Here's why having a thought of attack or judgement about someone else automatically includes you and attacks you.

Mind in its natural state is free of all judgements and attacks. It is "empty". It sees reality for what it is with no interpretation.

In order for mind have a 'judgement' about someone, the only way mind can do this is to generate some kind of situation within itself that looks like a judgement. An attack thought.

So within the mind itself, made from mind, mind has to invent images, forms, thoughts, impressions, sensations, which put a judgement into the mind's experience. Otherwise the mind wouldn't be able to PERCEIVE that there is a judgement taking place. Mind can only experience what is within itself and is absolutely blind to anything external (because there is nothing external, really).

So now the mind is having a judgement about "someone", but it couldn't create this judgement outside of itself. It's setting off nuclear bombs about this so-called other person, but the fallout from that explosion is affecting the mind because it's all taking place inside the mind.

Even though the mind is having a judgement ABOUT something that it thinks is outside of itself - beyond the body identity - the actual experience of the judgement and the conditions that this judgement creates, are happening inside the confines of the body-mind.

So that means it's happening to you. Not only is it happening to you just as much as it's happening to someone else, it's actually ONLY happening to you, and not happening to someone else at all!

So to perceptually attack someone else, you have to put attack into your mind. Your mind has to believe in attack, and it goes both ways. The mind doesn't conceive of 'attack on xyz person' hoping to escape how that attack feels, it conceives of 'attack' in general. And that means, the same rules it applies to someone else, applies to itself.

The mind cannot perceive or experience anything outside of itself. It's like, the ocean cannot know what life is like in a desert - it can't go there, it doesn't exist there, it can only be aware of what's in the ocean.

So you THINK that you can use your mind to make up stuff 'about someone not myself'. You THINK you have this ability to objectively sit on the sidelines and judge and attack and have absolutely no effects from this at all. That's absolutely mistaken and a totally ego-based self-deception. Nobody has this ability. It's a myth. If you want bombs to go off against other people, you have to set them off within you, and pretend that they're having an affect on someone else. Good luck with that.

So you have this vested interest in not attacking 'others' because in fact it doesn't even attack others, it attacks you.

Try hating someone or being really angry at them, at the same time as loving yourself. Any luck with that? It's not possible. You can't maintain a state of mind for love to exist while simultaneously having a state of mind where hate/fear/guilt/judgement/attack exists. YOUR mental condition has to degrade in order to generate hatred. Hatred destroys you. Your mental condition has to become unconscious and blocked in order for you not to see love in someone. And by not seeing it in someone, those blocks will block your own awareness of your own love. You put up walls to keep others out, and to keep you in a prison.

So you see you can't do anything to others and think that you're getting away with it, or that you are not going to be affected in some way. You are deeply affected, and ONLY you are affected, when you really get down to it. So it's utterly futile.

You have this interest in not attacking others not because you even can attack others, but because every single time you do this you do not realize that you are ONLY attacking yourself, YOUR mind suffers, YOUR mind changes into a hate machine, YOU are experiencing the hate, and other people aren't even experiencing it.

You think you can generate 'stuff' in you that somehow leaks out and overflows and travels over to other people and does stuff to them. You think you have these weapons of warfare, the power to affect someone else. You don't. It's a total myth. If someone doesn't choose to experience effects they will not. If you're in a judging hateful mood and you're going around believing you're capable of attacking people, and the people are all laughing and not taking it seriously, obviously you don't have the power to affect them. You're deluded.

You are the only one who is upset.

If someone else is having a problem, and you feel concerned, there is something mistaken going on in your mind.

There is actually an ego reaction, based on the hierarchy of illusions, which says that based on the perceived severity of the situation, you should be having a certain amount of reaction.

Just even perceiving that someone ELSE is having a problem, seems to be enough of a belief in a "cause" happening outside of you, even if it not perceived as happening TO you, to produce a sense of "effects" showing up in your mind.

If it's you believing that someone else's body is under attack, this would seem not to be about you at all. But it is, because your mind is having the belief in attack. And even if it's someone "not me" seeming to be attacked, just the acceptance that it is occurring is enough to cause your mind to generate fear thoughts.

So then the question arises, is it possible when presented with situations in which other people are suffering, to be completely unmoved by it. Is it possible to not have a reaction, to not go into fear, or into diagnosis mode, or attempting to react to what seems very real.

And then this further leads to, is it OKAY to not react? Is it okay to remain calm and peaceful and seemingly "disconnected" from what is supposed to be a "normal reaction"? Is it okay to be happy when someone is upset, calm when someone is stressing out, peaceful when someone is in pain, etc. That basically, your inner state and emotion and mental condition becomes NOT DEPENDENT ON the external world.

Somehow this means transcending the hierarchy of illusions, orders of severity/difficulty, belief in seriousness, problems seeming to be real, other people's problems seeming to be real, and sinking into a kind of detached "insulation" or self-contained independently chosen state of being, that isn't always the EFFECT OF or a REACTION TO what's happening in the world. The idea of being in a state which the WORLD did not cause, is quite radically new.

Can I become not involved. Can I remain untangled from the illusions. In the face of dramas, can I not buy into them. Can I remain happy and peaceful at all times, which seems very very alien to the state of being constantly tossed around on the ocean waves like a rollercoaster of stressful reactions. Can I become independent of the world's causalities, immune to them, invulnerable to them, such that I am literally no longer AFFECTED by anything. And such that whatever state I experience *I* have chosen, and the world has not caused to happen in me.

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

There was a man I posted a video about recently who killed several people. This man was hallucinating that the people were trying to kill him. In his self-defense, and terror, he thought he was completely sane in ending their lives.

He did not see these people for who they were. He did not see their innocence. He saw something in them which was not there and which they were not doing. But he was convinced they were his enemy. He perceived them as an enemy and was certain the only sane course of action was to destroy them before they destroyed him.

Obviously this is insanity, but this is how the ego functions in all of us. When we are in the ego we go into a PRIVATE WORLD in which we hallucinate and project our OWN sin onto other people. We perceive it there, as though it is not our own stuff and as though it is real. We don't even see the person for who they are, and instead interact with that hallucinated projected enemy self, as if it's really out there.

In a sense, when we do this, we are no better than murdering other people. It may seem to be to less of a degree, but it's the same mechanism. And yet, it is not really other people that we're attacking, because as soon as you choose ego you go into a private world. You are then actually attacking a portion of the inside of your own mind, where you see a hallucinated version of your own sin and guilt. You attack your own ego. All of this has nothing to do with other people.

We need to learn to let go of identifying ourselves as ego, i.e. sinful and guilty, so that we can gain a clarity that is very important. We need to become able to truly SEE people as who they really are (Christ, innocent). But we're not going to be ABLE to see that in them if it is not also our own identity. Anything less than love will project a private world of self attack, in which we are at war with ourselves and THINK that it's a war with other people.

Anyone with enough awareness to KNOW that they are Christ, that they are innocent, CANNOT fall for the impression that someone else's insanity has anything to do with them. Someone else's self attack, someone else's private world, someone else's hallucination, or someone else's attempt to project their illusions onto you, has NOTHING to do with who and what you are. It doesn't even touch on who you are, is not targeted at who you are, and doesn't even acknowledge your identity. It's like the person is sending out packages with address labels that are for... not you, even though they're throwing them at you. They just do not register with you. They don't land with your identity.

You then have enough awareness to SEE clearly that the person is actually experiencing insanity. What they are accusing you of they are accusing themselves of. What they think is true of you is true of them, to themselves. Their belief that their enemy is evil is really their own belief that they are evil. They are having a mental illness. They are inside a private hallucinatory world, interact with make-believe selves, and it's literally got NOTHING to do with you at all.

IF you can get to that awareness, which requires that your own awareness be full and know yourself as innocence, you will have the clarity you need to NOT fall for the delusion that someone else's madness is about you. You will see, instead, that their entire experience is a CALL FOR LOVE. THEY need help. It's got nothing to do with you personally. This also will reveal to you that you are completely invulnerable, completely inaccessible to their ego attacks, because YOU do not believe that you are made of the things that they are accusing you of.

Therefore, this gives you access to a freedom, an awareness that nobody CAN attack what you ARE, because what you ARE has shown you that everyone else is trapped in private worlds. Their attacks are on THEMSELVES, and therefore, actually, NOBODY IS REALLY ATTACKING YOU. That then will give you natural confidence and fearlessness, and compassion. And you will be able to come from love.

Nobody has ever really attacked you. You are innocent and immortal and invulnerable. Nobody's harsh words have ever really been toward you. Nobody's abuse was ever an abuse of what you are. You are not abusable. You cannot be defiled in your innocence. You are naturally OUTSIDE of the ego entirely, outside of people's private reality bubbles. You are outside of other people's private worlds, you are outside of their hallucinated attacks, and you are outside of their delusion that their rage has anything to do with you. What a peaceful, safe place to be!

You only are "affected", which really means, are attacking yourself, when YOU believe that you are less than innocence and lovable. That means you believe you are ego, and you are now having your own private world of hallucinations. And other people's hallucinations will start to resonate with your false truth, and you will believe they join together and that therefore other people ARE now capable of attacking you. And when they express their hallucinations toward what you are, you will believe they really are about you, and you will really generate "hurt" in yourself (really done by your own mind), believing that they put it there. That's the mode you have to get OUT of, by reclaiming the Atonement.

Atonement is the awareness of your innocence, your invulnerability, and your immortality. And in this view of clarity, you'll laugh when you see that NOBODY is actually even attacking what you are AT ALL! They're all too busy attacking themselves, and are all lost and unconscious in their own little worlds. How freeing! Nothing real can be threatened, because nothing real is BEING threatened.

"The Holy Spirit is the IDEA of healing. Being thought, the idea GAINS AS IT IS SHARED."

As we allow ourselves to be healed, we become healed, and in turn become healers. We are able to give the miracles we have received, and we can give healing to others.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal."

"No one can give what he has not received. To give a thing requires first you have it in your own possession."

"Those who are healed become instruments of healing." (note that an instrument is used by something HIGHER than the instrument - in this case the Holy Spirit).

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another."

We're asked in ACIM to perform healing WITH the Holy Spirit. That means he is included in the healing process, and is actually the way by which the healing occurs. This is because HE is the only healer and therapist. Only HE understands miracles. He is the answer to the separation and KNOWS HOW to heal everything. You DO NOT know how to heal!

"the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him"

"The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION."

"help is His function"

"its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function."

"he (you) LETS HEALING BE"

"the nature of miracles you do not understand" "Nor do you DO them."

"HE (you) can point to darkness, but he (you) CANNOT bring light OF HIMSELF"

"What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world"

"what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them"

In effect, we act like a kind of portal or window THROUGH which the Holy Spirit's radiance of healing power extends. The light of God comes from God through him, through us, to others. We are not able to GENERATE this light ourselves.

We of ourselves really have NO power at all. But when we OPEN ourselves to him, and allow him to work WITH AND THROUGH us, we GAIN the power of God. And this power works ON ITS OWN, because love automatically extends and shines.

It's kind of like, the radiant shining light of God, which has healing power in it, shines from God THROUGH you, to others. Which is why "Miracles are a universal blessing from God through me (Jesus, as an example of a brother), to my all brothers". The light of God is God's light, which shines through you, and extends to others, healing them.

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles" or the way by which this miraculous power is bridged to you from God, so that it can be GIVEN TO OTHERS through you.

This is because in your creation, you are given the gift of giving, which means that God gives himself to create you, and creates you to BE a giver, so that HE can be given THROUGH you along WITH you, to co-create. He has given you something which you are meant to GIVE to others, to share with them, in order to have it.

"You CAN LEARN to bless, and CANNOT give WHAT YOU HAVE NOT. If, then, you OFFER blessing, it MUST have come FIRST TO YOURSELF. And you must also have ACCEPTED IT AS YOURS, for how else could you GIVE IT AWAY? This is WHY your miracles offer YOU the testimony that YOU are blessed."

"Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

Healing miracles are a mirror of this creative dynamic, on Earth, whereby you give what you receive. And WHAT you receive (God's blessing/miracle) has within it the power to heal others, WITHOUT you having to know how it does it.

It's kind of like you are passing along or allowing to extend THROUGH you a power which you did not generate on your own, you did not author, but which you allow to TRANSFER as a form of communication. God shines through you, FOR you, and therefore FOR your "patient".

"The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark."

Your function is, in effect, to participate in the Holy Spirits's healing work, by sharing his function, allowing HIM to PASS ON his healing (of you) through you to others. In this, you don't really get to claim any credit for being a healer, or special, or the source of the healing.

HE heals YOU, FOR you. And you in turn allow him to heal others, FOR you, FOR them. Because he is the help that God has appointed and given. He is supposed to be the one who DOES the miracles.

"The Holy Spirit does NOT work by chance, and the healing that is of HIM ALWAYS works. And unless the healer ALWAYS heals BY Him, the results WILL vary."

"And that is why the Holy Spirit IS the only therapist."

"The Holy Spirit is the radiance that you must let to banish the idea of darkness."

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

"The text explains that the Holy Spirit is the Answer to all problems you have made."

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

This means that in truth the Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist, because ONLY he knows everything to be able to be certain how to heal everything. He is the GUARANTEE that the separation WILL be undone, because he has the power TO undo it entirely, given him by God. The Holy Spirit DOES NOT FAIL, and when He heals, IT ALWAYS WORKS. Your role then is really to LET HIM DO THE HEALING.

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist. He makes healing PERFECTLY clear in ANY situation in which He is the guide. ***The human therapist can only LET HIM FULFILL HIS FUNCTION. He needs no help for this.*** He WILL tell you EXACTLY what to do, to help ANYONE He sends to you FOR help, and will speak to him through you, IF YOU DO NOT INTERFERE. Remember that you ARE choosing a guide for helping, and the wrong choice will NOT help. But remember also that THE RIGHT ONE WILL. Trust Him, for help is His function, and He is of God."

"We once said that the Holy Spirit is the Answer. He is the answer to EVERYTHING, because He knows what the answer to everything IS."

When I heal with the Holy Spirit, I am not really doing anything. I am specifically instructed what to do, to fulfill my part of the function I am sharing with him. I may be told to place my hand on a specific part of the body. I may be told when the healing is done. I may be asked to move to a different position.

But more often I will be asked to "rest" or "relax". In effect I am really being told to just take a chill pill and sit on the sidelines while I let HIM USE ME and work through me. He works through my body and through my hands. The more that I don't try to do anything at all, the less obstructing I am. I pretty much just relax and rest and just let him get on with it.

I have NO CLUE how he does what he does. I do not know what he is doing, only that he is doing it. My body shakes and my hands tremble and there is an intensity and various back-and-forth motions and so on. But these happen on their own, caused BY him, or as side effects of what HE is doing.

This means that I have to be willing to trust and to sort of "get out of the way", and to "not interfere". And you can be sure that at times my ego does try to BECOME the healer. The ego in me starts trying to say things to make healing happen, which really has little to no effect anyway. Or I start thinking that I need to force or push, or to hold my hand differently, or to think forgiveness thoughts, or to start doing affirmations, or say lofty things, and none of this is necessary. I am told to relax or even to stop.

In particular Jesus instructs me by saying "let me". Which I've come now to learn to mean, allow him to use the Holy Spirit through me to perform a healing on a person FOR me and FOR them, without me doing anything other than being used as a kind of vessel. It may still entail me "laying on hands" and spending some time involved in the process, but my participation is minimal.

It does take the willingness to allow something OTHER than yourself to DO stuff through you and through your body. This may be unsettling at first, learning to trust to allow some unseen force to make stuff happen IN your body and THROUGH it. To see that, even if you are standing there doing nothing of your own volition, your body is moving, even BEING moved by some unseen power.

Trusting that it WILL move on its own, without your intention to move it. And then seeing it consistently do so, without interference or motivation or control on your part. I am now at a point where I can let the Holy Spirit literally move my body parts ON HIS OWN. He can actually make my arms and hands move around with no motor intentions of my own.

"For you can be AWARE of what you cannot see, and it can become compellingly real to you, as its presence becomes manifest THROUGH you. Do His work, for you SHARE in His function. 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."

"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."

"Concern yourselves not with the EXTENSION of holiness, for the nature of miracles you do NOT understand. Nor do you DO them. It is their extension, far beyond the limits you perceive, that demonstrates you did NOT do them. Why should you worry how the miracle extends to all the Sonship, when you do not understand the miracle itself?"

So here Jesus is clear, you don't even really DO miracles yourself. That is to say, you do not originate or source the power or the light that produces healing. You do not "use your own power". You are not the "battery" that charges someone. Instead, the Holy Spirit temporarily USES your system to infuse your battery with HIS power so that it extends beyond yourself to someone else. HE brings the power from God, and you allow it to extend.

This is also reflected here, where Jesus tells us that the miracle extends through you WITHOUT your help, because it's really something that's being given BY GOD. "Miracles mean life and God is the giver of life." "Miracles are a universal blessing from God." Their RADIANCE or GIVING to another is essentially AUTOMATIC, because you give it freely through sharing and letting it go. Ie not inhibiting it or stopping it from FLOWING THROUGH you.

"The ONLY way to heal is to be healed. The miracle extends WITHOUT your help. But you ARE needed that it can BEGIN. ACCEPT the miracle of healing, and it WILL go forth, because of what it IS. It is its NATURE to extend itself the instant it is born. And it is born the instant it is offered and RECEIVED. No-one can ask ANOTHER to be healed. But he can let HIMSELF be healed, and thus offer the other what he has received. Who can bestow upon another what he does not HAVE? And who can SHARE what he denies HIMSELF? The Holy Spirit speaks to YOU. He does not speak to someone ELSE. Yet BY your listening, His Voice extends, BECAUSE you have accepted what He says."

Essentially then you are to receive help and healing from the Holy Spirit to get your own mind into a state where it is more trusting of HIS help. Where you are willing to RECEIVE miracles for yourself, which you are willing to SHARE with others. You become infused with healing and love and power. And HIS light now shines out from you ON ITS OWN. This light "performs" the healing in another. The light comes from God and you just allow it to pass through you. You become a kind of CHANNEL or MEDIUM THROUGH which love, light, life, healing etc is communicated to your brother.

"We have said that the Holy Spirit is the MOTIVATION for miracles. This is because He ALWAYS tells you that ONLY the mind is real, because only the mind CAN BE SHARED."

"You CANNOT choose to escape His care, because that is not His will. But you CAN choose to accept His care, and use the infinite power OF His care for all those He created BY it."

"The Holy Spirit is invisible, but you CAN see the results of His Presence, and through them, you will learn that He is there. What He enables you to do is clearly NOT of this world, for miracles violate every law of reality, as this world judges it. Every law of time and space, of magnitude and mass, of prediction and control, is transcended, for what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly beyond ALL of them. Perceiving His RESULTS, you will understand where He MUST be, and finally KNOW what He is."

What I have learned now is to let Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit perform the healing. As in "You will see healing through your hands through me." This means acknowledging that the healing power or force or love which CAUSES the healing, the remedy, is something given by God and passes TO me and THROUGH me. I can let it pass through me when I have been willing to receive it for myself, because that means I am unblocking myself and getting MY blocks out of HIS way, so that HE can shine THROUGH me.

This means also recognizing I am NOT SPECIAL as "a healer". I have NO CLUE how to heal anyone to be honest. I don't know how bodies work, what makes emotions work, or the intricacies of the actual mind or how to make it sane. I cannot claim selfish credit for the healing that takes place, beacuse I am not the one doing it. Yes i am involved, yes I am facilitating, yes I am using my hands, yes I am maintaing a relaxed and non-interfering state of mind, but I am not the CAUSE of the healing. All "glory" for that goes to God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

At least, for now anyway. We are told that eventually we will become far more directly in-touch with all power in heaven and earth, that "I am not afraid but all powerful", and that by acknowledging that "all power is of God is to gain all power." But right now my experience is that I a pretty much powerless to do anything OF MYSELF, I don't HAVE any special powers, and I don't know HOW to heal. But I do know how to trust the Holy Spirit and Jesus to do healing through me.

"A better and FAR more helpful way to think of miracles is this: You do NOT understand them, either in part OR whole. Yet you have DONE them. Therefore, YOUR understanding CANNOT be necessary. Yet it is still impossible to accomplish what you do not understand. And so there must be Something IN you that DOES understand."

"As God communicates to the Holy Spirit in you, so does the Holy Spirit TRANSLATE His communications THROUGH you, so YOU can understand them."

"The Holy Spirit will teach me this, if I will let Him."

"I do NOT feel guilty, because the Holy Spirit will undo ALL the consequences of my wrong decision IF I WILL LET HIM. I WILL to let Him by allowing Him to decide for God for me."

"You understand that you are healed when you give healing. You accept forgiveness as accomplished in yourself when you forgive. You recognize your brother as yourself, and thus do you perceive that you are whole. There is no miracle you cannot give, for all are given you. Receive them now by opening the storehouse of your mind where they are laid, and giving them away."

"But YOU must see the works I do through you, or you will not perceive that I have done them unto YOU. Do not set limits on what you believe I can do THROUGH YOU, or you will not accept what I can do FOR you. For it is done ALREADY, and unless you give ALL that you have received, you will not know that your Redeemer liveth and that YOU have awakened WITH Him. Redemption is recognized ONLY by sharing it."

Sometimes, we can use the truth to deny what we really believe. We can say, ok in theory I get it, there is no world, people are not bodies, death isn't real, sickness is a lie etc. It all makes sense. But, that doesn't mean we really really deep down believe it. If we really believed it we wouldn't be here in sick bodies trying to die.

So then the truth is that at this time, right now, we do believe in death and sickness and that people are bodies. We can bring in the truth as a concept that people are not bodies, and that which gets sick is not really a person, and if the body dies the person hasn't really died. But at the same time the mind is still actually believing that people are bodies that get sick and die, and that still generates suffering. I'm doing the course, but life still sucks, and this is why.

Given that we do believe all kinds of lies, all kinds of mistakes, all kinds of illusions and falsehoods, as if they are real, we could be using these higher loftier truths, these theories, to hide from how we're doing right now. We could be hiding behind it and using it as a shield to cover up and deny and not look at and not recognize what we ACTUALLY believe right now. More of a spiritualised-ego wishful thinking, in love with the ideas but not living it.

I suppose that's some kind of a "bypass". We are giving lip service and partial belief to something higher, but are then using it to deceive ourselves into thinking that we no longer believe anything else. As if just by getting it intellectually that's going to undo all of our investment and belief and commitment to suffering and death. And doing a few lessons is going to fix it overnight. And just because I read some text it means I have no ego left.

There is in fact part of me still that does believe, for example, that my wife was a body, and that the body became horribly sick, so sick that it died completely, and now she is dead. That's an actual ongoing belief that I have, even if I strive towards higher truths that death is not real and she is still living in Spirit eternally. And that belief does still generate suffering.

Avoiding the fact that we do still believe in all kinds of ego bullshit, is a way to keep those beliefs protected. Covered over with a layer of garnish in the form of higher truths and platitudes. We keep telling ourselves we don't believe these things over and over again but deep down we still do.

And so the ego uses the truth to hide the lies, and keep them as sacred treasures. We can look and sound and seem all spiritual and as though we're clever at grasping metaphysics and are doing the lessons and all that to try to wake up. But it can easily be used by the ego, which is totally committed to the reality of death, to avoid admitting to what we DO believe. We're perfectly adept at using ACIM to add another layer of denial over everything the ego treasures in order to keep it going.

We do believe in suffering and death and sickness and pain and misery. We do believe Earth is reality and is God's cruel creation. We do believe that death is salvation and suffering is atonement. We do believe that guilt is justified and fear is totally rational. We do believe that we're not safe and that we are in constant danger. We do believe that the death of a body is an absolute loss of a part of reality that can never be regained.

We can't get past these beliefs if we aren't willing to at least admit that we do believe them. And we can't get past it by just going into denial and trying to take on a higher truth in order to COVER OVER those beliefs and pretend they're not there. A thorough investigation of what you DO believe in all honesty is required, to at least admit that you DO believe in it, in order to change your mind. Otherwise why would you bother.

This is also why Jesus says that we are supposed to admit that we DO believe the separation from God happened, that we DO believe we are a body, that we DO believe in things going wrong. But only so that we can THEN, in light of that, realize that we need and want to do something to correct it, and can properly undo those beliefs. If we just cover it up, Jesus refers it to a "misuse of denial".

"The Separation HAS occurred. To deny this is merely to misuse denial. However, to concentrate on error is merely a further misuse of legitimate psychic mechanisms. The true corrective procedure, which has already been described as the proper use of the spiritual eye (or true vision), is to accept the error temporarily, BUT ONLY as an indication that IMMEDIATE correction is mandatory. This establishes a state of mind in which the Atonement can be accepted without delay." UrT2E50

So we do need to accept at least temporarily that we do not want anything to do with God. That we DO believe we are separate from God living apart from him devoid of him and that we do not want him. We hate God and want him dead. We have these beliefs. We find ourselves in spacetime in a human body pretending to be flesh and bones and believing this it is what we really are. We have to admit that this is our position if we want to get out of it. We can't get out of it by just hammering ourselves with theories and statements about what is true while keeping these beliefs going.

For me, I recently looked at this and recognised that I do in fact believe I am separate from God. And therefore, because of that, I need to now find a way to return to God. Almost like the very beginning of the journey, starting from scratch. It was as though I hadn't wanted to look at the fact that I did squarely believe in being separate, and had spent years avoiding that belief and pretending that I didn't believe it.

What keeps us from awakening and reality is the hidden desires we have to want nothing to do with it, and that has to be uncovered and relinquished. In effect, we don't get to God by just trying to go there, we have to unshackle ourselves from the chains that bind us to hell first. The ego commitment to death and the fact that you do want to die, has to be looked at. You want the opposite of God, which is why you're here in the first place. Just smothering that with shiny icing isn't going to make it go away.

Similarly in grief and loss I was not feeling happy, and had to admit that I was not happy, and that therefore because I wanted something else i wanted to be happy. And that was a stepping stone to seeking out that happiness, and realising that God is that happiness. I might not have done that if I would have kept pretending that I was happy. I didn't want to admit I was not happy because I thought that was "being more ego", but in fact it's merely admitting to how much ego I already believe in. I was trying to cover it over with denial and illusions of truth and fanciful ideas and lofty metaphysics.

We have to realise we're in the shitty stinky pig-pen if we want to realise that you're the prodigal son and want to go home. The way out of hell requires realising that you're in there in the first place. And the fact is that most of us in the world are so in denial that we don't even believe we're really suffering at all. Suffering has to be recognised AS suffering before you'll be willing to want something else. So long as it is kept hidden behind an illusion of the truth, you'll keep it going.

There is a law of God, in that God must give all of himself to create something. And what he creates must therefore inherit everything from God. Nothing can be left out. A son of God inherits EVERYTHING. And so the creations of God are created "in the image and likeness" of God.

A Son of God in turn is able to create things by passing onto them ALL that they have received from God. Which literally means, passing God onto them. As such, your creations inherit from you what you have inherited from God. This is extension.

There is no limit to what is given, and no limit to what is received. Therefore, the son of a son has ALL of what the son has, and ALL of what God has. Similarly, you as a creation of a creator MUST be a co-creator, and MUST be able to create life just like God can. You create in the image and likeness of yourself and God.

"If creation is sharing, it cannot create what is unlike itself. It can share only what it IS."

Now, on Earth things are not remotely like this. A fleeting glance at it will tell you that objects are NOT co-creators. They do not inherit all of their parent's attributes. When there is birth, something is lacking. A child is not an identical image of the parents. No two bodies are alike. Every object lacks something that others have. Nothing has everything. And for sure objects cannot create more objects.

For example a car cannot extend itself and produce more cars. Houses don't give birth to houses. And rocks do not produce baby rocks. We might say that organic life forms come closer to creation, in that they do seem to reproduce and generate anew. However, if you look closely you'll see that they DO NOT pass on the fullness of what they have.

"In this world, it is impossible to create."

A child will inherit SOME attributes from one parent, and SOME from another, and will not look entirely like either of them. Each created life form only loosely resembles its creator, is always lacking something, and is never a true "spitting image". Indeed the child is separated from its creator and is even capable of changing itself, without the parent changing.

This happens because physical objects are not creations. They cannot be creations, because they are not CREATORS. They CANNOT EXTEND. This means that not only is the world not a creation of God's, it is not a CO-CREATOR with God either. This is why ACIM says:

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

There is NO extension in this world. Physical reproduction is separation, it is not creation. Cell division or growth is separation. Birth is separation. There is no sharing and there is no extension of life and no real inheritance. Objects cannot create more of themselves and they cannot hand-down their personal attributes to what they create, if anything.

What this means is, that this world really is founded on an idea of NOT EXTENDING GOD. It is founded on an idea of unwillingness to create, a desire to NOT give fully, a withdrawal and a resistance and a fear. It is founded in a mindset of separating and limiting and reducing and not sharing fully. The end result, is that the world CANNOT GIVE. It cannot give because it does not HAVE anything to give, because it has NOT inherited from God.

"It takes great learning both to realize and to accept the fact that the world has nothing to give."

A way to describe this situation is simply this. THE WORLD IS A DEAD END. It is what happens when you attempt to STOP creation from happening. It is a lack of extension. As a result, its symbols, images, forms, objects, and matter, all express and represent the idea of ENDING the creative process. You make something, and it's done, and that's the end of it. You create something, and it stops, and it does not keep creating. You cause something, and its game over. Everything ends.

"The world of time is the world of illusion."

"No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

"How can a world of time and place exist if you remain as God created you?" Essentially then, the world is not a world of co-creation, or extension, or the continuation of life, or the unending inheritance from one to another, or the total full giving of anything to anyone. It is a world is limits and holding back and unwillingness. A world where life is not allowed to be permanent or eternal, and ultimately a world of death. A dead-end in a dead-end universe.

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped."

The reason you cannot escape anything here is because it is a DEAD END, a closed off corner surrounded by walls of division and isolation. This is why everything in the world of form (objects, bodies, planets) leads to death. It was born from an idea of death, an idea of ending life, or putting a stop to creation. It was made from a desire to kill God and his Son and to put a stop to extension. It was not made with love or with an intention that it last forever. And so all things in it die eventually.

"Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death."

There is no other reason for this other than that we had to resist and deny God (life, eternity, creation) in order TO make this world. And to hold it in place, we have to keep denying God. And when God is not denied, the world of death cannot remain. Its forms, its objects, its human bodies, it mountains and rivers, its planets and galaxies, all of it cannot remain without the idea of death. Without the idea of putting a stop to the co-creative extension of eternal life.

"Without the idea of death there is no world. All dreams will end with this one. This is salvation's final goal; the end of all illusions. And in death are all illusions born. What can be born of death and still have life?"

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

The world, Earth, is a dream of death. It was made by trying to make heaven DIE, and so was already formed from an idea of death EVEN AS you made it. It is nothing more than a dream and will not remain when dreaming is over. This HAS to be true, otherwise we would be seeing all things creating all things, we would see total inheritance from all objects, we would see endless life and permanence and no death of any kind. This is not a world of life-forms, it is a world of death-forms. It is a world of exile outside of heaven.

"There IS no life outside of Heaven. Where God created life, there life must be. In ANY state apart from Heaven, life is illusion. At best, it SEEMS like life; at worst, like death. Yet both are judgments on what is NOT life, equal in their inaccuracy and lack of meaning. Life not in Heaven is impossible, and what is NOT in Heaven is not ANYWHERE. "

"Outside of Heaven, only the conflict of illusions stands; senseless, impossible, and beyond ALL reason, and yet perceived as an eternal BARRIER to Heaven. Illusions ARE but forms. Their content is NEVER true."

A world where things come to an end, is not a living world, or a created world, or an eternal world, or God's world. It cannot create and it cannot live and it cannot exist forever. It must be a world of death, opposite to life, and guaranteed to end, because it is made from the idea of ending existence, and so it even denies its own existence.

"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."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world. et the REAL world HAS the power to touch you even here BECAUSE YOU LOVE IT. And what you call with love WILL come to you. LOVE ALWAYS ANSWERS, being unable to deny a call for help, or not to hear the cries of pain that rise to it, from every part of this strange world you made, but do not want. The only effort you need make, to give this world away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

To be a healer of another person's mind, you have to begin by forming a connection to that person. Somehow your mind has to be in a state where it has ACCESS to the other mind.

The only way to gain access to a brother is through joining in love. Only love can be truly shared, and love is communication. Love opens you up and plugs you in, facilitating oneness, union, connection and joining.

This means that at the very least, you cannot effectively heal someone if you have not connected with them through love. The gap of separation between you has to be surpassed first.

This leads to the question of whether you are being truly healing and helpful, or whether you are being harmful and attacking. If you are lacking in love in some way, there is an attempt to separate off your mind from another. If there is any belief in harm or hurting or scapegoating or making sins real, it's going to pull you away from their mind and erect walls that come between you.

This obviously tells you that it's not truly possible to even get access to the mind of another while you're in a state of attack. If you are not healing, you are hurting. "What is not love is murder."

In order to, on your part, cease contributing to suffering in the other person, you yourself have to be free from attack. When you are not in "attack mode", you are in healing mode. Attack mode separates you off, healing mode joins you together with your brother.

Love is a bridge, fusing minds together as one. In order to access the bridge you have to be sufficiently loving. A transmission of anything less than love places the bridge out of reach. But fully loving the other person is a very intimate, visible, exposed and embracing state.

So in one way or another, healing requires that you join with the other person in a fusion of oneness and love. Generally speaking this means you have to be in a loving state, generate love, or transmit and receive love.

The state of joined minds must transcend space and time. In fact you are able to do this at a distance ie remotely, for someone you are not even physically close to, because space doesn't enter into it. Your mind is able to communicate with another mind regardless of distance.

Which leads to realizing that the state of "sharing" places you more or less "in the mind" of the other person. You can visualize this in terms of you being physically one with the other person's body. You can visualize it as resonating with their frequency/energy. You can do it through feeling and empathy. You can also tune in by feeling that where you are, you are IN the other person or their body, as if you are where their body is, and your own body is overlapping theirs.

So there are two ingredients here. 1. Loving enough to activate a shared communication channel or bridge across which love can be shared. And 2. Transcending space and being one with the other person beyond bodies. In the sharing of space, you overlap with your brother and are in him.

This forming of a loving connection and sharing a space, now places you in a position to SHARE what you have to give. You can now offer and give and radiate and bestow love to this person in a blessing ("Miracles are a universal blessing from God"), feeling it within yourself, which is shared in intimacy with the person due to your overlapping oneness. What is yours is theirs and vice versa. What is happening in you is happening in them.

This sharing state of union now allows your mind to light up the other mind. To restore sanity to it. To supply a lack of love, life and energy to it. With your minds joined, in a oneness kind of state, you kind of now become "co-thinkers". A mutual team. Two minds acting as one. Kind of like siamese twins where the two minds have to cooperate to get anything done.

That now means that it requires for BOTH of you to agree to believe and express the same thing, in order for it to be possible. If one of the two does not agree, they are in conflict and the action is prevented. This means then that if the other person believes they are sick, and you do not, they are prevented from being able to believe in, strengthen and express that belief.

They are thus trying to assert various lies about themselves which are destructive. Their mind is weaker. You are asserting truth about them which is constructive. Your mind is stronger. Your mind can thus influence their mind and "override" their weaker belief. Or to put it another way, you can enlighten them by shining your light into their mind so that that mind is theirs and is strengthened in them, because you share the same light.

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

The simple task therefore is to "supply a lack of light" ("miracles supply a lack" "given by those who temporarily have more to those who temporarily have less".) To supply the lack of light, you must shine brighter than the other person in terms of the degree of love.

To SUPPLY it at all, to get that light INTO their mind, your light has to not only be bright enough, but your mind has to be loving enough, so that your mind can actually gain ACCESS to the other mind through a connection of sharing.

To be able to "amplify" the light in another mind, like kindling a fire and enhancing the flame, you have to at first see the light in the other person. You have to recognize that they ARE light by knowing the truth about them. Which means looking to their christ self and beyond their body and beyond their sickness. You overlook those things through forgiveness, which is facilitated by a loving attitude, and look to their innocence and holiness. And upon finding the light in them, you acknowledge it is there.

"The miracle-worker ****begins by PERCEIVING light****, and translates HIS perception into sureness by ****continually extending it****, and ****ACCEPTING ITS ACKNOWLEDGMENT****." - this is talking about a SUSTAINED TRASMISSION OF LIGHT to another person and acknowledging/accepting that it HAS been received.

"****Its EFFECTS**** (increase in light, healing etc) 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."

In effect, your true perception, loving perception, allows you to forgive your brother and see the truth in him. See the light of christ or soul in him. And as you focus on constructively amplifying his truth, appreciating his light, his light is strengthened. The Holy Spirit in him is that light also.

"The idea of the Holy Spirit shares the property of other ideas because it follows the laws of the universe of which it is a part. It is strengthened ***by being given*** away. It increases in you ***as you give it to your brother***. Your brother does not have to be aware of the Holy Spirit in himself or in you for ***this miracle*** to occur."

Here Jesus is literally saying that if you GIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT (light) to your brother, it is PERFORMING A MIRACLE! Increasing your awareness of the Holy Spirit IN your brother, even if your brother has no idea that He is there, heals his mind.

This light that you shine, comes from God. God put the light in you, and you extend and express it. Your natural function is to "pass on" this light to others, to shine into them, to illuminate them, which shines away their darkness. The brighter you shine with love, the more sharing and connected you are, the more powerfully you will be able to "enlighten" them.

"Your minds are so powerful a light that you can look into theirs and enlighten them, as I can enlighten yours."

This is clearly a simple matter of SHINING brightly at people. The higher the level of sharing in oneness, the higher the level of love and light and miraculousness and healing. High love plugs you into their mind and shares it with them, transcending the gap of spacetime and the bodies and the world. You dwell with them in union and joining and sharing of oneness. And as you dwell there brightly, you light up their soul for them to see.

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad.""Miracles unite you with your brother."

"Miracles make minds one in God."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What seems to be the opposite of life is merely sleeping. When the mind elects to be what it is not, and to assume an alien power which it does not have, a foreign state it cannot enter, or a false condition not within its Source, it merely seems to go to sleep a while. It dreams of time; an interval in which what seems to happen never has occurred, the changes wrought are substance-less, and all events are nowhere. When the mind awakes, it but continues as it always was."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am still as God created me."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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."