The interesting thing about all blocks to awareness, is that there is always love behind them. The block is there to hide the love. The block also makes it seem like the love is not there. But if you were to remove the block, you would return to the awareness of love's presence, which has been there all along. This is why behind every grievance there is a miracle of love.

"The miracle behind this grievance will resolve it for me."

"The answer to this problem is the miracle which it conceals."

We began in love and we love everyone and everything. But then along comes ego stuff, grievances, hates, judgements, blame, anger, fear, guilt, sinfulness, darkness, to blot out the love and cover it up. But we truly do simply "cover it over" with a layer of untruth, to disguise it and make it seem like it's not there.

This means that no matter who you seem to be angry towards, you actually do love them behind that anger. Behind all physical objects there is also love. Behind the body there is love. Behind all attacks and judgements you love the thing you are attacking and judging. Underneath your hatred there is love. And beyond every layer of self condemnation there is love. It's already there, because it's your love of God which nothing can remove.

The course says that grievances and miracles are opposite. That a grievance hides a miracle. And if you apply forgiveness to the grievance to undo it, you will become aware of the miracle instead. ie if you remove the block to love, the love is revealed. It's kind of like removing the clouds so that the sun can shine. The sun is always there behind the clouds.

It's not as if, when you're in a grievance, there is no love anywhere. It does seem that way because a grievance is a denial of love, it's an attack and a belief in sin. Every grievance attacks love and attacks God and the sonship. But it does this only in an attempt to make it go away, which ultimately is a form of denial. You can't make love go away because love is permanent. All you can do in truth is hide it from your awareness and pretend it's not there. Like burying your head in the sand.

If you can remember that behind every grievance there is a miracle of love, then you know that the purpose of every grievance is to hide the love. And that means every grievance implies there is love there, a love which you're trying to use the grievance to hide. The grievance is serving a purpose of avoiding the truth. Admitting to the truth and waking up to reality exposes you to love again.

To do that you need to recognize the attack is there to serve a purpose. You aren't just attacking for no reason, or even just because you want to get rid of your sin and guilt. You're doing it to achieve a goal of keeping God away. Every attack upon yourself and every projected attack upon others, is only there to serve the goal of separation from God. You use it for that reason alone. You want to keep the separation going so that you will not be exposed to love.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING."

The removal of the blocks to love's presence, is merely the removal of all attempts to attack. Attack is sin, and also insanity. You can only attack yourself, so each time you are attacking you are trying to hurt yourself. Doing that hides your awareness from love, and is really the purpose of the attack. The aim of all attack is to resist the truth, to shut God out, to hide from reality, and to assert that you are not immortal. But without attack, only the truth of love remains.

Whatever you're upset about, it's not about anyone else, NO MATTER how much it seems to be someone else's fault.

Where is the upset located? Is your upset inside someone else's body? No, it's inside your body.

All of your feelings are inside your own body. All of your thoughts are inside of yourself as well. All of your beliefs and judgements and opinions and viewpoints are all inside of you.

Ideas leave not their source.

The way you feel, these are your feelings. They're not someone else's feelings.

Part of your upset entails an energetic link between you and another person in which you experience your upset feelings as though they are 'connected to' the other person. Or in other words, your belief that your are upset "because of them" links your emotional reactions to the other person as though the two of you are joined together by it.

But if you can remember and own your own feelings - these feelings you're having are YOUR feelings, nobody else's. This is how YOU feel. You are the one having these feelings. These aren't anyone else's feelings. You are the one who is feeling upset. This is isn't outside your body and it's not in another person.

If you can get to that point and say that with any amount of conviction, you might be surprised that suddenly the seeming energetic 'link' or 'vulnerability' that you felt in relation to the other person, suddenly disappears. Much of the feeling that you had wrapped up in the perception of 'this is what they did to me', disappears also. You detach.

Your detachment allows you to come back to yourself. And then you can admit to yourself, and own for yourself, that how you are feeling, how you are reacting, what you are experiencing, is all YOURS. It's got nothing whatsoever to do with anyone else. There are NO CAUSES outside of you that have created this feeling or reaction or upset. That person didn't put it there. That person didn't make you feel this way.

YOU CHOSE to feel this way. These are your feelings, not theirs. These are your reactions, not theirs. These feelings are inside your own self and are a part of your own experience. That means they are under your 'control'. Or at the very least, under your ownership. They sure do not belong to anyone else. And if nobody else has created them in you, and you are detached from the other person knowing they did not cause these feelings, then you have to realize that you quite literally decided to have these feelings.

You chose to experience these feelings. You decided to have this reaction. You decided to create this energetic emotional response within yourself, when you thought you were stimulated by that other person. They didn't cause the reaction, they just acted as a neutral reflection. And in that reflection you saw something that brought up some feelings inside yourself that had NOTHING to do with the other person. They didn't make you feel this way, YOU decided to feel this way ABOUT what they appeared to do. So you chose your reaction and your experience and everything you feel.

You will find quite often that if you will claim ownership and responsibility for all of your own experience, in this way, is not only drops and disarms the ego perception of your experience being 'caused by' someone outside of you, it also correctly identifies that YOU are in a position of responsibility, meaning you are NOT A VICTIM, and therefore you are FREE of a sense of victimhood and all perceptions relating to it. This sets you free as well. And you will find if you do this - take back your power and reclaim ownership of responsibility for EVERYTHING you are experiencing - you will often find these feelings suddenly transmute all by themselves and just dissolve and deflate and disappear into nothing. And in their place, is often a tremendous laughter.

Being unlocked from seeing yourself as victimized or caused by others is the key here. If you take full responsibility for everything then nobody can have allegedly been responsible FOR something happening to you. And when you believe others are responsible for stuff happening to you, for or against you, you basically are being irresponsible for your own life and are CLAIMING that someone else is responsible FOR YOUR LIFE, for you.

Nobody else is responsible for your life. Nobody else is responsible for owning your true identity. Nobody else is responsible for the feelings, reactions, emotions and expressions that you are experiencing. Nobody. There is nobody to shovel your 'Self' off onto. Nobody to claim they are supposed to be living your life FOR you, or waking you up FOR you, or changing to what you prefer FOR you. This is YOUR life, not theirs, that you are living. YOU are meant to be fully and completely and squarely in the clear awareness and ownership of WHO YOU ARE, in full responsibility and identification with and operating out of your True Self.

You are invulnerable when you stop believing in victimhood.

No matter what you do you are innocent!

This is true, but it is grossly misunderstood and misused by the ego.

In order for this truth to apply, you have to BE in your innocence. It can't be intellectual. You can't use it to justify murder.

You first have to get yourself into your innocence, so that your innocent isn't just an informational fact, it's an experiential fact. And in order to experience innocence, that places you in the mind and being of LOVE.

It is not possible to experience such innocence without aligning yourself with love.

Therefore, once you ARE aligned with love, you are in your innocence, and whatever you do WILL be innocent. Or to put it another way, no matter what you do, it WILL be loving - and it will never prove you are guilty.

It's only when you take this fact and try to apply it to life without the experience/alignment with its truth (truth is an experience not intellectual information!), that you distort it and then use to justify actions that you perform not based on love, such as that it is okay to hurt someone or "do bad things" etc.

When you do that, you have "level confusion". You've attempted to take something that it is a truth on a higher level of metaphysics, which can only be *experiential*, and are attempting to apply it to a level of existence that is not experiential, where there is separation between you and the truth. And that's why it turns into justification for war. And this is also why religions have led to more wars than most any other cause.

No matter what you do, you are innocent, free, forgiven, loved and loving. But if you're not truly authentically living from such a state of being, then beware your ego's misuse of it.

One thing people in the world don't realize, is that when you make one part of the world 'special', it HAS to make other parts of the world rejected.

So if I say, I really love Mac computers, it tends to make me feel that I dislike PC's. Or if I say, I like sporty-looking cars, it tends to make me believe that other cars are 'uglier'. Or if I say, I like the summer, it tends to make me feel antagonistic toward winter.

We do this every day, but we just don't really realize how we are actually *creating* the enemies that we despise, indirectly, by elevating various other things to special/hero/idol-worshipped status.

If I worship an idol and put something on a pedestal and believe it is my savior, that's all well and good but I don't realize that simultaneously I've created a nemesis somewhere else. It may not even seem to be in my conscious awareness, but I can't MAKE something an idol without using a tool of attack on everything the idol is not.

So people are going around for example trying to be good, trying to people please, trying to have the right behavior, trying to choose the right political candidate, trying to be in love with a special something, trying to save a special group of individuals, trying to stand up for some kind of social justice, or trying to eat the right foods etc. And what does this do?

What happens in the mind when we say "only this part of the world is acceptable?". We reject the rest of it, which is an act of denial, which is an attack, which throws all kinds of darkness and secret hate onto the 'rest' of the world. And since this is all really about the MIND, it basically creates an unconscious mind filled with everything we don't want.

And then this unconscious mind turns around and projects into the world and manifests as enemies, examples of what we hate, examples of the kind of people we think are sinners, examples of behaviors and actions that we consider not allowed, etc. And the more we try to really intensely focus on what is 'right', we inadvertently keep CREATING what is 'wrong' and reinforcing it.

Then all this extra wrong stuff shows up in the world and we hate it more and try to separate from it more, which is secretly an ego ploy to reinforce and keep it. We go on our crusade and blow our trumpet in defense of 'all that is good' which is exactly what actually creates and manifests 'all that is bad'.

If we're not being neutral, if we're attached to outcomes, it we're judging something as right or wrong, if we're invested in seeing a certain thing be kept while other things are destroyed, we just keep creating a greater TENSION between 'right and wrong' rather than actually undoing what's wrong. And this tension grows the more we try to separate from what's 'wrong', because the pursuit of what's 'right' ISN'T a pursuit of the truth - its a pursuit of one-sidedness and is a spiritualizing of the world.

So everyone's on this ego rollercoaster of chasing after what they have decided means 'right' and 'correct' and 'not sinful' and not realizing that this is directly and explicitly creating even more of the stuff they are trying to get away from. Because all that they're really doing is trying to escape from, deny, and shut out, everything they consider bad. You can't have a happy life by being in FUCKING DENIAL!

The world is neutral. It's we who give it all the meaning it has and label it with all our made-up labels of 'oh that's ok' and 'oh thats not ok'. And this constant effort to separate out the ok from the not-ok is just more ego separation which leads to war, hate, anger, and attack. It does not WORK. And it does not lead to progress. If you want the kind of progress where you create a world where everything is only 'good' and nothing 'bad' happens, you will never attain it, because the very desire to do so is a desire to DENY that 'bad' exists and therefore create it. And so the world is spinning its wheels. Isn't it horrifying to realize that YOU are creating the very enemies that you hate the most, and that you will keep doing so while you keep trying to reject a part of yourself?

Have you ever had a dream at night where you're being chased by someone and you're running away in fear and you just can't seem to get away, and the more you run away or fight with the person the stronger and more adamant they seem to become? This is exactly this dynamic, because the person chasing you is YOURSELF who is only appearing as an attacker because you keep rejecting yourself. In your dreams, when you stop running, and you surrender, and you do what the ego would say is 'letting yourself be caught', the person stops chasing you, and they stop attacking you, and all of a sudden you are friends. How about that?

We have to become able to ACCEPT and ALLOW everything. Not split it out and say one part is ok and one part isn't. This is true equality. This is a value worth pursuing. Unconditional love, not conditional love. Not a love that's only given to friends and not enemies. Not a love that, in being given only to friends, turns everyone else INTO an enemy, for the sake of being able to reject them further.

What would Jesus do? He would overlook all sin and recognize the innocence and equality of everyone.

Ok.. stepping off the righteous soap-box for now.

It is not possible to hold a thought of accusation in your own mind, which seems to be about someone else, without YOU also receiving side-effects from that thought. That thought is toxic.

A thought of attack, even if it's a justified attack, is still an attack. And attack thoughts have attacking properties. It's like a nasty, dark, spiky, painful energy in your mind. Do you think you get away with not being affected by that?

So here's the conundrum. You cannot have a negative thought about anyone else without it affecting you. You have to put the negative thought into your own interior mind-garden, and it's going to grow a bunch of weeds there. It's going to attack YOU as much as it attacks someone else.

It's all or nothing. Either the thought applies to you AND them, or it doesn't apply to either of you.

When you're in the business of having the kind of thoughts that apply 'separately' to separate people, those are INSANE thoughts.

If you would realize that your attack thoughts (about other people) are attacking your invulnerability, you would not have them.

If you would realize that you cannot hate someone without hating yourself, you would not hate.

If you would realize that you can't judge and condemn someone without you also feeling condemned, you would not do it.

There is no 'separate justice'. There is no person A being guilty and person B being innocent. Either all are innocent or all are guilty. The accused and the accuser are both guilty.

The ego's laws, the law of the land, are all based on this idea. Someone is to blame, and someone is not. This is not a law based in sanity.

God's law says that whatever is true of one, is true of all. Whatever applies to one, applies to all. One law that applies equally to everyone and finds everyone equally innocent. That is the only sane law.

Recently I've been noticing a changed feeling inside. It feels like some kind of grievance has been forgiven, and now there is less desire to be at war. It feels like a backing down, dropping weapons, stepping attack and being less interested in separating off.

The best that separating or fighting can accomplish is some fake victory, which leaves you in prison separated off from others and alone. It's a standoff or a stalemate. There is nothing gained there because you lose by winning, and taking sides no longer works.

I feel like somehow there is a gradual closing up of some kind of gap. The rift in the mind is the split mind, which is reinforced by anger and projection of guilt. I see more clearly that these acts increase my separateness, and separateness is the only problem.

Being separate just leads to being separated off, alone, isolated, weakened, licking wounds and plotting revenge. It's not a state of trust. It seems to be becoming more obvious that I should just surrender and let go and stop fighting altogether. That fighting doesn't ever make me win.

In recognition that I can only attack myself, and can only separate myself off, and can only split my own mind, I just have less desire to do so. And there is less need to do so as guilts are undone and are healed away by forgiveness. With forgiveness the woulds are closed up and they leave no scars behind. And what once was sore and sorry and an ancient self-hatred has turned into a present self-love.

Perhaps we need to lay down our weapons and stop the war with ourselves, if we want to be at peace. It isn't anyone else but me that I make to suffer and I can be attacked by nothing but my own thoughts of being separate.

"And those who serve the lord of death have come to worship in a separated world, each with his tiny spear and rusted sword, to keep his ancient promises to die."

"The seeming solace of illusions' gifts are now his armor, and the sword he holds to save himself from waking."

"Now is escape impossible until you see you have responded to your own interpretation, which you have projected on an outside world. Let this grim sword be taken from you now. There is no death. This sword does not exist."

"Returning anger, in whatever form, will drop the heavy curtain once again, and the belief that peace cannot exist will certainly return. War is again accepted as the one reality. Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again."

"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head."

"The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword you MUST perceive the body as YOURSELF, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what HE is, and thus what YOU must be."

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness."

"specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies."

"Take time today to lay aside your shield which profits nothing, and lay down the spear and sword you raised against an enemy without existence."

"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys? How soon will you be ready to come home? Perhaps today? There is no sin. Creation is unchanged. Would you still hold return to Heaven back? How long, oh holy Son of God, how long?"

Punishment is never called for. Ever. It is a sign of unforgiveness.

ALL mistakes are forgivable.

This doesn't mean you can use this to justify harm, because to *experience* innocence prevents you from being harmful. You don't therefore abstain from harm just because its intellectually correct, but because the innocent CANNOT sin.

All mistakes are forgivable. Punishment for mistakes is completely counter-productive. It is never warranted or justified, and leads only to adding abuse, which adds darkness to darkness, adds pain to pain, and reinforces a sense of being 'bad' which WILL express in future as more 'bad behavior'.

ONLY healing can be an appropriate response to mistakes. Mistakes and the ability to make them must be healed, with love, to be undone. Otherwise, regardless of the intentions to help, to coerce, to fix, to correct, or whatever, all of those intentions are flawed and all of them include reinforcing and making worse whatever the need for the mistake was.

Punishment harms, it doesn't heal. How can something harmful in any way bring about a more HEALED person? It has NO power to correct anything truly. It is a complete waste of time.

Love is the only response in all situations.

In the separation, you confused the true and the false. You assigned God's properties to the false world, BUT YOU ALSO assigned false properties to God. This turned God into an evil enemy to you in your perception of him. This was necessary in order to believe that the world you made was something you would want instead.

This means you actually framed God as opposite to his nature. As if God is evil, destructive, attacking, sinful, deadly, sick, suffering, weak, powerless, unreal, illusory, vengeful and special. While many people focus on how they are going to forgive the false world, which entails lifting truth from it, you ALSO have to forgive God and lift the FALSE from him.

You may not realize that you have assigned false properties to God. But you have in fact framed God as a special false God. You have tried to make out that God is evil and an enemy. The ego believes this. It wants nothing to do with God because IT believes and perceives God as "everything evil", while seeing itself as holy.

"No-one who hates but is afraid of love, and therefore MUST he be afraid of God."

"You are more afraid of God than of the ego, and love cannot enter where it is not welcome."

"And being deceived in yourself you ARE deceived in your Father, in Whom no deceit is possible."

This means you do in fact have within you various reasons to avoid God, to fear God, to not want God, and to hate God. Part of you wants God to be dead. You have to therefore actually forgive God of the projections and misperceptions that you have laid upon him, and recognize that he is not those things.

It is your attempt to AVOID looking at your "attack on God" blasphemy that compels you to focus on forgiving the WORLD instead. You do not want to look at this because you actually believe that your attack on God has made you GUILTY. And you do not want to revisit the idea of approaching God because you believe it means admitting to having sinned against him, and you think he's going to kill you for it.

"You do NOT see that EVERY sin and EVERY condemnation which you perceive and justify IS an attack upon your Father."

"Your brothers and your Father have become VERY fearful to you, and you would bargain with them for a few special relationships, in which you think you see some scraps of safety."

"For through guilt, you EXCLUDE your Father and your brothers FROM yourself."

"It is your Father Whom you would defend against."

If you think that God is evil you will not want to go home. If you think the world is NOT evil you will not want to go home. You've turned God into an enemy and do not trust him. That's why there is a whole process of "the development of trust". You have misplaced your trust in the ego world. You have to learn to trust God again.

"You CHOSE to forget your Father, but you did NOT will to do so."

To trust God you have to be willing to accept the possibility that God is not the scary monster that you think he is. That he is not going to hurt or attack or reject you. That he still loves you because he is still love. You have to take away from God the false accusations you've made that he is evil and vicious and not to be trusted. You have hurled abuse at God and have accused him of sin. This has to be undone.

You will only approach God, tentatively, if you can have a little willingness to be mistaken about him. And this requires that you trust and have faith that he isn't out to destroy you. You have to be wrong about God, because you have become mistaken about him and his nature. You cannot conceive of him without a body, or think of him as anything but selfish like your ego. This has to be reversed.

"And either the ego, which you made, IS your father, or its whole thought system will not stand."

"Your gods are nothing, because your Father did not create them." "You who have been unmerciful unto yourselves, do not remember your Father's love."

This aspect of forgiveness doesn't seem to be talked about very much in ACIM circles. A lot of time is spent talking about forgiving the world and its contents and the people that piss you off, but very little about looking at the fact that you rejected God, hate God, do not want God, and are trying to destroy him and his son. This picturing of God as an enemy has to be undone in order for you to feel safe to be intimate with God again.

You have to unlearn your rejection of God and learn to love him again. Perhaps the real reason that many people do NOT focus on forgiving God, or looking at how they have framed God as evil, is because it would suggest tremendous guilt and fear, to admit that you have tried to attack and kill off God himself. Fortunately God has not held any of this against you and dispels it entirely, and is his hands are held open in welcome to receive you as his most loved creation once again.

To want to go towards your brothers in Christ, to want to forgive anything, you have to be willing to forgive God. You have accused him and must correct this. The world was made as an attack on God. You can forgive the world but you also have to forgive the idea that you've attacked God. You have made God into a false God and have redefined what you think God is like. This has to be corrected. You have to learn to love God again, and you can start by admitting that you don't.

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

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion. The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

"The "attack on God" made His Son think he was fatherless, and out of his depression he made the god of depression."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him."

"The god of the crucifixion demands that he crucify, and his worshippers obey."

"You MADE the god of sickness, and BY making him, you made yourself ABLE to hear him. But you did NOT create him, because he is NOT the Will of the Father. He is therefore not eternal, and will be UNmade for you, the instant you signify your willingness to accept ONLY the eternal."

"You were willing to accept even death to deny your Father."

"You have interpreted the separation as a means which you have made for BREAKING your communication with your Father."

"You can give up the god of sickness for your brothers; in fact, you would HAVE to do so, if you give him up for yourself. For if you see him anywhere, YOU are accepting him."

"GOD is not at war with the god of sickness which you made, but YOU are. He is the symbol of willing AGAINST God, and you are afraid of him BECAUSE he cannot be reconciled with God's will. If you ATTACK him, you will make him real to you. But if you refuse to worship him, in whatever form he may appear to you, and wherever you think you see him, he will disappear into the nothingness out of which he was made."

"Embodiment of fear, the host of sin, god of the guilty and the lord of all illusions and deceptions, does the thought of death seem mighty. For it seems to hold all living things within its withered hand; all hopes and wishes in its blighting grasp; all goals perceived but in its sightless eyes. The frail, the helpless and the sick bow down before its image, thinking it alone is real, inevitable, worthy of their trust. For it alone will surely come."

"There is either a god of fear or One of Love."

"Or will you make another idol to replace it? For the god of cruelty takes many forms."

"The ego is not a traitor to God to Whom treachery is impossible. But it IS a traitor TO YOU who believe you have been treacherous to your Father." "You who have played that you are lost to hope, abandoned by your Father, left alone in terror in a fearful world made mad by sin and guilt, be happy now. That game is over."

The Course talks about how special love covers up special hate.

I always thought of this as though special love is our special relationships, isolated friendships, marriages, etc. ... and that the special hate was 'somewhere else' in some unconscious realm or whatever.

But both the special love and the special hate live within ourselves, simultaneously, as sort of different compartments of the ego mind.

The only reason the special hate seems hidden or unconscious, while the special loves seems to be out in the open, is because special love equates to the persona, and special hate to the shadow.

As you choose to use the "persona & shadow" - a package deal, ie the ego, you highlight and emphasize the stuff in the persona and attempts to condemn and hate the stuff in the shadow. The persona represses and denies what it doesn't approve of, so it 'seems' the special hate is hidden

But especially when the 'terms' of the special love/persona are not met, it being just a part of the ego, the persona facade of is often 'taken off', and instead the underlying hatred is revealed. The shadow.

In the shadow, there isn't a facade of covering things up or hiding things or so much in terms of denial and rejection. In fact, it seems that the shadow is quite 'raw'. In a sense, it is in some ways more honest than the persona. It doesn't pretend to like something - but it does retain a hateful attitude which ultimately is also dishonest.

This is what they mean when they say the ego can go from suspicious to vicious. In the persona the ego is suspicious. If the persona is violated, it goes away and the claws come out.

But the claws are really just the 'hurt' parts of the total self that were attacked, when you chose the persona. So it's like, you put parts of yourself into a 'good box' and put other parts of yourself into a 'bad box'. It seems that the 'bad box' is the parts of you which are now attacked, wounded, unconscious, denied and hated. So that part of you is not getting a whole lot of love in that way.

But also, the persona, while appearing to be the opposite of that, is also really an attack on the total Self. The persona may 'appear' innocent, a hero, someone's savior (in an ego way), a fixer, a people-pleaser or whatever, someone you would not be suspicious OF ... but it too is really not your authentic self.

It is a protective, defensive, rejective, deflective shield, that covers up your real Self. And using it also strips you of power. You become weakened through it, because the idea of focusing on only certain aspects of Self is an attack, an attempt at separation. It attacks your wholeness, which is where your strength is.

Your real strength is in being whole. Being all of yourself without judgement or condemnation. Being who and what you are, without putting on a fake show or being dishonest in any way. Just representing your real self. Representing God. That Self doesn't need any help.

That Self is not interested in or in NEED of any of the 'services' that the persona seems to suggest it's going to give you. Again, what the ego tempts you to believe it will do 'in your favor' (the persona), actually ultimately attacks you and leads you in totally the opposite direction (pain/shadow).

So it's not so much, that you need to bolster up your persona so that you are stronger and can be more confident. It's that you need to stop using personas altogether, so that you can return to being your natural, full, consistent, honest self, which is FAR more powerful and fearless and does not suffer from any of the neediness or suspiciousness or defensiveness or viciousness that comes with using the ego.

So it all eventually boils down to.... do you use the ego, or do you unmask yourself and be real.

Sometimes people try to put you down, condemn you, make you wrong, call you names, claim you sinned etc. They may have a strong opinion, be domineering or power hungry. They may even say something quite vicious designed to push you away, shut you up, or shut you off.

This is always evidence of someone who does not love themselves. They have entered into a split mind where they are projecting, and they believe always that something applies to you that does not apply to them. They point a finger as if it’s not pointing at themselves. It is a very one-sided state. You are wrong, they are right. All the accusation seems to be coming out of them into you. And this makes it seem it’s entirely you who is under attack.

People like this can be difficult to deal with. There is also tremendous temptation to take this at face value and believe it’s happening to you. Or that it even really is about you or has anything to do with you. If you yourself do not love yourself enough, those weak parts of you will be triggered, seemingly hurt, react, and erupt with emotion and upset. You may then believe your experience was caused by them, that they actually attacked you.

If you do love yourself you will be unmoved. If you do not believe about yourself what the person believes about you, you will not be triggered. You will be clear it is not about you. Your forgiveness of yourself makes you immune. It then becomes clear they are talking about themselves, hate themselves, and are in a state of self attack. It also becomes obvious that how the attack appears on the surface is not what it really is.

The person is in a state of not realizing they are actually attacking themselves. They have disassociated from their self condemnation. They are in denial that they are hurting themselves. They are being murderous and harmful because they really believe and perceive that their attack is having no effect on them. They are not in their right mind. Self hate has blinded them, and now they are accusing a brother of their own sins. And they believe they can get away with it. They are unloving toward you not because you deserve it, but because they don’t love themselves.

If you can not buy into this performance, recognizing this attack as a call for love, realizing the person has made several errors, you have an advantage. Their self attack is something you can use to diffuse their attempted projection. It’s now your function to heal them, to love them, by reminding them of what they are ACTUALLY doing to themselves. You can look out for their innocent, holy self. Look at what they are doing to themselves in the interaction, NOT what they are doing to you.

You can now diffuse it by presenting the fact of what they are doing to themselves. Lovingly. To make them aware of how they are not loving themselves. This puts all the attention back on them and makes it clear this has NOTHING to do with you. You therefore are protected by love, cannot be hurt, and no-one can make you lose your peace.

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

Whatever you are perceiving, whatever you are believing, you ALWAYS believe that you are experiencing the truth.

If you are feeling guilty, you believe this is the truth. If you are projecting guilt, you believe that its true that the other person is guilty. If someone else seems to do something to you and you perceive it this way, you believe this is the truth. Always you are locked into an idea of the truth, regardless of whether this truth is ACTUALLY true.

You can even believe that death is real. You can believe that death is salvation. You can believe that attack is salvation. You can actually walk around believing that it is "totally true" that death means life and there is no God. You can be convinced this is the truth. It doesn't matter that you're grossly mistaken. One thing holds consistent - no matter whether you side with Holy Spirit or ego, SOMETHING is always the truth for you.

Now, whatever your grasp of truth is, this is manipulated by your beliefs. Beliefs are "truth modifiers". You use them to redefine the truth and to make something else be the truth that isn't. This is the ego's tool to convert the MEANING of God into something that God does not mean. It changes the meaning of the truth, the meaning of your identity, the meaning of what and who you are. You use belief to convert yourself into a sinner who deserves to die.

Ok now, given that you always believe you're experiencing the whole truth, this can lead you to not suspect that your grasp of the truth might be faulty. You believe you are complete right now, whole right now, aware of everything right now, that you know everything right now, that you are aware of the entire content of yourself right now, and that this is completely true. EVEN THOUGH... this is not true at all for most of us.

We are always convinced by truth, and we are allegiant to it and protective of it.We will defend it up and down. We will not want to question it. The ego's purpose for questioning truth is to replace it with something even less true that it still thinks is the truth. It does NOT want you changing the truth back toward the REAL truth. So it becomes very easy to mangle and distort the truth and to be caught up in thinking it is REALITY and to be totally convinced that you are RIGHT about it, but to still be very mistaken.

And given you can be really convinced about this, that really forms a strong barrier against even suspecting something is mistaken or that you might be wrong. Why would you even think to need to correct something if you are sure it's already perfect? Why would you even suspect that there is a happier way to exist when you already believe that your SUFFERING is happiness? Why would you want to live forever when you already believe that death is your ultimate salvation and that you will die no matter what, dam it?

You can be lost in the truth. Lost in what the truth seems to be. This is why it's like a hallucination.... you're seeing something that's not even really there and you think its real and you're scared and upset by it as if it's totally real, and yet it's just some silly illusion. You can run away from imaginary monsters and cower under a bush. You can be frightened by what seems like real political nightmares. You can be troubled by what looks to be a genuine threat of terrorism. And yet... this is all still just a dream. It's not TRUE.

Snapping out of a state of 'fixation' on an hallucination, snapping out of a strong conviction that someone else really is wrong, snapping out of believing the story, snapping out of reacting to the world that APPEARS to be real.... it's not easy. But it's what we need to do. We need to wake up.

It's okay. ... you are safe... in heaven.... with God... right now.... and nothing has gone wrong.... and God still loves you.

"For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

This was an eye-opener for me, that you have to be IN THE PRESENT in order to be forgiving. Not only that, but the state of mind that you're in when you're in the present, truly, without a past, is the forgiving state of mind.

There present is where you have no grievances, because all grievances are to do with the past. What someone did or didn't do in the past, past hurts, old arguments, unforgiven conflicts, things which "happened" - past tense. Without a past you cannot have grievances. This is why "the miracle" and the vision of christ ONLY exist in the present.

This also means that when you move into the present, you have to have let go of the past, and brushed it off, and dropped it. So if you had grievances toward a person, you would have to be willing to completely let that go and "forgive" them ie no longer hold it against them as a sin. Because sin is always in the past, along with guilt, and the ego. Only if THERE IS NO PAST is your brother forgiven.

Without a past you see people as they are now, without any history of faults and failures and offences. Being fully and squarely in the present moment of time, with no concern for the future or the past, that's where you find the light. It's where you find the real world, because it means you're taking a look at "reality as it is now", rather than disappearing off into a dream of memory. True accurate perception requires total present attention.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying or teaching that forgiveness has to take place in the present moment. And this doesn't mean that when you "do your forgivenesses" you are doing them now in the present. We are not in the present, typically, most of the time, or when we're reciting lessons or quotes or trying to apply the course. Most of the time we're lost in he past and giving lip service to the STATE of forgiveness.

To really forgive, just as Jesus says that miracles are seen in light and the light is in the present and miracles heal only in the present, your mind has to let go of the whole of the past. In fact it has to let go of time, past and future, to experience a holy instant. Being in the "now" is the only way to be actually freed from all forms of suffering, which are always rooted in the past.

You can't really be forgiving toward someone if you still believe they did something, which doesn't just mean writing off what they did and keeping the idea of time. It means actually getting out of time, out of the past, realising the past doesn't even exist, and being in the present. In the present you are taking a fresh new look at a person, immediately and without a history.

"The miracle enables you to see your brother WITHOUT his past, and so perceive him as born again. His errors ARE all past, and by perceiving him WITHOUT them, you are RELEASING him. And since his past is yours, you SHARE in this release. Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present, and you WILL find it if you seek it there. You have looked for it where it is NOT, and therefore have not found it. Learn, then, to seek it where it IS, and it WILL dawn on eyes that see. Your past was made in anger, and if you use it to ATTACK the present you will NOT SEE the freedom that the present holds. Judgment and condemnation are BEHIND you, and unless you bring them WITH you, you WILL see that you are free of them." UrT12F5

To be in the present is to be forgiving. You can't have any sense of a record of sins people committed, unless you are focused on the past. When you focus on the past you're not really seeing anything at all because you're looking at something that is not there anymore. And so you lose vision. You regain vision, sight, Christ vision, in the light of the present, when you are here now, aligned with the always-now of eternity.

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision."

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form, because it can so easily be changed."

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer I cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. Love created me like Itself."

-------------------

Grief from a loss can be very, very difficult to deal with. I've personally had to go through a ton of it. 18 years ago I left my home country of England and immigrated to the USA.

This entailed a significant sense of loss in ways I never imagined and was just horrendous to go through producing massive amounts of tears over a span of several years. Some of the losses included:

Loss of family - not being around them or able to be around them, even on holidays. Not being able to travel easily to see them. Not a single member of my family was at our wedding or any other event. Although no-one literally died, it was as though they all had. Actually just even writing that just now has brought me to tears again.

Loss of culture - not being immersed in the culture and not even realizing it was a culture. Being surrounded by a completely alien environment where no-one even speaks your language or sounds like you, where there are no recognizable holidays or shared events, with no familiar social cues, no familiar traditions, sense of dress code, or anything. Top this off by being surrounded by an entire country that celebrates things you have no familiarity with or sense of identification with, and it adds up to even more alienation.

Loss of familiar forms - an entirely different set of foods, brands, products, money, buildings that are completely different in design, traffic laws totally flipped around, extremely different weather, totally different tv shows, clothing, standards, a different style of working, all new holidays, etc. Not to mention the loss of a sense of "home" or belonging or fitting in or being part of anything.

Loss of identity - I assumed that so much of what made me "me" was inherent to me. It was not. It was inherent to the country and culture. Once I was outside of it it brought into question who I even am, what is truly "mine" and what was just something I inherited or assumed as part of "normality". My whole sense of self was shaken to the core and transformed. I grieved even for who I used to be.

Each year various thing would trigger me off. Especially holidays, birthdays, christmas, and even American holidays which were celebrated en masse but which I could not relate to, making me feel deeply left out in a whole other way. Christmas was a nightmare. The first sign of decorations or snow or holiday jingles would immediately trigger 2 months of hell. Sometimes I felt powerfully compelled to just run away and get the hell out of here.

What I had to learn, was about what this grief is, what is causing it, and what I can do about it. Besides hundreds of boxes of tissues, accompanying the massive purge of "losses" that I perceived, I tried various things. One thing which did immediately help was EFT (emotional freedom technique) - a form of acupressure, which alleviates emotional pain. It takes the edge off and offers some relief. But I wanted to truly heal this suffering.

What I've learned about grief is that is stems entirely from ego beliefs. Just as the course say, "No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision." Meaning, unless I am doing something to myself, there can be no basis for grief.

Every single sense of grief or loss comes from a perceived "real separation" occurring. Something which seemed real, which is now inaccessible, unavailable, distant, kept apart, or more permanently removed. This can be a loss of a person's life or a country or a pet or a culture or a favorite job or a tv show or whatever.

The ego first values these things by making them special, making them real, attaching to them, identifying with them, and believing they are important. Then, when one of these things is "lost" or separated from us, we literally are experiencing this idea that we're separated from reality, from what we "love", from what we think is valuable or important. This produces a rift within our mind, a split, and it can be very deep.

This sense of "real separation happening" is absolutely nothing short of a reflection or fragment of the idea of being separated from God. Every "loss" is the idea that God has been lost. That love has gone away. This produces horrendous feelings of lack, emptiness, depression, sadness, loss, loneliness, hurt, anger, fear, guilt, shame, you name it.

Additionally, in the ego thought system there is an idea of sacrifice. Sacrifice means that you first of all make something real or valuable or special, and then you believe that in order to atone you have to forceably be deprived of it, even while you still value it, which *guarantees* that you will suffer a sense of having lost something important to you. It is the idea that if you lose i.e. sacrifice something, you will gain something. The ego is totally nuts.

Even giving something to someone else through the ego and perceiving it as you being diminished or lacking or losing in some way, is the exact same dynamic which all grief is based on. And your reaction to it will be varying degrees of a sense of loss. It may not be a deep deep grief when you begrudgingly give up something you liked, but it's still the same dynamic.

I've found over time that all of my grief stems from my false perception. i.e., it ENTIRELY erupts out of the perception that a "real separation" has occurred. There is no other cause of it. It is not really about "oh I miss that person" or "oh I lost that job I loved" or "oh I don't have my family any more". These are mere forms of the same basic content of separation. It is the sense of having lost something you are attached to or which is special to you, i.e. fake reality, that produces the ego responses of grief.

I have also found, that even if I am deep in feelings of grief and it becomes possible to reclaim or get back or visit people or things which were "lost", this still does not in any way fix the grief. It is my own perception of real separation which causes the upset and until that is undone, as a false belief, I can still be in the presence of the very people or things I lost and still feel a loss. All loss is an inside job.

The grieving is actually taking place INSIDE my mind, between one part of myself that I made special and another part which has lost it. I've seen that my grieving is entirely selfish and about myself, and never really about anything outside of me. This has also taught me that e.g. returning home or going back to family will NOT resolve the problem of grieving, and through my own experience it never has. For the ego it's a fake promise of salvation.

I've also found therefore that any grief that I am having is entirely due to my own beliefs, my own choices, my own perceptions, my own attitude, and what I choose to perceive. If I choose to believe death is real, I WILL automatically be very upset when someone dies. If I choose to make someone special or attach to them or "need" them, I will AUTOMATICALLY grieve whether I like it or not when they are taken away. I set myself up for loss every time that I try to take possession of something or depend on it too heavily or make it special or considering it more exclusively valuable or conditional. And so, I literally do this to myself.

Every ego attempt to make something special, to "have it" or value it or attach to it or believe in it (ego beliefs) or possess it or need it, will AUTOMATICALLY bring with it the conditions for its INEVITABLE LOSS. It is a total trap. You literally are signing up for LOSS, when you sign up for "getting".

The truth is, no-one needs to grieve, no-one is supposed to be experiencing loss, no-one is supposed to be crying or unhappy, no-one is supposed to spend 50 years getting over the loss of a parent or child, no-one is supposed to be SUFFERING like this. Without using ACIM whatsoever, and just fudging our way through this stuff, we will take however long it takes to cry and cathartic and remember and try to keep them alive etc...ie reluctantly letting go. Without any other tools, most people spend years dealign with deep losses.

And then there is another camp of people who are so level-confused that they'll try to force you to just "get over it" or repress it or censor it or not feel any feelings or never cry or bypass it with ACIM pleasantries like "it never happened" etc. For most people, they HAVE to go through a "grieving process" because its the only way they have to heal the ACTUAL problem, which is a sense of separation from God. And that is the ONLY problem, even in the case of grief, and even in the case of death.

If a person is having such a deep emotional pain, there is nothing helpful in repressing it or trying to ignore it or not letting it out or trying not to cry or to shove it down in some way to pretend it's not there. Feelings, once they are created, MUST be felt and allowed to flow. And usually the sense of loss is so deep that it simply generates a ton of feelings. They must be felt, not turned into emotional constipation. But that said.... tentatively.... there must be a better way, and there is.

Tackling the real issue, which is a sense of "real separation" or "real loss" or "real sacrifice" or "real absence", which is a BELIEF in your mind that has nothing to do with the world or other people, there is much more HOPE for a swifter recovery. What a person has "suffered" in a "loss" is really that they are suffering from a false perception of reality (God) being lost permanently, as though completely real. It is very, very convincing to the ego, and it produces just horrendous depths of unhappiness.

But this separation, this loss, it can be healed. And it can be SIGNIFICANTLY undone if not entirely, through applications of ACIM principles. i.e. forgiveness, seeing the truth, unearthing the lies about "justified grief" or "everyone grieves" or "loss is normal after death" or whatever else... stuff that well-meaning psychiatrists have made up to explain why most ego-driven people suffer. Jesus has a different message: "You need not suffer."

It is ONLY a perception of real separation that produces grief or loss, ever. There is no other cause. And perception CAN be healed because beliefs CAN be changed. It is NOT necessary to have terrible grief. It is NOT necessary to have a deep, bottomless pit of misery for years and years. It is NOT necessary to feel like you lost part of yourself forever and ever. It is NOT necessary to feel hurt and angry and abandoned and upset for the rest of your life. There is nothing that cannot be healed.

For me now, every single year my "christmas grief" has dwindled at a rapid rate, since doing the course. This years was the least upset I've ever been. Triggers have been collapsed. Ideas of real loss undone. A sense of major separation significantly reduced. Tears have dwindled. It's not simply been through years of suffering and tears or "normal grieving process". It's because I apply forgiveness principles to what I am experiencing. In the middle of a moment of grief, if I can even remember that "I am not separate from God", and that this grief is about that... it immediately cuts through it like a knife.

Grieving can be a very long term process for many people, me included, but it does not HAVE to be. There is no requirement in God's Creation that anyone be upset for any reason. There is no justification for unhappiness. There is no rational for why it's "normal" to be seriously upset about anything. The Course is offering us the END of all death, all suffering, all sickness, and all grieving. To restore us to life, to happiness, to joy, to freedom, to liberation from all sad feelings and all sense of God being dead.

You need not suffer. What can you possibly grieve for but the belief in separation from God, which is not real? There has been no loss. Separation has not happened. God is alive and well and loves you. What's to be grieving about in truth?

"Projection still has this "hurling" connotation, because it involves hurling something you DO NOT want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically.)"

The golden rule is based on God's law that everything is equally shared by everyone - because we're all one. What applies to me applies to everyone and everything. Either we are all innocent or all guilty. Whatever you do to another you do to yourself, because they are part of you.

But then Jesus goes on to suggest that separation produces a state which is opposite to the golden rule. In this state, it is believed that what applies one does NOT apply to anyone else. That everything is exclusive. What you do to another you do NOT do to yourself.

So if you enter into this belief that you can get away with murder, that you can project blame without being blamed, that you can find someone guilty while you are innocent, or that there can be this imbalance of equality, then you've attempted to reverse the golden rule. You are denying the law of God.

The ego does this because it denies God's laws, so it believes that there is no equality, no sharing, no oneness, and you are not joined with others. It believes that anything that applies to you does not apply to them, and vice versa, due to a separation between you. And therefore, it becomes viable to suggest you can pile all the blame onto someone else in order to escape from it.

This then enters into what Jesus calls projection, which is also dissociation. Here the mind is trying to "project separation" or increase separation, to keep the separation going.

"Projection will ALWAYS hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind, and its ONLY purpose is to KEEP THE SEPARATION GOING. It is solely a device of the ego to make you feel DIFFERENT from your brothers and separated FROM them. The ego justifies this on the wholly spurious grounds that it makes you seem better than they are, thus obscuring equality WITH them still further."

By separating yourself off, disassociating from your brothers, identifying yourself as "not them", and the reinforcing the intensity of the separation between you, you are "projecting". You then leverage this separateness by trying to make sure everyone else holds the sin and not you. This is golden-rule reversal because what applies to them should also apply to you.

So as the golden rule becomes inverted, we get separation, dissociation, denial, projection, a gap between people, a sense of exclusive identity, blame and scapegoating. Jesus also describes this as having grievances, as being the opposite of miracles. ie if you enter into this golden-rule denying state, you are trying to be unmiraculous and attack instead.

"This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically."

"And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond."

Miracles and grievances are opposites. Miracles are founded on the golden rule, and all sense of attack or separation or sin is founded on golden-rule denial. Trying to break the law of God, although really simply denying that it still applies, puts you into a split mind where you think you can attack without being attacked. And yet you are still attacked, because you do it to yourself, and are suffering as a result of being separate.

The law of God can never be broken, but the ego is the denial of the law of God, and being in denial it hasn't changed the law - it has simply pretended it does not apply. And each time you pretend it does not apply, attempting to attack without being attacked, which is a breakdown in cause and effect, you hurt yourself. Your brother is part of you, and to attack him is to attack yourself, even if you believe by mistake that he is not you. You would not attack him if you knew he was part of you because you would have a shared interest.

"False perception", ie being heavily in your ego, is a state of imprisonment. It's a very closed way of looking at things, it cuts you off from the light, wraps you in heavy walls, and makes everything look serious. It faces you to focus on how things look physically as if there is nothing else, and even shuts out the mind.It offers no bigger picture and dwells entirely on appearances.

In this view it becomes apparent that there are serious problems, and the problems seem impossible to solve. One thing seems to depend on another to be righted and everything seems locked in. It makes you feel stuck and lost and alone, powerless and helpless. It starts to feel like there's no way out, no solution, no hope. It is a state of psychological darkness and limitation.

False perceptions always feel imprisoning because the mind is actively trying to imprison. It's seeing things in such a way as to focus on what is wrong, what is broken, what can't be solved, what is evil, what has been done to something, how bad it is, how sorry it is, how awful it feels, how much it's painful etc. It emphases and blows everything bad out of proportion making it seem far worse than it is. It also shuts down any openness to positive possibilities.

Such a state of mind is easily driven by old unforgiven hurts, grievances, being triggered, upsets and heavy ego emotions, loss and grief, anger and frustration. It's as though the ego functions always at a very low level of consciousness and with a very dire outlook, and everything it thinks and feels and experiences is gloomy and a nightmare. When you get into that you can't help but see that way and it seems practically impossible to get out of it.

All the problems become real and you become filled with reactions, which are attempts to make it go away. But none of them work because the problem looms heavily and seems completely solid and fixed and stuck, unmovable and unchangeable, irreversible like as sin. This is what ACIM refers to really as "the granite block of sin", something that seems to be happening that seems utterly impossible to undo.

The only way out of this is to move into the light, and miracles are seen in the light. The only way to get into the light is to start to look for the light and seek it out. The light means looking on the brighter side, looking for openings which lead to freedom, looking for goodness, looking for a higher purpose, looking for a sense of calm and peace, looking for positivity and holiness. It requires stepping back and realizing that you're actually being unforgiving, and to look at what you're doing to attack through fear, and choosing to stop doing that. To break out of psychological jail.

Only by becoming more forgiving can you get out of hell. It is literally the only way. To be forgiving entails increasing the light so that you can see more clearly, and letting go of grievances and reactions. Eventually it entails taking away all sense of heaviness and darkness, strength and power, reality and irreversibility from the situation. There has to be a surrendering of control and an opening up to higher help. Seek out the Holy Spirit to help you, to heal you, to correct you, direct you, decide for you. Let yourself receive some love and light to brighten up the situation. Everything always looks better with the lights on.

"You but accuse your brother of your own sins." - ACIM

Every single occurrence of you being angry at someone, blaming them, being afraid of them, believing they are doing something to you, being hurt by them, getting revenge, or whatever... every single interaction with people that is anything other than pure LOVE, is your attempt to GET RID OF YOUR OWN SINFULNESS.

You have no other reason to be doing this. It is purely an exercise in trying to deny that you believe you're sinful. That is enough to account for the ENTIRE spectrum of all ego-based relationships and interactions with others.

You really don't have issues with anyone else. You really don't have a problem that's got ANYTHING even REMOTELY to do with another person.

You have a problem with YOU.

YOU believe that you really sinned. That's all.

That's absolutely your only problem in the entire world. Your belief in your own sin is driving ALL of the other ego expressions, nightmares, attacks, reactions, upsets, fears, all suffering, and even death.

ALL of it. Just stemming from YOUR OWN belief that you are truly, honest-to-God SINFUL.

Therefore, you do not even really need any kind of corrections that attempt to address ANY of that other stuff. That other stuff is NOT the problem. It's all symptoms! It's all side-effects of your attempt to avoid your real problem.

Your ONLY problem in the entire world, in your entire life, is your self hate. And for that, you need to undo it with FORGIVENESS.

You ONLY need healing for your belief that sin is real, and that therefore YOU ARE SINFUL. This idea of sin is the idea that it is possible to ACTUALLY separate from God, and that you have done so. It is an attempt to make this idea REAL, and to own responsibility for achieving it.

This is the root of all evil. This is the cause of all sickness. This is the belief in death and that death is both justified and deserved.

If ALL you ever do from now on, is throw out ALL of your practices which attempt to bandaid your life, and every strategy that tries to deal with egoic relationships problems, and focus SOLELY on undoing YOUR belief that YOU are sinful, I do believe that is ALL that will be necessary to wake up.

The "sinful self" must go. And with it will go ALL of the effects that come from it - guilt, fear, punishment, suffering and death.

Just work on forgiving yourself. Just purely focus on owning up to your own self hate, and how you BELIEVE that you have committed "real sin". Undo that belief, accept the atonement. You did NOT really sin. You are innocent.

It's not even really about forgiving others or taking back projections or any of that. The big secret is your own DEATH WISH which comes from your OWN BELIEF THAT YOU ARE SINFUL. You have no other problems.

You think you are not worthy of God's love because you think you are sinful, and that God could not love you as a result. Well, there's good news. YOU DID NOT REALLY SIN because sin is not reality, and that means GOD DOES LOVE YOU and you are WORTHY of being loved. You are NOT worthy of dying.

Absolutely everything else will fall inline if you correct this. Everything else will take care of itself AUTOMATICALLY once that illusion of sin is removed.

What is self-attack and a belief in sin, other than suicide? It is your self crucifixion.

Sickness in your own body is an attempt to accuse others of sin. It is part of the process of projection. "You but accuse your brother of your own sins" "Sick bodies are accusers".

This is entirely to do with cause and effect. In your natural state you are purely causal. You are not at the effect of anything external. But when you believe in your own sinfulness, you go into denial and disown the sin, projecting it outwards.

In other words, you take the causality from within yourself and hand it over to something outside of you. You now see cause as outside you, and effects as inside of you. Your mind believes both, that someone else is the cause of you, and you are being affected by them. That you have effects in you.

Due to believing in being affected, your mind powerfully manufacture signs and symptoms in your body as a reflection of your own belief, that you are having effects. It puts them through THROUGH its belief in the CAUSES that it sees itself as subject to. This is entirely based on the belief that there is a cause outside of you with power over you, dictating what you are, changing you against your will, and thus that there SHOULD BE effects in you correlating to the hierarchy of illusions.

Your mind itself creates the effects in you, and through believing that you are affected, invents weakness, suffering, sickness and death in the body. This manifests in the body as a symbolic representation of this attitude and thus the body becomes sick. The sickness of the body is entirely a PART OF the process of the projection of sin onto others. As you project mentally, the body communicates the attack by taking on the form of the message.

By using the body to accuse rather than to extend love, the body BECOMES accused, depicts accusation, turns into a form of attack, and is distorted by the mind's belief in its own affectedness. Essentially, "toxic harmful messages" passing through it affect it negatively. The body out-pictures the mind's sick attitude about itself and its brothers. The body now shows what the mind is believing and being used for, as symptoms of sickness and malfunction materialize by the power of the mind.

So there is this thing happening on a mental level where the mind is believing in sin and projecting it outward onto others. Your brother is being accused of sin and is being attacked by your mind. This belief simultaneously affects your PERCEPTION, which is now backwards (false perception), whereby you now see your brother as sinning against you and is the cause of your suffering. He is made into the real sinner who has power over you, as a false perception.

Then at the same time, on the physical level, the body is entirely caught up in this psychological process, is swept up in the attack and is distorted at the level of form to depict the attacking attitude. It becomes a "picture of crucifixion" which testifies and shows PROOF to your brother that HE must have been the CAUSE of you, and here are the EFFECTS to prove it. You show him the effects as part of your accusation and projection, to try to convince him of its wrongfulness. This all happens at once, mentally and physically.

So now the body becomes a physical accuser, demonstrating that there must have been a sin against you, because the body is under attack against your will (so it seem), and symptoms are providing fake evidence to show for it. As your brother looks upon this sick body, even if he has absolutely nothing to actually do with the situation, if he beholds your accusatory body he does not see his forgiveness there. And instead seems himself standing condemned, which weakens his mind.

Unless he is able to forgive himself, and thus completely overlook your demonstration of blame, which would allow him to be unaffected, his own belief in his own sinfulness will be compounded by your demonstration. If he can overlook it and not buy it, he can potentially offer healing to you. If he fails to overlook it, he will merely add to your sickness and compound it, taking the opportunity to rebel and project his own sin onto you in a joint ego encounter of mutual unconsciousness.

Your sick body does nothing at all to help him heal and is an attempt to infect him. It shows this on physical levels such as through infection and disease and contagion. Such sickness show up AS contagious because the mind TRYING to transfer sin to the other person.. I'm not sharing this to make anyone feel guilty. This is just something that we need to look honestly at if we are to move towards healing. But beware that Jesus holds absolutely nothing back when he presents this idea

"***The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill.*** Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

So Jesus is saying here, YOUR sickness, even your physical sickness, is part of an attempt by your ego's belief in sin, to project or give away the sin to others through accusation and projection. And as your body becomes sick, through your OWN indirect causality, as part of your sinful USE of the body, you get to show everyone why someone ELSE caused it.

It even goes as far as to say, that if you cause your body to DIE, in physical death, you are WILLING to do so because it assuages your guilt, portrays you as the innocent helpless victim, allows everyone else to be accused of causing it (external causes of death), and is thus the ego's attempt to exonerate you. This is why we have a belief that people die "against their will", "unchosen", "unfairly", and feel sorry for the whole episode. It's all part of the ego's worship of death as salvation.

This means you would be literally **willing to die**, to pay the price of death, IF it means you can be considered innocent and not the cause of sin. If the world can be considered the cause of it, YOU get off as the innocent party. And so death "saves you" from having sinned. This is what happens upon EVERY death. This is the CAUSE of every single physical death. "No one dies without their own consent". And this is why death of the body PROVES a complete failure to choose against sin and accusation. Death is a state of total disownership of self, life, will, power and responsibility and is an attempt to destroy the Son of God.

So it kind of boils down to this. When your mind believes in sin, it will project that sin onto others, see cause as external, experience backwards/false perception, and induce deliberate illness in the body to correspond to "what effects likely wold be produced" by such a cause. The body then shows proof that your brother is sinful because effects remain in the body. And as you literally SHOW him this sick body, you remain accusing him. And you will not REMOVE the effects from your body, because you want to CONTINUE accusing him.

"For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied."

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape."

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And what has consequences MUST be real, because what it has DONE is there to see."

The important thing is, there is a flip side. What happens when you choose NOT to believe in sin? What happens when your mind decides to be holy and healed and loving towards others? With no sin to project, the entire projective process stops. That means the mind stops believing causality is external. It takes causality off the shoulders of your brother. It stops seeing itself as a victim at the effect of anyone else. Perception reverses along with cause and effect, such that you now see yourself as the cause, not the effect. And thus all "effects" in you, and in the body, literally disappear. Because without an externalized cause, they cannot remain.

The result of this is that your body is not USED to accuse, or to attack, but to HEAL. Because the mind MADE the symptoms as "effects" in the body as fake evidence to accuse your brother with, the mind ALSO has the power to UNDO those symptoms. "You made sickness and death and can therefore abolish both." By TAKING BACK YOUR POWER from externally projected "cause", you reclaim causality internally and stop seeing yourself as "having effects". The effects cannot stay WITHOUT projected causality, because you now see yourself as ONLY CAUSAL. "I am not at the effect of the world I see" is healing.

By extending love and healing through the body, the body DEPICTS harmlessness, holiness, innocence and the ABSENCE of sin. Just as the mind invented the symptoms of sickness due to its belief in "being affected", it also UN-INVENTS the symptoms as a result of believing "I am NOT at the effect of the world." Through believing "my brother is NOT the cause of me", the body is healed. By NOT using the body to communicate attack or blame, the body stops SHOWING symbolic signs of attack or blame. All sickness is lifted away from it BY the mind and it is healed through mind power Because you are the CAUSE of all of this. Sickness and death is a CHOICE.

There are NO exceptions or loopholes to this dynamic. When the mind is healed, it heals the body and forces the body to NOT show any signs of attack. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Now is the body healed by miracles." When the mind is in a state of sin, it attacks the body and makes it sick. "Sickness is anger taken out upon the body." "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt (by others)." The body SHOWS what the mind's attitude towards itself and its brothers is. "A broken body SHOWS the mind HAS NOT been healed." Always.

It boils down to, healthy mind, healthy body. Sick mind, sick body. Sin and projection, body depicts attack. Forgiveness and healing, body depicts the absence of attack. Loving shows up as a divinely healed lovely body devoid of all signs of suffering, and symbolizes Christ and eternal life.

"This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. The arrest of the mind's extension is the ***cause of all illness***, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you.Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions that are responsible for the body's condition. ... He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him."

Jesus is absolutely NOT saying that the body "sometimes" heals. He is not saying "it might, it might not." He is saying IT HAS TO symbolize the mind at all times. The body is an EFFECT, not a cause. The body is not AT the effect of the world. It does not "become sick" through external causes. Those are fake. It becomes sick only if the mind approves of the sickness for its purposes of projection. The body is being USED, it does hot have a say in it. Effects do not cause anything.

Nor is there such a thing as "death happens against my will." This is entirely a fictional ego belief. Death happens when your mind chooses to attack your brother. Your attempted murder of him, kills your body. When you love and forgive all people, your body CANNOT BE SICK OR DIE. Sickness and death literally become impossible. And this is the resurrection, in which death is surmounted and has NO POWER over you.

Giving and receiving are one. If you give ONLY LIFE, you will receive only life. If you give sin and death, you will receive sin and death. This is also the golden rule. If you believe you brother is sinful and you attack him for it with your body image, you WILL attack yourself and believe you are sinful. This will make you sick, mentally and physically. If you give him healing, you will be healed. "I will heal as I let him teach me to heal."

This is A Course in Miracles. A central teaching. The Holy Spirit has a perfectly healed body and mind to offer you to use in the world as a teaching device. But it is only accessible by not sinning against yourself and others. It IS possible to REVERSE, UNDO, and HEAL, all forms of sickness and death. Not only in yourself, but also in others. This is what it mean to be miraculous.

"And you will understand that miracles reflect the simple statement, "I have done this thing, and it is this I would undo.""

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

"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.""

Such a healed body HEALS YOUR BROTHER through its example.

"Correction IS the function given both, but neither one alone. And when it is fulfilled as SHARED, it MUST correct mistakes in both of you. It CANNOT leave mistakes in one unhealed, and make the other free. THAT is DIVIDED purpose, which cannot BE shared, and so it CANNOT be the function which the Holy Spirit sees as His."

"What you would prove to him you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but testifies to what you teach to him. Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him. And in its healing can it offer him mute testimony to his innocence. It is THIS testimony that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing show your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to show your brother that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing, that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of full deliverance from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys"

Lately when I read ACIM talking about time, I have a different impression of it. There's because there's "physical" time and "psychological" time, like two layers.

In some parts we're told basically that as soon as the current moment is done, it is gone. That whatever is "here and now" in the physical sense, is all that there remains. Prior configurations, previous states, stuff that seemed to happen before, it's all over the instant it happens. This "physical time", part of spacetime, is a constantly evolving changing world of form.

Then in other parts Jesus talks more about a kind of psychological time. This psychological time is an interpretation of what's happening, in which you can either be very present with whatever is physically here now, or you can be somewhat distanced from it by focusing on beliefs and memories about stuff from "the past".

In our minds we have sort of invented an idea of the past, in which we keep holding onto stuff which is already gone. So the physical "time" of spacetime seems to march onward, in which the states of material objects are gone forever and have been replaced, and in which only the current stuff you are faced with now is all that's left. And then there's an overlay of psychological perception and use of the world, which can be deeply invested in things that have gone by, or present here now.

When the mind is much more present with what it is faced with here and now, it is closer to what seems to be called a "holy instant", or in effect, moments of the current configuration of the world which are squarely focused on the present here and now, seen without looking toward the past or future.

An instant of spacetime, a moment of happenings, present events and arrangements of objects etc, as though keeping pace with it and always focusing on what is current. Jesus seems to call this immediacy of and use of "time", ie being in the present or "now", a string of holy instants. As Jesus says "now is the only time." But of course, in spacetime, the forms constantly change still. But as soon a their state changes, the old state is gone forever.

But if your mind is heavily preoccupied with the past and future, this takes you away from the present. In particular if you believe that someone attacked you at some point in time, and you have not forgiven this, and are holding onto it, you have a grievance which anchors your mind in the past and focuses you on what is not happening anymore.

You can only have grievances based on things that happened in the past. Someone "doing something to you" immediately becomes past-tense, and now you recall it like a wound that keeps reminding you of something that is already over and gone. You won't let it go, so you keep pulling it back up from what seems like a psychological past, to relive it, regurgitating it and trying to keep it going, not letting go of what has already gone.

Without a psychological past it is impossible to retain grievances of any kind because you can only be upset about what someone "did", which is always past tense the instant that is has happened. Without a past you cannot have any unforgiveness.

And as Jesus leads off in the workbook, with "I see only the past", he's talking about how we are so heavily attached to things that happened "before" that we haven't accepted as "gone", that we are living in a kind of haze of hypnotic memory and recall, dwelling on things which are not here anymore.

And because of this, we filter the "present" configuration of the world through a lens of history, of unforgiven grievances, of resistance to God's presence, which causes us to not see anything "as it is now".

There can only be grief over things which once were seemingly here, which have gone, such as physical bodies, and the unwillingness to truly accept that they are not here now. To let go of the past is to let go of lost treasures and special relationships which are over already. We just struggle with the fact of their extinction, because the very instant that they are gone, they are gone.

As we move toward God, who is always present and lives only in the eternal "here and now" or "always and forever", we must move our psyche out of the past and into the present. Not that we're trying to make the world out to be real or anything, because its forms will still change and shift as they always do in illusions. But we are at least trying to get a look at the world through present-tense eyes which are clean and new and forgiving and which are not projecting past sins or ancient hatreds onto it.

Thus "in time", or at least, in the progression of change of form, our view of that form can come from a more centred and present frame of reference, which is a holier state and closer to God. The present "now" of time is symbolic of eternity and it is where we can most fully connect with God. Being "in the past", mentally, is an attempt to create "more spacetime" ie more distance and more delay between us and God, and between us and reality.

So there's a kind of physical spacetime, and there is also a kind of psychological spacetime. When the psychological spacetime completely lets go of the past and future, and becomes fully present, it looks upon the physical spacetime with fresh loving eyes, which do not not use past happenings as condemnations, and does not look to the the past for truth.

Then once the forgiven world is seen and looked past with this present light, we are close enough to "what really is" that we can transcend and overlook the world, and move on to our home in God. God is always here and now, and has always been here and now, and will always be here and now. It is only your mind that has wandered off into a movement away from what remains.

"Release the future. For the past is gone, and what is present, freed from its bequest of grief and misery, of pain and loss, becomes the instant in which time escapes the bondage of illusions where it runs its pitiless, inevitable course. Then is each instant, which was slave to time, transformed into a holy instant when the light that was kept hidden in God's Son is freed to bless the world. Now is he free, and all his glory shines upon a world made free with him, to share his holiness."

"Judgment ALWAYS rests on the past, for PAST experience is the basis on which you judge. Judgment becomes impossible without the past, for WITHOUT it you do NOT understand anything. You would make no ATTEMPT to judge, because it would be quite apparent to you that you do not know WHAT ANYTHING MEANS. You are afraid of this, because you believe that, WITHOUT THE EGO, all would be chaos. Yet I assure you that, without the ego, ALL WOULD BE LOVE."

"The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love."

"When your peace is threatened, or disturbed in ANY way, say to yourself, "I do not know what anything, INCLUDING THIS, means. And so I do NOT know HOW TO RESPOND TO IT. And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now." By this refusal to attempt to teach yourself what you do not know, the Guide Whom God has given you, will speak to you. HE will take His rightful place in your awareness, the instant YOU abandon it, and offer it to Him."

A radical teaching in the Course which not many are willing to accept, is that the condition of your body is still subject to the Golden Rule. That means that what applies to you applies to others equally. So when your body is sick, it IS attempting to attack both you AND your brother. It is not sick in isolation, it is a double-edged sword. And while your body is sick, it IS accusing your brother of sin, attempting to show to Him HIS sinfulness, attempting to attack Him and make Him dead.

Therefore the ONLY way to exonerate Him and to PROVE to Him in an undeniable way, that He must be innocent, is to demonstrate a body which has no signs of sickness or attack. YOUR health is HIS health. The body must become a symbol and representation of immortality, a sign of life, so that when your brother looks upon its loveliness He recognizes HE must be innocent because YOUR body shows no signs of effects, and therefore He cannot have attacked you. This is not merely wishful thinking. It requires a supernatural state of protection in which it becomes IMPOSSIBLE for your body to be attacked, sick, or dead.

This is also very clearly and radically spelled out in Chapter 27, section 2... "the picture of crucifixion", in which Jesus states we are to stop demonstrating sickness TO others, in order to teach only life and innocence. He even goes on to say that the Holy Spirit has prepared an alternative BODY, which is free from all signs of attack, and we are to show it to others to prove "brother, at your hand I live", defying all attempts by others to find signs of the effects of their attempted attacks, thus exonerating them.

There are few sections of the course less understood and more denied than this one.

Additionally, in Chapter 27 section 3 "the fear of healing" (!!) which follows on, Jesus opens with this statement, building upon this:

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, proclaiming that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned."

So what he is saying here is that a damaged body (sick, ill, diseased, broken, in pain etc) is ACTIVELY ACCUSING. In order to BE in states of sickness the mind has to entertain level confusion, has to project causality outside itself, sees itself as at the effect of external causes, and thus sees brothers as the CAUSE of the sickness, thus accusing anything other than yourself of causing the suffering. And then the body SHOWS a representation of this mindset, accusing your brother through PHYSICAL EVIDENCE, that HE must be the sinner who caused this. "Brother at your hand I die".

And so when you are making your body show up as sick, demonstrating self-attack, you attack both you and your brother, because separation comes BETWEEN you. The physical form of sickness is a weapon of accusation against both of you. Therefore... and this should be obvious unless you are into justifications and level confusions and denial, that the ONLY WAY to EXONERATE your brother, while you still have a body, is to NOT SHOW HIM any signs of sickness or damage in your body. If your body is still in a state of sickness, you ARE still accusing him, and therefore your mind CANNOT be healed. This is why, without exception, "a broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." There is no escape from this. You cannot have a sick body and a healthy mind.

This is a Course in miracles and it is a course in LIFE. It is not a course in being sick, which is a little death. It is a course in HEALTH. It is a course in healing. It is a course in removing ALL signs of attack and separation in the body PRIOR to being in a mental state capable of resurrection. The course ends in resurrection, not death. You MUST NOT SHOW SICKNESS OR DEATH TO THE WORLD!

Jesus goes on to say "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?"

And so when your brother attempts to accuse or attack your body, you must DEMONSTRATE (which means to show physically), that his efforts produced no EFFCTS, your body HAS no effects of sickness or damage, your body could not BE attacked, and you are a picture of invulnerability. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" speaks of this protection, which is SUPERNATURAL and defies all ego laws and laws of physics:

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible. Yet THIS PROTECTION needs to be preserved by careful watching. If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgement or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick. "

And let us also remember from the manual for teachers:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak, it suffers and it dies.

Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die. When its usefulness is done it is laid by, and that is all. THE MIND MAKES THIS DECISION, AS IT MAKES ALL DECISIONS THAT ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BODY'S CONDITION. ...Sickness is now impossible to him. ....Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

In this there are no exceptions. The condition of the body REFLECTS the condition of the mind, and the mind is the ONLY CAUSE of the body's condition. There are NO outside powers that bring oppression or suffering, including death. You are supposed to DEMONSTRATE LIVE that nothing can hurt you or your body. Not even your brothers attacks. And even as he attempts to attack you, it has NO EFFECT, proving IN FORM in undeniable evidence, that he MUST NOT have sinned because it had no consequences, and therefore He is innocent. His innocence is proved to him through your miraculous demonstration. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle DEMONSTRATES this."

To suggest you can have sane healthy mind while the body remains sick is DENIAL, it is a split mind, and impossible. It is your responsibility to SHOW that nothing happens to you against your will, you cannot be attacked unless you attack yourself, and "no one dies unless they choose to do so" - which means NO ONE ELSE can make you die if you do not choose it. The message given by the mind and the message given by the BODY MUST BE ONE, otherwise you are giving double messages and are a LIAR.

So yes, this DOES MEAN, that the state of your PHYSICAL BODY is actually important while you have it, it is part of the MIND's experience, it is not exempt from your demonstration of sanity, it is supposed to be USED to communicate health and healing, and therefore YOU MUST STOP MAKING IT SICK OR DEAD in order to complete the Course! The course ends in resurrection, not death. No-one escapes a dream of death through death. You HAVE to make the body healthy and healed and whole and free from sickness of every kind BEFORE your mind can be ready to overcome death entirely. And that means there is a supernatural POWER that you must demonstrate to others. This is why "Miracles are teaching devices."

All those who would say the body doesn't matter, or it isn't able to be sick, or it doesn't exist, or mind is separate from body, or sickness isn't real, or whatever other DENIAL BULLSHIT, I suggest you reconsider and read what Jesus has actually said. HE says the body must be used as evidence of immortality and innocence, and you can't do that if it's still in a state of corruption. I suggest you look at Chapter 19 - obstacles to peace - the INCORRUPTIBLE BODY. Here is the opening paragraphs:

"One thing is sure; God, Who created neither sin nor death, wills not that you be bound by them. He knows of neither sin NOR its result. The shrouded figures in the funeral procession march not in honor of their Creator, Whose Will it is they LIVE. They are not FOLLOWING it; they are OPPOSING it. And what is the black-draped body they would bury? A body THEY dedicated to death, a symbol of corruption, a sacrifice to sin, OFFERED to sin to feed upon, and keep ITSELF alive. A thing condemned, damned by its maker, and lamented by every mourner who looks upon it as himself.

You who believe you can condemn the Son of God to this ARE arrogant. But you who would RELEASE him are but honoring the Will of his Creator. The arrogance of sin, the pride of guilt, the sepulchre of separation, all are part of your unrecognized dedication to death. The glitter of guilt you laid upon the body would KILL it. For what the ego loves, it kills for its obedience. But what obeys it not, it CANNOT kill. You have ANOTHER dedication which would keep the body incorruptible and perfect as long as it is useful for your holy purpose."

It's time to start raising the dead and showing that you cannot be hurt in any way, on any level, even in form.

We are not supposed to be moving TOWARDS death, in any way. Not even physically.

From Chapter 19 section 9 - "the attraction of death":

"And so it is with death. Made by the ego, its dark shadow falls across all living things, because the ego is the "enemy" of life.

And yet, a shadow cannot kill. What is a shadow to the living? They but walk past, and it is gone. But what of those whose dedication it is NOT to live? The black-draped "sinners," the ego's mournful chorus, plodding so heavily AWAY from life, dragging their chains and marching in the slow procession that honors their grim master, lord of death? Touch any one of them with the gentle hand of forgiveness, and watch the chains fall away, along with YOURS. See him throw aside the black robe he was wearing to his funeral, and hear him laugh at death. The sentence sin would lay upon him, he can escape with your forgiveness.

This is NOT arrogance. It is the Will of God. What is impossible to you who choose His Will as yours? What is death to you? Your dedication is NOT to death, nor to its master."

CLEARLY, if you are moving toward death, you are moving away from LIFE, and God's Will is that YOU LIVE. "It is not God's will that you suffer". You MUST NOT MAKE YOUR BODY DIE otherwise you are NOT DOING GOD'S WILL. This IS what the Course is teaching. STOP DYING!

Even if the body is not real, even if it is an illusion, you CANNOT continue having it be sick or dead while maintaining the you are awake and spiritual. You MUST use it to demonstrate immortality, health, happiness and holiness. You MUST use it to bring healing to others. You MUST use it as a communication medium through which miracles are performed for others. And you must use it to EXONERATE your brother of all sin. If you are moving into physical sickness, you HAVE defenses against the truth. If you are moving toward death, YOU DO WORSHIP IT.

You are supposed to become CAPABLE of overcoming death entirely, making death impossible for you, PROVING it is impossible for you, and not ALLOWING OR CHOOSING death to "happen to" the body against your will. "No one dies without his own consent." You CANNOT have a sane mind without a healthy body. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." "Those who are sick do not love themselves for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves".

It is all simple and clear. This is a Course in the LIVING and a moving closer TO LIFE, which is God. You cannot approach God, who is life, and have sickness and death be maintained on any level. The body MUST RESURRECT and become holy. Failure to do so is failing the course.

---

Below is the full quote from the course about how you use the body to teach the innocence or sinfulness of another:

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. Yet this is writ in hell and NOT in Heaven, where you are BEYOND attack, and prove his INNOCENCE. The picture of yourself you offer him you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all. And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence.

The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins.

Sickness is but a "little" death; a form of vengeance not yet total. Yet it speaks with certainty for what it represents. The bleak and bitter picture you have sent your brother, YOU have looked upon in grief. And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved. Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.

Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that every scar is healed, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. 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. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true.

It is not Will for Life, but wish for death, that is the motivation for this world. Its ONLY purpose is TO PROVE GUILT REAL. No worldly thought or act or feeling has a motivation other than this one. These are the witnesses that are called forth to be believed, and lend conviction to the system they speak for and represent. And each has many voices, speaking to your brother and yourself in different tongues. And yet to both the message is the same. Adornment of the body seeks to show how lovely are the witnesses for guilt. Concerns about the body demonstrate how frail and vulnerable is your life; how easily destroyed is what you love. Depression speaks of death and vanity of real concern with anything at all.

The strongest witness to futility, which bolsters all the rest and helps them paint the picture in which sin is justified, is sickness in whatever form it takes. The sick have reason for each one of their unnatural desires and strange needs. For who could live a life so soon cut short, and NOT esteem the worth of passing joys? What pleasures COULD there be that will endure? Are not the frail ENTITLED to believe that every stolen scrap of pleasure is their righteous payment for their little lives? Their death will pay the price for all of them, if they enjoy their benefits or not. The end of life must come, whatever way that life be spent. And so take pleasure in the quickly passing and ephemeral.

These are NOT sins, but witnesses unto the strange belief that sin and death are real, and innocence and sin will end alike, within the termination of the grave. If this were true, there WOULD be reason to remain content to seek for passing joys, and cherish little pleasures where you can. But in this picture is the body NOT perceived as neutral and WITHOUT a goal inherent in itself. For it becomes the symbol of reproach, the sign of guilt whose consequences still are there to see, so that the cause can NEVER be denied. Your function is to PROVE to him that sin can HAVE no cause. How futile MUST it be to see yourself a picture of the proof that what your function IS can never be.

The Holy Spirit's picture changes not the body into something it is not. It only takes away from it ALL signs of accusation and of blamefulness. Pictured WITHOUT a purpose, it is seen as neither sick nor well, nor bad nor good. No grounds are offered that it may be judged in ANY way at all. It has no life, but neither is it dead. It stands apart from ALL experience of fear OR love. For now it witnesses to NOTHING yet, its purpose being open, and the mind made free again to choose what it is FOR. Now is it not condemned, but waiting for a purpose to be GIVEN, that it may fulfill the function that it will receive.

Into this empty space, from which the GOAL of sin has been removed, is Heaven free to be remembered. Here its peace can come, and perfect healing take the place of death. 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."

The simple way to let this be achieved is merely this; to let the body have no purpose from the past, when you were sure you KNEW its purpose was to foster guilt. For this insists your crippled picture is a lasting sign of what it represents. This leaves no space in which a DIFFERENT view, ANOTHER purpose, can be given it. You do NOT know its purpose. You but gave ILLUSIONS of a purpose to a thing you made to hide your function from yourself. This thing WITHOUT a purpose CANNOT hide the function that the Holy Spirit gave. Let, then, ITS purpose and YOUR function be both reconciled at last, and seen as one."

"Everyone should love everyone."

"You cannot enter into REAL relationships with ANY of God's Sons, unless you love them all, and EQUALLY. Love is not special. If you single out PART of the Sonship for your love, you are imposing guilt on ALL your relationships, and MAKING them unreal."

This is a clear message from Jesus. Each one of us needs to get to the point where we love *everyone*, literally. Not a single exception, not a single "type of person", not a single reason why we can't love someone.

Regardless of what political party, regardless of criminal history, regardless of sins committed, regardless of what color or sexual orientation their body is, no matter their personality, no matter how they behave or what their voice sounds like or what foods they like or what team they support.

This is unconditional love. Love without exceptions. Love without special conditions.

If you are a man, a straight man, are you willing to fully love all other men? Including gay men?

If you are in an exclusive marriage, are you willing to love EVERYONE as much as you love your spouse?

Will you love your children as much as your husband?

Can you love all of the neighbors that you disapprove of?

Can you love all celebrities, political leaders, groups, corporations, the military, all war mongers, hitler?

Wherever there are reasons not to, there are reasons not to love yourself. Wherever there is some limit on WHY you cannot love them, there is a limit on why you cannot love yourself. If you cannot be willing to fully express love to every single one of God's children equally and fully, there is a limitation placed on how much love you are willing to receive. Which means you do not love yourself either.

Special relationships are especially prone to exclusion. That one special person, who is better than all others, your favorite, whom you love the most, such that no-one else compares, and everyone else sucks. Can you find the same love everywhere you go, regardless of whether that special person exists?

Can you love another man's wife as much as you love your own?

Can you love another woman's husband?

We're not talking here about having sex with them or getting into an orgy. We're talking about non-physical spirit-based extensions of love through the heart.

There can be no enemies if you want peace. There can be no-one identified as "not worthy of love" if you are to be worthy of love. You can't maintain that someone is wrong or sinful or undeserving. You can't keep separating off one group of people to spiritualize them at the expense of putting another group down.

Jesus loves EVERYONE EQUALLY. Every single person on or off the planet. All the children of God. When there isn't full total willingness to love everyone equally, there is a resistance to loving ANY of them fully. This is why Jesus says if you do not love them ALL fully and equally, you do not really love ANY of them.

If you have a special person or family member that you feel you love a great deal, but you do not love every other person to the same extent, you DO NOT love that special person fully. The love you withhold, the unhealed grievances, the special hate you have for others, must detract from how loving you can be towards a special person. To love that special person fully, you HAVE to love everyone fully. It's the only way that works. In case you didn't notice, you cannot love and hate at the same time.

For those who want to return to Heaven, to God, to unconditional reality without limits, all such grievances must be relinquished. All specialness has to be questioned. All exclusivity has to be transcended. Whether you choose to spend extra time or attention with certain people still, that's up to you. Holy Spirit wants to turn your special relations into holy ones. But to be holy, what applies to that one person must apply to all, including you.

You cannot love others if you do not love ourself. You are also included in this. To have enemies is to be at war with yourself. You cannot get away with it. Maintain enemies and you are not at peace, seeing yourself as under attack. Only when every single person is your friend are you free from this. And to do that you have to be a friend to yourself. You have to be willing to love yourself and receive love from God. When you do, you can then give or extend it. You must be included in this because love is a state of SHARING. It belongs to everyone.

If you meet a person who complains a lot, they frame themselves as a victim and then tell you all the many many ways that someone or some group of people are wrong. They go on and on and on and on and on endlessly. And meanwhile you feel like you are being held hostage and can't get away and you can't shut them up. And then as you try to leave, they follow you and keep on going with their diatribe.

What's happening is the person is full of guilt and shame and secretly condemns themselves a lot. They see themselves as victimised by all the many things in the world that they seem to not like. But they are not being spiritually responsible, for their experiences and feelings, so constantly accuse the world of causing it. They feel justified in pointing a finger of blame and listing off all the many sins they see outside themselves, but really because they themselves believe they are sinful. They hate themselves, so they like to hate others. Their shit don't stink, and they portray themselves as always idyllic and harmless and justified in being righteous.

The payoff for them is that if they can project their sins onto other people and find everyone to be guilty, it makes them have a certain sense of psychological relief from the heavy burden of their own hidden guilts. They get to come off as innocent and not like those who sin, separated off from them, and therefore not the guilty one. It produces an illusion that they believe they are not guilty, which is a form of denial.

Meanwhile, the more that they do this, the more they are basically imprisoning others. They are projecting their own imprisonment, and in effect really see themselves as imprisoned by their own guilt. They are locked in and stuck in their own confinement, so are expressing confinement to you. And that makes you feel like you are being locked in confinement. Whether or not they actually target you or complain about something you are believing or doing, it doesn't matter, because they want your indirect acknowledgement that they're right and that you are bearing witness to their innocence.

So long as you agree with them, don't stop them, allow them to spew, and go along with it as though condoning it and not challenging it, they will keep going and never end. They find validation by your passive receipt of it. Meanwhile their condemning blaming imprisoning vibe can make you feel like you're being held hostage and that the other person is using you, like you're chained to them and have to hear the long list of sins, so that they'll feel better about themselves. They don't want to let you go or be free because they won't be able to scapegoat and get rid of their guilt. It's really a guilt dump onto you so that they feel better, in illusion.

There is another way that this plays out. I've noticed if someone sees themselves as a victim and isn't being spiritually responsible, they'll believe that things you personally do make them feel unpleasant, guilty, shameful etc. They will then accuse you of being the cause of their suffering, even though they did it to themselves by taking something personally. They will twist what you said and use it against you as though you caused them to have a reaction. And now they'll start to get angry at you and scapegoat you and demand an apology.

This becomes a form of intimidation, where responsibility has been shifted, and now you supposedly are responsible for making them feel better. They hold what they did to themselves against you, and now you feel like it's your fault, you feel guilty, and now you feel like you have to atone or make it up to them. You have to now grovel and lower yourself and make an apology, after which they grin with delight that they forced it out of you and made themselves feel superior.

It becomes a kind of tyrannical relationship of control and blame, where you are accused of causing them what they're supposed to be responsible for. You feel imprisoned by this accusation, and supposedly guilty for causing them. They get this angry strong opinion about how you're wrong. They totally depend externally on someone apologising or meeting their needs or sucking up to them, in order for them to feel better, because they are not being responsible for how they feel. They depend externally on this positive feedback and getting positivity from others, to make up for their lack of responsibility for feeling shit. And meanwhile they judge the living shit out of everyone and everything.

So then you start to feel obligated and held hostage and like you can't tell them they're wrong. Since they depend so heavily on external validation, you also sense that if you were to say anything against them or that they might take as an attack or that they might think of as not validating their bullshit, they will become even more angry and negative and scapegoating, and then they'll become a big monster and do something even more threatening and aggressive and controlling. So then you become afraid that they'll have power over you, control you, manipulate you, and that you're not good enough.

This kind of person is so victimy and so dependent on externals and so believing the physical world and generally likely atheistic and non-spiritual, such that they act like a gatekeeper and superior person whose opinion has to be requested on all matters. Like they are really important and special. And if you agree with them they shower you with ultra positivity and loveliness, and if they don't agree with you they go into an angry pout mode and become aggressive.

The special love flips to special hate. So now it's very hard to question their motives or to point out their flaws or to push back on their strong opinion because you know they'll just go into attack mode and make you an enemy. So instead they get to stay in a kind of 'everything's wonderful' state of illusion and fake special love relationship and dishonesty and irresponsibility, acting like they have the face of innocence all pleasant and nice to everyone, only to become an enraged monster when anyone points out their bullshit.

Either way you can end up feeling held hostage by someone's ego, with demands that you act a certain way, or indirectly demands that others act a certain way, in order for them to be happy. It can be difficult to stand up to and to draw a boundary with these people, to stop them from their spewing or to raise doubts about their motives. In both cases the person is a scapegoater, a judger and a hater of the things in the world that they consider wrong.

They segment the world into positives and negative, side heavily with what they like and side heavily against what they don't like. This is a spilritualizaiton of the world, an attempt by their egos to make out that some parts of the illusion are better than others, and leads to believing that they themselves are better than others. In their siding with the face of innocence they become overpowering and seeing themselves as holier than thou. In effect, those who portray themselves as the innocent victims tend to be the most vicious accusers.

"The partly innocent are apt to be quite stupid at times." UrT3D3

"This is particularly unfortunate, because frightened people are apt to be vicious" UrT3C15

"The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good." UrT31E2

"Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." UrT31E4

Your ego is the denial of the Self that God created. Its foundation is the belief that you do not have a Self - that you are not the whole. It represents your attack upon your SELF, in an attempt to destroy yourself, which is why the ego wants you dead.

Being rooted in limitation and separation, it is a sense of self that depends on being separate from other selves. It has to reject other selves in order to seem to exist. And so you have to make an ego for yourself AND for others in order to distinguish that you have one.

"Each man makes one ego for himself, although it is subject to enormous variation because of its instability, and one for everyone he perceives, which is equally variable."

Your ego is obviously in a state of contradiction, because its goal is to be a full self, but it simultaneously hates the full self and denies it. It requires that it lacks something that others have, and has something that others lack, in order to be different and unique and stand out. It is made of relative differences, because it is not absolute. This is why it can never be satisfied or achieve its goal. But that doesn't mean it won't try, so long as "seek and do not find" is its guiding rule.

So the ego is the search for your self, where your mind is trying to find the self that it is denying. It refuses to stop denying self and actually find self, and wants to always be in a state of not knowing what it is. It will search intently to try to increase its awareness of self, to have more and more sense of self, of existing, but without ever questioning the original denial of self.

In order to increase the sense of self, this partial, limited, finite, less than whole, small self, has to constantly build itself up, bolster itself, increase its sense of identity, reinforce itself, validate itself, prove itself, get recognition, and generally increase the attention it gets.

Your ego does not care how it does this, only that it does this. It doesn't care if it means identifying negatively about yourself, being hard on yourself, beating yourself up, being a victim, because these all still have the hidden payoff that it validates the EXISTENCE of the ego. If you are suffering, you must exist.

Your ego will wear any kind of clothing including negative unhappy hurtful senses of identity, if it means you still at least exist in some way. A hurt, damaged, suffering, sick, lonely, unhappy self is still a separate self. Just as much as a separate self that seems happier and more successful and rich and famous.

This is because the ego's fundamental drive is to become more self. To exist more. It doesn't care how it does it. It wants something separate to identify with. It wants to be validated as existing at all. It wants attention, even if it is highly negative attention, or positive attention, so long as it is the attention that it wants to be the centre of.

It wants to be noticed, even if that means being a victim, being abused, being attacked, being threatened. It doesn't care, so long as someone somewhere is validating its existence. And even wanting to AVOID attention is another way to stand apart and be different, to be secretly noticed as avoidant and hiding and ashamed.

As Jesus says in the course the ego also loves the idea of analysing the ego, even if the goal seems to be to try to undo the ego and figure out its functioning so that you can rise above it. Because by thus focusing on the ego and its workings you are STILL validating it and giving it attention. It loves to be talked about regardless of what is said about it.

The overall theme here is that the egos tools can take many different forms, but its fundamental PURPOSE or USE OF those tools is always towards its singular aim of making itself exist more. It could even come up with the thought and emotion, "I'm suffering so badly, it hurts", as though it does not want this. But you might not notice the secret underlying assertion here: *I* am a suffering self that exists, and *I* am having real hurt, therefore I must exist.

It always revolves around a sense of "me". But this sense of me is a limited identity. Since it lacks self and lacks existence, your ego needs to "get more self" from somewhere. It seeks for others to confirm its existence, it seeks to be superior to others so that it can be more right and have more truth, it seeks to be inferior to others so that it can wallow in its real suffering and be a suffering self, and it even seeks to pretend to be indifferent so as to be a neutral self that sits on a fence.

"Everyone is looking for himself and the power and glory he thinks he has lost."

Always in whatever way the ego expresses, it always is with the PURPOSE of finding a way to bolster the sense of existing. And usually this purpose is hidden and not overtly stated. There is a kind of indirect payoff. While ego is busy putting attack thoughts in your mind, you might not realize that the REASON WHY its putting them there is so that it can get more mind-power to use to reinforce itself, or that it is busy adding to its stockpile of labels and definitions of itself.

When you are angry at someone for example, hurling guilt and pretending that you're innocent, you may not realize the subtler hidden purpose of WHO it is that is angry. WHO is benefiting from the game - it's the ego. If you are an angry self, you are still a self. If you can increase the sense of separation with another person by dissociating from them and wanting nothing to do with them, wanting them to stop existing, it intensifies the sense of being separate from them, which in turn increases the sense of existing as a separate self.

It's always very helpful to ask yourself, "how is my ego benefiting from this?" With any emotions, any reactions, and projections, any attack thoughts, anything that is not peace and love, you should ask yourself how this is benefiting the existence of your ego. And you will likely see that there is always some kind of payoff, some way that it benefits "you", some way that you get something out of it. If nothing else, that it simply confirms that you as ego exist.

Another of the egos big tools is to be right. When you are trying to be right, it's because you believe you are guilty and wrong, and are trying to project that onto someone else, so that someone else can be wrong and you can pretend to be right. It may seem at first that the benefit here is that someone else gets to be the guilty one. But that's not the real goal. The real goal is to increase the sense of separation between you and others, which splits your mind, intensifies the sense of being "not them", and thereby intensifies the sense of "being me."

Another of its devices is being judgemental. It may seem at first that the payoff in judging is that you're finding something wrong with someone else, perhaps to be superior to them, or to confirm how you are inferior to them. But the real secret payoff is that if you are superior you are "more than", and "more real" and "more true." And this increases the sense of existing. And being inferior to others or less than or insecure, even if unpleasant, still increases the sense of being something - existing. And all the labels you pile on are just more definitions for what you are.

Another big tool is grievances. If you are bearing a grudge it means you are holding onto the past, which means you are pulling your self away from the present. The present is where your real self has presence, and exists, so the ego does not want anything to do with it. It wants to maintain unhealed unresolved ties to the past so that it can be anchored in it. It needs the past in order to have grudges and grievances that it can keep blaming other people for, so that it can keep projecting and separating and reinforcing itself. Without grievances there can be no way to distinguish that you are separate from others, and so can't exist as an ego.

So it's not just about scapegoating, or being a negative or positive victim, or being at the effect of the world, or people attacking you, or you projecting guilt, or disowning of responsibility, or trying to identify with idols, or becoming a body, or whatever else. The CORE motivation of the entire ego thought system, the GOAL, is to keep being a separate self and REPLACE (kill off) the Self that God created. To keep reinforcing ego, building it, armouring it, defending it, intensifying it, having pride in it, decorating it, increasing it through any means possible.

This is all rooted in the core belief that you are not as God created you. And by denying the self God created, you seem to believe you lack self. That you lack love, power, identity, causal will. And it is these beliefs - these blocks to the awareness of love's (Self's) presence - these denials, that you lack all these things, that really needs to be undone.

Undoing these things doesn't directly attack the ego, and trying to get rid of ego by demonising or attacking it will just be more ego attacking itself to make itself exist more. You can't undo it by using ego tactics to fight it. You have to surrender it.

You undo it by basically withdrawing belief from it, not listening to it, noticing how you're adding to it, being willing to be mistaken, but even moreso by looking at the beliefs you have about NOT being a self, about being unwhole or unholy, about how you lack and are in need, how you don't have love, how you've lost something, how you've been diminished, and this general theme of "something is wrong with me." Your "self attack" has to stop.

Without these faults, these lacks, these needs, this wanting, this self denial and self attack, there can be no guilt and no ego. And the way to undo self attack is through the secret of salvation, in which you recognize you're doing it to yourself and you stop doing it because you want a better way. And that is the path of forgiveness - to undo ego by questioning its foundation. By accepting that you are still as God created you, lacking nothing, needing nothing, ending victimhood, reclaiming power and responsibility for what you are, and opening up to your real identity as the Christ self - the whole holy self, which is based on oneness not separation.

"Allegiance to the denial of God is the ego's religion."

"That is why the ego IS the denial of free will."

"You who identify with your egos cannot believe that God loves you."

"Being made out of the denial of the Father, the ego has no allegiance to its own Maker."

"For the blamelessness of Christ is the proof that the ego never was, and can never be. Without guilt the ego HAS no life, and God's Son IS without guilt."

"The present is the only time there is."

"Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything."

"Lesson 308: This instant is the only time there is."

The ego uses our memories to constantly drag up unhappy experiences and relive them. This is a trap. Effectively, everything that ever seemed to happen before, here, is gone. It's over. All you have in spacetime is what's in front of your face right now.

"The ego invests heavily in the past, and in the end, believes that the past is the ONLY aspect of time that is meaningful."

If you remain in the past you'll also remain in grievances because you can't hold something against something unless you're dragging up something they did in the past. If they are not sinning now, they have never sinned. And there is no sin without the past.

The past IS the idea of spacetime, because it is the idea that what has always existed in eternity no longer exists and has been changed into something else. ie it has died. Time is the idea that God is dead. It is opposite to reality and not of God. To God there is only presence, no time, no space, no past, and no future.

"To you who still believe you live in time, and know not it is gone, the Holy Spirit still guides you through the infinitely small and senseless maze you still perceive in time, though it has long since gone. You think you live in what is past."

"The past is over. It can touch me not."

"Unless the past is over in my mind, the real world must escape my sight."

"Forgiveness is the great release from time. It is the key to learning that the past is over."

"The only aspect of time which is really eternal is NOW. That is what we REALLY mean when we say that now is the only time."

"For what can be forgiven but the past, and if it is forgiven it is gone."

"Forgiveness does not aim at KEEPING time, but at its ending, when it has no use. Its purpose ended, it is gone."

"Forgive the past and let it go, for it IS gone."

I've recently been 'God bathing' ... But I don't quite have a tan yet.

Actually it's not as simple as just getting into my swimsuit and laying in the light. There's a slight problem. Part of me does not want it.

The interesting thing is, though, that as I attempt to expose myself to God's love - by which I mean, to actually accept the *experience* of it - to let it in and allow it - it shines a light on the parts of me that need healing.

These are the parts that I can tell feel like... They are not worthy, they are not good enough, they are guilty, they believe something is going to be taken away or lost, that hold grievances, that feel alone and separate and forgotten, etc... All of this 'me', this ego me, who I think I am right now, that when you really get down to it, when faced with 'the truth' (God), experiences itself as unwanted and lost.

It's not easy to be aware that this is in me and that it needs healing. But part of the 'God bathing' is that I become at least a little bit willing to let some love soak in. I let it come a bit closer. I let it seep in around the foundations of my 'self hate', and loosen it up a bit. It's like being surrounded with a healing balm, or getting a hug.

That resistant ego part of me still doesn't believe that God could love me...and it always has this sense of ...'because'... There is a reason... Because of what I did... Guilt.

Hopefully if I can release and let of enough blocks and resistances and beliefs in guilt, I can at least let myself realize, if for just a moment, that actually everything is going to be okay. I can be loved, I can be healed and forgiven, and I actually do deserve God's unconditional love.

And then little glimpses or feelings of optimism start to creep in, little awarenesses of... maybe it's true. Maybe I don't have to be this way. Maybe I don't have to stay separate and guilty. Maybe I don't have to die. Because what is this really all about but the secret death wish that we all have, believing we cannot be with God/Life ever again. My thought last night was, maybe I actually don't have to die. And that was a relief. "Thank God"... For sure.

Learning to allow and accept what God is.... Surrendering what I am not.

A powerful sentence came to me which felt great to repeat several times. "I am the Son of God. I am completely innocent."

ahhhhh. Now there is a slight tan.

There are two versions of this answer.

One relates to conditional love. If God has certain conditions which must be met in order for you to be worthwhile loving, then if you don't meet those conditions you aren't worthy enough. This makes you think that in order to become worthy you have to meet certain conditions, or turn yourself into a more lovable person. And also you believe that if you aren't meeting certain conditions, this PREVENTS God's love.

But then there's unconditional love. If God loves you unconditionally then it doesn't matter what your current state is, or what you think you did, or whether you're awake or sleeping. God is loving you 100% regardless. This means he must be overlooking everything you think would keep you from Him, and instead sees the REAL YOU.

Being worthy of God also means that God wants what you are or what you represent. It means God shares the view of you that you have of yourself. And it also means that your worthiness is lofty enough to be attractive to Him.

When you believe you are unworthy, it is a form of denial which attempts to shut God out, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be able to believe you are unworthy. So you have to pretend you're not. But it is only pretend. You can never be ACTUALLY unworthy, you just think you are.

Also to be worthy of God means that God values you and wants you and welcomes you. If you think there's something about you that proves that God wouldn't love you, maybe you're too ugly or have too many grievances or don't like your job or whatever, maybe you hold this up as the reason why God wouldn't love you. But it isn't proof. It's a mistake. And it is an incorrect answer.

God can't stop finding you worthy because God is constantly creating you, choosing you, sustaining you, loving you, extending you and protecting you. You came FROM God, because He decided he would extend love, as love, as you. Your very nature, your foundation, is love. If you came FROM God then obviously you ARE what God wants, because God wouldn't be in the business of creating something he doesn't like. He only creates with love. So you must be lovable.

Your belief that you're not lovable is the only problem. You think there's some reasons why God doesn't love you. None of those reasons are the truth and none of them have the power to stop God's love. You think they can, but they don't. You can hate yourself to death but God still loves you. And then He's like, ok, are you done playing now? It's time for dinner.

This is a big lesson for me and everyone: How to love all the time. It's natural, but our divine nature to always love and express love has been blocked by fear, attack thoughts, grievances, hatred etc.

When other people seem to be loving and we're "getting" something out of the relationship, ie specialness, we open up some of the flood gates and allow "exclusive love" to go towards the person.

But when the person fails to love you, is angry or upset with you or treats you poorly, there is great temptation then in the ego to simply use it as a way to prove that someone doesn't deserve your love. Then you form a grievance, hold onto attack thoughts, fail to heal, and stop being loving. In order to deny love to others, you have to block it, which denies it to yourself! You cannot love and hate at the same time!

This turns then into conditional love, which simply means you will only love others when they are doing something that you want or being a certain way. Particularly when they are seeming to be loving toward you or giving you what you think you want or need or lack.

We have to actually wean ourselves off of conditional love in order to reach atonement. That means that we have to recognize that our "loving" or expressing must not be tied to external conditions of any kind, causes of any kind, or people of any kind. That means that we don't love in "reaction" or response to others, but we simply love because it's what we are and how we want to express. It's a decision.

"Teach only love for that is what you are" says it all.

I've started to see glimpses of this. To refuse to be unloving even in a situation which seems it would warrant defenses or reactions. To simply choose... I'm only going to love right now. And to then love, to radiate love, to be love. Not because of the person, not as a defense, not as a reaction, nothing to do with the ego at all.

Then you find out that your willingness to love is not *dependent* on other people or the state they are in. And at first this seems crazy, that you would choose to love in spite of appearances or situations that seem to "call for" some other response. This expressing of love OVERRIDES the ego's laws in the situation, ignores the hierarchy of illusions, forgets/forgives grievances and has unexpected benefits to yourself.

In a situation, I decided I am only going to love. So I stood there and loved. I felt love in my heart area radiating out. I didn't know I was able to radiate this love. As I did this, the other person was not happy at all. My deciding to love was not in response to their ego. And so it seemed to me there wasn't really a "reason" to love, other than that... it sure felt good. Certainly better than entering into false empathy.

The really interesting thing is, if I choose to love, to extend love, the love expresses, like it goes out and radiates and "sends" love. In this sending, something really intriguing happens. I share in the love, I feel the love, and I become more sane. Love is the "natural nature" of a sane mind. It quickly corrects mistaken perception. It's like the sun comes out and the light is shining and everything is put into its proper place.

I also notice when I choose to love, just spontaneously, not as an ego reaction - to will to love - the extending of that love allows me to receive it. *I* feel loved. By giving love, love comes to me and through me. I was waiting a long time for a certain person to be more loving, and it wasn't until I decided to just love them that *I* experienced the love that I thought THEY were supposed to be providing.

This goes back to the very basic lesson (seek and do not find) that when we believe that we are lacking love, we will shift responsibility for love onto someone else and expect them to do the loving for us. Then they either will or will not, and when they will not, we stay in a lack of love. So we have to learn the difficult lesson, that we cannot get other people to love us and we are not SUPPOSED to. You can and will only experience the receiving of love, truly, when YOU LOVE.

When YOU choose to love, you instantly enter into love's extension and expression, you feel the love, you become part of the love. "To have all, give all to all." This is a basic law of God, that in order to have something you have to give it. If you are not having something, it's because you are not giving it.

If you do not have love and others don't seem to be filling the void for you, it's because you are not loving enough. And when you love enough, you don't NEED anyone to love you FOR you, because YOU are joining in unconditional love and extending God's love. Love comes through you, and you experience it.

It boils down to this simple state, which I presume is what it will be like in Atonement, where you simply love all the time. You express love all the time. You radiate it, flow it, extend it. It comes out through you from God and from your soul. And as it goes out, it has miraculous power. And this loving power actually has something to do with healing and miracle working.

Love has this property that, unless it is given or shared, it does not exist. Love isn't a "state" that's static. God isn't static. God is an extender and creator. "Love goes out because of what it is." "Divine abstraction takes joy in application."

Love HAS to be shared. "God did not will to be alone." When it is not being radiated and shared and GIVEN, it does not have any radiance, and does not shine, and has no presence. That means it is dead. Death is the denial of extension of love, which is also life.

So in order to be alive, to be in resurrection, to reach atonement, and to be happy, we have to remove these blocks to love SO THAT we can once again resume our NATURE of always extending, always loving, no matter what, no matter who, no matter what time or the reason. That means that you being loving really has NOTHING to do with anyone else. You just be loving because you ARE love. You can't help it. "Teach only love for that is what you are".

So that means being willing to love and extend love in ALL SITUATIONS regardless of the situation, or who it is, or how upset they are. And the reason you love really has nothing to do with the other person. You simply do it because it's natural, healthy, you are willing to, and it feels great.

I thought I was forgiving someone because I was doing forgiveness processes about them. But... I didn't really get to a point where I was LOVING them. THAT is the healed state that is the goal to reach with forgiveness. If I am not loving the person, literally, the I must still have some kind of grievance or block to love, therefore am not receiving it, because I am not extending it. And feeling "unloving" unfortunately automatically means you will also feel "unloved".

Love comes from within, and it extends outward to others. It radiates naturally when it is not obstructed. It also contains willingness because unwillingness is unnatural and everyone naturally wants to share love to increase their joy. "God, who encompasses all being, nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually (love) and want to share it to increase their joy."

That means if you want to feel the love, you have to BE the love. You have to give the love. And that doesn't mean special love, or sacrifice, or loss. It doesn't mean subservience or reaction or slavery or being carpeting. It means you love because YOU WANT TO, IN SPITE OF anyone else. And then you naturally bring that love to others simply because it serves BOTH of you. That is the golden rule. What applies to you applies to them.

Love first. Being loved is secondary and automatic. Trying to be loved first blocks being loved.

This means then we have to learn to decouple or disconnect "whether we will love" or "when we will love" from anything that other people are doing. Even if other people are stressing out and upset and angry or whatever. We have to decide, I, by myself, with God, am going to love right now, regardless of anyone else, even if that someone else is someone close to you.

And that means you have to claim the responsibility, freedom, joy and pleasure of LOVING for YOURSELF, which is the same thing as accepting atonement for yourself. It's your right to love and experience love. It's your inheritance.

I've seen that many people think we're supposed to "forgive the world", in that we find ways to "see it differently." Because this is PART of what the course says. Change your mind about the world etc.

But this tends to lead us to a sort of assumption that the world is the TARGET of the forgiveness, such that we're trying to be nicer to IT. As though we'll end up with a better, happier relationship WITH it.

But I see this as short-sighted. Because in fact the way forgiveness works, we have to actually overlook bodies, and look beyond form, and see past the veil of matter. The aim is to see the light of Christ, the face of Christ, which is HIDDEN BY the world.

It's by overlooking the world that we look TO the light, and find the real world. Which is not the physical world. And then INDIRECTLY, the physical world becomes forgiven or seen in another light.

I think when we consider the purpose or functionality of forgiving the world as looking squarely AT the world in a different way, we're missing the point. We're not really supposed to be prioritising finding a better way to look at bodies and planets. The purpose of forgiveness is to NOT SEE them, so that we are restored to being able to seen heaven.

In fact we're told that we will awaken to the Kingdom when we put our full attention on it, essentially forgetting the physical world entirely.

We have to be careful then with this idea of forgiving "things", or bodies or places or stuff in the world. Our aim isn't really to first and foremost cosy up to matter and snuggle into bed with it. It's to find a way to rise up OUT of and BEYOND, to recognize it as nothing and see it diminish in our sight. Its undoing is the atonement - the cancellation of the dream.

It's easy to think that we do a forgiveness, for example, by "forgiving that person for what they did" or whatever. But what's the end result, keeping the person in a body and seeing the body and trying to be nicer to it? This can't really work because to see the body requires guilt and grievances. The aim should be to see their body LESS and to see their spiritual self MORE.

I see that some people have become lost in this, thinking spacetime is God's murderous creation, and seek to "forgive the world" DIRECTLY instead of indirectly, thus holding it up in front of their faces and screaming love at it to try to make it be something it's not. This is not going to work, because the world isn't real and isn't capable of reciprocating or creating.

We're not here to have a special relationship with an illusory fictional planet. We're here to undo the story and collapse space and time and watch the world spin back into nothingness. Because we don't need it. God already gave us a Kingdom.

"Forget not the Kingdom of God (heaven) for anything the world (spacetime, earth) has to offer. The world (of bodies) can ADD nothing to the power and the glory of God and His Holy Sons, but it CAN blind the Sons to the Father if they behold it (if you see it, your view of God is blocked). You cannot behold the world (see matter) and know God. Only one is true." UrT8F2

"To forgive is to OVERLOOK (not see the world). Look, then, BEYOND error (beyond spacetime), and do not let your perception rest UPON it (upon the physical), for you will believe what your perception HOLDS. Accept as true only what your brother IS (spirit), if you would know yourself. Perceive what he is NOT (bodies), and you CANNOT know what you are, BECAUSE you see HIM falsely (as matter)." UrT9C1

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

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

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

"Grievances are completely alien to love."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sick bodies are accusers." "Behold, brother, at your hand I die."

Ok now, this is a lesson in cause and effect and what happens when it is reversed.

When your mind is sane, it knows it is "cause". It causes, it creates, it extends love. It knows that what it causes is its "effect".

As mind starts to deceive itself and go insane, it begins to reverse cause and effect. It sees itself as "at the effect of" something, and places "the cause" (sinner) seemingly outside of itself (its a split mind with victim and victimizer in it).

If you can imagine little arrows coming out of the mind pointing in the direction of causality, when cause-effect is reversed, the arrows start pointing AT your mind as if from outside of it. This is self attack. The mind starts producing "effects", which correspond to what it *perceives* are the kind of effects that the "outside cause" is causing.

So as the mind goes into perception and starts perceiving "backwards", it sees itself as under attack from outside of itself, even though the split part of the mind is what's attacking the other part from the outside in.

At the same time, placing causality outside of your mind or "separate from me" or "not part of me" (the split involves disassociation), you "project" ownership of that causality onto "others". You see your sin in them, and see them as causing you.

If you are an effect of an external cause, that external cause is "to blame" for putting the effects in you. They are the ones who are launching the arrows in your direction. So as your perception reverses and you now have level confusion and belief in magic and an authority problem, your mind is now attacking itself "through" what it sees as others - brothers.

This is a state of mental illness. It is sickness. And because the mind, your mind, is attacking itself in a split state, IT is putting the "effects" into you which IT is also causing from an external vantage point. A vital element to a flipped perception is that you actually perceive as if the "cause" is outside you, or that you are perceiving yourself through the eyes of others. If they are the ones causing your "effects", so you claim, you are *accusing* them of causality, or sin.

Simultaneously, the "effects" which you are visualizing as coming from elsewhere, YOU put in place, and so you actually implement sickness in FORM. This sickness shows up as your body becoming sick! If you can visualize this, it's kind of like you dress yourself in an appearance of suffering and show this to your brother, and hold this "picture of crucifixion" up in front of his face, and say "behold brother, at YOUR hand I die", as an attempt to PROVE that HE is the cause of your effects.

So on the one hand, your body starts to manifest symptoms of sickness because your mind is sick/split and is attacking itself, and on the other hand you are simultaneously condemning your brother for being the one to cause it. You've displaced causality onto brothers and now hold them accountable for your suffering. This is why "sick bodies are accusers".

Now, here is the key central teaching, which many people don't get or don't want to accept. While it's true that bodies are not real and don't matter etc, while you have one, it is PART OF the way in which you are attempting to accuse your brother of sin. While the attack is really happening on a mental level, your body IS REPRESENTING a picture of your mind's attitude about itself. And its self attitude is the SAME as its attitude about others, due to the Golden Rule.

So now, that means, the only way that you are going to stop accusing your brother of sin, is that two things need to happen. 1) Your mind needs to have its perception corrected so that it's not backwards, and so that your mind does not perceive itself as "being affected by" a separate external cause (brother), and 2) Your body needs and MUST reflect that attitude through its FORM, in order NOT to show a picture of crucifixion to your brother.

Now, some people might say that it doesn't matter what form your body is taking or whether it "looks sick" or has some disease etc, that this has no bearing on your brother because bodies don't really exist anyway. This is true at this level. BUT... the body can only get into that state of sickness when the MIND has USED IT FOR ATTACK, meaning that it is only IN that state BECAUSE the mind is attacking your brother (by accusing him of causing your suffering). So while the body is "secondary" or a "symptom of" the mind's condition, the body does tell us what state your mind is in.

Jesus goes on to be quite clear that the only way that you can absolutely PROVE to your brother that he is not a sinner, is not merely by your mind being free from a reversed cause-effect, but also that your BODY DEMONSTRATES a picture of innocence - a body which has no flaws, no damage, no disease, no death, no harm and no breakage, in order to SHOW HIM something which is SO CONVINCING, and so irrefutable, filled with "conviction", that he will not be able to deny his own innocence when he looks upon it.

When he looks at your sick body, it stands there accusing him of sin. If he is not in his right mind, he will take this as proof of his sinfulness. He can "opt out" of that by choosing the light for himself, but if he does not, he IS CURSED by your body and mind. Jesus speaks of how those who are sane cannot be cursed, but those who believe in separation CAN be negatively affected by others, because it compounds what they already believe. This is how you "imprison" your brother.

In order to set your brother free AND YOU AS WELL, your mind has to have its perception corrected, which means that you see yourself as ONLY CAUSE, with no effects happening to you. And when your mind does that, it will USE the body to SHOW a picture of "having no effects". If your body has no effects or attack in it, and is a picture of invulnerability and harmlessness, it comes across as lovely and pure and holy. There is no "temptation" in it to suggest to your brother that there are effects in it, and therefore no PROOF that he can have done anything TO IT in sin or attack. This EXONERATES HIM. "Miracles are teaching devices."

So while the body itself may be a secondary symptom or illusion, the state or picture of what it presents to others still correlates to the state of mind. If the mind is sick the mind WILL see the "self" as attacked, and having identified itself with the body, will attack the body, and perceive the body as attacked, resulting in the body BEING attacked by the mind. Sickness will then show up in the body, proving your brother's sinfulness. Even if you think your brother had nothing to do with your sickness, your sickness IS an attempt to come between BOTH OF YOU, because separation is a two-edged sword. Dead bodies are ego weapons.

When your mind is sane, it WILL heal the body, because it will no longer be visualizing "effects happening to me". Thus no effects will show up. The mind HAS power OVER the body at all times because it is the CAUSE of the body. The mind is on a higher level than the body, and trumps all of the body's states. "The mind is responsible for EVERY condition of the body." - whether it looks like sickness or health. And a sane mind will ONLY SHOW A HEALTHY BODY, otherwise it is demonstrating condemnation! And what the body shows up, is a TEACHING DEVICE, and will teach others they are sinners if shows up as sick!

So when your teaching becomes unified, and you "teach only love for that is what you are", your body will be healed by the mind ("the mind, being sane, heals the body"), and will ONLY show to your brother a lovely HEALED body, which has been healed through miracles of love. "The mind must be stronger than the body, EVERY miracle DEMONSTRATES this", because miracles correct perception and heal the mind and restore the order of the levels, which REVERSES THE EFFECTS. "You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

Once you demonstrate to your brother a healthy body, you are showing him "brother, by your hand I LIVE." This cancels out sin and proves he must be innocent, because he cannot find the "effects of sin" in your appearance. Your healthy body exonerates him and teaches him he CANNOT have sinned, and so must be innocent, merely by looking upon it. This is why, IF YOU HAVE A BODY, it MUST reach a state of only life, only health, and only healing, and SURMOUNT DEATH, in order to reach the state of "resurrection."

Resurrection is the opposite of death. It is a state in which your mind is sane and ONLY WILLS TO SHOW LOVE, and therefore refuses (and cannot) show a body that appears to be attacked. It teaches only love by using the body as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY. It is still only a symbol, and is limited, but it does represent the eternal life of Christ. It is in resurrection that the curriculum ends. And it is in resurrection that you overcome death entirely, SWEARING NOT TO DIE, and choosing to NEVER CHOOSE DEATH AGAIN.

You choose never to die by simply choosing to only represent life and to only unite with your brother in recognition of your mutual perfect union and innocence forever. "You cannot die unless you choose to do so." "No one dies without their own consent". All death is suicide. This is a course in the living, in life, in restoration of life, in raising the dead, and expressing live-giving miracles. When the conditions of sickness are removed from the mind (guilt) there is nothing for it to return to. Love heals the body. Love heals the mind. Love shines away the body. And all that is left is love.

DAMAGED BODIES ARE ACCUSERS!

IF YOUR BODY STILL HAS SICKNESS, IT IS STILL ACCUSING AND FORGIVENESS IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL IT HAS BROUGHT HEALING TO THE BODY AS WELL

Here is the passage which definitively explains that if you show a damaged, broken, sick, defective, disabled, ill, corrupt, dead, or in any way unhealthy body to your brother, YOU HAVE NOT FORGIVEN HIM. "A miracle of healing proves separation is without effect". The EFFECTS have to be CANCELLED, otherwise you are STILL condemning. This literally means that you MUST HEAL YOUR BODY in order to prove to your brother that you have forgiven him. It's not enough to just "do it in your head." You are to DEMONSTRATE a picture of immortality, not a picture of crucifixion.

From "The fear of healing"... (shitloads of fear around this for most people)

"Is healing frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and DAMAGED BODIES ARE ACCUSERS. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, PROCLAIMING that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because YOUR DAMAGED BODY SHOWS THAT YOU MUST BE PROTECTED FROM HIM. To forgive may be an act of charity, but NOT his due. He may be PITIED for his guilt, but NOT exonerated. And if you forgive him his transgressions, you but ADD to all the guilt that he has really earned.

The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the WITNESSES that pardon is unfair. THEY WOULD RETAIN THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE GUILT THEY OVERLOOK. Yet no-one CAN forgive a sin which he believes is real. And WHAT HAS CONSEQUENCES MUST BE REAL, because WHAT IT HAS DONE IS THERE TO SEE. Forgiveness is NOT pity, which but seeks to pardon what it knows to be the truth. Good cannot BE returned for evil, for forgiveness does not first ESTABLISH sin, and THEN forgive it. Who can say and MEAN, "My brother, you have injured me, and yet, because I am the BETTER of the two, I pardon you my hurt." HIS pardon and YOUR hurt can NOT exist together. One DENIES the other, and MUST make it false.

To witness sin and yet forgive it is a paradox which reason cannot see. For it maintains what has been done to you DESERVES no pardon. And, by GIVING it, you grant your brother mercy, but retain THE PROOF HE IS NOT **REALLY** INNOCENT. THE SICK REMAIN ACCUSERS. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well. For no-one in whom true forgiveness reigns CAN suffer. HE HOLDS NOT THE PROOF OF SIN BEFORE HIS BROTHERS EYES. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own. Forgiveness CANNOT be for one, and not the other. Who forgives IS HEALED. And IN HIS HEALING LIES THE PROOF that he has TRULY pardoned, and RETAINS NO TRACE OF CONDEMNATION THAT HE STILL WOULD HOLD AGAINST HIMSELF OR ANY LIVING THING.

FORGIVENESS IS NOT REAL UNLESS IT BRINGS A HEALING TO BOTH 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.

WHAT YOU WOULD PROVE TO HIM YOU WILL BELIEVE. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And EVERYTHING YOU SAY OR DO or think but testifies to what you teach to him. YOUR BODY CAN BE MEANS TO TEACH THAT IT HAS NEVER SUFFERED PAIN BECAUSE OF HIM. And IN ITS HEALING can it offer him MUTE TESTIMONY TO HIS INNOCENCE. IT IS THIS TESTIMONY THAT CAN SPEAK WITH POWER GREATER THAN A THOUSAND TONGUES. FOR HERE HIS FORGIVENESS IS **PROVED** TO HIM. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does YOUR HEALING (mind AND body) SHOW your mind is healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE CONVINCED his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you.

Thus does the miracle undo all things THE WORLD ATTESTS CANNOT BE UNDONE. AND HOPELESSNESS AND DEATH MUST DISAPPEAR before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has POWER FAR BEYOND the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt. The ancient Calling of the Father to His Son, and of the Son unto his own, will yet be the last trumpet that the world will ever hear. Brother, there is no death. And this you learn when you but wish to SHOW YOU BROTHER that you had no hurt of him. He thinks your blood is on his hands, and so he stands condemned. But it is given you to SHOW him, by your healing (physically), that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream.

How just are miracles! For they bestow an equal gift of FULL DELIVERANCE from guilt upon your brother AND yourself. YOUR healing saves HIM pain, as well as you. And YOU are healed BECAUSE you wished him well. This is the law the miracle obeys: That healing sees no specialness at all. It does NOT come from pity, but from love. And love would prove ALL suffering is but a vain imagining, a foolish wish, ***WITH NO EFFECTS***. YOUR HEALTH is a result of your desire to see your brother with no blood upon his hands, nor guilt upon his heart made heavy with the PROOF of sin. And what you wish is GIVEN you to see."

(See also "Only the mind AND BODY need atonement.")

Let's take a moment to recognize where we are AT, rather than where we think we should be. Although it may be increasingly obvious, in theory, what the truth is, it can be tougher to actually want to experience the reality of that truth. And most of us are still somewhat bound to wanting the things of this world, the body, and our sense of identity which is bound to it.

If we get honest, and put aside the intellectual theory, and look at what we are ACTUALLY doing, where our allegiance actually is, and the ways that we really do WANT things of this world still, we can at least be honest in admitting we don't want to wake up yet. We are resisting it, are unwilling to embrace it fully, and we want something else.

My own intellectual grasp of course metaphysics has become so revealing lately, that it even is starting to "scare" the part of me that does not want to accept it. I can understand how it is true and why it makes sense, but part of me does not want it. Does not believe it. Can't let go of the "something else" that I presently am attached to.

It can be useful though, if you are not willing to accept the truth, to at least admit that you don't want to accept the truth. Even if this doesn't mean you are going to suddenly change your mind and accept it, it at least does allow some light to enter, by "admitting" your present truth. And your present truth is that, while you are earnestly seeking God, you don't really want to be with Him, otherwise you would be.

This just means that we still have some work to do. Our minds still need training. We need to become willing. But generally speaking, moving towards the truth, when you are still bound to the ego, feels like approaching an enemy. It's like going towards something you do not want, something which threatens you, something which you don't trust.

I want to do the whole waking up thing, the miracles, the happiness, the love, but the fact is that right now, where I'm at, there is still a number of ways in which I don't want it. I'm still drawn to the body and the bodies of others. I still do not see with Christ vision. I still am afraid of God. I still avoid healing others. I still have grievances and losses. I still don't entirely trust the Holy Spirit or Jesus. I still want to keep the things of the world. I still believe the world is real. I still am scared by the idea that there is no world. And I still believe I am made of, identified with, stuff of the world which the course says does not exist.

I know that it's a journey, and over time there is progress. I also know that I gradually become more and more willing, and have progressed greatly in developing trust and letting go of fear. But I also know that where I am AT, versus what I understand the truth to be, are two different things. It's actually easier to grasp the metaphysics than it is to live it. And when I feel that my experience is lagging behind my understanding, it becomes frustrating.

This of course produces more guilt, to admit that you don't entirely want to ACTUALLY go there, yet. That you want to keep people imprisoned. That you want to keep suffering. That you still react to dreams as if they are reality. That you don't want to give up certain treasures, idols, experiences, pleasures etc. It makes it seem like you are doing everything you are not supposed to be doing.

I'm just sitting with this today. Just taking a break and being ego. Just acknowledging where I'm at, rather than the pressure of where I think I should be. Jesus reminds me "you are free". You can stay right where you're at if you want to, and when you're ready, he is there to help you move forward again.

"I will help you as much as you will let me."

"It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There are various ways that you do this. Every one of them is a form of denial, is an illusion, and is not true at all.

You can do it by attempting to demonstrate that you can be attacked. You do this by trying to attack yourself or your body, bringing about states of "sickness" which symbolize separation or which try to show that you are not immortal in some way.

You also do it be projecting ownership of everything onto someone not yourself, giving away all of your power, being irresponsible, being two-faced, lying, hating, attacking others to prove that attack has real effects, or by trying to make out that you are someone other than yourself.

You also do it by inventing an illusion of death, which tries to demonstrate that what you are can be destroyed. It cannot, but you try anyway. And when you try, even if you seem to destroy the body, it still does not destroy who you are because you cannot stop being immortal spirit.

Nothing you can do can change what God has created to last forever. He sustains your immortal spirit in an eternal, timeless act of extension. Everything that you are, is an expression of what He is - everlasting love. Your Life is your immortality. Life sustains you indefinitely and without limit. You are in a constant state of perfect health and cannot be harmed or changed or influenced in any way whatsoever.

But you still try to. This entire world and all of the bodies in it and all of the events and sicknesses, disease, war, suffering, conflict, it is all an attempt to prove that it is possible to be other than God created you. It's an attempt to prove you can die, you can suffer, you can be upset, you can be limited, you can fail to perform miracles, you can be at the effect of the will of another, you can be victimized, you can fail to have any ability whatsoever to influence the environment, and that you have no power over anything.

You've done a great job of being upset, and believing that you are upset for a good reason, that it is justified, and that you should be unhappy. The reason you are unhappy is unjustified. You've also done a great job of creating reasons and justifications for why you are unhappy, none of which are valid. You've also created a long list of grievances which all seem unresolved, because you think that they actually are important, not to mention all the important things that you think you have to do today, none of which matter.

You are immortal spirit. You are already complete. You are already as God created you. There is nothing you can add to what God created. There is nothing that has been taken away. You've already received what God has given, and it has been full and abundant and total. You are lacking nothing. There is no lack of love in you. God has not changed his mind about you. And you are still as God created you. You're done! So what the fuck is all this other bullshit? lol

One of the major problems we have is that while in ego, we're in a state of confusion. And that means we've lost sight of what is true and real. This then leads to confusing things which are false with things that are true, and not really knowing what is what. In such a state, it is hard to recognize anything for what it really is.

The problem is that not recognizing stuff makes it harder to identify if you are doing something wrong or need to take action to correct it. In denial, it's hard to even realize for example that you are upset, afraid, guilty, angry, harboring grievances, judging someone else. We might be doing all these things but simply not recognize them as these things. It's like we have swapped around all the labels. This can even make you choose suffering and death by mistake, thinking they are salvation.

Years ago I was harboring a lot of anger and yet at the same time was so in denial of this that, even sitting on top of a volcano about to burst, I would have told you I was not angry at all. Similarly I was in states of tremendous fear and anxiety and yet was so "used to it", to blinded by it, that I did not think I was afraid. I simply could not recognize it for what it was, and thought it was just normal or something else. And when you get used to living with something you think can never be undone you just assume it's a permanent truth.

When I judge, I do not always recognize that it is judgement. I do stuff that I think does not seem like judgement, but it is. I may be having a grievance about something but may not actually think to myself, this is a grievance, and it doesn't seem to be what you might categorize as a grievance. Fear can take on many forms and turn into anger, and you might not even realize you are afraid because you feel angry, yet behind the anger there is fear.

It's hard to correct things when you don't even really discern what it is you are doing. You might not even think you have a problem at all. You might be convinced that someone else is the one who is wrong. I mean, regardless of the fact that you may be projecting blame, you might literally not even realize that you are doing something. You can be unconscious of the fact that you are attacking yourself and totally believe that other people are out to get you.

So it all really boils down to a simple lack of recognition, of clear discernment. Being able to tell, this thing is this, and that thing is that. That God's truth is actually true, and that ego's truth is actually false. Trying to "sort out" which is which is almost our entire effort in waking up. If we could simply "learn" to be clear about what stuff is, what we are doing, what effects it is producing, and making awakened decisions about what we want, we would not produce "un-asked for" consequences, undesired suffering, or buy into make-believe problems.

We may be asked to see Christ in our brothers, but how can we do that when we have absolutely no clue what Christ is, how to be it, or how to perceive like Him? We might be asked to forgive, but then we barely can even grasp what forgiveness is or how it's supposed to work. We are digging around in the dark trying to find our way to the light, when all the while the light is what we need to find our way.

Really we're just a bit confused. We're having some trouble remembering what is true and real about ourselves, others and the world around us. We're mistaken. And we do not even recognize that we are mistaken. Which can result in just staying asleep in a confused state believing you're totally normal. But once we do recognize we're mistaken we can learn to accept what now becomes an obvious fact. We have an aha moment, a eureka. What seems confusing becomes clear to you. And once you recognize the truth, you are enlightened.

"Forgive them father for they know not what they do."

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

In the physical world we often think of quantum physics as the pinnacle of scientific success in describing "reality". The more you dig into it the more subtle it becomes. Quantum flux, string theory, unified theories of gravity, multi-dimensional realities, anti-matter and dark-matter, black holes, notions of how consciousness plays a part in forming spacetime etc.

But here is the truth of it. Quantum physics is the study of an illusory world, using separation-based scientific mathematics, confirmed using illusory physical experiments, studied by illusory bodies, drawing conclusions based on a MASSIVE assumption that this world has any reality at all.

It seems at times that the physics tells us truths which might previously have only been the domain of religion or mysticism. Such that the physical nature of objects isn't wholly real, matter comes in and out of seeming existence, particles have probabilities of location which only forms into matter when observed, etc. They've done all kinds of experiments which seem to reveal at least some of the properties of spacetime.

This then leads to the idea that quantum physics is a kind of new scientific spirituality, or that it's proving things that transcend the illusory nature of the world. But we have to be clear here. It is still a mathematical scientific study of a dream world. Even at the lowest level.

Beyond quarks and muons and all manner of exotic particles, beyond the quantum fields and flux, this is all still part of a dream. At some level they still believe that the basis of all of this is reality, even if they are willing to entertain the idea that the surface layers are illusory. They never actually go so far as to say that the universe is absolutely nothing and does not exist. They won't touch ever on the idea that God is real, and they always stop short of heaven.

Here is the main problem. All of this theoretical physics is based on extremely advanced math. Math is based on the idea of separation, that one thing is not another thing. That all the numbers are separate in their values and are not the same. 1 is not 2 and 2 is different than 3. These are the 'quantum' building blocks of the physics itself. Provided numbers remain separate, then you can do math with them. You can calculate things and come up with equations. But what if numbers themselves are flawed?

In heaven's reality, the truth is that 1+1=1. And no matter how many times you "add one" (create a soul), the sum total is still 1, because they are still "one with God". There are all kinds of ways that this plays out. For example the idea that you can share an idea and retain the idea and yet both people now have the idea - the idea that giving and receiving are one, and that you lose nothing by giving everything. This is TOTALLY incompatible with the idea of numbers.

I have 1, and I give 1 to you. And now you have 1, I should have 0. But I don't. We both have 1. And moreso, it's the same one. It shouldn't ever be possible for me to have the whole of something, while you simultaneously have the whole of something, and it be the same whole. In the world of separate numbers, transferring value to you takes it away from me, and to give is to sacrifice. I lose by sharing. 1+1=2 really means separation and separation produces two separate things. It does not speak of oneness.

The entire system of math is fundamentally based on laws of separation, which is based on the ego thought system of separation from God. So that means that now we're trying to do mathematical physics based on laws of separation, trying to describe a reality that is beyond separation. All we end up doing is describing THE separation, ie a separated state, and regarding it as the whole of reality. This is what quantum physics is doing. It is blind to God and blind to heaven's nature.

When God extends the whole of himself, he gives all that he has to his creation, and yet he ALSO retains it all. He does not lose anything by giving it. He shares. Now his creation has everything, and so does he.

This would also suggest to the ego and to math, that if that first created being has everything, there is nothing left for anyone else to have. And yet God can create a second creation by sharing the whole of what he has with it, giving it everything, and now it ALSO has everything. And now two have everything. Two have the same value. And equal value is the Golden Rule.

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

You can't describe that using math other than to say 1+1=1. Or you can even say 2=1. Well, now if the value of 2 is the same as the value of 1, and those two things ARE each other, because they are totally equated, then ALL numbers equal 1. That's what oneness is about. The many created children of God sharing everything and therefore having the same whole and the same value. That means ALL numbers equal 1.

You cannot DO math when all numbers have the same value. You cannot do quantum physics or ANY kind of physics. Heaven is NOT quantum physics and it is not run by quantum physics. It's laws transcend all of space and time and the laws of separation.

So you have to be kind of careful when you put the ego's triumph of extremely complicated analysis and calculations on a pedestal and call it "reality". They are not even studying reality, they're studying an illusion of a world that doesn't exist, under the assumption that it has reality. They don't even know what reality means. It's all a calculated guess, and it's all mistaken. Just as all beliefs in separation are mistaken.

E=MC squared which supposedly tells you the relationship of mass and energy vs speed of light and how time changes relatively and so on.... it's all made up. It might seem to roughly and closely correlate to a world of separation. Yes. Because THIS world, this illusion of a world, IS based on separation.

So it naturally SEEMS to line up with separation-based physics. The math SEEMS to correlate. AND the whole separate system of spacetime is so seemingly stable, most of the time, that you can even do experiments IN spacetime that seem to prove or correlate to what the theory says should happen. That's how they "validate" their physics. But all this is really doing is taking an illusory world, studying it with illusory means, using its illusory nature to correlate to illusory predictions, and then when they match up they claim that this is truth. It is nothing of the sort.

All that quantum physics can do is describe roughly and incorrectly and from a very false-perception vantage point, what appears to be the nature and workings of an hallucinated unreal world, without truly acknowledging its unreality. All of the "laws of physics" such as gravity, seem to be observable phenomena because of the fact that Newton got bopped on the head with an apple one day. But there are no apple trees in heaven and stuff doesn't fall on people's heads.

What this really boils down to is, the body is being used to try to tell you what the truth about the body is. And on that matter, the body is entirely biased and ONLY will tell you that the body IS real. We are using a device to try to discern whether the world exists, based on the fact that the body MAKES the world seem real.

"Only the body makes the world seem real." And then we're assuming that its reality can be studied and verified and proven. All we're doing is using a biased apparatus to make a REFLECTION of the world and are calling it a unified theory of reality. But a reflection of hell is not the truth.

You cannot look to science to tell you what is ultimately true. You CAN look to science to tell you in most cases what seems to be true in a fairly "stable" unreal world. You can use it to measure your body. You can use it to evaluate the redshift of starlight. You can use it to calculate approximately the motion of objects. But you CANNOT use it to tell you, in the big picture, ANYTHING REAL.

"I am under no laws but God's".

"There are no laws but God's. Dismiss all foolish magical beliefs today, and hold your mind in silent readiness to hear the Voice that speaks the truth to you."

"I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's. His laws release me from all grievances, and replace them with miracles. And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond."

"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."

A sense of separation from God is the ONLY problem you need correct.

This is far reaching. Every sickness, every war, every grievance, every negative thought, all death, every illusion, all fear and doubt, every body, is a SYMPTOM of what it is like to experience a LACK of love. It’s how the appearance of the absence of love shows up.

There is no problem love cannot solve.

Sickness for example, arises from a block the awareness of love’s presence. When love is blocked, the block itself shows up as an illusion of unlove - a seeming absence of love and therefore health. As Jesus says:

"Those who are sick do not love themselves, for if they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

I love how Jesus is so extremely logically clear with no exceptions. All sicknes arises from a lack of love. Therefore, increasing the level of love HEALS and restores health.

This also MUST mean that when there IS love, there CANNOT be sickness. Or death!

Love is God. When we attempt to be separate from LOVE in any way, we enter into ego, darkness, suffering and problems. Those problems are symptoms of love’s absence. Human bodies, planets, weather, wars, fear, suffering, birth and death are ALL symptoms of the seeming absence of LOVE.

So it is very very simple. If you increase the love, ALL of the problems disappear. Love shines away darkness. Love removes ALL false needs and lacks. Love heals all sickness on every level. Love has miraculous power over all the ego’s laws. Love can raise the dead. Love can make death impossible.

Have you ever noticed, when you are riddled with fears and questions, trying to find answers, and believing you have needs, IF YOU GO TO GOD, commune with Him and receive some love, EVERYTHING GETS BETTER?! It all just vanishes. You forget what you were going to ask. Questions dissolve because the lack of love is met. Questions are doubts arising from fear, which is love’s absence. If you put aside what you think you need, and jump straight to getting some LOVE, it accelerates your return to peace.

You don’t really want your questions answered. You don’t really want your problems solved. You don’t really want someone to meet your fake needs. What you really want is LOVE. And love will ERASE all of these things instantly. All these other needs, wants, lacks, demands, fears and problems are only there because of love’s absence. Love’s lack is what they are MADE FROM.

When love is present, there can be no suffering. Love is powerful, miraculous, and there is NOTHING it cannot do. Love, quite literally, has miraculous supernatural power. It can heal the sick, raise the dead, repair bodies, heal the world, move mountains, overcome all the egos laws, and do everything that Jesus demonstrated as possible.

Love is the central core glue that joins ALL parts of A Course in Miracles into one seamless unified essence. It is very, very simple. All our undoing of grievances, all our forgiving, all our healing, all our practice of miracles, any acceptance of atonement, reversal of cause-effect, removing blocks to love, it is all ultimately aimed toward an increasing awareness of love’s presence, AND an increasing EXTENSION of and expression of love.

"Teach only love, for that is what you are".

Jesus was VERY loving. That is why he had miraculous power to do anything. "There is nothing your holiness cannot do." Love is not just love, it is UNLIMITED CAPABILITY. All of ACIM is geared toward returning to a more loving presence. To healing the separation from love. To put us back in touch with LOVE itself, so that all problems are solved.

In love is salvation. In love is healing. In love is peace. And in love is eternal life with God.

ALL problems are ONE problem - you believe you are separate from God.

There IS no other problem.

The ego, however, has been extremely clever in making the illusion that there are many many many separate problems. It has tried to fragment the problem, ie introduce separation into the separation.

What you've ended up with is a world where the FORM of the problem appears to be different. All 'forms' (objects etc) are the 'form of error'. The error is the separation from God. The FORM that the separation is taking varies greatly. The ego also has you use the body's senses to look upon form and to regard its form AS the problem. So it tells you like...

"The kitchen sink is broken therefore there is a problem with the kitchen sink".

"The car battery has died so there is a problem with the car battery".

This completely covers over what the problem really is. These are fake problems. They are decoys. They are MEANT to distract you and fixate you on FORMS - physical matter - so that you will not look to the mind where the real problem is. Like, right now as I look out the window, it just started snowing. So now there's a problem - it's snowing out, so if I go out there it's going to be cold. So now I have a problem, and I must problem solve THIS form of a problem by fetching my jacket. That seems to then SOLVE the problem - this problem at least. But it doesn't solve world hunger. It doesn't solve drought. It doesn't solve your favorite TV show ending before you're ready to be done with it.

The ego keeps all problems completely separate by identifying problems as forms, so that unique forms of problems need unique solutions. And it appears you CAN solve unique problems with unique solutions. Except that this a) makes you think you've really solved the real problem (which is not true), and b) ensures that there is no "transfer value" between problems. You fix this problem, another one will pop up. You fix your toaster, your fridge melts. You fix your car, your window breaks. Whatever it is. Endless separate problems, all designed to DISGUISE the ONE PROBLEM.

The ONE PROBLEM is that you believe your relationship with God has gone to the shits and its broken and now you are separate from the only One you can ever fully love - God and His Creation. That's the ONLY problem that ever exists.

So then because you're so distracted by the ego's illusion of problems, when problems 'happen' you get all caught up in how you need to 'forgive this problem' and 'forgive that person' and 'forgive my body' and all this bullshit. Its' all kind of at a surface level because your attention is really distracted by all this external stuff. It's meant to distract you. Ego doesn't want you realizing there is only one problem and one solution.

When you car breaks down it is because you believe you are separate from God.

When your house catches fire it is because you are separate from God.

When your cat dies its because you are separate from God.

When it rains on your wedding day its because you are separate from God.

When the wrong politician wins an election its because you are separate from God.

When you run out of your favorite food its because you are separate from God.

NONE of these thing could even EXIST if you weren't separate from God. EVERY single problem in the entire physical universe is the direct result of you separating from God. The physical universe ITSELF is the FORM of your being separate from God - it is a depiction of your broken relationship. And your separation from God IS the problem. Not your cat, your car, your house, your job, your friends, your upsets, your fears, bla bla bla... endless list of bullshit. You only have ONE problem.

Your relationship with God. Something seemed to happen to damage your relationship with God, and the RESULT was that you ended up in hell. Hell - this world - is ONLY the symptoms of a blocked relationship with God. It has NO other basis. There aren't any other sources of problems or causes of problems anywhere in the entire universe. All other sources are fakes and decoys and cover-ups and false origins.

It all stems from you believing that you've had a lover's tiff with God and now you're not on speaking terms and you've gone off in a huff all pissed off and at the same time upset and ashamed and feeling bad about it, because you believe you've hurt God and destroyed the only meaningful relationship you ever had.

What are you going to do to solve this problem?

How are you going to REPAIR and HEAL this ONE problem?

How are you going to get yourself BACK to God? How are you going to clear the air, forgive everything that seemed to happen, let go of all 'bad blood' and get back to where you and God are IN LOVE again? How are you going to get there if you are not directly addressing and undoing your belief in separation?

Yes you can work on it by addressing how the separation shows up in tiny fragments. You can address individual little problems in your life like your toaster blew up and singed your hairdo. You can forgive that little bit of upset. Or you can forgive that political candidate that you despise and undo a bit of separation there. But that's just scratching the surface. That shows how deeply embedded you are in the APPEARANCE of problems in the world, which is just a surface coat of distraction. Why not TARGET your efforts at DIRECTLY repairing your relationship with God - which IS what this is all about?

If you want to undo separation, it means you are going to have to get back to being ONE with God. It means you're going to have to have a REUNION. It means you're going to have to COMMUNE with Him. It means you need to take all the reasons that you think you are separate from Him, all the problems that you think are coming between you, and offer them up with a willingness to let them go. Because all your grievances and all your problems are grievances against God. Period. You think it's about other people. It's about you and God. That's all there is.

So ask yourself, as you forgive, exactly how much DISTANCE is there between you in that forgiveness effort, and God? Is it scratching the surface and skirting around the real problem? Is it actually bringing you closer to God? Are you becoming aware of the way that you are trying to avoid and deny God and stay far away from Him? This is what it is all about. You need to heal your separation from God, and nothing else.

You're not going to heal it if you're not willing to GO TO GOD and make an effort to reunite. You're not going to heal it if you're not willing to admit everything is about your relationship to God and that this relationship needs to be healed. You're not going to heal if you think your job is to just `forgive illusions` or `see my brother correctly` or whatever. Those are just tools and stepping stones. The huge elephant in the living room that people don't want to touch with a barge pole is GOD. God loves you and wants to be with you again and you're having this stand-off and making up all these extraneous complicated reasons why it is 'other stuff' that you have to deal with.

There is nothing you need to do other than to heal your connection to God and release absolutely everything that comes between you. If you want to totally simplify the Course, simply work on what's happening between you and God that keeps you apart, and remove that stuff with Holy Spirit so that you can be with God again. It's that simple. Being with God is all you really want. It's the only thing that means anything to you in reality. It's your heart's desire. You would be hugely relieved and overjoyed to learn that God still loves you and you CAN be together again. All other goals are fake goals and distractions.

God... please help me to be with you.

God... I give this belief in body sickness to you because it's just coming between us and I want to be with you.

God... I've been all pissed off at my coworker and have been trying to forgive them and its not working, because I know its not really about them its about us, and the anger I feel is anger at you, and I don't want to be angry at you any more. Please forgive me and correct me so we can be One.

God... I recognize this lack of money is directly a symbol of us being separate and I have no real interest in money, all I want is to be with you. Please heal this absence of you in my life and replace it with symbols of our togetherness, until I'm able to be with you fully.

God... please heal my mind of the belief that I am separate from you, which is showing up in my body as disease and threat. I know it's because I believe our relationship is diseased and that I am threatened by you. Please help me to feel safe with you and know that I'm mistaken for believing we're at war.

God... help me undo my belief that we are not loving toward each other. I was mistaken for thinking I hurt you in any way and I recognize and accept your unconditional love and forgiveness.

Go to town on it. Include God in everything. This is the purpose of the Course.

Often our idea of love is special love, which means exclusive or conditional love.

That means, it's relatively commonplace and 'normal' to only feel loving toward things that you approve of, while you spend the rest of your time rejecting everything else. But this isn't unconditional love.

Sometimes it takes some difficult lessons in which to learn to be unconditional toward others. But it also works the other way - if you are going to be yourself at all times and not enter into fake persona identities or putting on a facade when around certain people, you're going to need to learn to be unconditionally yourself, no matter what.

So that's going to take a lot of honesty, to be true to the truth about you at all times.

But as you become more yourself, more loving toward yourself in all situations, you will also become more loving toward others in all situations.

Sometimes the people who you do not like, or who are your enemy, or who offend you or even attack you, are the ones who have come to try to prompt you to love unconditionally.

What they do for you is they push your buttons and give you signals that say they do not love you, so that you will come to confront the limitations and conditions that you've placed on your own response. Will you hate them in return?

You will come face to face with your own inability to love them unconditionally, perhaps your patience wore thin and you lost your cool, or you just can't accept people being that way. But why.... the why is, really, that you can only love conditionally, and you can only therefore love yourself conditionally.

You may then find yourself, in the face of such opposition, realizing and exclaiming that you CANNOT love them. There is some reason, so strong, as to why your love stops and you seemingly refuse to love them. Particularly if you feel justified in resentment or anger or hurt. But then this will bring you face to face with your limitations. WHY can't you love them? Why can't you overlook and forgive them? What is it that you think is 'about them' that you can't love, which REALLY is about YOU that you can't love? Why do you have a limitation of conditionality placed on your ability to love?

Because what that will mean is, if you can't love them, you can't love yourself. But here is the marvelous opportunity.

If you can somehow dig even deeper, put aside your resentments and grievances, and find SOME way to above and beyond to love EVEN MORE, even beyond what you thought you could love, you will be breaking through the barriers of your conditionality - your conditioning - both towards others and towards yourself. Your love will GROW.

And then you will find yourself in situations noticing that you feel stronger and more loving towards all people, even strangers. That you feel more open to them, compassionate toward them, and more understanding of them. You will realize that somewhere somehow you put aside some kind of barriers that you had erected around yourself which always kept people at a distance or made it seem difficult for you to be around anyone that wasn't your special chosen ones.

Your sense of trust and certainty will skyrocket, you will find a renewed confidence and fearlessness due to the removal of a sense of separation, and you will genuinely feel in your heart a feeling of love for people that you never knew was possible.

To accomplish this, therefore, we need our own limtiations to be confronted, we need our own conditionality to be pointed out, we need our own 'reasons' for not being able to love someone - with all our justifications as to why - to be brought into question so that we will put them aside and find a way to love that goes beyond specialness and beyond confinement. This is our gift to others but also is our gift to ourselves, because we deserve to be the love that we really are at all times and this light shouldn't be kept under a rock called specialness.

As Jesus said a long time ago, love your enemies. Otherwise the walls you erect to keep them out keep your love in a prison, and being a prisoner makes you feel unloved as well. Unconditionally loving yourself is a much more deeply satisfying place to be.

When you hold a grievance, where you demand that someone else has to change because they are unacceptable to you, you are using the ego's version of forgiveness.

If you claim they are wrong or bad or evil or sinful or guilty in any way, you are saying you need them to change. They should not be the way they are. They are wrong and bad and evil to be the way they are. They should not be this way.

This means really that you want THEM to change so that YOU do not have to change. And it also means that you in fact want to be AFFECTED by them, as a victim, but you want them to affect you in a way that matches your desires.

So if you were to get a person to change and be the way "you want them to be", then supposedly they'd now treat you the way you want them to, and give you what you want. Maybe they'd now "make you happy". But this is still a form of victimhood.

Being caused to be happy by something outside yourself is just as ego as being cauesd to be unhappy by something outside yourself. They are both forms of being at the effect of the world. And when you depend on the world being nice to you, giving you what you want, meeting your standards, or forcing you into preferable states, you're forgiving to destroy.

By demanding that someone change, or be not like they are, which is your projected judgement of them in the first place, you are destroying them with your judgement of them. You evaluate first that they are evil and then ask THEM to be the one to stop being evil. This is not only self destructive, it's an attempt to destroy the world.

It's like accusing someone of being a bad person, even when they're not, and trying to put that onto them, and then demanding that THEY change to get out of the prison that you've put them in, to make you happy. It's like asking someone to do your own dirty work.

So first you try to destroy them, then you demand they stop being the destroyed person, to appease you and for your own gain. Like hurting someone then requiring that they get up and thank you for it. This is how the destroys in order to try to bring about a "forgiven" state where the sin seems to have been removed. In a sense you demand that they "resurrect" from being evil, for your benefit.

If someone undoes the sin you accuse them of, by changing, and complying with your wishes, then the ego now says well, you have indeed forgiven, and now that I see you are not being the evil I accused you of, my perception of you is not seeing evil in you. And that implies that I've done a forgiveness. If you stop being the evil sinner that I hate, then apparently I have forgiven you. But nothing has really changed in my mind, so there has been no real forgiveness at all.

It's like when someone does something you disapprove of, and then you say you are not going to forgive them until they change their ways. They have to repent. And when they change their ways and meet your conditions, you will say yes, very good, you did what I wanted and now I approve of you, and now you are my loyal servant. Then you are temporarily bestowed with an ego blessing of seeming mercy, while still enforcing that if you return to your wicked ways, you'll be punished just as much as before.

This in effect is therefore like some dictating tyrant who wants everything to be their way and wants everyone else to comply. To have power over everyone and control everything. To force the world to stop being the way it is, or the way you judge it to be. If those other motherfuckers would just stop being assholes everything would be great for you and life would be smooth. And so the ego seems for an illusion of peace in the midst of its warring ways.

"The ego's plan for salvation centers around holding grievances. It maintains that if someone else spoke or acted differently, if some external circumstance or event were changed, you would be saved. Thus the source of salvation is constantly perceived as outside yourself. Each grievance you hold is a declaration, and an assertion in which you believe, that says, "If this were different, I would be saved." The change of mind that is necessary for salvation is thus demanded of everyone and everything except yourself."

Jesus redefines the meaning of fear. It is not some mere feeling that you have. In fact, He teaches that fear is the opposite of love. Love is essentially equated with the entire Kingdom of God and the nature of Creation. So fear really is another word for "the entire ego thought system."

Fear is the idea of love's opposite. If you are slightly unhappy, if you are sick, if you are dead, if you are at war, if you are suffering in any way less than experiencing eternal life, there must be fear present. The entire dream of death is a dream of fear. Fear is death. Fear is unwillingness.

I bump into this all the time. It just seems that I keep encountering some form of fear, over and over and over again. It doesn't always seem like fear, unless I look at it carefully and notice that it seems less than loving and has some kind of fearful resistance or reluctance or uncertainty running through it. All stresses, all upsets, all are based in fearful perceptions.

All of my efforts to awaken or be spiritual etc all seem to be this constant "battle" with fear coming and going, sometimes stronger than other times. It feels like trying to stay afloat or even to approach the surface where the light shines, only to be dragged down by these fearful anchors. If I could be released from fear, I would be in a state of love, therefore, and would be happy.

If happiness and love is what I want, and to be miraculous you must be expressing love, then it makes sense that all fear has to be undone. Fear is really the big problem. And fear is nothing but the illusion of the absence of love. It's the idea of darkness. Fear is seriousness. Fear is hell. Fear paralyzes. Fear is attack. And fear stops life.

All forms of hate and vengeance, all grievances, all self attack, all projections, it's all rooted in fear. All attempts to fix and solve and figure out and plan are based in the fear that something is wrong. All ego motivations and seeking to not find, is based on the fearful idea of loss and lack. Without fear there can only be love.

We must seek out and remove all traces of fear and the cause of this fear. Undoing fear allows you to relax. Undoing fear re-establishes trust. Undoing fear lightens you up. Undoing fear makes you happy and corrects your perception. Without fear you will see the shining face of Christ and be glad.

"All healing is essentially the release from fear."

"The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite."

"T-1.VI.5. All aspects of fear are untrue because they do not exist at the creative level, and therefore do not exist at all. 2 To whatever extent you are willing to submit your beliefs to this test, to that extent are your perceptions corrected. 3 In sorting out the false from the true, the miracle proceeds along these lines:

4 Perfect love casts out fear.

5 If fear exists, then there is not perfect love.

6 But:

7 Only perfect love exists.

8 If there is fear,

It produces a state that does not exist.

9 ****Believe this and you will be free.**** 10 Only God can establish this solution, and this faith is His gift."

"We have said that you have but two emotions, love and fear. One is changeless but continually exchanged, being offered BY the eternal TO the eternal. In this exchange it is extended, for it INCREASES as it is given. The other has many forms, for the content of INDIVIDUAL delusions differs greatly. But they have one thing in common; they are all insane. They are made of sights which are NOT seen, and sounds which are NOT heard. They make up a PRIVATE world, which CANNOT be shared. For they are meaningful ONLY to their maker, and so they have no meaning at all. In this world their maker moves alone, for only HE perceives them."

"Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness and become glad."

Years ago I used to hate a person. I thought this person was the cause of everyone's problems. I was secretly and passively angry at them, not communicating with them, unwilling to forgive them, feeling very hurt by them, annoyed by everything they did and wanting nothing to do with them. I had built up a considerable case against them and attempted to get others on board to agree with me. It really seemed to me that this person was the reason why I was suffering and unhappy, why I was imprisoned, why I was always at war with them and why I did not feel loved by them. It was ALL their fault.

For many years this went on. I wanted to put as much distance between myself and them as possible. I didn't want anything to do with them. I even moved to live in another place to get away from them. I was quite sure they were the enemy and I did many things to emphasize the separation between us. I wanted to be not associated with them (disassociated) and pushed them away, did not allow us to have a relationship, and despised them. That is, until one day when it all changed.

A moment happened where, in their presence and in the midst of secretly wanting not to be around them, accusing them of sin, all of a sudden this idea came into my mind. It was a shocking idea, but it was unavoidably obvious. Somehow, this person was me. Somehow, that person, in that separate body, was in some way one with me. I, myself, was "over there", behind the wall of hatred, behind their physical form, inside them. I had a kind of oneness experience for a moment. And the "target" that I always thought was "that person", suddenly was revealed to be ME.

This experience was so completely opposite to everything I had thought and felt about this person. I literally was shocked to suddenly have this experience that while I had made every effort to disassociate from "them" and build a gap between us, *I* was somehow on the other side of that gap and therefore everything I felt towards them, I was ALSO feeling towards myself. This wasn't a pleasant realization. But at the same time it was very powerful.

It was like dropping a drop of liquid detergent into greasy water. This truth had dropped in and shown me how terribly mistaken I'd been, what I'd been doing to myself, and that I couldn't continue to hate this person because doing so was hating myself. If we were one, if I was in them, if I myself was on the other side of that wall, then this whole entire thing wasn't "exclusively" about them, it was about me. Some part of my own self or mind was attacking itself with a vengeance.

This was a major turning point in the relationship. It totally turned it on its head, but gradually. Not merely in the relationship to that person but also the relationship with myself. I began to heal and to start to realize, at even an emotional level, as I catharted old pains and misperceptions and false beliefs and grievances, that I wasn't REALLY angry with that person, it was actually in fact directed towards myself. It was me that I hated and it was that which I had to heal. And everything I'd believed "they did to me" had to be forgiven.

The more I allowed myself to heal and release that, the less it appeared to be anything to really do with that person at all. It far more obviously was a split in my own mind and my own attack upon myself, which I had vehemently projected onto this person. The more I projected, using hate to increase the separation, the less it SEEMED to be anything to do with myself. It was all about them. I as I healed, so too did my view of this person. As I undid my own self attack, the impression of offense, victimhood, enemies and projective blame, I stopped being so triggered by this person or believing it was about them at all. My attention turned within to the enemy I'd made of myself.

Over time, my relationship to that person has improved profoundly. Almost all of the blame and scapegoating has stopped. The huge stockpile of pain has melted. Animosity and inequality has turned to equality and friendliness. It seems like nothing happened. The specialness has dissolved. I can talk to them more honestly, openly and deeply. There is communication. There is forgiveness. And it's given way to a more mature way of relating. This is all thanks to the undoing of the separation in my mind and the willingness to take an honest look at what I am doing to myself.

Ancient hatred. Present love.

Here are statements demonstrating that you can SEE real stuff. Seeing God, seeing the Son of God, seeing Christ, seeing the Kingdom. Note that perception of reality is NOT the same as being IN reality. But some of these quote infer you can SEE WITHIN REALITY (not using perception).

"God is in everything I see because God is in my mind."

"The idea for today is the springboard for vision. From this idea will the world open up before you, and you will look upon it and see in it what you have never seen before. Nor will what you saw before be even faintly visible to you."

"Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God" is another way of saying the same thing. Only the innocent CAN see God."

"The innocence of God is the true state of the mind of His Son. In this state, man's mind DOES see God, and because he sees Him as he Is, he knows that the Atonement, NOT sacrifice, is the ONLY appropriate gift to His OWN altar, where nothing except perfection truly belongs."

"Today we will attempt to see God's Son. We will not let ourselves be blind to him ; we will not look upon our grievances."

"This is the way in which you MUST perceive God's Creations, bringing all of your perceptions into the one parallel line which the Holy Spirit sees."

"For who could see the Son of God as innocent and wish him dead? Christ stands before you, each time you look upon your brother."

"Nothing that you remember, that made your heart seem to sing with joy, has ever brought you even a little part of the happiness this sight will bring you. FOR YOU WILL SEE THE SON OF GOD. You will behold the beauty that the Holy Spirit loves to look upon, and that He thanks the Father for. He was created to see this FOR you, until YOU learn to see it for yourself. And all His teaching leads to seeing it, and giving thanks with Him."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean, and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. Nothing is hidden here, for everything has BEEN forgiven, and there ARE no fantasies to hide the truth."

"For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past."

"For every grievance is a block to sight, and as it lifts, you see the Son of God where he has always been. He stands in light, but you were in the dark."

"You who believe that you can choose to see the Son of God as you would have him be, forget not that no concept of yourself will stand against the truth of what you are."

"To believe that you can perceive the real world is to believe that you can know yourself. You CAN know God, because it is His Will to BE known."

"The Soul always remains changeless, because it never leaves the sight of God."

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

"No-one in this distracted world but has not seen some glimpses of the other world about him. But while he still lays value on his own, he will DENY the vision of the other world, maintaining that he loves WHAT HE LOVES NOT, and following not the road that love points out."

"Your holy brother, sight of whom is your release, is no illusion."

"You would not do this, except for your UNWILLINGNESS to perceive reality, WHICH YOU WITHHOLD FROM YOURSELF."

What the world is, is really only the tiny instant of its current state right now. Not what it was before, and not what it will be. There is a tiny thin slice of 'time' in which everything is always changing and transforming, and in which the only stuff that exists is actually there.

Whatever state the world is in right now, that's all that exists of the world. The future doesn't really exist yet, the past is already gone. There isn't really any time, no past and no future. Time is really an avoidance of the present and an avoidance of reality.

So all we have of the world is whatever is "left over" right now this single instant, the current objects, the things in their current positions, the current conditions of stuff, arranged in whatever way they are arranged right now.

As changes occur this same one moment right there now shifts and morphs before your eyes, becoming slightly different than it was just before, but only the stuff that still remains NOW is what is here.

There is no recording of past states, other than through fictional memory, and there is no predicted future. As soon as something changes, how it was before is totally irrelevant. It is only in the configuration that it is in NOW. It is not its past or it future states, just the current one.

As far as the physical world is concerned, there is no past or future at all, just a single slice of time in which everything appears to come and go, right now, here and now, in the present.

The now-moment of time, is symbolic of the foreverness of eternity. It is not the same as it but being in the present moment of time puts you very close to the eternal. By being only in the present you effectively aren't going anywhere, even if the appearance of forms keep shifting and changing.

The world is like a pool of water which is mixing and flowing around but it's still the same one pool of water. Just moving and animating within the present tiny slice of time.

To be in the present there can't be a sense of knowing what is about happen, because everything has to be met immediately as though it is completely new, otherwise you're projecting past learning onto the present.

There can be a lot of resistance to just being totally present, which is fear, and is ego, in which the mind is not really paying attention, it's projecting a wall of expectation and anticipation and the dullness of having "figured it out ahead of time", such that the mind is paying attention to what it thinks will happen rather than to what is.

This is the importance of the "I do not know", because this leaves the mind open to receiving an present-moment awareness of what is happening, rather than being lost in concepts and thoughts and beliefs about what "might be".

God can only be found in the present because God IS PRESENCE, which is an eternal property of here-and-now and always-and-forever. God's absoluteness means he is fully and totally present everywhere, as in in-person and fully attentive to it. So you can't be aware of God when you're living in the past.

Living in the past really means you're caught up in a kind of dream about things which aren't even here anymore, and which have changed into something else, such as old grievances and losses and pains and so on. And it's just as bad to live in the future, where you are imagining what might happen and trying to predict and control it. Sin locks you into the past just as guilt sucks you into the future in anticipation of punishments to come.

We really in truth only can exist in the present. Where else could you possible BE present, or really exist? You are here now with God forever. The "real world" also only exists in the present and can only be experienced by being present.

"This instant is the only time there is."

"(Edgar) Cayce's mind was imprisoned to some extent by an error against which you have been cautioned several times. He looked to the past for an EXPLANATION of the present, but he never succeeded in separating the past FROM the present. When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists."

"The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the total misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is. It therefore cannot understand time, and cannot, in fact, understand anything."

"The present now remains the only time."

"The only aspect of time which is really eternal is NOW. That is what we REALLY mean when we say that now is the only time. The literal nature of this statement does not mean anything to the ego. It interprets it, at best, to mean "don't worry about the future." This is NOT what it really means at all."

"What time but now can truth be recognized? The present is the only time there is. And so today, this instant, now, we come to look upon what is forever there; not in our sight but in the eyes of Christ. He looks past time and sees eternity as represented there."

"And I will not use my own past learning as the light to guide me now."

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

"That was the first projection of error outward. The world (Earth) arose to hide it, and became the screen (mirror) on which it was projected (a second projection ONTO the mirror which produces perception - what is reflected back to you as feedback), and drawn between you and truth."

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

"If you could accept the world as meaningless (has no content of its own like a mirror) and let the truth be written upon it (reflected in it) for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless (having no image of its own), you are impelled to write upon it (reflect in it) what you would have it be. It is this you see in it (reflected in the mirror)."

"The reflection of God (in the mirror) NEEDS no interpretation. IT IS CLEAR. Clear but ***the mirror***, and the message which shines forth from what ***the mirror*** holds out for everyone to see, NO-ONE will fail to understand. It is the message that the Holy Spirit is holding to ***the mirror*** that is in HIM."

"In the world you, can become ***a spotless mirror***, in which the holiness of your Creator shines forth from you, to all around you. You can REFLECT HEAVEN here (in the mirror). But no reflections (in the mirror) 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.**** (because it's a mirror) You need but leave ***the mirror*** (Earth) clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it (reflections seen in it). God will shine upon it (reflect in it) of Himself

. Only the clear reflection (in the mirror of earth) OF Himself can BE perceived upon (reflect in) it. Reflections are seen in light. In darkness, they are obscure, and their meaning seems to lie only in shifting interpretations, rather than in themselves."

"***Perception is a mirror***, not a fact." (what you percieve are reflections in the mirror of earth that you projected onto it to see. The mirror Earth ITSELF Is not part of perception, it's the mirror which allows projection/perception to happen.)

"The reflections that you accept into ***the mirror*** of your minds in time, but bring eternity nearer or farther."

"Your picture of the world (the image you see in the mirror) can only ***mirror what is within*** (projected onto it). The source (origin) of neither light nor darkness can be found without (because what's out there is just the earth mirror, and you have to give it meaning). Grievances darken your mind, and you look out on a darkened world (reflection of darkness in the mirror, or "dirt" seen "on" the mirror obscuring the reflection of God). Forgiveness lifts the darkness, reasserts your will, and lets you look upon a world of light (reflected in the mirror)."

"The world is nothing in itself (because it has no meaning, because it's just an empty mirror). Your mind must give it meaning (project images onto the mirror). And what you behold upon it (in the mirror as the feedback of your perceptions) are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them (reflected back at you) and think them real. Perhaps you think you did not make the world (the mirror), but came unwillingly to what was made already, hardly waiting for your thoughts to give it meaning. Yet in truth you found exactly what you looked for (put onto the mirror because you wanted to see it) when you came. There is no world apart from what you wish (because the world is a mirror and what you see in it is just your wishes), and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see (in the mirror), and all the world (reflection seen in the world) must change accordingly."

"Like all things in the world its meaning is temporary (projected onto it), and will ultimately fade into the nothingness from which it came (the earth was a projection of the idea of nothingness - the opposite to everything) when there is no more use for it."

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

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to recognize the meaningless (the projections of ego meaning, a different context), and accept it without fear. If you are fearful, it is certain that you will endow the world (mirror) with attributes (meaning, images) which it does not possess, and crowd it (project onto it then perceive in it) with images that do not exist."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it (projected onto the mirror), nothing more than that."

"There is a silence covering the world (mirror) that was an ancient dream so long ago no one remembers now. Its time is done, and in the little space it seemed to have is nothingness. The dream has gone, and all its dreams of gifts have disappeared as well. The first dream has been seen and understood for merely an illusion of the fear on which the world was based. (the mirror earth was formed from the idea of the opposite of love which is fear)"

We talk a lot about forgiveness and undoing grievances and not projecting guilt etc, but a HUGE elephant in the room is how everyone believes they are their body!

We are quite literally NOT a physical body. We are spirit beings, made of God-stuff. The body is NOT a part of our self.

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

"The body is OUTSIDE you, and SEEMS to surround you, shutting you off from others, and keeping you APART from them, and them from you."

But take a look at the world, look at how everyone is always focused on bodies, regards bodies as people, refers to bodies by name, and how we all seem to be very IDENTIFIED WITH the body.

Even from birth and through childhood, we're told that we are a boy or a girl, or a human being, and that our body is our self. It's drummed into us by a society that HEAVILY believes that we are bodies.

This isn't made any easier by the fact that the body ITSELF makes the world seem very real, and thus makes ITSELF seem very real. It reports on itself using its OWN senses, and reports that the body it senses as existing really exist. Pain and sensations confirm it.

Everyone's looking in mirrors at "how they look". Everyone's talking about what other "people" look like. Everyone's talking about what their body did today. Everyone's taking their body appearance personally, either to their benefit or detriment.

We have a BIG PROBLEM of believing that we are flesh and bones objects walking around on a fake planet.

We are not even 1% body. We are 0% body. Purely spirit. Purely life. Purely made of God-stuff. And yet the world is at like a 99% belief that bodies are true, bodies are life, bodies are our reality.

It is this identification WITH and AS the body that produces EGO, and is a problem of identification. That we literally start experiencing the body as if it is US, and anything it experiences is happening to our SELF. This is mental illness and it is widespread and extremely common.

In fact it is so common that it's taken to be absolutely normal, absolutely natural, the stuff families are made of, the stuff countries are made of. Human since birth, born to be flesh and bones, born to have a brain and a heart, born to bleed and die.

"I am not a body, I am free, for I am still as God created me."

"Temptation has ONE lesson it would teach, in ALL its forms, WHEREVER it occurs. It would persuade the holy Son of God he is a body, born in what must die, unable to escape its frailty, and bound by what it orders him to feel. It sets the limits on what he can do; its power is the only strength he has; his grasp cannot exceed its tiny reach. Would you BE this, if Christ appeared to you in all His glory, asking you but this, "Choose once again if you would take your place among the Saviors of the world, or would remain in hell, and hold your brothers there." For He HAS come, and He IS asking this."

"In Heaven God's Son is NOT imprisoned in a body, nor is sacrificed in solitude to sin."

"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. To see our Self as separate from the body is to end the attack on God's plan for salvation, and to accept it instead. And wherever it is accepted it is accomplished already."

"The ultimate purpose of the body is to render itself unnecessary."

"The "self" that needs protection is not real. The body, valueless and hardly worth the least defense, need merely be perceived as quite apart from you, and it becomes a healthy, serviceable instrument through which the mind can operate until its usefulness is over. Who would want to keep it when its usefulness is done?"

"All these things are your replacements for the Love of God. All these things are cherished to ensure a body identification. They are songs of praise to the ego. Do not put your faith in the worthless. It will not sustain you."

"If you let your mind harbor attack thoughts, yield to judgment or make plans against uncertainties to come, you have again misplaced yourself, and made a bodily identity which will attack the body, for the mind is sick." "The IDEA of separation PRODUCED the body, and remains connected TO it, MAKING it sick because of its identification WITH it."

"The body is the ego's home by its own election. It is the only identification with which it feels safe, because the body's vulnerability is its own best argument that you CANNOT be of God."

"I want the peace of God." W185

I've been realising more and more lately that peace is a vital core part of awakening to reality. And here's why.

Before "the separation" there was union and oneness. The idea of separation first began as nothing more perhaps than a very subtle sense of taking sides. Of there being a very slight difference between what seemed to be two things, instead of one thing. A hint of inequality and a vague notion of something belonging to one part and not another.

This mad idea later snowballed to the fullest extent of possibility, into greater and stronger senses of separateness, opposition, inequality, difference and all manner of exclusivity. In effect, "war broke out". A state of psychological war in which the peace of oneness was brought into question.

"And the peace of God's Son was shattered, for he no longer understood his Father." UrT12C11

"Angels came, too, but their protection was not enough, because the Separated ones were not interested in peace. They had already split themselves, and were bent on dividing rather than reintegrating. The levels they introduced into themselves turned against each other, and they, in turn, turned against each other. They established differences, divisions, cleavages, dispersion, and all the other concepts related to the increasing splits they produced." UrT2B43

Ultimately all of what we think of space and time, all physical matter, all objects, planet Earth, human bodies, and all the rest of it, descended as the crystallizing of this simple idea of being separate - separate instead of whole. And that was an idea of conflict, of war, of things disagreeing, of nothing being the same.

In heaven there is perfect peace because there is no possibility of war. There are no separated off things that can be enemies, nor can they attack anything else. There is no sense of threat or danger, no ability to harm or alter God's perfect creations. And without such threats there is no sense of fear, or a "loss of peace" or a disruption to "peace of mind."

Our minds did little more than enter into a state of believing in separate things. That sense of separation took on every conceivable form, including war and attack, blame and murder, sickness and death, destruction and change, judgement and condemnation, danger and threat, conflict and disagreement, inequality and disharmony, and everything we're all familiar with in our lives on earth - a planet which itself depends entirely on separation and war for its illusory existence.

We then need to seek to reclaim our peace of mind. That means, all the ways that we be SEPARATE have to end. All sense of attacking, all desire to hurt, all cruelty, all murderousness, all blame and judgement, all condemnation and grievances, it all has to collapse so that the SEPARATIONS between things are collapsed, restoring unity and oneness.

ONLY in that unity of oneness is true peace fully possible, because it's a state in which all sense of separation is absent. War becomes impossible, and without war there is no fighting, no conflict, no disturbance, no loss, no imbalance, no sin or guilt or death. Peace is an attribute of a sane healthy mind which has been restored to wholeness. Because in wholeness there is no split mind, no divided will, and you are no longer at war with yourself. This is accomplished through forgiveness.

"Forgiveness IS your peace, for herein lies the end of separation, and the dream of danger and destruction, sin and death; of madness and of murder, grief and loss." UrT29G1

"Peace is an attribute in YOU. You cannot find it outside. All mental illness is some form of EXTERNAL searching. Mental health is INNER peace. It enables you to remain unshaken by lack of love from without, and capable, through your own miracles of correcting the external conditions, which proceed from lack of love in others." UrT2A32

To gain peace, all your psychological weapons have to be laid down. All sense of wanting to attack, wanting to resist and fight, wanting to hurt and destroy has to be undone. And undoing all of this is a surrender. It is this surrender that ends the war, a surrendering of all ego pursuits and beliefs. When you wave the white flag, you return to peace, because the end of war is indeed peace. Nor will your peace mean defeat, but victory and invulnerability.

"Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself to keep all miracles away from me." URW347

"Now must you once again lay down your sword, although you will not recognize that you have picked it up again" UrM21A4

"Every time you feel a stab of anger, realize you hold a sword above your head." UrW192L9

"Nor is it possible the two can ever be the same, while specialness stands like a flaming sword of death between them, and makes them enemies." UrT24D4

"Lay down the cruel sword of judgment that you hold against your throat, and put aside the withering assaults with which you seek to hide your holiness." UrW190L9

"How long, oh Son of God, will you maintain the game of sin? Shall we not put away these sharp-edged children's toys?" UrW250W45

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or something like that.

"What He (Holy Spirit) 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."

Heaven's reality is governed by the laws of God. These laws are unlimited and impose no limits. They enable to be possible anything and everything that can happen. And what can happen must happen and has happened. And these laws cannot be broken because they are the will of God.

On Earth, however, the world seems to be governed by a second set of laws, which are laws of limitation and conditionality. Laws which appear to be separated out into many separate laws. Laws of gravity and space and time and forces and quantum energies. Laws which allegedly govern and form the foundation of this whole "reality".

"These are the means by which the laws of God APPEAR to be reversed. Here do the laws of sin APPEAR to hold love captive, and let sin go free." "The laws of chaos govern ALL illusions. Their forms conflict, making it SEEM quite possible to value some above the others."

"For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

But these laws are completely fictional. They are a layer of lies laid on top of heaven in an attempt to obstruct it and deny it. They are an enforcement of an idea of being separate and of separate things having separate interactions. It leads to the illusion of physical matter and of bodies and worlds. But all of these laws are artificial and secondary to what is real.

What this means is that someone who is in touch with the real laws of God, can break every law of physics. Someone who is in a position prior to the making of the fictional laws of space and time, has access behind-the-scenes to adjusting and manipulating those laws. If the very laws of the world themselves can be adjusted at will, then all physical objects and happenings can be overridden.

When this happens, the world's laws will appear to be "broken", and what seems to be impossible will become possible. The fact is that what seems to be possible in this world, is a very limited range of possibilities. It is not unlimited possibility. One thing has to happen in order for another to happen. Two specific materials have to come together in order for specific reactions to happen. There are fundamental low-level rules which seem more basic but always they are laws of limitation.

Even the basic laws of space and time are laws of limitation. The idea that something has to be located in one place and not another, is a limitation. That two things can't be one thing, or one thing can't be in two places. These are limitations.

We have become very accustomed to living in a realm of limitation and accepting it as the entire scope of freedom and possibility. But in the big picture, this world IS a very limited world, and even space and time and mass and materials are forms of confinement and lack and scarcity and littleness. And all of these limits impose NO limit at all on the infinite unlimited power of God and his children.

"For it is YOUR will to learn aright, and NOTHING can oppose the will of God's Son. His learning is as unlimited as HE is."

There is a suitable analogy for this. In computers now, we have 3D models of environments and worlds. Virtual reality games and so on. The designers of these worlds can make up whatever rules they like, implement whatever limitations they like, and even produce entirely custom forms of physics.

They can decide that gravity moves upwards, they can decide that two objects can overlap, they can even decide that some kind of mysterious force keeps two objects from ever getting close. They have the freedom to do this because they are operating on a higher level than the world they're making. Similarly, you who are of heaven and reality and a world beyond Earth, have the freedom to design worlds in which you implement whatever rules and laws you so choose. And even these laws and limits are artificially added, held in place and maintained by the mind.

You can decide, ok, there's going to be this thing called gravity which sucks things onto surfaces, and this other thing called time which makes everything keep changing, and another thing called space to keep things apart, etc. But these are made-up limits. Somewhere there's a construct in the mind of imposing limitation on what should be utterly unlimited and boundless.

This also means, if you are aware that you are the programmer of the world, that you design it and dream it and implement it, then you also are above and beyond and have power OVER all the laws and limitations that you yourself set in place. Even if you made these laws to limit YOU, you still can transcend them and override them.

And this means you can tinker with the background code, you can adjust the laws, you can bend and break them. You can do things to modify the world which CANNOT happen as a natural result OF the laws, but CAN happen as a result of someone reaching down from OUTSIDE the laws and "forcing" a change. Some would regard such influences as a "glitch in the matrix", where the laws of physics seem to be broken.

And now water turns to wine and bread multiplies out of thin air, and bodies walk on water, and people appear to teleport, and sickness disappears into nowhere, and dead bodies resurrect, and heavy objects are levitated, and mountains are moved into the ocean, and oceans are parted, and those born without eyeballs suddenly can see, and those without legs suddenly can walk.

All such things are possible in God because God is above and beyond the limited world. He is outside the law. He can BREAK the law. He can change and manipulate the law. In fact Jesus in ACIM says that "time and space are under my control" and "I have overcome the world". And that "mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

This world of limits is not REALLY a world of limits. It's not even really a world. It's not even really physical. And its laws are not even real laws. And gravity is not gravity, and nuclear forces are made up, and even space and time are fake. If you knew this and were in touch with this, you could manipulate them in ways which, to those who operate WITHIN the laws, would consider impossible. You would appear to be "breaking reality."

This is why undiluted miracles have a potential power to possibly induce fear in some people, because they make possible things which the world considers impossible. We're talking here about physical objects potentially chaing in ways that DEFY all of the laws you have grown accustomed to, believe are the "stable foundation" of your entire reality, and therefore brings into QUESTION whether or not such laws are even true. And witnessing such a miracle could therefore seem to "frighten" those who think their sense of reality has become broken, as if they are losing touch with reality itself. But miracles can do this because they can accomplish "the impossible."

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. And hopelessness and death MUST disappear before the ancient clarion call of life. This call has power FAR beyond the weak and miserable cry of death and guilt."

Miracles, which in A Course in Miracles means the power from ANOTHER WORLD, having power over an ILLUSION OF A WORLD, in which the illusory world's laws are BROKEN, have the power to do this. They can rearrange space and time and move objects and transform one form into another. They can press the pause button on the laws of physics, tinker with what seems to be "reality", and result in a change which the world would say cannot be possible, and yet it has happened.

"The miracle is proof he is not bound by loss or suffering in any form BECAUSE IT CAN SO EASILY BE CHANGED. This demonstrates that it was never real, and COULD not stem from his reality. 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."

Jesus was and is an expert at changing forms, because he has transcended the hierarchy of illusions. He knows there is no order of difficulty in miracles, because he recognizes all physical objects as the same one illusion. He is able to manipulate and influence any and all things because he is in touch with the truth that their limitations are completely fiction, that his mind has made them up, that he is under no laws but God's, and therefore the laws of the world simply do not apply to him.

"There are no laws but God's."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

"I am entitled to miracles because I am under no laws but God's. His laws release me from all grievances, and replace them with miracles. And I would accept the miracles in place of the grievances, which are but illusions that hide the miracles beyond. Now I would accept only what the laws of God entitle me to have, that I may use it on behalf of the function He has given me."

This is not merely a psychological change. The world is in your mind, and by recognizing your mind makes up its rules, your mind can change the rules. You can change the laws of physics. You can override the body. You can erase sickness and death. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do.

"Heaven and earth are both in your mind." "You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts." "Yet this world is ONLY in the mind of its maker, along with his REAL salvation. Do not believe it is outside of yourself, for only by recognizing WHERE it is, will you gain control over it. For you DO have control over your mind, for the mind is the mechanism of decision." "There is no world apart from what you wish, and herein lies your ultimate release. Change but your mind on what you want to see, and all the world must change accordingly."

"There is nothing my holiness cannot do because the power of God lies in it."

"My holiness is unlimited in its power to heal, because it is unlimited in its power to save."

"There are no laws except the laws of God. This needs repeating, - over and over until you realize that it applies to everything that you have made in opposition to His Will."

"We will begin the longer practice periods today with a short review of the different kinds of "laws" we have believed we must obey. These would include, for example, the laws of nutrition, of immunization, of medication, and of the body's protection in innumerable ways."

"Miracles do not obey the laws of this world. They merely follow from the laws of God."

"What I seek today transcends all laws of time and things perceived in time."

"You are at home in God, dreaming of exile, but perfectly capable of awakening to Reality. Is it your will to do so? You know, from your own experience, that what you see in dreams you think is real, as long as you are asleep. But the instant you waken, you KNOW that everything that SEEMED to happen DID NOT HAPPEN AT ALL. You do not think this mysterious, even though ALL the laws of what you awake to WERE violated while you slept."

"When I see the world as a place of freedom, I will realize that it reflects the laws of God instead of the rules which I made up for it to obey."

"Your holiness reverses all the laws of the world. It is beyond every restriction of time, space, distance, and limits of any kind. Your holiness is totally unlimited in its power because it establishes you as a Son of God, at one with the Mind of his Creator. Through your holiness the power of God is made manifest. Through your holiness the power of God is made available. And there is nothing the power of God cannot do."

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

"Reality observes the laws of God, and NOT the rules you set."

"As you awaken other minds TO Him through HIM, and not yourself, you will understand that you are not obeying the laws of this world, but that the laws you ARE obeying WORK."

"Time can have no sway upon you, nor can any laws of earth have power over you. Your hands will heal, and give the gifts that you accept of me."

"The miracle, therefore, has a unique function, and is motivated by a unique Teacher, Who brings the laws of another world to this one. The miracle is the one thing you can do that TRANSCENDS order, being based, NOT on differences, but on equality."

"Miracles make time and tide wait for all men. They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes, and can abolish both."

"I raised the dead by KNOWING that life is an eternal attribute of everything that the living God Created. Why do you believe that it is harder for me to inspire the dis-spirited or to stabilize the unstable? I do not believe that there is an order of difficulty in miracles: YOU do."

I'm trying at the moment to get a better handle on how various MIRACLE WORKERS have been able to achieve their states of mind, and gain access to true miracle working power.

Most of these miracle workers are Christians or Catholics, be it Jesus himself or various saints and other notable individuals.

There is something about what they are reading into in the bible that is steering them towards states of saintliness, christ-consciousness, holiness and humility.

I believe there are parallels to some core teachings in A Course in Miracles, and that some of these aspects may not be so readily noticed.

The bible acknowledges that we are in a "fallen state", and have become "sinners."

ACIM would make a small adjustment to say we BELIEVE we are sinners, and as a result a part of our mind has "become evil". This evilness is what we call ego. Many ACIM students do NOT acknowledge that they have this evil ego in their mind and do not want to look at it. But we have to "confess" that we believe evil things, in order to admit to our mistakenness and seek a better way.

The bible would say we are trying to be evil or wicked, and that by doing so we are destined for hell.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say that we do indeed BELIEVE that we are evil and wicked, which is the "ego" portion of our mind, and by so believing we project and perceive hell. The "devil in us" drives us towards destruction and suffering and death.

The bible would say "the devil" tempts us and plays upon our sins and uses our mistakes against us.

ACIM makes a small adjustment to say our egos produce this temptation, our belief in sin leads to self punishment, and we indeed seem to succumb to ego/devil when we believe in death and destruction. In unforgiveness we demand punishment for sin, and the wages of sin is death. This is because we are unforgiving toward ourselves and others and must purify ourselves of grievances/sin/guilt/fear.

The bible would say that only that which is of God is good and real and true, and ACIM would agree with this.

The bible would also say that we need to purify ourselves of our evil ways, ie repent of sin. ACIM also agrees in the sense that we have to stop believing in separation and sin and guilt. This means we have to own up to the fact that we are "being sinners" by having egos, we WANT to be sinful, and we need have a little willingness "to repent" ie to CHOOSE AGAIN and change our minds. We're not going to do this if we don't have willingness to admit that we WANT to be evil.

In both paths there is an acknowledgement of the fall of man. There is acknowledge that we have entered a state of belief in sin and death. There is acknowledgement that only that which is of God is holy and good. There is acknowledgement that this world is a fallen kingdom and the body is not natural to us. There is acknowledgement that we need to admit to "being sinners" (egos) and be willing to repent (choose again). That we need to become more forgiving and develop faith and trust in God.

In particular, all saints and miracle workers confess to having faith in God, trusting in his power, believing in his laws, and obeying his instructions. There is a great dependency on God, both in terms of carrying out his will, doing the Holy Spirit's work, and also being looked after by God. This is mirrored in ACIM as well in terms of us developing trust, gaining faith, listening to the Holy Spirit, receiving Help and Guidance and Correction etc and learning how to be HEALERS.

Both the bible and ACIM provide a notion of "salvation" from sin and suffering and death. A way to overcome the world. They both focus on resurrection and life. They both lead us toward God and toward spirit and eventually to heaven itself.

I do not see that ultimately, in terms of goals, there is ANY difference whatsoever between the two paths, in terms of their end result. When we become miracle workers we become exactly like this who have gone before us as renowned performers of the acts of God. We become empowered to utilize God's unlimited power, the Holy Spirit works through us, and we simultaneously become purified and holy and innocent and good.

The key to the success of these miracle workers appears to lie mainly in their dedication to the laws and nature of God, their development of faith and trust and dependence on God, their willingness to admit to being nothing without God, their humility and recognition of God as being the source of ALL power, and their great honesty in seeking out and purifying themselves of all devils and egos and evil thoughts within them, and their vigilance for the Kingdom.

A Course in Miracles asks us to do PRECISELY the same, and to become exactly like them.

"You once said that souls cannot rest until everyone has found salvation. This happens to be true. It is the privilege of the forgiven to forgive. The Disciples were officially and specifically told to heal others, as Physicians of the Lord. They were also told to heal themselves, and were promised that I would never leave them or forsake them. Atonement is the natural profession of the Children of God, because they have professed Me."

The separation from God was a pretty big event, placing many sons of God into states of insanity and producing an entire world of separation.

What was the answer to this? God himself gave the most profound miraculous answer, in the form of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was created TO GUARANTEE the resolution of this problem for everyone everywhere forever.

The Holy Spirit was given us as God's HELP. He is described as our friend, therapist, comforter, our only teacher, healer, and way out of hell.

It sounds to me that we should therefore be trusting him and using him and asking for his help and healing. He has a function in awakening that God has given him, and we have a particular function as well.

Very often people talk about doing ACIM as though it's something they do all on their own. They might say that all you have to do is forgive, all you have to do is see things correctly, all you have to do is think right.

But there is no room for the Holy Spirit in any of this. What does he DO exactly? How is he helping? What is his role and function? Because apparently GOD decided that the Holy Spirit was the answer and guarantee and power that will correct the ENTIRE separation issue. So are we LETTING him do that?

If we are not working with, using, trusting, depending on, making room for, being healed by, the Holy Spirit, then we are essentially denying Gods help. And that to me seems somewhat arrogant. Some people see the path to awakening as something they can do all on their own without the Holy Spirit ever doing anything, and this cannot be right.

We're told the Holy Spirit will respond to your slightest invitation. We're told that we are having just a little willingness and he will help us. Were told to refer ALL DECISIONS to him with increasing frequency. We're told that he will heal us and teach us how to heal as we attempt to heal others with his help. We're told that when we heal by the Holy Spirit he never fails. We're told that he has the power of God at his disposal and what he enables you to do is unlimited and not of this world.

If we're not incorporating the Holy Spirit into our PRACTICE AND APPLICATION of this course, then we're missing something major and crucial. It's not really enough to just say that we should merely see from a forgiving perspective, or that all we have to do is identity with Christ or all we have to do is get rid of our grievances. Were told to not even attempt to forgive without FIRST joining with the Holy Spirit.

You might ask yourself what function the Holy Spirit HAS, what he is capable of, and what he can DO FOR you. Or even to you. There is essentially nothing that he cannot do, and it's really us who is placing limits on him through mistrust and fear. WE should be building a solid relationship with him and working with him as the centrepiece of our entire journey back to God. Especially since it is HIM that orchestrates events and happenings to lead us to eternal life.

I think we ALL need to let the Holy Spirit be our teacher, healer, comforter and helper in ALL matters, and that we should trust him and turn to him for support in ALL things. Certainly as a priority above and beyond turning to any other ego-driven teacher who might be falling short of the whole truth.

"The imagined usurping of functions not your own is the basis of fear. The whole world you see reflects the illusion you have done so, making fear inevitable. To return the function to the One To Whom it belongs is thus the escape from fear. And it is this that lets the memory of love return to you. Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

"If it is the judgment of the Holy Spirit, it will be right, for judgment IS His function. You share His function only by judging AS HE DOES, reserving no judgment at all unto yourselves. For you will judge AGAINST yourselves, but He will judge FOR you."

"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."

"Never attempt to OVERLOOK your guilt BEFORE you ask the Holy Spirit's help. That is HIS function. Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven."

"The Holy Spirit never refuses an invitation to enter and abide with you. He will give you endless opportunities to open the door to your salvation, for such is His function. He will also tell you exactly what your function is in every circumstance and at all times. Whoever He sends you will reach you, holding out his hand to his Friend."

"The curriculum is highly individualized. And all aspects are under the Holy Spirit's particular care and guidance. Ask and He will answer. The responsibility is His, and He alone is fit to assume it. To do so is His function. To refer the questions to Him is yours. Would you want to be responsible for decisions about which you understand so little? Be glad you have a Teacher Who cannot make a mistake. His answers are always right. Would you say that of yours?"

"In His function as Interpreter of what you have made, the Holy Spirit USES special relationships, which YOU have chosen to support the ego, as a learning experience which points to truth. Under His teaching, EVERY relationship becomes a lesson in love."

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

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life."

"They will not hear another voice but yours, because you gave your voice to God and now you rest in Him, and let Him speak through you."

"It is not needful that I make it ready for Him, but only that I DO NOT INTERFERE with His plan to RESTORE to me my own AWARENESS of my readiness, which is eternal."

"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."

"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."

I think most of us are heavily doing a spiritual bypass. We are not asked to do a spiritual bypass. We are not asked to throw course quotes at the world to make it go away. We are asked to REPURPOSE the world and the body, in time, to USE them differently for a higher purpose. Using the body for a higher purpose does not mean throwing the body in the trash, or throwing course insults at it.

We are asked to first become able to see this world through forgiving eyes, to see the forgiven world. If we cannot see the forgiven world, which is a beautiful sight in the present where we see FROM love and light, then our mind cannot be in a sufficient state of forgiveness and healing to be able to awaken FROM the world. Seeing the forgiven world FIRST is a REQUIREMENT, not an option. We cannot bypass this, or just write the world off as "not real" at this point.

The only point at which the world is acknowledged as completely unreal and forgettable is when you are ready to leave it completely. That's the only point at which these proclamations become valid and experiential. When the world is ACTUALLY disappearing from your sight. Until then, harping on about how there is no world or how it's all unreal or the body doesn't exist is a spiritual bypass. Its DOES exist for you while it's there.

We have work to do, there is healing to be done, there is therapy that is needed, there are miracles that need to be performed, there are relationships which must be experienced, there are lessons that must be learned, there is mind-training to be accomplished. This is accomplished HERE IN A BODY, in this life, in this world.

We are asked to express the LOVE OF GOD through the body, from us to another, in this world, using the body for what we call communication which really means healing. We are asked to be teachers of God in this world, to be healers, and to bring the Holy Spirit and Christ to others. To follow his directions and to be truly helpful, HERE, in this world.

There is an atonement plan for our lives and our future. We are supposed to placing our future in the hands of God and trusting the Holy Spirit's guidance. We are supposed to purify and forgive our grievances and undo our secret sins and hidden hates so that we can become able to SEE again, but NOT at the expense of just sacrificing and hiding from life here. We approach the forgiven world FIRST, WITH a body, before we can get fully out of it.

There is a huge amount of spiritual bypassing in the ACIM community and probably in a lot of spiritual paths, where the ego is quite happily and arrogantly trying to shoot for very lofty ideals and advanced spiritual theories and states. Trying to act and express and live as if it is already completely advanced and awakened, spouting off quotes and statements as if they are dispensing with the world which is still hated and believed in, with coldness and lifelessness and no spirit. A denial of life and a total bypassing of WHERE WE ARE AT RIGHT NOW.

We are supposed to be becoming happier people, not just more peaceful and certainly not more conceptual. We're supposed to be laughing more, enjoying more. We're supposed to be LIVING more. Both in terms of spiritual force and health and also in terms of this life on this planet. We have to find a way to LOVE THIS WORLD, even if "it is unreal" in the ultimate sense.

There is far too much drive to dissociate from the world and body and disappear off into the intellectual realms of righteousness, as though this means we are making progress. We need GROUNDING. We need to stop trash-talking the body and world and find a way to USE IT properly, as intended by Jesus, not as intended by a wide variety of misled students and teachers who are heavily bypassing and use the course as an ego weapon.

We're here for a reason, we have a life for a reason, we have a body for a reason. We all keep wanting to skip to the end, to have no body, to have no ego, to be done with all this. We are NOT READY to do that, and we don't want to admit it. We definitely are not ready if we can't even see the forgiven world, if we can't even extend God's love through the body, if we can't even perform miracles that heal other people. We are not the advanced amazing superhero spiritual ego that we want to think we are.

We are NOT at that level of advancement, in a genuine way. We need more time, we need more lessons, we need more training. And that means we're going to have to HAVE A LIFE in this world for some time longer. And the ego, which is largely "doing the course" in most cases, really hates the insulting idea that it is not spiritual enough, not advanced enough, not awake enough, not ready enough. Always skipping ahead and wanting the end to happen now.

We're all trying to run before we can walk. Pulling up all these advanced lofty ideals and trying to hold them as wholly true and make them apply, when we can't even love each other properly. Or even to love ourselves properly. When we can't even heal anyone. When we can't even let the Holy Spirit work through us yet. We're like still operating with training wheels but trying to hurl along at 100 miles an hour like we're some kind of ascended master or something. It's gotta be slowed down, and we have to admit we are NOT THAT ADVANCED YET. And for most of us we may never be that advanced in this lifetime. That's the sorry fact.

There is much purification work to do. Miracles and mystical healings and advanced christ vision and total forgiveness and disappearing the universe and all that is lovely and cool but hardly anyone is ANYWHERE NEAR that point. I know I'm not. We need a whole heck of a lot more therapy and inner work and forgiveness practice before we can even approach the kind of states necessary for seeing the forgiven world, or performing supernatural miracles, or overcoming death forever. We will get there, but we're NOT there now, or even close. We don't need another even loftier concept or ideal to chase.

We need to take a breather and just relax and be a bit more normal and have a normal life, have a body, enjoy things, play more, laugh more, have fun and lighten up about all this serious spiritual study. We're missing some major point here - that we are supposed to be more full of LIFE. How can we be more full of life when we're not even willing to life THIS life and keep trying to escape from it on the basis of some high-level metaphysics?

We're just making another ego persona out of this whole thing. There is an atonement plan that we need to trust. A plan for our lives, here, in a body, which we agreed to before we came. We have to live that out, instead of trying to escape from the classroom at every turn. Gotta bring this whole course waaaay back down to Earth.

There is a physical time, in terms of spacetime, which is actually just a 'now moment' that keeps shifting its form. The present of time is the only time that seems to exist. Once stuff "as it was" is no longer, the past is gone. There is no actual past or future.

We are located in the present moment, but in the present we keep dreaming of the past and future. We drift away from the present to hide from the light, and to keep replaying the ego/past. All grievances and suffering is in the past.

If you are seeing the past you are psychologically focusing in on what is not here now. In time, the present moment is all that remains. The present moment of time symbolises the always-here-now foreverness of eternity. The present of time is also WHERE you will find access to heaven.

The present moment is where the reflection of God is because presence means immediacy and hereness and actuality. It's where reality is. It's where there is light and love. It's where you'll find peace and happiness and heaven. It's allocated in the now because that's the only "place" where stuff actually is.

When you are dwelling on the past you are in the present dreaming of the past, thinking of old hurts, remembering pain and suffering, attached to things that are gone, hiding in darkness. It is an avoidance of the presence, because the present is where light is.

When you are psychologically focused on the past you do not see anything as it is now in the present, but instead project the darkness of the past onto the present. When you are in the present you are closer to heaven and project heaven's reflection onto it instead, seeing the real world.

You can ONLY find the real world, happiness, love, light, God, peace, etc in the present. You cannot find it in the past or future. NOW is where God is. The past does not exist.

The ego tries to drag the past into the present to keep it going, blotting out the present by projecting the past onto it, and then trying to extend the past into the future producing an illusory 'continuum'. This erases the present from time.

The holy spirit's view is that the present is the only time, there is no past or future, and remaining centred in the presence he extends the present into eternity.

Everything to do with 'level 2' which we might call the separation or the lower order reality or spacetime or the ego thought system, is all to do with the psychological past. All darkness, suffering, sickness and death, victimhood, grief and guilt, fear and sin etc, is all movements into the past. 'Level 2' is the past and its projected future, Level almost-1 is the present in time, and level 1 is eternity.

Eventually time and the present-now-moment of time will disappear, leaving only eternity. The now of time symbolises eternity and is as close as you can get to God/heaven etc while still in spacetime. It's where you see the world "as it is", the real world, the forgiven world, the present "reality".

It's where the happy dream is, where you can see in the light, and where miracles are born. You cannot perform miracles in the past, only in the present. Holy instants are moments in the present without a past. Every part of ACIM's teaching leads toward becoming totally present in the here and now and letting go of everything past and future.

Forgiveness IS the present!

"I see only the past." W7

"My mind is preoccupied with past thoughts." W8

"The mind's preoccupation with the past is the cause of the total misconception about time from which your seeing suffers. Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"now is the only time" UrT5E8

"This instant is the only time there is." W308

"Your mind cannot grasp the present, which is the only time there is." W8

"The present is the only time there is." W164

"The present now remains the only time." W132

"There is no past nor future" UrM25A1

"You HAVE "sinned" IN THE PAST, but there IS no past. Always has no direction." UrT11J7

"A miracle is a beginning and an end(ing). It thus abolishes time. It is always an affirmation of re-birth, which seems to go back, but really goes forward. It undoes the past in the present, and thus releases the future." UrT1B13

"For healing CANNOT be accomplished in the past, and MUST be accomplished in the present to RELEASE the future. THIS interpretation ties the future to the present, and EXTENDS THE PRESENT, rather than the past." UrT12D10

"NO SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP IS EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT." UrT16H2

"His past has NO reality in the present, and you CANNOT see it." UrT12F1

"Let no dark cloud out of YOUR past obscure him from you, for truth lies ONLY in the present" UrT12F5

"Here in the present is the world set free." UrW132L3

"He is as safe in the present as he was before illusions were accepted into his mind, and as he will be when he has let them go." URM17A7

"There is no fear in the present, when each instant stands clear and separated from the past, without its shadow reaching out into the future." UrT15B7

"In the holy instant, you see, in each relationship, what it WILL be, when you perceive ONLY the present." UrT15F8

"Let no defenses but your present trust direct the future" UrW137L20 "The miracle reminds you of a Cause forever present, perfectly untouched by time and interference." UrT28B7

"Past, present, and future are not continuous" UrT12F4

"Yet in the present love is obvious, and its effects apparent. All the world shines in reflection of its holy light, and I perceive a world forgiven at last." W293

"The birth of Christ is now, without a past or future. He has come to give His present blessing to the world, restoring it to timelessness and love. And love is ever present, here and now." W308

"FUTURE loss is not your fear. But PRESENT joining IS your dread." UrT26I3

When he said "mind is the builder," he did not realize that it is only what it is building NOW that really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists.

"In brief, the past is NOW your justification for entering into a continuing, unholy alliance with the ego AGAINST THE PRESENT. For the present IS forgiveness." UrT17D11

The present is before time WAS, and WILL BE when time is no more. In it is everything that is eternal, and they ARE one. THEIR continuity is timeless, and their communication is unbroken, for they are NOT SEPARATED by the past. Only the past CAN separate, and IT is nowhere.

Everyone should love everyone, and be a part of everyone. That is natural. What is unnatural is to be separated off and not share with each other.

The device which we use to separate ourselves off, is the body. Bodies act like little anchors that root you in a little spot of space and time and keep you apart from others. And without a body there cannot be specialness or special relationships.

Within this scenario, all bodies are separate and unrelated. There are no relationships, only separateness. Everyone is alone. The body is like a prison with legs, walking around keeping its occupants inside. The prisoners cannot reach outside of their prisons, but they can shuffle their prison cells around to try to get closer to each other. Usually the prisoners clash and disagree and hate each other for their differences.

Sometimes, when two prisoners find each other and regard each other as similar, sharing common ground, common features, common backgrounds, common interests and beliefs, they see each other as less of a threat. They are less than totally hated for a while, granted special rights and privileges.

To perceive another as being like you, in terms of physicality or form or beliefs etc, creates the illusion that you are less at war with them. There seems to be something that you agree about. When there is a lot of agreement, you might even feel trusting enough to become closer to the person.

You then enter into a special relationship. The relationship, which is really the absence of relationship, and more like two prison cells banging against each other in the darkness, brings two together so that everyone else might be excluded.

"When two INDIVIDUALS seek to become ONE, they are trying to DECREASE their magnitude. Each would DENY his power, for the SEPARATE union EXCLUDES THE UNIVERSE. Far more is LEFT OUTSIDE than would be taken in. For God is left WITHOUT, and NOTHING taken in."

They come together to share on the basis of how they are alike, and therefore how they threaten each other less than others. This mutual illusion of trust seems to open doors and lets the two become more intimate. But their intimacy depends on the rejection of all others.

These chosen ones, the special love interest, the exclusive partner, the one with whom special rules are agreed to, whom has special rights which cannot be shared with anyone else, becomes the idol. They are given special artificial value, not inherent to who they are, but in contrast to what others seem to lack.

And so they experience feelings of closeness, seeming special love, a certain degree of trust, a magicalness in which the whole world seems to disappear, and you wish you could be with this person forever and to hell with everyone else. Coming home to this person feels like a breath of fresh air, as you both lick your wounds and hate the rest together, pointing out their flaws and keeping them at a distance.

The so-called relationship is then a tentative state of mutual partial agreement, or allegiance. Certain terms are made which cannot be broken. The persons are not allowed to become too different or step away or act outside the prison walls, otherwise they are violating the contract. And the contract may even be called a marriage.

If one of the persons strays too far, goes outside the envelope of interests, violates the common ground, breaks the walls, stops being exclusive, tries to become intimate with another, changes in a way which makes then unalike, or steps on their toes, the underlying sense of loneliness, isolation, abandonment and rejection will come flying out, hurled at the other to accuse them of sin.

And so the special love quickly turns to special hate, as those who once were trusted allies turn into enemies, brothers become strangers, lovers become divorcees, and significant others become forgotten.

For as much as they allowed the other to come into their secret circle, they kept everyone else out. They had to in order to make the relationship special. This chosen one was the only one permitted to be loved. This special one was the only one who could gain permission to access secrets and hidden hates. The whole world was against them and they against it. But their conditional love always had conditions from the start.

At some point, a relationship based on bodies, and on such specialness, and illusions of joining, may be brought into question. If there is enough of a movement or willingness towards becoming more unconditional, truly open, or sharing more honestly, a relationship not based on flimsy illusions but on something deeper, then the special relationship will be brought into question.

This questioning of it will reveal that the two did not really come together in love, they came together in hate, and hated together, and thought this was love. And the whole relationship will be seen as unfounded, in which what they thought was a magical kingdom of perfection and bliss was in fact founded on a lie. A lie of loneliness and shared suffering and false empathy and codependency and enabling and justifying attack together.

This can produce a lot of pain and misery and shock, because suddenly what was an illusion of love and magical specialness and special value is suddenly recognized as false, faulty, flawed and fake. You thought you were in a relationship but you really weren't. And so now in order to convert this specialness into a true relationship, a holy relationship, it's going to take some transcendence of its exclusive limitations.

The terms of the relationship will have to change. Who you think you are relating with will have to open up. You will have to become more unconditional and accepting and tolerant. You will have to put aside grievances and unforgivenesses and hatreds. You will have to dig deep to find love even in the face of rejection and attack. And this will also mean having to heal and love yourself so that you are willing to give more than you ever gave before.

If the relationship can tolerate this transition, from a make-believe love affair of idol worship, special love, body worship, physical intimacy, safety in numbers and so on, to a more encompassing inclusiveness, then it can be converted into a holy relationship.

To do this, bodies must be transcended. The other cannot be regarded as a body. Nor can yourself. Special values and beliefs which seemed to apply only to the two of you have to be questioned, and now the interests of others have to be incorporated as well. Others have to be included in the circle which has to expand to include everyone. Exclusivity has to go out the window, and all sense of physical limits has to be uprooted. The whole sense of who and what you are, your identity, is brought into question.

This is where you are learning to truly join, to unconditionally love, to identify beyond the body, to learn to see the other for the first time beyond the body, to truly open up and expose oneself, to join in minds instead of in bodies, and to realize that you ARE each other. Interests become shared, special boundaries become blurred, the world is no longer an enemy, and an equality sets in.

In true equality, the other can no longer be seen as a parent, or a child, or a special one, or someone better or worse than self or others. They have to be seen as God's equal creation, alongside you, in which it is an honor to support and help them in their ascension into the light. To heal with them and to share with them. The two of you have to come into the light of honesty and truth and forgiveness. And then you might find that you are able to actually BE related, because you are part of each other.

The prison doors begin to swing open, true access begins to reveal itself as mind reaches out beyond the body, and now the two can become one. Thus specialness ends, and the unholy become whole again. And now the wholeness incorporates the whole, and all are regarded as included in this whole. One way of relating to every one. One love, one truth, one family of God.

ACIM: "Miracle Principle 7

Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first."

DICITIONARY: "the process of making something spiritually or ceremonially clean."

What is purification? It is the process of removing "impurities", so that you end up with something that is "pure" and has no impurities in it.

What is it we are purifying? Our minds. We are removing "impure thoughts", beliefs, values and attitudes, so that we can be pure. Or rather, aware of our purity in God.

What are examples of impurities? All of the ego stuff, including evil thoughts, attack thoughts, grievances, unforgiveness, blame, anger, murderousness, all forms of sickness and death, separation ideas, body identification, guilt, fear, a sense of sinfulness, unworthiness, etc.

Heaven is a state of perfect purity. Another word for purity is innocence. It's a state completely devoid of any kind of sin or evil. It's so pure, that there isn't even a tiny trace of desire to attack or hurt, there isn't the slightest hint of anger or resentment, and absolutely no sense of fear resulting from seeing others as attackers.

Heaven is SO pure, it is very likely far more pure than you can imagine. And in order to enter awareness of heaven, you have to purify yourself of all states and attitudes that are impure. This actually entails being willing to give up a whole bucketload of ego things, which you may not be currently totally happy about giving up.

You have to give up ALL anger. You have to give up ALL attacking. You have to give up ALL guilt. You have to give up ALL sin. You have to give up ALL temptation to see yourself as victimized. You have to give up ALL desire to hurt other people. You have to give up ALL guilt, shame, and sense of not being good enough. You have to give up ALL motives relating to trying to get stuff. You have to give up all specialness, all selfishness, and all trace of conditional love. You have to give up unhappiness, sickness, suffering and death. And you have to give up the entire ego thought system.

The end result of this relinquishment, is a state of PERFECT PURITY. It is a purity SO pure that it is utterly immaculate, undefiled, and completely holy. The degree of holiness is off the charts in the extreme. You cannot enter such a state with any trace of malice in your heart or any amount of unforgiveness. You have to have forgiven absolutely everyone and everything, and hold nothing against anyone, and see yourself as utterly absolutely sinless.

Only through the complete removal of the belief in sin can you achieve this, because it is the atonement. It is the recognition that there is no sin anywhere, not in you, and not in anyone or anything. It is a state of TOTAL SINLESSNESS. That doesn't mean like, sin is real and evil is real and you have to stop being that through repentance, but more like, the recognition that these things are NOT real and you CANNOT BE them. That sin does not exist for you. There is only total harmlessness, gentleness, softness and love.

The most holy and pure, the most innocent and harmless, the most gentle and clean, the most unwilling to hurt, the most beautiful and new, are those who have purified themselves of the ego, of temptation and of death. It is the purity of the angels. It is absolute allegiance to God. It is a complete and total surrender of all control and egotism and all false ideas of self. It is the complete letting go of all false goals and made-up laws and artificial identities, and any attempt to be other than God created you.

So ACIM is saying that in order to become miraculous, to access the miracle-minded state in which you can PERFORM MIRACLES, which is a very loving state of sinlessness and holiness, you have to FIRST purify yourself. Your mind has to be decluttered and washed out with the spirit and ALL ego in you has to be utterly removed. You have to be cleansed and spiritually renewed. Jesus refers to this in ACIM also as a "rebirth", like becoming new again, as if nothing had ever happened to turn you into an evil monster.

You purify through whatever process works for you. But let's also realize that forgiveness is really the state OF purity, of atonement and of true perception. We are trying to reach that state. Because "only christ forgives" and that means we need total acceptance and alignment and awareness of Christ, TOTAL, MAXIMAL LOVE, in order to be in a state of forgiveness. Anything we do towards that goal is our "practice" or "application" of course principles in which we are trying to move ourselves CLOSER to that state.

This is why ultimately our entire work with the course up to its end goal of resurrection, is really a process of PURIFICATION, which RESULTS IN a state of total forgiveness. In which you have completely forgiven yourself, ie, have recognized that there is absolutely zero ego or sin or death in you. Where your mind is completely open and clear and in the service of spirit. Where Christ can now move through you, and Jesus can perform miracles through your hands.

To purify, you do whatever works, provided it entails the successful progress of moving closer toward total purity. Closer towards God, who is utterly pure, sinless and innocent. You can't be having attitudes of ego, attack, anger, blame, guilt, shaming, destruction etc, if you are to be pure. You can't be a keyboard warrior on facebook. This is the part the ego in you does not like or want, because it means giving up the things the ego CHERISHES and wants. Its way of relating to others through murderous attitudes. It does not WANT purity or holiness, it wants to be evil and wrong and bad, vulnerable and unhappy and destructive.

You can use catharsis, letting go, surrendering, development of trust, opening your mind, trusting God, various modalities of healing, practicing performing miracles, tuning into the love and light in you, prayer, asking for help, receiving love and healing, inviting the Holy Spirit to operate on you (mind/body/emotions), affirmations, cancelling error, reprogramming yourself, convincing yourself, reminding yourself, doing workbook lessons.

You can purify by forgiving people, polishing up your relationships to make them holy and equal and sharing, learning to be more unconditionally loving, working with the angels, giving the day to the Holy Spirit, seeking out blocks to love and removing them, digging out old hurts and unforgivenesses, getting rid of secret sins and hidden hates in the light, handing stuff over to the Holy Spirit, receiving guidance, doing Christ's work etc.

Whatever works. However you purify, however it is you can get yourself into a state of PURITY, of innocence and holiness. A state where you no longer WANT to hurt yourself, or others. A state where you see your TOTAL SINLESSNESS, and therefore project sinlessness onto others and the world, seeing them as sinless, and therefore having no grounds for fear or blame. Purity gives you harmlessness, just as it also puts your mind into a supernatural state of being invulnerable and IMMORTAL.

The innocent are strong and powerful. They are protected by God. They cannot BE hurt and DO not hurt themselves. "You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself." "My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability" etc. They feel safe and secure and protected and guided. They cannot be attacked and are above the battleground. Nothing can intrude upon them because of the strength of spirit. And they can bestow healing and miracles and life upon those who are not yet purified - those who believe they are the living dead.

Once purification is reached, in part or in whole, you will have access to miraculous power. You will have the innocence with which to love, and the light with which to see. You will have the purity of heart and the total angelic harmlessness and gentleness with which to heal others. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing." You will become a miracle worker, able to raise the dead and resurrect the impure.

You will be able to actually purify others for them. "It is the privilege of the forgiven (pure) to forgive (purify)." And now you are doing God's work, until you go home to heaven, to the state of total and utter purity and innocence forever.

In the separation, we entered a state of mind opposite to God. THEN we projected this state of mind outward, trying to hide from it. This produced the world of spacetime.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it***, and became the screen on which it was projected, and drawn between you and truth."

"***The world you made*** is therefore totally chaotic, governed by arbitrary and senseless "laws," and without meaning of ANY kind. For it was ***made out of what you do NOT want, projected FROM your mind***, because you were AFRAID of it."

This means that the world is actually once removed from the state of mind of the separation. It is a second stage in separation. The first dream is of being separate, and was then projected as a second shadow dream of a physical universe.

This in turn implies that all things physical are a decoy, a kind of "effect" being projected from a hidden mental state. Therefore, anything physical is not a cause, nor is it capable of sinning, or of doing anything. It is a symbol of something hidden.

The whole world is an illusion of a world, an image, projected from a sick mind. It is being put there by an unseen process. It is not the world that needs to be forgiven and corrected. Or to put it another way, we must forgive the world in the sense that it has not done what we think it is responsible for. It is "following orders."

As purely an effect, the world cannot decide for itself, or choose what happens. It is the mind that is orchestrating every dream, every circumstance, all events and encounters. Behind the physical world its a state of mind which needs to be healed. It is the circle of fear. It is not seen by the body's eyes or by perception. It is prior to projection, and without projection there is no perception.

This is what we might call unconscious guilt, or at least a hidden and more direct sense of attack and sin. Its projected form, the physical world, was made to hide its viciousness.

"You would be willing to look upon your savage wish to kill God's Son, IF YOU DID NOT BELIEVE THAT IT SAVES YOU FROM LOVE. For this wish CAUSED the separation. You have protected it (producing the physical world), because you do not WANT the separation healed, and you realize that, by REMOVING the dark cloud that obscures it (the underlying belief in separation obscures God), your love for your Father would IMPEL you to answer His call, and leap into Heaven."

The world is a symbol of what it has been projected from. Just as the body is a symbol of the ego. It is not an end in itself. This whole world, this universe, is not an end, but a secondary expression from another state of mind. It represents that state of mind, an outward picture projected from an inward condition.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

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

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no MORE than that, it is NOT less. Therefore, to YOU, it IS important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the OUTSIDE picture of an INWARD condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the WORLD, but will to change your mind ABOUT the world. "

The whole point of forgiveness then is to recognize that the world is once-removed from what is causing it, and what it causing it is in the mind. Therefore, cause, mind, will, and power, have to be brought back into the mind and recognized as being there. This is where the answer and the healing is. To take back your projection really means to take back the physical world.

Nothing physical is sinful, because it isn't the SOURCE of what it is doing. It is a projected image. It's where the world is coming FROM that is where you'll find the sin. The world was made to disguise the internal sin, to make it look like sin is externalized. That's why "the world of bodies is the world of sin." But it is really a projection of the idea of sin. "The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outward."

To lift the belief in sin away from the world, to see "the forgiven world", simply means recognizing that all of spacetime is not the cause of itself. It is coming from somewhere in the mind. Anything it does is a second-hand projected form of what is projecting it. Being solely AN EFFECT of an internal belief, it can't be held accountable for anything. The belief in sin is internal, and not perceived out there.

This is why the world really has no meaning of its own. Why it's a meaningless world. Why it's neutral. Why it can act like a mirror to reflect internal ideas of sin, or internal ideas of love. Because it is really nothing but a screen onto which we project stuff. It is an externalization of what's inside us. To blame it for anything, or to even look to it to identify "what to heal", is to misplace what is causing it. The world is a SYMPTOM AND SIDE EFFECT of the belief in separation. The belief in separation is the real problem, and the only problem.

If "all my problems have been solved", it is because the world is NOT the problem. The underlying secret sins and hidden hates are the problem. The unforgiven grievances. The attack thoughts. The belief in sin and death. The idea of separation. All the mental content which projects as the body and the world. Those are the problem that needs healing. The physical world will reflect whatever internal changes we make.

This is why sickness is a projected form of guilt. The inside becomes the outside. This is why death can only happen if the mind chooses it. This is why the mind has power over the body, and why miracles can resurrect and heal it. This is why changing your mind about the world changes the whole world. You're really changing your mind about yourself and God, and this results in a different projection.

First we will project a world of sin and death. Then, changing our internal material, we will project a world of harmlessness and peace and love. And then we will so fully extend our projecting in line with God's will that we will simply resume the full extension of heaven. And in total extension there is no denial or dissociation or "ego projection" or disowning. And so the projected world, which came from the tiny mad idea projected outward, will simply cease to have a source. And without a cause in the mind, without the idea of death, it will simply cease to be made.

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

The world, the physical world, BEGAN IN a dream. A secret hidden dream of sin and ideas of attack and death. Without this IN the mind, the world has no cause to PROJECT it. It came from nothingness and must return to nothingness.

It's very simple. God is the ONLY cause of you. God is the ONLY cause of anyone. Everyone who exists is solely caused by God and NOTHING else. Whatever God wills that we all be, we are that, and even we have no say in this.

We are all totally EQUAL and next to each other, and God is above. God creates me fully and creates you fully. I do not create you, and you do not create me. It is nonsense to suggest that I am your creator or that you have caused me to exist.

This means that your brothers are NOT the cause of you. Nor is the world. Nor is the body. NOTHING ELSE can EVER cause you. Not one single person in the world is causing you right now, nor who has ever caused you, nor have you ever caused anyone.

When you believe someone is at fault or doing something to you, you MUST be confused about who your creator is. Whoever creates you causes you. No-one else has any input to this or any power over you. To believe someone is causing you is to believe you are NOT caused by God. To blame someone is to reject God as your creator.

Forgiveness then can very simply entail deprogramming yourself from ANY belief that ANYTHING other than God has power over you. This is the same as saying you should use the power of denial to deny anything NOT of God ANY POWER over you. That includes denying that your brother has any power over you, or that you have power over anyone.

The EGO is the confusion about cause and effect, about who your creator is, and therefore where CAUSE is coming from. If you assign cause to your brothers, or to the world, or to the body, then you are confused. They are NOT the cause of you in any way. When you believe cause is outside of you making you its effect, or you are at the effect of the world, you are claiming that the world is your creator.

You DO actually have creations which YOU HAVE caused, which are the living beings in heaven that you co-created with God and your brothers. These are not the people of the world. You DO have power over these beings because you are the CO-CREATOR of them. But you have created them by giving them freedom, just as God has with you.

If in any way right now you think that some person is doing something to you, or some company, or some group, or something in the body, or some aspect of the world, or anything at all in this dream, then you ARE MISTAKEN.

The ego will then form notions of a kind of cord or connection or chain or cause and effect, between you and others, between you and the body, or you and the world. It will suggest there is a tie or bridge across which stuff from another person "comes into you" and "does things to you" or "makes you" or changes your emotions or induces reactions in you. The belief in these artificial cause-effect relationships have to be SEVERED.

Whenever you are mistaken about causality you will find a belief in your mind that someone or something has kind of latched onto you, is outside you, causing you from the outside in, and now you are at its effect. This is NOT true. This belief has to be undone.

You can simply do this by just looking at the beliefs you DO have about these horizontal cause-effect relationships, and UNDOING your belief in them.

I am not being caused by that person. That person is not doing anything to me. I am not at the effect of them. They are not responsible for how I feel. They are not making me upset. They are not doing anything to me. They are not the cause of my feelings. They have not attacked me. They are doing NOTHING to me.

You can see then that this leads to the fact that your brother is innocent, because if they truly are NOT CAUSING you at all, then you cannot claim that they are in ANY WAY sinful, guilty, wrong, bad, evil or attacking. So they must be innocent. Sorting out the fact that they are NOT the ones doing anything to you, helps you to see their innocence and yours, and places responsibility for sight back your own court.

It is also important to affirm that you are not doing anything to anyone else. I am not attacking them. I am not hurting them. I am not abusing anyone. I am not causing anyone to feel anything. I am not making anyone upset. I am not responsible for anyone feels. I am not making anyone sick or afraid. I am not attacking anyone. This is simply because YOU are innocent. You CANNOT DO ANYTHING TO ANYONE.

God himself PROTECTS everyone by his will. No-one but him can touch his children. His children CANNOT hurt each other in reality. This is the simplicity of forgiveness and atonement. Simply putting cause and effect back into their proper place, being willing to be forever an effect of God, and realizing that LOVE is all that you can actually share with anyone.

"It is God's Will that nothing touch His Son except Himself, and nothing else comes nigh unto him. He is as safe from pain as God Himself, Who watches over him in everything" "I am forever an Effect of God."

"Father, I was created in Your Mind, a holy Thought that never left its home. I am forever Your Effect, and You forever and forever are my Cause. As You created me I have remained. Where You established me I still abide, and all Your attributes abide in me because it is Your Will to have a Son so like his Cause that Cause and Its Effect are indistinguishable. Let me know that I am an Effect of God, and so I have the power to create like You. And as it is in Heaven, so on earth. Your plan I follow here, and at the end I know that You will gather Your Effects into the tranquil Heaven of Your Love, where earth will disappear, and separate things unite in glory as the Son of God."

"I am not the victim of the world I see."

"How can I be the victim of a world which can be completely undone if I so choose? My chains are loosened. I can drop them off merely by desiring to do so. The prison door is open. I can leave it simply by walking out. Nothing holds me in this world. Only my wish to stay keeps me a prisoner. I would give up insane wishes, and walk into the sunlight at last."

"Here is the perfect statement of my freedom. I am under no laws but God's. I am constantly tempted to make up other laws, and give them power over me. I suffer only because of my belief in them. They have no real effect on me at all. I am perfectly free of the effects of all laws save God's. And His are the laws of freedom."

The secret of salvation tells you "you're doing this to yourself". ACIM also tells you "you but accuse your brother of your own sins." It also tells you that you "look within first" and then project outward, producing perception.

So the thing is, you START by attacking yourself first, accusing your self of sin. Then you look within. Then you project your own sin out. Then you find yourself in a situation where you seem to have to "forgive someone else", or at least begin the process of realizing it's not about them, taking back the projection, and then looking at why YOU are innocent.

But really most of the time we spend in undoing all this projected crap, it's not really even the original problem. The original problem is that we do not love ourselves. We attack ourselves. We have judged and condemned ourselves. We've believed ourselves to be unworthy of love and forgiveness. And it's only later that this becomes projected onto the world and other people, which produces a mess we have to then clean up before we can even home in on the real issue.

If you think about it, your only job then really involves the forgiving of YOUR SELF, which would automatically remove the need to project sin onto others in the first place. Your SELF ATTACK needs to be undone, in order to have no sin TO project. And if you are not experiencing love, it is because you have not forgiven YOUR SELF. You have blocks to the awareness of love's presence because you do not believe you deserve to be loved. You don't love other people because you hate yourself first.

Forgiveness is not really complete until you return to a state of love, whether it seems to be about another person or yourself. Only when you can love the person that was an enemy, are you fully done forgiving them, and now welcome them with open arms. If you do not love yourself, it's because you have not forgiven yourself fully. Which means that you have grievances against yourself. You have beliefs about your own sinfulness. You are convinced of your own unworthiness and are hurting yourself.

If you were to address this actual problem, this inner self hatred, this suicidal self-abuse, the secret sins and hidden hates, not even on a basis of feeling guilty about accusing your brother of it, it would clear everything up. Jesus says you don't have to seek for love, you just need to remove the barriers you've built against it. Those barriers are barriers against YOU, against loving yourself. They are within you. And it's only later that you project them as a hellish world in ways that interfere with your relationships.

You are the one who needs to forgive, and you are the one who needs to be forgiven. By yourself. You need to learn to stop unloving yourself. You need to find out all the ways that you do not love yourself or are unwilling to do so. And they will indicate all the ways that you do not want to love others because YOU do not believe YOU deserve to receive love. And then you need to undo that belief so that you can recognize your entitlement to love.

Miracles function by applying to both YOU AND another. And so your unwillingness or inability to love another is only evidence of your unwillingness to love yourself. You would have to love yourself at the same time as loving them, and so you do not love them, because to love them you'd have to love yourself. And so you hold back your love of others because you don't want to love yourself. You are unwilling to love yourself because you hate yourself. And Jesus tells us not to underestimate the sheer extent of this hatred.

Ultimately though, the key is, that by recognizing you do this attack to yourself, the secret of salvation can offer you a way out. By healing your relationship WITH YOURSELF, by allowing yourself to receive love, by loving your own self first, you will automatically see the world differently. You will see a forgiven world only because YOU are forgiven. You will see forgiven brothers only because YOU have forgiven yourself. You will see a reflection of God in the world ONLY because within you you have no sin and guilt and God (love) is accepted as present in your mind, and so is projected onto the world.

It seems incredibly simple when you get down to it. So much ego time is spent lost and confused and caught up in external problems and other people and dramas and all these projected forms of your own self attack, such that it makes it seem most of the time it's not even about you. But its ONLY YOU that needs to get healed FIRST, to accept atonement FOR YOUR SELF, so that you can in turn be available to heal and help others. To offer love to them, you have to have love to give, and you can't have love to give when you don't acknowledge your own lovability.

You don't even really need to deal with trying to "forgive others" or to "forgive the world" or to "be more loving toward people". What you really need to focus on is getting your self to be more loved, by YOU. To find out why your relationship WITH YOURSELF is broken. To find out why and where you hate yourself, how you are denying yourself, and why you don't want to admit to being God's beloved child. All the rest is an ego distraction and a form of denial, an attempt to pass the buck and make the problem be outside your mind so that your own self attack remains hidden.

When YOUR mind gets corrected, your PERCEPTION will get corrected too. "Perception is a RESULT, not a cause". Perception doesn't even need to be "worked on". There is a massive amount of distraction with people thinking that they have to fix and shift their perception. You cannot DIRECTLY shift perception because it is a SIDE EFFECT. Spiritual perception is a RESULT of fixing YOUR BELIEFS about YOURSELF. It's what you sense AFTER you have looked within and have projected your inner world outward. As a man thinketh, about himself, so does he perceive.

This is all an inside job. YOUR MIND has shit in it that needs healing. All the world related to your self and the healing of yourself is entirely within you. You can use holy relationships or guidance or whatever else help along the way but ultimately, simplifying it greatly, Jesus is just asking you to 1) get yourself back to love and 2) then you'll share that love with others automatically.

Love goes out automatically because of its nature, and you don't even need to make it do that. It has its own function to do that. You just need to stop blocking it. And you do that by forgiving yourself for what YOU have not done. When you see your own sinlessness you'll see the sinlessness of your brother. When you see your own innocence you will see his. Once you do that, the rest will take care of itself. Seek the Kingdom of God within you and the whole world will be made forgiven.

Giving and receiving must occur simultaneously.

This means that in order to receive love and healing, you must give love and healing.

Which in turn means, that the only way for you to be healed, is to extend healing to others.

Which therefore means, that your willingness to heal your brothers heals you.

"I will be healed as I let him teach me to heal (self and others)."

This is a key point because when you focus on "your" healing or "your body" that in fact is falling short of extension. As you fixate on "what is wrong with me", you are failing to forgive and overlook it.

What's needed is the re-establishing of your function of healing, which happens through extending PAST the body to others.

If you seem to be sick, it is because you have not loved yourself AND other enough. As ACIM says, those who are sick do not love themselves. But to love yourself you have to love PAST yourself because love has to be shared.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves."

"Learning must lead beyond the body to the re-establishment of the power of the mind IN it. This can be accomplished only if the mind EXTENDS to other minds, and does not ARREST ITSELF in its extension. ***The arrest of the mind's extension is the cause of all illness***, because ONLY EXTENSION IS THE MIND'S FUNCTION. Block this, and you have blocked health because you have BLOCKED THE MIND'S JOY."

As you become willing to give, you are praying to receive. You can only receive by becoming part of the giving. When prayer is asking to get and not give, it is asking for sacrifice. And when prayer is asking to give and not receive, it is asking for sacrifice.

You have to be included in the prayer that asks to receive, because you must be part of the functioning of giving. The "flow" through you as a conduit for God only works when you are willing to be part of the transmission of that which you want to affirm is in you and through you.

When the mind's extension is arrested ie held back, through the body, and begins to fixate on your body or another body, it is not fully joining minds. It is falling short. Love is being held back. There is resistance and fear. This induces illness.

Once illness is induced and you are deceived, the temptation is to continue believing that since you are sick, you need to address the sickness. But focusing on the sickness does not look past it. It is the sharing, extending, and looking past your body that re-establishes the proper functioning of the mind. Once mind is extending/forgiving past the body, it is shining a light, and that light heals your body indirectly.

So the trick to this is that if you need healing it is because you are not healing. To heal, you need to heal others. By being of service, you receive support. By extending love you receive love. As ACIM says "Love goes out because of what it is, but you are needed that it can begin." If you block it is cannot extend. You must participate in the giving, to open up your vessel so that love can flow through.

Jesus tells us, "you are healed because you wished him well." As you wish your brother well it heals you. If you attack your brother you will attack yourself. If you try to accuse your brother of sin, you will be accused. If you prepare a list of effects and suffering that you wish your brother to endure, you can be sure that you will be the one who experiences them. You cannot be healed alone, nor can you escape the effects of your thinking.

It's important to realize then that not only is healing not "just you getting healed alone", but also sickness is not about "you being sick alone". Sickness is an attempt to come between brothers and to attack BOTH you and your brother, driving a separation between you, using the body as a separation device and attempting to increase the rift.

Making the body "more real" by focusing in it, increases its symptoms, in an effort to convey that it strongly comes between you. Your sick body acts like a solid brick wall blocking you off from others, attacking them keeping you imprisoned. Similarly healing cannot entail merely the repair of "your self", it HAS to entail the REJOINING and SHARING with your brother, to undo the rift that caused the sickness in the first place.

No-one is sick in isolation. In contagion do the sick seek to kill others. Sick bodies are accusers. If "you" seem to go into sickness it is because you are attempting to accuse your brother of your sins. Which means you believe you are sinful AND that your brother is sinful. And this means you see yourself in a sickened state AND your brother in a sickened state. It may well be that you seem to be the only one suffering but it is because psychologically you have separated yourself off from others.

No-one heals in isolation. Isolation must end for there to be healing. To be healed yourself, you cannot hold grievances against others, you cannot project sin, and you cannot find your brother to be guilty. By the Golden Rule, what applies to you applies to them. For you to experience healing, mentally and or physically, you have to be willing to see your brother healed. "Forgiveness is not real unless it has brought a healing to your brother AND yourself."

The temptation is to think you are the only one sick. The belief in "I am alone" produces sickness because it ends sharing. Therefore the opposite, "We are joined", produces health because it acknowledges that in their natural healthy state, minds are joined as one. And you can only ever join in LOVE.

It's almost as though you should "ignore" (overlook) what seems to be "exclusive sickness" and focus more on extending love to others, which shines past the sickness and erases it. If your sickness is a barrier to sharing, sharing is the remedy. The sickness was an attempt to disable yourself so that you could NOT share. The solution is to share and extend love in defiance of the barriers you've erected so that they are shone away.

Sickness then is an attempt to isolate, to cut yourself off, to be exclusive and special, to be different, to not share, to hide and to be in the dark. Healing must then be a matter of joining, reunion, equality, sharing, coming into the light, opening up to extension, and allowing your brother back in. This means receiving all of the sonship again, developing holy relationships, and moving past the illusions of separation.

When Christ Mind is shining through a body in wholeness and love, the body is shone past, making it illuminated and healed and transparent, eventually to disappear entirely. Bodies are interference, originally made as devices for separation. To use them with the Holy Spirit is to UNDO them. "The body cannot remain without illusions."

"Christ is within a frame of holiness, whose ONLY purpose is that He may be made manifest to those who know Him not; that He may call to them to come to Him, and see Him where they THOUGHT their bodies were. Then will their bodies melt away, that they may frame His holiness in them."

"The body needs NO healing. But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed! And it is here that Christ sets forth the remedy. His PURPOSE folds the body in His light, and fills it with the holiness that shines from HIM. And nothing that the body says or does but makes HIM manifest. To those who know Him not it carries Him, in gentleness and love, to heal their minds. Such is the mission that your brother has for YOU. And such it MUST be that YOUR mission is for HIM."

"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."

There are many clues in ACIM about miracle working and this is one of them. It says that to perform a miracle, you should BEGIN by perceiving light. What is light?

In workbook lesson 121, "Forgiveness offers everything I want", there is a procedure in which you start by pulling up an image of a guilty person that you want to apply forgiveness to. You start to see light in this person. You look for ways to credit them and see their merits and recognize the good they've done and so on to try to frame them in a more forgiving, charitable, honoring, allowing and respecting kind of way. Gradually you cover the person in this light and it replaces the guilt THAT IS YOURS in your mind.

So then what we learn is that this lesson is taking you from a state of darkness to a state of light. Darkness is guilt and attack/sin and fear. To shift "into the light" as it were, is to basically try to seek out the light, the good, the application/gratitude, the recognition of the light in someone. That the persons not entirely evil, dark, a monster or an enemy. You move towards innocence and away from guilt. Toward forgiveness/miracles and away from grievances.

So if we're not IN the light already, then we need to get INTO the light. We get into the light by healing OURSELVES, through this kind of forgiveness process in which we gradually replace darkness with light, becoming willing to move towards innocence and away from guilt. It's our own guilt that needs undoing at this point so that we can become miracle-minded and miracle-ready, so that later we can get into miracle-doing.

When we've DONE this, and we're got our minds into a state of forgiveness and light, we're more loving toward ourselves and others. It's the state of light that we need to get to BEFORE we can perform miracles for others as EXPRESSIONS. This is why "Miracles are everyone's right, but purification is necessary first." You have to purge out all the guilt and sin and fear and rise up into the light, so that miracles are not blocked by a lack of love. Miracles are always expressions of or FROM a loving mind.

Once you can get yourself INTO the light, now you are ready to perform a miracle FOR another person. This is also described here... "Tell him that the implied lack of love that his version contains is WAY off the Mark, and misses the level of right thinking entirely. He MUST heal his perception in this respect. He MUST work a miracle on behalf of himself here (See the point about miracles as a perception corrector) before he can effect miracles as creative energizers, which they are."

So Jesus is saying that first if YOU are not in the light you can't work a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR others, and YOU need a miracle to heal your OWN perception first. You work a miracle - ie you transition from guilt to innocence, within YOURSELF, on behalf of yourself, with the help of the Holy Spirit. This gets you up into the state of light. Then when you're IN the light, you are in a position to "begin by perceiving light." Similarly "The perceptual content of miracles is wholeness."

So we have to first work on ourselves to become lighter and filled with light and filled with the Holy Spirit. It is this light, or LOVE, which forms an ability to SHARE. You can ONLY share love because love is a bridge that joins everyone together in openness and welcome. The love MUST be present in order to perform a miracle as a "creative energizer" FOR another person. To GIVE what you have received. You cannot give God's power WITHOUT love.

So we focus on becoming more loving by removing these heavy chains of guilt and lifting our minds up into lighter states of forgiveness and innocence. This gives us ACCESS to the power of God through the Holy Spirit, and activates the LOVE that bridges to JOIN with another person. This is some fairly high-level stuff which is why miracle-working in general is largely reserved for the more advanced "more forgiving" individuals who have purified themselves of ego/guilt. "Those who are healed become instruments of healing."

Once you "perceive the light" in another person.... ie, see them IN A FORGIVEN STATE first, THEN you are in a position to transfer miraculous power to them as a "creative energizer", which GIVES THEM ENERGY, and thus gives them LIFE, and raises them from death or lack/fear. Once you are in the light, you are also in a position of knowing your function and how you share the Holy Spirit's function, and are now willing and able to ALLOW HIM TO HEAL THROUGH YOU.

Jesus says we are to "continually extend" the light. That's like a transmission of healing love power. He says we should "accept its acknowledgement", which I think means to SEE the light in the other person (the holy spirit effectively) ie forgive them, and thus witness or acknowledge that it IS THERE in them already. The divine spark is in them already. We need to see this light in them - frame them as innocent and immortal - and acknowledge that this is the truth about them ALREADY. ie "there is nothing wrong with you".

Then Jesus says you cannot bring light OF yourself, because you're nothing without God. But the Holy Spirit can bring light THROUGH you and extend through you as you "hold the door open". Effectively you channel the holy spirit's power, and let HIM amplify the life in the other person, through your mind. This also lifts you AND the other person up. You let the Holy Spirit do the healing by you "holding the light" for the recipient and letting him apply healing.

So the main ingredients boils down to:

1) Invite the Holy Spirit to work upon you, then through you.

2) Get yourself healed and into the light first. This takes a lot of purification/forgiveness work.

3) Be in a loving state, either by inducing it or receiving it or imagining it and feeling it.

4) Extend the light and see it in the other person, ie see them as forgiven - see their real immortal unchanged self and don't accept their ego/sickness.

5) Let the love join you with your brother and act as a bridge for sharing/holy relationship. Be in the light together as one.

6) Let the Holy Spirit move "across" (transcend) this bridge and also increase within your brother's mind. Amplify the light in him.

"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. As you can hear two voices, so you can see in two ways. One way shows you an image, or better, an idol which you may worship out of fear, but which you will never love. The other shows you only truth, which you will love because you will UNDERSTAND it. Understanding is APPRECIATION, because what you understand you can identify WITH, and by making it part of YOU you have accepted it with love. This is how God Himself created YOU, in understanding, in appreciation, and in love."

"The way to LEARN TO KNOW your brother is by perceiving the Holy Spirit in him."

So Jesus says there is an absolute nature within you brother which never changes. That is your brother's immortal self, it is permanent and still as God created it. The Holy Spirit reflects that and is one with that.

Your brother THINKS he can change himself and that he has, which is why he perceives he is NOT immortal and is sick. He does not KNOW HIMSELF. But the true nature of him is STILL in there behind his self deception and denial.

By recognizing the UNCHANGED SELF in him, the absolute, you are helping to change his mind about himself FOR him, by holding a different view of him.

By recognizing your brother's immortal self - the holy spirit in him so to speak - you are APPRECIATING your brother in gratitude. Recognizing him for what is true of him. Thanking God for him. Then by appreciating your brother's reality, it is recognized as part of YOUR SELF, and you now join with your brother as one.

It's all about light/love/life, being IN it, sharing it, giving it, seeing it, amplifying it, allowing the Holy Spirit to increase it, acknowledging/appreciating it, recognizing it, sharing it. Through this "joining of minds in light" which we might also call "sharing innocence and immortality", resurrection takes place mentally and physically.

"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 miracle is the act of a Son of God who has laid aside all false gods, and who calls on his brothers to do likewise. It is an act of faith, because it is the recognition that his brother CAN do it. It is a call to the Holy Spirit in his mind, a call to Him which is strengthened by this joining. Because the miracle-worker has heard Him, he strengthens His Voice in a sick brother by weakening his belief in sickness, which he does NOT share. The power of one mind CAN shine into another, because all the lamps of God were lit by the same spark. It is everywhere, and it is eternal."

"Since thoughts do not have to be conscious to exist, your brother does NOT have to be AWARE of the Holy Spirit, either in himself or in you for this miracle to occur. He may have dissociated the call for God, just as YOU have. But the dissociation is healed in BOTH of you as you see it in him, and thus acknowledge its BEING."

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.

Consider the idea of a script for your life which you fully planned, consented to, and passionately wanted, before you came into this lifetime. Imagine that you organized and orchestrated every single interaction. You created agreements with every single person you would ever meet and you asked them to do to you every single thing they were to do, with which they would comply. Imagine also that only what you planned would happen and nothing else would happen - except you would also forget that you planned it.

ACIM does speak to this, in that it says that nothing happens to you that you have not asked for, and that you get *everything* you ask for, and that you get *nothing* that you did not ask for. It also speaks to this when it says that nobody dies without his own consent. NOBODY DIES WITHOUT THEIR OWN CONSENT.

At some point, somewhere, whether it's in this life or before this life, but somewhere, for ACIM to be TRUE on this matter, you ****MUST**** have consented to every single thing that has ever happened in your life. ABSOLUTELY ALL OF IT. Not only consented to it but created it, asked for it, wanted it, designed it and even set it in motion YOURSELF. Not by any outside force or coercion or ANY amount of victimhood whatsoever. (this is somewhat described in the "song of prayer" pamphlet as well)

Remember the Course also says the key to salvation is this - that you are but doing this to yourself.

IF the Course is telling the truth (and it is), then everything that has ever happened in 'your life' has been exactly designed by and asked for by you. All of it. So this takes quite a lot of 'fessing up', which also means your life must become totally void of victimhood.

If you look now, and you look back at some things that you recognize as having 'happened' in your life, particularly events which involved people where they seemed to influence you in ANY way, and in particular in what *looked like* any kind of negative way, then you need to now reinterpret that. If you can allow yourself to ACCEPT that you planned and asked for every single detail of what occurred, then a few insights must arise:

1) You have to realize there was a REASON WHY you planned what you did, and that reason was FOR YOUR GOOD. Every single thing that you designed must have been for an intended purpose of, ultimately, leading you to a spiritual awakening. Every single 'lesson' or scenario that you put together, MUST have been intended to HELP YOU in some way.

2) With the information that all events are helpful, this must then shed a new light on all of these tragic past experiences, to show you that SOMEHOW, whatever happened, and no matter how it looked at the time, somehow that event and that person were ONLY doing what was in your script and they performed it perfectly. Therefore they weren't REALLY a victimizer. And you weren't REALLY a victim. At the time, yes, you believed you were, but here's the thing. You only believe you are a victim when you are UNAWARE that you are a script-writer.

3) This now gives rise to the insight that every way you've experienced being a victim in the past, was a result of a lack of awareness on your part, in which you experienced something designed to HELP YOU but interpreted it initially as HURTING YOU. This symbolically is the same thing as being loved by God but believing that you're actually being attacked by God. Ie it seemed against you rather than for you. So all of the ways that you STILL hold onto past events with a grievance, thinking of them as 'wrong' or 'unwanted' or 'bad' or 'unpleasant' or whatever, blaming the other person, all of that INTERPRETATION of events came about ONLY because you did not remember that you wrote the script. It looked like you didn't ask for what happened, which, IF it were true, WOULD justify your anger and hurt and offense. And that means, you need to to be more truly forgiving, ultimately accepting the atonement.

4) This now helps you to see that, ultimately, everyone involved is INNOCENT, because nobody has done anything outside of the contract and nobody ELSE is responsible for having done anything TO YOU against your will. Your will is embedded in your script which YOU WROTE, so even if you now find yourself unaware of this and experiencing victimhood, YOU DID STILL WRITE IT. So you can hardly blame the other person. So now you need to go look at all the unhealed grievances that you still haven't let go of, and which you still interpret in a victim consciousness that says "I didn't want this to happen", "this wasn't fair", "they did it to me against my will" etc.... you HAVE to reinterpret that.

5) This now leads us to TAKING RESPONSIBILITY. This might seem like a step which places a shitload of guilt on your shoulders, blaming yourself for what happened, bla bla bla. That's ego. What it really means is actually a doorway to FREEDOM and RELIEF. You see, if you scripted all this, and you asked xyz person to do what they did, and you can admit that and own that fact, then you can let them off the hook. You can realize they did not victimize you. YOU victimized you. You hired them to carry out your wishes. If you are responsible for writing your script (and maybe you had help on the other side to do this gently/realistically etc), then you can no longer blame anyone else for what happens, in the past or in the future. It also means you can no longer view experiences as unwanted, bad, against you, unhelpful, hurtful, something to resist, as an attack, or any other form of victimization. That means, yes, whatever they did, whatever happened, you wanted it and got what you wanted, FOR A REASON, to HELP YOU to wake up.

6) Having now admitted to this responsibility, and started to access the sense of RELIEF and freedom that this gives you... because dropping the whole victim drama is a RELIEF from suffering, you can now enter into GRATITUDE. You cannot be grateful to an attacker while you think you didn't ask them to attack you. But you can be grateful to them when you realize you DID ask them to AND you can turn your mind to look at the situation as helpful/for you. It's like looking for the silver linings. What's happening is NOT a terrible tragedy or a horrible event gone wrong. That's illusion. What's happening is trying to help you to be steered in the right direction or to keep you safe or to help you learn who you are or to guide you to remembering whats true or to learn to love and care etc.. whatever the purposes are in your plan for spiritual "growth."

7) Finally then you have to learn to change the 'direction' or angle from which you look at events. If you're responsible and everything is for your good, then you need to learn to 'take it' that way. Look for the helpfulness. Look for how it is 'positive'. Look for the silver lining, the learning, the opportunity its giving you. Look at how it is making you grow or what you're learning from it. Ultimately then there is only one LESSON, in the form of all lessons. And it's this. You need to overcome the NEED for the lesson by recognizing the truth, owning up to the responsibility of who you really are (owning your innocence), entering into the mindset of the Holy Spirit which shows you that you are never a victim, and reclaiming your FREEDOM from the dramas of the ego. Ultimately this translates to you OVERLOOKING (forgiveness) all of the ways that you get LOST in the 'game' that you set up, so that you literally are no longer CAPABLE of playing the game. Once the truth is revealed, you can never forget it. And so you no longer need to create these dramas ever again.

Remember, nothing happens to you against your will. There are no accidents. Nothing happens that wasn't planned at some point in time BY YOU. Nothing is being forced upon you against your will.

You might find yourself 'inside a lesson' in this lifetime and feeling stuck in it, victmized by it, limited by it. But you might not also remember the benefits of this situation. Maybe it has indirect effects on the spiritual growth of other people. Maybe by suffering a sickness you HELP other people to learn compassion. Maybe by being afraid you give others an opportunity to learn to nurture. We're all this big soup of roleplay and side-effects and responses.

Also let's just finish by saying you're not stuck with a lesson. Holy Spirit WANTS you to learn the lesson. The answer to it is not being hidden from you. Often Holy Spirit tells me, in the midst of some frustration and confusion, "its a lesson". So them I'm like.. hmm... what is this lesson, what am I meant to learn? And it's not like Holy Spirit is withholding the answer, but I need to experientially becoming willing to accept some measure of truth in order to complete the need for the situation. The lesson may not be obvious.

In fact a recent lesson for me was to learn to DROP the idea of miraculously healing a problem with my eye, so that i would let go of false ideas about control and spiritualization of my ego, even though this outcome seemed at the time to be totally the opposite of what I thought I needed to do. Holy Spirit eventually revealed, when I was at the readiness to admit to it, that the whole point was to help me to 'see' the truth - that I was trying to do/be something beyond what is asked of me.

Also I can't begin to tell you how much I have learned compassion and a heart-opening as a result of various challenges that a person close to me has been through. For which I'm grateful, even though it sounds 'sick' to say you're grateful for sickness.

Holy Spirit said to me, "there is a plan". I'm learning to trust that more. And thus learning to take responsibility for my part in that plan, and thus relinquishing all of the support for victim mentality and blame. Even now as I start to look back at past events in 'this new light' I can see that I need to become grateful to people that I thought were against me or who I thought did the wrong thing. They were only helping and they only DID help. I just didn't recognize it.

Ultimately you want to get to where you have no more need for writing scripts, having learned everything they offer. Then you are free from the cycle of reincarnation forever.

God doesn't have an attitude of making you guilty for doing certain things. He isn't up there judging and condemning. He isn't holding grievances or hating you for your choices. Nor does he forcibly stop you from doing whatever you want. Even if it's something that is seemingly hurtful to you and others.

When God created you, he extended his infinite unlimited freedom, giving you total free will. This was like a granting of permission, that you are free to create and do whatever you want. God placed NO LIMITS on your freedom. There are no clauses or exceptions, and no small print. You are completely free. It is because of this giving of total freedom that you are a fully created individual being.

That automatically means God isn't sitting there revoking your freedoms, judging you as guilty for the choices you make, regretting giving you freedom, wanting to enact his wrath because of the sins you commit, aiming to punish you for poor choices, or any other kind of control or coercion or attempts to stop you against your will.

God cannot go against your will because your will is actually shared with his own. To deny your freedom would deny his freedom. He isn't in the business of putting you in chains or binding you to certain rules and regulations.

With God there is always a sense of.... you can come and go as you freely wish. No-one is forcing you. You can choose heaven, you can choose hell. You can choose harmlessness or harm, peace or war, life or death.

One thing you cannot do is alter the laws of God, you cannot undo the golden rule, you cannot influence what reality is, you cannot alter what is ultimately true, and you cannot attack anything real. This is because God wills that reality be perfect and immortal and eternal forever, and reality is his creation, not yours.

You also cannot undo the fact that rejecting God results in illusions of pain and suffering, not because God punishes or makes you suffer for trying to violate his will, but because you choose and induce it upon yourself when you try to deny his nature. You literally assert that you want to suffer rather than be happy.

In granting you total freedom, you were also given the freedom to "mis-use" will, to try to will not to will, to attempt to deny what is still true, to try to use creative power to create nothing, and to attempt to repress and disempower yourself as much as you like.

God did not STOP you from believing that you could be separate from him, even though you can't. He didn't stop you from trying to attack him and his kingdom. He didn't stop you from trying to die, or making war and terror, or trying to enforce sickness, or anything else that ego would consider a sin. He doesn't WILL it for you, but he also doesn't force you not to.

Since you've been given total freedom, nothing that you choose is ever a reason for guilt. If you are free, you have been given permission when you were given freedom. God isn't holding you on a leash or binding you in chains. Nor does love enter where it is not welcome, nor does God demand or control or force anything.

God never says "you shouldn't have done that, you're sinful for breaking the rules". You cannot break the rules because you cannot violate your freedom. There are no rules because there are no limits on your freedom.

You actually are totally free to come and go, live or die, be happy or unhappy, be awake or asleep, whatever you want. But this also means that because you are totally free, you are also totally responsible for your choices. Total freedom IS total responsibility.

When you are willing to take total responsibility for your total freedom, you are also taking responsibility for the power of decision to choose what you want. You are now exercising your will to choose whether to will one thing or another, and whether to go home to heaven. This is why heaven is a choice that you have to make freely and willingly. It cannot be forced upon you.

This also then means that you can never blame anyone else for doing anything to you, because in your freedom you cannot have anything done to you against your freedom. You can attack your own freedom, in illusions, but no one can ever be guilty. Because everyone is always free. And you are always free from attack.

The secret of salvation then comes in, because in total responsibility you are the one who must have denied your own freedom. Attempting to be guilty is an attempt to deny that you are free, accusing self and others of violating God's rules and sinning against his law. But this has to be false because God has granted you the freedom AND POWER to do absolutely anything.

The ramification of this is that you could potentially choose never to go back to him. You could choose to be evil and murderous. You could choose destruction and sickness and death. Just as freely as you could choose healing and love and life. And you have done so - although you can always choose again.

This then reveals that whatever you are getting, you must be choosing, because you are free. And since freedom is power and responsibility, you must be choosing AND CAUSING everything that happens. This includes all forms of suffering, which must be doing to yourself freely. This is why you are master of your own destiny, and why you are ruler of the universe, and why nothing happens without your consent.

The question then is, does God just sit in heaven watching all this, allowing you to suffer for as long as you wish? In a sense, yes, except that God is also loving. God does not will that you suffer, or even believe that you suffer. God wills perfect happiness. God wills eternal life and deathlessness. God wills love not fear.

In his love, God has INVITED you freely to return your awareness to him. God isn't coercing you to go there. God HAS placed an atonement plan in place via the Holy Spirit, to gently orchestrate events and repurpose the world to lead you back to eternal life. And because the Holy Spirit is perfect and powerful, succeeding in doing so is effortless for him.

This doesn't mean you are ever forced to return or to give up your dreams. You STILL have to have a little willingness. You still have to be willing to learn - because the time that you take the curriculum is voluntary. But there is a PLAN in place to ENCOURAGE you to return to God. This plan is gentle and wise.

People are arranged to meet because they have POTENTIAL for a teaching/learning situation - for a holy relationship. There are no chance encounters. Events are organised by the Holy Spirit to be conducive to education and healing. This is why we have 'lessons', which appear as trials, so that we can learn to choose again.

None of this is forced. Before we incarnate we CONSENT to plans and events and encounters based on our current needs and wants. We give free permission for things to occur so that we can learn. We exhibit willingness, to whatever degree, sometimes more than others. And our life in the school unfolds accordingly.

But at NO TIME is there ever force, or requirements, or pressure, or sneering down the nose, or judgement, or reprimand, or punishment, or keeping score, or enforced karmic punishment, or any kind of "you're wrong for doing that".

As best as is GENTLY possible, God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit orchestrates time and space to make its events as conducive to change and spiritual progress as possible. As the therapist, the Holy Spirit knows how to do this expertly and perfectly. He knows how to GUARANTEE that everyone will eventually wake up to reality, and it is only a matter of time before we all do so.

You're still free. You will eventually freely return to God because you want to. Because you see no other alternative. Because you recognize that you gained nothing in leaving and will regain everything in returning. Not because anyone has the whip out. Not because there's hell to pay. Not because there is any kind of bully in the sky waiting to kick you in the ass if you take a step out of line.

It's all very loving and gentle and consenting. This is also why the "script is written" pertains to an OPT-IN free-willed curriculum where there is an outline "plan" for atonement but not a FORCED awakening. Nor are you locked into some kind of rollercoaster you can't get off, or some kind of replay of hell that you have no say in choosing.

This is simply because YOU ARE ALWAYS FREE. Your freedom is permanent. There are no restraints, no special rules or terms and conditions, no requirements, no punishments for your choices, and no judgement from God. God does care about you and wills that you awaken, and you will do so because your will is shared. But WHEN you do is still up to you just as it always has been. And this is why accepting atonement is your sole responsibility, because no-one else can do it for you.

"It is crucial to say first that this is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what to take when. It is just because you are not ready to do what you should elect to do that time exists at all." UrT1A1

"The sole responsibility of God's teacher is to accept the Atonement for himself." UrM19A4

"When you are willing to accept sole responsibility for the ego's existence YOURSELF, you will have laid aside all anger and all attack, because they COME from an attempt to PROJECT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN ERRORS." UrT7I8

"Your will is as free as mine, and God Himself would not go against it." UrT8E9

"The latter required the endowment of man by God with free will, because all loving creation is freely given" UrT9A9

"The "Princes of this World" are princes only because they are really angels. But they are free to establish their kingdom where they see fit." UrT1B30N

"No one CAN be "taken over" unless he wills to be. However, if he places his mind under tyranny, rather than authority, he intrudes the submission/dominance concept onto free will himself. This produces the obvious contradiction inherent in any formulation that associates free will with imprisonment." UrT2A30

"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." UrT9K9

"Nothing God created can oppose your will, as nothing God created can oppose His. God GAVE your will its power, which I can only acknowledge in honor of His." UrT8E9

"Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them. The attraction of light must draw you willingly, and willingness is signified by GIVING." UrT12F12

"Salvation, perfect and complete, asks but a LITTLE wish that what is true be true. A LITTLE willingness to overlook what is not there. A LITTLE sigh that speaks for Heaven as a preference to this world which death and desolation seem to rule." UrT26H9

"Your part is only to offer Him a LITTLE willingness to LET Him remove all fear and hatred, and to BE forgiven." UrT18F2

"Heaven is the decision I must make." UrW138

"Knowledge will be restored when YOU meet its conditions. This is not a bargain made by God, who made no bargains at all. It is merely the result of your misuse of His Laws on behalf of a will that was not His." UrT8A2

"The misuse of will engenders a situation which, in the extreme, becomes altogether intolerable. Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way." UrT2B69

"Perception ALWAYS involves some misuse of will, because it involves the mind in areas of uncertainty. The mind is very active because it has will-power. When it willed the Separation it willed to perceive. Until it chose to do this, it willed only to know. Afterwards, it had to will ambiguously, and the only way out of ambiguity IS clear perception." UrT3F13

"What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything which happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good? Perhaps you have misunderstood His plan, for He would never offer pain to you. But your defenses did not let you see His loving blessing shine in every step you ever took. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal Life." UrW135L19

"The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. In fact, both TIME and MATTER were created for this purpose. This appears to contradict free will, because of the inevitability of this decision. If you review the idea carefully, you will realize that this is not true. Everything is limited in some way by the manner of its creation. Free will can temporize, and is capable of enormous procrastination. But it cannot depart entirely from its Creator, who set the limits on its ability to miscreate by virtue of its own real purpose." UrT2B68

There is a non-duality model which is frequently projected on ACIM's teachings. It suggests that in truth there is only "one", and that in the separation from God many individuals were formed. This however is very unlike what ACIM actually says when you go read it.

ACIM's teaching is that God created many individual beings - souls - who also share everything simultaneously. This comprises the sonship, which is a permanent family of living beings who each have their own self and yet share identity through the Christ mind, creating as one. Individuality was given to each soul/mind and therefore everyone has a real self. It is not a "blob" of one being sitting there all alone. It is a community.

In the separation from God, it was not an event where individuality was invented. It was an event where pre-existing individuals tried to be selfish. They didn't want to share everything with everyone, so they tried to separate themselves off. They became selfish, hoarding, possessive, owning, isolating, exclusive, special and rejecting of others.

The separation then was a breakdown in communication or a disruption of the family unit of the sonship. It's where some individuals became "the separated ones", by freely choosing individually to not share with others. It was like an attempt to rebel against the family and go off on their own as prodigal sons. But there is nothing about being a prodigal son that deletes you from existence when you return home.

What actually happened in the separation was you attempted to reject your wholeness and your self and your family. You tried to stop sharing with your permanent brothers. You wanted some special favor from God, which he would give you alone and not anyone else. It was simply an attitudinal problem, one of selfishness, and not an issue of trying to be an individual."The ego is the idea of selfishness."

Selfishness is an attitude. You can have a person who is an individual who shares, and you can have the same person who adopts a selfish attitude. Just because you're being selfish doesn't mean you suddenly invent an individuality.

In the separation, in denying our shared identity and family coherence, we actually tried to deny that we had a self. The ego is the idea of self denial, repression, hiding and withdrawal. It was an attempt to reject your self and to not be a self. In fact the ego idea even takes it so far as to try to eradicate your self entirely, which is why it is so murderous and always has the goal of the death of the sons of God in mind.

In death the ego reports that it is triumphant in erasing your self and removing your individuality. It is in death that you stop being an individual or having a self at all. Death is the attempt to destroy who and what you really are. And death is not about the production of an individual life, it's about ending it.

This also means that when you go in the opposite direction towards heaven, towards eternal life, you are moving away from the lack of individuality, towards individuality. Towards having a self. It's a movement back towards the family of God and towards the sonship and your equal brothers. It's a reintegration of self and a return to wholeness. It's a reclaiming of your identity and a recognizing that you do exist as an individual being. As a soul.

Jesus also states in the course that as you awaken, your sense of self actually expands, becoming more full and complete. This doesn't mean you are simply returning to one big blob in the sky, it means you are returning to being yourself. And the goal of the course is to "know thyself."

So in fact the traditional models of individuality are upside down. Especially in some eastern traditions which suggests that reality is no-self while illusion is self. This is completely backwards. The fact is that when you decide to try to reject your self, to deny your soul, you bring illusions of separation into your mind. Blocks and walls and grievances and attack thoughts etc enter the mind to try to cut down, isolate, narrow, limit, confine and section off who and what you are from the rest.

These walls and limits seem to form a restricted or reduced sense of self, surrounded with pictures of bodies and things that are too small to encompass what you really are, so that you'll believe that you are not the magnitude or scope of your unlimited self. And as you "identify with" these things, such as with the body, you believe that you are something small and little and cut off and separate. And this "bodily identity" in your mind forms a sense of who and what you are, which is a false sense of identity. But really it's a false IDENTIFICATION WITH something, not the invention of identity itself.

Those who are deceived, believe that this false sense of identity is their self. Such as believing you are your body. And it is this false sense of self which ends when you wake up to reality. It is this sense of being separated off and not sharing and not being whole, that ends. Which means you actually return to a greater fullness of self, more expansive and inclusive. You actually become full of self. You identity WITH your spiritual self and DIS-IDENTIFY from the false body."The soul is the idea of self fullness."

But self here does not mean selfishness, or an isolated self. It means a self that shares all of itself with other selves, in unity and oneness, as in having a real open and full relationship with all other individual beings in reality. God included.

So you have to then realize that ego is actually the attempted denial of your self and the denial of individuality. It's the attempt to suggest you do not exist and do not have any self and are dead. And just because this denial of self shows up as the seeming "presence" of an artificial identity, it does not mean that you have created an individuality. It's actually an ILLUSION OF an individual, which is ACTUALLY NOT an individual. Because remember the ego is always deceptive, being an illusion.

Your ego is really the absence of self, the absence of individuality, the suppression of personality, the denial of wholeness, and the rejection of being as God created you. The illusion of a separated off, selfish self, is undone as you awaken. This does not mean that your individuality is thrown out with the bathwater. What it means is that your individuality opens back up to sharing with the rest of your God-given family. It is actually a return to having a self. It is self acknowledgement, acceptance and awareness.

So when you have people teaching that ACIM is non-duality, or that you have no real self, or that you do not exist, or that you're supposed to deny yourself, or that your entire identity is going to just disappear someday, they are teaching absolute bullshit. They are teaching you that you do not exist, which is an ego teaching. It is an improper use of denial.

You're supposed to deny the DENIAL OF self, not deny that you have a self. You are to deny the ego, which is an illusion of a self, but which is actually the attempt to not have a self. You are to deny that you do not have a self. That is how you return to what you really are as a self in heaven. As an individual being which God created to share with others and co-create with Him.

"God who encompasses all being nevertheless created separate beings who have everything individually and want to share it to increase their joy."When you project these non-duality teachings onto ACIM and you start to claim that the path to enlightenment is self repression or self denial or "you don't exist" and trying to be so neutral and passive as if you don't even have a self at all, that is actually SELF DESTRUCTION, which is completely in accord with the ego. It is the ego attempting to be spiritual, in fact. The absolute pinnacle of the spiritualized ego is to deny that you exist, in the name of being spiritual and growing in size. It is arrogant and narcissistic and a mistake.

This is why ACIM's teaching is not the same as the teachings that people keep projecting onto it. It is not a non-duality teaching and it is NOT about trying to get rid of yourself. Remember you were created by God to HAVE a self in the first place. Your self is divine and holy and perfect. You also have equal brothers who are divine and holy and perfect, created by God as well. And you share everything with everyone always. That produces a perfect harmony of souls in the sonship who have and share everything with each other, as the family of God.

That is what is written in ACIM and that is what it teaches. That you had a self before the ego came along, and you will have a self again when the ego is erased. This is not a course in self destruction or repression of the sonship or the depressing argument of trying to not exist. You should not deny your soul, or you are denying reality. This is a course in awakening to who and what you are as created by God, as one of many of his beloved children in heaven.

All anti-individuality sentiment is therefore destructive and death-worshipping and depressing and a rejection of God's will. Ego does not mean or equate to individuality. It equates only to an ATTITUDE which an individual has that runs contrary to the sharing nature of the sonship. Removing the attitude problem does not have to entail you destroying yourself. You are in fact supposed to embrace yourself and your freedom and thank God that you have been given life to share with others forever.

Judgment is a fairly large topic in ACIM. The course teaches us to basically "not judge". But that's not the whole story. Judgement can relate to evaluating the meaning of something, but also can in its lower forms mean condemnation. It can devolve into hate and attack and sin, or it can elevate to true justice and forgiveness.

Judgment is tied into perception, which "selects and evaluates" the meaning of things. And because it's based on perception, it is uncertain and unstable. That is, until it is stabilized by the Holy Spirit.

He has correct judgement because he, in part, has perception, but he also has knowledge. You have to know EVERYTHING in order to correctly discern what anything is. It thus requires vision, based on knowledge. He is the only one who can judge correctly, until you can learn to share his judgement in place of the ego's judgment. The ego always judges harshly, producing what we call "condemnation" or "being judgmental."

This is because the ego does not know anything, and is always wrong. Its judgements are always harsh and attacking, accusing everything of sin and guilt. It cannot recognize the "true" judgements of the Holy Spirit, and so its judgements produce false perceptions.

If you let the Holy Spirit judge for you, and then you match, accept or align with his judgement, your own judgement will line up with his and be accurate. If you try to judge on your own, and given you lack knowledge, most of the time you will judge with the ego and make false judgements. These judgements will be attacks and they will hurt yourself.

As you learn to let your judgement rest upon the Holy Spirit's judgement, your own judgement aligns with the truth, causing your perception to become "true". You judge with the ego less and trust the Holy Spirit to judge for you. Eventually your own judgement becomes "as true" and equal to his, shared with him.

Only when your judgement is perfected, and your perception aligned with knowledge, are you in a position to judge correctly without ego. This is an advanced state.

Jesus doesn't entirely write off all judgement. He does want us to stop using our ego to judge, and to instead depend on the Holy Spirit to judge for us until we are better able to judge with him correctly and share his judgement. His judgements are not condemning, they are healing and forgiving.

Thus to him, true judgement or "the final judgement" is a way of evaluating everything as forgiven and innocent, in which judgement becomes "non-judgmental." In this way, the attacking judgementalism of the ego becomes repurposed and is used to cancel itself out. By using judgment to not attack, the need for judging at all is undone, and so the need for perception ends.

Ultimately, by using the Holy Spirit's nonjudgmental judgement, we escape from the world. The world was made BY judging, ie as an attack on God, as a condemnation of his son. The ego aligned with the world's nature (both based on separation) and judged the world harshly.

The Holy Spirit judges the world fairly and without condemning it. You thus escape from the world by not playing the world's game of condemnation and attack (which is also sin). By not attacking what is rooted in attack, by not judging those who condemn, by seeing sinners as innocent, judgement is repurposed as a way to evaluate that the judgmental attack-world is forgiven. Thus is our investment in its nature undone, and the world is gone with it.

When judgement is perfected, ie shared with and in agreement with the Holy Spirit, ego and the body and the world disappear. Perception ends and we return to a state of knowledge, waking up in the reality of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no condemnation and no sin and no ego, and no need to judge or evaluate the meaning of anything. Everything there is inherently meaningful and means everything, which thus gives way to cognition and knowledge.

This all boils down to:

1) Do not condemn (hate, attack, sin, make guilty, attack-thoughts, grievances etc).

2) Do not evaluate anything on your own, recognizing you cannot (let Holy Spirit judge through you - extend his judgement).

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

"Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."

"No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself."

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

"Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being."

"We will receive but what is given us from Judgment made beyond the world."

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment. What is your judgment on the world, teacher of God? Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him."

"How CAN specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too."

"We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety."

"Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one."

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you."

"Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be."

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."

"Good judgment" in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does "bad." It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment he merely gives up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."

"Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception."

"No-one can escape God's final judgment. Who could flee forever from the truth? But the final judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear."

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. The Final Judgment might be called a process of Right-evaluation. It simply means that finally all men must come to understand what is worthy and what is not."

"Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact."

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

The idea of separation is madness, because what it implies is impossible. It is not possible to be separate from God. But the mad idea was the idea that you CAN be separate from God, even though it is impossible.

To insist it is possible, must be madness, because to believe it you have to deny reality and truth and blind yourself to sanity and sense. This belief makes the mind insane, because it now believes impossible things are possible. This is why the separation from God was an entry into a state of mental illness, ie insanity.

"When the "lies of the serpent" were introduced, they were specifically called lies because they are not true. When man listened, all he heard was untruth."

"The instant that the mad idea of making your relationship with God unholy seemed to be possible, ALL relationships were made meaningless. In that unholy instant time was born, and bodies made to house the mad idea, and give it the ILLUSION of reality."

The mad idea gave rise to a mad world, based on insane notions and crazy laws, devoid of meaning and empty of truth. And into this insane world we projected our insane beliefs, producing a mad and false world to reflect our inner madness. And all who participate in it are mentally ill.

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt. Look carefully at this world, and you will realize that this is so. For this world is the symbol of punishment, and all the laws which seem to govern it are the laws of death."

What we've ended up with then is a fictional world which insane people believe exists. And it is populated with people who have insane beliefs about who and what they are. They do not know themselves, are out of touch with their own reality, and think they are something they're not. This especially is entwined with the belief that they are physical bodies, which their immortal souls could never be. And they see themselves as limited and lacking.

"Sin is insanity. It is the means by which the mind is driven mad, and seeks to let illusions take the place of truth. And being mad, it sees illusions where truth should be, and where it really is. Sin gave the body eyes, for what is there the sinless would behold?"

Realize then that the world as we know it is populated by beings who originally were, and in truth still are, wholly immortal, perfect, innocent, loving, healthy, happy and completely invulnerable. Beings who God created to live forever in divine perfection, who lacked nothing and were capable of anything.

In the separation, these beings gave belief to impossible nonsense and thus moved their minds into insane states. This produced the anti-christ or otherwise known as the ego, which is an idea of what you THINK you are, as a kind of wishful thinking or denial of your true nature. Thus each person developed a SECOND self for themselves, which they identified with and as, and thought to be the whole of who they are.

"This is the anti-Christ; ... 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."

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

So now you have a world seemingly populated by individual beings who strongly believe they are NOT as God created them. They've added an entire layer of lies on top of themselves, to cover themselves up. They've invented a second self to suit their preferences.

They have profound denial which means they actively resist admitting to the truth about themselves and each other, and instead participate in lies and fantasies about what they are. They want to be a body and they want to suffer and they want to die, and they think this is normal because they think the hell they created is heaven.

"He has come to save me from the evil self I made."

"They DO believe that Heaven is hell, and ARE afraid of love. "

"For your definition of Heaven IS hell and oblivion, and the REAL Heaven is the greatest threat you think you COULD experience."

This has thrown these individuals into states of mind that are distorted and unnatural. They are mentally ill. They believe they are something or someone they are not. They have associated with being a physical object. They think they came into existence with the body. They believe they are limited and lacking and insufficient and defective and broken and sinful and guilty and in need of fear. And they relate to others through specialness and selfishness and mistrust and victimhood.

"the self-accusing shrieks of sinners mad with guilt."

On the level of the world then it always seems that you're interacting with a whole person, who is egoic, and who has major selfishness issues, and who relates in special ways, and strikes bargains, and wants to get, and sees themselves as limited and lacking and defective. And it seems this is ALL THERE IS to the person. As if they ACTUALLY ARE a limited dysfunctional individual.

You see this appearance as the whole truth about the person, and people seem to really be in states of "becoming", of "growing", of transformation, learning, progression, acquisition and so on. As if they have started out with nothing and are lacking and little and weak and frail. And so the whole world seems to be populated with egoic individuals who are all far less than magnificent and most of whom find themselves to be unworthy of love or life. Which drives them all to self-punishment and suicide.

"...the sense of loneliness and abandonment which all the separated ones experience. Depression is an inevitable consequence of separation. So are anxiety, worry, a deep sense of helplessness, misery, suffering, and intense fear of loss."

"the delusions of the Separated ones."

"All the separated ones have a basic fear of retaliation and abandonment. This is because they BELIEVE in attack and rejection, so this is what they perceive and teach and LEARN. "

It seems then that we're living in a world where people represent varying degrees of ability, accomplishment, skill, confidence, and a very wide range of personalities and potentials. And in all cases no-one is perfect and everyone is lacking in some way. And everyone is trying to improve themselves because they all think they were created broken. And now there is competition and everyone fights to be better than all the other defective ones, while the defective ones lick their wounds and want to die.

If you take this at face value, if you think this is normal and natural, then you'll think that the EGOS that you interact with ARE people. That their egotism is NOT a mental illness, but is in fact just some normal psychological structure. A personality trait perhaps. And that it's completely normal for people to hate themselves, to attack others, to be angry, to worship idols, to take from others, and to seek for exclusive relationships. As if this is what completely natural mentally-sane people do. So normal because it's so common.

What we have to realize is that this is NOT sanity. And these ego people, the way they present themselves, is NOT really their self. It's not their real identity. They in fact are pretending to be something they're not. They present themselves as fictional characters, with traits and behaviors that aren't even natural. With beliefs about themselves that are unfounded and false. In denial of their own self and repressive of their own freedom.

"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."

They don't even know who they really are. They don't know where they came from or how they got here. And they certainly don't even suspect that they even have a real self. And even think that maybe they don't exist at all, have no real creator, invented themselves, and maybe aren't even real.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

What we're looking at, when we look at the world, is in fact a place where a very large number of mentally ill people are gathered together. And all of their mental illnesses are regarded as largely normal and natural, ie not an illness at all. We don't even recognize insanity when we see it. We think it's normal that people relate the way they do, think of themselves in such unnatural ways, and are completely lost and out of touch with their own reality. On a planet filled with suffering, how can you remember what it's like not to suffer?

If we don't suspect that there is a higher, larger truth about people, then it's going to make it seem like their ego self is REAL, that it is the WHOLE truth of them, and there is nothing more to it. And in that view you will relate to their EGO in terms of special relationship, and with no sense of forgiveness. Anything they do in insanity will be a sin, and you will justify holding it against them. Because you don't recognize they are mentally ill. And all their twisted behaviors are in fact part of their illness.

If you had only ever known someone in an ill condition, and had never known them when they were healthy, you would have great difficulty seeing past their illness. If you had only met them after they became dysfunctional, you'd have a hard time having any notion of what they are REALLY like when they're not sick. And if the whole planet is sick, how can you know what society is supposed to be like, when no-one can even remember a time when there was no suffering at all?

If we have no sense of the actual REALITY of each person, then this is what we're going to do. We're going to BUY INTO their illusions of who and what they are, fall for the same temptations, go into false empathy, join them in suffering, and compound their ego. This keeps them imprisoned and does not offer any kind of healing. And they need healing because they are not sane. Falling for this means YOU are insane, because you've failed to recognize that the illusion of sanity is not sanity, and so think that you are sane when you're not.

Everyone, when sane, is a loving, powerful, supernatural, immortal, eternal being of light, filled with joy and laughter and miracles. Such a person is invulnerable, cannot be sick, cannot die, cannot be upset, has no grievances, doesn't judge or blame anyone, is perfectly innocent and holy, knows God intimately, depends on God for everything, and has no authority problem. This is what EVERY person in the world was like when they were created. This is the kind of self they ARE behind their mental illness. And if their mental illness was cured, this is how they would be. A world of christs!

To not RECOGNIZE that people's egos are not their real self, is to fail to forgive. To forgive requires having in mind an awareness BEYOND THE LIES, of what the person's souls is really like, as created by God. The original self. The real self. The holy self. The higher self. That is their true self. And that self has no limitations or lacks or failures or malfunctions or depressions or sicknesses or lies about themselves or others.

So then we have to realize that we join with the Holy Spirit as therapists in the world, as healers, come to offer SANITY to those who are insane, and to lift them up and resurrect them to truth and light, so that they are restored to their true function and true abilities. To their real identity. To remember who they are, to know themselves and to live out from the love that God put in them.

"Now must you share His function, and forgive whom He has saved, whose sinlessness He sees, and whom He honors as the Son of God."

"your function in this world is healing"

"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 only way you can forgive someone is to know the real truth about them on a higher level. The bigger picture. Their true nature as established by God. And this truth has to STILL be true, even if it is covered up by their own mind, and obscure and hard to see. Even if they themselves don't know it's there, and even if they themselves deny that it's true of them. Because people are in fact out of touch with their own souls and don't even remember what their real identity is. It is our task to REMEMBER FOR THEM, so that they might remember also and wake up to their true nature.

"Remember for everyone your Father's power, that He has given them"

"He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God. YOU CAN REMEMBER THIS FOR ALL THE SONSHIP. Do not allow your brother not to remember, for his forgetfulness is YOURS. But YOUR remembering is HIS, for God cannot be remembered alone. THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN. To perceive the healing of your brother as the healing of yourself, is thus the way to remember God. For you forgot your brothers WITH Him, and God's answer to your forgetting is but the way to remember."

"Do not allow your brother to be sick, for if he is, have YOU abandoned him to his own dream, by SHARING it with him."

Since the ego is really a smokescreen of lies, it is not true of a person. Even if they are holding it up strongly in front of your face as an obstacle to peace. To forgive is to OVERLOOK it, and see BEYOND it, beyond their body, and beyond their false sense of identity. To recognize who they are in spirit, and to acknowledge the PERMANENT TRUTH about them. To hold them in the light and acknowledge that they ARE in the light.

This means in fact bypassing their illusory ego beliefs, their ego self, and realizing that on a higher level their mind is SANE. Only a small portion of their mind is insane and their soul is still perfect. By tapping into the higher self and truth of the person, you JOIN with them in love. This bypasses the ego and increases the wholeness within the mind, which in turn undoes the false ego identification - the sickness - the mental illness. Because "all sickness is mental illness." This is how miracles are performed.

Don't be deceived. People are not who they say they are. Everyone has an imposter in them. The Holy Spirit knows who we really are, and will awaken this truth in us if we will let him.

"Seek not to make the Son of God ADJUST to his insanity. There IS a stranger in him, who wandered carelessly into the home of Truth, and who will wander off. He came WITHOUT a purpose. But he will not remain before the shining light the Holy Spirit offered, and you accepted. For there the STRANGER is made homeless, and YOU are welcome. Ask not this transient stranger, "who am I?" He is the only thing in all the universe that does not know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Be not deceived by the illusions it presents of size and thickness, weight, solidity, and firmness of foundation. Yes, to the body's eyes it looks like an enormous, solid body, immovable as is a mountain. Yet, within you, there is a force which no illusions can resist."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see."

"Let not the dream take hold to close your eyes. It is not strange that dreams can make a world that is unreal. The WISH to make it IS incredible."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You closed your eyes to shut him out."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But eyes deceive, and ears hear falsely."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Heaven is a choice I must make."

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

"The truth shall set you free."

There is a lot of resistance to this very radical part of ACIM, so let's look at it even more closely.

When you project sin onto others, you are accusing them of your own sins. You do this to dissociate from the sin, deny it and hide from it. You try to associate it WITH someone else, so that they are responsible for it, and you're let off the hook.

If you think of sin as CAUSE, you are trying to disown causal power and put it outside of yourself, making you AT THE EFFECT of it. You believe someone else is CAUSING you, affecting you. and deciding what you are.

However, this doesn't just happen on a mental level. It also happens PHYSICALLY. The body is a symbol, not an end in itself.

"It is still true that the body has no function of itself. This is because it is NOT an end."

"The body is the symbol of the world."

"The body is the symbol of the ego, as the ego is the symbol of separation."

It is a communication device. It REPRESENTS the MESSAGE that the mind is transmitting to another. It CHANGES FORM to DEPICT a symbol of the kind of relationship you are having with the person! This is because it is a separation device and takes on the form of "how much separation" there is between you and others. And sickness is a greater degree of separation than health, symbolically.

Images of a healthy, unharmed, pain-free, sickness-free body, SYMBOLIZE ideas of eternal life. It represents innocence and the absence of attack. It symbolizes healing and wholeness and harmlessness. It contains no "proof" that sin has ever happened to it, and there is no evidence that anyone has ever attacked it. Therefore it acts as a SYMBOL OF IMMORTALITY.

However, when the mind is sick, having attack thoughts and belief in sin, which starts the ball rolling with projection and scapegoating, this INFLUENCES the picture of the body. The body actually literally CHANGES FORM to a different symbolic form. Forms of sickness, damage, malfunction, attack, pain, deformity, disability, disease, infection, etc, are all attempts to SHOW your brother that you "think ill of him." The body thus because a SYMBOL OF DEATH. Or as Jesus puts it, a "picture of crucifixion."

"Death is the symbol of the fear of God."

"the one you made, out of your split mind, and which IS the symbol of death."

"Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son. You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes (your body in a sick state), that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death (yes PHYSICAL), and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell."

We actually USE the body as a TOOL. It is a communication device. We actually hold it up as a picture for others to look at to REPRESENT what we think and how we relate. When we are in ego, we change the body into forms of sickness. And when we are with the Holy Spirit, we change the body into forms of health. This is because a "healthy body" DOES symbolize life and wholeness and happiness and innocence. Just as sick bodies SYMBOLIZE attack and suffering and pain and death.

Now here's the important part. The reason WHY you make the body sick ON PURPOSE in order to accuse others of sin. When your mind is healthy, cause and effect are in their proper order and you are extending love outward. You see yourself as the cause or dreamer of the dream. However, when you go into ego, your perception becomes backwards, and you start to see cause as OUTSIDE of you, and see yourself as AN EFFECT.

Your own mind does this, and the result is that it starts to "visualize itself" AS an effect. Whatever way it believes someone ELSE is to blame, or someone ELSE is sinful, it also imagines what kind of EFFECTS that would produce in you if it were true. If some person is believed to be attacking you, YOUR mind will DEPICT itself physically as the symbolic image of an ATTACKED body. Your mind implements the EFFECTS within the body, to correspond to its belief in the projected CAUSE that it sees as outside itself.

So now what's happening is, as cause and effect are reversed, your mind starts to attack itself from the outside in, through others. As you go to scapegoat and blame someone for CAUSING you, for sinning against you, you SIMULTANEOUSLY portray yourself as a victim. You do this mentally, BUT it also in turn CHANGES THE BODY. The body PICTURES what you think of yourself and how you see yourself.

"The body is the symbol of WHAT YOU THINK YOU ARE."

Whatever you think you are, your body SYMBOLIZES it physically. If you think of yourself with attack and sin, which you later project, your body takes on a symbolic FORM of that attitude. It represents TWO things ... 1) what you think of yourself, and 2) what you think of others. These are actually one thing, because you are one with others.

So as you go to accuse yourself of sin, you ALSO go to accuse your brother of sin. The body COMES BETWEEN you as a separation device. It is now being USED to symbolically visualize the PRESENCE of attack, darkness, walls, blockages, etc. And so the body shifts its physical appearance (it's just an image in the mind), to represent your relationship to yourself and others. "Whenever you consent to suffer pain, to be deprived, unfairly treated, or in need of ANYTHING, ***you but accuse your brother of attack upon God's Son***. ***You hold a picture of your crucifixion before his eyes***, that he may see his sins are writ in Heaven in your blood and death, and go before him, closing off the gate, and damning him to hell. "

"For accusation is a bar to love, ***and damaged bodies ARE accusers***. They stand firmly in the way of trust and peace, ***proclaiming*** that the frail can HAVE no trust, and that the damaged HAVE no grounds for peace. Who has been injured BY his brother, and could love and trust him still? He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because ***your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him.***"

Bottom line, when your mind is accusing, your BODY accuses as well. It lines up with the mind's attitude. The body itself does NOT have its OWN state, its own attitude, its own decision, or its own mind. It CANNOT maintain itself. It is maintained by the mind, and the mind has power over it. The mind USES it and TELLS it what to do and HOW to show up. It MAKES the body appear in one form or another. And the PURPOSE of any chosen form is to COMMUNICATE through symbols.

So when you are accusing, which means you are projecting, which means you are splitting your mind, your mind causes the body to be used for separation, and this ATTACKS the body and makes it steer towards a PICTURE of crucifixion and death. The INTENT is that the body is acting to PROVE to your brother the consequences of what you claim HE DID. You cannot scapegoat WITHOUT it changing the body. The body is HELD UP as a picture to SHOW HIM effects, which YOU put there, which you accuse HIM of putting there.

So long as the body remains appearing to be sick in any way, and given the mind is the ONLY cause of it, and given the body can ONLY symbolize because it has no meaning or state of its own, the body HAS TO fall into line with the mind's purpose. If the body remains sick in any way, the mind HAS TO be continuing to use it for attack. The body is still showing a symbol of attack BECAUSE the mind is STILL attacking. There are no exceptions to this. It is so reliable that we can say, if the body is still sick, the mind HAS NOT been healed. And it also means if the body is still sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother of sin.

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

It is NOT enough to claim that the mind can be healed WITHOUT healing the body. When the mind is healed, it FORCES the body to symbolize its new condition. The body cannot stay sick or keep sickness or hold onto any given state, because mind is USING IT as a symbolic form of communication. Whatever the mind wants to show a brother, the body HAS TO show. And so the body CHANGES FORM according to the mind.

This works for sickness just as it works for healing. The body cannot stay sick if the mind decides to be truly healthy. No more than it can stay healthy if the mind decides to be sick. Jesus even goes so far as to say that if your mind is truly healed, it WILL heal the body ALWAYS, and this makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the body to become sick. The mind is OVERRIDING any alleged external (projected) causes of sickness, and is TOTALLY OWNING control and power over it. Therefore, it does not CHOOSE to be sick, and so does not MAKE the body show up as sick. This makes sickness of the body IMPOSSIBLE.

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for, it will become to you. Use it for sin or for attack, which is the same as sin, and you will see it as sinful. Because it is sinful it is weak, and being weak it suffers and it dies. Use it to bring the Word of God to those who have It not, and the body becomes holy. Because it is holy it cannot be sick, nor can it die."

"The body's health is fully guaranteed because it is not limited by time, by weather or fatigue, by food and drink, or any laws you made it serve before. You need do nothing now to make it well, for sickness has become impossible." ... ""Yet this protection needs to be preserved by careful watching."

It can't be stressed enough how extreme and unconditional this is. If you so choose, your mind will use the body for attack, which WILL ALWAYS attack the body and FORCE it to depict proof of sin. And this proof of sin will be held up to others to SHOW them what they did to you (allegedly). EVEN to the extent that you are willing to KILL the body entirely, IF it means that you can be exonerated from sin. And he is in fact saying that we do this.

We think it is even a SMALL PRICE to pay, if it means we can be seen as the innocent one, such that a dead body IS VERY STRONG PROOF that someone OTHER than the person CAUSED The death. You'll notice that whenever there is a physical death, it always looks as though the person DID NOTHING to cause it. This is because their mind has DISOWNED the cause by projecting it EXTREMELY, depicting themselves as POWERLESS AND HELPLESS, as if having no ability to choose at all.

"Death is an attempt to resolve conflict by not willing at all."

"All forms of sickness, even unto death, are physical expressions of the FEAR OF AWAKENING. They are attempts to reinforce UNCONSCIOUSNESS out of fear of CONSCIOUSNESS. This is a pathetic way of TRYING NOT TO KNOW by rendering the faculties for knowing ineffectual."

By PRETENDING not to be willing at all, to have no choice and no power and no say in the matter, we attack the body and make it show up as DEAD, in trying to ACCUSE THE WORLD OF SIN, so that WE will seem to be the helpless victim. A person who was "killed" NOT by their own hand. Someone who "died of" ANYTHING other than themselves. Died from cancer, died from starvation, died from a car crash, died from war, whatever. Anything so long as it appears to be NOT THE MIND. So that the person can HIDE the fact that THEY DID IT TO THEMSELVES. This is why death is an extreme LIE.

"The power of witness is beyond belief, because it brings conviction in its wake. The witness is believed BECAUSE he points beyond himself, to what he REPRESENTS. (the body is a symbol) A sick and suffering you (physically) but ***represents your brother's guilt***; the witness which you send (communicate physically), lest he forget the injuries (physical) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (of your body) YOU accept, if ***only it can serve to punish him***. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion do they seek to kill. ******Death seems an easy price*****, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die." For sickness is the witness to his guilt, and death would prove his errors MUST be sins."

So in death, you are using your body to try to PROVE that your BROTHER IS A SINNER. This is the EGO's use of the body. This is what happens when you use the body for attack. It destroys the body. It makes the body show up as sick and suffering and a victim, so that someone or something is framed for sin. That is the ONLY reason this happens. And the mind makes this decision alone.

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

The alternative is that if you move towards RESURRECTION, towards life and wholeness and happiness and holiness, this TOO has an "influence on" the body. It has a healing influence, we could say. It causes the mind to DEPICT itself as a symbol of immortality. A symbol of having NOT been attacked, a symbol of being free from suffering, a symbol of eternal life. A symbol of invulnerability and harmlessness and the IMPOSSIBILITY of being sick or hurt.

As such "the mind, being sane, heals the body" and "now is the body healed by miracles." Again the body has NO SAY in this. It is just a symbol. It gets its FORM from the mind's relationship to others. It SYMBOLIZES the communication. As the mind heals the body CANNOT REMAIN SICK. It cannot maintain sickness or keep it, nor is there ANY OTHER CAUSE of physical sickness. Mind has TOTAL control over it.

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind MUST BE STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

The mind is STRONGER than the body and the body can only go along with the mind's wishes. If the mind heals, the mind overrides the body image and projects an image of a HEALTHY body. A body which is free from any symbols or signs of attack, harm, damage, breakage, scars, wounds, or anything else which might symbolize the OPPOSITE of eternal life.

Furthermore, when your mind forces your body to heal, because you WANT to SHOW your brothers that you LOVE him, and think HARMLESSLY of him, HE now looks upon your physical body as a MESSAGE. Its physical form PROVES what you THINK of yourself and him. In its healed form, it says "I have never been hurt and you have never hurt me." It PROVES he is innocent. It even proves this BEYOND anything HE tries to do to you.

Even if he thinks he HAS attacked you, YOUR miracle of healing proves to him that HE HAS NOT. And therefor he can no longer BELIEVE that he is a sinner, because you've USED the body to show him, symbolically, that anything he THOUGHT he did had NO effects. This triggers a HEALING IN HIS MIND, because your BODY no longer supports or TEMPTS him to believe that he is sinful. Therefore your body now is used as a HEALING DEVICE and IS SYMBOL OF THE INNOCENCE OF YOUR BROTHER.

"What you would **prove to him** you will believe. The power of witness COMES from your belief. And everything you say or do or think but ***testifies to what you teach to him***. ***Your body can be means to teach that it has never suffered pain because of him.*** And ********in its healing****** can it *******offer him mute testimony to his innocence*******. It is THIS testimony that can speak ****with power greater than a thousand tongues****. For here is *******his forgiveness PROVED to him*******. A miracle can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (physically) show your mind is (also) healed, and has forgiven what he did NOT do. And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, ****and healed along with you****."

"Health (physically) is the witness unto health. As long as it is unattested, it remains without conviction. ****Only when DEMONSTRATED has it BEEN proved, and MUST compel belief*****. No-one is healed through double messages."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ****every scar is healed****, and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ****he will look on his forgiveness there****, and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you. 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****. That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified, and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear. Attest (physically) his innocence and NOT his guilt. YOUR healing (physically and mentally) is his comfort ***and HIS health***. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

So literally, the healing of your mind, without exception forces the healing of your body, which in turn HEALS YOUR BROTHER. Your healing becomes HIS healing. "When I am healed I am not healed alone." And UNLESS this occurs, forgiveness IS NOT complete. Again...

"*****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?"

If your brother is sinless, psychologically, he CANNOT have done anything to you PHYSICALLY, and therefore the physical is now REPURPOSED as a way to PROVE to him, psychologically, that he HAS NOT sinned. His sins had NO EFFECT on you OR your body. Your miracles REMOVED the evidence. And he can no longer SEE proof that he sinned. Which PHYSICALLY EXONERATES HIM. And this testifies that HE CANNOT have sinned, and now his MIND is healed because your physical body has played a part in weakening HIS belief in his own sinfulness. Something it could NOT do if it remains sick. In fact if it remains sick, your mind IS still accusing him of sin, and he knows it.

Some ACIM students think that there is no validity or importance whatsoever to changing the physical body, healing it, or for any reason. But Jesus is saying something totally opposite. He is literally saying you MUST heal it, otherwise it DOES continue to PROVE that your mind IS NOT healed. And any time physical sickness of any kind is showing up, something in YOUR mind is not healed. Physical sicknesses of different kinds in fact symbolize different mental attitudes.

"Sickness takes many forms, and so does unforgiveness. The forms of one but reproduce the forms of the other, for they are the same illusion." Different unforgivenesses (grievances, special relationships etc) produce different PHYSICAL FORMS of sickness.

"So closely is one translated into the other, that a careful study of the form a sickness takes will point quite clearly to the form of unforgiveness that it represents."

So here he is even saying you can DIAGNOSE what UNFORGIVENESS is present in the mind, based on the physical FORM of the sickness in the body. Because the body is always symbolic and the forms of sickness are symbolic. This is why you get backaches when you are carrying to much mental load, and your eyes develop problems when you don't want to see something, and someone "gives you a headache" when you don't like them, and your blood pressure "boils" when you get angry.

Physical sickness IS HOW you project your sin! If your mind cannot CONCEIVE of attack, it overpowers the body and forces it to show up AS HEALED. A mind that is TRULY devoid of attack produces a LOVELY BODY, devoid of any signs or symbols of attack of any kind. Not only does the body heal by miracles, it now becomes a SYMBOL OF ETERNAL LIFE. And symbolizing immortality, it is DEVOID OF HARM and CANNOT be sick, NOR can it die! It is now impossible for the body to die and decay, it can ONLY be left by TRUTH, by DISAPPEARING IT! "Being sane, it heals the body because IT has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness, because it cannot conceive of attacking anything or anyone."

"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."

"Now in the hands made gentle by His touch, the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still, for what you REALLY are can not be seen nor pictured. But THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all. IT witnesses to the eternal truth that you can not BE hurt, and points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS."

God has given you free will. Anything you choose is yours to choose. No-one else has any say in what your choices are. No-one has any right to decide for you what your choices are, to make commentary about your choices, to judge your choices, or to accuse you of making the wrong choice. It is none of their business.

Each person is solely responsible for their own personal freedom, which means that anything that a person experiences is entirely chosen, and not induced by anyone or anything else. God is the only cause of anyone. "I am forever an effect of God." One brother does not cause or create another brother. All brothers are equals as siblings precisely because they are not the cause of each other. No one else has EVER been the cause of anything you have experienced. If you believe otherwise you are confused.

You do not have the power to cause anyone else. No one else has the power to cause you. Being entirely responsible for your own freedom can only arise when you grant everyone else total responsibility for their own freedom. If you attempt to control, manipulate, judge, coerce, persuade, condemn, or otherwise alter other people's freedoms, you are denying your own and imprisoning yourself. It will not help you.

When you are entirely responsible for your own perfect freedom, which is a gift from God, you will recognize that absolutely nothing happens against your will. Not suffering, not sickness, not even death. "The power of decision is my own." Your sole responsibility is acceptance of atonement for yourself, so that you can offer it to others. But it is not for you to shove it down their throats, nor can you force anyone to be at peace, or to be loving, or to choose what you think they should.

When a person begins to lose sight of their own freedom, they lose touch with responsibility for the power of choice. And they begin to believe that causation and power are outside of them. They disempower themselves by blaming others. And then they automatically begin to try to make sense of why things are happening seemingly outside of their choosing, and it starts to make sense that someone else is choosing for you. And now you have assigned responsibility for your freedom to someone else.

When you think that someone else is responsible for your freedom, you are being irresponsible, and you will now depend on them making decisions that you approve of. You will encourage them to choose for you, provided it's the right choice that you indirectly want. If they do not choose what you want, for you, you will attack them for failing to give you what you want.

This then becomes the ego's mandate of "forgiveness to destroy", in which responsibility for freedom and for change is assigned to someone other than yourself, instead of you taking the responsibility to make your own decisions. You also cannot claim total responsibility for your own decision-making, while simultaneously believing that other persons are responsible for your decisions. Which means you have to allow other people to be entirely responsible for whatever decisions they make.

When you enter into coercion, control, blame, judgement, accusation, condemnation, taking sides, demanding that people comply with your beliefs, trying to force people to act a certain way, requiring people to make certain choices that you think are the right choices (for any reason), or have expectations or "needs" relating to what they do to or for you, you are entering into insanity, a special relationship, and false perception.

"God does not coerce".

"Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange."

"Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

You can easily spot when someone is moving into ego. Instead of being responsible ONLY for their own free will choice, they begin to displace responsibility onto other people. Causation is placed outside of them. They then begin trying to manipulate or "guilt-trip" others into acting certain ways, to comply indirectly with their wishes. The seeming "boundary" of freedom between them and others is disrupted, they trespass on the sacred territory of another, and the invasion of war begins.

When people are arguing about whether they should or should not do something, or what is the right thing to do, or who did what to whom, or who is responsible for causing other people to be sick, or who is putting who in danger, or any other dynamic where one person is accused of being responsible for another, the ego is involved. The two people are becoming tangled in a special relationship, anchored at the body level of insane illusions and fictional causes.

Interestingly, when someone is doing this, which always involves projection and anger, which is an attempt to make someone guilty, the person is claiming to be acting in the interests of freedom and the good of all, but are simultaneously rejecting their own freedom by trying to control the freedom of others. Or rather, they place their own freedom into the hands of other people and then try to accuse them of mis-handling it, meaning you don't really believe that other people are free to use YOUR freedom as they see fit.

To make a long story short, what other people choose to do is absolutely none of your business. This is why Jesus asks you to "be passerby". You are only free when you recognize that your brother is free. You cannot recognize his freedom if you are trying to control him, trying to get him to side with you, are waging a war and trying to win allies, or when you're accusing him of inappropriate choices (sin).

If you reject the freedom of others you are in fact shutting down your own freedom, but you do this in the name of trying to uphold your freedom, which is insane. You clearly cannot increase your freedom, or secure your rights, by taking freedom and rights away from other people. If other people are making poor decisions, then the consequences of those decisions are their responsibility only. You cannot be affected by them, unless you yourself personally make a poor choice as well. You cannot be cursed unless you curse yourself first, and other people's poor decisions DO NOT affect you against your will.

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

When you move into an area of believing that other people greatly affect you, can destroy your life, can interfere with your health, can threaten your family, or can in any way do anything to you by their free choosing, you yourself have a mental health problem. You are denying your own freedom to such an extent that you think other people are the owners of your freedom. You have given them the power to do this to and for you, meaning also that you do not love yourself. And yet you accuse them of acting against your love.

You in fact want other people to be responsible for you, and in fact you want them to do things to you against your will, so that you can maintain that you are not free. You therefore use your enemies as devices to keep yourself imprisoned, and the more you hate them the more you succeed in imprisoning yourself. The only way to be free yourself is to grant freedom to everyone. Blaming people for imprisoning you or violating your rights is a great way to violate your own rights.

You might think that if you were to do this there would be anarchy, you would be vulnerable, idiots would run the country, fools would steal your possessions, stupid nutjobs would try to hurt your family, and the broken would try to infect you with their diseases. But these are actually part of your own attempt to reject health, reject life, reject protection, reject invulnerability, and reject safety. None of this can happen without your psychological consent.

You can't have it both ways. You can't be in the business of disempowering yourself and disowning your supernatural power of immortality, while at the same time claiming that other people are responsible for your wellbeing and are able to hurt you. You do in fact have a mind-over-matter power innate to all children of God, capable of rendering you immune and invulnerable to all the things of the world. You have an automatic God-given miraculous ability to heal anything and overcome anything. And nothing can prevail against you.

"Today it is the ego which stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

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

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

When you are in the business of making other people's business your business, you are not in business. You are out of business, which is why you are trying to get the business of others by being involved in their business. You busy yourself with their business because you have no business doing so. And by doing so, you have no business at all.

The people who are having an utter shit fit about whether or not to vaccinate need to pay attention to sanity and reason. You are immortal and you cannot die. No-one and nothing can happen against your will. So who are you accusing of being responsible for things happening to you? It is in fact you who is disempowering yourself and setting yourself up as a victim, and you want to have victimizers in your life who you believe oppose you, to pretend that you don't want their opposition, so that you can keep being a victim about it.

All forms of sickness are illusions produced by an insane mind, acted out upon a body. This is something that you do to yourself. "The mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body." Your mind has the power to decide whether or not to live or die, to be sick or well, to be happy or unhappy. No one has the right or the responsibility to take this power or freedom away from you. And no-one can. Only you can give it away, disown it, or try to lose it, by your own free will. That's your choice.

If you fear that you can be infected by another's contagion, or by some random environmental evil, then your mind is already sick and needs help. If you are not willing to receive the help, then you are in a bind. It means you do not want to be healthy and you want to die. And yet in this condition you will claim that you want to be healthy and not be sick. But you cannot be even believe that you can be sick while simultaneously bringing about the ONLY decision capable of making you suffer. Nor can you be blaming the cause of your suffering on a speck of particles, or a car crash, or any kind of external causation.

"No-one can die, unless he chooses death. What seems to be the FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."

The real deeper issue behind all this covid panick, is the fear of death and "how to be safe". However...

"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."

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

When we are body identified, we place ourselves on the battlefield and accuse ourselves of weakness. Then we set ourselves up for being subject to a warzone and threaten ourselves with causes on the same level. We then try to escape this threat with magical means and silly maneuvers which are supposed to somehow make you invulnerable and safe, as if this solves the problem. The problem is not whether or not you are susceptible to a disease, the problem is that you are choosing to believe in disease in the first place, therefore threatening yourself with inducing it.

It then does not matter whatsoever whether you choose to get a vaccine or not. Getting one is insane. Not getting one is insane. Both are insane because they are based on a false premise. If the premise is "sickness is real and I am vulnerable to death against my will", then you are already insane. And making the decision to be vaccined OR not vaccinnated are both equally insane outcomes based on a lie.

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." You cannot go either way and claim to be making a sane decision.

You cannot escape from or have external salvation from sickness, while looking for external solutions to an externalized problem. If the world does not exist, who is doing this to you? Who is deciding that you are weak and vulnerable and attackable and destroyable? This is nothing other than your resposnibility and your belief. "I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts." ...

"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 which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you are not able to accept total responsibility, which is atonement, then you are in a predicament. You say you want salvation but you don't. You say you want life but you keep choosing death. You say you want health but you believe in sickness and then panick in fear trying to scramble to find ways to defend agaisnt it, knowing it cannot work. What are you going to do? If you are not willing to entertain a miracle, then you are left with no other option. If you are not willing to forgive and rise above the battlefield, you have no other option.

The only remedy you are then left with is a solution which can at best seem to partially work, and at worst destroy you. This is true of any vaccine as much as it is true of ANY magical solution. No magical solution will ever induce wholeness, nor will it make you invulnerable, nor cause you to be what you are. Magic will not correct your mind, it will likely have no effect on your insane beliefs, and it will not ultimately save you from death. It is your thoughts alone that decide whether or not you are choosing to die, and this overrides all magic, and the world.

So you are then in a predicament because you cannot possibly choose a remedy that truly works, all the remedies are broken, the only action you can take is incomplete, and nothing external can truly cause you to be peaceful. "salvation comes from nothing outside of you."

"THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you."

A vaccine is, at best, an illusion of a solution. It might seem to work for some people and not for others. It may seem to work to a degree, but not totally. It absolutely MUST attack the body in some way as all magic does. It will not stop any virus from entering your body and beginning to take hold.

It will not prevent your body from being vulnerable. It will not ward off death nor will it cause you to feel safe. It might, potentially, seem to manipulate the body so that it might, perhaps, if your mind consents, avoid contagion or transmission of a disease some of the time. But it will not bring peace to your soul. God doesn't live in a syringe. Nor does God need booster shots.

If all you can choose is a senseless insane choice, a partial choice, a choice which you know cannot truly work, which can at best produce an illusion of health, and which may in fact hurt you, what are you to do? This is where you need to ideally be willing to turn to someone who knows better than you. Ask the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus. Ask your angels. Get some guidance from a higher perspective. If you are not willing or ready to go there yourself, get their input. Let them decide for you.

And this again is where we must acknowledge the freedom of your will. No divine being is ever going to mandate a vaccination, nor are they necessarily going to always advise against it in a given situation. What is right for YOU, is dependent upon every speck of your mental state and what is appropriate, not only for you, but in the atonement plan and in the script for your life.

There may be a reason for you to elect temporary sickness. There may be a reason for you to meet certain people. There may be a good reason for YOU in particular NOT to choose a vaccine. There may be a cascade of outcomes that are only possible if you do, or do not, get medicated. There may be a good reason why you SHOULD, just as there may be a good reason you shouldn't. And it has absolutely NOTHING to do with anyone else, solely because the curriculum is individualized.

The Holy Spirit knows what is best for you given YOUR situation, where you are at and what you are ready for. He knows where your trust is. He knows what you are capable of and will accept. Turn to his advice rather than that of fear or the ego. And especially beware of the egos of other well-meaning people especially the ones who are religious about the "reasons why" you should or should not make a certain choice. EVERY reason on this level is fiction.

If you cannot or will not turn to the advice of a wiser counsel, and if you refuse health, and if you actively are choosing sickness, and if you are living therefore in fear of contagion, then your options are limited. Love does not enter where it is not welcome. You can be prayed for. You can be loved. But you may reject all support. You may have a death wish. You may want to die. It might be "your time", based on your plan. Who knows. I do not know and no-one else likely knows either. Matters are far deeper than some "statics" about viruses or medicines.

Long story short, if you made it this far. .... you are always absolutely free to make any choice you want to make, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. If anyone is trying to control your decision for ANY reason at all, they are denying their own freedom and are trying to make you responsible for them. They are like children looking for a parent to depend on, to decide everything for them.

This is because they have become undependeable and irresponsible. It's up to YOU to decide how to discern where they are at, and to be responsible yourself for your own choice. And whatever you choose, God loves you.

At the end of the day all you can do is make your own choice in freedom, and free from guilt, and do so decisively and with conviction. But not a conviction that turns into tyranny, or the attempt to recruit others to your cause. Let people be where they are at. Let them make their own decisions. Let them be mistaken and recognize that they are.

Not because they don't do what you want them to do, but because they are free of you. You have no business trying to coerce people to agree with YOUR fearful belief in laws that are not of God.

What I decide to do is none of your business, or anyone's. What guidance I receive regarding my own choices, is none of your business either. What I decide to do or not do has nothing to do with you either. And if you think that my choice affects you, you are deliberately disempowering yourself, because nothing happens to you against your will. This is not supposed to be a selfish free-for-all, or a war, where people are opposing each other and digging in their heels thinking they know what's true. Nothing in this world is true, it's just a dream.

Go within, and go above. That's the only place where there is any sanity.

This is a MAJOR axis in the course, transitioning from false perception to true perception. Learning to overlook the world of bodies and see beyond it to the light of the real world, so that you are ready to move on to Heaven. It is VERY CLEAR that the physical world of bodies is ONLY SEEN through the body's eyes, and learning to OVERLOOK it and not believe any of it is forgiveness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Corrective learning always begins with awakening the spiritual eye, and turning away from belief in physical sight. The reason this entails fear is because man is afraid of what his spiritual eye will see, which was why he closed it in the first place. We said before that the spiritual eye cannot see error, and is capable only of looking beyond it to the defense of Atonement. There is no doubt that the spiritual eye does produce extreme discomfort by what it sees. The thing that man forgets is that the discomfort is not the final outcome of its perception. When the spiritual eye is permitted to look upon the defilement of the altar, it also looks immediately toward Atonement. Nothing which the spiritual eye perceives can induce fear. Everything that results from accurate spiritual awareness merely is channelized toward correction. Discomfort is aroused only to bring the need to correct forcibly into awareness.

What the physical eye sees is not corrective, nor can it be corrected by any device which can be physically seen. As long as a man believes in what his physical sight tells him, all his corrective behavior will be misdirected. The reason why the real vision is obscured is because man cannot endure to see his own defiled altar. But since the altar has BEEN defiled, this fact becomes doubly dangerous unless it IS perceived. This perception is totally not-threatening because of the Atonement. The fear of healing arises in the end from an unwillingness to accept the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary. The fear arises because of the necessary willingness to look at what man has done to himself."

"Pain thresholds can be high, but they are not limitless. Eventually, everybody begins to recognize, however dimly, that there MUST be a better way. As this recognition is more firmly established, it becomes a perceptual turning-point. This ultimately reawakens the spiritual eye, simultaneously weakening the investment in physical sight. The alternating investment in the two types or levels of perception is usually experienced as conflict for a long time, and can become very acute."

"But the outcome is as certain as God. The spiritual eye literally CANNOT SEE error, and merely looks for Atonement. All the solutions which the physical eyes seek, dissolve in its sight. The spiritual eye, which looks within, recognizes immediately that the altar has been defiled, and needs to be repaired and protected."

"The REAL beauty of the Temple cannot be seen with the physical eye. The spiritual eye, on the other hand, cannot see the building at all, but it perceives the altar within with perfect clarity. This is because the spiritual eye has perfect vision."

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

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

"The concept of the self stands like a shield, a silent barricade before the truth, and hides it from your sight. All things you see are images because you look on them as through a barrier which dims your sight and warps your vision, so that you behold nothing with clarity. The light is kept from everything you see. At most, you glimpse a shadow of what lies beyond. At least you merely look on darkness, and perceive the terrified imaginings that come from guilty thoughts and concepts born of fear. And what you see is hell, for fear IS hell. All that is given you is for release; the sight, the vision and the inner Guide all lead you out of hell with those you love beside you, and the universe with them."

"And this he learns when first he looks upon ONE brother as he looks upon himself, and sees the mirror of himself in him. Thus is the concept of himself laid by, for nothing stands between his sight and what he looks upon, to judge what he beholds. And in this single vision does he see the Face of Christ, and understands he looks on everyone as he beholds this One. For there is light where darkness was before, and now the veil is lifted from his sight.

The veil across the Face of Christ, the fear of God and of salvation, and the love of guilt and death, - they all are different names for just one error; that there is a space between you and your brother, kept apart by an illusion of yourself which holds him off from you, and you away from him. The sword of judgment is the weapon which you give to the illusion of yourself, that it may fight to keep the space that holds your brother off unoccupied by love. Yet while you hold this sword, you must perceive the body as yourself, for you are bound to separation from the sight of him who holds the mirror to another view of what he is, and thus what YOU must be."

"Your brother's body is as little use to you as it is to him. When it is used only as the Holy Spirit teaches, it has no function. For minds need not the body to communicate. The sight that sees the body, has no use which serves the purpose of a holy relationship. And while you look upon each other thus, the means and end have not been brought in line."

"If you send forth ONLY the messengers the Holy Spirit gave you, WANTING no messages but theirs, you will see fear no more. The world will be transformed before your sight, cleansed of all guilt, and softly brushed with beauty. The world contains no fear that you laid not upon it. And none you cannot ask love's messengers to REMOVE from it, and see it still. The Holy Spirit has given you HIS messengers, to send each other, and return to each with what love sees. They have been given to REPLACE the hungry dogs of fear you sent instead. And they go forth to signify the END of fear."

"My holy vision sees all things as pure" - "And while we still remain outside the gate of Heaven, let us look on all we see through holy vision and the eyes of Christ. Let all appearances seem pure to us, that we may pass them by in innocence, and walk together to our Father's house as brothers and the holy Sons of God."

"Be willing, then, to see your brother sinless, that Christ may rise before your vision and give you joy. And place no value on your brother's body, which held him to illusions of what he is."

"Vision is freely given to those who ask to see. Your brother's sinlessness is given you in shining light, to look on with the Holy Spirit's vision, and to rejoice in, along with Him."

"There is no problem, no event or situation, no perplexity, that vision will not solve. All is redeemed, when looked upon with vision. For this is not YOUR sight, and brings with it the laws beloved of Him Whose sight it IS. Everything looked upon with vision falls gently into place, according to the laws brought to it by His calm and certain sight. The end, for everything He looks upon, is always sure. For it will meet His purpose, seen in unadjusted form, and suited perfectly to meet it. Destructiveness becomes benign, and sin is turned to blessing under His gentle gaze.

What can the body's eyes perceive, with power to CORRECT? Its eyes ADJUST to sin, unable to overlook it in any form, and seeing it everywhere, in everything. Look through its eyes, and everything will stand condemned before you. All that could save you, you will never see. Your holy relationship, the source of your salvation, will be deprived of meaning, and its most holy purpose bereft of means for its accomplishment. Judgment is but a toy, a whim, the senseless means to play the idle game of death in your imagination. But vision sets all things right, bringing them gently within the kindly sway of Heaven's laws."

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

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

"Reason would tell you that the world you see through eyes that are not yours, MUST make no sense to you. To whom would vision such as this send back its messages? Surely not you, whose sight is wholly independent of the eyes which look upon the world. If this is not your vision, what can it show to you? The brain can not interpret what YOUR vision sees. This you would understand. The brain interprets to the body, of which it is a part. But what it says, YOU cannot understand.

Yet you have listened to it. And long and hard you tried to understand its messages. You did not realize it is impossible to understand what fails entirely to reach you. You have received no messages at all you understood. For you have listened to what can never communicate at all. Think, then, what happened. Denying what you are, and firm in faith that you are something else, this something else, which you have made to be yourself, BECAME your sight. Yet it must be the SOMETHING ELSE which sees, and, as NOT you, explains its sight to you.

YOUR vision would, of course, render this quite unnecessary. But, if your eyes are closed, and you have called upon this thing to lead you, asking it to explain to you the world it sees, you have no reason not to listen, nor to suspect that what it tells you is not true. Reason would tell you that it can't be true, BECAUSE you do not understand it. God has no secrets. He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey's end, why He did this to you. What could be secret from His Will? Yet you believe that YOU have secrets. What could your secrets be except ANOTHER will, that is your own, APART from His? "

"Your sight was given you, along with everything that you can understand. You will perceive no difficulty in understanding what this vision tells you. For everyone sees only what he thinks he IS. And what your sight will show you, you will understand BECAUSE it is the truth. Only your vision can convey to you what YOU can see. It reaches you directly, without a need to be interpreted to you. What needs interpretation MUST be alien. Nor will it ever be made understandable, by an interpreter you cannot understand. Of all the messages you have received and failed to understand, this course alone is OPEN to your understanding, and CAN be understood."

"Reason will tell you that they must have seen each other through a vision not of the body, and communicated in a language the body does not speak"

"My condemnation keeps my vision dark, and through my sightless eyes I cannot see the vision of my glory."

"The love of God, for a little while, must still be expressed through one body to another. That is because the real vision is still so dim."

"Miracles are seen in light" "It is important to remember that miracles and vision necessarily go together. This needs repeating and frequent repeating. It is a central idea in your new thought system and the perception which it produces. The miracle is always there. Its presence is not caused by your vision; its absence is not the result of your failure to see. It is only your awareness of miracles that is affected. You will see it in the light; you will not see it in the dark."

"Only be quiet. You will need no rule but this to let your practicing today lift you above the thinking of the world, and free your vision from the body's eyes."

"To the extent to which you value guilt, to that extent will you perceive a world in which attack is justified. To the extent to which you recognize that guilt is meaningless, to that extent you will perceive attack cannot BE justified. This is in strict accord with vision's FUNDAMENTAL law: You see what you believe is there, and you believe it there because you WANT it there. Perception HAS no other law than this."

"But on His Vision sin can NOT encroach, for sin HAS BEEN corrected by His sight."

"What is the resurrection?" "Here the curriculum ends. From here on, no directions are needed. Vision is wholly corrected and all mistakes undone."

"Now there are no distinctions. Differences have disappeared and Love looks on Itself. What further sight is needed? What remains that vision could accomplish? We have seen the face of Christ, His sinlessness, His Love behind all forms, beyond all purposes."

"These things await us all, but we are not prepared as yet to welcome them with joy. As long as any mind remains possessed of evil dreams, the thought of hell is real. God's teachers have the goal of wakening the minds of those asleep, and seeing there the vision of Christ's face to take the place of what they dream. The thought of murder is replaced with blessing."

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

"These are among the many magical beliefs that come from the conviction you are a body, and the body's eyes can see. You also believe the body's brain can think. If you but understood the nature of thought, you could but laugh at this insane idea." " Yet this is no more foolish than to believe the body's eyes can see; the brain can know."

"It is your weakness that sees through the body's eyes, peering about in darkness to behold the likeness of itself; the small, the weak, the sickly and the dying, those in need, the helpless and afraid, the sad, the poor, the starving and the joyless. These are seen through eyes which cannot see and cannot bless. Strength overlooks these things by seeing past appearances. It keeps its steady gaze upon the light that lies beyond them. It unites with light, of which it is a part. It sees itself. It brings the light in which your Self appears. In darkness you perceive a self that is not there."

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

"You can SEE reason. This is not a play on words, for here is the beginning of a vision that has meaning. Vision is sense, quite literally. If it is not the body's sight, it MUST be understood. For it is PLAIN, and what is obvious is not ambiguous. It CAN be understood. And here do reason and the ego separate, to go their different ways."

"Yet how can sight which stops at nothingness, as if it were a solid wall, see truly? It is HELD BACK by form, having been made to guarantee that nothing else but form will be perceived. These eyes, made NOT to see, will NEVER see. For the idea they represent left not its maker, and it is their maker that sees through them. What was its maker's GOAL, but not to see? For this the body's eyes are perfect means. But not for seeing. See how the body's eyes rest on externals, and cannot go beyond. Watch how they stop at nothingness, unable to go beyond the form to meaning."

"Let not the FORM of his mistakes keep you from him whose holiness is yours. Let not the vision of his holiness, the sight of which would show you your forgiveness, be kept from you by what the body's eyes can see. Let your awareness of your brother not be blocked by your perception of his sins, and of his body. What is there in him that you would attack, except what you associate with his body, which YOU believe can sin? Beyond his errors is his holiness, and YOUR salvation. You gave him not his holiness, but tried to see your sins in him, to save yourself. And yet his holiness IS your forgiveness. Can YOU be saved by making sinful the one whose holiness is your salvation?"

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

"Your world is seen through eyes of fear, and brings the witnesses of terror to your mind. The real world cannot be perceived except through eyes forgiveness"

"I would bless the world by looking on it through the eyes of Christ."

"You keep an ancient memory before your eyes. And he who lives in memories alone is unaware of where he IS."

"The real world is attained simply by the COMPLETE forgiveness of the old; the world you see WITHOUT forgiveness. The Great Transformer of perception will undertake WITH you the careful searching of the mind that MADE this world, and uncover TO YOU the SEEMING reasons for your making it. In the light of the REAL reason that He brings, as you follow Him, He will SHOW you that there is NO reason here at all. Each spot HIS reason touches, grows alive with beauty. And what SEEMED ugly, in the darkness of your LACK of reason, is suddenly released to loveliness. Not even what the Son of God made in insanity, could be without a hidden spark of beauty, that gentleness could release.

All this beauty will rise to bless your sight, as you look upon the world with forgiving eyes. For forgiveness literally TRANSFORMS vision, and lets you see the real world, reaching quietly and gently across chaos, and removing ALL illusions that had twisted your perception, and fixed it on the past. The smallest leaf becomes a thing of wonder, and a blade of grass a sign of God's perfection. From the forgiven world, the Son of God is lifted easily to his home. And there he knows that he has ALWAYS rested there, in peace."

"Forgiveness is the home of miracles. The eyes of Christ deliver them to all they look upon in mercy and in love. Perception stands corrected in His sight, and what was meant to curse has come to bless. Each lily of forgiveness offers all the world the silent miracle of love. And each is laid before the Word of God upon the universal altar to Creator and creation, in the Light of perfect purity and endless joy."

"Seen through understanding eyes the holiness of the world is all I see, for I can picture only the thoughts I hold about myself."

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. They are His substitutes for all the terrifying sights and screaming sounds the ego's purpose brought to your horrified awareness. They step away from sin, reminding you that it is not reality that frightens you, and that the errors which you made CAN be corrected.

When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision? And after vision, who is there who could refuse what MUST come after? Think but an instant just on this. You can behold the holiness God gave His Son. And never need you think that there is something else for you to see."

"This is your purpose now, and the vision that makes it yours is ready to be given. You have the vision that enables you to see the body not. And as you look upon each other, you will see an altar to your Father, holy as Heaven, glowing with radiant purity, and sparkling with the shining lilies you laid upon it."

And this will be your concept of YOURSELF, when you have reached the world beyond the sight your eyes alone can offer you to see. For you will not interpret what you see without the Aid that God has given you. And in His sight there IS another world. You live in that world just as much as this, for both are concepts of yourself, which can be interchanged, but never jointly held. The contrast is far greater than you think, for you will love this concept of yourself, because it was not made for you alone. Born as a gift for someone not perceived to be yourself, it has been given YOU. For your forgiveness, offered unto him, has been accepted now for BOTH of you."

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

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

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

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

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

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