Lesson 153 "In my defenselessness my safety lies."

Truth = Reality.

So if you change what is true, and you believe something that isn't really truthful, it will change your reality.

Your reality changing is what we call hallucination. You believe something is true which isn't. You believe something is out there which isn't.

"I am upset because I see something that is not there" is one of the first workbook lessons.

You see something that is not there because you believe it is a part of your reality. You believe it's part of reality because you believe there is truth in it. You justify it, explain it, prove it, emphasize it, focus on it, magnify it, rationalize it, and create it, all to demonstrate it is the truth - and you will then experience it.

When you "make" up the truth, you make illusions. You will experience those illusions as if they are real. And you'll think this is reality.

So because your perception, your mind, has to experience a reality that exactly matches what is true for you, if your belief about what's true changes from God's truth and turns false things into a truth substitute, then your mind is going to have to hallucinate in order to match that belief.

When you're experiencing your so-called reality, if it is not completely God's reality, you're still going to think it's real. You will take it for granted like it's just a given. Without questioning your truth you will just stay right there in your private hallucinated world.

The only way you can shift "reality" back to God's reality, is to change the truth. You need to look at, discover, realize and recognize what is true and what is false. Like, the real truth, not just something you want to be true.

This "sorting out" is a big part of the awakening process. What is true, what is false. And to transition from false to truth you're going to have to have "a little willingness" that maybe your "reality" is actually not showing you the whole truth - that you're seeing things that are not there - and that this is upsetting to you.

It's totally understandable that you would be upset by seeing something that doesn't exist. Scary as hell. To return to peace you need to stop hallucinating, which means you need to get really straight about what the truth really is. You can't keep playing ego games. You need to get super honest and discerning and find out, with Holy Spirit's light, what's really going on here.

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.

Consider for a moment, a definition of yourself, in which YOU CANNOT CHANGE. You are absolutely changeless. You exist always the same, fixed, absolute, certain, permanent. Something that never alters, adjusts, transforms. Something incapable of becoming anything, losing anything, having anything taken away from it, or added. Just the same, always and forever, always existing, always being, always you. Same old you since you were created.

Then with this is idea it being IMPOSSIBLE to experience change, consider the contrast this produces to all the forms of suffering in the world. Someone doing something to you, being affected, upset, made to feel this way or that, moved by the wind, affected by the environment, threatened by the politicians and the warmongers, altered by sickness, pushed around by health concerns etc. All of it... all forms of CHANGE. All things which say "I can change you and you will change whether you like it or not."

What are you and where do you stand and how are you able to play any of these games if YOU CAN NEVER CHANGE? If you cannot be changed by anything, you are invulnerable, immortal, eternal. Always perfect, always strong, always beyond the reach of every kind of influence, every force, every attack, every threat to your nature. You cannot change, you have never changed. You remain as God created you and always will be the same. So can you believe you have been changed, caused, forced, yet again, to become something you can never be?

"You were NOT born to die. You CANNOT change, because your Function HAS been fixed by God." UrT29G4

"Can YOU see guilt where God KNOWS there is perfect innocence? You can DENY His knowledge, but you CANNOT change it." UrT13C8

"You cannot be ANYWHERE that God did not put you, and God created you as part of HIM. That is both WHERE you are and WHAT you are. This is COMPLETELY unalterable. It is total inclusion. You cannot change this now or ever. It is forever true. It is NOT a belief, but a fact." UrT6C6

"In the longer practice period, we will think about your reality and its wholly unchanged and unchangeable nature." UrW67L2

"Now He can remind the world of sinlessness, the one unchanged, unchangeable condition of all that God created." UrM19A2

"Your Self is radiant in this holy joy, unchanged, unchanging and unchangeable forever and forever." UrW190L6

"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable with transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feeling, alterations in conditions of the body and the mind, in all awareness and in all response." UrW152L5

"The Thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky. So high in Heaven is it set that those outside of Heaven know not it is there. But still and white and lovely will it shine through all eternity. There was no time it was not there. No instant when its light grew dimmer or less perfect ever was. Who knows the Father knows this light, for He is the eternal sky which holds it safe, forever lifted up and anchored sure." UrT30D8

"Only what God creates is irreversible and unchangeable. What YOU have made can always be changed, because when you do not think LIKE God, you have not really thought at all. Delusional ideas are NOT thought, but you CAN think that you believe in them." UrT5G11

Here is today's bombshell of truth.

The entire physical universe is a game, designed by the ego, which is impossible to win. Anyone who plays the game will die. Period.

The game has only one rule. If you believe in the game and try to play it, you will die. There is no way to play it and win.

If you think that you can play the game in some kind of special way, using some kind of special abilities or skills or knowledge or workarounds or talents or aptitude or cleverness or creativity or whatever, you will become delusional, and you will die.

If you think you can play the game in a certain way by taking sides with certain apparent powers, by teaming up with those who seem to be winning, by avoiding certain obstacles or traps, by being at war with enemies and getting rid of them, by being very very careful not to have anything bad happen to you, or any other strategy whatsoever, ALL of those strategies WILL NOT WORK, and you will die.

If you think you can outsmart the game and section off a small part of the environment to protect and defend you, or that having certain behaviors will ensure your safety, or that wearing certain clothes or embarking on certain activities will change your chances, you are delusional, and you will die.

The instruction manual for the ego's game of "life and death", which has a subheading "actually, its just death", reads: "all players will die." That's it. At least it doesn't take 5 hours to learn like some games.

The ego's primary game is a game of separation. It is a game of emphasizing differences. It is a game of attempting to separate out one thing from another in as intense and believable a way as possible. It does not care whatsoever what the qualities of each part are, so long as they seem separate.

The game's primary function is temptation. It is designed to tempt you to believe that the appearance of difference or separation between things is real. If you fall for it, you fall for the trap, and you will die. If you look at two parts of the environment and you find yourself siding with or against either of them, not recognizing that they are BOTH PART OF THE SAME GAME, you will fail, and you will die. The instant you feel sorry for some part, or are against another part, or put one part on a pedestal, or buy into any kind of SPECIALNESS, you will die.

The devious, diabolical fact of the game is, anyone who falls for the illusion of difference and separation WILL SUFFER AND DIE, because they have been tricked into making themselves LESS THAN WHOLE, and therefore have diminished who and what they are, and this is DEATH.

So within the ego's game, it does not matter AT ALL, in any state of war and conflict, who wins or loses, who is right or wrong, good or bad, innocent or guilty, or any of it. If you buy into the belief that the good/innocent/righteous people are correct and the bad/wrong/guilty people are not, YOU FELL FOR IT HOOK LINE AND SINKER AND YOU WILL DIE.

The ego itself is the puppet master which disguises itself in the costume and form of every single thing which shows up in the game. It is secretly the identity behind every individual, every form, every event which happens, and every illusion of difference. It will play both sides against each other, playing itself against itself. It will take the role of savior and fixer and helper and carer and lover JUST SO THAT it can be victimized by someone else, SO THAT you will buy into the illusion that the other person was the sinner and not this one. AND THEN YOU WILL DIE, because you failed the test.

Illusions of better/worse, right/wrong, good/bad, more spiritual/less spiritual, more ego/less ego, are TRAPS. Illusions of people who seem innocent but who are still vulnerable, are traps. Illusions of people suffering and being sick against their will are traps. Illusions of bad things happening are traps. Illusions of unwanted terrible weather events are traps. Illusions of acts of nature, God's wrath, war, disagreement of all kinds, marital tension, sexual tension, hate, violence, condemnation, judgementalism, taking sides in a sports match, liking someone more than another, loving someone more than another, IS A TRAP, AND YOU WILL DIE.

This entire world, everything you see in the world, all people, all objects, all places, all events, all circumstances, all situations, all stories, are all DOOMED to condemn you to death IF you buy into them whatsoever.

No-one wins here. No-one actually pulls off a win, which would be a win against God. No-one achieves the FICTION of getting away with murder, being able to do something to someone else without receiving the effects, being able to have someone else make you die against your will, or suffering without choosing it. There are no winners in any argument or war. To believe in the war itself IS LOSS. To believe in enemies at all MAKES YOU WEAK. To side with the little victims MAKES YOU SUFFER. You cannot escape the game this way. You cannot just shift yourself into one safe-seeming corner of life where you cower and hope that all the bad shit doesn't come your way.

There is only one way to escape the game, one way to overcome its rules, and only one way to play it correctly to your advantage. The ONLY advantage is NOT TO PLAY IT AT ALL. This is what you have to learn. You have to see all illusions for what they are, tools for separation. This includes all "life forms" (death forms) in this world. They are all forms of separation, forms of error, forms of sin. They are not holy. That they appear at all, and that you believe you really see them, is your choice to die.

This entire world is a picture of the crucifixion of God's Son. There is NO PART OF IT which is not an attempt to kill you. Every trap will present itself and you will fall for all of them until you learn to overlook them all and attain Atonement/forgiveness. The world is not escaped by death, or by winning, or by making your best effort to avoid death, or by trying to bend the rules, or by thinking you're so great that you can go outside the lines and succeed on your own terms. YOU WILL FAIL, GUARANTEED, and you will die. The world - the entire ego's game - is only escaped by TRUTH.

Only truth will set you free. Only truth will show you the ego's game in plain sight, with all its diabolical devious designs and all of its traps and purposes and attempts to tempt you into it. Only the truth will allow you to see in the true light, the true nature of the temptation. Only the truth will keep you protected and safe. Only the truth will guide you out of the dream of death. Only the truth will allow you to live forever.

The road to enlightenment really boils down to a matter of recognition. There's more than 100 references to "recognition" in ACIM.

"Why wait for Heaven? Those who seek the light are merely covering their eyes. The light is in them now. Enlightenment is but a recognition, not a change at all."

Here Jesus is saying that we are ALREADY LIGHT, alreadty holy and whole. We just keep DENYING that it is already true of us, like someone who doesn't want to admit what's true. We are covering our eyes and trying NOT to see reality.

What does recognition mean? It means you accurately and correctly discern and acknowledge what something actually IS, without any distortion or denial or illusions or attempts to change it.

This obviously means being AWARE of what it is, and so yields awareness, or awakening. To be awake to what something IS is to recognize its reality. To not recognize reality is to be unaware of what is real, which places the mind in a state of sleep or unconsciousness, in which it dreams a world of lies.

The interesting thing is that, within you right now, there is a holy, perfect, happy, peaceful, divine, innocent self. It's ALREADY THERE. And it is already true. God has in fact already established the fact of what you ACTUALLY ARE.

The only problem we have, is that our minds are currently in a state where we don't clearly acknowledge this about ourselves, we don't recognize it is in us already, and we don't seem to want it. We have REJECTED OURSELVES, and don't want to be who we are.

"Here the deathless come to die; the all-encompassing to suffer loss; the timeless to be made the slaves of time. Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless, and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain, and finally to die."

Part of the problem of not wanting it is simply because we don't recognize it. When you DON'T recognize something, you think it is something else. And now you've entered into illusions and confusion and insanity. It means you are out of touch with reality.

Accepting reality means coming into "contact" with it, rather than being separated off from it or distanced from it. Being in contact with reality is sanity and recognition of what is already true. Such a state of mind is mirarcle mindedness.

"Miracles are examples of right thinking. Reality contact at all levels becomes strong and accurate, thus permitting correct delineation of intra- and interpersonal boundaries. As a result, the doer sees the truth as God created it."

Atonement is the same. We are asked to accept the atonement. The atonement is an expression of the truth. We are simply asked to accept what is true, in terms of the truth as God established it. To accept what God has GIVEN you. Which is also to reclaim your inheritance.

"Innocence is not of your making. It is GIVEN you, the instant you would HAVE it."

"The remedy is NOT of your making, any more than YOU are." "God Himself gave you the perfect correction for everything you have made which is not in accord with His Holy Will."

We aren't even really asked to do anything special or elaborate. We're basically just asked to "know thyself". To be true to what we actually are. To recognize its truth, to acknowledge it as true, and to accept it.

This means that while we're NOT doing that, we must be in some kind of strange mental state where we're AVOIDING the truth, we want something ELSE to be true, and we've put our faith in things which are false. We've given reality TO illusions and lies, instead of letting reality be reality.

It surely can't be hard to simply turn within and acknowledge actual facts. A truth which can be experienced. To let go of all desires to have the truth be something it is not, and to merely accept what is true. To let yourself be as God created you. To stop trying to turn yourself and others into something they're not.

Enlightenment then isn't even really an activity, it's more like just a total surrendering and allowing what ACTUALLY IS to be what it is. Which also means allowing God to be God, and you to be you, and your brother to be your brother.

It's like, just giving up and stopping all the ego games of wanting things to be different to how they are in reality, and being willing to ADMIT that only the truth is true. To lay down all the defense and denials and ways that we try to INSIST that something else is true and real.

It was our insisting on not being okay with heaven, that produced this false world. It was our denial of God that produced our egotism and suffering. It was our wanting to be something we could never be, that placed us in bodies and space and time. And it was our attempt to oppose life that induced our own seeming death.

"You ATTACK the real world every day and every hour and every minute, and yet you are surprised that you cannot SEE it." The road home couldn't really be more simple. We just give up fighting against reality and become fully willing to accept and receive an "off the shelf" solution from God, take His truth to be our own, align with His will for us, and just return to living in your NATURAL state.

"To be without a body is to be in our natural state. To recognize the light of truth in us is to recognize ourselves as we are."

"By DEMONSTRATING to yourselves that THERE IS NO ORDER OF DIFFICULTY IN MIRACLES, you will convince yourselves that in your NATURAL state there IS no difficulty, because it is a state of Grace."

"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"Health is the natural state of anything whose interpretation is left to the Holy Spirit, who perceives no attack on anything."

THIS WORLD DOES NOT CAUSE ANYTHING

The world we seem to live in, which includes planet Earth, does not cause anything to happen. It has no causes in it. And since cause=truth, it has no truth in it. And since truth=reality, it has no reality in it. It however has many many illusions of causes, pretending to be causes.

The world causes nothing. It is nothing but an effect. In order for this to make any sense you'll need to realize that *everything* in this world is being caused from SOMEWHERE ELSE.

In a pantomime, puppets are dangled from strings and made to seem to interact with each other. One can be made to seem to do something, and then it is necessary for the other to be made to do something else, in order to create the illusion that it was affected. There is no causality between them. All of the causality comes from ABOVE, causing what is BELOW.

As it is with miracles. Miracles are expressions from a mind which is ABOVE this world which has CAUSED this world. The world is its effect. That higher mind (the Sonship) has projected this entire universe including the Earth.

Everything that seems to "happen" in it, is not happening because of one thing causing something else. Instead, both the things which seem to cause, and the things which seem to be affected, are simultaneously projected in parallel from another place entirely.

The wind does not blow the trees. The wind blowing and the trees moving are BOTH accomplished at the same time by the same ONE CAUSE, the mind of the dreamer.

Gravity does not cause a ball to roll down a hill.

Eating food does not cause you to make poop.

Throwing a rock at a window does not cause the window to break, unless the higher mind says "ok, I will now break the window", and the breaking of the window is implemented BY THE MIND, not by the rock.

Nothing in this world causes anything at all. We are not made sick by things in the environment. We are not hurt by other people. We are not upset because of things we see. Nothing happens to us, not even death.

Nothing can happen to you, a Son of God, without your say so. Nothing can happen, without your consent. "No-one dies without their own consent". Mind, from a higher level, has to PUT IN PLACE both the apparent causes and apparent effects of EVERYTHING that takes place on planet Earth. EVERYTHING!

The world does not spin because of inertia or gravitational forces or attraction to the sun. It spins because the MIND SPINS IT.

Rain does not fall from a cloud on its own as part of an accumulation of water particles. Rain does not fall unless the mind makes it do so.

This is a world of ANIMATION, it is an animation, like a movie, being projected out and played by a mind that is causing everything in the scene to occur. Everything.

You wouldn't imagine for a second that someone could be sat at the movie theater watching the movie on the screen, and that they could CHANGE the content of the movie by doing something with the screen. If you want the movie to change, you have to get in touch with the folk who MADE the movie, and the mechanism of projecting it, so that the movie appears differently.

Similarly the world can easily be changed by someone who has access to the miraculous mind of the Son of God, who is a miracle worker. This mind has the power to ERASE the world. This mind has the power to CHANGE the world. This mind has the power to do ANYTHING. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do."

The world itself does not DO anything at all. Nothing happens to anything anywhere against any will. Nothing can happen AT ALL unless it is part of the one who is DREAMING IT. Only the dreamer can determine what shows up in the dream. Only the dreamer can make objects appear to interact. Only the dreamer has access to the level of freedom and capability to make the dream appear to do stuff that DEFIES the illusion of linear causality.

If the dreamer decides, hey, when this forest fire rages, which I made rage, I will ensure no harm will come to that house. And so the house will not suffer the fire. And if the dreamer decides, when that rock is thrown at that window, there shall be no damage, so be it.... there will not be a broken window. And if the dreamer decides, this body will have no sickness and show no signs of damage and it will be impossible to destroy it... so be it. The body will be invulnerable.

Miracles appear to defy the LINEAR causality of this world. They prove and demonstrate that the ILLUSION of cause and effect here is FALSE, is fictional, and that it can easily be modified and defied. The mind could easily suppress the effects of an explosion. It could easily levitate a mountain. It could easily cause someone to walk on water. It could easily show that gravity has no effect on the body.

There is an analogy to this freedom and flexibility of writing the rules of what's going to happen in a fictional world, in this world. It's in the area of creating digital worlds. Movies, games, visualizations, 3d objects and so on. In this arena, we get to make entire environments out of nowhere. We can populate them with characters and make stuff happen. But guess what, there are no laws.

Nothing is impossible there. If you want to make a huge ball representing the sun suddenly turn into ice-cream, that's easy enough. And objects in a virtual world have no inherent laws of physics. If you want to make them repel each other or bump into each other and rebound off each other, you have to ADD a whole bunch of extra rules and conditions. But the fact is, YOU add them. And without them, objects would pass right through each other.

This world, this universe, is an illusion. It causes nothing at all and it has no causes inside of it. All causes here are illusions of causes. This is why as a miracle worker you can demonstrate this fact by making something occur which, according to the linear laws, is impossible. It should be impossible to reverse death, it should be impossible to levitate a mountain, it should be impossible to walk on water, and it should be impossible to heal all sickness, but it's not true. There is nothing a holy Son of God cannot do.

Open your mind. Question what you're looking at. Planet Earth isn't a "thing" in its own right functioning according to universal laws. It's nothing but a simultaneous parallel projection from a place UNSEEN. And as a projection, it has no will and no life and no mind of its own. It has no identity. That is why it does not really exist. There is no world. It's imagined.

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way."

"There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you."

"There is nothing in the world that has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail."

"The world that you see is what you have put there to see; nothing more and nothing less."

"A miracle of healing proves that separation is without effect."

"Time lasted but an instant in your mind, with no effect upon eternity."

"The world may seem to cause you pain. And yet the world, as causeless, has no power to cause. As an effect, it cannot make effects. As an illusion, it is what you wish."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The ego's logic is as impeccable as that of the Holy Spirit, because your mind has all the means at its disposal to side with Heaven or earth, as it elects. But let us again remember that both are in you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you believe bodies and sickness are real, you will look upon bodies suffering and want to fix them. The nightmare of things going wrong compels you to do something in guilt and desperation. So you try to heal, but you are simultaneously reinforcing the sickness with a belief in it. You attack the sickness to try to destroy it, and fight against it wishing it would leave.

Some small measure of healing can be possible this way, beacuse there is at least a partial desire to heal and help, and this can have some effect. But it is thwarted by the conviction that it won't work, based on an ongoing attack upon the victim.

By seeing them as a body, and as sick, as if true, you pull them down from being an immortal perfect Christ being in heaven and frame them as weak and suffering, which is an attempt to weaken and destroy them.

True healing completely ignores the sickness, recognizing that sickness and bodies are lies. They are not true or real, and what they present is a decoy designed to tempt you away from the truth. The bodies screams with its fits of proclamation as to what is wrong with a person and all the ways the are guilty.

To heal is to look past this with forgiveness, to not be deceived and to not listen to what the body says is true. The forms of sickness do not matter, the type of sickness does not matter, the alleged severety or length does not matter, and how it seemed to arrive deos not matter.

Instead the healer looks to the truth and focuses only on what is actually real, not deceived by false illusions. You look for the fact that the person in God's creation is already perfect, already immortal, already unharmed and already whole. This IS the truth about them, which their body and sickness are designed to hide.

So you must recognize that the sickness is a deceptive lie, a form of denial, covering up the truth that the person is NOT sick at all. The mind is playing games and covering over perfection with imperfection. Our focus should be only on the perfection of the person.

In fact, in truth, this means the person does not really need to be healed, because their spiritual self is still as it always was - perfect and unchanging, incapable of sickness, unable to die, and always the same. It is only their mind which seems distorted and lost, trying to form pictures of suffering that don't apply.

By focusing on the true light of the person you become glad and thankful to God that he has blessed you with this divine holy gift that is your brother. And so your brother is seen as YOUR savior and healer. And by thus recognizing his changeless perfection, he shares that perfection from God with you and you reflect it back to him.

As you become aware in your mind of the Holy Spirit in him, the changeless perfection in him, and given that your light IS your brother's light, and your mind IS part of his mind, you lift up his mind FOR him and help him to remember his own light. He thus is healed because you saw him AS healed, which is a fact and a truth and a reality, and not a wish or a desire. Something to recognize.

By recognizing that your brother is healed, this strengthens his view of himself in what seems to be his own mind, because your minds are shared. And so he is resurrected in your sight and the shining of this light INTO his mind AS his own shared light and identity, prevents him from having such strong belief in his own separation.

True healing is thus the extending and sharing of light and power and life from your mind into your brother's mind to enlighten and brighten his mind so that he can see his own perfection.

"Healing ONLY STRENGTHENS. Magic always tries to weaken. Healing perceives NOTHING in the healer that everyone else does not share WITH him. Magic ALWAYS sees something special in the healer, which he believes he can offer as a gift to someone who does NOT have it."

"You might well ask why SOME healing CAN result from this kind of thinking, and there is a real reason for this. However misguided the "magical healer" may be, and however much he may be trying to strengthen his ego, HE IS ALSO TRYING TO HELP. He IS conflicted and unstable, but AT TIMES he is offering SOMETHING to the Sonship, and the ONLY thing the Sonship can ACCEPT IS healing."

"Learning is constant and so vital in its power for change that a Son of God can recognize his power in an instant, and change the world in the next. That is because by changing HIS mind he has changed the most powerful device that was ever created FOR change."

"When you heal, that is exactly what you ARE learning (doing). You are recognizing the changeless mind in your brother by perceiving (knowing) that he could NOT have changed his mind. That is how you perceive the Holy Spirit in him. It is ONLY the Holy Spirit in him that never changes His mind. He himself must think he CAN, or he would not perceive himself as sick. He therefore does not know what his self IS. If YOU see only the changeless in him, you have not really changed him at all. But by changing your mind about HIS FOR him, you help him undo the change his ego thinks it has made in him."

"Our brothers ARE forgetful. That is why they need your remembrance of Me and Him who created Me. Through this remembrance you can change THEIR minds about themselves, as I can change YOURS. Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

"The mind WE share IS shared by all our brothers, and as we see them truly, they WILL be healed. Let YOUR minds shine with mine upon their minds, and by our gratitude to them make THEM aware of the light in THEM. This light will shine back upon YOU and on the whole Sonship because this IS your proper gift to God."

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves. Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are DENYING TO THEMSELVES. If they knew the truth about themselves, they could not be sick. The task of the miracle-worker thus becomes to DENY THE DENIAL OF TRUTH. The sick must heal THEMSELVES, for the truth is IN them. But, having OBSCURED it, the light in ANOTHER mind must shine into theirs, because that light IS theirs."

"But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals."

"When I am healed, I am not healed alone."

"Healing is an act of thought by which two minds perceive their oneness, and become glad. This gladness calls to every part of the Sonship to rejoice with them, and let God Himself go out into them and through them."

"The miracle-worker begins by PERCEIVING light, and translates HIS perception into sureness by continually extending it, and ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT. Its EFFECTS assure him IT IS THERE. The therapist does not heal; he LETS HEALING BE. HE can point to darkness, but he CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF, for light is NOT of him. But being FOR him, it MUST be for his patient."