Even though you are perfectly safe in God and are surrounded and infused with impenetrable love, you still believe that there are lots of reasons to be afraid and concerned.

Even though you are immortal spirit and you can never die and you will and are living forever in an endless sea of eternal life, you believe that you are set to die and to inevitably meet some kind of end.

Even though God loves you absolutely and unconditionally and universally and constantly, being incapable of stopping loving you for any reason whatsoever, you still believe that you've done a bunch of shitty stuff that prove why God finds you unworthy and that you cannot be loved.

Even though there is absolutely no threat or danger or reason to be afraid about anything because you're absolutely perfectly protected in God's heart and immersed in permanent invulnerability, you still believe you're some kind of frail, weak, vulnerable and infectious blight that should be riddled with disease and suffering.

You are immortal spirit, pretending to be mortal.

You are perfectly safe, pretending to be afraid.

You are absolutely loved, pretending to be unworthy.

You are completely whole, pretending to be broken.

It's a funny game, the immortal Son of God is playing, acting as if it's really true that you are no longer the Son of God.

Nothing has changed. Nothing has happened. You haven't stopped being as God created you.

The cat is out of the bag. Meow!

Recently I was in the car driving home from getting food, and felt this kind of tension or frustration with people. I was in a certain mood and decided to suddenly start telling everyone that I love them. Of course.. from inside the car, traveling at speed, with the windows shut ;-)

I felt like there had been just years and years of people passing by without being loving, people turning their faces away, people avoiding each other in guilt, a lack of connection, a lack of expression. That it had boiled up to a certain point where it just seemed like I wanted to grab ahold of everyone and shake them and tell them I loved them.

So I someone broke the mold and started shouting at everyone I saw, passers by on the street, people driving cars, people in store windows, that I loved them. Of course, inside the car, with the windows shut ;-)

It felt like a relief, to at last have a normal, love-based expression come out toward people in spite of their refusal to be loved or their own lack of love expression. It was like, someone has to say something. I couldn't tolerate any more the cold shoulder and the spiritual poverty. So I forced some love out. And it felt really good.

In fact it felt so good, such a relief, it was like taking years of rejection off my shoulders. And it made me laugh so much for a long time. It seemed so funny and freeing.

I think in a way this was one of the recent steps I've been going through in "breaking through" the barriers of conditional love, and ego hierarchy, and moving towards unconditional love. Loving when it doesn't seem called for, or even wanted. And loving just because... it's natural and healthy and everyone is supposed to be doing it all the time.

This world is really constipated. It's needs love but rejects love. We can't keep ourselves bound by these chains. We have to break free.

Jesus revealead to me last night a whole new perspective on the whole idea of sin/guilt/fear/death.

I was doing a forgiveness process and Jesus had revealed that I was afraid because I believed I'd sinned. But when I inquired, tentatively, what this sin was.... Jesus revealed the real truth:

"There is no sin". ("what if you looked within and saw there is no sin?")

I thought, what, how is this possible? I thought about how we hark on about 'the separation', and how we've sinned, and now we're guilty, and then we're afraid, and all this.... we've sort of bought into this. And what Jesus showed me is, all of that is just a STORY.

It is not true that there is actually a sin in us. It's not true that we're actually guilty. It's not true that we actually need to be afraid. And it's not true that there is real death. It's all just a story, spun by the ego. This is all the ego's myth about what's happened - what it imagined and wanted to believe.

We BELIEVE we've sinned and separated, but we haven't. We THINK we're terrible sinners, but there is NO REAL SIN in us at all.

I've held in my mind a long time this 'creation myth' of how we separated and sinned and gained this huge unconscious guilt and fear etc... sort of accepting that this is 'true', but it's really not.

The ego has spun this story that we are really sinful, but it's just a made-up story. There is no sin at all! And it's pun this story that we're really guilty. But we're not guilty in the slightest! And it's spun this story that we need to be afraid. But there is absolutely no grounds for fear. And it's spun this story that we should suffer and die. But there's absolutely no foundation for that being true whatsoever.

I could see somewhat past the 'intense dark horror' of this story, perhaps for the first time, and looked instead to how this all began. Am I really separate from God? Hmmmmm.... what if the separation was also just a story that we made up? (Holy Spirit says "true"). What if we're not really separate from God at all, we just think we are.

We're all still innocent :-) And lo and behold, that made me laugh with relief, that I am still with God and quite literally, none of this story has *actually happened* at all. There is no actual sin, guilt, fear, punishment or death. It's just a great big fairytale. Kinda funny really.

Here is yet another way to explain why death is not part of the program for a miracle worker.

1. Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing real can be hurt, attacked, made sick, or dead. Reality has eternal life.

2. If there is sickness or death showing up, it MUST be an ILLUSION of sickness and death, not REAL sickness or REAL death.

3. There is no such thing as real sickness or real death.

4. An illusion can only persist so long as something about it is not recognized. This is how all puzzle games work, for example. So long as the "solution" - which is nothing other than awareness of the "how the trick works", remains obscure to you, you’ll buy into and be trapped by the illusion. As soon as you "see" the answer, suddenly you are no longer deceived. You have stepped outside the illusion and what you thought was true is no longer true. You can no longer "buy the lie", and thus the illusion *disappears*. It’s like the punchline of a joke you already heard - not so funny anymore.

5. Suffering only persists while illusions of suffering are maintained. They can’t be maintained when there is truth and sight. As soon as they are seen for what they are, they have no power to hide the truth, and the truth dispels the MYTH. No myth, no illusion. Nothing but a lie to recognize as such. No-one will keep a lie when it is recognized as one.

6. Illusions of sickness and death similarly must disappear when recognized. If we are deceived by them, we are not seeing fully. If they seem real, we are not seeing fully. If they seem to hold any power at all, or have any truth in them, we are still unconcious. As soon as we are aware of what these things are - illusions of things that are not happening in reality - we can wipe them away like a puff of smoke. They are recognized as NOTHING. "The last illusion to be overcome is death."

7. A mind that is in truth, is aware, and cannot buy into or be deceived by illusions. Such a mind DISPELS illusions. Light shines away darkness. Such a mind MUST disappear sickness and death. Sickness and death cannot REMAIN when they are recognized as illusions, because "illusions recognized MUST disappear." Therefore you cannot keep sickness or death when the mind is sane. "The mind, being sane, heals the body.

Lately Holy Spirit has been starting to push me to do things I don't think I can do by myself, or that I don't believe would be a good decision.

I was not going to eat pizza, claiming that it would congest my sinuses too much. He said, eat the pizza. I ate the pizza. It wasn't a problem.

I was not going to buy a dairy ice-cream for similar reasons, and he suggested it was okay, so I did it, and I had no symptoms.

Today, I was tired and emotionally wrought after some release and healing, and I didn't want to go to the store, but needed some stuff. Holy Spirit said, "go!". So I went. And I didn't go based on my own belief that I would be able to rely on myself, but based on the belief that because He supports it, I WILL be able to go. I had FAITH!

And as I went, I exclaimed that I will go and I will shop and I will be fine because I will be infused and sustained by the power of God, I will be filled with his strength, and I will have no problems. And as I got to the store, I could FEEL the presence of a strong, light, joyous energy in me, and not only did I have no problems with tiredness etc I even felt open with other customers, seemed to attract people who were laughing and happy, and generally felt supported. I even believe there was an angel there who showed up as a man... sometimes I can tell, and that man spoke to me about bananas, and it was funny and it was all good.

So this is what I am finding now. There are certain things that I believe are true of the "natural world" based on the ego's natural laws. But then, there is God's will, God's power, and His SUPERNATURAL strength. And as you step out to do things which push you beyond your natural boundaries, and which go out on a limb, and which you could only do IF you had God's strength to support you, then knowing that you do and inviting it to do so, God DOES come to support you in supernatural ways! That means you are walking with God.

And so I am learning, more can be done through me and by me IF I have God with me. There is a power that can work through me. There are goals that I can achieve which I could not achieve alone but which are achievable because God rushes in to make them so! Ahhhhhhhhh.

"I am sustained by the love of God" - ACIM

"God goes with me all through the day" - ACIM

This doesn't just mean I have a buddy to talk to, it means if I will step out and take a risk and go beyond the ego's laws, God's Will be done!!!

Can I get an amen?!

When you defend your ego self, you become righteous. And as you do this, you will become angry.

The Course says "anger is never justified", but when we are defending an idea of "why I am right", I AM attempting to justify myself.

I'm trying to say, "I am right because...", and I will use anger and intensification of the ego in order to try to 'rise up against' whatever is saying otherwise. How dare they accuse me!

Ok... so the antidote is simple. I have to be willing, even if I might have grounds in normal worldly terms for being justified, to let go of trying to be right. To let go of defending myself.

A person will only defend themselves if they believe they do NOT have grounds to stand on!

A person who is actually in the honest truth does not need to defend themselves because they don't perceive that something 'false' in them has been truly pointed out. They will stand firm and remain calm and smile.

It's only when a person's ego is activated, that they will start to defend it, because there is some truth to what the other person is then accusing them (their ego) of. And you'll try to defend that ego self because you, yourself, are horrified that 'its true' that your ego is standing on false ground.

So really we then get wound up by someone pointing out our flaws and our ego allegiances. If we didn't have these, we wouldn't be triggered and wouldn't try to defend it.

Defenses then are attempts to add shielding and extra protections to reinforce a FLAWED position - an ego position, which you've taken in error. And because that position is ego, it is vulnerable, and thus needs reinforcement and defense in order to keep bolstering it up, so that you can keep believing it is strong and firm. But it is really a weakness.

Funny that a show of anger is really a show of weakness, trying to appear strong to cover up a believe in a lack of true strength. And what is another word for a weakness or lack of true strength? Fear. Fear is always underneath anger and anger is a reaction to try to cover it up or compensate for it by *pretending* that you are excessively strong.

Choosing not to defend myself, by not believing that I'm 'right', which is an error, because that really means I'm 'wrong', allows me to stay calm and unengaged and detached from provocations.

There's nothing to defend when there is no ego present. And there's no need to then justify and rationalize why the ego is right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The funny thing with fear is, that while you are feeling it, it actually changes how reality looks to you .... so the world goes from appearing to be a place of safety and beauty, to a place of darkness and danger. And that's only because there is fear happening in your mind. You think you MUST be afraid if xyz is happening. That's not true.

So it's not as though you're actually having an objective, detached viewpoint. Every perspective of the ego always claims that it is being completely objective and capable of discerning what is true and false, when in fact it is always CONTRIBUTING to what it sees and experiences. As such ego thoughts are never neutral. "There are no neutral thoughts" - ACIM

You think that the amount of fear that you experience correlates exactly to how much of an 'actual' danger is out there. But fear distorts reality, and causes you to be incapable of seeing reality. So how do you know that there really is as much danger as you perceive?

And what if I were to tell you that "projection makes perception"? i.e. you are projecting fear onto the situation, which MAKES it look like there is a danger, so now you believe you are unsafe even if you are safe. You think there is such a thing as reliable fear, or discerning fear, or very carefully considered fear. There is no such thing. As in quantum physics, if you look with the ego you will change what you are looking at. You cannot be anything but subjective.

Outside of your fear, it is possible that there is a world that is not a threat to you, and is not a cause of fear. It is possible that the PRESENCE OF FEAR in you is actually the ONLY problem that needs to be dealt with. It's the mustard seed in your own eye the blocks you from perceiving truthfully, and as such you see blockages in the eyes of others, i.e. intentions to attack you. Your attack on them shows you this. Your fearing about them shows you a reason to be afraid.

This is the secret then to fear. Fear is its own problem. It tries to justify itself, and it changes how reality looks to you, and then shows you that altered reality as though claiming it is real. Therefore, the only things you are ever are afraid of are how reality looks when you are IN the fear, which paints a picture that's horrifying and threatening. You are not SEEING reality. You're seeing the mirror-reflection of fear itself. But when you are IN the fear, you really really believe that the threat is real. If you USE fear, which is a choice, you will find reasons to justify why you are afraid. And none of them are true. Fear is always false - a lie.

Outside of fear there is no reason or need to be afraid. Everything is safe. There is no danger or threat. Nothing can harm you. You are invulnerable. You are immortal spirit.

As you look at someone's body, you think this is them. It's not. Look more closely. Notice how the body itself is a kind of externalized appearance of solidity, which blinds you. The person is "inside" the body behind the physical appearance. Look at how their spirit or mind is within the body, and the body covers it up. You cannot seemingly SEE the spirit.

Think also about how you yourself, in your own body, have a difference experience on the "inside" of your body than other people seem to "see" in the outside. And when you look in the mirror there is a disconnect between how the body looks and your sense of identity - particularly if you are not heavily identified with your body. Who you are on the inside can be quite different to how you appear physically.

So then recognize this is true of others as well. Who they are is not the body that you see at first glance. It's far too easy to be blinded by sight of form and to fixate on the physical body of a person thinking that IS the person. The physical body of another was MADE TO BLOCK SIGHT. To prevent you from seeing your brother BEHIND the body's form. Bodies are separation devices, designed to imprison souls in order to identify them as locked up inside images of differences and illusions.

If you can particularly regard someone's "inner self" or "the person" distinct from the body, it is quite interesting what happens to your perception. Not identifying THEIR body "as them", but rather looking past it to the person "behind" or "within" it, and see that inner person, you overlook the body. And suddenly it becomes quite funny how everything you thought was true about the person was actually a statement about the state of their BODY.

So if their body seems to be sick or has problems and you have regarded these things as "part of the person", you have been deceived. When you look past the illusory appearances of physicality, and try to look at the inner person, you may transcend the body and suddenly realize that all of the body's states and characteristics are NOT the person.

Therefore the body is NOT a representative of the person directly, but rather a once-removed picture of their inner condition. Seeing the inner condition allows you to recognize this, and then it becomes quite hilarious, especially if you had bought into their physical differences or disabilities previously. It also shows you the body then in its proper perspective, that it isn' the person but merely an outward picture, and therefore its state or condition DOES NOT MATTER ie has no truth to it, therefore you can easily NOT BELIEVE IN IT and work miracles to heal the person, disregarding the body's appearance as meaning anything at all.

Denial is an attempt to get rid of something, make it go away, place it anywhere other than here, push it outside of conscious awareness, and to disassociate from it. It’s an attempt to pretend it does not exist. This is a psychological act.

When there is denial, the "displacement" of what is being avoided appears to become separate from where it is (in you) and is sort of "pushed away" from you. Thus you push it outwards - outside of yourself.

So where there is denial, there is a pushing away, ie projection.

You can often experience this happening if you are ever around someone who represses their feelings. Regardless of how they feel, they will attempt to pretend they’re not feeling it, or they try to hide the feeling from themselves in an attempt to hide it from others. They think that if they are not aware of something, others won’t be aware of it either.

This is quite funny really and is similar to how we hide from God in order to pretend that God is not there. It’s also why we hide our secret sins and hidden hates, to KEEP them but pretend they are not there. Out of sight out of mind, but it doesn’t work.

What then happens is these people, because of denial, broadcast their stuff outward quite intensely. The more the denial, the more they project. This can especially be true of more intellectual people who do not like to feel emotions. They become loud broadcasters of what they do not want to feel. They are trying to get rid of it by projecting it away from themselves. They think that hiding it from themselves makes it go away from everyone, but it does not. Their feelings, pushed onto others, are even EASIER to see by others.

If you are sensitive or empathic you will likely easily pick up on these broadcasts and wonder why you are suddenly flooded with confusing feelings. Being around "projectors" can be quite toxic. They are emotionally irresponsible people who want to maintain a persona of everything being okay all the time, instead of being authentic. People-pleasers do this too.

This is also how we project stuff in our mind. Projection makes perception. Or you could say, denial makes projection. Upon "not wanting to see" what is being denied, it will be projected outward and then seen even more intensely. The only difference is there is a disassociation and a denial that it is inside yourself or has anything to do with you.

Always, being more responsible for everything you experience and feel will put you much more in touch with who you really are, give you strength, make you more aware and loving, and you will be much more authentic. You will also then stop sliming everyone else with your garbage disposal system.

The body you have, no matter what its issues are, they are not who you are. Thankfully, you are immortal spirit. You're just using this body temporarily as a vehicle to interact with the world.

You've had other bodies of various kinds. Memory of that fact would immediately help you to look at your current body as not a fixed part of your identity, but just a 'house' that you temporarily live in.

You have attributed various properties to your sense of self based on the body you have, how it looks, what color it is, how it moves, what its problems are, but none of those things really are to do with who you really are.

Just because you, or your loved ones, are showing up IN a body, doesn't mean you or they ARE a body.

If you could keep in mind that you are not a body and "no-body" else is either, then you'd see that it's kind of funny how we all keep going around acting as though what applies to our body applies to us.

We groom our body, decorate our body, look at our body in the mirror, do weird things with our body, look at other bodies, notice what other bodies are decorated as, and generally speak to other bodies as though they are people. But it's what's inside the body that gives it life - spirit - which without it the body would be just an empty, lifeless host.

This is part of learning to see yourself and others as Christ. Christ is not a body. Overlooking the body and not being distracted by it is part of forgiveness. Not regarding people as bodies is part of forgiveness. Not identifying yourself as a body is part of forgiveness.

At some point you're going to stop using this body, probably, unless you somehow convert it into a higher form, and then when you stop using it and carry on your way, you'll recognize how it is not who you are.

It's like putting on some clothes and then starting to believe that you are the clothes. It's easy to do, given how intimate you are with the body and how closely it seems to match your every intention. You are creating it, after all. But it's not your self.

Almost everyone in the world remarks about how 'you' look, what 'you' did, where 'you' went etc... really all referring to the "hero of the dream" - the exalted body which everyone is worshipping. The body is a false idol, and just an instrument to use temporarily.

It is by overlooking form and recognizing/knowing the true nature of your identity and the identity of others, not confused with bodies, that miracles are possible.

Miracle principle 20: "Miracles reawaken the awareness that the spirit, not the body, is the altar of truth"

Miracle principle 42: "A major contribution of miracles is their strength in releasing you from your false sense of isolation"

Miracle principle 44: "The miracle is an expression of an inner awareness of Christ and the acceptance of His Atonement"

Miracle principle 50: "The miracle compares what you have made with creation, accepting what is in accord with it as true"

"I am not a body, I am free" - ACIM

Quote: "Freedom must be impossible as long as you perceive a body as yourself. The body is a limit. Who would seek for freedom in a body looks for it where it can not be found. The mind can be made free when it no longer sees itself as in a body, firmly tied to it and sheltered by its presence. If this were the truth, the mind were vulnerable indeed! "

Denial is a funny thing. It makes it SEEM like the thing has totally gone away, yet all that's happened is its been covered up.

We think that death is an actual end, that someone's life actually has been stopped. But death is not an end of life. Death is only a DENIAL of life - the denial that life is eternal and cannot ever end. You would have to be in denial of eternal life in order to die because otherwise you'll have to admit that it is absolutely impossible to be dead. So even if you 'are dead', you're still just in denial, because you can't BE dead, because life is eternal. You can deny it to HIDE it, but you can't get rid of it. You can STAGE your death and make it LOOK LIKE you died, but you didn't. Hah. Cover's blown.

The same happens with your sense of unworthiness, your unlovability. You think that you are unloveable and that your unlovability has REMOVED lovability from you. But it hasn't. You're just in denial of the fact that God still loves you. You're pretending to be unloveable, because you CAN'T be unloveable. God's love can't be stopped or removed, so all you can do is PRETEND to be worthless. You can't ACTUALLY be worthless. But while you're busy pretending, you really think that your worthlessness has actually removed all of the love and love's ability to love you. It hasn't. It's still there. Your worthy self is still there, hidden behind your unworthiness. They apparently exist at the same time because you are just in denial. You can't make yourself not be love even if you try.

This is also why when you feel like you are separate from God or you are ashamed or guilty or afraid or whatever, you PERCEIVE that your true self has been LOST, and that you have been CHANGED INTO some other self, and that now you're going to have a hard time getting back to being yourself as though you ACTUALLY have stopped being you... but you haven't. All you've done is be in DENIAL of who you are, which does nothing but simply cover it over with a blanket.

This is ALSO why we only need to remove the obstacles to our AWARENESS of love's presence. It is NOT because love is not present. LOVE IS PRESENT FOREVER. We are just not aware because we are DENYING it left, right and center. We're swearing up and down, there is no love, God is dead. And yet God is loving and alive. We have blocks to the AWARENESS of this fact, and that doesn't mean it is not a fact until we become aware of it. It is already a fact. God is already love. God already loves you even if you don't believe it. This is why we do not need to be taught how to BE LOVE, because we STILL are love, we just need to stop denying it all the time.

You are still Christ. You are still 100% innocent. You are still loved by God. When you let go of all of the story and drama and game-playing of pretending otherwise, you will ACCEPT and ADMIT to it, instead of hiding from it.

I see you.

I was being controlling. I did not want things to be the way they are. i wanted to stop them being the way they are and be different. I could not accept that this was okay or that it should be this way.

But I did not realize the effect that this control has on the world.

When I resist what's happening, I resist by attempting to control and reject what's going on. I try to shut it out, at the same time as trying to put into place some kind of 'alternative' that I think is better or more correct. So there I am in a state of strong rejection, and strong enforcement, simultaneously - which obviously is conflicting and therefore upsetting.

I did not realize that my attempt to resist and control was actually CAUSING the situation I was looking at, to appear to me in the way it was appearing.

The more I did not like what was happening, the more I tried to stop it and control it. But the more I did that, the more the situation seemed to get further from how I wanted it.

The more we control, the more we resist. So now that I am in resistance, that resistance only becomes stronger as I become more passionate about forcing things to be how I think they should be. In fact, it's really impossible for me to HAVE things the way I want them, because to make them be that way takes a tremendous amount of control and manipulation, which means I am in tremendous resistance, which means I am not in a state of acceptance.

There never will be a time when I can both be controlling and enforcing situations while also experiencing acceptance. So in effect, i will never be able to experience that the outcome I wanted has actually occurred and that I am at peace with it. Unless that is I became SO incredibly controlling that I violated boundaries and rights attempting to get others to change. Which would of course be completely inappropriate on many levels.

I did not know that trying to control a situation makes it worse, and takes it further from acceptability. How can anyone ever find the peace of acceptance through being controlling? Good luck.

The more I saw the situation is needing to be controlled because it was 'out of control' and unacceptable, the more the people involved seemed to become even more out of control and unacceptable. Funny that. They reacted to my controlling efforts with their own resistance against my attacks, so no wonder the scenario I was trying to get away from simply became more stuck and rigid. What you resist persists.

My strategy is now shifting. I need to learn to be accepting, not controlling. Allowing, not enforcing. Permitting, not resisting. And that means, or at least seems to mean to my ego, that I cannot have things the way I want them. Which to the ego, seems to suck, right?

My ego wants to have a world where I get to 'control' certain things, even if it's only in the scope of my 'own life' or my 'own body'. I still want to have that control over 'my' life. And so that really means, I am wanting to control MYSELF. How strange is that?

Control isn't the same as free will. And having no control does not mean you don't have freedom. In fact you have more freedom when you are not controlling. How's that for a paradox? Control takes away your freedom instead of giving it to you! Yet another way in which the ego says one thing and does the exact opposite.

So then, to my intellect, it doesn't understand how I can be accepting and uncontrolling and still be in any way 'happy' about what's going on, or how I can have any 'say' in what's going on. It doesn't understand how it's possible to accept what is, and yet have the freedom and power to do something to change something. It sees acceptance as the doorway to powerlessness, to no choice, to passivity and victimhood. Interesting how the ego sees it this way in order to avoid acceptance, because if you become really accepting you become empowered.

Acceptance without powerlessness or passivity. A novel concept.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Attack actually means withdrawal. The Kingdom of God cannot be attacked. When you try to attack, you withdraw away from what you are attacking.

It's funny how all of the ego's illusions always look like one thing but are actually totally the opposite.

In the ego, free will looks like being tremendously independent and having great breadth of choice, but in truth the ego's free will is actually an imprisoned will and all its choices are attempts to isolate and be limited. The ego is the imprisoner of will.

When you attempt to attack a brother, you withdraw away from him and isolate. Therefore your attack cannot access the reality of what He is. Only in sharing of love can you actually "connect" with your brother's real self, because his real self is made of love and can only be accessed through love.

It's the same with God. If you try to attack God or oppose His will, instead of actually being ABLE to cause some kind of change in him, you instead withdraw away from him. It seems to be experienced by you as if it's a positive outward expression of attack away from yourself, but in truth it is a withdrawal away from the perceived enemy and a failure to attack at all.

Attack cannot have any real effects. You cannot really sin. You cannot attack anything real. Nothing real can be threatened. This is why God and His Kingdom are totally beyond the reach of the ego.

Similarly with power, when you are empowered you automatically must be aligned with love because love is strength and only by being aligned with love can you access the Power of God. If you try to use God's power to attack, you automatically lose that power and become weak.

In the ego, whenever there is an attack trying to be perpetrated, it is in fact a lack of attack. It is a failure to cause. It is an attempt to stop causing. It is the opposite of causal power. It's like a fearful dog barking its head off in hopes that the threat will go away, making it look like it is attacking when in fact it is terrified and will run away at the slightest advance.

This means literally you literally CANNOT ATTACK ANYTHING REAL. You cannot attack your brother, you cannot attack God, and you cannot attack yourself. This is why your innocence is guaranteed. Any time you try to attack you automatically place yourself under arrest. When you try to attack, you arrest the extension of your mind, which produces sickness. When you attack, you create illusions of being hurt.

When you try to attack your brother, you arrest your mind and attack yourself. This causes you to withdraw away from your brother into your body. It makes you isolate yourself and identify yourself with a physical form in a specific location in space. You are supposed to be everywhere in your omnipresence but attack puts you in prison. You imprison yourself by not loving yourself and others.

Joining minds with others through expressions of love (miracles) heals the separation, releases you from prison, ceases attack and allows you to gain access to sharing with others again and with God. Only through love can you connect with loving brothers. Attack is a breakdown in communication and it attacks communication itself, causing the attacking effort itself to be attacked. This is because all ego efforts to attack are self attack.

God is absolutely protected from the ego and all its ways. It cannot even approach God because its attempts to approach are actually running away. Every time it lurches forward with a spear, it recoils in terror. Nothing real can be threatened because the ego can only attack the ego and reality does not attack reality. Nothing unreal can threaten anything real, and nothing unreal exists.

Have you ever noticed that the physical form or shape of objects, is touted as making something "unique", but really they're all the same thing?

In the company I work for I have to add thousands of products to a website, and so I see all these variations on a theme.

Then I find myself asking myself, why would anyone want to have 3000 different types of this item? One with a little but of a more rounded look, one with more fancy bits, one in a different color, one with shiny metal on it. And companies are churning out these products by the thousands as if they are all important and worth having. We have become quite obsessed with possession of such crap.

After a while I become completely disillusioned, which is a good thing.

The human race has become really good at manipulating forms, designing objects, and creating appearances of differences. The explosion of "creating" (making stuff) is on a roll.

Since the industrial revolution especially we've really gone wild exploring every conceivable "version" of the same thing, every way to take advantage of material properties and differences, and all the different forms we can come up with.

Amazon now sells almost half a billion products, and most of them are just variations on a theme. There are now 60,000 t-shirts for sale. Do you really think the differences between these t-shirt is SO VAST that they are all completely unique? How many ways are there to cover up the upper torso?

This is something of a madness which humanity has pursued and doesn't really know how to stop pursuing. This notion that if the form is different, it is a unique thing. some forms or shapes are more desirable, and finding the "best ones" is some kind of salvation. This is mental illness.

Unique tools are needed to solve unique problems. The ego loves this. It loves to create new appearances of unique situations which call for a custom solution which is nothing like any other solution, does not extend to solve any other problem, and keeps the solution isolated and limited to this one need.

This belief that all forms are unique and different and worth existing, is the ego's insanity. Exactly why do we need 60,000 t-shirts, or 100,000 different kinds of trousers, or a million songs?

You might say well, this is human nature, to create and express and explore. No, it's not. It's UNNATURAL.

Personally I have grown significantly disillusioned with physical objects. To want to have certain special objects or toys or whatever, to try to receive their specialness or to think that I am somehow better off by choosing exactly the right items.

I used to buy into the illusion of differences of form much more and wanted to have this item or that item or be very careful about choosing. Now I care much less. Much more laid back in terms of how I think these things are going to save me or how I need to have the best this or that.

Sure it can be fun to shop, no harm done. But perceptually and psychologically, "civilized humanity" has become lost in its obsession with forms - particularly the illusion of form, its appearances and its special isolated different properties. This is a huge world filled with junk.

It's funny when Jesus talks about this and how we think that we're doing important things, earning little bits of paper and metal discs, spending them on ridiculous things we don't need or really want, to decorate and adorn our fake bodies and our fake homes, all as substitutes and distractions away from God. lol

"This world holds nothing that I want".

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws you have set up to save you. You really think that you would starve unless you have stacks of green paper strips and piles of metal discs. You really think a small round pellet or some fluid pushed into your veins through a sharpened needle will ward off disease and death. You really think you are alone unless another body is with you.

It is insanity that thinks these things. You call them laws, and put them under different names in a long catalogue of rituals that have no use and serve no purpose. You think you must obey the "laws" of medicine, of economics and of health. Protect the body, and you will be saved.

These are not laws, but madness. "

"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 are a people pleaser, it means that you hide yourself from others. You do this by putting a mask or "persona", a facade or "face" over the top of yourself, showing to the world only what you want them to see. You present yourself to them as all smiles, nothing going wrong, everything is great, as if you're amazing and happy and "fine" when in fact you're dying inside.

It may seem that in this effort to please others you're trying to please them, but you're not. You actually are trying to hide yourself from them so that you only show them what you think they will approve of, in order to hide what you think they will not approve of. It stems from secret sins and hidden hates, self condemnation and self judgement, by which you perceive yourself as flawed. You're not making them be pleased with YOU, you're making them pleased with a FAKE person that doesn't even exist.

The persona you put on as a fake self, a cover over your hideous insides, cuts you off from others and from yourself. It is the most horrible state to experience, emotionally. A sense of embarrassment, shame, being harshly judged. By you.

Make no mistake, what happens when you people please is you separate yourself from your oneness and openness with other people, and you also separate yourself from yourself. You lock yourself in an internal prison where no-one ever really sees who you are and you don't let anyone in. You don't share anything with anyone and you are too afraid to be vulnerable.

The funny thing is that by being exposed and vulnerable you become invulnerable. It's only when you think you need to hide that you develop something that needs hiding. Your dark secret sins are nothing in the light. They don't exist.

But hiding yourself behind this mask is your idea of an attempt to protect yourself. You think that it is shielding you from the threats of others, that if you will just show them a smiling face that seems agreeable and not upsetting, they will not hurt you. It's a coping mechanism to try to defend yourself. The problem is, you are attacked by your own defenses.

Because by believing that someone else is judging you harshly and that you have to put up the smiling-face shields, you are also condemning yourself harshly. And that self condemnation can result in the most horrendous deep emotional pain way beyond anything another person could seem to inflict on you. Deep, deep shame and embarrassment and the sense that you are very wrong. It hurts you. You hurt yourself, by pleasing others.

And newsflash, other people do not want your pleasing, and they do not want to be pleased. Not if they are unconditionally loving. They didn't ask for you to defend yourself or present yourself that way. You're not really doing it for their benefit. You just think you are. You think they are the one who judges you, when all along it is yourself judging yourself indirectly through what you think they think of you.

The simple truth is, you cannot be yourself, while you people please. You are not being honest or authentic. You are not free. You're not free to simply express yourself and let the chips fall where they may. You're not free to open up and be vulnerable or hurt or emotionally upset or to let people help you. It's a state of being very cut off and alone. It's the opposite of health and the opposite of life.

By hiding behind a persona/facade all you do is feel ignored, judged, not-belonging, dissociative, and wishing you were somewhere else. Because you are somewhere else. You're not present. You're not being yourself. You're trying to be something you're not. You're trying to portray yourself as some kind of image that has nothing to do with who you are. And this image is destroying you. Because so long as it stands in for your identity you are imprisoned and trapped and weak and afraid.

No-one can be happy when they are not being true to themselves. No-one can be happy and relaxed and free from fear when they are trying to show up as "always positive" when that's totally unrealistic. That persona, puts you into the darkness. It puts you in the shadows and turns you into a shameful guilty sinner lurking behind this public image of yourself that hides your dark evil ways. And if only you'd come out into the light you'd see that you are not even remotely evil. It's the darkness that's the problem, not you.

Learning to simply just BE YOURSELF is the entire curriculum of spiritual awakening. To be as God created you. To be so accepting and natural in being who you actually are, free of pretending and cover ups and denial. Pleasing others denies your soul. Learn to tell the world to fuck the hell off. You don't need to be pleasing anyone, not one single person. And if they don't approve of you, that has nothing to do with you. You will make yourself suffer far more through your rejection of yourself than anyone else ever could.

Be free. Be you. Be visible.

We rely on our own abilities. We rely on ourselves to be able to figure things out. We rely on the ability to be able to understand why things happen. We basically have appointed ourselves as some kind of know-it-all guru who supposedly has the actual ability to find out the reasons and causes of everything.

This is a complete farce. The ego cannot figure out why things happen. All the ego does is make things worse. It adds to problems, it does not objectively diagnose them. It also presents situations in which we are seeking a lot but not finding.

And this is because, as soon as the ego thinks something is happening or has gone wrong, it ACCEPT THAT AS TRUTH, and that alone shuts the entire door on all possibility of actually doing anything constructive 'about' that problem at all. You can see this in almost all medical circles where the problem is accepted as real and then 'treatment' is nothing more than maintenance, and there are no real 'cures'.

The only thing that can come from believing that something really has gone wrong, is an endless - yet seemingly purposeful and well intentioned - tirade of exploration and explanation, attempting to justify, rationalize and explain 'why' ....under the artificial hope that IF you can figure out why, you will somehow access some kind of other SPECIAL ABILITY to then do something about it.

And so not only is our ego the appointed assessor and figures-outerer, it is also going to save us from this problem once it figures it out, supposedly, with its expertise and its own reliance on itself to get itself out of this mess (which it created by the way). Pretty unlikely, and pretty funny that it was the ego who created and affirmed the reality of the problem and is now supposedly going to save us from it.

And when we do this, which is pretty much all the time, we're basically on a wild goose chase hunting after ghosts and never really solving anything. All this does is enhances our reliance on the ego, our trust in the ego - our ego self - and prevents us from turning to Holy Spirit.

The situation with Holy Spirit is that if we were trusting Him instead of attempting to do ANYTHING about this problem on our own, which requires surrendering the ego (go figure), we would not ever get into the mode of trying to figure out the 'why' of what's happening. In fact, it would be like doing absolutely nothing about the problem, not even attempting to understand it or to describe it or explain it.

To the ego that seems ridiculous. It seems ridiculous to our own ego self to suggest we should just not even attempt to get into explaining, to not even begin to figure it out, and to not even try to understand what's going on. Because what we really need to do, and all we need to do, is completely turn to Holy Spirit in trust and surrender and ALLOW HIM to solve it for us. There are parts in ACIM where it tells us this, that we need to not only turn to Him and trust Him, but that He will also then turn around and DO IT FOR US, IF we will let Him.

Allowing Him to do healing and correction for us takes a development of trust. It means putting aside the ego. It means SWITCHING OFF the ego's use of the mind to attempt to control the situation or diagnose it, and to be quiet and receptive. It means allowing our mind to be put under the control of SPIRIT, to use as it wills, and to trust that it knows what it's doing. This is an entirely different mode of functioning than depending on our own ego self to solve everything.

IF we do trust Holy Spirit and open our mind and turn over management of our mind to Him, for Him to use, then He CAN work miracles through us to solve ALL problems instantly. This doesn't take any figuring out. It doesn't take use of the mind to figure it out. The mind's function is not really as a figure-it-outer, that's just how the EGO is using the mind for controlling situations. The mind can be put into more of a passive mode of sorts where it is under the expression of Spirit, and then it is much more powerful to be a conduit for change and to receive correction.

So we need to stop depending on ourselves, our own lowly little abilities and 'learning' that we're oh-so-proud of and special because of,, and this constant determination that we are *supposed* to solve problems on our own or to try to understand and gain some kind of know-how about the problem which allegedly will help us fix it. This *seems* to work sometimes, in magical ways, to change furniture and move it around, but it does not work to actually undo problems or to correct the mind that believes they are real. And indeed the ego is incapable of solving many problems whatsoever.

Let go. Let God work through you.

I haven't been focusing on miracles for a while, but kind of accidentally lately I've been finding myself exposed to some statements about miracles. I seem to be seeing them in a different light. Which is funny because "seeing in the light" is a big part of it.

There is one thing ACIM says fairly clearly and it's that miracles are ONLY seen in light. It also says miracles and vision are completely connected to each other. At times it also suggests miracles are so high in terms of states of consciousness, as to be right up at the christ level. Such as that the eyes of christ deliver them to all they look upon.

It also tells us that miracles, seen in light, are all over the place. A miracle stands next to what seemed to be a false perception, and these miracles are even there when we don't see them. We can block awareness of the miracles but that doesn't mean they're not there. And that suggests they are "ways of seeing."

I also found in experience recently that in one instance where I was driving behind a car and was about to scapegoat and then chose not to, kind of "holding back" the projection of guilt, Jesus called it a miracle. So then that got me thinking, what is a miracle really? We're also told that miracles and grievances are opposites. Also that ego-projection and miracles are opposites. So that tells us a bit about the state of mind or the activities of mind.

We're also told that miracles don't "do" anything, although we're also told they UNDO the interference that the ego was DOING. They "correct" the mind and sort of straighten out perceptions. They're also described as the translation of denial into truth. Also that miracles merely remind the mind of who the dreamer is, ie putting your awareness back in touch with you being causal and not seeing yourself as a victim or as in a position to scapegoat.

Miracles appear to be tied into true perceptions, as though they are glimpses of an accurate perception of something. But we're also told that they are thought creations, that they can energize others, that they can supply a lack. And that they are expressions of love. In prayer love is received, and in miracles love is expressed.

The impression I'm getting is that the love is coming down from a higher level ie heaven, and we are the open door who has to extend them. This is a sort of cause-effect chain, where God gives us the miracles and then we transfer them to others. As in "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me to all my brothers."

If we are in a state of christ mind where we're fully open to the truth, then we are fully able to extend and pass on these miracles, these parcels of love. It's almost like they reflect the idea of creations, in which we are co-creating with God, extending God and paying forward what we've received. This is why you can only give the miracles you've received.

On the one hand it seems that a miracle is like a gift of love, a form of healing, which corrects the mind and lifts it up out of false perceptions into true perception. As stated in terms of miracles "entailing" a sudden shift into vertical perception. At the same time this gift of love has power and healing in it, as all love does, and so while it corrects your sight and you "see with the miracle" or through the miracle-sight, you also extend that love and power and it can cause things to happen.

Jesus also refers to them as examples of right thinking. Right thinking is sanity and true perception. Accuracy of thought and mind. These moments of clarity and non-attack and non-judgement and non-projection, recognize sinlessness ie as in forgiveness, and broadcast that wholeness of mind to the whole sonship. They are thus also expressions of holy relationship ie total unconditional relationship.

Since Jesus refers to them as thought-creations, and that thoughts can create higher or lower realities, these miracles are clearly a function of mind and thought, which includes power and love, as kind of acts of "higher dreaming". These miracles lift up the mind and heal it, as in "interceding for your holiness". And as a result you see correctly, and your correct seeing has corrective properties which can shine light into other minds and correct them.

Thinking of someone like Jesus in a state of christ-mind, or near to it, he was so sided with heaven's laws that he could constantly radiate and pass on that miraculousness at will. He could use the mind, in combination of thought and belief, and with the power of God behind it, to cause things to happen. And each of these were love-based expressions. Including raising the dead and healing the sick and moving mountains. The mind is just naturally miraculous and powerful when it's in its healed state.

So miracles are definitely tied to mind, and to seeing, and to light, and to forgiveness, and to giving and receiving, and to extension of God and love. They are acts, performances, expressions, doings, which emit out of the mind and are given and shared, as part of the natural outgoing of love and its unlimitedness. Someone miraculous has the light of God in their eyes and just sees everything with sparkling light and can effortlessly bestow blessings of supernatural transformation everywhere they go.

"The miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise."

If a miracle can be as simple as a right-minded non-attacking non-scapegoating non-projecting opposite to a grievance, where you "look and wait and judge not", in which you are being closer in alignment to how the Holy Spirit sees, then we're asked to basically get our mind-seeing into the light where it can bestow miracles all the time. Seeing forgiveness given to everything. Meeting all things with heavenly blessing.

Or something like that.

I found myself in a conversation with Jesus last night about whether or not it's okay to pray for someone if they have not 'given permission'. I wanted to pray for someone to attempt to help them and heal them, but I wondered, what if they did not want this?

I thought about how we're not meant to violate someone's free will and how maybe it would incur some kind of 'karma' if we try to do this. I also thought about ethics and about how everyone has 'rights' and that we're supposed to be respectful and all that.

I seemed to be getting hints from Jesus that it was still okay to pray, and in fact it had been Jesus who initially had suggested to me "pray". Jesus has been trying to get me to experiment more with 'true prayer', since prayer is the medium of miracles, and to learn more how to extend God's miracles to people. But I felt a bit awkward about 'doing a prayer to someone'.

I wondered if it was some kind of manipulation. But somehow it seemed plausible that maybe it was helpful, that maybe anything that truly comes from God is perhaps useful and uplifting and a blessing of some kind.

So then I started wondering about whether in the higher realms there might be some kind of special 'rules' or 'laws' in place which govern this kind of thing, whether I should ask Jesus or God or someone not only IF it's okay to pray for someone, but also what to pray for. It seems at least to make sense to ask for guidance as to what will be helpful, rather than just launch into an ego 'I think this should happen' sort of thing.

Then it started to occur to me that perhaps there is a difference between horizontal and vertical thinking, ie that most of our worries about violating someone's free will are to do with things we would 'do to someone' in a horizontal, ego-logical way, on the level of form and separation... and that perhaps when you go into 'vertical' mode (which is conducive to miracles), you are perhaps transcending that entire scenario... it occurred me to also that everything in this world is basically illusion and part of ego-world laws, and yet in truth, "I am under no laws but God's".

Having spun my wheels around all of this I then turned to Jesus and just asked, why or how is it okay to pray for someone when they haven't asked for it and maybe don't even want it?

In his becoming-increasingly-common fashion, he replied with a single short sentence which cut through absolutely all of the bullshit and confusion like a knife.

"Since when was it a crime to love someone?"

:-)

Praying with God and receiving God's love and extending God's love, which is the 'mechanics' of miracle working, is entirely within the realm of loving people. It's not really 'about' the miracle as such, or the outcome, but really just about loving people. The love that inspires the miracle is important, more than the miracle itself. The miracle is almost a side-effect of love. So with a focus on simply praying as a form of a) thanking God for love, b) receiving love, c) extending love to others, where's the possible harm in that? And if a miracle comes of it, that's fine too... because "miracles are natural expressions of love, when they aren't happening something has gone wrong".

So I focused on love. And I prayed for the person. And I even prayed for the person to receive healing, which may even entail changes in their body. But rather than it seem like an act of control, manipulation, non-acceptance or overstepping boundaries, it simply became an affirmation of truth, an exclamation of the lovability of the person, and a restoration of how God would have things be. In this sense it can only be a blessing. And this made me think of...

"Miracles are the maximal service you can render to another". So if a miracle is the absolute BEST that I can possibly offer to someone, as a natural component of love through prayer, than where is there room in there for doubt or ideas of 'not supposed to' or 'respecting separate will' or whatever. And I guess it boils down to this..... miracles from God's love are ALWAYS a blessing, are ALWAYS welcome, are ALWAYS justified, are ALWAYS allowed (per God's will), and are a kind of 'right' that we each have to bestow upon each other.

We are, in our miracle working, extending God's authority and using that authority to have authority over ILLUSIONS, not so much over the person. The person is NOT the illusion of sickness, the person is NOT the life challenge, the person is NOT what their ego is up to or the lessons they have. So we cannot really do anything TO the person anyway, because they already ARE perfect love in truth. And we are not really in fact healing the real person because the real person needs no healing. All we are doing is calling for love to come in and set a person free from illusions, which is a divine blessing.

Okay so I realize this may sound like potentially a lot of rationalization or justification... but really just clarity. Coming into awareness that we ARE extensions of God's authority, we DO have the ability to give love, Jesus DOES perform miracles as "intercessions for your holiness", and doing this IS allowed and normal and loving, regardless of whether someone asks to be helped or not. Divine help is TRULY HELPFUL. Ego help is the kind of help that has side-effects and boundary-violating properties. There is a difference. Provided we are putting God/Love first, all is well.

It's okay to work miracles for those who are not able to help themselves, and for those who are temporarily weaker, and for those who are temporarily more resistant to love. But you should probably still seek Spiritual guidance as to whether this is in accord with the Plan of Atonement. As Jesus says, indiscriminate miracles are not always helpful, and that you should consult with Him first. I guess that's as good a basis for 'what to do' as any.

It all comes back to that funny old adage ... "what would Jesus do?"

Please forgive me if this message isn't well formed because I think I am going to express something that is sort of 'new' to me and I am not well into it yet.

Love has been coming to me... the possibility of love... the possibility of being loving toward other people in general. Its a change in my attitude about others. Part of this seems to involve realizing that I've been doing all this healing and forgiveness work on 'myself' with... lets be honest... a somewhat selfish intention. I mean, even though it's a spiritual path and all that, it's always been about me healing myself, me forgiving for my own benefit, me applying the Course to get myself to feel better, etc. And now... this 'me' part doesn't seem as much the focus, or as important. And instead, I'm starting to let real LOVE come through me, and its starting to become about - sharing that love.

I'll also be honest in telling you that I generally have not really felt loving towards most people for a long time. Whether its a remnant of childhood suffering or a personality thing or whatever I've accepted, or maybe I've just been pretty normal/typical all this time and nobody could really expect more. ... but I'm finding now, there IS more. There is the possibility of not just being another one of many strangers that pass each other and barely acknowledge each other, but rather of actually LOVING PEOPLE.

Now, this is where it gets really fascinating for me at the moment. I've been finding that.. experimenting with. .. the idea that, if I attempt to be loving toward people instead of how I normally would be around them, it is significantly changing my perception. And I'm not talking about some lofty aim like 'see the christ in everyone' and I'm like 'what the fuck is christ?'... it's simply.. .just fricking love them.

Normally around most people, especially strangers, I will become guarded and shy and quiet really quickly. Its a defense mechanism thing, usually triggered by the slightest observation that there is something about the person that is unsafe/unloving. What I did not know, however, all this time, is that the unsafely and unloivingness that I see in people - the triggers - is actually the result of ME not looking at them WITH love. I've always been looking at people with... well, the ego... and seeing the ego reflected back. And now this idea is popping in, why not try instead to extend love and be loving toward them, and see how that feels

Well... when I decide to do this, which is usually after I notice that I just lapsed into zombie mode, something really unexpected happens. I don't feel afraid. It's like, all of the basis for my 'social anxiety' is because I perceive without love and therefore see a lack of love and I see it as an attack. So... if I CHOOSE to see WITH love, then I actually see ONLY love, and I don't even see any reason not to love. It's like, all of the 'reasons' for fear are just not even there. I can't detect them, they don't appear, they don't register. Somehow the love makes me feel safe and prevents me from even perceiving that I can be attacked. If I'm looking WITH love, then it shows me love. If I look with attack, I see attack. And I didn't realize how used I've become to seeing 'with attack' all of the time, such that I thought it was normal, and that people out there 'really are' threatening... when in fact, there is another way to experience it.

I always struggled with this. You have no idea. I mean, really high levels of anxiety around strangers, fear of judgement, unsafely, becoming 'spacey' and losing all focus, becoming avoidant, wanting to get the hell out of there, etc. It has taken a LOOOOOONG time to gradually sift through this all to realize that it is ME and MY attitude which SHOWS ME exactly what is IN ME, and I then think it is in the other people, and then I think that this proves WHY I should feel the way I feel. It JUSTIFIES it. Sure, I should be afraid because that person is judging me, or I should be anxious because that person is threatening me, etc... when instead, it was always that I'd projected MY self-attack onto them and was seeing it there.

And now, along comes love. And I mean... not special love of romantic love or whatever... like, real LOVE... love from GOD. Unconditional love. Spiritual love. And if I allow myself to stand in love and to choose to see other people WITH that love, what do I experience? Well... I feel completely safe. The anxiety has no foundation. And even if I'm feeling afraid or anxious, if I choose love, it instantly disappears. And even if people still are behaving in odd ways or looking at me funny or appearing to be rejective or whatever, if I am in a loving place, then I feel completely invulnerable to that, like, I know it can't do anything to me.

The big lesson here is this... and I'm still exploring this and only just STARTING to experiment with this in real situations.... the big lesson is that... when you extend God's love fully to your brother, and just choose to love them instead of any other attitude, ALL you will see is love and lovability and there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BE AFRAID. So... this is the TRUTH! In truth, there is no reason for fear because in truth, in love, there is perfect safety. There simple IS no attack. There IS no cause for alarm. There IS no threat.

So this is my 'opening up'... the next phase... realizing that the theology and the thoughts and the figuring out and the Course processes etc are... themselves... just tools to open up the heart to love, and that it is THE LOVE that is actually what we need to BE and express. To love it. To be it. To extend it. To share it. Experientially. Actively. For real. Taking the love to the people. Taking the love and letting it love through me. Letting healing come through me. Letting life come through me. But not for some silly selfish 'oh this is my special spiritual path, don't mind me I'm just over here forgiving myself dutifully and staying separate from everyone'.

Love erases all fear. And of course.. the opposite of love is fear... without love, fear HAS to show up. Once love shows up, love is the LIGHT, and fear HAS to disappear. And it does. It does every time!

Reason to celebrate. Only love is real! And the truth isn't just facts and information and thinking... the truth is FELT.

And what's really surprising to me about God's love is... that... it is being freely offered to me right now without me having to really do anything to earn it... almost as though, I'm jumping right from being in the middle of a long drawn out spiritual path, to the end goal. Like. God loves me NOW... I can be loved NOW... It's very surprising. And it's got nothing to do with thinking about love. It's ACTUAL love. God is love. Not just an idea. Love love love love love love love.

The ego can be pretty sneaky. Usually it is merely suspicious. And usually it will tell you just seemingly 'small lies', just enough to get you a bit upset. This way the ego gets to hide while you're kept under control by little lies.

But then as you get upset, it's willing to start to tell you slightly bigger lies. It hopes to pry you open like a can-opener, gradually reinforcing the lies and getting you to believe in it more and more.

Over time, gradually, if unchecked, you'll start to build up some major conviction that what it's saying is true, or that what it's saying will happen is true. Before you know it, you've gone down a slippery slope into hell.

The ego bargains that if it can keep your awareness from rising up to question it, it can keep pulling you in, deeper and deeper, adding layer upon layer of deceit and lies. It banks on you going along with it, believing it, listening to it, being scared by it etc.

Over time you even start to side with it, because by believing it you begin to develop a false idea of what is true and real. You enter into insanity and everything flips around and you start to really believe that what the ego has said is actually true. You will even start to defend it. And by identifying with it, you'll even feel offended when someone else points out how much it is lying to you.

At that point, it's hard for someone to reach in and show you the truth because you are so 'close' to the ego, in identification, that you think that what it's said about you is who you really are. Seeming to 'attack' the ego then seems to be an attack on YOU, and the ego counts on that, for you to become its defender. It is now your ally.

This can go on for quite some time and in fact can even take you all the way to death. Death can only happen by you giving the ego consent to destroy you, by you just falling into all of its traps and deceptions and coming to side with its conclusions. And the funny thing is, because you're unconscious, you won't even REALIZE that you're falling into a trap, or see it AS a trap, and therefore won't even sense motivation to get out of it. You'll walk right into a death trap thinking it's your salvation.

So as this goes on, the ego is willing to become more vicious and to scream more and to tell you ever increasingly horrifying things, to build up your fear and your allegiance. It counts on you believing it, reacting to it, buying into it, and going along with it, in order for it to tempt you a little bit further into a nightmare of hell. This will continue so long as you keep falling for its tricks.

But this is a risk for the ego, because the more that it exposes its hate and its destruction and its desire to destroy you, it's really risking the possibility of you noticing how ridiculous it is. It will only bring out its 'big guns' when it knows that you are sufficiently cultivated into its deluded ways that you will not be likely to question it - that you don't have enough awareness or discernment left to NOTICE that it's giving you lies.

It will also come out full force when it senses that you are about to abandon it and withdraw your belief in it, because it doesn't want you to undo it.

It needs you to not RECOGNIZE a lie for what it is, but to fail to realize that the ego is even against you. It wants you believing it is your best friend so that it can pull you into unconsciousness.

The risk is great. If the ego turns to viciousness and comes out of hiding and presents its biggest, most vicious attacks, things could go either way. Either you will be so horrified and reactive that you'll just buy right into it, OR, you might suddenly start to notice how utterly ridiculous this all is.

When life goes to SHIT, and things just become really ridiculous, sometimes you'll start to exclaim to yourself, "this can't be happening", "it seems like a dream", "I can't believe it", "this is just so ridiculous" etc... this is you starting to REALIZE that the situation IS ridiculous. The problem is that many of us will continue to side with the seeming reality and seriousness of the situation, instead of realizing that the ABILITY to see the ridiculousness is the WAY OUT, and to focus on that. You're starting to see through the ego's lie, but your belief that 'stuff happening' is real often prevents you TRUSTING your instinct.

If things get so ridiculous that you just can't believe it, you might even start to laugh at how ridiculous it is. This is good. This happens when you've so totally exhausted the purpose of this ego lesson or your use of it, and have run out of a need for it, and now you've come to a place of SURRENDER. Usually, you will only go along with the ego because you think there's a benefit of you getting to control life, or that you need to control life in order to deal with the problem the ego lies about, and it's often not until you SURRENDER that ego position by realizing how FUTILE the separation from God is, that you'll finally WAKE UP to realize that this is all just a ridiculous stupid dream that you can no longer take seriously.

And so the allegiance with the ego then is broken. It exposed itself, it took a risk, it did everything it could to fully and directly confront you with bullshit, and you laughed in its face. Congratulations.

Lately I'm noticing more and more often, I just don't want to blame. I'm believing in "real sin" less and less.

I didn't see this coming, and it's not that I've been deliberately working on not being blameful. But I'm starting to see why this makes sense.

When I blame, I am believing that there is some "other" that's not me, that I'm finding responsible for some kind of guilt or sin. This so-called other is actually a part of my own self which I split off in my mind and attack. This attack seems to cause a hallucinated projection onto other people, in which the disassociation from the "conscious" part of my mind makes it seem like it's all to do with someone else.

But the truth is that my attack is actually coming from me, and it is going TO me. And in fact, I am not even really attacking anyone else at all. I think I am, but I'm not.

In the ego's thought system of denial, it really does seem like it is not only possible to find someone else guilty for our own belief in our own sinfulness, but that they can receive ALL of the blame and we receive none of it. We actually think we can scapegoat someone and make them wrong and find them guilty and that this has NO effect on ourselves whatsoever. i.e. Do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.

This is of course a complete illusion. While it persists, we go around blaming people because we think that we CAN, as a viable "option" for getting rid of our own sinfulness. Introducing a separation between cause and effect, we think we can be free of the effects and responsibilities of our sin, and someone else can take the hit. And we want to make especially sure that the separation between both is strong so as to be strongly convinced no nasty effects are going to leak back onto ourselves.

But what has to dawn on our mind is not only that we are responsible for 100% of what we are experiencing, but also that everything that has happened we have therefore done to ourselves, and therefore there ARE no causes outside of us, and thus there are no grounds for blame.

This also reveals to the mind that while it thought it was capable of attacking someone "else" with no effects on itself, it actually WAS attacking itself. At first it will think that it was attacking both itself and others, but then it will also dawn that it was in fact ONLY attacking itself. In our egos we live in private worlds of self-attack, at war with ourselves, in our split mind with multiple personalities. It doesn't even really involved anyone else at all, we just pretend it does. When we are willing to become aware that we are ONLY doing it to ourselves, then a whole new kind of experience starts to emerge. This is what's starting to happen to me now.

I am getting this feeling that I just don't WANT to blame people for anything. I haven't deliberately been trying to stop blaming as such, it's just sort of emerging. Some part of me seems to be aware that if I blame, in the act of blame, there is an attack and that *I* actually receive at least some of the effects of that attack. It's not true that the other person is 100% separated from me, and it's not true that they are really guilty. If I am being responsible, it MUST mean that I am doing this to myself and am attacking myself.

So each time I go to scapegoat, i.e. pretend that I even CAN scapegoat, I'm starting to learn or realize that the "blame" is ACTUALLY from myself, to myself, and I WILL experience effects from that. I am becoming aware of those effects, rather than being unconscious of it. And the fact is, outside of denial, this self attack HURTS ME. I do not want to keep hurting myself. It is a natural response, really.

If you could be aware that you can ONLY do anything to yourself, and that if you attack, YOU will be the one who gets ALL of the effects, you would not attack.

It is only because we've been unconscious and split in our mind and believing that there is an "other" that all of the responsibility can be given to (disowning of self), that we even CONCEIVE of the idea of displacing blame onto this "other". Or even that doing so might cause us to NOT be experiencing the effects of the sin. It is only because of DENIAL that it even seems possible that this would be helpful in alleviating guilt.

So while I am in denial and am being dishonest and irresponsible and believing that i am really sinful, I'm going to be really compelled to try to split myself off from that and project it somewhere. But the truth is, I'm not escaping it. Self-attack is self-attack. Nobody else is even being attacked by me at all, so it's not even as though there is this motivation to "be nice to other people". My self-attack has NOTHING to do with anyone else at all, and in truth, NOBODY receives any effects from it. No real effects anyway.

So it's not even as though I'm doing this out of GUILT in relation to trying to be kinder to others. That would actually be a form of self sacrifice which is ego. Instead, it's just the natural dawning of AWARENESS, that because I am responsible, I literally AM doing unto MYSELF as I would have MYSELF do unto me. I am attacking myself, and it is my belief that I am really sinful that is the root of this attack.

So as we have the courage to look at our own belief in our own sinfulness, in the idea of "real sin", and are finding some genuine healing atonement for this, it seems like the truth that we are only attacking ourselves becomes more obvious. I just am becoming aware that if I attack, *I* will feel hurt, and I just don't want to feel that anymore. I don't want to keep finding myself sinful, because now it's not a game of whether or not anyone else is being forgiven (you cannot forgive anyone other than yourself, and there is no need to!), it's a game between me and myself now and how I want to be towards myself.

I don't want to blame others, because I don't want to blame myself, because I don't want to keep finding myself sinful and guilty. I am just losing interest in it. It hurts to hurt myself. I don't want that. This is how my interests become shared interests with others. This is what leads to literally doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, which really means, you are DOING LOVE to others BECAUSE you love yourself. You cannot really do anything to others unless it IS love, because everything else is really self attack.

So it's funny but, in situations where I would've gone right into blame and accusation and scapegoating, I just can't seem to believe my own bullshit anymore. I know its dishonest and irresponsible and denial and not true that it's anyone else's fault. Nobody has done anything to me. No-one is the cause of my upset. I am choosing it. I'm doing this to myself. And I want to stop doing that. I want to recognize my true innocence, and learn to love myself again.

Surrendering to self-love shared with God. I am worthy because in the atonement, it is true that I have not really done anything real, and therefore am still innocent. Accepting that produces a justification to love yourself.

Jesus gave us a nice analogy this evening for how we reverse cause and effect, how the ego functions, how we create scapegoats, and how we do stuff to ourselves.

The analogy is that of a hand puppet or glove puppet. The ego is like a puppet we use.

By itself, the puppet has no will, no life, no power to do anything. It lies motionless when you are not using it. It doesn't do anything to you or to anyone else. It's just a tool that goes unused and sits on a shelf.

At this point, you know that you are the one who has all the power to make stuff happen, and you know that you are the only one who can do stuff to yourself. All the puppets are dormant.

You decide to pick up the puppet and put your hand into it. You're now wearing it. And immediately, you start to move your arm around to move the puppet. And then you start to move your fingers to make its little arms and legs wiggle and maybe make its face move. Maybe you'll even give it a funny voice to add to the illusion that it is alive. You are trying to bring it to life, to "make it real", and to imbue it with the belief that can really do something.

At this point, you start to make believe. You start to weave a fantasy where the puppet is brought to life, where it animates, it moves and makes noises, and inevitably, you'll start to make it do things. Maybe its suddenly able to pick up objects. Maybe its able to poke people or tickle them. Maybe it can do stuff even to your own body.

The issue here is, once you start to pretend that the puppet is the one that is doing these things, you've introduced a major error in your mind. You've placed a separation between you - as the source of all power and life - and this puppet, even though your hand is still animating it - which makes it now seem that the puppet is not getting its power from you.

So now the puppet seems to have its own power, its own will, its own life. It has become the culprit. And now it is the one that gets blamed for doing stuff to yourself or others. You have turned it into a scapegoat. You can pretend to do stuff to yourself or others, through the puppet, pretending the puppet is the one doing it, so that the puppet is to blame and not you.

So let's invent a scenario. Let's say that this puppet, which symbolizes the ego, as a tool for you to use and give power to, isn't really able to do anything at all. But you decide to use the puppet to punch yourself in the face. So you do it. It hurts. You've attacked yourself. But because you believe responsibility for the puppets actions is no longer your responsibility, its obviously the puppets fault. It should be apparent how it is insanity to blame the puppet or to believe it has causal power over you.

In this there are two things happening. You are now a victim of the puppet and your disassociation from being the puppeteer makes it seem as though YOUR OWN ACTIONS against yourself are not coming from you. So not only can you blame the puppet for hurting you but you can claim that you had nothing to do with it, which justifies anger. So not only are you victimized by yourself but you cover it up by scapegoating, but you also now justify that scapegoating because it seems you didn't do it to yourself.

This is literally what happens in life whenever you believe that someone else or something else has power over you, is causing you, is affecting you, is changing you, influencing you, making you, forcing you, attacking you, victimizing you, whatever. If there is any ounce of this kind of perception or belief, you have disassociated from your own participation. You're actually attacking YOURSELF, through the puppet/ego/person/attacker, and pretending its not you. You do this in your mind. You attack yourself vicariously.

As we reveal the truth of this, you can see that as you slip your hand into the puppet and bring it to life and make it seem to have its own will, and then you punch yourself in the face, you will probably believe you are not the one punching yourself in the face. You blame the puppet, the person, the attacker. But if you don't take responsibility for it, you are stuck in the victim mentality.

So what you need to do is, stop pretending that your own puppets are doing stuff against you with their own willpower. It is YOUR OWN POWER that is attacking you THROUGH these externalized puppets. You send out your own self-attack, self-guilt, projecting it out into the puppets in the world (also your body), into things you eat, into things you see, into things you say you don't like, and you ANIMATE these things to seem to attack you. And you fear the power they seem to have. But here's the secret...

The power that you fear is attacking you against your will, by these puppets, IS YOUR OWN POWER. Its your arm, in the puppet, that's punching you in the face. It's your mind, that's extending out through other people and then turning on you. So the power you fear is your own power. And you see it in other things but its really yours. And there IS NO OTHER POWER acting against you other than your own. There is no other arm in the puppet. There is no other puppeteer out to get you or trying to work against you. It's you. You are doing this to yourself.

Owning up to being the puppeteer is the key to salvation. Taking responsibility for making stuff happen to you. Being the mind that is choosing to see situations in such a way that you perceive it as though the puppets in your life are doing this stuff of their own decision. They are nothing more than tools that your mind is using for self-attack. And here's the good news...

If everything that attacks you is YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if everything you are afraid of IS YOUR OWN POWER being used against yourself, and if you CHOOSE to stop condemning yourself.... who's going to do anything to you? Nobody. Nobody else is out there to do stuff to you. This is all an inside job. It's you as your own enemy. You need to forgive yourself for what you have not done and recognize your innocence. You need to own up to being the puppet master and take the gloves off! Stop hitting yourself. Stop punishing yourself. Stop judging and condemning yourself. Stop finding yourself guilty and stop proceeding to punish yourself for stuff you have not done.

Take the puppet off your hand and own your power. It has no power of its own. Take it back. Its yours. It was yours all along. And then you can recognize.. this is the key to the atonement...

The puppet is just a puppet. It cannot and does not do anything. It never has. It is not real. It is not alive. Nothing has ever happened to you. Job done. The ego is a puppet. It's your puppet. That's all it is. Once you take back your power and own up to who you are, you put down the ego and it is lifeless and powerless. Cause and effect have been placed back in their proper orientation and you are no longer a victim.

Freedom.

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

We may not think that people are trying to destroy themselves. People can seem relatively happy, fairly sane, living a seemingly active life, enjoying success in their career, raising families and so on. But the fact of what is happening in the big picture is still there.

God's Kingdom is the realm of creation, of the constructive use of the power of the mind. It is there that life is wholeheartedly supported and sustained eternally. Any degree of suffering or sickness is completely impossible. Everyone enjoys perfection and eternal life and immortality.

But in the separation, all who participated in it did reject the Kingdom, and thus rejected immortality and perfection. This rejection of God was a rejection of life, a rejection of innocence, and a rejection of existence. It thus led to a death wish, or a desire to not create. The opposite of creation is destruction, and it was the destruction of God and Self that was the aim.

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

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

"This is a dream of death."

And so we entered into dreaming, in which all dreams are based in the rejection of creation and life. And so all dreams are dreams of death. And the physical universe is a system of death. All its laws are based on death, and all its roads lead to death.

We seem to have a seeming escape for a while, a kind of in-between state where we have a "life", before we die. But this is still essentially a period of dying. And it still leads to the grave, which is something we can deny and avoid but this denial doesn't stop it happening.

Nevertheless, this all only happens as a result of choosing death, ie choosing the opposite of creation. Choosing to not be with God. Which means choosing self destruction.

So if you are willing to look, you'll notice that everyone who is here is in various degrees or stages of self attack and punishment. This is not something pretty to look at. Many people are so riddled with guilt they can't even look you in the eye.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death. Children are born into it through pain and in pain. Their growth is attended by suffering, and they learn of sorrow and separation and death. Their minds are trapped in their brain, and its power declines if their bodies are hurt. They seem to love, yet they desert, and are deserted. They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end?"

Why does this happen? It happens because each individual person believes they are a sinner. And in whatever way, somewhere in the mind there is a belief that sin is real and true, has happened, has had real irreversible consequences, and that they can never return to God.

But even moreso, we believe we actively deserve to be punished for it. That we want the punishment and want to suffer, because it is expected of us and we agree with it. And so the people inflict self attack upon themselves in all manner of ways and this eventually leads to the death of the body. And all of this is chosen and self inflicted. And if it were not for this, there would be no suffering or sickness or death.

The simple thing to realize then is that this whole world is filled with people who are trying to die. "a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures come to die." Where we come to hate a while, wither and die. Jesus doesn't pull any punches on this stuff, he's very blunt about it.

So you've got a world full of sacrificial lambs, people destroying themselves in various ways, all manner of self attack, and all of it is essentially suicide. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent." Which means that all of the sickness, all suffering, all forms of unhappiness, all death, is all a choice made by people who believe they deserve it.

Except that, they don't deserve it. No-one does. No one deserves suffering even if it's an illusion of suffering. No one deserves to be punished in any way. No one deserves to have to go through any kind of psychological hell or experience of pain or disfigurement or disability or disease. These are all forms of self abuse. Every single example is someone trying to hurt themselves.

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

We're a world filled with self attacking, self hurting, self abusing, self harming, self destructive, self sabotaging, self denying, self hating, self loathing, self corrupting people, all of whom think they deserve to suffer because they're guilty. But they're not really guilty, and the ENTIRE thing is just one huge mistake.

Sin is not real, or possible. Meaning attack on God is not real or possible. Meaning there is never justification for guilt, meaning there is never a PURPOSE for suffering, to inflict just desserts or due justified punishment. There is never a valid grounds for unhappiness or disease or depression or anything less than God's will that we be happy and healthy. The whole thing is a giant mistake.

So all that's really happening is that everyone is seriously mistaken, confused, lacking recognition, insane, unclear, uncertain, afraid, not sure of anything, and really kind of lost in a nightmare of their own making. All as a result of denial and an unwillingness to look at their own innocence. Which in a way is kind of funny, because if we'd just look at the fact that we could never have sinned, we'd stop trying to kill ourselves over it.

"What if you looked within and saw no sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego never asks. And you who ask it now are threatening the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to pretend it is your friend."

Death isn't real, and nothing real can be threatened. But we certainly can go through the motions and try to make it happen, to have the experience of being a corrupt body, feeling pain and sensations, torturing ourselves in our dreams. All of which is unnecessary. All that's needed is the awakening to the truth. The acceptance of the facts. The recognition of what really is real and what is not. Because there really is no sin, in reality. And that means there is no grounds for any kind of self punishment, suicide or death.

No-one needs to be dying. No-one needs to be suffering or sick. No-one needs to be unhappy. We all just need forgiveness - the recognition of sin's impossibility, and the continuance of our absolute immortal endless innocence. And those who are innocent can never suffer, nor do they want to or choose to.

Because if you are just as perfect now as when God created you, and if you have never done anything to anyone, and if nothing you thought you did ever even happened, then all that's left is to thank God that you have been given eternal life.

When you first perceive that someone has something wrong with them, is sick or suffering in some way, and this strikes you as real, you will have a reaction.

Your reaction will be part of what you have put in place in your mind, because both what you see in the other as sickness and your reaction to it coexist in a single split-minded dynamic.

You will react to what you've shown yourself, believing it. If it is real to you, you will be horrified and upset and will want to stop the suffering as if that will solve your upset, but the other person's suffering isn't the cause of your upset - your split minded perception is.

You will want for the person to be free of this pain or sickness or situation. You think that if you solve that, your own upset will go away, but it won't. You will then automatically start trying to fix them and change them and even force them to be different.

Your attempts to fix them will then compel you a great deal and produce a lot of what seems like a genuine desire to help, a motivation to research and figure out and find solutions. You can get into that quite deeply.

You will convince yourself that you are being caring, that you just want to help the person, are trying to heal them, want to take away their hurt and save them.

But what you don't realize is that you're doing all this as a reaction to something you perceived which frightened you and upset you. You think that your response is based in helpfulness and selflessness but it's really a selfish reaction to what you showed yourself and what you saw in the person.

Your use of them entailed you seeing truth within their sickness, believing their sickness to be real, showing yourself their illusion of sickness as though it is the truth and is really happening. That is actually an attack on your part. That is you using the opportunity to imprison them by holding these perceptions as true of them, maintaining the sickness and keeping it.

Your efforts later to get rid of the sickness, as extremely caring as they may appear to be, are actually an egoic cover-up to the fact that you are keeping the sickness in place, have attacked the person with the sickness by agreeing with it, and some part of you actually wants them to be sick.

The truth can be upsetting to admit to. Shocking isn't it, that you thought you were just trying to help and care about them and in fact you were hurting them, contributing to their suffering and keeping them imprisoned.

All you've been doing this whole time is rebounding off your own false, erroneous perception, which showed you an illusion of sickness as though it was God's given truth, which must be horrifying if sickness is the truth, and then were attempting to get rid of that as though it was in the person and not in your own mind. The making-real of what you thought was in the person, was just a projected portion of your of mind attacking itself.

If you admit to this then you will learn to stop trying to fix and heal and correct and help and solve the person's problem, because in REAL truth they do NOT have a problem. You do. YOU are upset about what you see. YOU are upset about what appears to be a real suffering. IF it were real, your upset would be justified indeed. But it's not. You are mistaken. And that means that all your attempts to help based on keeping it real and believing it's truly happening, are actually counter-attacks and are NOT forms of healing.

So all this time you thought you were trying to help, you were hurting, agreeing with what the person believes about themselves, and holding them captive to their own suffering. Your failure to UNDO their sickness is an attack. Your failure to see through and overlook the illusion of their sickness - which is not REAL sickness (it doesn't exist), is actually an attack. Since you did not forgive, you must have judged, and judgement is condemnation.

If you can admit this to yourself and collapse this whole illusory response to a misperception, you will stop trying to fix and solve the person based on what is "really happening to them." It's a false reaction, because it's not TRUE that something is really happening to them. Their sickness is an illusion, not a reality. Their immortal self is NOT threatened. There is no real danger. Life isn't under attack. Only by perceiving and believing as such do you support life and set your brother free from their imprisonment.

Once you admit you were only reacting to your own upset, because of what seemed like a really deep "genuine" feeling of caring and wanting to help and make everything better, you will see that this desire to help is really an illusion. It's part of the ego. As supportive as it SEEMS, it is not helping at all. It is just your own emotional upset flaring up into a nightmare and causing you to go on the offensive trying to solve everything that doesn't exist. Pretty funny actually.

When this denial has been undone, you are now more clearly confronted with a greater degree of truth about the situation. Your challenge now is to ACTUALLY FORGIVE what you see, to not believe in it, to truly UNDO it, by correcting your mind and offering this correction to your brother. Your lack of support for their belief that they are sick will be healing, helping to guide them towards the truth that will set them free.

Now you can be TRULY HELPFUL, by offering a miracle of forgiveness and coming from real love, which isn't a love that enters into FALSE EMPATHY. False empathy means you are believing in the suffering of others and agree with it and therefore are attacking them and yourself with it by joining in it with them. That isn't helping you or them. True empathy means representing God, genuinely, offering miracles of love, and shining a light for your brother to see.

There are parts of the Course describing miracles where it says that they shine a light to reveal all the ways that we are in error. It doesn't necessarily do anything but it reveals how we are in fear and let's us see that clearly so that we can recognize illusions and thus make them disappear. It points the way to the truth.

We must learn to OVERLOOK the appearance of sickness, instead of reacting to it. We must learn not to believe our eyes or think that this is proof. We must recognize our own ego reactions based on our own nightmare of hallucinating that sickness contains the truth. Sickness is always an illusion and if we're not recognizing that we will become upset and try to attack it with "help". That is not forgiveness and it is not healing or helpful. Such helpfulness is hurtful.

Strangely, you will become more loving and truly compassionate when you are not having your own gigantic mega reaction to someone's plight. You'll be more present and available and productive and constructive. You'll be able to truly help them and support them, rather than making it all real and going on a rollercoaster ride. It's not easy. The ego has lots of traps up its sleeves and this is one of the big ones.

The whole problem with false perception is really just one of confusion about "what is the cause." Or more to the point, who is causing it. We could rephrase that as "I don't know what God (cause) is."

In the separation there was a disassociation from the role of "causer" or chooser (creator), and the ownership and responsibility of this causing was projected onto others. We then ended up in an extremely confused state of not being able to clearly discern, "who is doing what to whom?"

In the ego thought system, cause and effect are completely reversed, things which are true seem false, things which are false seem true. There is a breakdown of the Golden Rule, in which anything that's true is true of both of us.

It's replaced with the ego's idea that what is true for me is not true for you. Which really is another way of saying, cause and effect are separate. I can cause you without being affected. And you can cause me without being affected. I can accuse you of doing something I did not do, and thereby believe I am innocent while you're guilty.

This is the ego's idea of "getting away with murder", because it believes it can cause things to happen and escape the consequences. So when we get into "its you not me", or "you did this to me", any kind of blame or finger-pointing or scapegoating or believing that "cause" is outside of you, you will instantly go into a victim role. And victims are always confused about who is attacking them.

In that confused state of ego reactions, it always seems like it's someone else doing this to us, some external event happened, some unforseen circumstance, some unwanted happening

Usually you'll feel devoid of all responsibility for causing it. ie it'll seem like you didn't choose any of it, and you don't want it. But this is because you have no clue whatsoever what is really causing anything. And so random fingers point at random targets hoping some mud will stick.

As you apply forgiveness, ie you become more honest and less in denial about your contribution, you start to sort out exactly WHO is causing stuff to happen. At first it seems like it's everyone except you, but then gradually each time you see that YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF, or was something you did in fact choose, or that it did have an effect on you, the picture starts to become clearer.

The more you can take responsibility for choosing the more you will discern clearly and recognize that you are the cause of your suffering. You will also start to notice that the ego's breaking of God's laws does not work, and in fact when you do attack or scapegoat another you do NOT escape the consequences. It makes you feel guilty, it frightens you, it upsets and stresses you out.

Eventually, there becomes a clear association between "being a victim" and "attacking yourself". A clear line of causation from what you are choosing and the effect YOU experience as a result. You'll see it's not possible to blame another without feeling blamed. It's not possible to judge without feeling judged. It's not possible to attack without feeling attacked. And it's not possible to accuse someone of being the cause of you without you feeling like a vulnerable victim.

And so then it becomes obvious, that you feel like a victim BECAUSE you positioned yourself as one, seeing yourself in that role, and wanting to do so in order to try and get a payoff of scapegoating. But you no longer can pretend that your attacks on another don't hurt yourself. You can't help but notice that the instant you try to shift guilt to someone else, you will immediately feel that familiar weakness, threat and lack of safety that accompanies a victim mentality.

It then becomes an unavoidable no-brainer. That is, you clearly recognize and distinguish, whenever I attack, I feel attacked. Whenever I want to make someone out to be guilty, I feel like a victim. Whenever I try to be unforgiving, I feel unforgiven. It has a direct correlation, because I AM the cause of everything I experience, NOT the other person.

It then becomes harder to pretend to yourself that your attempted attacks on others have no effect on you. You are affected every time. You simply cannot maintain peace and happiness at the same time as being angry with someone. You can't truly honestly justify anger in any situation because you know that it's bullshit. And it'll become increasingly noticeable that you're bullshitting yourself as you sort out exactly who is causing everything you feel.

So then it becomes quicker and easier to catch yourself. You can see, well, as soon as I went to point a finger at someone and use them as a scapegoat, I felt like a victim under attack. Funny that. I made that happen. I gave myself that experience. And so I can choose again and withdraw that self-attack, that self-positioning of "I'm the victim here!". That demand that I be weak and vulnerable and recognized as a suffering frightened liar.

Since I then see that I do this to myself and it was very obvious that I did this, the entire "appeal" of playing the victim role withers away. There's no point to it when you can more accurately discern that it very much does hurt you. There are consequences. And so the challenge then is to no longer see yourself unfairly treated or as a victim of anyone or anything, recognizing that it's only when you do that you feel that way at all. And you no longer want to feel that way.

Fortunately since it's an inside job where you're the only one causing, and other people are never the cause of you AT ALL, it really boils down to your own willingness to admit to what you're doing to yourself and to want a better way. To prefer not suffering over suffering. To recognize that hurting hurts and attack attacks, rather than believing it does something else. Because in our confusion we don't even realize what the fuck we're doing to ourselves, and we end up killing ourselves in the name of self preservation.

True perception is accurate perception. It is recognition. It is awareness and discernment. It is the ability to SEE, clearly, what the truth of this situation is. What is really going on. Who is really causing and choosing. Where things really originate and what their effects actually are. It's the willingness and ability to not be blinded or confused by the ego temptation to think its one-sidedness can work. It's simply honesty and openness to the truth.

Who would hurt themselves unless they thought they weren't hurting themselves in doing so?

Who would hurt themelves once they recognized that they cannot be hurt unless they do so?

Who would hurt themselves if they recognized that even the slightest attempt to hurt others diminishes your own happiness?

Who would hurt themselves when joy and peace and love are the price?

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"No-one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No-one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No-one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants. And no-one dies without his own consent. Nothing occurs but represents your wish, and nothing is omitted that you choose. Here is your world, complete in all details. Here is its whole reality for you. And it is only here salvation is."

""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."

llusions from the outside are not illusions at all. With the perspective of knowing everything about the illusion, the truth of it, you can't be deceived by it.

Being outside of an illusion is like knowing how the magic trick works. Or it's like solving a puzzle and never being able to go back and do the same puzzle again because you already know the trickery involved.

Once you've seen the truth, you can't go back. Once you know the answer, you can no longer pretend that the question is valid. Or even worse, it's like the joke that you heard several times already so it's just not funny any more.

This is also why the world is hell-bent on finding the next big illusion, because people keep wanting to be unconsciously absorbed into the trickery and deception of appearances. Once the 'show' has been experienced, it becomes 'old', and the ego keeps lusting after another illusion to replace it, in order to avoid the possibility that you might awaken.

Illusions can only be maintained while something is hidden from your awareness. And in fact what that means is, your awareness itself is hidden by something, because you can't see the whole picture - the answer eludes you. Only by being unaware of the whole truth can you be deceived by an illusion, so it requires your participation and willingness to become unconscious.

When some portion of your own awareness is unaware of what's really going on - you are in a state of semi-unconsciousness. And it's only in this state of unawareness that you can be deceived by an illusion. Only when some portion of your awareness has become hidden and blocked can something seem to make sense and yet be mistaken.

So let's say there are two characters standing on a stage in a play, doing their theatrical production. In the play, the two are enemies. The victim character has this big long story about how the perpetrator is against them, how they're so wrong and bad and guilty, and how they did this all to them. The perpetrator in the play sees the victim as some fake people-pleasing nutcase that needs to be taken down a peg or two, and they believe they are justified in attacking them. So the two are at war.

Now, in order for your awareness to believe the illusion of these characters, you have to have fallen for some kind of trick. The trick here is, that you believe both characters are being acted by two separate people. You also are somewhat absorbed into the story from each character's perspective and can see how each one seems justified in being enemies with the other. You see how they both are against each other, very much separate from each other, and want nothing really to do with each other. This entirely hinges around the appearance of SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES, and that a sense of IDENTITY has been associated with those differences. This reinforces the idea that these are two separate individuals, which is part of the power of the illusion.

What you suddenly find out, as the play ends, is that in fact, both characters have been acted by the same person, at the same time. Now, obviously this seems nonsense to the ego, impossible even. But to your mind this is perfectly possible. And when these two characters are actually inside your own mind, having a go at each other, your mind is in a state of unawareness - a split mind at war with itself with multiple artificial identities. The stories and the separate identities and the costumes and the drama and their relationship all goes towards painting this picture that each of them is separate. And given they are both characters in your mind, that means your mind has become split and is unconscious that it's actually playing both of them at once.

When it is revealed that in fact there are not two identities involved, but only one - and that this one is you - it then becomes impossible to believe in all of the illusions that suggest these two characters are two separate people. The cover is blown. The mask has come off. The truth is out. And now it becomes literally impossible, upon seeing that both characters are really one person, to believe any of the lies and stories that each was telling about the other. In fact their stories must be completely invalid and fictional and UNTRUE, because nothing that each one claims about the other can make sense if both of them are one person.

The victim can't possibly truthfully claim that the victimizer is out to get them, when the victimizer is the exact same person. Because then the victim would be literally attacking themselves through this person. And the victimizer can't be truthfully claiming that the victim deserves to die, because the victim is themselves also, and that means they'd have to believe about themselves what they believe about the other.

So when awareness comes, that there is a UNITY, a ONENESS, that spans what you THOUGHT was two separate things, illusions - obstacles to awareness - are blown and seen through and can no longer be believed. You only can have a single identity. There can only be one you. And if that one you has been pretending all this time to play out this drama with two identities who seem to be enemies, then admitting to having done BOTH of those roles has to reveal to you the truth. The truth is that you are one whole self, not two selves, and these two characters cannot be who you REALLY are, and their stories must be completely false.

So in order to step out of illusions we need to recognize where there is some sense of separation, or some story about how this is not that, or this person is not that person, or this person is separately doing something to that person without being affected by it, etc. That's the ego's illusion - that one part can be separate from another part and do stuff to them without any side effects. It's a total lie, because both parties are the same person attacking themselves. Once you admit to this and step outside of it, the bubble bursts, reality comes in and the lies are shown for what they are. You can no longer believe the story, or the joke, or the trick, or the question, or the puzzle, and now you SEE the truth. And you are whole.

This whole drama is going on inside you right now. There is a character in you which you think is all that there is to you - your persona self, which is trying to be all spiritual and special. And there is another character in you which you hate and want to be separate from and have nothing to do with, because it seems to victimize your little persona self, and you disassociate from that self and project it onto other people where you can keep attacking it to get rid of it. But it's really inside your mind and it's part of you. And all along, even if you block it out, YOU are playing the role of it at the same time as playing the role of this 'partial you'. And both are the same self.

When this truth comes to light and you accept it and recognize it, you can no longer believe the ILLUSION that someone else is doing stuff to you against your will. Or that someone else is victimizing you. Or that you are a victim in any way. Or even, that you are this small little persona self that's left over and separate from the other venomous hateful self that you tried to pretend was not you either. Neither of these selves are you, because they are both just illusory characters. Your ego - your persona self - is not you, and your 'alter ego', your shadow self, is also not you. And all along you've been pitting these two characters against themselves in your own mind and living out a nightmare. Wake up from that! You are one self, not two selves.

So illusions are just that, the illusion - the deception, the trickery, the appearance, the lie, the *seeming* truth, that what was one is two, and what is joined is separate, and that you are not your own enemy. And while you're inside of one or the other roles within that illusion, you will believe you are only that, and will be unaware, unconscious, of your whole self. Only when two become one will you snap out of the deception and become FULLY AWARE of who you really are, your whole self - your Holy Self, joined in Oneness with Holy Spirit. That's who you really are, behind the illusion of being unwhole and incomplete.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miracles and supernatural interventions occur more readily when there is physical relaxation and a willingness to surrender and receive.

The act of not 'acting', of not transmitting, of not even giving, but simply a willingness to let go and be open and RECEIVE, invites and allows Holy Spirit to access and help you.

I have now over the past few months received healing from the Holy Spirit on an almost daily basis. And I don't just mean he fixes some perceptual issues. I'm talking, supernatural power! Sometimes it will occur spontaneously even if I am in public, or anywhere that I need it, but Holy Spirit can be discreet and is able to tone-down the visual signs of this happening (which usually entails much shaking of body parts), lol.

Most readily I am open to this happening when laying in bed either towards sleeping or in the morning. Typically Holy Spirit begins by simply saying either "relax" or "surrender". This could be in the middle of some rant or some other conversation and is often unexpected and I don't always clue-in at first that this means He is going to do something, but then it begins.

Even if I am laying there relaxing, sometimes He knows that I am not necessarily letting go of a situation in order to let Him help, and so he will say "surrender". This signals me that I need to actively surrender.

To do this, I will repeat in words, "I surrender", several times. At first I seem to say this slowly and with gaps between, because I am not yet very willing to let go. But I notice that the healing really starts to flow when I say it quickly and in quick succession, so that there is no time in-between for my ego to get in there and keep holding on. "I surrender, I surrender, I surrender." After saying this several times, Holy Spirit will likely spontaneously activate and begin healing.

By surrendering, what I mean is, having a willingness to let go and give up and stop fighting. It's actually a 'feeling' I get of like, how you'd feel if you'd tried everything and failed and just threw up your arms and admitted defeat. It's an openness, a giving in, and an admitting. Admitting the truth literally means "allowing the truth to come in". This is why surrender is apparently a VITAL part of the miracle process, because it means you're willing to put aside doing this yourself, and admit that you cannot, and stop trying to be God.

Then God comes.

Sometimes I've heard Holy Spirit say, "come", and I'm not sure if this means for me to come to Him, but I've also had Him basically put words in my mouth as to what He wants me to say to Him to get things flowing, which is cool. So I will say, "come Holy Spirit", "come into me". This is an invitation. Also sometimes I will ask Him to join with me or to help me to join with Him.

In my willingness to surrender, there is much activity which I'll describe in a moment. But I've also found that in addition to surrendering and allowing Him to operate on me, if I am also actively doing some kind of forgiveness during this time, like, really getting down to the truth that stuff isn't real and it hasn't happened and I'm not a victim and so on, this will also activate additional 'phases' of healing. So just when I think it's kind of done, there'll be another whole wave of it.

What almost always happens, I'm finding, is there are about 4 or so different expressions of Holy Spirit healing me. The first one is that my head literally starts to shake from side to side "violently", i.e. very very rapidly, like a vibration, and the speed of this can be so fast that it's like just a really intense vibrating, and I have to trust that this is safe (lol), which it is. This seems to dislodge... I don't know what, from my head area. This can last anywhere from a few seconds to up to 20 seconds or more. Then there will often be a short pause, and then it kicks into phase 2.

In phase 2, all of a sudden whatever energy or whatever was drained from my head area flows down into the belly area. I suddenly start to experience muscle contractions in that area, which can be quite intense. The muscles become so contracting that it forces me to hunch over or partly sit up, and in the really strong cases there is such vibrational tension in the 'floor' of the abdominal area, that it feels like an earthquake vibrating very deeply. This will go on for possibly 15-30 seconds depending. As the energy or whatever clears, and He gets done, I relax back down, and I immediately notice that ... just something has changed in my experience.

Often I immediately notice that I feel expanded, calm, peaceful and relaxed, and soft. It feels really good. It's as though something happened on the inside of me and my whole awareness is different. Sometimes after several rounds of this, per my willingness to invite more and do more healing, I have felt really really peaceful. It also energizes me somewhat but can also make me a little ungrounded for a while.

A third way it manifests is that sometimes the energy or whatever goes out through my arms which will shake, sometimes quite aggressively. Sometimes this is followed by a series of belly contractions as well. A fourth way, which actually I think was the first way that I started to experience this, was that gradually some kind of presence would begin to fill me up from my feet upwards, causing the muscles to all become tensed all the way up my legs to my stomache, and then there would be much shaking and 'draining' where emotions and other energy from the upper torso would just seem to drain out of me quickly.

I have absolutely no idea really what Holy Spirit is doing. No idea. I don't know why His presence causes the body to shake. I have no clue why His healing focuses around the head and later around the belly, other than that these are the two main area of nervous systems and the "two brains".

Similarly, if I ask Jesus to come into my belly area when I am having intense feelings, He will do almost the same thing, resulting in a complete undoing of that feeling, its cause, and a state of happiness and laughter at the end.

Also I forgot there is also another way that this manifests, and it's to do with if I am focussing my attention on another person. If I am doing a forgiveness about someone and I am asking Holy Spirit to heal some part of them, I will start to experiencing shaking and vibrations in that area of MY body, sometimes quite intensely, and sometimes it's so unusual in its focus on that body part that there is just no way I could even conceive of making that body part move that way. Like it could be a healing in the lower back or something and it's shaking all over the place but if I were to think, how could I make the back muscles shake in just that one area like that, it's just totally impossible.

I have been learning to trust that when I do this for some other person, it is helping them, but this is an area of doubt for me, which I am still working on. I have, however, noticed that after some rounds of healing for someone else in this way, they do appear to exhibit signs of SOMETHING having changed in their experience, afterwards, through at least some kind of shift in mood or renewed clarity of awareness or even some physical side effects. This is especially an area that challenges me to trust because I am not the recipient of the benefits and I cannot tell from my own sensations whether it is helping or not.

This has all has come about through SURRENDER. Also through trust. Just opening up to Holy Spirit and inviting Him to come into me and to do whatever he wants to do... that alone is a big trust step at first, because you don't know what might happen. I did that numerous times with 'milder' healings taking place before it ever progressed to the intense shaking. Another way to approach this if you prefer, is to just address God, "God, I receive your healing love".... do that a few times and tell me you don't feel some sense of love come around and into you. This also can be sufficient to signal to Holy Spirit to allow healing love to flow into you, as much as you are willing to receive it. Receiving love from God takes seemingly a bit more willingness than letting Holy Spirit run riot, maybe it's a trust thing.

These are all acts of RECEIVING, and they entail that I relax. If in the middle of the healing I start to tighten up and resist, He reminds me to relax, because it does seem to interfere to some degree, whereby the shaking etc may stop or lessen if I start fighting it. I have had to learn to TRUST it and not be afraid of it and to just let Him do whatever. It is often quite funny when my head is shaking all over the place and my cheeks and mouth are flapping around and I'm actually relaxed, it's sort of fun!

I look forward in particular now to doing a pretty strong session of this for myself on the weekends, either toward sleep or upon waking, but really Holy Spirit I'm finding out doesn't care about schedules and sometimes will start doing the shakes even before I really seem to be ready. It's gotten to where even a slight 'hint' to Him to do it can kick it in, at any time. I believe the same is true of miracle performed for others - which is where this is leading, whereby we are to just spontaneously funnel the power of God without even thinking about it.

I was watching some videos today of a pastor who performs many many many miracles and has risen the dead etc, and one of his teachings is that you need to get the RECIPIENT of healing to surrender and relax a lot, in order to RECEIVE the full transformation and healing. This seems to be key. If the person is interfering and trying to pray and do stuff at the same time, that's actually a block. Receiving and transmitting are two different functions, and the person receiving the healing needs to be ideally in a RECEIVING mindset.

So relax! Surrender a lot. Be willing. Have courage and trust and invite Holy Spirit to come into you. He is willing and ready, He's just waiting on YOU to be RECEPTIVE. This is how you can receive your own healing miracles effortlessly. I think this is actually EASIER than sharing miracles with other people, which is a whole different dynamic. But I think,... Holy Spirit may be about to reveal a new way of looking at that, based on surrender.

Let us know how you get on! Happy shaking. And remember, "He will correct the consequences of my wrong decisions if I will let Him, and I choose to LET HIM"!!

I’ve been studying passages about perception lately. There’s a lot of them. The body’s eyes are only capable of fixating on forms and appearances of physicality. They were made NOT to see. They only register "physical signals" of light coming from the outer surface of objects. They eye’s "perception" is equivalent to false perception, because they are blinded by form. The eyes do not see at all.

They pass signals to the mind. The mind is the only thing that sees. The mind then interprets the signals based on the belief system and values. Whatever you value, you believe in, and want. This turns into what you "want to see". Similarly fear is used to shut out perception of things you do not want to see. When you have ego values, you see what you want to see as special, and what you don’t want to see is regarded as unreal or evil. This is a dualistic view.

Your perceptual mechanism is a layer on top of the mind which filters the body signals and interprets their meaning. This is where the "world you see", in your mind, is based on the meaning you give it. The body’s eyes are never capable of showing you reality. They can only send pictures to the mind which are illusions. The world they depict is fundamentally an illusion regardless of HOW the picture is interpreted. It is not possible to use the body’s eyes to see Heaven.

When you move towards true perception, which is still interpretative, you start to put all things into one category in your belief system and value system, rather than categorizing the world in dualistic terms of special love/special hate. All of the pictures being sent by the body are categorized as UNREAL. They are recognized as being fundamentally illusions, which, when viewed WITHOUT distortion (accurate perception) are easily discerned to be NOT reality. A mind "without illusions" in its perception does NOT "see reality", it interprets body signals as the LIES they were made to be.

To see with true perception lines up perception with the laws of God and allows the mind to see "through" the perceptual filter without distortion or bias. "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness." The mind then uses perception to see the "physical signals" "as-is", with no additional meaning being given them, nothing denied, nothing hidden. When seen "as is", they are simply registered as FALSE. They are OVERLOOKED with forgiveness.

Perception of form becomes very "thin", like a thin transparent veil. The body’s eyes here are still registering signals of a physical world, where bodies are in various states of sickness, people are still at war, and so on, but the mind interprets it all as unreal. The mind is in touch with the fact that it is the one DREAMING, and that it is the one who has sent the world out there to report back what’s out there. "Miracles remind you of who the dreamer is."

So then the mind knows that ITS DREAM is what is brewing shown to it by the body signals, the dream is fundamentally FALSE, and does not really exist. It is a very small step from there, "illusions recognized must disappear", for God to now take action to END YOUR DREAMING, remove perception from your mind entirely, and thus collapse the entire dream including the body and the physical world which were nothing BUT an illusion. In false perception you ADDED illusions ON TOP OF the illusion. There are TWO LAYERS of illusion. In true perception you came to look at the illusion WITHOUT illusion being added, and recognizing it only for what it is. Then when the world illusion has been recognized, it disappears.

I’ve been hearing people use the term illusion in an incorrect way. As if it means, "illusions about" something. You guys need to brush up on your grasp of what an illusion IS. People have too easily equate an illusion with "a false perception of something", and then equated the "disappearance of the illusion" with true perception. As if true perception does not SEE illusions, but sees reality. Let’s be a bit more precice in defining what is an illusion and what is reality.

I was driving one day and saw what I thought was a two headed bird. It was a large bird like a crane. I stopped the car and had a good look. Sure enough it dam well looked like a two headed bird. It seemed REAL. I drove forwards a little and took another look. Driving forwards introduced additional information which was HIDDEN from my perception before. Suddenly I was able to see additional legs, and then it became clear that there were in fact two birds, standing right next to each other. The illusion that there was a two-headed bird in reality, was blown. I was now SEEING the TRUTH (true perception) "about" what was ACTUALLY THERE. Seeing the truth, however, merely revealed the information that was hidden, and the parts of "whats there" that I could not see. My perception became more full and whole and inclusive. I was now looking at what was there "as is", instead of with a deluded interpretation.

This is also how it works in the course. You perceive with the body falsely. If you believe that what the body shows you is truth, you are deluded and in false perception. You believe the ILLUSION or the parts which function together to make it seem like soemthing, is real. You don’t see all the information. They are key facts hidden by denial. You are unconscious. When you open your awareness by removing "blocks to awareness", you gain access to information and facts which you did not know existed. You start to see more FULLY, all of what is there, as it is, a complete picture, without distortions or hidden information. This merely shows you the "apparatus" that was being used to make something look like somethig else. It’s like being privy to a "behind the scenes" look at the making of a movie. You see the cameramen and the fake stage and all the actors "out of character" and it blows the whole illusion.

True perception shows you these hidden details. But the fact is that SEEING CORRECTLY (corrected perception) only shows you the TRUTH ABOUT what is out there. It only reveals it "as it is "without your interpretations and strange meanings and lack of context. It only shows you an undistorted view of what is there. This undistorted view is, you could say, "free of illusions", but more accurately, it is free of BELIEVING that what is out there is REAL. It does not buy into the illusion any more. It’s like when you solve a puzzle and now you can never be deceived by it. Or you hear the punchline to a joke and it’s never as funny after that because you recognize that the setup is a lie. True perception shows you, without distortion, accurately, correctly, that the physical world the body looks at makes no sense, is deceptive, does not match up with God’s nature, is fundamentally flawed, IS ITSELF AN ILLUSION, and IS NOT REAL. Jesus is very clear on this in stating that true perception recognizes that what you see in this state is categorically UNREAL.

Bodies, forms, objects, animals, weather, forests, oceans, the planet, galaxies, all of it is a movie set. And when you are aware of ALL of the parts of it, see it clearly, and stop buying into its appearance, you will no longer be willing or desiring to believe that it is anything other than FALSE. A big lie. A trick. Just a great big scam. That’s why you WAKE UP after seeing that "forgiven world", because you see that what is here - this world - is NOTHING REAL, it has NO VALUE, it’s nothing but smoke and mirrors that you USED to think was true, and now you RECOGNIZE it as FALSE. Then it disappears.

You then find yourself in Heaven, where there is no world, no bodies, no spacetime, no planet, no critters, no forests and oceans, and "nothing there but shines and shines forever." Now you are in KNOWING of what is REAL. And it sure as fuck was not planet Earth. You’ve now left the MOVIE SET behind, have given up your little toys and fake play things, have become COMPLETELY DISILLUSIONED with the world, and have now decided to GO HOME TO HEAVEN, leaving this world behind. "The world will spin into the NOTHINGNESS from which it came." "The body is a dream." "The body is the central figure in dreaming and without the dream it does not exist." (paraphrase)

So all you folks saying "illusions about", are not RECOGNIZING that the world ITSELF is a mechanism of illusion. FORM is an illusion, no matter HOW you look at it. If you look at it and think it IS REALITY, now you are blind and decdived. ONLY by looking at it with true perception can you be NOT DECEIVED by it, not blinded by it and realize it is 100% fundamentally a device for deception and untruth, which can ONLY deceive you if you don’t realize what it is doing. In this truth, you SEE form - body signals - as something that you USED TO think was real, and now you realize it was just a TRICK. If you don’t recognize how this world is LYING TO YOU ("nothing so blinding as sight of form"), and if you think illusions are ONLY your "interpretations" of what’s out there, you’re going to be staying sleeping for a long time to come.

I think the big gross error that some people are making, is that they have decided:

1) When I’m in ego, I’m not seeing correctly, so I’m making a shit hole out of something that isn’t shitty.

2) When I’m in true perception, I will see the beautiful lovely world with the credit it deserves.

That’s totally fucked. I’m sorry. It’s 100% backwards.

1) When you are having false perception you are BUYING INTO the illusion and not recognizing it. You think it’s reality, even though you’re having a nightmare. It’s a state of hallucination and distorted interpretation.

2) When you are having true perception you STOP BUYING INTO the illusion, you recognize it is NOT TRUE. You realize it’s NOT REALITY. You are no longer having a nightmare, but you ALSO ARE SEEING THAT THIS WORLD IS NOT REAL. You stop hallucinating ABOUT IT, but that doesn’t suddenly mean "its reality." You are now seeing the TRUTH ABOUT it. The truth about an illusion is that IT IS AN ILLUSION!!!

This ties in exactly perfectly with what forgiveness is. Forgiveness OVERLOOKS FORMS and does not make them real. The idea of "looking at" the physical world "with love" and "seeing it correctly" and it being fundamentally "a lovely thing" is bullshit to the 10th degree. That’s a total failur to understand what an illusion is. You are supposed to stop believing it’s real, not believe it’s MORE REAL than before.

This is the *incorrect* view of the metaphysics:

1) False perception shows you a false world or false view OF the world

2) True perception shows you are true world, or a true view OF a true world - as if what’s out there is true and real

THAT IS WRONG!

This is the CORRECT view of the metaphysics:

1. False perception shows you a *FALSE WORLD*, AS IF IT IS TRUE, making it SEEM REAL. It is backwards perception. It renders reality an illusion, and illusions reality. You do not realize what you’re seeing "as real" IS NOT REAL. False perception sees this world AS REALITY.

2. True perception shows you a FALSE WORLD, which is NOT REAL, and recognizing that IT IS NOT TRUE. That the "truth about" it is that IT IS NOT TRUE. It renders reality as reality and illusion as illusion. Truth = true, false = false. Here you RECOGNIZE that what you’re seeing IS NOT REAL. True perception sees this world AS ILLUSION. **A LIE**

In true perception you will then be so certain that you aree merely PERCEIVING A DREAM, not a reality, that you will be ready to WAKE UP FROM DREAMING.

When you wake up from dreaming, the UNREAL WORLD - Earth - does not suddenly become real! IT DISAPPEARS beacuse it was never real to begin with!

What REMAINS is Heaven, which has nothing to do with this unreal illusory world whatsoever.

"Heaven remains your one alternative to this strange world you made." You MADE this world with illusions. Making makes illusions. It is not creation.

We often talk about the versions of the course, the editing, whether all the facts are included etc. And then on top of that we try to understand its metaphysical model, its concepts and ideas, and argue over which model is the right one.

But what we should perhaps really be more concerned with is whether true information has been lost. ie whether we have the whole truth represented in word form, or whether key detail has been lost.Information is ... the minimum amount of detail that is needed to represent something with perfect logical accuracy.

In its simplest form, for example, let's say there are two squares next to each other. One is black and one is white. You can distinguish that there are two, because they contrast to each other. This contrast is information. If you were to, for example, color both squares white, you cannot tell whether its one square or two squares. Information has been lost.

In information theory, which is used for such things as data compression algorithms for example, and also in science, there is something called entropy. Entropy is a measure of the absolutely minimum possible size that the information can be, in order to fully and accurately represent something.

When you have files on your computer, or images for example, you can "compress" them. Usually this is based on representing larger repeated things with smaller symbols. You can get back exactly what you started with by "de-compressing" it based on the symbols. But this can only be done up to a point. There is a threshold at which you CANNOT compress the files any smaller, without losing information. All the "information" needed to fully describe the image must be retained in some form.

With images for example, the jpeg file format is not an accurate representation of the image. It LOSES ACCURACY as a trade-off for making the files smaller. The more accuracy it loses, the smaller the representation becomes, the blurrier the image is. It starts to develop artifacts which are visual errors. From that "overly reduced" data, you CANNOT get back the original full fidelity and quality of the original image. Key accuracy of information is LOST.

When we conceive of truth, when we try to describe reality, or talk about God and his creation etc, these lofty and rather abstract metaphysical ideas, the temptation is to make the representation of that truth, the symbol of that truth, be as SMALL AND SHORT as possible. We somehow think that less is always more, and that "simpler" must be more true. This is NOT true. TOO FEW words is INACCURATE.

When an accurate representation of something is reduced SO much, it has to in fact LOSE very important detail. The information becomes blurred, vague, generalized, overly abstract, and really does NOT contain the subtle nuances that are actual aspects of the whole truth. It may SEEM like it represents the whole of the truth but it doesn't. It's an APPROXIMATION, like a jpeg image, which is "sort of close" to being accurate and gives you some idea of it, but IS NOT accurate.

Examples of this happening include "reductionistic" statements like "Everything is God." Well now. For some reason that sounds all mystical and special and lofty. But, such a vague statement lacks enough detail to be accurate. You cannot GET BACK the full story when you BASE logical conclusions on this information. The reconstruction of the whole story is corrupted.

You could say for example, well, it seemed like the Son of God feel asleep and dreamed of death. But ... since ITS ALL GOD.... THIS MUST MEAN, logically, that God HIMSELF fell asleep and dreamed of death. That is absolutely what it implies. You can argue that "no it doesn't" but all you're doing is trying to pretend that it is accurate because the BS alarms are going off to indicate errors. The fact is that the information that's given is NOT ENOUGH, it DOES NOT accurately represent the whole truth, and it's too vague.

MORE WORDS IS BETTER! Or perhaps we can say, you want ideally the fewer number of words which FULLY AND ACCURATELY represent the whole truth. I you can be sure this is not going to be 3 words or even 20 words.

So yes, even in terms of thinking about abstract spiritual stuff, even in terms of oneness, god being all, everything is mind, son and father blending into each other, going beyond words and concepts... all this stuff.... when you are USING LANGUAGE and logical constructs to THINK about it..... and you strip SO much away that you start losing vital information, going BEYOND the entropy threshold, you are literally turning a detailed and nuanced truth into a blob of mush and mud and blurriness and meaninglessness. Because you think that is what spirituality is like .... this oneness thing... must mean, we only need to use one word. Not even close.

There IS an entropy limit beyond which you cannot go, in logical reasoning, in discussion, in theorizing, in metaphysics, in conceptualizing reality, where if you DO go beyond it, you have chopped out SO much information that you're not even really talking about the whole truth anymore. You're making a vague approximation which is NOT accurate enough. And it is therefore MISELADING. The more you push it towards eradicating as many words as possible, down to like "everything's God"... you have seriously censored significant major truths.

If for example I have a flower with 6 petals and I tell you that I have "a flower", but I don't tell you that it has 6 petals, in your mind you may envisage a flower with 8 petals. You are wrong. I did not give you enough information to represent the whole truth about what I have. There is information loss. I have been TOO VAGUE. I have reduced the accuracy of the representation of truth BEYOND the limit of information entropy, and have gone into the realm of a LACK OF TRUTH. A loss of precision.

It is funny then that when we talk about "its all one thing", we are actually LACKING truth, while pretending to talk about truth. We are not being accurate because we are not giving enough information. In fact we're trying to SPIRITUALIZE WORDS by having the fewest words possible. Less words is not more spiritual! In fact less words can be corrupting and destructive and a complete misrepresentation of the truth.

There are some people that go so far with their stripping away of any notion of anything informational - which usually means anything separate-sounding - any contrast or delineation or division or any notion of a "something" or two of anything.... that they enter a logical realm of total abstract bullshit. It devolves into meaningless drivel with specialness all over it. Ego loves to do this because it thinks a count of one is more spiritual than a count of two. It's concept of truth is flawed.

If for example it is true that God has at least one son. And if we say that this son IS God. And that is ALL that we tell you. If we tell you that is the WHOLE truth. Then someone is going to think ok.... the son IS God, so.... when the son fucks up and dreams of death and imagines murder, this must be God doing it right? Sure thing. God is now dreaming of death. We weren't specific enough or accurate enough.

It's a nice idea to imagine that God is this total 100% abstraction which is SO abstract that there is NO detail to it, no properties, no structure, no qualities, no characteristics, nothing. Just a nice blob of existence sitting there all by itself. That is NOT an accurate enough representation using words and symbols and language. It is a massive information loss. And God DOES in fact have properties, qualities, a "nature", a premise, law, mind, thought, causation, will, love, etc. The attempt to reduce truth to NOTHING, is an attempt by the ego to destroy the truth!

We HAVE to understand that God is for example infinite and absolute. We have to properly specify what God'e nature actually is before we can start basing conclusions on it. If you knew that God is causal and a creator, you would also know that God MUST have creations which MUST in turn have creations. The logic in this is utterly impeccable. But you can't see that or come to that conclusion is you DON'T specify that God is causal, or that his creations have to inherit through extension, or that he is a creator at all.

So when you become too vague, thinking it is spiritual, thinking you are representing truth more, thinking that "its oneness" is the most spiritual thing anyone has ever conceived of. ... it is not true. You CANNOT go that far into the loss of information and represent the whole truth using language and logic. But people are doing it all the time. "It's all God" ... well, sort of... but no. It's not. God has creations. "God is everything" .. well.. sort of, but no. God is not an illusion. Did you specify that? You need to.

So in terms of the editions of the course and the editing and the words in the book and the repetition of concepts and ideas and whether it contains ALL distinct information, fact, accuracy, precision and is "complete" informationally, you really need to think more in terms of ..... is there a full and accurate representation of the whole truth here. Is there ENOUGH words to represent the whole message. And that does NOT mean there should be too FEW words OR more than is needed. More words is not always an improvement either.

We might ask if something has been LOST, vital information, which is not repeated, which is missing, and that without it the picture is incomplete. It doesn't matter so much if the same ideas are presented many times, or if the concepts taught are built upon by others, etc. We need the whole accuracy and full scope of the truth, enough description to leave no loopholes, but we don't necessarily need 550,000 words to do that. But what matters is when you become SO reductionistic that you chop out VITAL information and disappear up your own arse.

So perhaps we can steer away from all these super-short ultra-vague trying-to-be-mystical statements of vagueness, and instead realize that you HAVE to use enough words in order to fully communicate an idea. You can't JUST say "God is" at this level and expect someone to understand that this DOESN'T imply that God is a piece of dog poop on the sidewalk. A more accurate, more detailed definition is needed, to close loopholes and stop logical errors from happening. This is why ACIM is presented as rather a lot of words, and not just one.

The course tries to represent a picture of the whole truth. It tries to talk about God and his nature. It doesn't do it in 2 words. It does it with a great many words because Jesus knows that you CANNOT represent the nuances of reality in such a small number of symbols. There is a certain level of entropy to this. You can't properly represent God, creation, kingdom, sonship, holy spirit, souls, your creations, eternal life, immortality, etc... in two words.

It has nothing to do with a person's inability to "grasp the truth of oneness" either. No one is grasping the truth of oneness by using the word oneness in a sentence. Oneness actually encapsulates rather a lot of details which you might not think are a part of it. Oneness doesn't forego God having a son. But it implies that there is no son at all. That is wrong. It is not an accurate representation and not enough information. The son is literally lost in that formulation.

Nor is someone being "all spiritual" just because they talk about God as if he's SO abstract that you can't say anything about him accurately at all. We might as well say that God is so beyond everything that you can't even say that God is beyond everything. What then? If you're GOING to use words, and language, and logical arguments, you CANNOT REDUCE IT beyond a certain point and expect to be accurately representing it.

God is ... much more than... just oneness.

When we try to make sense of things, we use logical reasoning. You do this all the time even if you don't realize it. You take what you "know is true" and build a conclusion from it.

Everyone tries to make sense of things. Whatever seems to make sense, you accept as true. When something doesn't make sense, you feel confused or regard it as false. This actually means you are HEAVILY dependent on whatever the logical process produces as a result, and usually don't question the process itself.

Everyone has a sense of what is true and what is false. What is true for you is the result of your reasoning. Your reasoning might be very accurate, or it could be very confused, but either way you end up with a conclusion.

The main way that people reason is based on a simple SEPARATION BASED method. It's based in separation because it defines whether or not something IS OR IS NOT something. A similar way we do this is trying to determine that something is EITHER THIS OR THAT. But with the clause that "it cannot be both". ie ... it's a model of NOT BOTH. SO it is "exclusive" and AGAINST equality.

Because the physical world itself, spacetime, is built from the separation idea, physical objects appear to be "separate" from each other. And being NOT equal, they are all DIFFERENT. This arrangement of "separate and different" objects lends itself very well to this kind of "either/or" reasoning.

So you can use this logic to say, my car is either in the garage or parked up front. Or, I will have the ham sandwich not the turkey sandwich. Or, my body is male not female. Or, this is my house not yours.

This kind of thinking maps exactly and very well to the arrangement of the physical world, because the physical world was MADE in an idea of separation. It has separation infused into it. And so Object A and Object B seem to be separate options. Either A, or B.

What this world, and this kind of reasoning, is EXTREMELY poor at, is dealing with matters of SHARING. It has no way to deal with the notion that something applies to BOTH, or to A AND B at the same time. It works very well when things are kept in separate boxes, sectioned off. But it has no way to deal with the idea that something is in two places at once, or that the truth applies equally to two things, or that two things are also one thing.

So in this world we can't usually say, I am sitting in my car AND I'm sitting in my house. Or that I am a human and a fish. Or that both me and my wife each get 100% of the pizza. These kind of ideas seem like nonsense or "not possible". We'd say, they are false.

The thing is, while THIS world is based on separation logic, as a THOUGHT SYSTEM founded on the idea of things being completely separate, God's reality is TOTALLY UNLIKE this.

God doesn't think in terms of separation. He doesn't think in terms of separate boxes. He also doesn't think in terms of EITHER THIS OR THAT. He doesn't draw contrasts between things in this way. He isn't exclusive or special or isolated or one-sided or treating one thing differently than another.

Also, given that God is whole and perfect, when God creates, God creates wholly and perfectly. This means that whatever God creates, has properties which are fully inherited from Himself and his nature. Like father like Son. But this means that, what is true of the father is true of the son. It means they are BOTH something. e.g. they are both holy, both innocent, both have everything, both are creators, etc. In fact this goes to such as an extent as to say they are ONE, and yet they are two, because they BOTH exist even though they share everything.

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

Similarly the Golden Rule, which is God's law, which is based on the idea that what is true of one thing is true of another and all things are treated equally, DEPENDS ON the idea that what is true of me is true of me AND YOU. That BOTH of us get to have everything.

That ME AND YOU are exactly alike. That what is true of me, is true of you, and vice versa. This is perfect equality. And it even goes so far as to mean that there is no compromise, lack, scarcity, or competition, because everyone has FULL access to everything simultaneously. This is true sharing.

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

However, this kind of equality, with a single truth applying to all things, where the truth is SHARED, and where BOTH elements are "as one", cannot be handled by the either/or logical process. In truth, for example, any thought of God contains all the thoughts of God. Any son of God is all the sons of God. This DOES NOT COMPUTE to the separation-based reasoning.

The ego, using separation thinking, would say, a son of God HAS TO BE EITHER, here, or there. He has to be in this box, or that box. He cannot be in both. God would say, that is totally untrue, that one son of God shares all of himself with another son of God, and BOTH of them are in BOTH boxes at the same time. That you are LITERALLY IN your brother, one with Him, as though he is part of you. This is absolutely sensible, rational, logical, and perfectly impeccable based on HOW GOD THINKS.

What you'll find is that, anything to do with God, his creation, his mind, heaven, reality, the sonship, sons/souls, holy spirit etc, absolutely anything that existed before the separation and without ego. .. is governed NOT by laws of "either this or that", but by laws of "both and". Laws of equality. Laws of identicality. Laws of oneness, which TRANSCEND BOUDARIES.

Therefore, whenever you think of any of these TOPICS, and you start trying to draw conclusions about these topics, IF you use either/or separation based logic to do so, you WILL come to COMPLETELY FALSE conclusions, but these conclusions will seem to make sense. They seem to have consistency, but they are based on a false premise (separation), and so are not sound or valid.

For example, God has created a sonship which comprises many sons. But it is also true that each of these sons IS the other sons. For example "one brother is all brothers. one mind is all minds". A son isn't just a "separate son", it's a son who IS ALSO the other sons. And there are many sons who are each other as well. And this is not in any way a contradiction nor is it anything to do with separation in the ego sense.

But if you use EITHER/OR based reasoning, and you look at heaven, you'll tell yourself, EITHER .... a) God has one son or b) God has many sons. And you'll tell yourself that it would not MAKE SENSE unless it were ONE OR THE OTHER. That the answer must be "not both". But "not both" is a TOTAL DENIAL of the fact that everything in heaven IS BOTH. It's a system founded on "both", on "and", on "sharing and inclusion."

The ego's way of thinking is EXCLUSION BASED. One object is excluded from another object. One boxes content is exclusive to that box and not the other box. This is how 99% of the world population thinks about EVERYTHING.

God's way of thinking is INCLUSION BASED. One object is also in another object. One object is in multiple locations. One object IS the other object. Two boxes contain one object. This is INCLUSIVE reasoning. This is how God thinks, and how his entire thought system functions. Because God is not BOUND by the LIMITATIONS of separation or a separation based system. God DEFIES separation.

So when you think "exclusively" about God's reality and creation, you are MAKING AN ERROR. Because you are using a logic system NOT designed to accommodate a system that overflows boundaries. So you are trying to FORCE boundaries onto that system, are trying to FORCE things into separate boxes that they are not restricted to, and are attempting to PROJECT SEPARATION onto heaven.

It is quite funny but almost everyone does this with regards to course topics. In other words, using an ego-based logic process to think about NON-ego topics, IN an ego way. The result is FALSE conclusions, which masquerade as "making total sense." But in truth, what makes sense to the ego, is totally nonsense, and what makes sense to God, is totally nonsense to the ego. Because the ego is insane.

That means that separation-based reasoning IS INSANITY. And trying to shove God's creations into finite boxes IS ISANITY. And trying to claim that God HAS to have only one son in one box IS INSANITY. And claiming that God can't have ONE son AND many sons AT THE SAME TIME, which is "perfectly legal" in God's system, is INSANITY.

The problem isn't so much that people are drawing false conclusions, it's more that people DO NOT realize that they are USING an ego-affirming thought process to FILTER and JUDGE a NON-egoic system. And so they SEE separations where they don't exist, AND they OVERLOOK separations where they DO exist as well. Such as here:

"God, who encompasses ALL Being, nevertheless ***created separate beings who have everything individually***, but who want to share it to increase their joy."

It would seem "logical" to most to say God EITHER has to have one son OR many sons, and it can't be both. And it seems logical to say that IF God only has one son HE CANNOT have many sons. And it seems logical to say that therefore those sons must be part of "separation" because "the absence of separations" is more spiritual. BUT ALL OF THIS IS A FALSE CONCLUSION, projected onto a divine system of logic, BY a BACKWARDS system of logic based on separation and exclusion.

We just don't realize that we do this. We do this all the time. Like literally EVERY conversation in this forum about the course uses separation-based reasoning. We think that reasoning in terms of either/or is totally normal, natural, and the ONLY way to think. It is TOTALLY not how God thinks and it is actually extremely unnatural. It is what leads to false perception in fact.

If your whole mindset and thought process is always proceeding along the lines of "this or that" "either or" ..... you are literally enforcing separation. You are being EXCLUSIVE, which means you are EXCLUDING others. And this is precisely what separation means - exclusion from the whole, exclusion from relationship, exclusion from communication and sharing.

If you THINK this way, about everything, all the time, you are thinking WITH the ego, even if you think you are being spiritual or thinking about spirit. This forces you into BODY identification because the body symbolizes a SEPARATE BOX, kept apart and exclusive from the other boxes. Exclusive reasoning anchors you into space and time and bodies. It is a thought system of death and isolation. This is NOT how God thinks and it is NOT how his thought system operates.

And anyone wanting to do the course will need to learn to grasp paralogical reasoning. Otherwise you can't possibly comprehend how your brother is yourself, or how you can have a holy relationship, or how you can be one with something without losing your identity.

Oneness with others is an INCLUSIVE idea, not an idea of exclusion, and you can't USE exclusive thinking to understand it. But you CAN use inclusive logic, which is holographic as well. Because God thinks holographically not linearly. We have to INCLUDE if we want to awaken, not shove God's creation into prison cells with only room for "one".

"The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is perfectly natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you. "

It is not JUST true that God has one Son. It IS true that God has one son. AND it is true that he has many sons. And his many sons are direct creations of his, while also the one son encapsulates them all, without removing them from him even slightly as a direct parent. To suggest God's SONSHIP - which is a collection of sons - is "an ego thing", is a COMPLETE LOGICAL FAILURE. To suggest that the presence of many sons is "separation", is a complete logical failure as well.

When there is BOTH AND ..... me AND you .... US as one ..... united and together as brothers forever..... THAT is reality. A system of total equality, sharing and simultaneous union. You exist, AND I exist. WE are one and many.

"We are the Kingdom, WE, the Sons of God."

A Course in Miracles itself is over 550,000 words of deep and dense material. It appears filled with meaning dripping from every word, and seems to talk on many topics. But really the entire thing has very simple origins and a very simple goal.

You simply started off in heaven's reality with God, and then you tried to rebel against his will and put yourself to sleep. You had a strange dream of mortality, and now you're trying to remember what your immortal reality is like again, so that you can wake up. It's no more complex than that.

Jesus even summarizes what the course/atonement is encouraging you to accept, in just 4 words, as "only reality is true." Or similarly "only the truth is true and nothing else is true." Or "I am under no laws but God's."The "truth" is what is "real", what is actual, is the most encompassing and the least interpreted. Just simply, what really exists as given by God. That which is actually happening and its truest actual meaning without distortion or denial.

The whole course is simply saying that you fell into a strange sleep where you appear to be insane and have lost touch with reality. And now he is trying to help you to become sane again. It's funny when after a while he says: "you are no longer WHOLLY insane."

"Not wholly mad, you have been willing to look on much of your insanity, and recognize its madness. Your faith is moving inward, past insanity and on to reason."

"For you are no longer WHOLLY insane, and you WOULD recognize the guilt of SELF-betrayal FOR WHAT IT IS."

But it's worth realizing that words are symbols of symbolic things - dream things. Just as the body is a dream, it symbolizes separation and ego. And the word "body" symbolizes that symbol. And A Course in Miracle as a book of 550,000+ words is filled with symbols.

Symbols always point beyond themselves to something else that they represent. They are not ends in themselves and don't really have their own meaning. They are representatives of a state prior to themselves, from which they express. Just as the body is a symbol and an expression which represents the mind from which it comes.

Jesus teaches that "nothing so blinding as perception of form". And that believing form is real or true is false perception. So when you look at the forms of the words in the course and you take them to be the truth, in and of themselves, based on the form they take, you are in fact blinded by perception of form.

Some people become very enamored with the choice of symbols in the course, the beauty of its seeming artistic poetry, and its mastery of language. But it only appears this way because it came from an origin higher and beyond and prior to itself, who articulated otherwise random symbols into seemingly symbolic arrangements to convey a message.

It's possible to mistake the words in the book for the truth itself, to idolize those words, to put them on a pedestal and think of them as the word of God. It's also possible to then become blinded by them, unable to look deeper or see the meaning on which they are based. Ultimately the purpose of the course is to make itself unnecessary, all of it has to eventually be let go and all of its words overlooked through forgiveness.

There becomes fanatical defense against the words being changed, the preservation of the words, and the attempt to prove logical arguments based on whether or not the words show up in the book. But this is all a false perception of the course, taking an illusion to be reality.

What is really needed, to go deeper, is a forgiveness even of the course itself. What begins as false perceptions of very sophisticated wordings must at some point move past the appearance of its symbols. To mistake a symbol for the thing it symbolizes is a mistake.

If you want to really find out what things mean, where they came from, why those symbols were chosen, or what they are expressions of, then you have to move beyond the words. You have to overlook their form and not get hung up on whether or not something is explicitly written, or whether it's in its original form, or whether it's been edited all to hell.

Jesus expressed A Course in Miracles from a very lofty vantage point, a point in which words mean nothing. He translated his awareness and experience into symbols upon symbols and into sequences of symbols, to try to speak a language that you might understand, or which might at least serve as an in-road towards their origin.

The words in the book are signposts and pointers, aiming in the direction of the truth. But they are not the truth itself. Nor are they even capable of accurately representing that truth, although Jesus has done an exceptional job of being very careful to convey meaning as accurately as possible. But you still have to learn to look past the words if you want to find out what they really mean, otherwise the course is just another idol.

What I personally found is that behind all of the words in the book, there is a deeper metaphysics. There is a logic which is amazingly impeccable and self evident, a living logic. There are natural structures and perfect extensions of truth. That even God is a logical premise with a logical conclusion.

There are reasons for everything being the way it is in reality, and in the ego's realm. Even the separation and the nature of this world are a progression of logical reasoning. The descent into hell was a procession of logical steps leading away from the truth, and all of this can be carefully detailed.

"From the belief in sin, the faith in chaos must follow. It is because it follows that it seems to be a logical conclusion; a valid step in ordered thought. The steps to chaos do follow neatly from their starting point. Each is a different form in the progression of truth's reversal, leading still deeper into terror and away from truth."

What you eventually have to do is a total rewind of all learning back to the origin, back to the nature of God and his reality. You have to then look logically and with reason, and very carefully, at how and why God is the way he is. To look at what it means to be absolute, infinite, unlimited, immortal, eternal and so on. There are laws behind all of this.

This is because God is actually the logical premise of all reality. It is his nature which dictates the entire laws that heaven is based upon. He is the truth and the source of all reality. If you understand why he is the way he is, then you can begin to logically reason why everything else must be the way it is. Because everything began with God and everything else followed very precicely.

Even if you completely forget everything you ever learned in ACIM and just start over from the very beginning, with the nature of God's reality, and reason out from there, you will surprisingly find that you'll come to the exact same conclusions that are written in ACIM.

Thats's because everything ACIM is saying is logically perfect. It is completely true. And if it weren't, the logic would be out of alignment with it and show why it is flawed. But it's not flawed, because Jesus is not flawed, and he knew exactly what he was talking about, as he still does.

In fact the entire nature and structure of creation, of all real relationship, including the shared sonship and the laws of heaven, all derive according to very simple and clear logical rules. These rules and their extension can be followed perfectly and make absolutely perfect logical sense. They are completely impeccable and flawless in their clarity that only a fool would argue against them once explained.

When you take these very simple logical foundations and you look at what they mean and imply, and then you take A Course in Miracles and you look at what it says about God's reality and nature, you find that they EXACTLY match in every case. They validate each other. Which means that everything in reality is perfectly logical, is exactly is the way it is, and can only be that way, and cannot be any other way. And that therefore ACIM is in fact based on the real truth.

Looking to these logical foundations, the logic can be expressed in simple words or diagrams, and it can be shown step by step, exactly why God is the way God is, exactly why and how he creates, exactly what must be created and its nature, and why the Kingdom of God operates the way it does. It can all be accurately described, and in far less words than are in ACIM. The basics are quite simple.

When you get all the words out of the way, so to speak, and see the deeper connection or basis for all of it, then you realize that Jesus really is just basing all his expressions on very simple concepts. Seeing past the complexity of the many ways it has been expresed, and not being blinded by its forms is the hard part. And it can take many years to try to find the needles in the haystack.

See, Jesus doesn't really write at the level of the words. It's not like some regular human who is sitting in this world at a typewriter pounding the keys and coming up with an egoic novel about ego stuff. He has written the course from a maximally high level, translating truths into an elegant breakdown of its aspects. How it applies to the world, how it applies to the body, how it applies to relationship etc.

He's done this so that you can be reached wherever your starting point is, and in terms you are familiar with, and using language and references you can understand. But the purpose isn't to leave you there poking around in the dirt and arguing over words, but to raise you up and bring you closer to the origins of the course. To the state of reality Jesus shares, and to its divine truth.

The metaphysics that the course is based on, shows that the course itself is an expression of something higher and deeper. It comes from a source that is very simple and is in touch with reality. Just because a person is putting the same teaching into over half a million words, or even a trillion words, doesn't mean that even more than a few words are needed to convey the whole truth, such as that "God is".

You don't necessarily need all those words. You don't really need to learn every single word form or memorize every quote or only quote from a specific version. In fact if you cannot use reason to determine WHETHER or not something is true and accurate, you are already in a state of not only depending entirely on but being blinded by the words themselves. You're supposed to see the logic behind them.

You don't really have to even read the whole book. It has a holographic nature reflecting the holographic nature of reality, such that the whole truth is in every part, because every part is an expression from the whole truth, given wholly and truthfully. Jesus wrote it all from a single whole truth and all of it expresses a cohesive single message, which you can find on every page.

You do need to fully apply it yes. You need to fully learn the simple truth, the basic nature of your self. You do need to shift allegiance from the forms of error to the unified reality. And you do need to develop trust and learn to relate with actual love and so on. But you don't need hundreds of thousands of words to do that. Maybe at first it seems you do, then later you realize you don't.

What I'm doing in the book I'm working om right now, is stripping away all the words entirely and "starting over" with pure logic. I'm examining what is deeper than all these words. I'm going to present extremely clearly what the real logic of God is and what reality's nature is.

I'll be explaining in simple clear steps exactly how heaven came to be and why it is run by the laws that it is. How creation comes of it and what must be true of you. This can all be arrived at through simple logical steps. Even God's nature can be logically and accurately described, because what you find out is that reality is in fact a living logic system of divine states, with very specific rules.

The aim is to come up with a "reformulation" of the form of the course's teachings, in far fewer words and in much simpler terms. A deep look at the ideas behind its many words. A formulation which still represents the truth with perfect accuracy, but which can be learned very quickly and easily in its more purified form.

Really the metaphysics behind the course is very simple and clear-cut, its not all that complicated once you can see it. But for many people, seeing through the fog of the course's words can be a hurdle in itself. It needs to be laid out in the simplest and clearest way possible, to save time and effort and to provide accuracy and clarity. And it has to bypass the entire realm of "opinion" - the logic has to stand on its own two feet and speak for itself.

That's why I'm making the book that I'm making right now. It will cut through all the noise and all the opinions and all the ego arguments and all the confusion. It goes deeper than debate and countless theories and interpretations that are hung up on word choices.

It's kind of like brushing away all the many forms that have covered over the course's true origins, to reveal what's behind it at all. I hope it will act as a "primer" and easier introduction, especially for those who are newer to the course.

You'll see, once you read it, and as you follow its reasoning, that it is extremely hard to deny what it says, and it is ultra clear in making total sense. I'm deliberately making it so that it is practically impossible to find fault in it. The logical is very flawless, not because I'm "expert" at it but just because reality's laws are themselves flaweless. Such that the true metaphysics of the course will be revealed in the light and seen for what it must be, completely accurately and consistently.

Then the really interesting thing is that, once armed with this tool, a kind of magnifying glass for the course bringing its depths totally into the light, it actually shines a light of clarity onto all that the course says. It helps to frame its meaning, to clarify intentions, to properly identify what Jesus meant in his wordings, and to steer away from common misinterpretations. The logic even helps you to realize things which must be true, which may not even be written in ACIM itself, yet are completely consistent with it.

The book itself actually stands alone in that it comes to the same conclusions as the course through its own process. It doesn't even rely on the course or anything the course says, to make its points. It doesn't need any quotes from the book either. It simply uses clear reasoning to come up with a clear metaphysical foundation.

Then it looks to what the course says to find out IF it agrees. And it happens to validate and agree with everything it says. And both of them reflect each other perfectly because they're based on the same exact truth.

Cause produces effects. This is God's permanent law, without exception. It applies everywhere always. There is a secret to performing miracles based on this, resulting in the undoing of effects. This is directly tied into the Atonement and The Miracle.

"the word "atone" really means "undo." (remove illusory effects)

"The miracle does nothing. All it does is to undo (removes effects). And thus it cancels out (by not causing) the interference (effects) to what has been done (caused in reality). It does not add, but merely takes away (removes effects)."

I have experienced several times the instant vanishing of symptoms when causation was removed. This takes place at the level of the mind and the mind's belief in causes. As I stripped away belief in who or what caused this, the entire symptom literally disappeared in a split second.

Nothing happens without causation. Effects can only appear when there is a cause. This includes the **belief** in there being a cause, even if the cause is made up in dreaming. When the cause stops causing, or is undone, the effects immediately disappear. Causation is like a broadcast, emitting consequences, effects, symptoms and results. Effects come from it.

Just as God is first cause, He MUST create effects. His effects are His Kingdom of Creation, including the Sonship. Because God is permanently causal, and true cause means creation, His creations have eternal life and always exist. True causality creates permanent, living beings. You did not cause God (which would be sin, authority problem, level confusion), God caused you.

"I am forever an effect of God."

There is also what we call "making", which is also a form of causality. It causes destructive illusions instead of creative reality. It is a made-up BELIEF in a cause, as an attempted cause, in the mind. It's a made-up cause that we believe is real, and which in turn produces made-up effects which we believe are real. Just because it is made-up doesn't mean it does not DO something.

A **belief** in a cause isn't a real cause, or of God. So what it produces is not a real effect, but is an effect nonetheless. Artificial causes produce artificial effects. But they DO produce these effects, which includes symptoms of sickness in the body, and ultimately the body itself.

"The body cannot remain without illusions (illusory causes)."

When the mind believes there is a cause, it MUST include the belief that there are effects. The mind thus believes in BOTH. They are made together, and are undone together. Effects cannot remain without a cause of some kind. When you switch off the broadcast projector, there is no more making of images. Both the broadcaster and the broadcast disappear.

It would be easy for us to switch on and off causes and effects at will. This always takes place in our minds. The problem is that we keep disassociating from the part of our mind that is causing or believing in causes, and project the ownership of the causation onto external things - anything other than our own mind.

So if we think a person is causing us to be upset, we're in false perception. We see cause as separate from and outside of our own mind. Yet this BELIEF in cause, is INSIDE our mind because "ideas leave not their source."

We are confused in thinking that someone else is causing our upset. But the IDEA of "someone is causing me to be upset" is our own mind's idea, which projects, resulting in a false perception. And this idea IS STILL CAUSAL. By believing, "I am being caused", we literally are CAUSING ourselves, and our mind DOES produce effects within us, from it. And this is actually part of the belief that we are creating ourselves, the result of a split mind.

It is not possible to believe in a cause, WITHOUT the belief itself having an effect. Even if the visualized cause seems to be mapped onto some other person, it is STILL a "belief in cause" in our mind, and this gives it power. If our mind is generating, picturing, imagining, "there is a cause", it WILL and MUST also picture, generate and imagine an effect to correspond to it. And usually the severity of the effect lines up with where the cause falls in the hierarchy of illusions.

This now means that as we picture ourselves as being caused, we WILL also picture ourselves as being affected. This believing in and use of causality, no matter how it is dressed up in appearances about others, will result in OUR MIND producing EFFECTS in ourselves. These will show up as symptoms in mind and body, as emotional reactions, fearful thought responses, justified anger, and other effects.

As the secret of salvation tells us, it does not matter how it appears that someone is a victimizer, or who is doing what. When your mind "sees itself" as being victimized, that way of seeing itself ALONE victimizes you. And you cannot see yourself as being victimized WITHOUT seeing yourself ALSO as a victim.

Funny that - as you believe in victimization it sets up a causal belief in your mind which causes you to MAKE YOURSELF a victim. Your mind then generates the effects and symptoms of having been affected. It pictures itself in the roles of victim AND victimizer.

Now, here's the key. Based on this law, that even your BELIEF in a cause IS CAUSAL, and has illusory believed-in effects, removing this belief in a cause MUST remove the effects. This even includes the physical symptoms of sickness which YOUR MIND put into your body, as a result of YOUR MIND visualizing itself as at the effect of its own causal beliefs.

If my belief is that a person is upsetting me, three things are happening. 1) I am "projecting" causality onto the person falsely, resulting in a false perception that "they" are causing me. 2) MY belief in being caused is causing me, 3) I am inventing the upsetting effects because of this belief, BY this belief. If I clear up the confusion about WHO is causing who, and then STOP causing through this belief, the effects MUST go.

If my mind is thinking, "I am upset because of them", and I"m feeling the upset, my mind MUST be seeing a line of causality starting with "them" and coming into me and impacting upon me, producing upset. This is what my mind is picturing. This is HOW I am making the effects. If I tell myself, "they are not causing me to be upset", I am taking a step towards undoing the cause.

I'm almost saying, "since they are not causing this upset, I am not upset." or "everything that came from them, has not come". They then become your savior because now you are using them to explain why you are NOT affected negatively, or as a way to say "I am healed because of you". Or as the course puts it, "Brother, at your hand I live." This requires the removal of all symptoms of attack in the body and mind, accomplished by removing fake causality or accusing your brother of causing (sinning against) you.

Sometimes, if the causing seems fairly clear-cut and well defined as to who I think did what, and I remind myself I am NOT caused by the person, it can be enough to undo my mind's belief in the cause, and thus stop causing my own upset. Symptoms of upset vanish instantly. Even physical symptoms, because *I* was producing them.

Other times, I've found I've built up a collection of beliefs in causes, which have to be dismantled more methodically, piece by piece. I have to remove all belief that anyone or anything else is causing my issue. I must not believe that I am at the effect of anyone else's mind or any "causes" that I THINK are in the world. My BELIEF in them being causes does not make them causes. This is confusion/projection/disassociation.

MY BELIEF in being caused is what causes me to suffer. When something is seen as having NO causes left, and being the cause of nothing, it disappears.

I have to also remove all belief that I am causing any issue in others, because this too ties me to guilt. For example if I have an argument, it is not enough to undo the belief that I am being upset by them. I will likely believe I upset them also, and this too is fake causality. Anything THEY are experiencing, THEIR mind has chosen to cause. I must be accepting of this by dismantling my belief that I caused them, which in turn will heal them and set them free from imprisonment.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself."

Once this is clarified, that no-one caused my effects but myself, and that cause is in my mind because I believed I was caused, I must now recognize that my own choice to believe I am being negatively caused DID produce my own symptoms. I am responsible for it. This is the secret of salvation. But we can't stop there. WE must STOP causing our own suffering.

This requires us to stop believing that even WE have caused our suffering. Seeing that we did it to ourselves, and recognizing our own mind is causing itself, may be enough to collapse it. Recognizing the futility of hurting ourselves, we will drop the desire to continue. Seeing that we are causing our own suffering, we cannot escape the causation or blame it on anyone, have to admit the truth, and admitting the truth presents us with a fact - we did this, and we no longer choose to.

We might have to work on undoing the belief that we are caused, as well as being willing to no longer suffer the role of victim. Without a cause that we believe in, we cannot believe in being affected. In recognizing we were the victimizer of ourselves, we can stop being the victim. No-one has ever been victimized by another person.

Remember that you have no neutral thoughts. All thought creates form on some level. All thought is causal. You cannot neutrally casually think about stuff without producing effects. Imagining fearful things happening to you, IS actually you DOING them to yourself. Dreaming about scenarios isn't a freebie thought. We deliberately DO, or DO NOT. We cause, or do not cause. And only what we cause happens.

""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 (effects) is what I desire (cause). What does not occur (effects) is what I do not want (cause) to happen. This must I accept."

"I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

Stripping away all sense of "the cause of this", MUST undo the effects. When you cease attacking yourself with thoughts of being attacked, you will not be attacked or attackable.

Without a cause, there can be no effects. Without belief in separation, there can be no sickness. Without seeing yourself as a victim you cannot be victimized. Without victimizing yourself you cannot be hurt. Without belief you are sinful (caused bad stuff) you cannot be guilty, and without guilt you cannot frighten or threaten yourself. Without a cause, your sickness must vanish. And without a cause, the dead must rise.

All illusions have no REAL cause. The causes are made up beliefs, which DO cause illusory effects, and without maintaining these beliefs the effects cannot stay. Anything not of God or made without love has no real cause. We MADE sickness and death by believing they have been caused and are the cause of us (the God of sickness and death), and can abolish it by believing they have NOT been caused.

To recognize something has NOT been caused, is to recognize it CANNOT have happened. Without a cause, the effects must go. What has not been caused cannot exist. And since illusory effects and symptoms DEPEND on the mind believing in them, without believing in them they MUST vanish. Which undoes physical suffering, sickness and death

This is forgiveness and atonement. The recognition that separation has not been caused and sin has not caused effects because there is no sin. The lack of belief in sin as "causing evil" erases death. The knowing that there is no death. Withdrawing causes of illusions will undo them all.

"Illusions recognized (I caused this myself, it did not cause me) must disappear."

This literally is tied into the atonement. If to atone is to undo, then by cancelling the fake causes that we were using to make things "be done", and if miracles undo and take away the effects by recognizing they have not been caused, then to accept the atonement is to accept that there are NO CAUSES other than God. We HAVE NOT CAUSED separation, there is no cause of death (sin), illusions DO NOT exist, and we are no longer manufacturing fake effects.

This will ultimately UNDO the world because the world is nothing but an EFFECT of a belief - the spacetime belief.

Shifting away from made-up causes, and aligning ourselves with God's Will, which is truly causal and creative, we become miracle workers. Operating from vertical causation, not mis-creation. Our causing now becomes love-based, constructive, creative, healing and miraculous. No longer against ourselves, no longer affected by the world, we regain invulnerability and power. We can now give life and cause resurrection.

We become a cause that does not cause itself. We become free from effects of our own making, or the illusion of effects made by others. Our will is now undivided and single-minded. Nothing can oppose us as ruler of the universe. We are free to carry out the will of God. To cause with IMMEDIATE effects. And to be truly helpful to others through causal miracles.

"This is a course in cause and not effect."

"miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Without a cause there can be no effects, and yet, without effects, there is no CAUSE."

"Who can predict effects without a cause? And who could fear effects UNLESS he thought they had BEEN caused, and judged disastrous NOW?"

"Who can perceive effect WITHOUT a cause? What can the causeless BE but nothingness."

"And this DENIES the fact that ALL are senseless; EQUALLY without a cause or consequence, and CANNOT have effects of ANY kind."

"In its passing went its consequences, left without a cause."

"And to realize that pain is purposeless, without a cause, and with no power to accomplish anything."

"Nothing can have effects without a cause, and to confuse the two is merely to fail to understand them both."

"Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness."

"It denies the ability of anything which is not of God to effect you in any way."

"Fear cannot be real without a cause, and GOD is the only Cause."

"The healing of effect WITHOUT the cause can merely shift effects to other forms."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect. What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief."

"And therefore all your sins have been forgiven because they carried no effects at all."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression."

"And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect it cannot make effects."

"What is projected OUT, and seems to be EXTERNAL to the mind, is NOT outside at all, but an effect of what is in, and has NOT left its source."

"Here is the proof that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do was ever done, or ever had effects of any kind."

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move (cause) 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 (cause) real control (effects) because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"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."

"And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place?"

"The body can become a sign of life, a promise of redemption, and a breath of immortality to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death. Let it have healing as its PURPOSE. Then will it send forth the message it received, and by its health and loveliness proclaim the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent an endless life, forever unattacked. And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt? Sins are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail effects which CANNOT be undone and overlooked entirely. In their UNDOING lies the proof that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

When you are whole, you have only one identity. You are identified with Spirit. You are one with Holy Spirit. You are at peace.

When you begin to believe that illusions are actually reality, entering into the separation state, you put denial in place to shut out awareness of God, and therefore awareness of your "whole self" (Holy Self, True Self etc) seems blocked.

Once this denial is in place, which is an act of believing in real sin, you have tried to attack your wholeness and God’s wholeness with an idea of separateness. You therefore put illusions of separateness into your own mind. These show up inside your own mind, or to put it another way, inside your own self.

So you "split yourself", in the same way that two people seem separate. The split seems like a wall coming inbetween two identities. At the same time, both of these identities are separated from the whole self and God.

Neither "part" of the split mind has awareness of the whole, because these parts, which have come about because you believed in separation, are both cut off from being aware of the whole mind. Neither of them "identify with" the whole self.

So now you have this whole mind which remains whole, in truth. Then you have this fictional scenario playing out INSIDE your mind, where there is this strange dream of separateness and division.

What keeps the parts of the split mind separate are simply illusions - appearances - that there is something about each part which is different to the other, causing them to seem to be "not each other". This cannot be true in reality, but within the split mind (consciousness), you develop a multiple personality disorder.

This split plays out as dreams of various dramas of conflict. Other terms for this conflict are war, self-attack, condemnation, judgement, the whole drama of victims and victimizers, some things being good and others bad etc.

The funny thing is then, within your whole mind, there is sort of a "stage" with a "play" being performed, with characters, and there are at least two main characters. And each character is seemingly "opposite" to the other in as many ways as possible. They want nothing to do with each other, they want to emphasize the ways in which they are separate and unlike, so that the illusion of "why" they are not ONE is reinforced and maintained.

One of these major parts of the split mind is the persona, and the other part is the shadow. I don’t think the course explicitly uses those terms/words, but it definitely does speak about this in many places and ways.

In order for there to be multiple selves in the mind, ie identities, false identities, there has to be denial and the purpose of that denial is to "shut out" one of the selves from the awareness of the other one. There are whole sections about this in the course.

The "persona" part of the split mind as we’ll call it, is really a part of the ego which attempts to create an illusion of innocence. Really the purpose you had in creating the split to begin with was an attempted solution to your belief in sin.

You figured that "all of you" was sinful, and you could not tolerate this idea. There was no way to KEEP it and also escape it. You wanted to keep "real sin" because that was your tiny mad idea/wish. So you made up a solution which is totally insane, but which creates an illusion of it working.

The solution is to section off one part of your mind where you’ll house all the "bad" or "rejected" or "condemned and sinful" parts of yourself, and then you’ll keep another part of the mind where you’ll create an illusion of a completely "innocent seeming" self.

By keeeping the two parts away from each other, ie keeping the fake-innocent self (persona) "in the dark" about the sinful self (shadow), the persona is able to maintain an ILLUSION that "you" did not sin! It shoves all of the evidence of sinfulness into the unconscious shadow part of the mind, attacks it, disassociates from it, and projects it "away" from the persona as much as possible.

One thing to note here is that you did not really want to get rid of your belief in sin. You wanted to believe it as real and irreversible. So you devised a way to KEEP it but To PRETEND you did not want it, so that no one (including you) would suspect or question that you might’ve been the one who did it, so that nobody ever will LOOK AT the fact that it was you, and therefore the idea of real sin goes unchallenged. You make yourself out to seem "innocenct" or even remorseful, with FAKE GUILT, in order to pretend you did not want to sin and weren’t the one to do it, but it’s not true.

This is all taking place still within your mind, entirely. It has nothing to do with what is "outside" of you, or anything to do with anyone else. But because the persona part of the ego disassociates from the shadow, it makes it SEEM "to the persona self" that the shadow-self is NOT ITSELF. Ie it is "other than me".

What happens is you, as the whole mind, who has temporarily lost track of who you are, and who thinks you are a split mind, with multiple personalities, now "sides with" the persona self. It is fictional and totally fake, but it seems to make "you" look like you did not sin. So you allow this persona self to be IN your "conscious awareness", and you make sure to keep the shadow self OUT of awareness in unconsciousness.

The primary function of the persona therefore is to attack your whole self, to identify that some major portion of your self is a sinner and guilty and deserving to die, ie not good enough and can’t be loved because it’s supposedly "evil", it confines all *illusory apperances* of the "bad stuff" and shoves it into unconsciousness, by using denial.

The act of putting "distance" between the persona and the shadow therefore implements *disassociation*, which basically means you do not want to be "associated with" the sin that you believe you committed against God (so no-one would suspect you). So you distance yourself from it using this denial mechanism. This MAKES the shadow ie basically creates an enemy for the persona, who it hates and despises and wants nothing to do with, ON PURPOSE, so that it can KEEP the bad shit away from itself, making an illusion of innocence.

Since this is happening all entirely within the whole of your mind, BUT since you have identified your "self" only with the persona self and not the repressed sinner/shadow, you then "perceive" that you are NOT the shadow self. That it is some "identity" separate from what you are. You disassociate from it so heavily that you literally believe it is NOT YOU. ie, this other part of your own mind is NOT part of your own mind.

What then will happen, however, is the mind cannot get rid of this dark sin, because ideas do not leave their source (!), so it can’t actually get it OUT of the mind, it can only *disguise* it. The persona will then seem to experience that it is now this little helpless innocent-seeming perfect good likeable harmless little self, and that the shadow unconscious self is this big ugly monsterous enemy that it wants to keep hating in order to keep it OUT of AWARENESS. To maintain denial.

Now. What this has actually resulted in in terms of the Son of God, is that within His mind, he has invented these fictional characters, the conscious self who is fake, and the unconscious self which is denied. The conscious self, the persona, SHOWS UP as a BODY! It acts as a visible representation of "who I am", a fake identity, appearing innocent, born seemingly innocent, and no one would suspect that it had tried to murder God.

And then, everything OUTSIDE of the body, the entire "world" and "environment" and all "people who are not me", are actually projections of YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS MIND. So your unconscious mind (shadow) is actually outside of your body, and your conscious persona self is inside your body. You can see just how much disassociation there is for an average person, by looking at how much they believe that they are ONLY the self that is "in the body", little and helpless, and everyone else is "not me".

Since the person’s mind is split and the person has identified only with their fake persona self, thinking that everything outside of them is "not my persona self", this happens to map exactly to how we experience the world in terms of bodies and relationships. When another "body" shows up "out there", we regard it as "not myself".

This simultaneously "maps" our unconscious, repressed, disassociated belief that WE SINNED, onto that other person, because just as we believe that our own sinful shit is "not myself", we also believe that that person is "not myself". Therefore it is EASY to "associate" your own disassociated unconscious sin WITH that "not me" other person! This allows you to perceive, and believe, that the sin is IN THEM, it is THEIRS, NOT YOURS, and THEY are the one who was the sinner against God!

Truth is, your experience of what you see "in the not-me selves" - other people out there, is YOUR belief in sin, actually WITHIN your mind still, and you are now interacting with YOUR SHADOW, inside your mind, hallucinating that it is a separate person or content within someone else, and you actually come to believe that this other innocent person is the "one" who is sinning against you.

Any attack you seem to experience, will SEEM like it is being caused by other people. IT IS NOT! It is YOUR other split off part of your own mind - your shadow, attacking the REST of your split off mind - your persona - which you think is "all of myself", but which is only PART of yourself. The persona - your conscious self, who denies that it has an unconscious mind, is "attacked by" this other part of the mind that it believes is not even part of itself.

If you think about it, the only way that it is possible for the persona part of the mind to "be attacked" is if the attacker is INSIDE the realm of where the persona lives. It can only get "access" to the persona because it actually SHARES the same "host mind", and therefore the persona can be attacked by the shadow.

We often, as personas, not our real selves, will believe that the identity who is doing the attacking is "not me", and therefore someone else is attacking "you" (your persona) and it is nothing to do with "you". You will therefore identify with being the VICTIM, who has been unfairly treated and abused against its will, by this "other". This ego persona will see itself as JUSTIFIED in being angry and getting revenge, which it does by further attacking yourself and sectioning off even more parts of you which it deems sinful.

The main function of the persona is to first condemn yourself as a sinner, then try to section off the sinful parts of you to hide them and make them unconscious through denial/disassociation, and to then try to "keep" only the bits of yourself that it deems acceptable, worthy, attractive, valuable, credible, innocent, likeable, good, basically a picture of fake innocence... a picture of someone who no-one would suspect of murder ous intent or a sinful past.

The whole point of the persona is to DENY that you were the one who sinned against God, by pretending to be totally innocent and harmless. To do this, the persona has to attack you, split parts of you off, judge them as bad, make them unconscious, disassociate them from yourself, and only keep the smaller subset of illusory qualities that it says is "acceptable for now".

The persona is a perfectionist and is NEVER satisfied and has impossible standards. The ego thus ranges from suspicious (when in the persona mainly), to visciousness (when the hated guilty shadow self comes out of unconsciousness to express pain and guilt).

You need to realize that the persona is actively GETTING RID OF YOU, by emphasizing all the things that it finds "good" about you, and getting rid of all the things it finds "bad". And sooner or later, because you are never good enough for it (because ego denies love/lovability), it will strip away "bad stuff" until there IS No good stuff left, and you will be DEAD! The persona tries to "preserve a good self" in the name of getting rid of you! It is not on your side and it is not acting in your best interests.

What you need to realize then is that every enemy and attacker and abuser and victimizer is PART OF YOUR OWN MIND. It is the shadow in your mind, which your persona made up, coming back to attack the persona to try to point out the ways that the persona is actually a murderer. While the persona is busy claiming "I did not do it, it’s the shadow’s fault, it’s the sinner", the shadow is going to have in its agenda to "expose" the bullshit lies of the persona and point out the ways that "you" are NOT GOOD, and not pure or holy or right or happy etc. The persona hates this and sees it as attack or violation, but it’s the mind’s attempt to heal itself in a way.

When the unconscious pain (pain body) starts to come into awareness, the persona freaks out in fear and tries to suppress it and get rid of it and avoid it. Trying to get rid of IT is what happens when you try to get rid of OTHER PEOPLE because you think that THEY are IT and getting rid of them will solve your problem! Except the ego’s tactics DO NOT WORK! YOU will keep your shadow self and make it worse.

You have to realize that every attacker is PART OF YOU. And, what is being "attacked by" that attacker, is also PART OF YOU. The key is, the secret to salvation, which is that you are doing this ALL to yourself. You are BOTH attacking you (persona identified self) and are also BEING the attacker (shadow). BOTH of these FAKE CHARACTERS are in your mind. You put them both there. oYu are not EITHER of them

At some point, in your undoing of the ILLUSIONS that keep these two selves apart, and which maintain war, and which keep you thinking that other people are your enemies when it’s really YOU, and that YOU are not even the self that was being attacked, you will start to see through this split-minded perspective.

At some point, you will first of all ACCEPT that BOTH of these things are parts of your own mind, nothing to do with anyone else. That means the attacker and the attacked are both in your mind. Then you will realize, that if they are both in your mind, and you put them there, YOU - whatever you are really - must be maintaining both of them. If YOU are putting both of them in your mind, then YOU are literally the puppet master who is pitting these two selves AGAINST EACH OTHER.

Therefore the war that is waging between "them" is actually FICTIONAL, the claims that each of them makes about what the "other" is doing to the is an ILUSION - a fake story and a fake set of character traits and a fake scenario of victimization, IS NOT REAL.

IF... you, as the whole mind, contain both persona and shadow, and if you are the ONE who has put them there, and if the ways they SEEM to be two separate identities is NOT TRUE, then...

IF you can realize that YOU ARE BEING BOTH OF THEM, then suddenly you will see a COMMONALITY between them, a truth which completely obliterates the entir illusion of separation, undoes all the disassociation, collapses all denial, and totally blows up this whole FICTIONAL PLAY which has been playing out in your mind.

IF they are both you, and you are ONE SELF, looking upon both of them, and realizing that they MUST both be you because *YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THIS ALL TO YOURSELF*, THEN.....nothing about them which *seems* separate can be true. They can’t BOTH exist as separate personalities if they are actually both you - ONE IDENTITY - not two identities.

Seeing this finally collapses the entire illusion, the split in the mind is OVERLOOKED, you forgive yourself for what you did not do, you stop playing the roles of attacker and attacked, victim OR victimizer, and you LET BOTH SIDES OF THE WAR GO. You realize your war with yourself could not be won because, since you were BOTH SIDES, you WERE ALWAYS LOSING, no matter who wins.

Seeing this futility will AWAKEN YOUR MIND to suddenly realizing, that since you are ONE REAL IDENTIY, NOT two fake ones, the fake ones cannot be real. And suddenly, they will DISAPPEAR. And since they were blocking your awareness of the WHOLE of who you are, and since you no longer see EITHER of them as your IDENTITY, suddenly your mind will AWAKEN to accepting and being AWARE OF who you ACTUALLY ARE, as ONE WHOLE SELF!

The fictional ego illusion deream will disappear from sight. Blocks to awareness will vanish. You will no longer pretend you are at war with yourself. You will no longer pretend to be multiple personalities. And you will simply return to your natural whole state of FULL AWARENSS OF ALL OF YOURSELF, as God created you. A mind which is whole, not split. A mind which is HOLY, not evil. A mind which is neither a victim or a victimizer. A mind which cannot BE attacked and CANNOT attack.

And now you are home, back to being who you really are, back with God, and in love FOREVER!

In terms of the truth, these are our only two options: either accept it as it is, or deny it. Denying it is an attempt to reject what the truth is, and to replace it with something else.

Jesus says denial is an act of 'positive creation' not just an attempt to negate the truth. By denying, we substitute the truth for something else, and invent or make some other illusion to take its place, to try to prove that something else is true. We actively erect barricades and something else to fixate on and believe in.

In the Atonement, we accept the truth as it is, as God has established it, without any desire or need to change it.

The opposite of Atonement or resurrection, is death, in which there is an attempt to reject all truth (life) and prove that something opposite is true (death).

Denial produced the physical universe. Denial implements all forms of sickness. Denial is death. Denial is also fear. "All forms of sickness even unto death, are physical expressions of the fear of awakening." Or to put it another way, when you do not want to accept the truth, you invent fear to try to explain "why" you cannot accept it. The fear is fake, just as death is fake. Death does not END real life, it DENIES IT and paints a picture which PRETENDS the immortal son of God has been killed. ("You have made a bargain you cannot keep.")

Denial was the attempt to reject the fact that you cannot sin, by trying to replace it with an attempt to prove that sin can and has been accomplished. Even in that attempt, it is a state of denial. It hasn't changed the truth. Denial has no power to actually alter what the truth is. But, being denial, denial is "in denial" of this fact, and so attempts to change the truth anyway, believing that it is possible. Such is denial.

Denial also represents unwillingness. When we attempted to deny God's will, or to deny that we are as God created us, we moved into unwillingness. This was an attempt to suppress our own will. We became unwilling rather than willing, or imprisoned rather than free. Death is a state of unwillingness, as are punishment, suffering, fear, guilt and sin. This is why it takes "a little willingness" in order to move towards acceptance of the Atonement (truth) because denial has to be undone.

Blocks to awareness are denial. Since the truth cannot be changed (it's established by God's will permanently), denial cannot actually change the truth into something else. And the only way to "believe in" something else being true, is to block out awareness of the fact that the truth is true. While you are still aware that only the truth is true, you cannot bring yourself to believe or be convinced by an alternative. So you have to "block awareness".

Denial does this by putting up an illusory psychological barrier, comprised of a "will to reject", which makes the truth go unconscious. Conscious awareness is cut off from accessing the truth, hidden behind this wall of denial, and so now all that you are consciously aware of is "whats left" that hasn't yet been denied. The stuff that has been denied now forms the unconscious mind, hidden from awareness and kept in the dark. Consciously, since you are no longer aware that it is present, or still true, or an unchangeable fact, and you cannot "find it" when you search around with your awareness, it SEEMS not to exist.

Many false conclusions are made based on this unawareness - based on incomplete information. For example if you are not aware that you yourself chose to believe in sin, you made the sin unconscious by implementing denial and inventing fake guilt to cover it up, you will now be unable/unwilling to see that you are the one who made you guilty. Instead you will now search elsewhere for a "cause" of the upset, and inevitably blame it on someone else, because that seems to make sense given that you are not aware of the hidden key fact of what you did to yourself. This is why Jesus said "Forgive them father for they know not what they do" - as soon as you go into denial, you do NOT KNOW what you are doing, because you don't have all the facts in awareness.

The secret of salvation lies in your willingness to remove the block to awareness, so that you can become able to SEE the chain of causality coming from yourself, the choices you made, and thereby realize that none of your conditions are caused by anyone else. Your mind is the sole cause of your experience. But this block to awareness, in order to remove it, MUST entail the willingness to remove denial. The layer of denial which literally blocks awareness - blocks the ability to SEE, must be undone. And that will only be undone through honesty and willingness.

Denial takes on many forms, and indeed all forms. It includes the belief that you are already innocent even if you have unconscious hidden hates, secret sins, unhealed wounds and layers of self-repression that you don't want to admit to. This can produce a state of "fake innocence" in which you don't SEE that you are the cause of something and so become justified in blaming it on someone else - scapegoating, accusing your brother of your own sin. It also then justifies anger, and this is why anger is never justified - to become angry is ALWAYS based on denial and unawareness of the facts. If you knew the facts, the truth, you would have NO reason to conclude that you should be upset.

Denial also accounts for this world - Earth - this universe. Jesus says in reference to it, "a world that denies itself cannot exist." The world denies itself, because it is made OF denial of God's Kingdom. All denial is self denial, and so this world is made of denial. That is why it is a BLOCK to awareness. "Nothing so blinding as sight of form." This is also why, when denial is lifted, and we are willing to see the whole truth, this world must disappear because, being made from denial AS a block, it is merely an illusion preventing us from seeing, and once you see PAST it and become AWARE that you are the cause/dreamer of it, you will stop USING IT to make God's Kingdom unconscious.

Another expression or use of denial is in the ego's motto of "seek and do not find". By denying that you already are perfect, you don't SEE the perfection in yourself so you think it is not there, and so are now empty, and are in need, and this need compels you to search for a solution to the emptiness somewhere ELSE, outside of yourself. This sets you on a "spiritual path" - ultimately the journey without distance. Here you will pursue FAKE SPIRITAULITY, fake peace, produce a spiritualized ego, spiritualize the world, spiritualize the body, and seem to side with one half of duality (ultra positive or ultra negative).

This also produces the PERSONA, which is a fake identity or fake mask which forms this idea of who you think you are, which is made of the denial of yourself. Even your physical body is a fake image, designed to make people believe that they are seeing YOU when they see IT, when in fact it is made to HIDE YOU. The body and persona then become filled with fakery, lies, self deception and dishonesty, resulting in a veneer of "looking spiritual" or "acting spiritual", decorated with spiritual clothing and performing fake rituals, which are all really designed to maintain the denial and block you from being AUTHENTICALLY YOURSELF.

The facade of innocence hides unconscious guilt, and makes a person seem holier than they really are. The main problem is the person themselves is unwilling to admit to why they are overcompensating for a deep belief in unholiness, by pretending to be holy and trying to convince everyone that they themselves are convinced of it. This "spiritual seeker" has to be undone just as much as any other denial, because it takes you away from yourself. You do not need to seek. You need to *acknowledge* what is already TRUE about you, and be grateful that God's creation has not changed.

Denial also plays out in the unwillingness to accept what is happening in your life. I spent many many years in denial that I was unhappy, afraid, angry, and it wasn't until my mid-20's when I started to admit that the way I was feeling was even those things. I did not recognize the mountain of upset in me AS fear or AS anger, and didn't even know that I was afraid and angry. Such was the denial. Denial obscures, making reality seem twisted and not what it is, so that you do not *recognize* it, and so remain in a state where you think it IS something ELSE. This failure to recognize the truth is what keeps us in the dark. Yet "illusions recognized must disappear". They can only be recognized by not being in denial.

Denial also produces various kinds of blindness. The unwillingness to see the truth. Even though people may be walking around in bodies talking and performing activities, they can be in various states of awareness ie various states of denial, thus various states of unconsciousness. Just because someone is working in a job and playing on the internet and chatting to their friends, does not mean they are aware or awake. Denial indeed is sleep. It is a suppression of awareness.

Since denial is unwillingness, it also produces justification for fear whenever the truth comes along to challenge the denial. If you are in denial and you are believing that the truth is not the truth, you've made it out to be evil, and have replaced it with a lie that you believe is your salvation. When the truth comes along, you see it as an attacker, a threat, and thus USE denial once again as the ego's only tool to reject, shut out, or put distance between, you and that truth. You bury your head in the sand to avoid it and to pretend it is not there. This induces all forms of sickness, because sickness is a defense against the truth. So yes, sickness is denial of life, as is death.

The funny thing about denial is that instead of being able to actually change the truth at all, you instead hide from the truth and block your awareness of it, reasoning that if you are not AWARE of it, it must not BE there. This is clearly denial because you are simply hiding your vision. Pretending that something is not there, does not make it go away. But in the ego, we become convinced by this delusion and think "out of sight, out of mind"... that if we can't SEE something, or cannot be AWARE of it, then it must not exist.

This way, we've told ourselves that we actually UNDID God, reversed creation, cancelled Heaven, and erased our true self. By believing that our denial of truth CAN change the truth (that darkness can hide the light), it's very easy to make the tiny shift from "I'm in denial of it" to "It's actually gone." Therefore we have come to believe, in ego denial, that we ACTUALLY HAVE changed the truth because our awareness does not show it to us and it seems not to exist any more. This way we came to believe that sin is real and has had real consequences. We think that we actually HAVE hurt God, produced a new truth, got away with murder, and destroyed ourself and our inheritance.

This belief then leads to the distorted perception that we stopped being innocent, CHANGED into a different state, our innocence went away, and now all that we're left with is guilt. And in that view it seems as though we have become unworthy, have transformed from sinless to sinful, or from innocent to guilty. The blocked awareness viewed from inside denial, makes it SEEM as if this is true. And so in denial, we automatically come to believe that our denying is actually WORKING, and is CAUSAL, and has power OVER the truth to change it. And so we think we have sinned, are really a sinner, deserve to be guilty, should be punished for it, and are worthy only of death. Denial produces the death wish.

From this side of denial, not seeing that our denial HAS NOT changed reality, we're quite convinced that we actually are guilty sinners who don't deserve love or forgiveness. And so we think we are working on or in or with this guilty "ego self", which has not only replaced our real self, but is the ONLY self left. In denial, we are not aware that our real self - our innocent self - still as God created it - is STILL THERE, still fully alive, still perfect, and has not changed whatsoever. That real self is right here with you now. That real self is already in heaven and never left, nor did it change anything in reality.

And so now we're in this strange position where we think we are only this evil self who can never go back to being holy, while all along our true self is perfectly undefiled and holy forever, existing in parallel to this false idea of ourselves. Your "higher self" therefore exists right NOW, even if your sense of identity is all caught up in denial and confusion and ego. This is why "enlightenment is but a recognition and no a change at all". It merely entails the willingness to be AWARE of what is ALREADY TRUE. And to reach that awareness, ALL layers of denial MUST be removed from the mind so that you CAN be aware of it.

To admit to being in denial, or even to admit to wanting to stay in denial - wanting to keep your denial - is still an admittance. It reveals a willingness to allow the truth to enter. Even if you say, "I admit I do not want to wake up", that is better than an unwillingness to even admit that. To admit, is to permit access. It means you are willing to let truth be said or expressed about whatever the situation is. And this truth then sets you free. Even if just a little bit. Even if you are just admitting to being in denial and that you don't want to do anything about it, admits more truth than to not even want to admit to that.

This therefore takes some willingness, and it takes honesty. It requires a willingness to be mistaken, without implying punishment. It requires you to get honest with yourself, to stop being in resistance or avoidance, and to LOOK AT what it is that you don't want to see. And looking at it with the truth, is looking at it with the Holy Spirit. He represents the state of mind in which there is no denial. Your willingness to dig out and offer up secret sins, hidden hates, grievances, and also ways that you don't want to admit or accept something, allows Him to shine away those lies and release you.

Now, in ACIM circles there are various forms of denial and blindspots and each person is different. I've seen the most denial circling around topics to do with the body not existing, and to do with the world not existing. These are two of the major sticking points because the ego denial has

built a fortress to protect belief in these two things, and believing you "are" a body or that there "is" a world are the two most fundamental "givens" in this world. The body is the hero of the dream, and the world is the dream itself. To question belief in either of these seriously pushes the ego buttons and seems to "threaten your establishments."

There is a lot of denial around these topics and a lot of refusal to accept them. Accepting that there is no world is one of the hardest things to do, because denial makes the world seem true, real, valuable and desirable. Denial that the world is a cruel place, for example, leads many to believe God created it. And with that kind of a conclusion, who would want to question God's reality? Yet we are still in denial until we are sure to have removed all denial. And we will be in denial that we are in denial, because we don't SEE that there is something unconscious to us that we believe does not even exist.

There are also good and bad forms of denial, or uses of denial. If denial is used to reject the real truth, that's not a good thing. If denial is used to reject lies, that IS a good thing. Or rather, if denial is used to reject the belief that denial is true, using the mind to ADMIT that the denial is there, or that it is FALSE, that is a worthy form of denial.

There are unworthy forms of denial, which usually entail either a direct 1st-hand rejection of what is real, OR a 2nd-hand rejection of the illusions that have arisen due to the first level of denial. For example it is denial to produce a body. The body was made to deny God and shut out sharing with the Sonship. This denial needs to be undone. But additionally, on a second level, while you are making a body, if you KEEP making it through denial, but then pretend in some way that it does not exist and try to "separate from" it, THAT is also an unworthy form of denial. Up to a point, "the body is merely a fact of human existence." But at some point, human existence (bodies) is also denial of Spirit. These denials are at different levels.

Jesus also tells us in ACIM that "the separation HAS happened." Many people DENY this, mainly due to confusion about "nothing happened" as the atonement principle. This is level confusion. We did have the tiny mad idea, and we did share it, and it did produce imaginary worlds of illusion. Jesus even says, that to deny this fact is an unworthy form of denial. But to "accept" that it has happened should only be done in order to quickly realize that atonement is the only meaningful "correction" for the separation, and that it should be done as soon as possible.

It is also possible to have denials on top of denials on top of denials. For example when you are in fear, you are pretending that you have good reason to be afraid of something outside you. But the fact is, the fear is a decoy to deny guilt. Fear is protecting you from guilt and deflecting attention away from it as the "reason" why you are afraid. Fear makes guilt unconscious and blocks the guilt. The only reason you are afraid is because you think you are guilty and want to punish yourself. But without awareness of that, in fear you'll look for causes of the fear externally. To undo fear you must remove the denial behind it, become MORE AWARE of what you denied, reveal the guilt, and fix the guilt. So you can see there are multiple layers of distortion surrounding the guilt, and even guilt itself is denial.

The ego only has one tool. "Deny what is." The one antidote is the atonement - "accept what is". But to accept what is, you have to first remove the denial, so that your awareness of "what is" increases. So this doesn't mean just accepting the world "as it is", because how you are perceiving it is NOT the fullness that's present. You are NOT seeing it for what's really there, and are not recognizing it as an illusion. Blocks have to be removed in your mind, so that you can SEE. By seeing accurately and fully, you have true perception, which shows you the truth about this world, that it is not real and doesn't exist. Without removal of denial you will try to accept it, but won't be able to recognize it or accept its unreality.

The ego used denial to hide God, by making sin. The ego used denial to hide and keep sin, by making fake guilt. The ego hid the guilt behind fake fear using more denial. The fear produces self punishment but by denying that you are doing so. And eventually death is denial even of punishment. At every step the ego is denying, denying, denying. Denying who you are, stripping away layers of what remains, until eventually there is nothing left to deny. In death there is TOTAL denial of the truth, and no-one who goes through death is in their right mind.

It all boils down to this simple dynamic. Either you accept the truth - God's truth as God established it, or you deny it. You have no other choice. And because denial does not change the truth, denial MUST be a lie, where you are PRETENDING that the truth is not true. So either you are pretending to be something you are not, or you are being your real authentic self - as created by God. It's your choice, whether to accept or deny. But no-one gets to define what the truth IS. Only God can do that. And being in denial DOES NOT redefine the truth, even though those in denial believe that this is precisely what they're achieving. This is the authority problem, which is nothing but denial and an unwillingness to be honest.

The freedom we have is one of accepting or rejecting, not establishing, but anyone in denial with an ego will be in the business of trying to establish what the truth IS, acting as a gatekeeper to have to "approve" or "disapprove" before anything is permitted into awareness. Only when we are willing to give up our attempt to be God, to make the truth, will we be willing to simply open up to ACCEPT and RECEIVE it. Accepting the atonement is like throwing up your hands and admitting, only the truth is true, and only God's will is possible, and only God's way will work. Nothing else works. The ego is a lie and death is failure. Nothing else is true. I might as well accept it and go with it. And this takes TOTAL SURRENDER.

Thankfully, the truth is on our side, and loves us and has created everything for us. A perfect home, the inheritance of eternity, immortality, absolute peace and total joy. Not too shabby an option to accept, when you realize you stand to gain everything and give up nothing by letting go of denial.

"No one can fail who seeks to reach the truth."

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

"A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

"The truth shall set you free."

Most people feel some sense of unworthiness. Some people feel it very strongly. Unworthiness means you do not believe you deserve to be loved. You're not good enough or smart enough or perfect enough or something enough. There is something lacking about you, something missing or something wrong with you. Something which proves that you can't and shouldn't be loved.

That which you believe is true and real, you will accept and allow and agree with. If you believe that something is wrong with you, that you are guilty or a sinner or are ashamed or remorseful about something that happened, even if you are upset about it you will believe that you deserve what you are experiencing. Whatever you accept as true, you will believe you are worthy of. Worthiness, deserving, entitlement, all correlates to what you accept and therefore allow and agree with.

If you do not feel worthy of love and forgiveness, it is because you believe you ARE worthy of something else. It means you believe that guilt is real. Believing in guilt means you accept that you are guilty, you agree that you are guilty, you believe that you should be punished and not loved, and will agree with anyone who comes along to punish you for you, ultimately on your behalf. Even if it hurts, you will not stop them, because you yourself believe that you are worthy of it.

When you are feeling unworthy or less than wholly lovable, you will experience some form of victimhood. You'll see yourself as unfairly treated, that what you are experiencing is not what you want, that you wish you could have a "do-over" and fix what you did, and that you feel deeply bad about what happened. These feelings seem very genuine.

In particular, feeling very bad about yourself, unworthy of love or attention or credit, feels very sad and depressing and unhappy. It makes you feel as though you are weak and have no power. Maybe someone took your power away. You see yourself as helpless and suffering.

It simultaneously will seem as though someone else has power over you. Someone else was hurt, or someone else attacked you, or someone else decided you are not good enough by not treating you well. Someone else has more than you, and you have less. You don't measure up, you fall short of the standard, you're not man or woman enough, or something is just lacking about you. These experiences are a perception of you being a victim. It seems so unfair, it seems so un-asked for, it seems like what you do not want. No-one seems to love you and there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it.

Perhaps there is even something about you physically, mentally or emotionally which seems to be hideous or unacceptable or just not good enough that anyone would love it. Overweight? Underweight? Ugly? Bad hair? Pimples? Poor clothing? The wrong kind of physique? A strange voice? The list goes on of all the reasons why someone would not love you.

In this state of mind, there doesn't SEEM to be anything that you are doing to put yourself into this situation. It seems deserved. It seems like there is no way out and nothing you can do to change it. You WISH that it would not be this way, but you do not see a way out. You don't see how you can escape this, and instead have to avoid the people who judge you and who have decided for you that you are a sinner.

The experience and feelings that go along with this unworthiness or guilt can be deep and profound. You can feel really awful about yourself. You can feel as though God wouldn't love you, no-one would love you and nobody wants you. It seems tragic. You just seem to want someone to come along and rescue you or be a friend or side with you or whatever. But they don't show up. Funny that.

All of these feelings are unpleasant and seem to suggest there is nothing you are doing to put them in place, that you are trying so hard to get out of it and that you just feel really bad about what you did or what you are. It SEEMS like you do not want this, that your guilt is genuine, you feel really awful about what you did, and it seemed so real, you actually caused someone or God to be hurt and it's had a real effect and someone got damaged and there's just no way to undo it.

So now you're stuck feeling guilty, and you deserve it, but your feeling of guilt is almost like a plea for forgiveness or a wish that someone else will forgive you for you. It feels as though you feel really really bad for doing something wrong, a kind of remorse, as though you recognize clearly that it was not the right thing to do, and just feel terrible about it.

But what we now need to address is the fact that all of this is bullshit. There are illusions at play here. There is denial. There is unconscious material which is not being admitted to. There are cover-ups taking place. There is dishonesty. There is irresponsibility. And there are ego devices in place that actually have a hidden agenda and purpose for all of these feelings, which you at first will not want to admit to.

The suggestion that you in ANY way might be using this guilt, remorse, shame or unworthiness for a secret purpose, that you actually might want it to be happening because you're getting some kind of benefit from it, will initially be experienced as a slap in the face. It will seem like a blasphemy, which will trigger you to react with "how could you say that" and "how dare you" as though this is completely the opposite of what you're experiencing. It will seem insensitive.

The problem is that your mind has placed itself into a perceptual experience of being a victim and is very confused and deluded and simply does not see the truth. It does not recognize what it is doing or how it is using unworthiness on purpose. It doesn't want to admit the truth and sees the truth as a threat or offense or attack.

This is simply because, whatever your scope of awareness is right now, which you will believe is full and whole but really isn't, determines what information you have and what facts you are aware of. Although your perception is limited, you see yourself as being aware of everything there is to be aware of, because your awareness only shows you what is within its range right now and anything outside of it seems not to exist. You may not even suspect that there is more to this than meets the eye.

Because of this, based on the evidence you ARE aware of, you will simply conclude (erroneously) that it does not SEEM as though you want to be guilty, it does not look as though you are choosing this on purpose, and you are ONLY aware of the seeming causes of this unworthiness and the consequences it produced, ie the justification for WHY you feel guilty, and the explanation for why it is both logical and sensible to feel this way.

For example if you are aware that someone did something to you, seeming to cause you to feel ashamed, and you see no other causes, you will sensibly conclude that you feel this way because of what they did to you. But this doesn't mean this is the truth or the real reason why you feel this way. There is more truth that is outside your awareness which you haven't admitted to yet.

Or if you did something yourself, you sinned, and thus you feel guilty and ashamed, you will conclude that you're supposed to feel this way because what you did was awful, and therefore it is justified and normal. People refer to this as your "guilty conscience", as though you have this "conscience" which regulates and honestly perceives whether what you do is good or bad at all times. However, only the ego has a guilty conscience, and the conscience has absolutely nothing to do with truth. It is purely based on judgement and ego-based errors in perception, denial and an unwillingness to admit the real truth.

Guilt will always feel as though it is genuine and heartfelt and that you are truly sorry and feel bad about what you did. That is its purpose. It is meant to make you experience in this way. It is, however, a very effective cover-up for a deeper experience which is completely opposite. There are some facts which you are unaware of which would show you that your guilt is actually not pure and sacred and sincere. There are some facts which would reveal that your guilt is actually a device for further sinning and for increasing separation.

When you make-believe separation and move into sin - the belief that separation really has happened in reality - you are believing that you committed an act of murder. Such an act does not happen "by accident". It is deliberate, intentional, pre-meditated destruction. It was on purpose, you wanted it, and you chose it. The whole reason for sin originally was to establish separation from God SO THAT you could go off by yourself and pretend to have your own separate existence, be ruler of your own universe and act like God without God.

There was nothing accidental about that, you didn't do it "by mistake", and it wasn't a cosmic "oops". It was vicious, it was an attack, and according to your belief in sin, which you WANT to believe, it produced a tremendous amount of "real" consequences such as that God has been changed, God has been hurt, God is justified in getting revenge, and you now have no option other than to go off by yourself and hide in a corner.

The purpose of the original sin was to bring about a separation from God and therefore from yourself. It required you to disown yourself. Sin was an attempt to disown yourself by destroying yourself and what you are. Following sin, based on the logic of separation which naturally proceeds all the way to death, you CONTINUED to implement a "getting rid of what I am" mentality. This led to the invention of guilt as a cover-up story.

To disown yourself and to be less responsible for choosing and for who and what you are, you invented guilt as if to say, you didn't REALLY mean to sin, you didn't want to do it, it sort of happened on its own, or God abandoned you or cast you out of Heaven, or it happened to you against your will, or, having really hurt God you now feel sorry that you did it. It's as though you have had a change of heart! Suddenly you enter into this guilt as if to say, I'm really sorry that I did that, I wish I could take it back. But this is a total lie.

Guilt is a layer of denial. It represses the fact that you DID want to sin and you did want to be separate. It covers up the very deliberate choice that you made with an ILLUSION of you seeming as though you couldn't possibly have wanted this. You sinned, you attacked, and then all of a sudden... what did I do? How could I do this? What was I thinking?

Well... this shift may on the surface APPEAR to indicate that you did not want to sin and regret it, but this is not at all genuine. You did want to sin and you will do everything in your power to KEEP the sin in place and never question it and never attempt to be open to the possibility that it can be healed or undone or that it never happened. You never want to let sin be threatened.

Therefore you have to build this fictional illusion that you do not want sin, which actually is an act of further separation. You look at the sin and you try to get rid of it, just like you tried to get rid of God. You separate yourself off from it, judge it, attack it, and tell yourself that it and you have nothing in common. The movement from separation to sin is exactly the same motive, purpose, and goal, as the movement from sin to guilt.

In terms of illusions, the appearance of them as if they are true will tell you, no no, I didn't really want to sin... it was a mistake, I didn't realize what would come of it. Bullshit to that. You actually did know and you chose it and tried to MAKE it happen. And now you then cover this up with a facade of guilt as if you couldn't possibly have wanted this. But this pretend remorse really covers up the fact that you are USING guilt now as a device for not only keeping the sin in place, continuing to believe it cannot ever be changed, but also as a way of disowning it and yourself.

Guilt causes sin to go unconscious. It is your attempt to shut sin out of your awareness and pretend that you do not want it. Your not wanting of something is an attack, using a device of separation to get rid of something. It worked for you to get rid of God, and now again it works for you to get rid of sin. By being guilty and SEEMING to be all ashamed and unworthy and nobody-can-love-me-now, you paint a picture of the reasons WHY sin cannot be undone and WHY guilt is justified, making guilt the truth and protecting sin from healing.

Having blocked out sin, which is the sole cause of guilt, your mind will no longer be aware of the sense of sin. Instead, your conscious awareness only remains aware of this new fictional guilt that you invented - fake guilt, not real guilt. It is not genuine guilt, it is not honest guilt, it is not true guilt, it is completely artificial and a lie. But being unaware of the sin that came before it, guilt is now squarely in your conscious awareness and seems to be the truth to you.

Guilt explains why you should be punished. Guilt also explains that sin cannot ever be undone. It justifies keeping the sin, pushing it into the past, as though it's done and over with, and can never be changed. It puts the decision-maker or cause of why you are guilty outside of yourself, so that you do not appear to be the one who decided to invent the guilt in the first place.

You are guilty because of "what you did to God" or you are guilty because of "how you hurt another person". Their hurt, their suffering, is used as the justification for why you should be guilty, and because you believe (through sin) that their suffering is real, you see it as the cause of your guilt. Lo and behold, you have successfully disowned the power and honesty and choice of being the one who put the guilt in place, and will now come across consciously as NOT being the one who wanted any of this.

In the guilt you'll put on this performance, this sob-story, about how you don't want to feel this way, you wish it never happened, it was unfair, someone else made this happen, you didn't choose it, if you could do something to undo it you would - EXCEPT FOR what would actually undo it - we won't let ourselves go there, believing that because it was a sin in the past it is a given - irreversible and never to be questioned. Anything but that.

Since you then believe you are guilty, you will believe you do not deserve forgiveness. To forgive would mean to UNDO the guilt and question whether you sinned. You do not want that and you have no intention whatsoever of ever going there to look at that. You want to stay as far away from the sin as possible, which is what makes it unconscious. If you do not deserve to undo sin or be loved ever again, you now believe you are not worthy of love.

It is through your own belief that you are guilty, which is you agreeing that you should be guilty, that you will accept and allow the guilt, even if on the surface you will experience it as unwanted. From inside of the guilt, from inside the unworthiness, which means that you are blocked from being aware of love by a barrier of denial, it will SEEM as though this is just a horrible experience that you would never want to choose... because you do not SEE that you did choose it, OR that you chose it on purpose for a very "evil" intention of bringing about the death of the Son of God.

So then you'll experience that you are worthy of punishment and unlove and mis-treatment and being attacked and hurt, because you do not believe you deserve anything better. Your allegiance has to be somewhere, so if it's not to God, it's to the ego - the thought system of pain and suffering and death. Not much of a substitute, but it's your only choice. And secretly, it's what you wanted. Being closer aligned to the ego will allow you to further you plan, which has been in place since the start and never questioned, of becoming a separate individual in your own reality, where death is life and separation from God is absolutely true.

In this unworthiness you will feel powerless, helpless, victimized, profoundly "not wanting" this at all. Or do you? Secretly you do. You are getting away with murder. You wouldn't feel guilty unless you believed that sin is real. Guilt keeps sin real. You wouldn't believe you deserve to suffer and die unless you believed guilt was justified and therefore that you should be punished.

You might seem on the illusory surface not to want the suffering at all, to be not choosing it at all, to be completely averse and horrified and terrified about what is going to happen to you, but this also is a huge bullshit lie. You are deliberately positioning yourself to suffer SO THAT you can continue your plan of separation and death and keep justifying why the Son of God should die.

The more that separation is implemented the more there will seem to be this huge rift between what you APPEAR to be wanting, versus what you are secretly really wanting. And since the ego is a split mind, always there will be a conscious self-will which seems to not want to suffer or be guilty or upset in any way, but there will be an unconscious self-will which is constantly trying to bring about death and disaster.

You actually believe you deserve to die, because of what you did. And you want to believe it. Death is what you want. It's what this entire dream is all about - you choosing death over life, ego over God. And isn't it strange how you flipped from attempted murder of God and His Son, to suddenly now seeming like a victim? Like you went from being the victimizer, to being the one who is being victimized?

Isn't that like a perfect cover-up for a victimizer, to portray themselves as innocent, to show themselves as being the least likely to sin, to fake their own helpless death (suicide) in order to prove that they are so powerless that it couldn't possibly have been them who did it? Their secret sin and hidden hate goes to the grave with them, and is the reason they go there. Who would suspect the most innocent-seeming person of hiding a malice against God which has attempted to destroy all of Creation? Who would suspect someone who is so powerless, helpless, hopeless, weak, afraid, suffering and unfairly treated by life?

It's the perfect cover. It's the perfect mechanism of denial, layer upon layer of projection, disownership, displacement of blame, irresponsibility, pretending to have no choice, and picturing yourself as the least likely one to have sinned. We're all playing this game of who can seem to die without anyone suspecting that they wanted God to be dead. It's the desire to want God to be dead which CAUSES you to die.

So yes, you can feel guilty, ashamed, remorseful and unworthy, and these can seem like such unfair, un-asked for, unwanted experiences. But we have to get very honest here if we want to actually have a chance of being set free by the truth - any hope in hell of actually being forgiven and for this whole mess to go away.

We have to be willing to admit that our guilt is not genuine guilt, or real guilt, or truthful guilt. It is fake guilt, denial, and a cover-story for something even worse. We have to admit also that our feeling of unworthiness is a tremendous cover-story once again for how we couldn't possibly want any of this, life is totally unfair, other people have been really judgemental and mean and accusatory, and how we "don't deserve this".

Those who feel unworthy will be constantly saying "I don't deserve this". Bullshit! This is the conscious ego persona claiming that it doesn't believe you deserve this, and that you are just trying to preserve your integrity and innocence, while unconsciously the ego shadow is hell-bent on staying as unworthy as possible.

You are fundamentally worthy of God's unconditional love all the time forever. But if you can position yourself as unworthy and justify why you are unworthy, this will seem to "explain" why and how you should not be loved by God. But isn't this just another way for you to attempt to assert that you CANNOT be loved? If you cannot be loved, guess what that means? It means that you have STOPPED GOD. And what's another word for stopping God? Murder.

So your unworthiness will be all sorrowful and you'll feel like you didn't ask for it and you don't want to be this way. But you do. You have to own up to that if you want to be free. And typically those who are in a victim mindset will NOT want to ACTUALLY take the steps necessary in order to undo the real problem. They will make HUGE amounts of noise about their desire to have this go away, how they don't want to suffer, and complain extensively about how unfair this all is, but the one key thing that they need to DO to ACTUALLY solve this problem - the undoing of separation and sin, they will avoid at all costs.

And so when you listen to a victimy person, you will notice that they are forever staying paralyzed, they are always staying exactly where they are, keeping all of their problems, keeping all of their suffering, but making huge screeching noises about how they want this to go away. They don't want it to go away. The one thing that would undo it, they do not want. Anything else they want, any other possible pathway or solution or answer they will be open to, but not the undoing of the unworthiness.

How are you going to be able to maintain that God cannot love, and therefore God is not love, and therefore God has no power to love you, and therefore you have power OVER God, unless you assert strongly that you cannot be loved? Your unworthiness is an authority problem. It is arrogance. It is you trying to stop God from loving. You justify it with guilt. You support it with an explanation of having sinned. You want to KEEP all of the ways that justify you being attacked and hurt and rejected and punished, because it allows you to GET AWAY WITH MURDER.

Your rejection of God's love, because you "don't deserve it", is bullshit. It is not true. You DO deserve God's love. You do not WANT to admit to deserving God's love. Your unwillingness to admit that you are USING your unlovability as a weapon, is keeping you in the dark and maintaining your agenda of death. Oh, poor me, I guess I sinned too much, I'm too guilty, God, you might as well not love me, just pass me by and go love someone else, you're really better off not loving me anyway, you wouldn't want to love someone like me, I'm SAVING YOU from unnecessary unjustified love and hurt by me turning away from you.

And so this unworthiness is really a denial of love and an attempt to explain why you should not be loved. Not that you cannot be, but that you should not be. And you will explain that because of your sinfulness, because of your guilt, you really do not DESERVE the love - that you're doing love a favor by saving love from having to love you. You believe the love will not WORK and that therefore you would be causing love to waste its efforts. Or in other words, your deserving to die comes from your attempt to make God die by stopping God's love from extending, ceasing the extension of Life.

It's almost like an admittance that you hurt someone so bad that they really should not love you, they shouldn't even try to, because they would be wasting their love unnecessarily and that you are saving them from this additional loss by not being worthy. So now you are God's savior, which makes your ego happy. So long a you stay unworthy, which SEEMS to be the illusion of wanting to be loved so badly, wanting to be forgiven, wanting to be seen as worthy, it REALLY is an attempt to do the exact opposite - to reject love as much as possible.

If God is permanently loving then you have to admit at some point that your belief in guilt and sin and unworthiness is YOUR belief. It is not God's view of you. You must also own up to and take responsibility for making the DECISION that you are guilty and unworthy, which reveals that you actually CHOSE it and put it in place on purpose, for a reason. You being responsible for all of this reveals the truth that every single part of what you are experiencing is a form of denial, is part of your ego plan, is untrue and dishonest.

You wanted to sin. You wanted to use guilt to cover up the sin and disown it. You wanted to be unworthy of love so that you could reject God. And you wanted to die to prove that God was dead. No-one else decided any of this for you. God didn't make it happen. It wasn't other people who caused you to be unlovable.

This is ALL part of your plan, every step of the way, and you wanted all of it. That means, that you have done this all to yourself, but it also means that therefore, if you change your mind and admit to the truth, you might STOP doing this to yourself and actually have a REAL HOPE of being free from this suffering. Unworthiness is hardly a joyful experience.

You will say you cannot forgive yourself for what you did. You do not want to. You don't believe in your innocence because you chose to believe that guilt is true. And not just because you did something really bad, but so that you could hide your sin and increase the attack on God.

Being guilty for murder is hardly a restoration of the state that existed prior to the murder, and guilt can hardly be said to be an atonement or compensation for attack. If you sin by attacking someone and its hurts them, what are you going to offer to them to compensate them? If you were to offer them love, healing, undoing of the sin, and reversal of all effects, that would be true "repentance". A miracle of healing would be true repentance. But you don't choose that. Instead you choose to go into guilt.

In this world, guilt has been terribly confused with love. People hurt those they "love" (but really don't) then go into guilt. Guilt is supposed to be some kind of position of being sorry, or remorse or regret, and then they will attempt to perform actions which make it up to the person, based on that guilt, as though that will atone for the sin. Guilt is not a gift, it's a slap in the face. It's an attempt to kick them while they're down. It's an attempt to save face. It is dishonest.

If you sin and hurt someone, the response from you should be that you RETURN TO LOVE, so that you can be as truly helpful as possible and heal the problem. And that person, IF they are in their right mind, should encourage you to return to love, through forgiveness, in order to RESTORE the state of innocence and invulnerability which seemed to be disrupted. Thus both of you are now better off. But if you instead move into guilt as your offering of atonement, you're really being selfish and are not atoning at all.

If the person you hurt is not in their right mind and has an ego agenda, they will likely seize the opportunity to notice that you made a mistake and, instead of forgiving you to help you to return to love, they will use this to get rid of some of their own sin and guilt. They will attack you, justifiably, accuse you, put you in the dog house, put limits on you, reject you from their "love", or generally separate from you as a justified punishment. This is a completely insane response and not in any way justified or honest or exhibiting integrity.

This is the ego's version of atonement, that you sinned so you must sacrifice in order to make up for it. You must lose something, you must be less loved, and you must give something away that you value and be at a loss, in order to "pay" for your crime. There is no justice when any Son of God is found to be guilty. Not only has one person been attacked, but now a second person has fallen from Grace and has entered into guilt. So now two people are suffering, which is hardly an improvement.

Being guilty and unworthy of forgiveness is exactly what your ego wants, and is exactly what it uses to pretend to be sorry about what happened. If you are TRULY regretful, you will return to love as quickly as possible, regain your sense of deserving love as quickly as possible, repair the "damage" by offering a miracle of healing, and give the TRUE GIFT of love. This will be a real atonement. This will undo the suffering and reverse the problem and restore peace. But the ego doesn't want that, and anyone with an ego will condemn and demand guilt as though it makes sense. It is insane.

Many forms of "love" are really guilt. Feeling guilty that you didn't do enough, feeling guilty that you hurt your loved one, feeling bad about not being able to help someone, feeling guilty that you caused someone to suffer or lack, etc... these are not positions of honesty or responsibility or repentance or atonement. These are positions of the ego using the situation to reinforce itself and increase separation and unconsciousness and death. And a "crime punishable by death" is the ultimate bullshit.

When someone makes a mistake, it must be innocent, because no-one in their innocent right mind deliberately sins. If it is a mistake, it is forgivable, calls for forgiveness and love and a restoration of communication and communion. It calls for even greater sharing and love, in order to correct the problem of the error in perception.

So at some point when you admit all this to yourself, you will have to learn to drop the entire "sob story" of how you are unworthy and guilty and ashamed and remorseful and regretful. None of these are genuine and every one of them is a dishonest plot to move you further towards death.

This "correct perception" of these perceptual errors allows you to RECOGNIZE these illusions as ego devices and not as truth. If you believe them then you have failed to recognize them, and they will remain. But illusions, when recognized for what they are REALLY doing, leads to their undoing and they must disappear. Therefore there is a healing and a release.

Yes, you feel like shit and unworthy of love, but.... do you want to keep spinning your wheels on this or... do you want an honest, real solution which will ACTUALLY repair the damage and heal you and set you free of this guilt and restore your worthiness for being loved? That is what forgiveness offers you. That is the escape from death that the truth offers you, if you are willing to own up to it.

Unworthy? Ashamed? Guilty? Mad at yourself for what you did? Self loathing? Low self-esteem? Bullshit!

You ARE permanently lovable, permanently worthy, permanently innocent, and permanently forgiven. Your self-hate is not justified. Your attempted self-destruction is not justified. Your guilt is unfounded. Your sadness is completely unfounded. Your fear of punishment is a total lie. And you have not really sinned at all.

God is very happy with you right now. Can you accept it as the truth? At least in your willingness to approach this truth, it may bring to light the ways that you are trying to believe the opposite, so that you can look at it honestly and let it go.

God loves you. Always has. Always will. And there is nothing that you need to "do" to make it up to Him or win Him over or convince Him of your innocence. You do not need to "atone" for a sin that you didn't really commit. You do not need to "atone" or "pay" for hurting God, because you haven't. You're just mistaken, and so long as you want to keep being mistaken God will STILL continue to love you unconditionally. At some time you will be ready to accept that, in truth, you deserve to be loved forever, and you are.

"Nothing you can do can turn me away, nothing anyone can say, 'cus I'm with you now and as long as you stay, loving you's the right thing to do, loving you is the right thing." - Carly Simon