wakefulness or THINKS OF a sleeping state) awake or sleeping. It is not its opposite in anything created (mind MAKES the illusion that mind is absent, free will is used to make the illusion of imprisonment), nor in what it seems to make when it believes it sleeps (even death is a deliberately chosen idea by a *living* mind).

God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them (not possible to make an actual separation, death, body, etc) The **thought** of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life (absolute death is not possible at all, the thought of death is just an idea WITHIN the awake mind and are illusions, love has no opposite, so death is not a true opposite, it’s just a state of thought). Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God (souls etc) remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere.

What seems to be the opposite of life (eternal life) is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not (e.g. trying to be a world or body), and to assume an alien power which it does not have (made-up ego laws or ability to really sin), a foreign state it cannot enter (illusions of vulnerability, sickness, suffering, death), or a false condition not within its Source (nightmares, attack, sickness etc), it merely ***seems*** to go to sleep a while. It ***dreams*** (thinks of) of time (this whole universe); an interval in which what *seems* to happen never has occurred (tiny tick of time, nothing in this world ever happened), the changes wrought are substance-less (no real consequences, no sin), and all events are nowhere (nothing ever really happens because its a thought of "nothing happening"). When the mind awakes (to the Kingdom of God, and stops dreaming up a world), it but continues as it always was (in heaven).

Let us today be children of the truth, and not deny our holy heritage. Our life is not as we imagine it. Who changes life because he shuts his eyes (failure to acknowledge reality, denial of God), or makes himself what he is not (trying to be a dead body) because he sleeps and sees in dreams (this world) an opposite to what he is? (Everything you see in this world is OPPOSITE to reality - "Earth, heaven’s opposite in every way.") We will not ask for death (this world - "without the idea of death tehre is no world") in **any form** today. Nor will we let imagined (bodies, planets) opposites to (eternal) life abide even an instant where the Thought of Life Eternal has been set by God Himself.

His holy home (heaven) we strive to keep today as He established it, and wills it be forever and forever. He is Lord of what we think today. And in His Thoughts, Which have no opposite, we understand there is one life (eternal life with God), and that we share with Him, with all creation (the Kingdom of God, not this world), with their thoughts as well, whom He created in a Unity of life (all created beings in heaven) that cannot separate in death and leave the Source of Life (God) from where it came.

We share life because we have one Source (God), a Source from Which perfection comes to us, remaining always in the ***holy minds*** which He created perfect (yes God DID create many minds!). As we were, so are we now and will forever be ("we" existing within reality). A sleeping mind must waken (individually) as it sees its own perfection mirroring the Lord of Life so perfectly it fades into what is reflected there (sees the real world, reflects holiness here). And now it is no more a mere reflection (when you go to heaven). It becomes the thing reflected, and the light which makes reflection possible. No vision now is needed (vision/perception has no purpose IN heaven/reality - "Indeed, you cannot remain in the world with this knowledge."). For the wakened mind (awake in heaven, not in a body or in this world any more, not in the dream, not having dreams, not having the thought of the world, not asleep, fully awake in God) is one that knows its Source, its Self, its Holiness."

If you did something wrong, if you sinned or committed some crime, damaged something or hurt someone, you won't be able to forgive yourself for it while you believe it actually happened.

Anything that you believe has REALITY, cannot be undone. Reality is a sense of what is ACTUAL, the facts, the irrefutable certain truth.

Reality cannot be questioned or denied. It is blatant and obvious and there is nothing beyond it. It's like the final judgement on something. Whatever is REAL, you will believe is so true it cannot be changed. Reality is rock solid. Reality is permanence.

This applies no matter what it is that you think is real, and no matter where you place reality, or what you categorize as real, and no matter whether in truth it's the real truth or a lie. If you think it has reality, you think it cannot be undone, cannot be reversed, and cannot be denied. You cannot ESCAPE from what you believe is real, and making it real to you is a choice to keep it.

So if you hurt, sin, attack, damage, destroy etc, if you give these things REALITY, you are locking them in. You're saying, they are actual, factual, unavoidably true. And in particular you will point to evidence, consequences, effects and proof, to demonstrate that it really did occur. And so long as this evidence and proof is also given "reality" it will be IRREFUTABLE that you really DID DO what you think you did.

With this belief in the reality of sin, especially backed up by physical real-seeming evidence, you WILL NOT be able to psychologically forgive yourself. It won't matter how much you work on it. It won't matter how you frame it. It won't matter how much you cathart or try to be nice to yourself or justify what you did or blame it on past-life karma or any other way to try to make it disappear. If it's real, you cannot undo it or let it go.

Whatever you decide is real for you, you are giving the power to dictate the truth. Just even the notion that you did something at all, if it is considered real, cannot be undone. You won't be able to let yourself off the hook, because in the back of your mind there'll be this nagging FACT, that you believe... that you REALLY DID IT. That you DID sin. Even if you justify it, that is like a way to run circles around it. Even if you try to explain it away, that's an attempt to pretend you don't believe you did it. If it's real, you did it, because only reality happens. And if you did it, you are responsible for it.

This means that anything you think you did, any sin or crime or attack, CANNOT be forgiven and let go, fully, UNTIL you are willing to question whether or not it was REAL. If it is considered permanently real, you're screwed. There is NO WAY to be exonerated from a sin if it was real. Not even if the other party says they forgive you. Not even if you receive punishment for the crime and "do the time" and suffer extensively to try to "atone" for what you did. Not even if you have punished yourself for decades over it, it's NEVER going to be enough to overcome REALITY.

The only SWITCH, the only variable, which has the power to set you free from all suffering and recognize your INNOCENCE, is the question of whether or not IT IS REAL. And the only way FOR you to be found innocent, truly, and completely forgiven, and able to truly let it go psychologically so that it doesn't keep holding on like a deep rooted belief, is to find what you did WAS UNREAL. Only if it is NOT real can it ever be let go. Because the mind cannot believe in what has no reality.

"Whatever you accept into your mind you make real to you."

You must question therefore the reality of ALL sin, all happenings, all crimes, all attacks, all suffering, all justification for suffering, and even the memory of what you think you did. You must question whether it even HAPPENED IN REALITY. Did it take place inside a real place, where only real things happen? If it did, you are STUCK with it forever. Did it take place in an UNREAL place, where only illusory things happen, and where dreams pretend to be real, and where there is temptation to believe something is possible that isn't? If so, there is hope that you can be FREE from it by recognizing the CONTEXT within which it occurred. And no-one would hold a DREAM against themselves.

If what you did took place IN A DREAM, and not in reality, then NOTHING about it was real. Nothing you did actually happened. Nothing had any consequences against anything real. Nothing real was hurt or threatened. Nothing guilt-inducing occurred. No-one real has been changed or hurt by your actions and choices. And you cannot have really sinned in any way. Only acts which happen IN DREAMS can be forgiven, and only illusions can be truly let go. Reality can never be forgiven or undone because it is permanent.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

So to forgive yourself for what you think you did, you absolutely **HAVE TO** come to the conclusion that it was NOT REAL, and did NOT take place in reality, and did not REALLY happen at all. Regardless even whether you remember it happening. And in complete defiance of even any evidence, proof, consequences or tangible reasons that claim "this is here because of what you did." All of this must be found UNREAL. Otherwise there is no way for your mind to psychologically let it go.

In your mind, whatever it decides has reality, it is deciding to HOLD ONTO AND ACCEPT. Whatever it decides is real, is takes to be TRUTH, and it will defend that truth endlessly. Whatever it thinks is real to it, whatever it accepts as factual reality, is anchors onto and gives validity to and empowers and reinforces and protects. There is no way for the mind to ever let go of what it believes is real, while it believes it is real. To make something real is to give it total authority over everything else. It's the final judgement and irrevocable decision as to whether something is valid or not. And what is real has immortality.

So to forgive yourself fully, to go to the ATONEMENT, to truly atone, which is to undo the unreal, you **MUST** - you have no other choice but to - decide that what seemed to happen WAS NOT REAL, did NOT take place in reality, HAS no real consequences, HAS NOT harmed anyone or anything real, and in truth DID NOT TAKE PLACE AT ALL. It has to be recognized as a DREAM, an illusion, whirling around in a fantasy of fiction, pretending to happen, seeming to occur, but a total lie and delusion. ALL sense of reality has to be stripped from it.

ONLY WHEN your mind has agreed that what you thought happened DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, which absolutely REQUIRES that you recognize it WAS NOT REAL AT ALL, will your mind give itself permission to LET IT GO. And only when it can fully let go of what is not real, can it FREE ITSELF from imprisonment, from condemnation and from suffering and righteous self punishment. Only when the mind recognizes the TRUTH that what you thought you did YOU DID NOT DO, because THERE IS NO SIN, and SIN IS IMPOSSIBLE IN REALITY, only then can it LOGICALLY conclude that you CANNOT be guilty.

"Only atonement can be said to cure."

This is where true healing occurs. This is where you are CURED FOREVER. This is where the ROOT of evil is ripped out of its bedding. This is where the whole entire "event" is completely expelled from the mind. And this is where you are set free from it in PERMANENT HEALING as you receive a miracle.

Only in true atonement, the recognition that there is no real sin, can you find yourself INNOCENT again. You can only ACCEPT your innocence, ie accept the truth of the atonement, when you can accept that YOU DID NOT SIN IN REALITY. Sin's unreality must be clear, in order to give it no credit or power over you. Otherwise you are simply going to hold onto it and attack yourself with it. You will finally rejoice as you give yourself PERMISSION to let it go, in the recognition that there is really NOTHING REAL to let go of.

You have not sinned. You can never sin. "There is no sin." "Nothing real can be threatened." And "Nothing unreal exists."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you think you brother did has not OCCURRED."

In times when I am moving into uncertainty about whether it's true that this world is unreal, I refer back to some key statements in the course which seem very clear to me. One of them is "the body is a dream".

This anchors the truth that the body, and therefore everything the body is made of, and therefore by extension anything ELSE in the same environment which is made of similar stuff or is covered by similar laws, MUST ALSO be a dream.

This then implies logically that the whole world and universe is a dream, and the body is merely one part or character within that dream. And the course similarly backs this up. The body is the hero of the dream, and it cannot exist WITHOUT a dream.

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

"The ability to perceive made the body possible, because you must perceive SOMETHING, and WITH something."

"The dreaming of the world takes many forms, because the body seeks in many ways to PROVE it is autonomous and real."

"Only the body makes the world seem real."

The body IS a dream, and can only exist INSIDE a dream, and DEPENDS ON dreaming, and cannot exist WITHOUT dreaming. Which means that it REQUIRES SLEEP in the mind in order for a DREAM to be taking place in order for a body to show up. It exists WITHIN perception and NOT in knowldge. There can be no body without this sleep, and there can be no dream without this sleep.

Even those who seem to have "awareness of dreaming", who seem more awake than others but still are in bodies, are still having DREAM bodies. And these bodies are STILL dreams. And these people are STILL dreaming. Awareness that you ARE DREAMING is not the end of dreaming, it is merely a point of perspective on the fact that you are NOT AWAKE. And this perspective on being "awake in the dream" is NOT the same as BEING FULLY AWAKE, never again to dream a single dream.

"No-one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. No-one believes there really was a time when ****he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real.**** He would have seen at once that ****these ideas are one illusion****, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away. How serious they now appear to be!"

The metaphysics of this is very simple and clear. When mind is FULLY AWAKE in heaven's reality, there is NO dreaming, NO sleep, and therefore there CANNOT BE BODIES. Bodies are dreams, and unless you are dreaming you cannot dream of bodies. Bodies are made up in the mind as part of the dreaming process. They are characters in the dream. Just as trees and houses and cars are characters in the dream. And none of them exist when you truly wake up to Reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life (heaven - "there is no life outside of heaven") is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

It is also very simple and evident, therefore, to realize that WITHOUT SLEEP, you cannot have a body. You cannot BE IN ONE and be fully awake. You CANNOT be in the full awareness of heaven, in which you are FULLY AWAKE, and at the same time claim that "you have a dream body". Dream bodies ONLY seem to exist for those who are asleep and dreaming still. The body cannot enter heaven because heaven is a waking state, not a dreaming state, and the body REQUIRES a dreamer.

This is also why you CANNOT be "Christ in a body", or "God in a body". Or "awake in a body". Or "in heaven in a body." And also why Jesus was NOT "christ in a body."

"God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there.""Love was never in the world of dreams."

To suggest this is possible, is to suggest that you can be in the full awareness of the Christ WHO IS IN HEAVEN, in the WAKING AND NOT DREAMING state, while simultaneously BEING ASLEEP AND DREAMING and therefore materializing a body. It is simply impossible. If/when Jesus shows up as a body now, to Earth people, it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. A temporary image within dreaming, used to symbolize something that is BEYOND the dream. Because Jesus is permanently in heaven.

"Christ has never slept."

"Jesus is the manifestation of the Holy Spirit"

"I am the manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and when you see me, it will be because you have invited Him."

Either you are squarely in heaven 100% in total awareness of God and reality. Or, you are in some way ASLEEP, having perception, dreaming of a world and inventing fake bodies. The only special exception to this is the Holy Spirit who spans the waking and dreaming states as a bridge, temporarily, to offer you a SYMBOL of heaven within the dreaming state - the real world, to prepare you for a full and gentle awakening.

The body is a dream, a fiction, an imagined fantasy, an image, a fake symbol, not an end in itself, a representative, an avatar, a depiction of something it can never truly picture.

"It is a picture of a body still, for what you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

It is not possible for your body, or anyone's body, to FULLY REPRESENT what you are as spirit. You are INVISIBLE to this realm. You cannot be seen by the body's eyes. The body CANNOT SEE REALITY or spirit.

"The body is not the means by which the real world can be seen."So for example if Jesus were to show up here, his body would NOT BE HIM, because he is not body identified. His spirit would NOT be seen. And the body would be nothing but a SYMBOL, vaguely approximating an appearance that you might find appealing or reassuring, for some purpose. And the body that shows up is NOT HIM. It is merely a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Even if it looks just as 3D and real as other bodies. Because Christ cannot "be a body" any more than God can.

"Jesus was a man who remembered his soul." "But I was a man who remembered the Soul and its knowledge. "

You will not ever see GOD directly in a dream. He is not a body. He does not have a body. He cannot be IN a body. He is not in your body or in anyone's body. Even the idea that "God is in everything I see because God is in my mind" is an idea of seeing the REAL world BEYOND bodies, in which there ARE NO BODIES. God in his unlimited infinite nature will not EVER be reducible to a finite form or shape or appearance. Even "visions" of God are perceptual illusions.

"PROPERLY speaking, a "vision of God" is a miracle rather than a revelation. The fact that perception is involved at all removes the experience from the realm of knowledge."

So you see, if you follow what ACIM says, it is very clear and consistent. Bodies are dreams which only exist inside of dreams for those who dream of them during sleep. And while you can become more aware of the dreaming state, this too is only preparation for true awakening FROM the dream state. And to awaken FROM the dream state you CANNOT maintain a body, or be in one, or have one. It cannot go with you to heaven. And as soon as you stop dreaming the DREAM BODY made of DREAM STUFF has to disappear entirely.

"The body is a dream. Like other dreams, it sometimes seems to picture happiness, but can quite suddenly revert to fear, where every dream is born. For only love creates in truth, and truth can never fear. Made to be fearful, must the body serve the purpose given it. But we can change the purpose which the body will obey by changing what we think that it is for.

The body is the means by which God's Son returns to sanity. Though it was made to fence him into hell without escape, yet has the goal of Heaven been exchanged for the pursuit of hell. The Son of God extends his hand to reach his brother, and to help him walk along the road with him. Now is the body holy. Now it serves to heal the mind that it was made to kill."

"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."

Various things seem to happen in the world. Sometimes seemingly happy things, sometimes tragic. Sometimes things seem to be going well, sometimes they fuck up. There are dramas. There's emotion. People seem to be well, others seem to be dying. There is a whole lot of "material" to react to, respond to, deal with, manage, etc.

It all seems plausible and true. It seems to have reality. It seems like it's something to be taken seriously. We seem to have to care about certain outcomes. It seems like there's real problems and real solutions. But this is all within the context of "the world is real".

IF the world is real, it makes sense that we should be taking things seriously. We should be caring, paying attention, reacting, dealing with issues, trying to control things, etc. This all seems "valid". It seems justified. It even seems to make sense. If someone is struggling with something it seems like there are certain courses of action. If there is a problem that seems serious, it seems you should be quite upset about it.

But here is the thing. This is all based on the assumption that the world is real. And that's a big assumption. It's a framework or a basis. A logical premise. It's a starting point on which to derive all these conclusions, evaluations, judgements, strategies etc. But what if the world isn't real?

What if the the world is in fact just a dream? You see, if the world is a dream, this changes the ENTIRE context of everything that seems to be happening. If it's a dream, nothing is really happening here. If it's a dream, even if it seems like some person just died, they didn't really die. If it's a dream, sickness is also an illusion and is completely fake. If it's a dream, everything that occurs is just some made up fantasy.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In a dream world, it's as though there are just scenarios, situations, scenes, fictions and stories, which come and go fairly randomly. They don't actually have any particular rhyme or reason or meaning. Over here is the scene of a person at work. Over there is the scene of a person battling with disease. Over here is another person waking up in the morning. Over there is another person tying their shoes on a subway train. Just strange little vignettes of activity, drama and story.

If it's a dream, none of these things are really happening. The dream reframes the entire and every episode as not being what it seems to be. Are we to keep taking it seriously when something shows up that seems serious? Or should we laugh at yet another strange episode of dreaming in which we seem to be experiencing strange events and people?

Yes, if its real, then we probably should react to it. But if it is ONLY a dream, this lifts away ALL of the reasons and rationale for taking it seriously, believing it means anything, reacting to it as if it's posing real threats, buying into its illusions. And don't think the illusions aren't extraordinarily creative and well made. They are designed to deceive and tempt you and distract you and disarm you. But even a scenario of a person standing there trying to destroy you, it laughable in the context that it's ONLY a scene within a dream and you are not the body nor can you be attacked.

If you could observe the world, from outside of it, from outside the dream, it would be a radical change in perspective. What you once thought was being really threatened is now recognized as nothing but some illusion pretending to threaten an illusion. Nothing REAL can be threatened. You'd know that the whole world is one big fake fairytale. There aren't really any bodies, there's no real sickness, no real death, on real war, no tears or upsets or problems. It's all made up.

And changing your frame of reference, your point of perspective on this world, is how you forgive and develop true perception. Learning to see from a vantage point of the truth about the world, that it IS a dream, rather than the perspective that it's really happening and worth being alarmed about. False perception shows you the world as if it's NOT a dream, but a terribly real-seeming nightmare with tragic events and threat and danger. In such a world there is no safety, if you have identified with the dream figure.

This is why it's very vital to dis-identify from the body. Not just because bodies are distracting and act as anchors to bring down the Son of God, but because they are INSIDE the dream. They are part of it. They are just characters and costumes. So you, who are dreaming the world from OUTSIDE of the world, if you start to believe you are one of the characters in the dream, a body, you're going to lose sight of yourself, lose track of the truth, and believe that the world is happening to YOU because YOU are now believing you're a body. "What you are cannot be seen nor pictured".

Becoming spirit identified merely means the same thing as recognizing this is just a dream. It means remembering who and what you are, which is, that you are the dreamer of the dream, NOT the contents of the dream. You are not the body or the house or the family or the children or the job or the role-play. You are outside the dream bubble. Outside of spacetime, in heaven. In the awake world, the reality of the Kingdom. Attaching your "self" to "world stuff" just makes you believe you're under attack from a dangerous world where everything is chaotic and destructive.

Jesus's approach to the world is to learn to recognize that it IS only a dream. And being a dream, it should not be taken seriously. It should not be afforded any kind of reality or truth. Any kind of "it's really occurring". Any kind of artificial meaning or implication. In fact, he tells us that this is the secret of salvation. If we would recognize it's JUST a dream, we should be laughing at every part of it, realizing that it's complete fiction. Like some movie on a screen.

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

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

There is a divine order to your creation.

God is the primary source and creator. Without him nothing exists, not even you.

God created you. Just to be clear, that means everything that you are, everything that you have, everything you are capable of, came solely from God.

You did not receive any attributes from the environment, from food, from upbringing, from self-taught ideas. Nothing.

You have absolutely only what God decided that you have.

Your joy, your love, your life, your power, your creativity, your expression, your freedom, your peace, your unity, your sharing, your relationship, your being, was all given to you by God.

You did not put it there. You did not create it. You did not invent it. You have no ability to change it. You cannot control it. You cannot make it go away. It is rock-solid permanent and utterly beyond you.

Here is the second facet of this interesting scenario.

Since you only have what God wills that you have, and are only what he wills that you be, you have nothing else and can be nothing else.

And this means that you cannot obtain any other qualities, characteristics, abilities, skills, talents, natures, conditions, or anything else that did not come from God.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."

You essentially were created with a full plate. Fully complete. Lacking nothing. Completely perfect in all ways. So finished and so fully divine, that you were not created in a position of having to go out and hunt or find or assemble or build or do anything at all to become whole.

You therefore cannot add to yourself. Just as you cannot remove from yourself. What you are is a permanent light in heaven sustained by the thought of God forever. Fixed and absolute. Unchanging, unwavering, eternal.

This means that any belief you have that you have added to yourself, redefined yourself, invented yourself, have something not of God, have something you gave yourself, something you found on your own, something you are capable of that is "new", something you've changed about yourself, etc... these MUST all be illusions.

As you move into the separation idea, into ego, it is these "alterations", "adjustments", that you begin to believe in. It is accompanied by a sense of lack, or being incomplete from the outset. That somehow God did not give you *everything* already, and so there is something to add or find or collect or establish. Some progress to make.

And this will include the belief that you have something of your own, which God did NOT give you, which you think is yours and that you can have. You cannot truly have anything that God did not give you, however. So when you believe that you have something not of God, you have nothing. And when you reject what God has given you, you have nothing.

God gave you all of his love, mind, will, power, joy, peace, beauty, freedom, life, etc. When you believe that you have something that did not come from God, you are rejecting what He gave you, which is your natural inheritance. As host to God, you inherit all of God. If you throw it away, you have nothing. And there is nothing else.

So now if you think you have power, but it's not God's power, you are mistaken. You cannot have any power at all if you do not have God's power. Yet, if you accept what God has given you, you have all power. The power is yours, but it is not sourced by you. The power you have IS God himself, in you, since you host him.

"To say, "Of myself I can do nothing" is to gain all power. And yet it is but a seeming paradox. As God created you, you have all power."

What you are, is more like a host or medium or relay-station or conduit or channel or re-expresser of God. You literally have nothing OTHER than what God has given and put into you. It is yours, truly, because it is fully given to you. And yet, at the same time, it is not an exclusive property of yours, nor did you make it, nor can you remove it.

Ego is the idea that you are or have something not of God. Something exclusive, special, unique, isolated, which is not shared with God. And typically not shared with anyone else. It's a possessive, selfish attitude. An attempt to hoard a piece of heaven for yourself alone. And this makes you alone. It's what makes you a "separated one".

If you try to own, grasp, possess, grab or steal away something shared, in an attempt to put a label on it and say it is yours ONLY, you lose it. Attachment is loss. Possession is emptiness. Try to own a piece of God and you lose everything. But share in it, and it is fully yours and fully everyone's.

Jesus says:

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

The problem then is only that you think you have something OTHER than or in addition to what God gave. And this must entail the belief that you DO NOT have what God gave. And its the belief in lacking what God gave, which causes you to be compelled to replace it with something else. Which will never work. You can only have what God gave you and the rest must be let go.

"I am still as God created me" also means "I am not what I made of myself."

You who are host to God, inherit everything real from God. And this is whole and complete and perfect. All of Him is in you forever. What seems to be "your" anything, is simultaneously HIS. "God is my strength". Your strength, which truly is yours, IS GOD. God, in you, is the sense of strength that you feel. It's literally like it is YOUR strength, to use, but it is ALSO His.

It's a very interesting relationship. God causes you. You are his effect. God being cause forces you to be also a cause. Now you are a co-creator. Not just a creator but a collaborator, because you can only create WITH him, using HIS power, which is shared with you.

It's like God has fully given all of himself to you, in your creation, establishing you as completely "having" everything, as if were fully yours, and yet at the same time, all that you have, is STILL HIS, and is still shared with him. That is your oneness. You are united with Him. You are a team.

You have nothing of your own. Yet you have everything, because God gave it to you. It's kind of like if it were "on loan". You have the use of it, but it's not yours exclusively. It still belongs to God. You're kind of renting it, permanently. And so you enjoy the benefit of it forever, but it's still technically His.

Thus you have the power of God in you. You are strong. You are immortal. Because God is in you. Because you are His extension. And you are free, yet you are joined. You are nothing without Him, but can share everything with Him. Either you share or you have nothing. But never can you have it all just for yourself. Nor do you source anything without Him.

When I think of it, it makes me think of the angels. They operate in service to God. They go where they are directed. They do what he wills them to do, in agreement with Him. They fulfill a function. They are joyfully glad to be what they are. They have no desire to improve themselves, nor do they need to. They give thanks to God for what they are in celebration and worship. And everyone's happy.

It's true that separation is impossible, because God is everywhere, so you can't leave heaven and go to another world. In what we call "the separation", or fall of man, or detour into fear, the rebellion against God etc, we didn't actually separate either. It is always impossible.

What is possible is the BELIEF that we have separated, and that belief can produce all manner of visual hallucinations, apparent worlds, spacetime, dreams, images and imagined happenings.

But these things aren't ACTUAL. The world isn't actually a world, the body isn't a real body, and spacetime isn't really spacetime. There isn't any real sin, real guilt, real fear, or real death.

What we've done, in truth, is we've just IMAGINED what it MIGHT be like, IF we could be separate. It's like imagining what a place might be like if you could travel there - somewhere you've never actually been, without actually GOING there.

You imagine what it might be like there, you picture it, you dream of its qualities and its environments, and you wish that you could be there. But you don't actually go there. You dwell within the daydream of "what if I could be separate", but you don't actually go to where separation is. You NEVER CREATE the place, you just stay in the "planning" of it.

In this way, the body is not really a body. It's actually a PICTURE of what a body might be like IF bodies were possible. The world isn't actually a world, it's a PICTURE of what you IMAGINE a world might be like if you could go and be in a separate world.

So you're not inside an ACTUAL separation, in an ACTUAL world, in an ACTUAL body. You're just dwelling somewhere else - in heaven - dreaming of exile. Imagining and visualising what you think spacetime would be like, IF it existed. Not a real actually created spacetime, just a daydream ABOUT a spacetime.

This is in no way the same as actually CREATING IT and going there. Instead, you are making it up. You've never gone to a real space-time, or been in a real body on a real earth. You've only pretended and rehearsed what it MIGHT be like IF you could.

This is important to remember because while you are inside this seeming world, you DO actually BELIEVE that you HAVE in fact separated from God, that you HAVE sinned, that you HAVE pulled off the impossible, you HAVE made a world, and you HAVE produced a body to live in. But you haven't. You've DREAMED OF doing it, but you haven't actually done it in truth.

There's a huge difference between actually doing something, and just believing that you are doing it. Between imagining what it might be like if you could do it, and actually doing it. The truth is that we are not living inside an ACTUAL SEPARATION. We're not in a real spacetime. WE're just CONCEIVING of what we THINK spacetime might be like, IF it were possible.

It's like drawing up the plans for a new city, and then visualising the plans, and then imagining that you're in the city by being "in the plans", without EVER building the actual city.

This is why you are forgivable, and everything is forgivable. Because you haven't actually SEPARATED, you haven't sinned, you're not guilty, and you can never die. All you've done is deceive yourself that you've done something impossible.

Spacetime isn't an ACTUAL attack on God. Bodies aren't ACTUALLY bodies. The world isn't ACTUALLY here. Death doesn't ACTUALLY happen. It's a dream in the mind, an imagined picturing of wishful thinking, a kind of hallucinating of a world that we wish COULD exist, but DOES NOT.

Because it doesn't really exist, and you have not really therefore separated, you must be innocent still. You must be MISTAKEN, simply because you believe that this NOT A WORLD, is actually a world. That you having NOT SEPARATED, is actually a real separation.

You really think you've done it, pulled it off, made an opposite to God, proven that God's son can die, that you can suffer, that you are something you're not. And because you THINK you have done this, you think you are guilty. But thankfully you haven't ACTUALLY DONE ANYTHING AT ALL. You're just a bit confused and lost in the blueprint for another world, thinking it's actually been created when all it is is an idea of what it could never be.

This is why you remain always innocent, because you have not done what you think you've done. And if you believe you have really separated, you are mistaken. If you believe you are really a body, you are mistaken. If you believe you're in a world here, you're mistaken. Believing the IMAGINED WORLD to be ACTUAL, is the only mistake.

Actual separation never happened. Only the faulty belief in it, a dream of a world that never was.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"There is no peace except the peace of God because He has one Son, who cannot make a world in opposition to God's Will and to his own, which is the same as His. What could he hope to find in such a world? It cannot have reality because it never was created. Is it here that he would seek for peace? Or must he see that, as he looks on it, the world can but deceive? Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"You are DEVOTING your mind to what you DO NOT WANT. How real can this devotion be? If you do not want it, it was never created. If it was never created, it is nothing. Can you REALLY devote yourself to nothing?"

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured."

"Perception seems to TEACH you what you see. Yet it but witnesses to what YOU taught. It is the outward picture of a wish, an image that you WANTED to be true."

"You need to be aware of what the Holy Spirit uses to replace the image of a body in your mind."

"This ____ is an image which I have made."

"That ____ is an image which I have made."

"An idol is an image of your brother"

"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."

The vital truth of forgiveness, is to recognize that what you thought happened, DID NOT HAPPEN.

"Forgiveness is the recognition that what you think your brother did has not OCCURRED."

This doesn't mean that it happened and then you forget about it. It doesn't mean you remember it and trust your memory of it. It doesn't mean there are real consequences that continually PROVE that it happened.

It means it literally DID NOT OCCUR. EVER.

Jesus says of the separation and the world:

"The changes wrought are substanceless. All events are nowhere."

This is a central idea. Not simply that the world exists or existed and we need to deal with it. But that the world DOES NOT exist, IS NOT happening, and NEVER DID happen. Essentially, that there IS NO WORLD.

I am not sure if many of us are willing to take our forgiveness to this extreme. Because we can recall "doing things" in the world. We can remember "sins", attacks, happenings. But even the slightest hint of the idea that "you did it" or "they did it" IS the belief that sin is real.

No one ever really DID anything, because of the CONTEXT of this entire world.

This world is nothing but A DREAM. It is an imaginary world. It has NO real consequences UPON anything real. It IS UNREALITY. It is the unreal world. Not one single thing in it is really happening. Not one single appearance is really there. It is an ILLUSION of a world.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it. For what He creates must be eternal as Himself."

Forgiveness isn't merely the overlooking of what "is there". It is the recognition that, literally, IT IS NOT THERE. This requires that you remember the entire CONTEXT of what you are INSIDE OF when you think that stuff is happening.

IF this world were reality, then yes, everything it is would REALLY be happening. And all sins would be real. And all attack is real. And all damage, suffering and death is real. IF the world is real, then it is ALL VALID, and it is all of God.

But if this world IS NOT real, if it is ONLY a dream and nothing more, then this COMPLETELY INVALIDATES absolutely everything within it. Not one single event is really happening. Not one single image is true. Not one single planet really exists. And NONE OF IT is real.

NONE OF IT!

The ultimate recognition of this fact, in its fullest possible capacity, is the recognition that THERE IS NO WORLD. AT ALL. It does not really exist. It is not there. Nothing is happening there. And no-one is living in it. There IS no history. There IS no past. There IS no planet.

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

So when you consider, indeed remember, that THIS IS A DREAM WORLD, not a REAL world, it completely reframes everything that happens. Or rather, it even brings into question WHETHER anything is happening, and indeed WHETHER there is EVEN a world here.

Space-time is 100% fiction! It is a BELIEF and nothing more. A mistaken idea of separation and delay. Space and time don't even really exist.

So any "sins" that seem to occur, any happenings, any events, any attacks, and sicknesses, any deaths, any day to day lives, any people going to jobs, any houses being inhabited, any lakes being swum in, any wars being waged, all of is JUST A DREAM, WITHIN an imaginary context. And so ALL OF IT IS A LIE.

IT IS NOT HAPPENING.

And it is ONLY when you can recognize that YOU DID NOT REALLY DO what you think you did, that you can RECEIVE THE CURE, which is the atonement. And atonement IS forgiveness. There is no sin because sin is impossible, and recognizing this is atonement. You HAVE NOT sinned because you CANNOT sin, because THERE IS NOWHERE TO SIN and sin is impossible everywhere. NOTHING CAN HAPPEN OUTSIDE OF GOD'S KINGDOM and THIS world, earth, and all the solar systems and galaxies, IS the illusion of exile outside of heaven.

The shit does not exist.

You know this deep down. And you KNOW that if there is even a SHRED of a notion that this world IS REAL, then EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER DONE IS A REAL SIN. And it cannot be forgiven. You can only forgive an illusion and cannot forgive real sin. Sin has to be UNREAL for you to forgive it. Only when your sins are recognized as NON EXISTENT are you aware of your innocence. And they are non-existent because they are IMPOSSIBLE.

You have never sinned. You never will. And no-one has ever sinned against you. Sin does not exist anywhere ever. Nothing has happened. All of spacetime is fiction. "The world of bodies is the world of sin." A world of sin cannot exist in God's world of innocence. You have NEVER sinned. You WILL never sin. YOU CANNOT SIN. You HAVE NOT sinned. You are just as holy and innocent as when God created you. And all the world will vanish.

THE WORLD IS NOTHING.

"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."

"God creates only mind awake. He does not sleep, and His creations cannot share what He gives not, nor make conditions which He does not share with them. The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere.

What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

When you contrast what is true in God's reality, versus what seems to be true or possible in this world, you will find a great discrepancy. A HUGE contradiction.

In God's truth, nothing real can be threatened. God is permanence. He is absolute factual reality. He is changeless and can never be destroyed. He is purely creative and constructive and totally devoid of suffering. And he can never die. Anything he creates MUST share all of these attributes, because they are extensions of his own nature and kind.

Then look to the physical world you are familiar with. Look at the fact that there is death happening. There are leaves falling from the trees and rotting. Someone's dog just got run over by a car. People are being shot. There are graveyards filled with decaying bodies. You can go there and look at the graves for yourself. You can go visit a morgue perhaps and see death in the flesh.

However, if God's reality is TRUE, and always true, as it must be to BE true, how is it POSSIBLE that there is death or attack of any kind? Can it BE true, that there is attack and death and murder in any form at all, if God's reality is that REAL THINGS are unattackable? How is it possible that you can look at a dead body? How is it possible that you can see leaves falling from trees? How is it possible that you can attack someone's body or be attacked by another?

It cannot both be true, that attack is impossible, and that attack is possible. There is no sense or sanity in that. ONLY ONE of them can be true. When it is blatantly obvious that everything in heaven is utterly immortal, invulnerable, eternal, permanent, and completely incapable of being changed by anyone against God's will. .... what then are the implications of that for the things which appear to COMPLETELY CONTRADICT that truth?

If you hold in your mind the FACT that in reality nothing real can ever be threatened or harmed or made to suffer or die, and then you quickly look at this world and see all of that happening ALL AROUND YOU, HOW "on earth" can you justify that IT IS POSSIBLE AT ALL? How can there be ANY TRUTH to this world at all?

Now we're not merely talking here about states of perception. You can be in false perception and believe very strongly that DEATH IS POSSIBLE. Even though this is obviously in TOTAL VIOLATION of God's reality. Death is UTTERLY impossible to God and his Kingdom.

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

"Be confident that your creations are as safe as you are. 12 The Kingdom is perfectly united and perfectly protected, and the ego will not prevail against it."

You can perceive for example that leaves are falling from trees right now. That IS DEATH. The leaves are going through a process of change. They are affected by the weather. They are under attack by the cold. They are PROVING that death is possible.

Then, you can move into what we call true perception. Supposedly this true perception is going to lift away the BELIEF or MEANING that leaves falling from trees "is real death". It's going to lift away the "proof" that falling leaves succeed in violating God's reality. But even if this is so, even if you interpret them to "not mean death", to see THROUGH their illusion of death, to not BUY INTO their death, you should really NOT SEE THEM AT ALL.

Leaves falling from trees IS STILL a process of dying, no matter how you interpret it or what meaning you give to it. A body laying in the ground ROTTING, is still actually "proof of sin". Why isn't the body upright and moving around, symbolizing life? Why does it not have vitality and strength and health? Why does it SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and decay? No matter HOW you look at it, the body is still in a FORM which represents the idea "attack is possible." EVEN IF you see it from a healed perspective.

"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."

True perception merely shows you a reinterpretation of the PROOF OF DEATH, in which the proof is disregarded. You RECOGNIZE that it is NOT REAL. That there CANNOT BE death because of God's truth that death is impossible. You OVERLOOK the death and do not buy into it. You do not BELIEVE in it or give it the meaning of fact, truth, or reality. You WITHDRAW reality from it and take back its seeming power to do anything. And this renders it nothing more than an ILLUSION OF A LIE OF A WORLD. It is the recognition that TRULY, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE.

What is impossible, in truth, simply CANNOT EXIST. It CANNOT HAPPEN. It CANNOT BE THERE TO SEE. If you see it, if you perceive it, in ANY way, you are seeing somethign which violates God's reality. This is why "you cannot behold the world and know God."

"The world can add nothing to the power and the glory of God and His holy Sons, but it can blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it."

If you behold the world, if it seems to be THERE AT ALL, you are blinded to God. Because in God, the things of this world are NOT POSSIBLE. There are no falling leaves in God. There are no burial sites. There are no mass graves from war. There is no decay or loss or famine or disease. There is no attack or murder or guns or violence. These are NOT POSSIBLE.

So you have to really deeply ask yourself. When it boils down to it, IF IT IS TRUE that in God's truth all forms of attack and death ARE UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE, that they cannot even show up in ANY WAY, with any interpretation ..... CAN IT BE POSSIBLE that the things you're seeing as "a world", as earth, is even POSSIBLE AT ALL? Can it exist? Can it BE there to be seen? Can it even SEEM to exist? Should it even be HAPPENING?

The honest and sane answer to this is NO. The world CANNOT EXIST if God's reality is true. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS cannot be existing, or happening, or showing up, or being perceived in any manner, if God's reality is true. There cannot be graves or guns or gangs or guilt or regurgitation or garages or gargoyles. There cannot be forms. There cannot be objects. There cannot even be planets. There cannot even be EVENTS of any kind. Because there is no time in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. ****When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

1) What seems to happen has NOT OCCURRED. ("Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did has NOT OCCURRED."

2) The changes wrought are substanceless. ANY KIND OF CHANGE is an illusion. "They can be easily be changed BECAUSE they are illusions." All illusions are changeable, reality is not. Anything which changes IS NOT REAL. They have no real substance or meaning.

3) All events are nowhere. There is no history. There is no time. There is no past and no future. There are no elections, no wars, no celebrations, no tv shows being watched, no food being eaten, no forests burning, no snow melting, no fish swimming in oceans, no people arguing other meaningless piffle, no clouds parting, no sunsets, no puppies and kittens, no icea cream falling on the ground, nothing. NO EVENTS ANYWHERE.

This is because there is no world. That there is no world is the ONLY SANE CONCLUSION you can come to, when you examine that this world is utterly IMPOSSIBLE. Nothing in it can POSSIBLY be happening if God's reality is true. And if you are seeing it happen, if you are believing your eyes, YOU ARE INSANE.

So long as there are graveyards, there is the illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible. Something not true seeming to be true. There CANNOT BE graveyards. Nothing in God can ever die, so what are graveyards for but to try to PROVE that something IMPOSSIBLE is happening? Death is a lie. "There is no death, the son of God is free."

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

What do you WANT to be true? That dying is possible, or that it is not? Your choice. And I am under no laws but God's.

"***Perhaps you think you did not make the world, but came unwillingly to what was made already*** (earth is not objective reality), hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (you wished it into being with wishful thinking), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly.

Ideas leave not their source. This central theme is often stated in the text, and must be borne in mind if you would understand the lesson for today. It is not pride which tells you that you made the world you see, and that it changes as you change your mind. But ***it is pride that argues you have come into a world quite separate from yourself*** (the idea that earth exists objectively and independently from your mode of perception), impervious to what you think, and quite apart from what you chance to think it is.

***There is no world!*** (earth does not exist because IT IS IMPOSSIBLE!) This is the central thought the course attempts to teach. Not everyone is ready to accept it, and each one must go as far as he can let himself be led along the road to truth. He will return and go still farther, or perhaps step back a while and then return again.

But healing is the gift of those who are prepared to learn ***there is no world***, and can accept the lesson now. Their readiness will bring the lesson to them in some form which they can understand and recognize. Some see it suddenly on point of death, and rise to teach it. Others find it in ***experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.*** And some will find it in this course, and in the exercises that we do today."

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in experience that is not of this world, which shows them that the world does not exist because what they behold must be the truth, and yet it clearly contradicts the world.

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This pretty much explains why you have the freedom to deny God.

"If you will accept yourself as God created you, you will be incapable of suffering. But to do this, you must acknowledge Him as your Creator. This is not because you will be punished otherwise. It is merely because your acknowledgment of your Father IS the acknowledgment of yourself as you ARE. Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free.

You do not realize how much you have denied yourself, and how much God, in His love, would not have it so. Yet He would not interfere with you, because He would not know His Son if he were not free. To interfere with you would be to attack HIMSELF, and God is not insane. When you denied HIM, you WERE insane. Would you have Him SHARE your insanity? God will never cease to love His Son, and His Son will never cease to love Him. That was the condition of His Son's Creation, fixed forever in the Mind of God. To know that is sanity. To deny it is insanity. God gave HIMSELF to you in your Creation, and His gifts ARE eternal. Would you deny yourself to Him?"

Note also that "separation" as in the theoretical idea that you CAN BE separate (which is impossible), is totally different from "THE separation", which is another name for the fall of man, the tiny mad idea. We DID in fact have the idea, we DID believe it, and we DID "fall". This is why there appears to be a facebook. BUT, the fall is not actual real separation, it's just belief in it and a denial that actual separation is impossible.

"The Separation (not ACTUAL separation, but the state of believing it's possible) HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay."

So we did have the tiny mad idea, we did go into it through belief (which is really denial), and we did find ourselves in a "lower order reality". But this state in which we SEEM separate is not ACTUAL separation or real separation, which is impossible. It's just us MISTAKEDLY believing that it's possible and happening.

THE separation, the fall from Heaven, did occur. But it was not an actual separation.

"The separation was not a loss of perfection, but a failure in communication. "

The failure to communicate (to receive, to give equally), resulted in a state of denial, not listening, being unaware of perfection, a breakdown in the experience of oneness. It did not change anything perfect, it just closed the communication channels to a degree.

"What God DOES know is that His communication channels are not open to Him, so that He cannot impart His joy and know that His Children are wholly joyous. This is an ongoing process, not in time, but in eternity. God's extending outward, though not His completeness, is blocked when the Sonship does not communicate with Him as one. So He thinks, "My Children sleep, and must be awakened.""

"Those who communicate fear are promoting attack, and attack always BREAKS communication, and therefore makes communion impossible."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects. Together, we can laugh them BOTH away, and understand that time can NOT intrude upon eternity. It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time."

"Adam's "sin" could have touched none of you, had you not believed that it was the FATHER Who drove him out of Paradise. For it is in that belief that knowledge of the Father was lost, for it is only those who do not understand Him that COULD believe it."

"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.

Man's spiritual eye can sleep, but as will shortly appear in the notes (reference Bob, elevator operator) a sleeping eye can still see. One translation of the Fall, a view emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, and worthy of note, is that "a deep sleep fell upon Adam". While the Bible continues to associate this sleep as a kind of anaesthetic utilized for protection of Adam during the creation of Eve, Mrs. Eddy was correct in emphasizing that nowhere is there any reference made to his waking up. While Christian Science is clearly incomplete, this point is much in its favor."

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

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

The fruit of only ONE tree was "forbidden" to man in his symbolic garden. But God could not have forbidden it, or it could not have BEEN eaten. If God knows His children, and I assure you he does, would he have put them in a position where their own destruction was possible?"

"Eating of the tree of knowledge is a symbolic expression for incorporating into the self the ability for self-creation. This is the ONLY sense in which God and His souls are NOT co-creators. The belief that they ARE is implicit in the "self concept," a concept now made acceptable by its WEAKNESS, and explained by a tendency of the self to create an IMAGE of itself."

"Until the Separation, which is a better term than the Fall, nothing was lacking. This meant that man had no needs at all. If he had not deprived himself, he would never have experienced them.

After the Separation, needs became the most powerful source of motivation for human action. All behavior is essentially motivated by needs, but behavior itself is not a Divine attribute. The body is the mechanism for behavior."

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

"You who prefer specialness to sanity could not obtain it in your right minds. You were at peace until you asked for special favor. And God did not give it. For the request was alien to Him, and you could not ask this of a Father who truly loved His Son. Therefore, you made of Him an UNloving father, demanding of Him what only such a father COULD give. And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father. He feared what he had made, but still more did he fear his REAL father, having attacked his glorious equality WITH Him.

In peace he needed nothing, and asked for nothing. In war he DEMANDED everything, and FOUND nothing. For how could the gentleness of love respond to his demands, EXCEPT by departing in peace, and returning to the Father? If the son did not wish to REMAIN in peace, he could not remain at all. For a darkened mind cannot live in the light, and it must seek a place of darkness, where it can believe it is where it is NOT. God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"Whenever projection in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth. If you will consider carefully what this entails, the following will become quite apparent:

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

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

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

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

These related distortions represent a picture of what actually occurred in the Separation. None of this existed before, nor does it actually exist now."

"The Garden of Eden, which is described as a literal garden in the Bible, was not originally an actual garden at all. It was merely a mental state of complete need-lack. Even in the literal account, it is noteworthy that the pre-Separation state was essentially one in which man needed nothing."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul. The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God.

The Creation of the Soul is already fully accomplished. The mind, if it votes to do so, becomes a medium by which the Soul can create along the line of its own creation. If it does not freely elect to do so, it retains this creative ability, but places itself under tyrannous rather than authoritative control. As a result, what it creates is imprisonment, because such are the dictates of tyrants.

To "change your mind" means to place it at the disposal of True authority. The miracle is thus a sign that the mind has elected to be guided by Christ in HIS service. The abundance of Christ is the natural result of choosing to follow him."

So you see, we are IN a state of sleep, dreaming, denying, pretending not to be as God created us, imagining things are true which are not, being unwilling, and trying to give it reality through belief. But none of it is true, or really happening, what it represents (an actual separation) is fictional, and it's just an illusion masquerading as a separation.

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

Ok's let's step back and look at the big picture. God exists. God created the Kingdom of Heaven, which comprises the sonship and the Holy Spirit. You and your brothers co-create to add to the Kingdom. The holy trinity is all that really exists.

"Your creations are your gift to the Holy Trinity, created in gratitude for YOUR creation."

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

"The Holy Trinity is holy BECAUSE It is One."

Then there was this thing we call the separation from God, which is a mad idea. It's mad because it's not possible in reality, so believing it is insane. It's a mistaken belief that you have become separate through sin, when you haven't. This belief denies God and therefore makes the awareness of reality unconscious to you. It induces a kind of sleep state where God seems to be denied.

Denial does not change the truth, nor does it affect reality in any way. It is merely an attempt to hide from it, by shutting it out of awareness and pretending it is not true. Denial in fact implies that what has been denied IS STILL THERE, which is why denial contradicts itself.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while."

"The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized."

In this sleep state we dream of an entire world whose nature is completely opposite to heaven. A world of space and time and galaxies and planets and civilizations. Worlds populated by bodies at war with each other. All of this is nothing but a fiction, because it cannot be true or really exist or happen in the Kingdom of God.

"earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way." "For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

In the dream of space and time, it SEEMS like impossible things happen. Sin occurs. Wars occur. Events seem to happen. People seem to do stuff. But the fact is that it is all a form of wishful thinking, it is all impossible, and none of it has any bearing on the reality of the Kingdom. This means that the entire history of the universe we made means absolutely nothing, does nothing, and does not even really exist.

"It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

The important thing to realize is that the premise of God leads to the conclusion of heaven, and the premise of "not God" (separation, attack on God) leads to the dream of hell and death.

If the premise for the world of death is FALSE, and if in truth the world is JUST A DREAM and has no reality in God's creation, then anything that seems to happen in it IS VOID. Every event is just part of a fictional dream. Every attack is a fantasy. Every dead body is an illusion. Every war is happening to nothing. Every conflict is artificial and make-believe. Every form of suffering is completely impossible.

Not one single thing in the dream world bleeds over into the reality of the Kingdom. Not one single attack has any effect whatsoever on anything real - remembering "nothing real can be threatened." Not one single child of God can ever by hurt, because all God's children are immortal and perfect. Not one single sin has every occurred.

Anything that you think you did in this world, anything that anyone else seems to do in this world, has NO EFFECT on anything real. No-one is ever really at war. No-one is every really hurt. No-one is ever invaded or attacked or suffering or dying. This is A DREAM. It's a dream that you're having because you are ASLEEP. Your mind is hallucinating a terrible world of conflict and nightmares.

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

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you REALLY understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who SEEM to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are WHOLLY unreal?"

The ONLY way therefore to "forgive" what's seeming to happen, is to recognize that IT ISN'T. This is the proper use of denial to deny anything not of God any reality whatsoever. If the premise of this world is that the world is real, then every event is real and meaningful and true. But if the premise of this world is that it is UNREAL and a DREAM, then NOTHING that seems to happen means anything whatsoever. Nothing is having any real effect on anything real, because this world is NOT REAL.

If someone seems to attack someone in an UNREAL world, there has not really been an attack. If someone wages a war in an unreal world using unreal weapons to invade and attack an unreal country on the basis of believing there are "real benefits" to doing so, or justified reasons for anger, or any other such nonsense, then those people are delusional. They are fighting over scraps of dreams, imaginary lands, fictional purposes, and for completely made-up reasons. This is insanity.

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven. What is sin except a false idea about God's Son? Forgiveness merely sees its falsity, and therefore lets it go. What then is free to take its place is now the Will of God."

In order to recognize that what you THINK your brother DID, has NOT OCCURRED ..... you have to recognize this whole world is a dream. ONLY IF it is a dream can it be true that it has NOT OCCURRED. Even if you saw it, even if you remember it, even if it's on the TV, even if it's in the history books, even if there appears to be "real bloodshed" or evidence or proof of sin, even if huge chunks of the planet are destroyed.... if the whole premise of this environment is that IT IS NOT REAL, then NONE OF THIS HAS OCCURRED in reality.

There is no war in God. There is no pain in God. There is no attack in God. There is no conflict in God. There is no ownership in God. There is no invasion in God. There are no weapons in God. There is no land in God. There is no earth in God. There are no bodies in God. There is no disagreement in God. There is no suffering in God. NONE of these things are POSSIBLE in God because God is permanently perfect, his creation is perfect, his children are perfect, and nothing else is EVER true.

This is what you need to see if you want to forgive ANYTHING in this world. You cannot forgive it if you think it has really happened. You cannot forgive it if you think there is real proof that it happened. This is why the course asks you to "demonstrate that you had no hurt of him", which you do by healing your body, in order to SHOW HIM PROOF of his innocence, defying his attempts to destroy you, in order to testify to the fact that nothing can happen against your reality.

"For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. He holds not the proof of sin, before his brother's eyes."

Nothing in the history of the human race, or the history of planet Earth, or the history of this all space and time, has happened. "All events are nowhere". NOTHING has happened. There is not even really a world here.

"There is no world." The ONLY way it is forgiven is by recognizing it has no substance, no value, no importance, no truth, no reality, no existence.

Your brother is forgiven because he literally in reality CANNOT DO ANYTHING to you. Your brother is forgiven because in reality HE CANNOT SIN against anything real. Your brother is forgiven because it is NOT POSSIBLE to wage war in the Kingdom of God. Your brother is forgiven because everything he SEEMS to do to sin is happening entirely in a MISTAKEN state of mind, in a dreaming state of sleep, in a TOTAL FANTASY, which has NO REALITY AND NO TRUTH.

None of this has happened. Only the Kingdom of God exists. There is no world. There is no war.

"How simple is salvation! All it says is what was never true is not true now, and never will be. The impossible has NOT occurred, and CAN have no effects. And that is all."

I've found personally that I cannot fully let something go so long as I believe it has any reality at all. If I believe it happened, then I believe it had some reality. That it was an event, in which "something" occurred. This somethingness is precisely what holds it in place in my mind and gives it a seeming existence.

You cannot forgive something when you are making it real. If the world is in fact just a dream, which it is, but if you believe it is not just a dream, you will hold onto it psychologically. This is attachment. It means you believe in it being more than just imaginary, as though it is a reality. It means you have accepted it into your mind as having truth.

The ONLY way to accept atonement, which cures all such sickness, is to fully recognize that what you thought happened did not happen. This isn't merely a matter of saying, someone did something but you're willing to let it go. Nor is it a matter of saying, the events transpired but you're willing to look at it with love. You have to actually get to the point where you recognize IT DID NOT HAPPEN.

The reason that it did not happen, or the recognition of this, requires a change in the PREMISE of the world. If the premise is that separation occurred, producing a dream world, which has some reality, then you CANNOT forgive anything. Once the premise shifts to "there has never been a separation", in which a world opposite to reality does not exist at all, and all events are nothing, only then is your mind in a position to truly let it go.

So long as you believe that anything even occurred at all, that the happenings were NOT a dream, that there were some REAL consequences, and something was AFFECTED, you will not let it go. You won't be able to. It is your belief in it having a power and a causation and a proof of sin, that anchors you to it and fuels it, keeping it going. You cannot fully turn your back on it until you can recognize it as NOTHING. Illusions must be recognized as NOTHING in order to disappear.

Similarly you cannot forgive the world fully until you can recognize that it is absolutely nothing. There cannot be a single bit of belief in it left. It can hold nothing that you want. You have to withdraw all value from it. You have to not accuse it of anything. You have to not believe that it has ever done anything to you or anyone. That it has had no real effect, no consequences, all of its changes are completely substanceless, all of the events are nowhere, and nothing ever happened but a dream.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

This seems like a major stretch for most of us to accept. Jesus isn't merely saying that the past happened that you should forgive what happened. He's saying this ENTIRE world, all of human history, the whole history of spacetime, all events, all happenings, all changes, are ALL ENTIRELY FALSE.

All fiction. All hallucinations. All made-up and meaningless. With no real causation and no real effect on anything real. With no threat against reality and having absolutely no real substance. That this is all literally NOTHING, and will completely vanish and be forgotten when you fully awaken to God.

That means that to truly forgive and let something go, you HAVE to recognize that it is absolutely nothing. This is only possible by recognizing this entire realm of experience is UNREAL, ie a dream. And being unreal, none of what appears to happen means anything or causes anything, or has any effect on anything or anyone.

Forgiveness of the world is the recognition that THERE IS NO WORLD. Only an illusory world, recognized as truly NOTHING, can BE forgiven. It can be forgiven BECAUSE it is not there. It can be let go BECAUSE there is nothing really there to hold onto. It can be accepted as having never happened BECAUSE it has not really happened at all.

This is merely coming to an acceptance that what you thought you lost was never something to have to begin with, and that you never really had it to lose. It is an acceptance that anything anyone seemed to do to you or anyone, was never done to you or anyone, and nothing real has ever been threatened. It's a willingness to stop using scapegoats and characters and events and groups and so on as reasons to dramatize your engagement with a fictional world, trying to hold on to suffering and victimhood in order to avoid God.

Given that forgiveness truly means to recognize that what you think your brother did DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL, you have to literally come to recognize that even the events did not really transpire, the things said were not really said, the actions taken were not real actions, the consequences were nothing whatsoever against anything real, and even your memories of it happening are false. Memory of the past is just another body sense mechanism which pretends to make the world seem real.

I forgive [xyz] person/place/happening/event simply because it literally was nothing, did not happen, has not happened in heaven's reality, has affected nothing, has caused nothing, has no power over anything, did nothing, was not a real sin, did not produce real loss, had no effect on me or anyone, and was never really even there. Only God's Kingdom really exists, and only creation is a real event. "Only the creations of light are real."

"Today I will recognize that all this has not occurred."

"Forgiveness recognizes what you thought your brother did to you has not occurred. It does not pardon sins and make them real. It sees there was no sin. And in this view are all your sins forgiven."

"If you remain as God created you appearances cannot replace the truth, health cannot turn to sickness, nor can death be substitute for life, or fear for love. All this has not occurred, if you remain as God created you."

"To condemn is thus impossible in truth. What seems to be its influence and its effects have not occurred at all."

"Just as forgiveness overlooks all sins that never were accomplished, healing but removes illusions that have not occurred. Just as the real world will arise to take the place of what has never been at all, healing offers restitution for imagined states and false ideas which dreams embroider into pictures of the truth."

"Instead, it merely asks that you respond appropriately to what is NOT real, by not perceiving what has not occurred."

"Both this world and the real world are illusions because right-mindedness merely overlooks, or forgives, what never happened."

"The instant the idea of separation entered the mind of God's Son, in that same instant was God's Answer given. In time this happened very long ago. In reality it never happened at all."

"Everything God wills is not only possible, but has already happened. And that is WHY the past has gone. It NEVER HAPPENED in reality. Only in your minds, WHICH THOUGHT IT DID, is its undoing needful."

"The childhood of your body and its place of shelter are a memory now so distorted that you merely hold a picture of a past that never happened."

"But the Holy Spirit tells you that even RETURN is unnecessary, because what never happened CANNOT involve ANY problem."

"Nor to its results, as this world sees them; sickness and death and misery and pain. These things have not occurred, because the Holy Spirit sees them not, and gives no power to their seeming source."

Physical objects are forms, taking on one form or another, to produce a range of forms. Some of them we call life forms. Others we might call lifeless forms, forms of materials, forms of objects etc.

The body's eyes look at these forms and takes them to be exactly what they are. It looks at the shape, the position, the color, the nature of it, and claims that this is what the form MEANS. It derives meaning from the form based on how the form looks.

A form will then imply something, suggest something, seemingly tell you a truth about itself and its world, as if the form is a cause which has influence and power. And so we look to forms with the body's eyes and ask the form to tell us what the world means.

We see the form of a broken body and we think that this means the body is damaged. We see the form of a puppy and think this means it was recently born and still innocent. We see a rotting apple and think this means death is taking place.

We constantly are sending the body's eyes out to look upon the world, as if the world can then tell us what everything means just by looking at it. If a body is sick we think it means the person is sick. If the body is dead we think life has ended. And we thus allow the world to dictate every sense of meaning.

This has happened, therefore .... that has happened, therefore. ... constantly analysing situations and scenery and coming up with explanations based on what appears in form to be there.

This way of seeing is what we call false perception or unforgiveness. It holds the form against itself and derives meaning from it, suggesting the form is defining meaning from the outside in, telling us a story of truth through perception.

But all we're doing here is failing to overlook the form, we're fixating on differences, emphasising the way one thing is not like another, finding the ways that nothing is shared between them, and trying to elicit meaningfulness from the uniqueness of the objects.

When something then seems to go horribly wrong, there is a severe damage to the body, a car is crashing, a house is on fire, or any other such drama in which form is screaming at us to believe it, if we only look at it based on its form we will be horrified.

Whatever the form dictates we'll take as truth, and will react accordingly. We'll absorb the hierarchy of illusions and have emotional reactions and disturbance based entirely on what the situation appears to be. We can't seem to rest in peace until all the forms have resume their proper arrangement and the bodies have stopped dying and the threats and dangers and pointed spiky things have become blunted.

If all we do is look at the physical world, believing everything we see, not questioning anything, falling for differences and appearances, buying into every little nuance of change and inequality in order to tell what's going on and what it means, we are lost and blinded. There is nothing so blinding as perceiving forms.

Forgiveness asks for an entirely different way of looking at this. It does not mean that you continue to focus on specific, individual, exclusive, separate things, in exactly the same was as before, with the body's eyes, but trying to find some kind of new angle on it. This is not an improvement whatsoever.

Forgiveness actually requires that all the sense of differences, inequalities, uniqueness, shapes, sizes, colors, behaviours, all physical properties, be completely OVERLOOKED, not dwelled upon, not seen, not thought to mean anything, not thought to dictate what the situation is, and no sense of truth whatsoever is derived from them.

Forgiveness must transcend the form entirely and look past it, past all sense of "many separate things" to look for a singular oneness of truth. And that truth is not inherent to those forms, or a part of them, but lies beyond them, because the forms were made to hide the truth entirely and to obscure all meaning. This is why Christ Vision does not become distracted by bodies or forms or the planet and looks past it to the light, to real meaning which lies beyond all objects and all physicality.

When we are buying into the way the world looks, with separate objects vying for attention, objects at war with each other, objects having differences, and being deceived to believe that these differences are important and meaningful, we are not being forgiving. We are being lost in a dream and falling for an illusion.

The appearance of one object seeming to have properties that another object does not have, if regarded as meaning something, is an illusion. It deceives you just by looking at it and not seeing through the disguise. Believing that a bike is not a house and a car is not an airplane, your vision splits apart and separates out and becomes totally fragmented, turning into a hierarchy of illusions instead of a singular vision.

These appearances of different form are all lies and deceptions designed to steer the body's physical sight down a rabbit hole into a dark corner where the mind cannot escape. This is temptation. This is falsely perceiving. This is believing the world is real and that constantly shifting forms and constantly dying objects are somehow the truth.

To forgive we have to find a way to not simply regard "what happens physically" to be in any way true, in any way a whole story, or in any way meaningful. A dark disturbing physical situation should not be seen as dark and disturbing. The darkness and dustrbingness are just properties of its form, the appearance it's taking, and is NOT meaningful.

A bloodied body should not induce feelings of horror and upset, otherwise the form is now acting like a cause and is dictating the truth based on its shape and appearance. A broken body, a disabled body, a suffering person, a scenario of starvation, a warzone, a battlefield, are all deceptive lies in which objects in certain forms suggest that certain things are true, that bad things have happened and that they are real.

Configuraitons of objects are meaningless. The entire physical world is meaningless. Its forms do NOT mean anything at all. Bodies in one state and not another does not mean anything. Sickness in one form or another does not mean anything. Bodies seeming to be alive or dead does not mean anything. These differences are all lies. A change in form from one state to another is utterly meaningless.

Remember that we have given everything all the meaning that we think it has, but typically we're doing this by looking at the form of objects and asking it to dictate TO us what "that" means. One shape means this, another shape means that. If the shape changes, the meaning changes. And then our response to it changes.

What we need to be striving for is a complete ignoring of all forms, all physicality, all objects, looking past it with forgiveness, taking none of it seriously, believing nothing we see through physical sight, ignoring all differences, having absolutely no change of reaction when external circumstances change, and being completely unmoved by the bullshit lies and temptations of the physical world. Not one single thing the physical seems to suggest is true. And nothing that happens physically is really possible in God's reality.

True meaning comes from God and is a singular whole meaning, a consistent unconditional meaning, which does not change or waver. It is the meaning of love and is so genuine and valuable that it is truly meaningful to us. It is all that means anything at all to us, and it's all that we really want. We can look out through this one meaning onto a world of a trillion meanings and disregard all the world's claims as false. Nothing in the world matters and it means nothing.

A teacher of God, a healer, does not consider for a moment the appearances of form, the forms of sickness, the stories of suffering about how this form came about, the family history, the background of what happens or the chain of events. None of it means anything and none of it is a cause. The miraculous mind considers only administering the love and truth that is missing, extending the power of God to fill and erase the gap, ignoring the form entirely.

The forms may change, the body may heal, the world may resurrect, but these too are illusions that ultimately mean nothing. Temporarily they symbolise changes in the mind and perception but ultimately there is no world to mean anything anyway. How can a world which does not exist mean something, and how can the events that transpire mean anything at all? There is no meaning to be found in a meaningless world. Only God's Kingdom of heaven has any meaning at all.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

"Therefore, He OPPOSES differences in form as meaningful, and emphasizes always that THESE DIFFERENCES DO NOT MATTER."

"ONLY the form of error attracts the ego. Meaning it does not RECOGNIZE, and does not know if it is there or not. Everything which 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."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE."

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning. Brought to truth, its senselessness is quite apparent. Kept APART from truth, it SEEMS to have a meaning and be real."

"Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"For form is not enough for meaning"

"The Holy Spirit is not concerned with form at all, being aware only of MEANING."

"Creation cannot even be conceived of in the world. It has no meaning here. Forgiveness is the closest it can come to earth. For being Heaven-borne, it has no form at all. Yet God created One Who has the power to translate into form the wholly formless. What He makes are dreams, but of a kind so close to waking that the light of day already shines in them, and eyes already opening behold the joyful sights their offerings contain."

"Come home. You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you, though you sought to make them meaningful. This world is not where you belong. You are a stranger here."

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"God knows not form. He CANNOT answer you in terms which have no meaning. And YOUR will could not BE satisfied with empty forms, made but to fill a gap which is not there."

"Fear is the emotion of the world. It has but one. Its forms are many - call them what you will - but it is one in content."

Read this carefully from ACIM.

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

These are Jesus's words. They are correct. It does not say that impossible separation from God has been made possible. It does not say that we in fact DID separate from God. It says that something called "the separation" HAS happened. There is a major difference between THE separation, and the general impossible potential for actual separation.

There is a very popular myth in ACIM circles that we're supposed to just assert that "nothing happened." Jesus is saying this is NOT appropriate and is a misuse of denial. Did you ever notice that for example you actually are having SOME KIND of experience of a world, a world in which you have a body, you type posts on facebook, you respond to people and so on? Technically speaking if these "things" were UTTERLY impossible, in the strictest sense, there is no way that you would even be able to dream of them happening. You wouldn't be ABLE to sit there right now reading these words, whether they're real or not.

There is a view of many people that the separation - confused with separation in general - did NOT happen, and therefore the logical conclusion is that "there is no facebook". This is CLEARLY A DENIAL. It makes no sense at all. It does not explain how it is clearly obviously possible for there to be some kind of a facebook, some kind of a body, some kind of a physical life.

No-one who believes that "it never happened" has ever been able to satisfactorily explain HOW ITS POSSIBLE that we can be sitting here typing little text messages to each other. They don't have an explanation because they believe we're supposed to just sort of turn a blind eye to all this stuff, slap a label of "not real" on it, PRETEND ITS NOT THERE (denial), and carry on trying to assert its unreality.

Jesus is telling you that this is a MISUSE OF DENIAL. Because in fact, per his words, "THE SEPARATION HAS OCCURRED." This isn't a real separation, it is fictional. But a fictional separation HAS occurred. A belief in, a dream of, an illusion of, an impossible separation, HAS occurred in thought, in the mind. It HAS in fact produced a whole other "order of thought" in the mind.

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

Read it carefully. The separation is NOT symbolic. Jesus says it is an ORDER OF REALITY. And that while it "lasts" ie in time, it is PERFECTLY REAL. This is NOT something that most ACIM students are very happy about, do not want to admit to, and will run away from at high speed. It seems to fly in the face of what so many people are saying, that "it never happened". Well, if it could not have possibly happened in ANY WAY, you literally would not be reading these words right now. And you are. Whether its a dream or an hallucination it doesn't matter, you ARE reading.

In the separation we did in fact produce a second order of thought and gave it a sense of reality. "Whatever you accept into your mind becomes real to you." It doesn't mean it is ULTIMATELY real, or that it really has permanent existence. It is truly an illusion of a possibility. But Jesus is clear the mind is perfectly equipped to sleep and to dream. These are NATURAL CAPABILITIES.

In fact, God gave our minds free will. And part of that TOTAL FREEDOM, is that you can freely try to use your mind to deny its own freedom. Yes, you have that freedom. It doesn't mean that anything real or possible can necessarily come from it, and it hasn't, but you CAN TRY TO. And when you do try to, your mind DOES SEEM to go to sleep, entering a state in which it dreams. This is entirely WITHIN THE LAWS OF GOD.

"Your Father created you Wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

This means God has given you the POTENTIAL, the freedom, to choose, per your own free will, whether to accept reality or not. You are CAPABLE of denying reality. This denial doesn't remove reality because denial is a pretense that you're doing something impossible. But while you are IN denial, your mind IS in a certain state. You ARE IN "the separation." This is why we DID produce a state of mind which Jesus refers to as "the separation". We DID have a mad idea, we DID fall asleep, we DID dream of spacetime, and we DID make bodies and facetime.

Denying any of this is not in line with the course. This isn't to say that these things we dream of are ultimately real, but they ARE real to the dreamer. They don't have permanence because they are denials of permanence, making them temporary, and reversible. But while they are HAPPENING, while the mind IS sleeping and dreaming, we ARE in fact CAUSING the mis-creation, the production, of states of mind, which entail a denial of reality.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

In order to return TO ultimate reality, the denial has to be undone. But the denial is, itself, an actual state of mind. It's something you're holding in your thought. You are having a dream of being separate. "You are safe in God, dreaming of exile". It is not helpful to claim that you are NOT DREAMING. "you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split."

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them."

"For you HAVE hurt yourself, and made your Self your enemy."

Jesus does not really ask that we "deny the dream is real" while STILL dreaming it. Because this is an false denial. The proper denial should END dreaming entirely. If you are still dreaming, then you are still giving reality to an order of thought.

"The Separation is NOT symbolic. It is an order of reality, or a system of thought"

This order of reality is being maintained by the mind and it HAS some reality while it is being maintained. That is why the world seems real. It is a kind of subjective reality but it's still a reality. Jesus asks us instead to ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THERE HAS BEEN A SUBJECTIVE SEPARATION - at least a state of denial and belief, a state of TRYING to oppose God - and that we must admit to this before we can heal it.

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

He doesn't say "just assert that it never happened." He doesn't say "just assert that separation is impossible." He says that you are supposed to ACCEPT THE ERROR TEMPORARILY, to acknowledge that your mind is in an unnatural state, so that you can change your mind into a more natural state. Eventually the unnatural state will diminish and be replaced by, or reveal, a more natural state. And by CHANGING YOUR MIND, which is always your freedom, you can revert it back to the service of spirit.

Remember that "The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial."

We HAVE chosen poorly, we HAVE used psychic mechanisms - mind power - thought and belief - to mis-create an illusory world. We did not create a NOTHING. We mis-created a distortion of reality. That HAS happened. But it can be undone. This far more accurately acknowledges your ACTUAL EXPERIENCE that you drive a car and eat food and go to the bathroom. There is SOME reality to this, some possibility to this, otherwise you literally could not even dream of it.

The dream is not nothing, it is a way of thinking that's out of alignment with God's will. That's why we NEED atonement. "Thus he becomes uncertain of his life, for what it is has been denied by him. It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"It is obvious, then, that when you are afraid you have placed yourself in a position where you NEED Atonement BECAUSE you have DONE something loveless because you WILLED without love. This is precisely the situation for which the Atonement was offered. The need for the remedy inspired its CREATION."

So Jesus is really saying that we did in fact enter a state of mind in which the mind does in fact experience strange illusory worlds as if they are real. A state of insanity. And we have given reality to this and it HAS SOME reality. It is relatively real, but not absolutely real. And because of this entering into a freely-chosen state of denial, a legitimate mind-state that is POSSIBLE because you have the freedom to try to deny your freedom - we DID in fact experience a "separate from God" - the fall of man.

And now we find ourselves in a mental state that NEEDS correction. There is a legitimate NEED for atonement, and we NEED to change our mind by free will in order to return to the acceptance of God's reality as the only reality that truly makes sense. A movement out of a state of sleep and denial, into a state of awakening and acceptance.

That's why the Holy Spirit was created, to guide us out of a state that we are PERFECTLY FREE TO ENTER, but which does not resonate well with our true nature, and so brings experiences of suffering. The atonement legitimately offers correction for this and restores the mind to a more natural functioning. It's not enough to just say "oh it never happened." You HAVE used your freedom and your power to choose something unnatural, and you DO need to choose again.

"What seems to be the opposite of (eternal) life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The above paragraph describes the ONLY thing that happens in the separation. The mind seems to go to sleep a while. The mind dreams of a world that doesn't really exist but seems to. Events seem to happen in it. But these events are nowhere, and the changes have no reality. The mind then wakes up, and this world it was dreaming of ceases to exist. Quite simply, at that point, the "world" which was dreamed, does not exist at all. This is what it means to say, "there is no world."

So what He's telling us simply is, you are in Heaven, dreaming of exile. You are in reality, which is God's world, DREAMING OF BEING IN ANOTHER WORLD. A second world, which your mind is making, as a result of its unconscious state. Its denial of reality is producing an hallucination of a SECOND world, which does not really exist, but seems temporarily to be very real. Upon waking, that world is nowhere. All its events are nowhere. It has had no consequences on God's world.

This is very fundamental A Course in Miracles metaphysics. You are awake, you sleep, you dream of a fake world, you wake up, the world is gone.

Now, see if you can follow this simple reasoning.

God is existence. God is infinite and unlimited. Therefore God exists everywhere without limits. He has no outer edges. You cannot be anywhere that He is not. He is everywhere always.

The idea of sleeping or dreaming, or the separation, or the tiny mad idea, or the ego, are all labels for one thing.... the idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God.

What would an opposite to God have to be?

If God exists, an opposite to God is non-existence.

If God is life, an opposite to God is death.

If God is reality, an opposite to God is unreality.

If God is true, an opposite to God is false.

If God is holy, an opposite to God is unholy.

If God is present, an opposite to God is not present.

What are we describing here? Let's group it all together. We're talking about a TOTALLY OPPOSITE state, which is non-existent, death, unreal, false, unholy, and not present.

Now, here's a simple fact. You cannot exist in non-existence. Non-Existence DOES NOT EXIST. Period. Never ever. There is no non-existence. It is nothingness. It is impossibility. You cannot be where God does not exist. You cannot go there, you cannot live there.

This idea of a total opposite to God, is the idea we had in the tiny mad idea. "What if"... I could be UNLIKE God? What if I could be NOT ALIVE? What if I could NOT EXIST? That is the tiny mad idea.

The reason it is mad, is because obviously you cannot NOT exist. You can't exist IN non-existence. The BELIEF THAT YOU CAN, is the whole problem. It's like claiming, non-existence DOES exist, and has reality, and you can go live there without God. This is a nonsense, insane idea. It is the idea we had. It is the idea we WANTED to believe in. And by believing it, we TRIED to make it real.

What were we really doing? We were BELIEVING that something which TOTALLY DOES NOT EXIST, exists. That an unreal nothingness, is real and something. Another word for that is HALLUCINATION.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

We hallucinated an entire "world", in an attempt to BELIEVE, that NON-EXISTENT NOTHINGNESS, actually has some reality. The desire to WANT it to exist, believed in it, and made it SEEM to do so, as an illusion. We MADE AN ILLUSORY WORLD, to DENY God's world, to DENY existence. A world of impossibility. A world which does not exist, but seems to, so long as we are insane.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates must be Eternal as Himself."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"The world you see is the insane thought system of those driven mad by guilt."

We made this world in an attempt to REPLACE God's world. To attack existence. To shut God out. To suggest, there is a PLACE, an existence, where GOD DOES NOT EXIST. Where His son is dead. Where God cannot enter, because it is OUTSIDE OF HIM. We constructed a world OPPOSING The Kingdom, an illusion of being EXILED outside of the Kingdom. Outside of existence. In NON-EXISTENCE. A dream of death.

"The world was made as a place where God could enter not."

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

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

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

"The hell you made"

You made, invented, dreamed, hallcuinated, a UNIVERSE, a world, including planet Earth, to shut God out, to attack existence, to reject existence, to oppose the Kingdom, to depict God's son as dead, to make it seem God does not exist, and as though sin is happening. It is the idea of a NON-EXISTENT WORLD, seeming to take the place of real existence - the real world, the Kingdom. You made an opposite to God.

You now find yourself, IN THE WORLD YOU MADE. On the planet you dreamed. Inhabiting a body you manufactured as a separation device. A device which does not exist. On a planet which does not exist. In non-existence.

This is why this world does not exist. It is a counterfeit world. A made-up substitute world. A second home away from God. Where you thought God (existence) would not exist. This includes the Earth, which is a SELF-DENYING world, an illusory world, made of NOTHING. It's a world you attempted to make and enter, OUTSIDE the Kingdom. It is not life. It is an illusion of life. And it does not really exist.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In any state apart from Heaven, (being on Earth) life is illusion. At best, it seems like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is **not life**, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible (Earth is impossible), and what is not in Heaven is not anywhere. (Earth is the idea of NOWHERE). Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible and beyond all reason, and yet perceived as an eternal barrier to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

God did not create the Earth because, the fact is, Earth is NOTHING LIKE THE KINGDOM. God can only Create ONE KIND of world. A reflection of Himself. That world is The Kingdom of God, comprising the Sonship. It is the Holy Trinity. God could not create ANOTHER world, DIFFERENT to the Kingdom. Earth is TOTALLY OPPOSITE to Heaven's nature.

"The laws of this world go against your nature."

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made (Earth)and all its ways; its shifting patterns and uncertain goals, its painful pleasures and its tragic joys. God made no contradictions. What denies its own existence (which Earth does, being NON-EXISTENCE) and attacks itself is not of Him. He did not make two minds, with Heaven as the glad effect of one, and ***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.*** ... God does not suffer conflict. Nor is His creation split in two."

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

***Earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way.***

Earth is the idea of being OUTSIDE the Kingdom of God, in NON-EXISTENCE. It is an illusion of death, nothing, fictional fantasy, insanity, darkness, the opposite to eternal life. Being made of NOTHING, it DOES NOT exist. When you stop hallucinating it, it will be nowhere. You only see it because you WISH to do so, with wishful thinking. A wishful thought that it is possible to be where God is not. There IS NO WORLD apart from your wishful thinking.

It boils down to this. God created ONE WORLD, Heaven, the Kingdom. That world IS NOT this world. It is NOT Earth. Then we MADE UP, invented, a fake world, out of NOTHING, to OPPOSE His world in every way. A picture of crucifixion, an attack on existence, a place of nothing. We now think the NOTHING world exists, because we are delusional. And we may even think God's world IS THIS WORLD, which is completely delusional as part of the BELIEF.... "there is no existence" "there is no Kingdom".

"Only the creations of light are real." There IS NO WORLD here. This is the central lesson in the course. You're DREAMING and hallucinating and making stuff up. because of your DESIRE, wish, to SEE and experience, that which DOES NOT EXIST.

"The world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision."

"You cannot see both worlds."

There ARE TWO worlds. One God created, and one you hallucinate. In order to SEE God's Kingdom you have to develop christ vision which OVERLOOKS (does not see) the hallucinatory world of Earth. "Forgiveness does not look upon bodies." Earth is a veil of illusions covering the face of Christ. You must see PAST it to see reality.

Heaven is BEYOND this world. Or rather, this world is NOTHING, NOWHERE, NOT HAPPENING, and Heaven is all that remains.

"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."

"**Beyond the body**,

**beyond the sun and stars**,

**past everything you see**

and yet somehow familiar, is an arc of golden light that stretches, as you look, into a great and shining circle. And all the circle fills with light before your eyes.

The edges of the circle disappear, and what is in it no longer is contained at all. The light expands and covers everything, extending to infinity, forever shining, and with no break or limit anywhere. Within it, everything is joined in perfect continuity. Nor is it possible to imagine that anything could be outside (no world, no earth). For there is nowhere that this light is not. This is the vision of the Son of God, whom you know well. Here is the sight of him who knows his Father. Here is the memory of what you are; a part of this, with all of it within you, and joined to all of it as surely as all is joined to you."

The form that something takes is NOT its meaning. A form is like an instance, or example of something, or a certain variant of its possible range of states, or a specific configuration amongst many possible configurations. Something can take on a form, or take one form, or another form. There can be "forms of" things. Shapes, sizes, parts, configurations, structures, pieces, objects, bodies, states, conditions, etc it's all forms.

When you believe that something about the form is truth, now you are saying that the form IS CONTENT. That its inherent meaning or reality is tied to its form. So now if we say, well, my banana is looking old a rotten, we might now take this to mean the banana is dying and is not edible. Versus an underripe banana which is more firm and green, we might think this MEANS it is not yet edible. And thus we lock the form into certain judgmental definitions of what they are and what they can do.

When we mistake the form that something takes, for what it MEANS, and we derived meaning FROM it or based on it, we are deceived. This means we are listening to an illusory world asking it to tell us what is true. Form IS NOT meaning. Form is not content. Form does not have ANY truth. It is unsubstantial and meaningless and nothing. All forms are fiction and illusions. They are forms of error. They are mistakes, deceptions, lies, illusions, dreams and wishes.

To understand that everything in this world does not MEAN anything, we have to recognize that the form anything takes cannot tell us what it MEANS. One configuration of objects does NOT tell us anything. A certain arrangement of parts does not really mean anything. A bigger object or a smaller object, a certain kind of material, a piece of machinery, old versus new, none of it means anything different.

When we are in a thought system where we seem to ASK the world of form to TELL US what it means, looking to it as a source of truth and to inform us of what is THERE and what is happening, based on its particular aspects, we're literally asking a meaningless nothingness to derive meaning from itself. That a certain body in a certain state means one thing, and a body in another state means something else.

We start to then believe that there can be a DIAGNOSIS. Or a prognosis. Or a judgement or evaluation of what condition something is in, and the possible outcomes that may be consequences of that specific state. As if that means something or would lead to possible futures or potentials, while shutting off the path to other possibilities that aren't "appropriate" for this specific form. Possibilities that the FORM "claims" is not possible, BECAUSE OF the form.

So now a dead body rotting and decaying is believed to MEAN an irreversible process is taking place and the decomposition PROVES that life has ended. This is all completely bullshit and made-up. The body in this state is really absolutely no different to a body running a marathon. If we are DECEIVED by the appearance of form, then we are BLINDED. ALL appearances, all forms, all configurations, all shapes and sizes and colors are utterly meaningless and nothing true can be derived from them.

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form. For sight of form MEANS understanding HAS BEEN obscured. Only MISTAKES have different forms, and so they CAN deceive. You CAN change form, BECAUSE it is not true. It COULD not be reality, BECAUSE it can be changed. Reason will tell you that, if form is NOT reality, it MUST be an illusion. And is Not THERE to see. And, IF you see it, you MUST be mistaken, for you are seeing what can NOT be real, as if it WERE. What cannot see BEYOND what is not there, MUST be distorted perception. And must perceive illusions AS THE TRUTH. Could it, then, RECOGNIZE the truth?"

Recognizing all objects as EQUALLY meaningless, their forms now become irrelevant. Who cares if something is taking on a certain shape? What does it matter that there SEEMS to be a certain specific sickness? Why should our response or reaction be profoundly different when the FORM is in a certain state versus another? To have different responses or to react in fear is really a sign that you BELIEVE that the form MEANS something different in a hierarchy of illusions. That a body in "this state" means "its terribly bad", while a body in "that state" is "not cause for concern." This is all bullshit, both the good and the bad evaluations.

All forms are deceptions. That's why the world is an illusion. It SEEMS to be something that it is not. It appears to be something it isn't. IT IS NOT TRUTH. It attempts to demonstrate PROOF OF SIN, that sins and events and happenings are taking place as, as if the world and the body have some kind of power, causation, will, mind, or ability to produce certain specific outcomes, chain reactions, or consequences. None of these pretend causations are real. All of these forms are equally just fake images being projected. They are empty pictures on a blank screen.

This is why ACIM even starts out the workbook having you look around the room and identifying that none of this means anything. To apply a single response (unconditionality) to ALL illusory forms, to all objects, in order to train your mind in the recognition that the form DOES NOT MATTER. That the form IS NOT MEANING. That the form of one object is no more or less important or relevant or significant than another. To deprogram you from the belief that certain kinds of objects in certain conditions MEAN one thing while others are more preferable.

The world is just a giant soup of jumbled up bits and pieces of nothingness, scrambled together into untold seeming numbers of configurations, designed to make it look as if there are a great MANY DIFFERENT things. As if there are contrasts and conflicts and ways that one thing IS NOT LIKE another. That this object is not that object. That this sick body is distinct from that healthy body. These are all DECEPTIONS. All illusions, trying to make it seem like ONE THING is many things. That the ONE DREAM is composed of many parts. That the illusion of separation isn't just an illusion of separateness, but a collective of untold numbers.

The ONLY way to recognize that all objects are equal, is to recognize they are all equally THE SAME. And the since they are all illusions of difference, their differences cannot be TRUE. Their FORMS cannot be true, when they conflict and differ. To be truth they have to be IDENTICAL. But their forms are NOT identical, so sameness reveals that their forms are NOT TRUTH. And different forms cannot be KEPT if there is to be equality. Their forms and their appearances of difference must not BE reality, because they're all contradictory. Therefore ALL FORM IS A LIE.

Not one object means anything more or less than another. Not one body means anything more or less than another in any state or seeming condition. Extreme torment and death and suffering is not any worse, bigger, stronger, harder, more difficult to undo, or more powerful and causative, than the slightest hint of a disturbance. Form cannot be taken to be meaning, it cannot be content, it cannot tell you WHAT SOMETHING IS, and all it can do is present a smokescreen.

The world is nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's not there. Without its forms there is no world. It is empty and nothingness. A void of meaninglessness. And not one thing in it means anything at all. And so there is no order, and no levels of difficulty, and no hierarchy, and no inherent meaning in any of it.

Therefore miracles respond to it with a single response, an unconditional response, which must be love, because only love can be unconditional. And so to recognize the world is all nothing is to love it, and light will shine away the darkness of forms and separations.

"See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and CANNOT go beyond. Watch how they STOP at nothingness, unable to go BEYOND the form to meaning."

"There IS no meaning in the form, AND THERE WILL NEVER BE. "

"What is perceived takes many forms, but NONE has meaning."

"Realize that, whatever form they take, they have no meaning and no power."

"Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"You have not found your happiness in foreign places, and in alien forms which have no meaning to you"

"Bodies may battle, but the clash of forms is meaningless."

"For here is nothingness, where neither birth nor death is real, nor any form in the misshapen mind that spawned it has any meaning in the Mind of God."

"Take not the form for content"

"Elusive happiness, or happiness in changing forms that shift with time and place, is an illusion that has no meaning."

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His. Therefore, it has no meaning."

"I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning."

"Would God have left the meaning of the world to YOUR interpretation? If He had, it HAS no meaning. For it cannot be that meaning changes constantly, and yet is true."

"The world you made is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind."

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

"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."

The world in which we think we live, is nothing but a dream. But we're so used to being in it, that we refer to it as real. We think it has real buildings, real people, real cars and real trees. We think we are eating real food, having real sickness, working at real jobs, and that bodies really die.

To align ourselves with the truth, however, we need to properly identify what this world is. This world is UNREAL. It's a hallucinated dream happening in the mind of someone who doesn't want to accept reality. Reality is the Kingdom of God, beyond space and time. The contents of this world are false.

"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."

"And what you seem to WAKE to, is but another FORM of this same world you see in dreams. All your time is spent in dreaming. Your sleeping and waking dreams have different forms, and that is all. THEIR CONTENT IS THE SAME. They are your protest AGAINST reality, and your fixed and insane wish to CHANGE it."

Jesus is pretty blatant here, saying that even when you wake up from sleeping at night, you are STILL dreaming. This world which you think is real and is your real life, is STILL a dream. It has the same content because it's made of the same illusions, it just differs in its forms. It's so elaborate, so detailed, so seemingly separate, and so seemingly huge, that you don't suspect it's not even real.

We should properly identify then that this world IS a dream, it is UNREAL, and it is FALSE. It has no truth, because its contents are invalid. It is a false world because it opposes heaven. "Earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." It is not created by God, so it can't really exist. It's more like a strange realm of illusions and dreams, images and fantasies, whisps of deceptive smoke and mirrors, in which figures come and go as if by magic.

"Time is a trick; a sleight of hand, a vast illusion in which figures come and go as if by magic."

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

Mind went into a sleep state, it dreamed of time (and space), it made up events which don't really exist anywhere, with consequences that have no real effect, with changes that are completely substanceless, and which will merely disappear into nothingness when we wake up to reality.

This means that, everything in this world is NOT a "real" anything. So all the things we think are real, need to be re-labelled as not real. For example, sickness is not REAL sickness. I don't mean that a person is pretending to be sick, in the context that there IS a real sickness that they're mimicking. But that ALL "actual" sickness is NOT real.

Cancer is not real cancer, it's fake cancer. Brain damage is not real brain damage, because "the body is a dream." Broken limbs are not real breaks, because the limbs are fictional. The graveyards are all fake and all the funerals are meaningless. Nothing is ever really dying because it can't, it just changes from one illusion to another, and it's just a neutral nothingness. Every kind of sickness or suffering is an illusion and NOT A REAL ONE. And there is no counterpart as a REAL sickness or suffering of any kind.

None of these things can exist in reality. In heaven there is no sickness or suffering, no attack or death, nothing goes wrong, there are no problems, there's no job to work at or house to maintain, there's no stores to buy crap at or streets for cars that break down. There isn't even a real sun.

"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."

So in this world, when you look at anything, you should really be recognizing that it is a DREAM OF something. A sick broken body is not a REAL sick broken body, it's a fake body pretending to be sick. A dead body is not a REALLY dead body, it's a DREAM IMAGE of a dead body pretending to look like it's dead. It's no different than a living one because they're both totally fake. Their forms different but they don't really mean anything different.

This also why there is really no death, because all of these things which we think "die" are just dreams. Reality cannot die because it cannot be threatened. They're figments of the mind. They're just images and holograms floating around in a fictional environment. This is why ACIM also teaches that the body cannot really die, OR live, because it is nothing. It is meaningless.

"The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

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

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. The last one had gone. It was laid in the tomb, but there was nothing left to bury. It did not disintegrate because the unreal cannot die. It merely became what it always was. And that is what "rolling the stone away" means. The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond. It merely ceases to interfere with vision. To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness."

What we need to learn as teachers of God, is to recognize and be aware that we're literally hanging out inside a giant DREAM right now. This world ISN'T real. Spacetime isn't real. Physical matter isn't real. Objects and bodies aren't real. Your body isn't a REAL body. There are no such things as real bodies. Your sickness isn't a REAL sickness. There is no such thing as a real sickness. Your sins aren't real either, because there is no such thing as REAL sin.

It's a complete reframing of this whole "reality", this whole experiential realm of mind or system of thought. To realize that since it is opposite to reality, it is UNreality, and is just a dream. We try to GIVE it reality to MAKE it real, but we only do this BECAUSE it's not real. We want to believe in it and value it, only because it HAS no value of its own. It's a meaningless world, made of nothing, an illusion of nothing appearing to be something. A tiny mad idea.

To recognize the world for what it IS, you have to categorize its ENTIRE CONTENTS as unreal. Everything the body can see with its physical sight has to be recognized as NOT REAL, and NOT TRUE, and NOT ACTUAL.

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

So we should get our mind into the habit of regard the things of this world as DREAMS. As fiction. Properly labelling them as artificial fake things. If your partner has a physical sickness in their body, they DO NOT have a REAL sickness in a REAL body. It's an illusion of sickness in an illusory body.

You wake up in the morning and brush your dream teeth and eat your dream breakfast and drive to your dream job, you do your dream work and drive your dream car home and eat your dream supper. Then you go to dream sleep in your dream bed and pretend to dream within a dream.

It's precisely BY recognizing that a sick body does not have a REAL sickness, that all power is stripped from the sickness and it is recognized as nothing. This is part of the healing approach of a miracle worker. When sickness is realized to be FICTION, it holds no weight and has no power and is nothing at all. "Illusions recognized must disappear" and what is recognized as nothing must vanish. You weaken and withdraw power from the sickness by regarding it as NOT REAL SICKNESS. Real sickness does not exist anywhere, just the illusion of sickness pretending to be sickness. It is empty.

"Here is the CAUSE of unreality. And it is here that it will be undone. YOU are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No OTHER cause it has, nor ever will."

"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."

"Yet nothing in the world of dreams remains without the hope of change and betterment, for here is NOT where changelessness is found. Let us be glad indeed that this is so, and seek not the eternal in this world. Forgiving dreams are means to step aside from dreaming of a world OUTSIDE yourself. And leading finally beyond ALL dreams, unto the peace of everlasting life."

The soul, which is your self, your real identity, and your true nature, can be thought of like a piece of machinery in the engine of heaven - in the mind of God.

Given that the soul is WHAT YOU ARE, it's useful to know the operating perameters of yourself. What are you? What are you capable of? What can and can't you do? What are your limits? What are your design specifications?

God is the DESIGNER of the soul. He is the manufacturer. HE ALONE determines the design of your self, gives your self its function, assigns it its abilities, specifies what it can and cannot do, and guarantees that it will always function as HE WILLS IT.

"The only function of spirit is to extend God's being."

Your soul is like a machine. It serves a function. It plays a role. It is used by God for a purpose. It operates according to HIS RULES ONLY. "I am under no laws but God's."

This means that in the overall picture of heaven, YOU are designed by God for a specific FUNCTION. Your functionality includes certain FREEDOMS or abilities.

These freedoms are inherited or BASED ON God's abilities. God can only design what He can conceive of, and He can only use Himself as a reference. He designs you to be LIKE HIM, and to operate WITHIN the confines of HIS abilities.

Your functionality includes the ability to extend God, to create, to know, to love, to experience joy and happiness, to co-create further creations, and to increase the Kingdom.

There are also some things which YOU ARE NOT ABLE TO DO. And thankfully these things are not things you'd WANT to be able to do. You cannot attack anything real. You cannot sin. You cannot hurt or be hurt. You cannot damage or be damaged. You cannot cause or experience any kind of sickness or suffering. And you cannot die.

God DID NOT GIVE YOU the ABILITY to sin, attack, suffer or die. You CANNOT DO THESE THINGS. You HAVE NEVER done these things. You WILL NEVER do these things.

In your design, you also have an INPUT and an OUTPUT. The INPUT to you is God Himself. You host Him. He plugs you into His power source and his light, and extends Himself to you. He POWERS your soul. He GIVES it life. It SUSTAINS it in His mind. AND, he also MAINTAINS YOUR FUNCTIONING AT ALL TIMES.

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

God Inc's equipment therefore comes with a GUARANTEE. It is a lifetime guarantee. And in fact God creates such excellent quality equipment that it is guaranteed to FUNCTION CORRECTLY FOREVER. He Himself makes sure of this by designing the soul PERFECTLY, ensuring it never needs maintenance and cannot go wrong. God PROTECTS his equipment permanently and really get's behind his product.

Everything the soul machinery is able to do, is determined solely by God. He is THE ONLY designer. He is the cause of you. Anything you can or cannot do, any function you do or do not have, is by HIS WILL alone. You cannot add to yourself or take anything away. No-one else can add to take away either.

This means that your soul is FIXED in its functionality. It cannot change itself. It cannot redefine what it is. It cannot modify itself. It can only operate WITHIN the parameters it was given. So let's say that the soul is given certain FREEDOMS, such as the free will to create. It IS possible that the soul can potentailly MIS-USE its power to create, to mis-create, but it CANNOT give itself the power to CREATE REAL damage. It cannot cause REAL sin. It can ONLY create constructively.

The other thing about this is, that the soul should generally ACCEPT its design, its functioning, its place in the Kingdom, and its overall abilities. It is in its best interests to do so. But sometimes souls decide to rebel against their creator. They want to be something they can never be. They deny their inherent nature. They imagine they are something they are not, and that they can do things which they CANNOT ever do.

When this happens, the soul isn't going OUTSIDE of its limitations, but it is PRETENDING that it is. Because it DOES have the power to FREELY CHOOSE, and so can freely PRETEND through denial that it is NOT what it is. This produces a "shut-down" mode, aka spiritual sleep. In this mode, by denying itself, the soul is shutting itself down. And when it is asleep, it dreams of impossibilities that CANNOT be really happening.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The soul IS FREE to do this, because it can use its freedom against its freedom, which is a mis-use of its own abilities. It can try to use free will to NOT WILL ANYTHING, which is an obvious contradiction in terms. When the soul tries to CAUSE something it was NOT DESIGNED TO OUTPUT, it merely causes nothing real to output. And instead dreams of imaginary outputs that don't exist.

The soul has been set up to have OUTPUT parameters as well as INPUT parameters. It can PRODUCE certain "products". It can generate living beings. It can CREATE LIFE. It can radiate love. And it can share joy and peace. It can experience relationship with other similar soul machinery (brothers), made by the same manfacturer. And it can enjoy perfection forever.

When the soul believes it is able to output something which God DID NOT MAKE POSSIBLE, it imagines it is producing things which it cannot possibly produce. These would include the making of bodies, planets, worlds, space and time, illusions of sickness, all forms of suffering, and death. None of these are REAL outputs, they are wishful thinking.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

When the soul does this, it is akin to a toaster oven believing it can wash your car, or a tv set believing it can cook dinner. It still remains IMPOSSIBLE, but the soul is free to use its freedom against itself to DENY its inherent functioning, and to PRETEND that other things are possible.

Since God did not give you THE EQUIPMENT FOR SIN... because your "soul 2000 model" did not COME WITH "the ability to sin" built in, it literally CANNOT DO IT. It can pretend to do it, but it cannot really do it. It can only dream of sinning, and never really attack any thing real. Just as your vacuum cleaner cannot bake cookies."Nothing real can be threatened."

God did not give you the ABILITY to threaten anything real. He did not BUILD IN a FUNCTIONALITY that can in any way CAUSE suffering. He did not provide you the equipment or parts to PRODUCE death. You cannot undermine your perfect functioning. You cannot make yourself malfunction. You cannot interfere with your inner workings. YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE AND NOTHING ELSE.

"I am still as God created me."

For the sake of what we'll call your SANITY, or operating in your soul in the WAY IT WAS INTENDED, without running amok and going haywire with UNPRODUCTIVE distorted outputs, it is in your best interests to ACCEPT YOUR FUNCTION. This means not having grandiose ideas of BEING SOME OTHER EQUIPMENT. It means not being jealous of the GOD MACHINE. It means not wanting to REJECT YOUR NATURE. And it means therefore the end of the authority problem.

You can't experience the EFFORTLESSNESS that God gave you, while you are trying to DISTORT your function. You cannot BE YOURSELF, while you are denying what you are. And you cannot be CONTENT or AT PEACE, while you are trying to turn yourself into something YOU WERE NOT DESIGNED TO BE. This means a willingness to ACCEPT your design specifications, without question, as GOOD ENOUGH. And this isn't some kind of second-best or booby prize either, because God creates perfect machinery!

The willingness to BE ONLY AS GOD CREATED YOU, to accept only the function THAT WAS GIVEN YOU, to fulfill the ROLE that God assigned to you, and to ONLY BE, HAVE, AND DO, that which God WILLED for you to do IN YOUR CREATION, is what re-aligns you with God's will and enables you to FUNCTION correctly. Or rather, to not disguise your true function with artificial functions.

This means having a willingness to accept FROM GOD, the specifications of WHAT YOU ARE. To allow ONLY HIM to define the TRUTH about you. To let him be YOUR FATHER. To let him be the one that decides WHAT YOU CAN AND CANNOT DO. And to acknowledge that you ARE EXACTLY HOW HE WANTS YOU TO BE. When you line up with this, and be ONLY this, and have ONLY what God gave you, and DO only what God willed for you, without objection, only then will you be happy and at peace and free from illusions.

To accept "the atonement" is merely to RECEIVE the ORIGINAL BLUEPRINT from the manufacturer. To be willing to ACCEPT that you ARE ONLY what God has designed you to be, and to function optimally within his parameters. To WANT nothing else, and to cease the MIS-USE of your function. You thus RESUME your function of creation and merely carry on as if nothing had happened.

Nothing can change what you are. You cannot change yourself. You cannot change other people's souls. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING AGAINST GOD'S WILL. You have not exceeded your operating parameters. You have not BROKEN, gone downhill, degraded, corrupted, caused unnatural side effects or damaged anything. YOU CANNOT SIN OR ATTACK OR DIE. You have NEVER DONE ANYTHING WRONG.

You therefore are still exactly the innocent, perfect, holy, acceptable, worthy, beautiful, loving, harmless, immaculate, immortal, eternal, happy, joyful, powerful, free, flawless and completely divine piece of machinery that GOD CAUSED YOU TO BE. Just by being TRUE TO YOURSELF, knowing yourself, and BEING YOUR SOUL, you need do nothing else.

All that God wants for you is to be true to yourself and fulfill the NATURAL INHERENT FUNCTION he gave you. And since that function includes happiness and joy, it is a function you WILL approve of.

"All true pleasure comes from doing God's will."

Everything real is of God, within God. God has no opposite because God is infinite, everywhere, always. It is not possible to leave God. There is nowhere that God is not. Anywhere "else", which must be unreal, does not exist.

"Ego", is nothing but a concept. It's an idea of a TOTAL OPPOSITE to God. Since God is absolute existence, the idea of an ego is "total non existence". Literally, this conceptual idea of total opposition to God DOES NOT EXIST. Non-existence has no existence at all.

The ego is also the idea that you can totally LEAVE God, be OUTSIDE of God, totally separate from and cut off from God, in an entirely separate realm of "existence", in which God is 100% absolutely absent and there is NO LIFE. It's the idea that you can and have left God entirely, have successfully separated from reality, and are now NOWHERE, not existing, having no life, in total oblivion.

This notion, this idea, of total opposition to and separate from God, IS the idea of the ego. But IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. Non-existence HAS no existence whatsoever. It is not possible to go there, exist there, be there or live there. We have not done this. Not even in our dreaming. It's a "goal", a "wish", but it is wishful thinking to believe you can accomplish it. God has no exit.

It is literally impossible to be outside of God's being. It is therefore literally impossible to be "inside" or "in" ego. In fact, the idea of ego is the idea of nothing. "The ego" has never lived, it has no life, no mind, no will, no power, no force, no opinion, absolutely nothing. It DOES NOT exist. It is literally NON-EXISTENCE. So all it can ever be to us is a CONCEPTUAL IDEA.

The "tiny mad idea" is the idea that IMPOSSIBLE NON-EXISTENCE actually exists. It is INSANE to believe this. You CAN believe impossible lies if you choose to, but this does not make them REAL, and believing it you MUST BE MISTAKEN.

You could not EVER even in the greatest delusion produce a state of non-existence. You could not separate yourself off from God's being. You could not leave God's reality. You could not produce a state opposite to God that HAS existence. You could not place yourself in a location that you can call "non-existence". Non-existence does not exist. Ever.

But what you DID DO, is you ATTEMPTED to APPROACH this state. You attempted to TRY to leave God. You tried to imagine that you COULD leave God completely, and that you had. And given that this was literally impossible, you WERE very confused, delusional, deceived and mistaken. You HAVE NOT DONE what you think you have done. ("There is no sin.")

It's kind of like, you are inside God still, but you imagine God has "outer walls". And then you imagine that you can push against these walls causing them to stretch. You think that if you push hard enough you will cause the walls to thin out. And that perhaps even in the greatest opposition to life imaginable, you'll be able to actually BREAK THROUGH .... to non-existence. That you'll literally be able to LEAVE God forever. To enter into some state where He DOES NOT exist.

The good news is, you WILL NEVER accomplish this, because all you could possibly do is enter NON-EXISTENCE which DOES NOT exist, so you CANNOT GO THERE. The ego is the idea of that place, that non-existence hell of nothingness, emptiness, lack of God, darkness, absence of light, lifelessness, death. It's a CONCEPTUAL REALM that does not exist. But you have used this concept of an "idea" of "what's it like to totally leave God forever", as a way to TRY TO DO SO.

It should be obvious this attempt is utterly pointless and futile. It cannot succeed. You are guaranteed to never not exist. All that you've "done", is ATTEMPT to leave God. You've pushed up against fictional boundaries, you've stretched the envelope, you've tried to blot God out of you mind so that you THINK you are not still inside of Him, and you've tried to make his outer walls as thin as possible. You reason that if you can ALMOST break through God's perimeter, He will become so thin that you will be able to OVERLOOK Him. And that then you'll be able to see PAST God, TO that non-existent realm. And this is what gives rise to FALSE PERCEPTION.

False perception is the attempt to overlook God in order to NOT SEE God, and instead to ignore and see PAST God TO that non-existent ego realm. And you will then start to IMAGINE that you CAN SEE a realm that doesn't exist. That you CAN SEE things which are IMPOSSIBLE and NOT THERE. And as Jesus clearly and correctly identifies this, this MUST be form a of hallucination. Because you CANNOT SEE what is NOT THERE, but believing you can and are MUST be delusional and hallucinatory.

You CANNOT REALLY SEE non-existence, but you keep trying to. And so you hallucinate A WORLD believing you are SEEING one. There IS NO WORLD, because there is NO OPPOSITE to GOD. The world, the illusory world you made, including Earth, is the insane system of thought produced by those driven mad by guilt. By people who believe they CAN SEE GOD's OPPOSITE. "Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way." Earth is an hallucination by the insane, believing they are or have escaped God.

"What if you recognized this world is a hallucination? What if you really understood you made it up? What if you realized that those who seem to walk about in it, to sin and die, attack and murder and destroy themselves, are wholly unreal? Could you have faith in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? And would you SEE it? Hallucinations disappear when they are recognized for what they are. This is the healing and the remedy. Believe them not, and they are gone. And all you need to do is recognize YOU did this. Once you accept this simple fact, and take unto yourself the power you GAVE them, YOU are released from them."

The making of this hallucinated world was an attempt to leave God and to produce a state where GOD IS ABSENT. A world OUTSIDE the Kingdom, a world of NON-EXISTENCE, non-life, non-love, non-reality.

"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"

Yet even in this so-called "separate world", it STILL is not outside of God. We DID NOT produce a state of total non-existence. Even this world has a limited degree of seeming reality. It is not "totally not here". And so in this world, which is, let's say, hovering on the outer border between God and non-existence, still within God (a dream of exile within God), the idea of physical death is the FINAL attempt to TOTALLY LEAVE GOD. It's how we try to put as much distance between ourselves and God as possible. To be as opposite to LIFE as possible.

We reason that, in death, we finally can LEAVE the realm where God exists a little. As if we think death is a doorway into the NON-EXISTENT realm of the ego. As if even the fake illusions of life and almost-death of this world, are still not "unlike God enough", and ONLY death can seal the deal and take us TOTALLY into that ego state. To cross over into the realm of non-existence. And as such, when we produce death, we are trying our hardest to LEAVE GOD and be NOTHING LIKE HIM. Death is a total unwillingness to live, to exist, to have anything of God, and to make His Son NOT EXIST. The attempt to do this is of course murderous and suicidal.

EVEN WHEN the body dies, unfortunately we STILL do not succeed in reaching the non-existent ego realm. The Son of God's spirit cannot be affected or killed, so we HAVE TO then carry on and reincarnate. Death FAILS to take us outside of God. Death FAILS to end life. Death is not the end of life, it is merely DENIAL of the fact that you CANNOT DIE because you CANNOT LEAVE THE LIFE OF GOD. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.

So think of this world, Earth, as merely A FAILED ATTEMPT to leave God. A failed attempt to completely separate from existence. A failed attempt to die. It does not accomplish what it claims. It cannot succeed in destroying God or His Son. Death is pointless and futile. You might as well just acknowledge you are alive in God and live forever.

"Swear not to die you Holy Son of God, you have made a bargain that you cannot keep."

In this world, "separation from God" or the LEAVING of God, producing a state of NEAR death, near non-existence, is REVERSIBLE, because it is not total. It is not total non-existence or total ego. If it were "absolute separation", it could not be undone. The fact that it CANNOT BE separation proves it is limited in its capacity to accomplish anything. And this is why death can be reversed and resurrection is possible, even physically, because death is NOT TOTAL.

This world does not work. It is a failed attempt. Death is failure. It doesn't do what it claims to do. It will NOT complete the separation or take you outside God. You might as well stop trying to die and just live. You HAVE eternal life, you just keep rejecting it. Denying it. You're an eternal immortal being pretending to suffer and die as if that were ever possible. Pretending you are limited and mortal and affected and sick and suffering. It is futile. It will not bring about an escape from God. And sickness's only purpose is to TRY TO escape from God.

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

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"All forms of sickness even unto death (including physial death), are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the FEAR OF AWAKENING."

You cannot leave God. You have not left Home. You DREAM that you are outside the Kingdom. You imagine you have placed yourself BEYOND God's walls. You THINK you have succeeded in entering a non-existent lifeless realm where God does not exist. You have not. You are just sleeping and pretending to be exiled.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

The ego DOES NOT EXIST. It's nothing but the CONCEPT of NON-EXISTENCE. It is another word for nothingness, impossibility, absolute void, godlessness, emptiness and absence. It HAS no existence at all. All our dramas are entirely a fictional attempt to BRING IT ABOUT, to get closer to it, to attach to it, to believe YOU ARE IT. This CANNOT BE. You can't do it.

BELIEVING THAT YOU CAN OR HAVE IS DELUSIONAL. It produces hallucinations of worlds that don't exist. Stuff that is NOT THERE, that you only seem to perceive because of your BELIEF in it. Your DESIRE to DREAM OF unrealities and fictional fairtytales. It is WISHFUL THINKING. And "there is no world apart from what you wish." You're not in non-existence, you're IN GOD, PRETENDING NOT TO BE. THERE IS NO WORLD.

Post-atonement awakening reawakens your mind to realize that THERE IS NO EGO, there is no non-existent world, you never DID leave God, you COULDN'T die, nothing has really happened, and ONLY the Kingdom of God exists. It is the end of DENIAL, the end of resistance, and the end of suffering.

"Ego" is nothing, literally. Your ATTEMPT to give "it" power does not give it power. You can't empower nothing. Ego does not exist. All you do is convince yourself that you are willing against yourself and that you are using your power against itself. You merely become divided against yourself and disassociated. All your efforts to be NOT LIKE God seem to manifest "the ego's characteristics", is an attempt to BE LIKE the ego. The non-existent ego. You never BECOME it.

It's just you being confused about what you are and where you are. You are safe in God at all times.

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

"Everything OUTSIDE the Kingdom IS ILLUSION."

"You could not remain WITHIN the Kingdom without love, and since the Kingdom IS love, you believe you are WITHOUT it. This enables the ego to regard itself as separate and OUTSIDE its maker, thus speaking for the part of your mind that believes YOU are separate and outside the Mind of God."

"denial of Life perceives its opposite"

"your salvation lies in teaching exactly the opposite of everything the ego believes"

"You REALLY believe that doing the opposite of God's will CAN be better for you."

"You are safe in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to reality."

"Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

Space and time are nothing but beliefs. This doesn't mean that we merely have beliefs "about" space and time, as if they really exist separate from our beliefs. They exist ONLY WITHIN our believing in them, and without believing in them they DO NOT exist at all.

"There is no world (spacetime) apart from what you wish."

If you have a good grasp of what space and time ARE, it becomes very obvious that they are not the same as reality. In fact they are totally opposite to reality. This also then tells you that anything WITHIN spacetime is opposite to reality as well. And it also further tells you that WITHOUT spacetime, nothing whose nature COMES FROM spacetime can exist, because it depends on spacetime for its entire existence.

In reality, God is omnipresent which means all of God is in all parts of God/existence simultaneously. God is everywhere. When we made the idea of "space", we attempted something COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to this.

Space is the idea of separated-out locations, in which each location is kept apart and is exclusive of the other locations. What is in one location is not in another location. There is no sharing of locations. The contents of one location cannot touch or overlap the contents of another. There is no true joining or sharing of any kind. All locations repel all others and hold them apart through what science calls atomic forces, but really is the idea of trying to put distance between yourself and God.

Space therefore invented the idea of a gap, separation, distance, avoidance, exclusion, repulsion, rejection, dissociation, and isolation. It gave rise to the seeming possibility that something can exist in one location and NOT exist in the others. Which in turn seems to make it possible for atoms and particles to exist separately and without touching each other. So long as there is the idea of spatial separation, "matter" is possible.

Matter requires that all its parts be kept SEPARATE otherwise not only could there not even be a three-dimensional object that "takes up space" or "spans across locations", but all objects would attempt to share the same space and cause a massive nuclear explosion. This is basic stuff supported by science. Atomic overlap causes atomic explosions. The seemingly physical material universe is therefore dependent on the idea of MAINTAINING SEPARATION at all costs.

Space also is the assertion that anything which exists only exists in PART of the space, and that what exists in that part is only a PART of existence. Therefore anything that exists does not WHOLLY exist and is NOT whole. This in turn implies that nothing is everywhere. Which also implies that everything is nowhere. Which is the entire idea that "God, whose nature is to be everywhere, does not exist anywhere". This is because "the world was made as an attack on God." "A place where God could enter not."

Just as space is UTTERLY upposite to God's nature, so too is time. Eternity means that what exists always exists. It is eternal, never-ending, permanent, immortal. It cannot ever stop existing. The idea of stopping existing is the idea of interruption, change, alteration, decay, modification, etc. This is totally incompatible with eternity. Nothing eternal can EVER change otherwise we introduce the potential for an END, and for death.

Time is the notion TOTALLY OPPOSITE to eternity, that whatever existed no longer exists, having died. And what exists now, is not the same as what used to exist, having changed. And what exists now will not always exist, because death or change is inevitable. Even the idea of change ITSELF is the idea of time, producing a "dream of death." SPACETIME IS DEATH! It's the very idea of bringing an END to what is endless, and making temporary what is permanent, and making mortal what is immortal.

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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."

Time was made as a total attack on God's nature. It is the suggestion that God and his creation, which are eternal and changeless, are in a state of total constant change, decay, suffering, alteration, interruption, attackability, impermanece and death. Just the idea that everything is always changing is the idea that "everything is always dying". The laws of nature such as that flowers bloom and die and human bodies bloom and die and planets bloom and die and so on, is INHERENT to the nature of time itself.

Time is really the idea that God is dead, once again in support of space's idea that God is nowhere. It says God is no-when, did not exist before, does not exist now, and will not exist in future. It is an attempt to eradicate eternity. Time was made in the separation in an attempt to DENY eternity. And everything that changes, grows, withers, dies, is born, transforms, modifies, interferes, attacks, can be hurt or damaged, etc... is entirely goverened by and DEPENDENT upon time.

"It IS a joke to think that time can come to circumvent eternity, which MEANS there is no time. "

"It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die"

Therefore space-time is an attack on God, it is in TOTAL OPPOSITION to God's nature, it is ENTIRELY UNLIKE reality, and NOTHING like heaven. And everything which has arisen WITHIN the confines of spacetime, is similarly TOTALLY OPPOSITE to reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." And everything within spacetime COMPLETELY depends on space and time "existing" in order to "exist."

Without space you CANNOT HAVE OBJECTS. Of any kind. Planets, bodies, cake, houses, cars, galaxies, all depend on spatial separation of particles. They all REQUIRE an ongoing assertion that God is dead. "The world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's son." If space or time were to END, which they MUST because they are not permanent in any way, ALL THINGS which are based on space and time must end as well. They CANNOT REMAIN.

You cannot have a three dimensional physical object without the atoms being held apart by space, and time governing their constant chemical and physical interactions. There is no motion without time. There is no growth without time. There is no birth and death of bodies without time. There are no planets without space. There is no world of spacetime without space or time. And both space and time are entirely illusions of an attempt to deny the reality of God.

It is a mistake to think that there is a way to KEEP the physical world while being IN reality, or that the world IS heaven, or that three dimensionality can remain WITHOUT spacetime. Sorry but this is impossible. This is why the world will eventually end and all the stars will disappear in light and all the galaxies will vanish. They MUST go if spacetime goes. You cannot have any of it without the belief in separation.

"Without the idea of death there is no world."

"Perception is temporary. It is an attribute of the space-time belief, and is therefore subject to fear or love."

"Ultimately, of course, space is as meaningless as time. The concept is really one of space-time BELIEF. The physical world exists only because man can use it to correct his UNBELIEF, which placed him in it originally. As long as man KNEW he did not need anything, the whole device was unnecessary."

"Like all aspects of the space-time belief, healing ability is temporary."

"Acts were not necessary before the Separation, because the time-space belief did not exist."

"The Atonement was built into the space-time belief in order to set a limit on the need for the belief, and ultimately to make learning complete."

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

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

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

"And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world"

"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."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant."

"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 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."

"Here He leans down to lift you up to Him, out of illusions into holiness; out of the world and to eternity; out of all fear and given back to love."

Lately I've been noticing that .... my state of mind, has something to do with what happens. I know that sounds a bit far fetched to many people. But we are after all told that this world is a dream, and that our minds are dreaming it.

I see how sometimes events and the appearance of certain people seem to correlate to certain attitudes or modes that I'm in. Sometimes a freer happier mode seems to produce the appearance of certain types of people, while unhappier or angrier modes seem to produce other types.

One of the ways that I've noticed this manifesting is with the idea that "what you resist persists". For example if you are driving a car and some slow person is in front of you, and you resist them being there, they seem to linger more than if you let them be there. When you let them go and don't make them an obstacle, they seem to leave sooner. In a sense, the showing up of a roadblock or "reason to slow down" shows up when you are "pushing too hard" or rushing. It influences what happens.

I've seen also times where, if I am doing a healing and saying things which are truthful, such as a few times in the hospital recently, following those times I noticed how other people seemed to lighten up a lot and laugh more. The whole sort of "atmosphere" of the place changed, the people changed and their moods changed and the events became more supportive.

For sure I also find that if I am upset or angry or frustrated, I start producing things going wrong. More and more things seem to fall on the floor, break, slip out of reach, get in the way, or generally just become "more reasons to be annoyed." I don't think that this is merely a matter of being annoyed and interpreting them as annoying. I think there is actually an increase in the number of things that happen, which don't appear to happen in such a condensed way at other times. Mind mind is literally influencing what happens.

Sometimes I get a sense that there is a kind of "psychic weather", in which, let's say.... it seems like maybe there are some minds that are contributing to external conditions - to dream content. Certain events seem to transpire as though "put there" by the minds of certain people. It seems at times as if there is a kind of psychological war playing out, literally orchestrating changes in events and what objects or people show up, in a subtle but noticeable way.

"This is not safe, because ***external conditions are produced by the thoughts of many***, not all of whom are pure in heart as yet."

Overall, I sense and notice more often, that the world in fact does appear to be a malleable dream. Not just some fixed physics-driven state of objective reality, but really a much more malleable fluid sort of "mix" of contributions and influences. It even appears to be possible that stuff which seems like it would've taken a long time to "plan" or "make possible", becomes possible complete with backstory, just to "fit" into place. As if the whole world just "changed" to line up with expectations.

There are some days when I wake up and I feel like everything has changed, in a subtle but noticeable way. Almost like as if you had jumped to a different "dimension" or "version" of the world, in which everyone and everything is subtly different in the same way.

I wouldn't be the first to claim this either, because there is plenty of evidence and stories out there about buildings appearing out of nowhere, strange correlations, sudden appearances or disappearances of things which couldn't seem possible, etc. Again suggesting that this world is not a fixed predictable place but rather a "mind-driven" realtime mixture of effects coming from the minds of people.

I think that in some way, the more that I become responsible for causation, as per the secret of salvation, and less of a victim, and perhaps stronger spiritually, I'm seeing more "influence" happening. Perhaps in the early stages of this development, but it does seem that my mind and focus and mood often influences the environment around me. Not merely in a subtle way as suggested in the heisenberg principle of quantum physics, but at even a much more "macrocosmic" level.

I feel this also points to having to also be more responsible and vigilant for thought, for more carefully managing my projections and my ego activities. After all, Jesus in ACIM also says that we need a healthy respect for the power of the mind....

"All miracle-workers HAVE to be trained that way. I have to be able to count on them. This means that I cannot allow them to leave their mind unguarded, or they will not be able to help me. ***Miracle-working entails a full realization of the power of thought, and real avoidance of miscreation.*** Otherwise, the miracle will be necessary to set the mind ITSELF straight, a circular process which would hardly foster the time-collapse for which the miracle was intended. Nor would it induce the ***healthy respect that every miracle-worker must have for true cause and effect.***"

Notice here that Jesus says that mind is very powerful and we need to be careful about mis-creating. If we are indeed powerful creators, and we have power of mind over matter, and mind is stronger than bodies, etc... and mind knows its dreaming, then obviously mind is going to start being able to "control" what dream content there is, what happens, and what does not happen.

"Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, ***will you gain control over it***. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision."

This suggests to me that in fact the workbook lesson "my self is ruler of the universe" where "what happens is what i desire" is not merely suggesting that we live in an objective world where we are "okay with" whatever happens, but that in fact LITERALLY we actually CAUSE EVENTS TO HAPPEN. That we begin to orchestrate the dream, consciously. Perhaps we can call it "lucid dreaming" in a sense. Indeed the mind certainly seems to have an INFLUENCE.

What this suggests then is this quite profound idea.... As you awaken more, your mind becomes more powerful. It becomes more causal, or more focused or "in control" of more DELIBERATELY CHOOSING. And this results in actual effects. It causes the dream to change. Your mind actually dreams of a different world. Not simply that you dream of the same world in a different way, or interpret the world differently, but that you PRODUCE a different world. The so-called "physical world" literally turns into a different configuration.

This would mean that the mind actually has the power to change the dream world directly, to manipulate events, to cause objects to show up and disappear, to have power OVER matter, to quite literally manipulate the world through direct effects. This would mean that, for example, for a person of enough power, they do not merely walk "the world", they walk whichever kind of world they want to emanate.

They literally can cause events, and prevent events. Nothing happens without their consent. They begin to have control over the dream world, over objects, over what transpires and what doesn't. And perhaps they can even literally force death and attack not to happen. They can cause events to steer away from destruction and death. Just as ACIM states that the Holy Spirit can clear a path for you so that you are free from obstacles...

"He will go before you, making straight your path, and leaving in your way no stones to trip on, and no obstacles to bar your way. NOTHING you need will be denied you. ***Not one seeming difficulty but will melt away BEFORE you reach it.*** You need take thought for nothing, careless of everything except the only purpose that you would fulfill. As THAT was given you, so will its fulfillment be. God's guarantee will hold against ALL obstacles, for it rests on certainty, and NOT contingency. IT RESTS ON YOU. And what can be more certain than the Son of God?"

That is quite a radical interpretation of the course because it suggests we don't just "re-perceive" the world in a better way, but that in fact the world literally is OUR DREAM, our mind is literally THE CAUSE of it, and we literally can dream of something else, CAUSING literal physical-seeming things to change. Why would this NOT be the case, when the mind has the power to actually cause bodies to heal, and the dead to resurrect, and mountains to move, and storms to calm? Such a mind can, let's say, ALTER REALITY. And that's quite exciting and interesting. And it means MIRACLES CAN MODIFY DREAM CONTENT DIRECTLY.

Obviously someone would need to become very vigilant about heir mind, very careful NOT to mis-create, very careful not to deliberately cause "bad situations", very careful not to CHOOSE events in which there is suffering etc, and to only induce dream environments which are conducive to healing etc. But this doesn't mean they can't choose anything they want. Imagine that Jesus could manifest any object he wanted out of thin air. Imagine that Jesus could make things multiply out of nowhere, he could turn bodies into other bodies, and could make things disappear. Why not, when he was "ruler of the universe"?

Not a mere passive traveler in a foreign land, but an ACTIVE DREAMER. Indeed, a "miracle worker", someone who can literally transform ANY APPEARANCE into any other, manipulating space and time and matter as if it's something to play with. In which the laws of reality as the world knows it are violated, any there is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

"There is no world apart from your ideas because ideas leave not their source, and you maintain the world within your mind in thought."

"But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. "

"The idea for today is a beginning step in dispelling the belief that your thoughts have no effect. Everything you see is the result of your thoughts. There is no exception to this fact."

"There is no point in lamenting the world. There is no point in trying to change the world. It is incapable of change because it is merely an effect. But there is indeed a point in changing your thoughts about the world. Here you are changing the cause. The effects will change automatically."

"Neutral thoughts are impossible because all thoughts have power. They will either make a false world or lead me to the real one. But thoughts cannot be without effects. As the world I see arises from my thinking errors, so will the real world rise before my eyes as I let my errors be corrected."

"Learning must lead BEYOND the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it."

"I demonstrated both the powerlessness of the body AND the power of the mind, by uniting MY will with that of my Creator, which naturally remembered the Soul and its own real purpose."

"Very few people appreciate the real power of the mind. Nobody remains fully aware of it all the time. This is inevitable in this world, because the human being has many things he must do, and cannot engage in constant thought-watching. However, if he hopes to spare himself from fear, there are some things he must realize, and realize them fully, at least some of the time."

"The mind is a very powerful creator, and it never loses its creative force. It never sleeps. Every instant it is creating, and ALWAYS as you will."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move mountains.

It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it.

People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert real control because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"My Self is ruler of the universe. ... It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. What happens is what I desire. What does not occur is what I do not want to happen. This must I accept."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do."

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

You may be wondering how "the separation" was possible, and how we came to seem to be in the situation we're in. There IS an explanation, which Jesus has given in many forms.

The essence of it, is that God gave you TOTAL unlimited freedom when you were created.

"The latter required the endowment of man (Souls) by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given."

"Free will is the attribute of the mind, NOT the Soul."

This means God gave us all absolutely free will. Our will has TOTAL freedom. Now, here's the interesting part.

Because the will is totally free, it actually has the freedom, or potential, to try to use its own free will against even itself. It can actually try to "will not to will." It actually is free to even use its freedom to try to prevent its own freedom, if it so chooses. Doing so is self-defeating, but you CAN do this.

This is an inherent function of the mind and actually completely natural, because it's part of being totally free. God HAD to give you the freedom to potentially "mis-use" your will, otherwise you could not be free. He couldn't just lock you in to some kind of mandated use of it, you had to be free to use it as you saw fit.

The freedom God has given you INCLUDES the freedom even to deny God if you want to. It includes the freedom to resist him, to deny reality, to try to use free will to stop willing, the ability to try to create nothing, to use the will destructively, and to at least ATTEMPT to separate itself from its source.

Your mind can in fact go into a state of denial. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, in terms of it being "not allowed by God." God had to GIVE YOU this ability in order to give you total freedom. He doesn't necessarily will for you that you USE the will in this way, ie non-constructively, but you CAN if you so choose.

When you do choose to use it in a self-defeating way, you are "mis-creating", in an attempt to use the will against itself. This is really an attempt not to create, or to cause nothing, or to be inept and inert, or to not extend. It's like a kind of resistance, which is also fear. An attempt to be UN-WILLING, or to NOT will what God wills. Indeed, to attempt to will AGAINST him, which is "the authority problem."

"Remember, we have already stated that denial is not a purely negative device; it results in positive miscreation."

There is a fundamental truth that you cannot will against God's will. But, that does not mean you aren't free to TRY to. You are free to attempt it. When you do attempt it, you FAIL to change his will at all, and instead go into denial.

In the denial you BELIEVE that you have succeeded, but you haven't. Also when you are in this denial state, you are denying yourself, denying God, and denying reality. It's very important to realize however that denial does not CHANGE reality. It has no effect on the truth. Denial merely means to believe that something is not true, even though it still is true. It's a kind of rejection or refusal - an unwillingness - to accept what is true.

Your mind, as given by God, DOES HAVE the freedom and ability and power to go into a state of denial. This is BUILT IN to its fundamental freedom. It HAS to be able to potentially use its own freedom even against itself, otherwise it is not free. It is because of this "clause" if you will, that we could potentially elect to "go into the separation", ie to believe that we have become separate, even though we haven't. ie to go into denial.

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

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

Mind then is perfectly natural in its ability to try to deny its own creator if it so chooses. God has given it the freedom to use itself against itself. The fact is that it HAS DONE THIS, which is what we call "the separation" or the fall of man. Our minds HAVE elected to deny their own freedom, placing themselves into a state of imprisonment.

When mind uses its own free will to will AGAINST freedom, it induces a state of imprisonment. The will becomes imprisoned and the mind seems to go to sleep, or seems to become unable to will anything.

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will. It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

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

This has actually happened, without in any way leaving God or leaving God's laws or operating outside of your inherent nature. There is fundamentally nothing "wrong" with this as such, but it IS out of accord with God's will. It is an attempt to reject his will. All this can produce is a state of denial, because God's will itself cannot be opposed, but you can thus "believe" that you are opposing it. Even if it's just a belief, it DOES alter your mind when you believe it.

"Remember a very early lesson, -- "never underestimate the power of denial." It has no power in ITSELF, but YOU can give it the power of YOUR mind, whose power is without limit of ANY kind."

"God did not ALLOW this to happen. But you DEMANDED that it happen, and therefore believed that it was so."

"God did not blot it out, because to eradicate it would be to attack it."

"It is NEVER God Who coerces you, because He SHARES His Will WITH you."

The main truth is that there is no real benefit to using freedom against freedom. The circular logic becomes obvious. For example, we're saying that it's possible to "will not to will". The more that you will not to will, the more you are using will, and obviously contradicting what you're claiming to accomplish. You therefore cannot will NOTHING, and have to will something. So instead you will a sense of EMPTINESS or a sort of "lack of creation."

"If a mind creates without love, it can create an empty shell. This CAN be possessed by evil."

"We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all. This emptiness provides the screen for the misuse of projection."

"He can create an empty shell (see previous reference), but he DOES NOT create nothing at all."

So in fact what happened is we used our free will and our freedom of choice to elect to use the mind, mis-creatively, to try to "create nothing", and this produced a sort of empty creation, or a lack of creation - a lack of love's extension. In the mind this produced the hallucinated state of the lack of God, which is space-time and all its contents. Jesus refers to it as an empty screen onto which we then project meanings.

So long as the mind is unwilling and is resisting freedom and therefore is in denial, it is maintaining its belief in something opposite to God. That maintains 'the ego' and the illusion of a meaningless world. The world is meaningless because it is an "empty shell" which has no real content of its own, onto which we project images and meanings either thought false or true perception.

While it is true that mind cannot create a real separation, and you cannot leave God, and you cannot violate his reality or his laws, it is also true that the ability to deny IS within his laws and his reality. It is part of your rights as a created free-willed being.

God actually does not COERCE or shame you or guilt you or punish you for WANTING to use your freedom against itself. You ARE FREE to do so if you so choose. It's just that when you do so, you do bring suffering upon yourself and He does not will that you suffer.

"If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it."

So God gently INVITES you to return back to willing constructively with him rather than destructively. You have to FREELY CHOOSE IT, and accept atonement because you want to, not because you are forced to. This is because your mind still has the power to exercise freedom - a power that you have never lost.

So being in the denial of God, is actually a possibility of reality. It is not PREFERRED, but it is possible. It is not what God wills for you, but he HAS given you your own will, so even though he does not make it possible for you to actually separate, he DOES allow you to BELIEVE that you have. And this has taken place. This is why Jesus says "the separation has occurred." We HAVE tried to deny God and we HAVE believed that we've become separate.

The problem then isn't REALLY denial. Denial is NOT a negative functionality. It is not inherently a bad thing. You actually can use denial positively and for protection. The proper use of denial actually denies illusions and supports the truth of reality. It is only the improper use of it which has led us to deny God and accept lies, instead of accepting God and denying lies.

"Because of your Father's love, you can NEVER forget Him. For no one can forget what God Himself placed in his memory. You can DENY it, but you CANNOT LOSE IT."

"You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it."

"But denial is a defense, and so it is as capable of being used positively as it is of being used destructively."

We have actually moved into a denial state, in the mind that God gave us, as part of the freedom he gave us, and this has TEMPORARILY produced the 'tiny mad idea' and the 'unholy instant'. It has led to the hallucination of spacetime - a belief in possibilities which aren't actually possible in truth. This has happened. But none of the things which seem to happen WITHIN this denial, have really happened.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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 substanceless, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

This ability for the mind try to elect to be what it is not, to assume an alien power it doesn't really have, or to enter a state that it can't really enter, IS the power of denial that all minds are naturally capable of, in reality or otherwise. If you use the mind against itself it attacks itself and produces insanity. And since denial is a rejection of or avoidance/hiding from reality, it is a form of unconsciousness or an attempt "not to know", which induces a sort of sleep, in which we dream of imaginary worlds.

You CAN deny God, that's not against his law. But when you do, you induce a nightmare of suffering.

"What God did not create can only be in your own mind apart from His."

"What God did not create does not exist. And everything that does exist exists as He created it. The world you see has nothing to do with reality. It is of your own making, and it does not exist."

The world you "made up" does not really exist. It's a dream. The ability TO dream, is not made up. It is part of your natural freedom. God is not stopping you from choosing to go into denial, but he IS inviting you to come out of that denial when you are freely willing to do so, and therefore return to a happier state in alignment with his will. Denial is not an illusion, it PRODUCES illusions when misused.

So basically, "the separation", otherwise called "the attempt to deny the truth" has happened, the mind HAS exercised its free will to repress its own freedom, and this HAS induced a kind of sleep state in which the mind dreams of separation. The dream isn't valid at all. The DREAMING is a mind function and not to be discarded. It is simply something that you can choose or not choose. When you DON'T choose to dream, you instead choose to accept ultimate reality, and use the mind ONLY for constructive creative purposes.

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

Long story short, mind DOES have the potential and freedom to go into denial, and this is entirely within the laws of God. It's just that when we do this, we are not happy, and it induces fantasies of things that aren't really possible. God does not will that we suffer so he instead calls us to return to him, knowing that it's best to use our free will creatively rather than self-destructively.

"It is for this denial that you need Atonement. Your denial made no change in what you are. But you have split your mind into what knows and does not know the truth."

"Both the power and the strength of man's creative will must be understood, before the real meaning of denial can be appreciated and abolished. Denial is NOT mere negation. It is a positive miscreation."

"Extension cannot be blocked, and it has no voids. It continues forever, however much it is denied. Your DENIAL of its reality arrests it in time, but not in Eternity."

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial." "For fear IS a call for love, in unconscious recognition of what has been denied."

"The out of mind is out of sight, because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition."

"Fear and love are the only emotions of which you are capable. One is false, for it was made out of denial, and denial DEPENDS on the real belief in what is denied for its OWN existence."

Mind is free to deny itself, at any time. It has denied itself. That's why we're dreaming of exile. Its ability to do this is God-given. Its election TO do this is its own free choice. It HAS chosen to do this, and so it IS in a denial state. That is why there arose a NEED for atonement and God had to create the Holy Spirit to maintain a link to his children, guaranteeing that they can return to him when they are willing to do so.

We are not to be in the business of trying to "deny" that the mind can or has done this. It absolutely has done this. But it can choose again. It can choose to stop mis-creating and to instead create only the extension of God. It can choose to stop denying its own freedom and reclaim its inheritance. It can move out of its temporary state of resistance, into acceptance, out of fear into love. And at no point is God sitting there saying "denying me is against the law." He doesn't condone it, but he also doesn't force you not to choose it.

For me I want a course that can be learned, is accessible, easy enough to understand, and can be applied without too much hassle. I think A Course in Miracles does this, and that Jesus is an excellent teacher. I think he knows what he's talking bout.

I think he is very masterful and wise and has taken huge efforts in the writing of ACIM to try to be as clear and obvious and relatable as possible, so that as many people as possible can learn the course and use it correctly. After all, it would be a pretty awful course if it was so obscure and difficult and hard to fathom that no-one could actually succeed at it.

"Contradictions in MY word mean lack of understanding, or scribal failures, which I make every effort to correct."

"...a host of related fallacies, including the misbelief that God rejected man and forced him out of the Garden of Eden, or that I am misdirecting you. I have made every effort to use words which are ALMOST impossible to distort, but man is very inventive when it comes to twisting symbols around."

For me, I recognize that Jesus makes some VERY SIMPLE straightforward statements. He states facts, in the clearest way possible. He uses words which are familiar to us, and which have associations with things in our world that we recognize. He isn't speaking some foreign gobbledygook language, or trying to make things obscure. He is very direct, factual, honest, obvious and clear.

So for example in the course he uses some terms such as "Earth". I think we ALL recognize that a reference to Earth is talking about the physical planet that we're on, the ball of rock, which is floating in space. Planet Earth. I think 100% of readers should agree that Earth refers to that object. If you think that it DOES NOT refer to that object, or that "Earth is NOT really a physical planet and has some other kind of reality", something is wrong.

Similarly he talks often about the body. Even already as I write this sentence you have an association in your mind which recognizes I just mentioned the human flesh-and-bones body. That's what the body is. My human body, your biological body, the bodies of people walking down the street.

This isn't rocket science. This does not have to be difficult or hard to understand. And it especially shouldn't call for us to have to perform massive mental gymnastics, get subtle nuances, re-word things, redefine meanings, shift things around, or have massive long debates about what it means. For fucks's sake, the body is just the body!

So for example if he gives a simple statement such as: "At no time does the body exist", we're supposed to learn that he really does mean that literally. The human flesh and bones body that we're used to walking around in, does not really exist. That's the teaching. That's the fact. That's his intention.

When he then also tells us for example that "The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist", the most obvious thing to learn is that once again, this human flesh and bones body does not really exist. Everything about it is geared towards separation, and it DOES NOT EXIST. NOTHING about it exists, in any way, to any degree, anywhere.

He goes on to reiterate the same simple truths in many ways, in many forms, in many statements. e.g. "As nothing, which it is, the body cannot be meaningfully endowed with the attributes of Christ." or "The body's nothingness", or "God did not create the body." etc. All of these tell us the same exact thing. The body is nothing, it doesn't exist, it's not really there. There is NOTHING ELSE to learn from this. There is NO OTHER MEANING.

You SHOULD be learning therefore that because of the many times Jesus has reiterated this simple teaching, one of many, you should be trying to learn and accept that "your body" is not really there, the bodies that you see around you don't really exist, and there are no real bodies. You should NOT be attempting to SKEW this, or to find loopholes, or ways to keep the body.

You should not be trying to explain how there is some VERSION of the body that is going to be kept. Or how references to the body are NOT really referring to the body. Or how the body is "not really physical" but is something else. Or how when he talks of the body he is only talking about it "as the ego sees it", or "as you perceive it". We have to stop tacking on all these extra clauses and exceptions and ways of DISTORTING the very basic most obvious teaching. The body is NOTHING. It's not there.

This means that all of the atoms, do not exist. It means that, the flesh and bones and organs and eyeballs and hands and feet, do not exist. Not one single part of its energy exists. None of its fluids or chemicals, none of the gut bacteria, none of the cells, nothing that gives it space, or takes up space, or is made of matter, or energy, or thought, or ANYTHING, none of it is there. That we should not be attempting to redefine it, keep it, view it differently in order to have it still exist somehow, or anything else. We need to learn to accept, THERE IS NO BODY. Zero. Totally non-existent in all places at all times in every way forever.

This is a simple teaching. It's not hard. It's not meant to be hard. You aren't required to study this course deeply for decades in an attempt to fathom the deeper mysteries of what these simple statements mean. It does not take for you to do the workbook lessons. It does not require for you too read the text 100 times. You should get it as soon as you read it the first time. The body is nothing and does not exist. It's not that hard. Jesus is not being obscure or clever or mystical or difficult or trying to tell us something in a very obscure context which only advanced students can ever get. This course is for YOU. ANYONE. To learn easily.

Statements about the body have implications. If the body is nothing, then it stands to normal sane reasoning, that anything the body is "made of" does not exist. For example if the body has carbon atoms in it, which it does, then carbon does not exist. And this by extension means, that trees which are also made of carbon, do not exist. Any if the skin cells fall from the body and become dust and contribute to the soil of the earth, then also the soil of the earth does not exist. And if the body breathes the air and depends on it, then so too is the air not real either. And as you take foods into the body and digest them and they BECOME the body, this must indicate that those foods, and their original forms, and the plants and trees and sources they came from, ALSO must not exist.

This is very simple reasoning, it's not rocket science. It's simple common sense. If your body doesn't exist as Jesus spells out clearly and easily, then it also MUST mean that anything around the body does not exist, the body's environment does not exist, and the entire cosmos does not exist. This is a very sensible and sane and rational conclusion. It's all made of the same stuff, so it applies to all of it. That means therefore that planet earth, does not exist. We could rephrase Jesus's statements to EASILY mean the same thing. e.g. "At no time does the planet Earth exist. It is either anticipated or remembered, but never exists just now." "The planet earth is a dream." "The planet earth's nothingness." "As nothing, which it is, planet earth cannot be meaningfully invested with the attributes of christ." "God did not create the planet earth."

The course is NOT meant to be ANY more complicated than this. All readers should be coming to the same conclusions. In fact there shouldn't even really be much of a process involved in "drawing conclusions". You should be seeing that Jesus has already done most of the work for you. He's already EXPLICITLY telling you outright, LITERALLY, that the body is nothing and does not exist. And he extends that in many ways to include the world as well.

"There is no world. "Earth, the other's sorry outcome, which is heaven's opposite in every way." "The place where it is reflected is not real." "The world you see is an illusion of a world. God did not create it." etc. Very simple, the course teaches normal everyday readers that planet earth does not really exist. Which is a very profound teaching. And it's our job to ACCEPT this and recognize it. But it becomes incredible at times the lengths that some students will go to, to avoid this. It is driven in part by the STRONG belief that people bring with them TO the course, based on prior experiences, that the planet seems to them to be real. All the pain, all the misery, all the experiences, the memories, all the bodies, all the relationships, all the events, which all seem to contribute in our minds to suggesting that Earth really does exist. But ALL of that is FLYING IN THE FACE of what Jesus is telling us, and so we have a lot to learn, or rather a lot to UNLEARN. Because we've taught ourselves a lot of stuff that is NOT TRUE, and is NOT what the course is teaching us.

That means we have to be willing to be mistaken, we have to be willing to question our beliefs, we have to be open minded to consider an alternative, and we have to also keep sight of THE PLAIN AND OBVIOUS. And of what makes simple logical sense. When we are reading something like the body being nothing and not existing, and we can't quite bring ourselves to accept it is true, because of our commitment to identifying with the body, we will DEFEND AGAINST what Jesus is saying. And then even a simple statement such as "the body does not exist" will be met with doubt, suspicion, questioning, deception, distortion and attempts to have it NOT mean what it means. Our egos will try to CHANGE its meaning and NOT SEE the obvious.

"We will use this simple lesson in the obvious because it has results we cannot miss."

Even the most obviously, BLATANT statements can be distorted if the mind is not ready or willing to listen to it. We can quite easily project onto the course a vast array of false perceptions. We can mangle it out of all recognition. We can take even the simplest clearest statements and FIND WAYS in which we can try to justify that they DO NOT mean what they mean. We can even take statements and give them completely OPPOSITE meanings, and feel "okay with that", as if it makes sense to us. As if it doesn't seem to contradict OTHER things we believe, because in our arrogance we think we already know what is true and don't want to question it.

To accept even the most simple truths in the course sometimes may require us to go through a tremendous purification process, letting go of faulty beliefs and backgrounds, discarding old baggage and world views, even questioning our most deeply held beliefs about who and what we are. And we do not WANT to do that. So we will resist it, and will instead NOT SEE the most simply obvious truths in front of us. Because we don't want to. We want the truth to be something else. And we do not TRUST it, because we trust something else.

So we have to sort through and sort out ALL of our other beliefs and find out if they line up with what Jesus is telling us. And that's going to be some rough territory because we COULD start trying to educate ourselves as to "what he means", and teach ourselves things that he DOES NOT mean. After all, if we don't even really know what is true, and are supposed to learn from him, then we need to really be willing to put aside out OWN teaching of ourselves and open up to BEING TAUGHT and actually learning something new. Otherwise we're not really being students, we're just being spewers and projectors of what we already decided is true.

Not that it takes rocket science to grasp the basic facts. Many things in ACIM are NOT supposed to be difficult. It's just that sometimes the truth is so profound and deep and intense that we do not LIKE it and do not WANT it. So we avoid it with an incredible array of creative means. An incredible arsenal of distortions, twists, defenses, manipulations, bandaids, and all manner of other strategies to not directly see or recognize or accept the simplest facts. No one with an ego wants to accept "there is no world" at its fullest intensity. And no one who believes they are a body REALLY wants to accept fully that their bodies don't exist.

But even with all these obstacles, even with learning disabilities, self inflicted filters, and all manner of unwillingness and denial, there are STILL some very, VERY basic aspects to Jesus's teaching that we all should really learn and agree to. The SIMPLEST of truths. Such as that the human physical biological body has absolutely no reality, value, existence, or meaning. It is NOT THERE. And also by extension, that this planet, the physical world, which is like the body and of the body, also is NOT THERE. These are fundamentally two cornerstone principles of ACIM. To not at LEAST accept them intellectually is going to produce a huge array of distortions of the course's teachings, and it has already done so.

You'll often hear talk of how "my ego this" and how "the ego" that. A lot of clout and blame is pinned on "the ego" now. It's used to describe all kinds of stuff in the world and in life.

People have even turned it into a kind of enemy that they fight with and blame and try to accuse for doing stuff. The label is thrown around like there actually is an ego, and then you'll hear explanations for why it doesn't "really" exist except in a dream.

There are widely common interpretations that Jesus is describing "the ego" in the course and therefore "the ego" is a thing or an entity or a something, that is responsible for some bad stuff. And this sets up a whole premise of being at war with it.

This is all confusion. Jesus is NOT trying to suggest that the ego exists AT ALL, not even fictionally in a dream. So let's put aside any belief that there is such a thing as "the ego", and we'll start from scratch.

God's world, heaven, reality, has various qualities, characteristics, properties etc. It has a nature. For example it's immortal, alive, permanent, perfect, whole, innocent, etc.

"Ego", is nothing more than, a CONCEPT OF, the "opposite to all that is".

Someone had a thought in their mind, like, "What if the opposite to God's Kingdom is true?" And so began the tiny mad idea.

This is ENTIRELY conceptual. It's someone sitting there just wondering, imagining, theorizing. Asking themselves, "what is the opposite of all this?" Or indeed, "what if I OPPOSE all of this?"

We simply tried to use our free will to oppose free will, or to "create" (will) that there be an outcome OPPOSITE to what God wills. A "mis-creation" or a "mis-use" of will. That is all.

This was a silly idea, ridiculous in fact. To try to use will, to make yourself NOT will, is obviously circular logic and makes no sense. It's impossible to will to be unwilling. But this is what you tried to do. You tried to put your will to sleep, to disempower your creative powers, and to strip yourself of what you are. To oppose yourself.

So ego is just this idea of opposition. What would it be like if there was an opposite to everything real? The opposite to life would be death. The opposite to permanence would be impermanence. The opposite to happiness would be unhappiness. The opposite to existence would be non-existence (death).

Now it's important to also put BELIEF on hold because I'm not even talking about BELIEVING IN this concept yet. At this point we're happily sitting in heaven just theorizing. Asking a question. "What?" Questioning everything, which is an attempt to oppose it.

What you come up with conceptually is, the idea of "non-existent impossibility." This non-existence, by definition, DOES NOT EXIST. It's not some real place you can go and visit. You can't live there. You cannot be its nature. It's ENTIRELY theoretical. Non-existence DOES NOT EXIST. It's the idea of being OUTSIDE of and completely SEPARATE from, existence. And existence is God.

So we started out with just a conceptual notion, an idea of an opposite to God's nature. An idea of NOT existing. And fundamentally we could never actually DO that. We could not LEAVE God and go where God is not. We couldn't get outside of God to go to that "non-existent" place. It's impossible. Literally totally impossible.

For example God is infinite and is everywhere. So you cannot go be somewhere and expect him not to be there also. Everywhere you go, God is there. He is omnipresent. So this idea is an idea of, what if you could go and be somewhere that God is not? Which is obviously a totally ridiculous idea, and no sane person would give two seconds of thought before laughing at being outside of infinite unlimited boundaryless reality.

So first we came up with this theoretical notion of "an opposite to what is". This was prior to believing in it. And at this point we were still sane. What made it a MAD idea, or turned us mad, was that we then attempted to CLAIM or assert, that you actually CAN go where God is not, you actually CAN be opposite to his nature, you actually CAN be unwilling.

You BELIEVED IN IT by denying its obvious impossibility, thus making you unable to RECOGNIZE it for what it is, and thus losing sight of the fact that it IS impossible. You became confused and lost.

This obviously was a form of denial and confusion and being totally mistaken. The logic shows that its impossible, but you insisted anyway. To insist that something is possible that is patently impossible, is essentially "nuts". BELIEVING IT in spite of its ridiculousness, became the only problem.

It was only when you forgot to laugh at the ridiculous notion of not existing, that you took it seriously. And you became deceived, tempted, and you "fell" into delusions, denial, hallucination, confusion, mistakenness, and all manner of fantasy nightmares. You lost track of WHAT IS TRUE AND REAL, and so went insane.

What were you trying to do? You were trying to MAKE non-existence be TRUE of you. Whatever you believe is true of you, you regard as your IDENTITY. Your truth describes you, defines you, establishes WHAT you are. And originally this was God's truth about you. But now you were attempting to assert that some OPPOSITE truth was true of you. And so your sense of WHAT I AM, your identity, became CONFUSED WITH, or caught up in, identified WITH or "matching" this notion of being opposite to what you are.

You did not actually make an ego as such. You did not accomplish the making of a non-existent self, because it is impossible. You did not ACTUALLY get outside of God's existence. You did not reach non-existence. You did not cease to exist. BUT, you BELIEVED YOU COULD. And so you DREAMED OF "the ego". A dream of the ego concept is NOT the same thing as ACTUALLY being it or bringing it into existence.

So when you believe that "the ego concept" (impossible non-existence) is POSSIBLE, your sense of IDENTITY shifts to align with it, to reflect it, to mirror it. You try to BE LIKE it. To be one with it. To merge with it and make it true of you, thus redefining your whole sense of what you are. And so by putting belief in "opposites to reality", your sense of WHAT IS TRUE changed, and thus your sense of WHO I AM changed.

Your sense of identity shifted from your soul, to an IMAGINED idea of what ego might be like. This did not actually make "the ego". You never created a "real ego". You just BELIEVE what is BEYOND your dream on the other side of oblivion. You believed in not existing. You believed in impossibilities. You believed in being opposite to what you are. That is all.

So there is no EGO doing anything whatsoever. There is no EGO taking responsibility for making ANYTHING happen. There is no ego to pin stuff on. There is no ego to say "the ego did this". There is no ego PERIOD. So every time there's someone teaching that "acim says" there is an ego, they are mistaken.

NON EXISTENCE DOES NOT EXIST. THE EGO DOES NOT EXIST.

Not even in dreaming do you go there. Not even in your wildest fantasies can you ever CREATE an ego. You never have. All you've done is TRIED to exchange God's reality for UNREALITY. Which means, taking everything true about God and trying to make it false. And taking everything untrue about God and trying to make it true. This results in CONFUSION (insanity) and that is all.

If you believe something is possible which isn't, you are not sane. If you believe you are IN the non-existent realm outside of God, you are insane. If you think you DID become separate and thus are OUTSIDE God, you are insane. But that IS what you believe, and that BELIEF is the tiny mad idea. The notion that the ego concept is OPPOSITE to what the ego concept IS.

Earth is just a neutral fantasy ABOUT non-existent realms, an attempt to REFLECT hell/ego/impossibility, as an "image" in the mind IMAGINING what having no imagination is like. Thinking about what having NO thought is like. Being unwilling to will anything real.

Let's put this another way. If the ego concept is non-existence, impossibility, death, nowhere-ness, lovelessness, emptiness, etc... in your BELIEF in it, you have tried to assign it the attributes of heaven, reality, truth, and God. You've tried to BRING IT TO LIFE. You've tried to turn hell into heaven, you've tried to claim that non-existence exists, you've tried to assert that immortality can be killed, etc. You've produced an entire hallucinated world based on this attempt to oppose life and make NOT LIFE appear to "live."

The body is nothing. The world is nothing. But in our BELIEVING (spacetime), we have TRIED to make it APPEAR AS IF bodies live, worlds evolve, there are "life forms" etc. it is NOT LIFE. It is an illusion. it is nothingness pretending to be something.

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

So there literally is no ego. We need to stop blaming "the ego" for stuff. EGO IS NON-EXISTENCE. It does not exist even in dreaming. There is no ego anywhere. Evil is not real. An absolute opposite to everything does not exist.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"By steadily and consistently cancelling out ALL its effects, EVERYWHERE AND IN ALL RESPECTS, He teaches that the ego does not exist, and PROVES IT."

So what does happen? What does happen is OUR MIND keeps on trying to turn itself into "the ego". It keeps trying to get CLOSER TO the CONCEPTUAL idea of "being ego", which is non-existence and impossibility and total limitation and death and a void and emptiness and lack and darkness and lovelessness. We keep trying to BECOME it, as if reaching through the outskirts of God's being to another world. But we can't. And we NEVER will. So it's all wasted effort. We might as well just accept the truth.

This is why the secret of salvation tells us that we MUST recognize that WE are doing this ALL to ourselves. Not the ego, not the world, it's us. We do the shit, we must undo it. It is NOT the ego, ever. It's part of our own mind running rogue and opposing the rest of our mind. It's us TRYING TO BE opposite. Working against ourselves. We are the dreamer. Miracles reflect the idea that it's this thing I have done and it is this I would undo. ME. My mind. Not "the ego".

You cannot give your power to the ego either. EVER. All you can do is BELIEVE that you are giving your power to "it". And thus YOUR MIND now goes into a distortion, against ITSELF, pretending to be opposed, pretending to BECOME an ego, and acts ego-LIKE, and now you blame "the ego" for stuff, but its PART OF YOU doing stuff to yourself. So now you are disassociated and projecting and trying to make your ideas leave your mind. That is all. Take responsibility for that. Never blame ego for anything. It does not exist whatsoever.

And when I say that I don't even mean, ok, this is a dream, so ego doesn't REALLY exist, cus none of this really happened, but it seems to, and so in the dream it does exist. IT DOES NOT. Ego doesn't even exist IN the dream. It's ENTIRELY just a theoretical concept and label for "absolute opposition". It's BEYOND God completely and even this dream is not THERE. It not here, it's not anywhere, and you can never make contact with it. This is why the Holy Spirit and "the ego" never communicate.

If you could actually leave God completely, and go to where existence is NOT, you've meet "the ego". But you can't and you never will. And all your dream life is about is imagining that you ARE or HAVE or CAN, when you AREN'T and HAVEN'T and CANNOT. It's wishful thinking at best. Ego is nothing but a theory. Which is why when it's gone, it's recognized as nothing.

Replace "the ego" with "I". Your mind is either whole or split. There is nothing else.

"The ego's opposite in every way, in origin, effect and consequence, we call a miracle. And here we find all that is not the ego in this world. Here is the ego's opposite and here alone we look on what the ego was, for here we see all that it seemed to do, and cause and its effects must still be one.

Where there was darkness now we see the light. What is the ego? What the darkness was. Where is the ego? Where the darkness was. What is it now and where can it be found? Nothing and nowhere. Now the light has come: Its opposite has gone without a trace. Where evil was there now is holiness. What is the ego? What the evil was. Where is the ego? In an evil dream that but seemed real while you were dreaming it. Where there was crucifixion stands God's Son. What is the ego? Who has need to ask? Where is the ego? Who has need to seek for an illusion now that dreams are gone?"

Once upon a time, in heaven, there was a rebellion against the will of God. The children of God believed they were separate, and threw themselves into a nightmare world of magic and hell and death.

God saw this and, loving his Children, created the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was a divine idea in God's mind, a single perfect idea of healing the entire separation. A thought of miraculous power and of love. An expression, as though a voice, calling his children to return, and providing them with all he help and healing they would need.

The Holy Spirit was established as the single perfect solution to the thought of separation, the bringer of the atonement, the very idea of resurrection and healing. The miracle, which was given by God to completely and fully and successfully heal the entire sonship.

The Holy Spirit has been endowed with all of the power in heaven and earth. All of God has been given him and he is absolutely unlimited in his capabilities. He is the mechanism of miracles, because he alone is in a state of the transfer from hell to heaven.

He is your only appointed friend, he is your only teacher, your only qualified therapist, and your comforter. He has been given to you by God as the only help you need to return to heaven, to become a miracle worker, to act as a healer, and to resurrect the dead.

His healing capability is perfect and flawless and guaranteed to always work. He never fails. His healing is powerful and effective and there is absolutely nothing beyond his reach. There is no situation he cannot resolve and no sickness he cannot undo.

He is your guide through foreign lands and alien worlds. He is there for you. He has been created as a permanent part of reality, bridging your mind and God's mind like a bridge, guaranteeing your absolute success in returning to reality.

The Holy Spirit cannot fail. He is beyond all flaws, beyond weakness, and beyond death. There is nothing he cannot do, and nothing he cannot do through you when you are willing to let him. He can undo all the consequences of all wrong decisions, all faulty choices, all attempts to make yourself suffer, and all forms of sickness. The reversal of death is effortless to him.

He has been given to you by God as the single perfect solution to your desperate attempt to be separate. He is the answer to the questioning and the doubting and the fearing of God. He provides the vision for you to see, the power for you to heal, and the guidance and comfort to guarantee all outcomes.

Your mission is to align with him, follow his guidance, turn to him for all decisions, depend on him for healing, work with him to heal others, and help to facilitate and extend his perfect function in the world. Your destiny is to be a healer with the Holy Spirit. He is the power that works miracles through you. Utilizing his power is the natural expression of all the children of God for the good of all.

He is not of this world. He is of God and of heaven. He brings to you and to this world a power and a functioning which is in complete violation of all the world's laws. He stands for an opposite and alternative solution, a happier dream, and the only way home. He will guide you and strengthen you and support you and work through you. He will speak for you, see for you, decide for you, heal for you, and resurrect you. And he will guide you back to eternal life. With him you are unstoppable and all powerful. With him there is nothing your holiness cannot do as a miracle worker, the light of the world, a teacher of God, a physician of the Lord, and a representative of God.

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

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

"Lead not your little lives in solitude, with one illusion as your only friend. This is no friendship worthy of God's Son, nor one with which he could remain content. But God has given him a better Friend, in whom all power in earth and Heaven rests. The one illusion that you THINK is friend obscures HIS grace and majesty from you, and keeps his friendship and forgiveness from your welcoming embrace. Without him you are friendless. Seek not another friend to take his place. There IS no other friend. What God appointed HAS no substitute. And what illusion CAN replace the truth?"

"Make NO illusion friend, for if you do, it CAN but take the place of him whom God has called your Friend. And it is he who is your ONLY Friend in truth. He brings you gifts that are not of this world, and only he, to whom they have been given, CAN make sure that you receive them. He will place them on YOUR throne, when you make room for him on his."

"All therapy is release from the past. And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this. He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

"Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it. So will He teach you to remove the awful burden you have laid upon yourself, by loving not the Son of God, and trying to teach him guilt INSTEAD of love."

"Make no decisions about what it is, or where it lies, but ask of the Holy Spirit EVERYTHING, and leave ALL decisions to His gentle counsel. The One Who knows the plan, of God which God would have you follow, can teach you what it IS. Only His wisdom is capable of guiding you to follow it."

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"Perception is not an attribute of God. His is the realm of knowledge. Yet He has created the Holy Spirit as the Mediator between perception and knowledge. Without this link with God, perception would have replaced knowledge forever in your minds. With this link with God, perception will become so changed and purified that it will lead to knowledge. That is its function as the Holy Spirit sees it. Therefore, that is its function in truth."

"The Holy Spirit was God's answer to the separation, the means by which the Atonement could repair until the whole mind returned to creating. The Atonement and the separation began at the same time. When man made the ego, God placed in him the call of joy. This call is so strong that the ego always dissolves at its sound."

"The Atonement principle was given to the Holy Spirit long before Jesus set it in motion."

"Therefore, says reason, if escape from guilt was given to the Holy Spirit as His purpose, and by One to Whom NOTHING He wills CAN BE impossible, the means for its attainment are MORE than possible. They must be THERE, and YOU must HAVE them."

"The seemingly new abilities that may be gathered on the way can be very helpful. Given to the Holy Spirit, and used under His direction, they are very valuable teaching aids."

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

"The Holy Spirit is the mind of the Atonement. It represents a state of mind that comes close enough to one-mindedness that transfer is at last possible."

"The Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracle-mindedness. It is the will to HEAL the separation by letting it go. It is IN you because God placed it in your mind, and although you can keep it asleep you cannot obliterate it. God Himself keeps it alive by transmitting it from His Mind to yours as long as there is time. It is partly His will and partly yours. The miracle itself is just this fusion or union of will between Father and Son."

"The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Joy. It is the call to return, with which God blessed the minds of the separated Sons. This the vocation of the mind."

"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him. We have already said that the Holy Spirit is the bridge or thought-transfer of perception TO knowledge, so we CAN use the terms as if they were related, because in HIS mind they are. "

"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED. Being the call FOR God, it is also the idea OF God."

"The Holy Spirit is the mediator between the interpretations of the ego and the knowledge of the Soul. Its ability to deal with symbols enables it to work AGAINST the ego's beliefs in its own language. Its equal ability to look BEYOND symbols into eternity also enables it to understand the laws of God, for which it speaks."

"The Holy Spirit is the perfect teacher. It uses only what your minds ALREADY understand, to teach you that you do not understand it."

"The voice of the Holy Spirit IS the call to Atonement, or the restoration of the integrity of the mind."

"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness. His is the glory before which dissociation falls away, and the Kingdom of Heaven breaks through into its own."

"The Holy Spirit is the call to awake and be glad."

"The Holy Spirit is the Christ mind that senses the knowledge that lies beyond perception. It came into being with the separation as a protection, and inspired the beginning of the Atonement at the same time."

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."

"The Holy Spirit is the home of minds that seek for freedom. In Him they find what they have sought."

"The Holy Spirit IS the translator of the Laws of God to those who do NOT understand them."

"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."

"The Holy Spirit is the part of the mind that lies between the ego and the Soul, mediating between them ALWAYS IN FAVOR OF THE SOUL."

"The Holy Spirit is the light in which Christ stands revealed."

"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."

"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the ANSWER, not the question." "The Holy Spirit is the bridge to Him, made from your willingness to UNITE with Him, and created by His joy, in union WITH you."

"Remember that the Holy Spirit is the communication link between God the Father and His separated Sons. If you will listen to His voice, you will know that you cannot either hurt or BE hurt, but that many need your blessing to help them hear this for themselves."

"The Holy Spirit is the Highest Communication Medium."

The physical universe is not what it appears to be. It is a wall, constructed of a mad idea of sin, formed from lies, to tempt you to believe a great many horrible things are happening. It has been inserted as a gap of hell, in between you and yourself, between you and God. It depicts every form of suffering imaginable, is designed to tempt you to believe all of it is real, and deceives at every turn.

"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."

"The world was made as a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son."

"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."

So hanging in between you and God's Son, there is a three dimensional image, physical matter, "the world of bodies is the world of sin", depicting God's son as crucified, attacked, murdered, fragmented, suffering, vulnerable and sick. This is what planet Earth was designed to be. A giant holographic presentation of the idea of an attack on God and His Holy Son.

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

All of its forms, all events, all occurrences, every interaction and movement, is all part of a shifting picture of change, in which every possible unreality except permanent perfection is depicted. Every car crash, every disease, every murderous war, every pain, every destructive habit, every unhappiness, all the tears, short and long term death, it's all designed on purpose to show you a picture of crucifixion.

Crucifixion is another word for death and this is a dream of death. And being an illusion of death, with stories of death running through it, it does not depict life and is not capable of doing so.

"What you are cannot be seen nor pictured."

"Nothing so blinding as perception of form."

So here you are, in your human dream body, looking out upon what seems to be a world, which you are blinded by. The body was deliberately designed to use its own senses to attempt to self-prove its own existence and the existence of other bodies. Its eyesight is blocked by the surface of sin (flesh, matter) so that by seeing it you do not see past it to the light of truth.

"You cannot behold the world and know God."

"Theirs (body's eyes) 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."

And so, every day, you wake up, and you see this world - the hell you made. And in it, things go wrong, all the time. You see someone you love in pain or suffering sickness and fear. You see animals being abused. You see wars waging on foreign continents. You try not to drive your dream car over the road kill. You see the dead deer on the side of the street. And the whole thing is one big pile of torture and terror.

The thing is, just the mere fact of "feasting your eyes" upon any of this worlds contents, immediately instills fear. Just the mere act of seeing it at all, means christ vision has become blocked and you are now losing sight of the truth. Illusions of a world rise before your sight, claimed as true and real by the body's senses. And now the world seems real to you. People seem to be suffering.

Things seems to be going wrong. There is murder and death on the news. And if that is true, if you see it, if it has become real to you, if you are experiencing it at all, it is because you now believe it is reality. And by virtue of equating this world with reality, you MUST now be horrified and afraid, because if suffering is reality, there is no way to exist anywhere in reality without suffering.

And if pain and misery are true, there is no way to exist in truth without pain and misery. And in this there is no hope and no light and no salvation, because if reality is now hell, there is no heaven. And all this occurs in a split second just merely by "sensing" this world. Just merely by seeing someone walking as a cripple. Just merely receiving signals that someone is crying in pain. Just merely witnessing bodies moving around. This is enough to produce an ego reaction of terror.

The instant you believe, are deceived by, witness as true, and fail to overlook this ENTIRE world, this picture of crucifixion and lies, your mind MUST now equate that reality is harmful. And this will instill a sense of being at the effect of harm. And this will incite fear. And now your mind will spring into action with "why is this happening" "how can I fix this" "how can I avoid this" "what's gone wrong" "what caused it". All based on the belief that IT IS HAPPENING AT ALL.

At this point we have already fallen for the ego's trap. The instant we are deceived by the world, tempted to believe "it's happening" or "there is a world", we've already slipped on the slope and are now descending into ego responses. And our entire struggle now becomes one of trying to escape, while falling ever deeper into a pit. With the walls of the world closing in. And no matter what we do, WITHIN that kind of mindset, it does not bring peace. Because now we're in the desert where there is no life or love, and we need to leave.

It's like, we're being bombarded night and day with visions of hell. A world of lies. Where not one single thing is true. Where the whole world is a temptation to buy into an illusion of a world, as if it's really here. As if events are happening. As if things are being threatened. It's a nightmare to believe this world is happening. It's a dream of death, and all dreams are of death. A dream of life is still a dream of death, because life isn't a dream.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So if there is someone in pain, if someone is suffering, and you see it or hear it or sense it, and you take this to mean "its happening", and you believe that, that alone means you are now tempted by the ego and are not forgiving. Because "to forgive is to OVERLOOK". And "falling for the world" or "gaining the whole world" causes you to lose your soul.

Failing to recognize this is JUST an illusion, NOT something "really happening", NOT something to react to, is a failure to be in christ vision. It's a failure to SEE reality. The screeching sounds of the ego have blotted out the real world. Not only is form blinding, it's *extremely* blinding, and every single thing that this picture of crucifixion DOES or SHOWS, is an illusion. A lie. A not truth. A false witness. A testimony of death. An attempt to prove that sin is real and death is truth.

If you watch yourself you'll see this happen. The moment you "experience" anything in this world, where you see something seem to go wrong, watch how your mind instantly reacts with ego. Watch how the fear increases rapidly. Notice how you immediately slip into the context of "I accept it is happening, but what is causing it"? rather than realizing, or questioning, is this even happening? If I believe what my senses are telling me at all, I am deceived.

"Whatever you accept INTO your mind has reality for you."

If I just fall into "its happening" mode, I will automatically start having thoughts like "why is this happening", "what's making this happen", "how can I stop this happening". Which is all ego. We then turn into fixers, managers, controllers, resisters, trying to change what we believe is happening. Trying to change an illusion based on believing that the illusion is real. And this is not forgiveness at all.

Forgiveness is profound. It literally means that this world IS NOT HERE. It requires the recognition and acceptance that THERE IS NO WORLD. It entails seeing PAST this world entirely, not falling for ANYTHING YOU SEE. Not being deceived by the powerful tempting illusions of suffering. To literally completely IGNORE extremely loud shrieks of suffering and war presented as physical proof. To look past the world as if it's not there. To not believe for an instant that someone's appearance of sickness is REAL or TRUE or HAPPENING. To realize your brother literally did not do anything that he appeared to do, and there are no real events here.

"All events are nowhere."

"Forgiveness recognizes that what you think your brother did HAS NOT OCCURRED."

Not just you thinking, well, yes he did something, he moved, he writhed, he suffered, he spoke, whatever... but that this wasn't real. It means being willing to pay NO ATTENTION to any of that, to ignore those signals, to not even TRUST your body senses, and to instead fixate on the light of truth beyond the body. Beyond matter. Beyond all physical objects and planets. Beyond the universe. A vision in the light so bright that it completely looks PAST (overlooks) and practically ignores everything in the world.

"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."

Anything the body does is not true. It's an extraordinary picture of lies.

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

We have to learn, this is a really profound lesson. This whole world was designed to deceive us. We have to learn to NOT believe its lies and NOT take its appearances as literal reality.

"The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

"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."

"Temptation has one lesson it would teach, **in all its forms** (all objects), 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 temptation to regard problems as many is the temptation to keep the problem of separation unsolved. The world seems to present you with a vast number of problems, each requiring a different answer. This perception places you in a position in which your problem solving must be inadequate, and failure must be inevitable.

No-one could solve all the problems the world appears to hold. They seem to be on so many levels, in such varying forms and with such varied content, that they confront you with an impossible situation. Dismay and depression are inevitable as you regard them. Some spring up unexpectedly, just as you think you have resolved the previous ones. Others remain unsolved under a cloud of denial, and rise to haunt you from time to time, only to be hidden again but still unsolved.

All this complexity is but a desperate attempt not to recognize the problem, and therefore not to let it be resolved. If you could recognize that your only problem is separation, no matter what form it takes, you could accept the answer because you would see its relevance. Perceiving the underlying constancy in all the problems which confront you, you would understand that you have the means to solve them all. And you would use the means because you recognize the problem."

There is a world beyond this world. It's reality. This world, Earth, is a giant advertisement for everything OTHER THAN reality. "Earth, heaven's opposite in every way." Every aspect of this universe is a dream about "what is it like to be dead". "The world has disappointed you since time began." It will never satisfy us. "This world holds nothing that I want."

"Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust even as you made it. This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

The escape from hell is the escape from this world, into the light of reality. Leaving behind every temptation, deception, denial, resistance, darkness, horror and hellish vision. To awaken from this dream of suffering and return to awareness of immortal reality.

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

How was the tiny mad idea possible? How was it possible for us to mis-create? Why did God give us the ability to try to sin? Did we lose our innocence in the separation? How is it that this world seems to exist?

When God created his children, He gave them the freedom to will and create. The mind is not capable of ever doing anything that God didn't give it the ability to do. It cannot add abilities to itself, it can only operate within the parameters of its design. This means you literally cannot go against God's will or do anything He did not make possible.

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

But what God did do, was give you freedom. The power of the mind to freely choose to will to co-create. And this freedom is fully given.

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

Within the context of being "completely free", it is technically possible for you to try to USE your freedom against itself. You HAVE to be free to do this, in order to truly have freedom. While you have free will, it HAS to be possible for you to potentially USE that free will to try NOT to will anything. If this weren't a part of the freedom of will, you would not have free will. It's not a productive USE of will, since it creates nothing, but it is still part of it.

The thing is, although you are free to TRY to deny freedom, something completely pointless happens when you do so. Since it remains true that God's will cannot be opposed, and you cannot remove your freedom from yourself, and you cannot make yourself unpowerful, and you cannot be changed in any way, the exercise of TRYING to use your will to NOT will, to be "unwilling" or to oppose God's will, HAS to be futile.

It's not that you aren't free to TRY to do this, it's just that there is really no point in doing it. It's not possible to cause anything real to happen this way, because it denies creation. So it's like saying, I want to use my free will against itself to cause nothing to happen. I want to will not to will. I want to not create anything. I want to deny myself.

There is a circular logic which enters into this. You are trying to use your free will to cause your free will to stop being free and to will nothing. But how can you still be WILLING that you will nothing? You have to still USE the will to will that you don't will anything. So the notion is really absurd. You have to keep using the will, while claiming that you're not using it. And so it has to entail denial and it has to NOT accomplish what you're trying to make it accomplish. And never can you will the WILL itself to cease to exist, because you'd have to USE will to do that.

It has to be a state of denial, because the fact remains you can't change your freedom or power. So trying to DO so can only mean you are going into a DENIAL of what is true of you, and are PRETENDING to do whatever you're doing. You can't actually make yourself un-free or destroy your power. You can, however, seemingly deceive yourself in believing that its possible. Precisely BECAUSE you are free to do so. God did make it possible for you to be free to try to not be free, but He did not make it possible for you to ACTUALLY affect your freedom.

"Your Father created you wholly without sin, wholly without pain, and wholly without suffering of any kind. If you deny Him, you bring sin, pain, and suffering into your OWN mind, because of the power He gave it. Your mind is capable of creating worlds, but it can also DENY what it creates, because it is free."

Another way to put it is, it is not possible to change God's will or to cause your own will to stop. It is literally impossible to separate from God or be where God is not. However, you are FREE to use your freedom to TRY to do so. You can INSIST that it is possible, and invest belief in it, and try to GIVE IT truth and make it real and convince yourself of it and deceive yourself, but you STILL cannot make it a reality or actually do it in reality.

As you try to do so, as you attempt to use your freedom to stop being free, as you try to will not to will anything, or as you try to will nothingness, or try to give reality and meaning to something impossible, you go into what we're calling the "tiny mad idea". The idea of separation and sin. Which just means you're insisting that something impossible is possible - that something false is true. That you CAN separate, you CAN sin, you have done so, and there is proof that the impossible is happening.

This can only be self deception and denial, because it's still impossible. But you are free to believe it if you want to. To believe it you have to DENY what is true, try to be out of touch with the facts, and pretend that the will has been denied. You are free to pretend that you have no freedom, which seems to place the mind in a state of "sleep" or dormancy, as though it is not creating or has no power, or is not alive. A sort of "stand-by mode", in which the mind believes that everything impossible is possible, and thus imagines that the opposite of God is happening through a kind of hallucinatory process of wishful thinking. ("There is no world apart from what you wish").

"When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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."

Now, going into this state, is NOT A SIN. NOR is it outside of the scope of what God made possible. You can never actually rewrite the laws of God. You can't give yourself something He did not give you. You cannot change yourself. You cannot destroy yourself or your freedom or your will. But it IS within your rights and within your power to deny or pretend that you can do these things.

Pretending that you are not immortal is the best you can do, because you cannot cause yourself to die. But you certainly can produce illusions, fabrications, that its happening, through the DESIRE to have it be possible. You can confuse your identity with these illusions. You can also believe that the suffering is real. But it remains unreal, and the truth is unchanged.

What this simply means is that by "mis-using" the mind to believe that impossibilities are possible and happening, you hallucinate a world of make-believe, which you try to invest in and convince yourself is true and real. You even try to give it immortality and life and will and a mind of its own. But you can't succeed. You can only fake it. But you are free to fake it.

Entering into this state of "denying that you are free", using your freedom of will to try to will not to have freedom of will, you are ONLY entering into a state of being MISTAKEN. If it is true that you HAVE freedom and will, you are mistaken when you believe that you don't. If it is true that you are immortal, you are mistaken when you believe death is possible. If it is true that sin is utterly impossible, you are mistaken when you believe sin is happening.

Being mistaken is still an "innocent" condition. Guilt does not have to enter into it at all. Someone can make an "innocent mistake", which is simply a failure to willingly admit that you're trying to do something which makes no sense. You can be mistaken in believing that willing against God's free will is possible. It's not possible. Nor can you really will against yourself. But you are free to believe it's possible, and to try to do it, and to try to convince yourself that you've done it. But you cannot do it, and so are mistaken when you believe this.

Believing that you can be separate from God, is a simple mistake. Since it's not possible, you can't do it. But you can try to convince yourself that it's possible. Doing that is pointless and futile because it can't BE possible. But you are free to try. You are free to resist the truth. Or to use your power to try to pretend to be powerless. You are innocent in this because all you're doing is using your God-given powers in a way that is a pointless exercise. A way which results in nothing really happening, as you "play small" and try to be little and powerless.

Provided that you recognize that mis-creation is just a state of being mistaken, and is not a sin, and is still well within the laws of God, and that at no time is God's will violated, even when you are mistaken, then you can also see that mis-creating is an innocent act. It's really not an act at all. And it does not change the truth about you. All it does is set up some illusion of deception and some confusion about what's really possible.

"There is another Maker of the world, the simultaneous Corrector of the mad belief that ANYTHING could be established and maintained without some link that kept it still within the laws of God; NOT as the law itself upholds the universe as God created it, but in some form adapted to the need the Son of God believes he has. Corrected error IS the error's end. And thus has God protected still His Son, even in error."

"Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release."

The Course also talks about how entering into this "detour into fear", which is just an attempt to make true what is not true, or to use will against itself, produced a "lower order mind" or a "system of thought" which seems to function opposite to how God originally indended it in higher reality. This lower (ego) mind is a mind of denial, deception, untruth and confusion. But it is not a sin. It's just a mis-configured and unwise mis-use of your God-given abilities.

"Thoughts can represent the lower or bodily level of experience, or the higher or spiritual level of experience. One makes the physical, and the other creates the spiritual."

The physical world of bodies is what is produced in the deceptive state of being mistaken about the truth. In the state of denial, the dream of death, the illusion of separation, the pretense at being powerless and imprisoned, it produces the "forms of error" which the body sees. Error is just a mistake.

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment."

Attempting to assert that will can cause will not to will, produced an illusion of an "unwilling world." A world in opposition to God. But this is STILL within the confines of the Son of God's freedom. The angels also have this freedom.

"Error cannot really threaten truth, which can always withstand it. Only the error is actually vulnerable. You are free to establish your kingdom where you see fit..."

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit.""God does not coerce".

"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. "

God is not viewing your excursion into "trying to make impossible things possible", as being a sin. He doesn't see it as a real threat to what you are, either. Nor does he coerce you into stopping doing this against your will. For God to oppose your free will he would have to oppose his own. He does however "encourage" and guide and help his children to "come to their senses". Because it remains true that "trying not to will anything" is a rather pointless exercise which can't really result in anything creative. It's more like, taking a nap where you dream of destruction or "the opposite of creating". A dream of mortality and death as "the opposite of eternal life."

We mis-created the world, but only as a mistake. Not as a sin. When it is recognized as only a mistake, sin is lifted away from it and it is regarded as forgiven. Being an illusion of something impossible seeming to be possible, this is seen through and beyond, and this overlooking is forgiveness. It's a forgiveness which looks past bodies and the physical to the light of reality, not deceived by the illusion that false things are true. To the the light of sanity and reason. We simply made the world in error and it can be undone.

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

"Miracles reflect..." "I have done this thing and it is this I would undo."All we're doing here, is basically, innocently, trying to do something which isn't really possible. We're using our freedom to try to imprison ourselves. We're using our immortality to pretend to be mortal. We're using our holiness to pretend to be sinners. And we're using the power of the mind to pretend to be weak and powerless. We can't ACTUALLY be imprisoned, or mortal, or sinful, or powerless. And so we're using all these things against themselves, to PRETEND that we don't have these things. This BLOCKS and disguises them, using illusions to make it appear something is true which isn't.

Seen as nothing more than an error, a mistake, a futile attempt, a pointless exercise, the dream of death is not "against" God's will, which cannot be opposed, but is an ATTEMPT to believe that opposing God's will is possible or has merit. The mind is just stretching the truth. But using the mind in a "destructive" way, against its own nature, isn't constructive or creative and it also doesn't allow you to experience happiness.

"The thought of death is not the opposite to thoughts of life. Forever unopposed by opposites of any kind, the Thoughts of God remain forever changeless, with the power to extend forever changelessly but yet within Themselves, for They are everywhere."

"By denying his mind any destructive potential, and reinstating its purely constructive powers, he has placed himself in a position where he can undo the level confusion of others."

God DOES will that you maintain the sanity of the clear recognition that there is NO POINT trying to use your freedom against itself. That it is truly impossible to WILL nothing. Or to make yourself have no power. Believing you are powerless when you are powerful, or that you are imprisoned when you are free, is obviously a state of denial, and this denial of life can only produce illusions of suffering and pain and misery."We also have observed that man can create an empty shell, but cannot create nothing at all."

"Whenever projection (creation) in its inappropriate sense is utilized, it ALWAYS implies that some emptiness (or lack of everything) must exist, and that it is within man's ability to put his own ideas there INSTEAD of the truth."

When you try NOT to create, you enter into "making" illusions. You produce an "emptiness" or lack of love, which is the world of "sin", meaning just the illusion of love's absence, or the absence of light. It isn't the presence of darkness, or of sin, or of real death, it is the illusion of the absence of their opposite. Because even in illusions you can't get outside of God's laws. You can never violate the parameters of your functioning as given by God. And so the world remains ONLY a mistake, not a real sin.

God's own will follows the knowledge that it is pointless to use will against itself, even though its possible to TRY to do so. Because when you try to do so, nothing is willed, and so nothing happens. God knows this and he is sane. His will is that you know it also. When you refuse to know it or you deny it, insisting that you CAN will nothingness to be something, you become deceived and confused. And God does not will that you enter into such suffering. "God's will for me is perfect happiness". And you can only be happy when you will in accord with God's true will - purely constructively and using your freedom to create. Free from self destruction.

"God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

"The miracle compares the creations of man with the higher level of creation, accepting what is in ACCORD as true, and rejecting the DISCORDANT as false."

In all this, you always remain innocent, you can be correct or mistaken, but you cannot change the laws of God or of your true nature. You can be asleep in a denial state of trying to pretend that impossibilities are possible, but you can't ACTUALLY cause an opposite to God to happen. You can dream of it, imagine it, try to give it reality, even convince yourself of it, but you can't make it true. So at some point you have to admit, it's a fruitless exercise, and just return to creating with God. Using will to willingly will your creations, as God intended.

The world, meaning the larger physical universe and everything in it, is fiction. It's a dream, coming from a dreaming mind. The mind is dreaming of states of being in which there is degradation, decay, change, entropy, uncertainty and death. This shows up as what we call the universe. It's an image, an illusion, picturing what God's creation (His Son) would be like if it were NOT what it is like. It's the idea of the opposite of Heaven (reality), and is hell (illusion).

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

"He will remain with you to lead you from the hell you made to God."

As a dream, it's not real. It's actually entirely nothing. Nothing whatsoever. It's merely an illusion of something. It's not there. At most, it is completely neutral, in that it causes nothing and has no effect on anything real. It is nothing but a thin "veil" of illusions, covering up reality. It has no mind, no will, no self, no soul, no power, no causality, no identity. It is not life and nothing in it lives forever. It has no real properties at all. Made of darkness, it is the illusion of the absence of light. When light comes, it disappears.

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"The world will spin into the nothingness from which it came."

"It is at best an illusion of life, at worst, death."

"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 are the dreamer of the dream. The cause of the manifestation of the illusory universe. It is in your mind and coming from you. You put into place everything that happens and everything the world contains. This is "the world you made".

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made and all its ways"

"For, if you think the world you made has power to make you what it wills, you ARE confusing Son and Father; effect and Source."

"My self is ruler of the universe."

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Both heaven and earth are in your mind."

Now. You as a dreamer, the cause of the dream world, have within your power the ability to choose whether to believe God's true reality is the one reality, or whether to put belief into the world you made. The only way to believe that the world you made has any truth or reality to it at all, is to believe God's world is lacking in truth and reality. This requires you to confuse what is really true, with what is false.

The false world you made (which includes planet Earth), by believing it exists at all, seems to take on properties of its own, as if it exists, as if it causes, as if it is happening, as if time and space actually occur. Through a reversal of cause and effect, believing that the effect of you is the cause of you, that your dream world is dreaming you, this forces your mind to "perceive" itself as being "caused by" the universe. This level confusion takes you out from "above" (or prior to) the world and places you seemingly "within it" (below it).

This is the foundation for incarnation into or the making of a body, which pictures you as if you have been "made by" the world, at the effect of it, and anchored in space and time like a prisoner. The body depicts the idea that the world is causing you, rather than that you cause the world. And now you seem to perceive in, through, and with the body.

Without this reversal of causality, there is no body. This also means everything the body "perceives" is false, perceived in a false way, confusing a false world with truth, and therefore perceiving it as if it is really there. This is what the senses were made to report (lies). They were made to look upon illusions of forms ("the forms of error"), and NOT see past them, taking them to be real objects and things.

"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."

"Even in its most spiritualized form perception involves the body."

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

"Perception is a witness but to this, and never to reality."

"Its eyes perceive it not; its senses remain quite unaware of it"

"The body's eyes will NEVER look on it." (reality)

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

The perceptual function of the body, through the body's eyes and senses, reports illusions to the mind as if to suggest these illusions are really there to perceive. The body relays images of a *false world* to the mind. These are neutral images with no real meaning. Snapshots of a fake world. Pictures of nothingness seeming to be something. It is then entirely up to the mind to determine what to make of these messages.

The body always and only perceives what is false. It can ONLY look upon false things. Everything it sees MUST be false (the world is false). It is literally incapable of perceiving reality or truth of any kind. It's vision is locked into hell, for as long as it seems to exist. It cannot see light, reality, heaven, or God. It was designed not to AND it never will, regardless of your state of mind. The body sees only sin. The world is made of the idea of sin and death. Every form, object, body, planet, galaxy, is made of the idea of separation, sin and death, being a dream of death. Physical objects are sin - illusions of separations seeming to happen.

"The world of bodies is the world of sin."

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

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

"endless list of forms of nothingness that you endow with magical powers."

"For sin arose from it, out of nothingness"

"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. Yet how can sight that stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is held back by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived."

So there's the body, showing you pictures of sin and hell, constantly. That's all it can do. Anything it "sees" is a result of vision being blocked by illusions, unable to overlook (forgive) anything. Unable to see through the block of solid physical sin (matter). Repulsed by it. Imprisoned by it.

The mind however, is the only thing that sees. "only mind can see". The mind "looks upon" the images of hell that the body relays to it through the senses. The mind is the location of the belief system. The mind is where any kind of distortion of reality is happening, and it's where you assign meaning or value or "reality" to illusions. Depending on what the mind accepts as true and real, determines how it will interpret the images of a fake world. It will either believe they are real, or will believe they are not real. But so long as the body persists, it WILL continue seeing the false world.

When the mind wants to believe (value) illusory things as real, it misinterprets what the body is showing it. It is confused. It confuses unreal things for real things. The mind, therefore, has a false perception ABOUT, the images being sent to it by the body's eyes. Since the body is showing you images of the FALSE WORLD, and the mind is believing these illusions are real, the mind is now having "false perceptions about" a FALSE world. The body only shows the mind images of "hell is real". If the mind agrees with the images and is convinced these images are indeed real hell, the mind too has false perception.

Believing the body's eyes is false perception. The body is always seeing falsely, but the mind can choose whether to be confused about what it's being shown (taking it as real), or to recognize that these images are false. Images of a false world, a fake world, an untrue world, a world that is not real, or happening, a world where the sin it is made of is recognized as not real. Not true. The mind decides what meaning to give to what the body is seeing.

"Nothing I see means anything."

"I have given what I see all the meaning it has for me"

"Therefore ... will to change your mind ABOUT the world. Perception is a RESULT, and not a cause."

Note that just because you change your mind ABOUT what the body is showing you, DOES NOT MEAN that the world is inherently real or true. It does not mean the world is REAL behind your misperceptions of it. It does not mean the world is suddenly the Kingdom of God if you would just stop projecting stuff onto it. The world is NOT REAL, IN ADDITION TO, your false perceptions "about it". You have false peceptions ABOUT a false world, which makes that false world SEEM like a real world. Therefore believing the world (which is an illusion of a world) is real, or created by God, IS FALSE PERCEPTION.

A mind that believes the world is real, is having false perception. This is a false perception about a false world. The world is false, because you invented it to oppose God's truth. It is the OPPOSITE of truth. Perceiving a false world falsely, you regard it as a true world or a real world, you take it seriously, you think you live in it, and that you are at the effect of it. A true (corrected, healed) perception of a false world, reveals to you that the world IS in fact false. This is *recognition*. It is a recognition and a correct identification that this world IS in fact illusory, false, unreal, untrue, not happening, not real sin, not causing anything, not existing.

"The body's eyes will continue to see differences. But the mind that 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 healed mind will put them all in one category; they are unreal."

"Illusions recognized must disappear."

"Earth, heaven's OPPOSITE in every way."

"Enlightenment is but a recognition"

Just prior to total awakening from the dream, having sorted out what is really true and really false, having come to recognize illusions as illusions, not being confused about what is real, the mind is very much healed and still uses the body temporarily as a teaching device. It is used by the Holy Spirit to communicate healing and to symbolize immortality. This is the state of being "a teacher of God."

A teacher of God is still in the world, still dreaming, still causing the body as a result of slight cause-effect reversal, but almost awake ("those who perceive still need healing." The teacher of God still looks using the body's eyes, upon a fake world, where nothing is real. And it still remains in a world that continues to function according to ego laws, space and time, change and death, war and conflict, sickness and suffering. The world is still a picture of crucifixion. But the development of true perception is the development of the "spiritual eye" which overlooks these illusions and does not believe them. It looks PAST them, through them, beyond them, to the truth of reality, ignoring the illusory world and not believing in it.

"To forgive is to overlook."

"Oneness and sickness cannot coexist. God's teachers choose to look on dreams a while. It is a conscious choice. For they have learned that all choices are made consciously, with full awareness of their consequences. The dream says otherwise, but who would put his faith in dreams once they are recognized for what they are?"

"Awareness of dreaming is the real function of God's teachers. ***They watch the dream figures come and go, shift and change, suffer and die. Yet they are not deceived by what they see.*** They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is ***no more real*** than to regard it as healthy and beautiful."

In this state, the mind is becoming aware it is making the world. It is the dreamer of the dream. It is causing the world. It has power over it. Miracle mindedness allows for the breaking of all laws. There is nothing you cannot do. The mind here is still perceiving, and the body is still showing it pictures of hell (bodies sick and damaged, people unhappy, death and decay etc), but having *recognized* the truth (God's) it now sees things in their proper perspective.

It's a recognition that a false world IS false, illusions ARE illusions, sickness is NOT REAL, and everything you're seeing in the dream IS nothing but a dream. If you see sick bodies, you do not BELIEVE they are really sick, even though they still APPEAR as illusions of sickness you can perceive. The body can still show you broken legs. You just RECOGNIZE that they are not REALLY broken legs. They are false images, and you are not deceived by it.

The distinction is simple. Failing to recognize that a false illusory world is exactly that, confuses the mind and makes the world seem real. Recognizing it for what it is, overlooking it, not buying into it, or believing in it, reveals its FALSE nature, BECAUSE you know what is true. What you used to believe was true, real, valuable, causing you, now clearly appears to be interpreted as doing nothing, having no reality, causing nothing and producing no real effects. The illusory world is recognized as not *really* sinning. It's sin is fake. It's sicknesses are not true of anyone. And death can be abolished at will.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

"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."

"Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth."

"You are the dreamer of the world of dreams. No other cause it has, nor ever will. Nothing more fearful than an idle dream has terrified God's Son, and made him think that he has lost his innocence, denied his Father, and made war upon himself."

In this state of mind the world becomes "the forgiven world." It is forgiven because you are seeing truly. True perception is ACCURATE perception. To accurately see the world you made reveals its "true nature" or "the reality of it". The reality of the world is that it is NOT real. "The real world" is Heaven. Seeing a false world truly, recognizes this world is nothing. False things are seen, but not believed.

Realize that this is a state of continuing to perceive the world and all its ills. It cannot help but be a dream of death. Being in true perception does not in any way change the laws of physics, unless you perform a miracle. The world still spins regardless of how you look at it. Blood falls to the ground regardless of how you look at it. How you look at it is NOT a cause, it is a RESULT. Perception does not cause anything. Perception is *feedback*. It shows you what YOU MADE. It shows you the dream that you're causing.

So you are still seeing the hell you made through the body's eyes, BUT you are no longer believing it is real or confusing it for reality. False perception is a failure to *recognize* an illusion when you see one, and the world is made of illusions. And illusions are not "only" your perceptions "about" the world. The world and the body are both illusions in their own right. You will still look upon them or with them but without the confusion that they are reality.

"The body is a dream."

"The body is clearly a device for separation and therefore does not exist."

"God did not create the body."

"The world you see is an illusion".

"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."

It's important to realize then that when your mind is almost 100% healed, you will still see a world of death. You will still see bodies being sick. You will still see (illusions of) war and suffering. The body keeps showing it to you per the ego's laws of physics. Just because you see this stuff, it DOES NOT MEAN that you are sick or believing in sickness. Just because you see someone suffering, it does not mean you are making them suffer. Just because you see your neighbor with a broken leg, it does not mean you are believing in broken legs. The key is whether you BELIEVE IT IS REAL. Whether you confuse it for truth. NOT "whether or not I see it."

Having truer perception DOES NOT MEAN "I will no longer see bad stuff." It does not mean "I will not be able to see sickness, otherwise it means I am still sick." It does not mean you cease being able to perceive death. It ONLY means you REINTERPRET what you see. You change what it MEANS to you. You change how you evaluate or judge it. You change whether you BELIEVE it is true or false, real or unreal. That has nothing to do with "whether I see it" UNTIL you attain 100% Christ Vision and the world disappears.

"The Holy Spirit is the great re-interpreter of the world."

You will continue to see this world until you ascend to Heaven. That's a fact. You being near enlightened will not change the way that the sun rises or the fact that oceans still are polluted or that death seems to happen. What changes is who you see it WITH and whether or not you *recognize* it for what it actually is. You either recognize a broken body is an illusion of a fictional broken body, pretending to be sick but being actually nothing but a fake image which you can easily change, OR you fail to recognize it and take it to be real, seeing a "real need", regarding it as "sin really happened", taking it seriously and reacting with fear. If you make the sickness real to you by believing in it, you are failing to recognize illusions and are now in need of healing yourself.

True perception, aligned with the Holy Spirit, aka Christ Vision, aka Spiritual Eye, is a clear and direct and un-distorting accurate way of seeing, which recognizes TWO things. Not just what is true, but also what is false. You must learn to recognize the false stuff AS false, and you do that by learning what is really true. In light of what is true, in the big picture, discerning, clearly recognizing, illusions are recognized as false and reality is recognized as true. BOTH occur simultaneously. You don't get to ONLY see "the truth" or "Reality" UNTIL you ascend to Heaven. Until then, you see both.

The false is seen for a while, but as false. The truth is also seen, becoming increasingly obvious as true. There are two perceptions happening at once. Body eyes and spiritual eyes. What is true (Heaven) becomes able to be seen BEYOND the thin veil of the false illusory world. The world becomes thin. Transparent. Illusions are overlooked. Bodies are not believed in. Fake causes are laughed at. Miracles demonstrate you are under no laws but God's, and break all the illusory laws of this world, including space, time, gravity, atomic forces, size, weight, distance, etc. These are all fiction.

The world seems to become forgiven, in that you no longer ADD attack to what it is. The world, when seen with forgiving eyes, isn't a REAL world, but is a NOT BELIEVED world. NOT believing that the world is real, or sinning, or attacking, or guilty, or anything at all, can make the illusory world seem lovely. It can seem lovelier than a world onto which you overlaid your projections of sinful belief. BUT, it is not lovely due to being real. It is lovely because it has no sin projected onto it. It becomes seemingly "innocent", BUT IT IS NOT REAL INNOCENCE. It becomes seemingly "holy", BUT IT IS NOT HOLINESS. It is NOTHING. It is seen merely as a thin veil, a picture of illusions of attack, which isn't really attack, and so sparkles with light as if clean and new and free from accusation. BUT IT IS STILL UNREAL. A forgive, yet STILL STRANGE world made of illusions.

"To see a sinless body is impossible. For holiness is positive, and the body is merely neutral. It is not sinful, but neither is it sinless. As nothing, which it is, the body cannot meaningfully be invested with attributes of Christ OR of the ego."

"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."

Then the veil parts. Christ is seen. The world is forgotten. The illusory world DISAPPEARS. The body vanishes. Death is snuffed out. There is no world. No perception. The mind awakens in Heaven's reality and continues Creating with God, where it left off, as if nothing ever happened. Because it was just a dream. And now it is gone. And everything made of dreams has disappeared. Now you are Home. Now you are awake in God.

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, 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. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

"Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists."