Here's a fact. NOTHING ABOUT YOUR BODY HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOU. The body is not your self. Its form, shape, color, size, activities, say NOTHING about you. Your face isn't even your face. Its gender and sexual persuasion is not yours. You have been a hundred bodies in a hundred lifetimes. Not even ONE of them defines you or is TRUE of you. If you believe otherwise, you are confused about who you are, and have a body-identification issue. To be spirit-identified you must stop confusing yourself with the body. To awaken, you MUST recognize yourself as ONLY SPIRIT. And ALL spirit is identical.

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

You are not a man or a woman.

You are not straight or gay or bi or trans or anything else.

You are not beautiful or ugly based on the body's looks.

You are not fat or thin or chunky or rotund or lanky.

You are not oversized or overweight or underweight.

You do not have a face.

You do not have arms and legs.

You do not have genitalia of any description.

Your musculature says nothing about your strength.

Your wimpyness says nothing about your strength.

The size of your private parts says nothing about you.

The way your brain functions is unrelated to what you are.

Your amount of seeming intellectual ability is meaningless.

You are not tall or short or anything in between.

You are not hairy or bald or naked or dressed.

Your clothes do not say anything about you.

The trinkets and ornaments you wear do not define you.

Your tattoos and birthmarks are not your identity.

Your amount of sexual libido or prowess means nothing.

Your taste for certain foods is irrelevant to your soul.

You do not have any of the needs that the body has.

You have not been born or grown or aged or suffered.

You have not changed in any way due to body changes.

You never gained or lacked anything.

Your body's features have nothing to do with you.

The color of your skin says nothing about you.

Your ethnic background does not define you whatsoever.

You have not ever done anything that the body did.

You have never touched another person.

You have never seen another person with the body.

Your body joining with a body is nothing to do with you joining with your brother.

Your hair size, shape, length, color, style, is not you.

You are not that which you see in the mirror.

Your defects, disabilities, missing or damaged parts, have absolutely no bearing on your perfection.

Your differences and uniqueness has nothing to do with your perfect equality with all God's children.

The identity that is in you is the same as in everyone.

How long you've been in a body means nothing.

What generation you seem a part of it irrelevant to you.

The pride of being part of a certain family is artificial.

Your support of certain body-groups is mistaken.

Your preference for certain body types is part of your own body identification.

Your hatred of certain body types if part of your own body identification.

All the body's senses tell you nothing.

Every sensation is illusory.

You have never been born and you will never die.

Complements about your body have nothing to do with you.

Hatred towards your body has nothing to do with you.

When your body is attacked you are not attacked.

You don't really have a face or arms or legs or a butt.

Your eyes are not your eyes.

You are not from a certain part of the world.

Your cultural background is entirely made up.

Your prejudices are evidence you think people are bodies.

Your racism is a belief in being a body race.

Your homophobia is an over-identification with your body.

How your body smells does not define you.

You have no color, no shape, no size.

You do not move in a certain way.

You do not sit down or stand up or sleep.

You do not eat food or drink.

You cannot be affected or changed or grown.

You have never had any kind of appearance.

It's not great to be a [fill in body type], you are not that.

You are not what you inherited from your parents.

You are not genetic.

You are not stuck with any type of body.

You are not limited by bodies.

You are not worshipped when your body is worshipped.

You have never communicated with a body.

Your body is no more valid than anyone else's.

Your body is no better or worse than anyone else's.

Your body is not more important than anyone else's.

No-one has anything you don't have.

You are not good looking or ugly or plain or handsome.

Being naked does not expose your real self to anyone.

The makeup on your body does not change you.

You do not have an image, you are not an image

You are not fashionable or poorly dressed.

NOTHING ABOUT THE BODY IS TRUE OF YOU!

YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU ARE SPIRIT!

Anything that God did not give you is not true of you. "God did not create the body."

When the body is recognized as an illusion of NOTHINGNESS, it will disappear. YOU are all that remains.

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, i cannot experience loss and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self concept to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like itself."

Accepting your true nature as an immortal being is the conclusion of this course. God created you immortal and you will return to your immortality. Nothing can hurt you. You cannot die. Do not try to prove otherwise or you will seem to suffer an illusion of suffering which does nothing real.

"What is immortal cannot BE attacked; what is but temporal HAS no effect."

"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."

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it. "

"You are immortal BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now. "

"For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is immortal. It remains forever and forever like its Creator, being one with Him."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God, and holy as Himself. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, immortal yet on earth."

"He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the immortal assurance of their Father's Love."

"But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, immortal as itself."

"In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this? Then practice well the thought the Holy Spirit gives you for today."

"This week we celebrate eternal life, not death. And we honor the perfect purity of the Son of God, and not his sins."

"Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life . For death is not your Father's Will, nor yours"

"His Son HAS BEEN redeemed from his own crucifixion, and you cannot assign to death whom God has given Eternal Life."

"What but your thoughts of misery and death obscure the perfect happiness and the Eternal Life your Father wills for you? "

"And would eternal life have been given me of the Father UNLESS He had also given it to you? When you learn to make ME manifest, YOU will never see death."

"Yet you can ask as easily for love, for happiness, and for eternal life in peace that has no ending."

"While you made plans for death, He led you gently to Eternal life."

What if you decide that you are not going to die?

Immediately this flies in the face of everything the world's population holds as true and inevitable. It flies in the face of an entire weight of collective thoughts and beliefs about what is normal and natural in this universe.

You wouldn't be the first to accomplish this either. St Germain for example was known to be "in a body", maintaining agelessness, for several centuries. Babaji is known to be hanging around without aging. There are others.

Jesus calls for every A Course in Miracles student to accomplish this also. He asks us to swear not to die. He tells us to choose resurrection, to not attack the body, to not make it sick, and to heal it. He asks us to make it a picture of health not a picture of crucifixion.

He asks us not to make the body age, or decay, or be sick, or die, but instead to maintain it in a state of guaranteed perfect health indefinitely, for as long as this is useful. That could mean thousands of years, or just a few.

You probably have assumed all your life that just because everyone else's bodies grow old and die and no-one can seem to cure death, that this is the only option. That death is inevitability and it's your fate. Particularly that death cannot be reversed, yet alone prevented.

You see the seasons come and go, the leaves die off, the flowers wilt, the animals turn to carcasses, and people are put in the ground. And we think this is normal and natural and unavoidable. Something to be "accepted" and adjusted to and made out to be something you can do "in peace".

But Jesus is asking a much higher calling for us. He wants us to use the body as a symbol of eternal life, a breath of immortality, to those who have grown tired of the fetid scent of death.

He wants us to allow the Holy Spirit to heal and resurrect the body through miracles, to present a picture of total health and loveliness to your brothers so as to teach them there is no sin and no attack.

He wants us to demonstrate, in person, physically, that there is no death, and that we have power over death. And that means that we make it possible for this exact body we have right now to not die. To not decay. To not grow old and withered and look like a prune. And to be incapable of corruption.

Are you willing to take up this challenge? If you're going to take this course the whole way then it is going to require of you at some time to actually commit to not dying. You cannot have a shred of belief in death or experience of death in your mind and being if you are to reach the end of the curriculum, which is resurrection - death's total opposite.

So you might as well decide right now. I am not going to die this time. I am going to move towards health, life, happiness, wholeness, healing, miracles, the power of the mind over the body, and I refuse to simply go the way of the worms along the funeral procession of death and decay.

How about you decide today, that you will not intent to die this time, you will not merely unconsciously accept notions that you will die, and you will not allow the body to die. It is your challenge to become miraculous and to heal the body's ailments and cure its diseases and undo death itself. To demonstrate your immortality using the body as a tool to prove your mind is stronger than death.

Few will rise to the challenge. It seems ridiculous. It seems impossible. It flies in the face of everything. Just stop and think for a minute. What if in this lifetime right now, with this body, you simply are not going to go through death? What if you're going to simply keep this body, heal it, resurrect it, protect it through miracles and the Holy Spirit, and maintain it in perfect functioning? For as long as you like?

Once the body is being healed by a sane mind, it cannot become sick, nor can it die. So now it is not possible to leave it through death. "A dream of death cannot be left through death but by truth". Truth means resurrection and life.

The body becomes a shining symbol of immortality and you can longer leave it through sickness or decay or suffering. The old doorway to darkness is closed. And the only way to then leave is to simply lay it aside, without decay, without attack, without sickness, in which the body does not corrupt or destroy or symbolize hell. And then it disappears.

What if you don't have to die physically? And what if you can resurrect all the way to invulnerability and immortality? And what if you can prevent the body from being attackable? And what if you do not have to keep aging? What if you can fly in the face of everything the world believes and choose not to die?

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent."

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that must be one."

These sections from the Course present one of the most CORE parts of Jesus's teaching - that you must USE YOUR BODY to demonstrate the innocence that you believe in. Anyone demonstrating sickness or death believes in attack and is NOT carrying out God's will.

"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?"

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

"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 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."

"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.""

"Behold the Guide your Father gave you, that you might learn you have eternal life. For death is not your Father's Will, nor yours, and whatever is true IS the Will of the Father."

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest with you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently. "

"In this depressing state, the Holy Spirit reminds you gently that you are sad because you are not fulfilling your function as co-creators WITH God, and are therefore depriving YOURSELVES of joy. This is not God's will, but YOURS. If your will is out of accord with God's, YOU ARE WILLING WITHOUT MEANING. But because ONLY God's will is unchangeable, no REAL conflict of will is possible. This is the Holy Spirit's perfectly consistent teaching. Creation, not separation, IS your will BECAUSE it is God's. And nothing that opposes this means anything at all."

"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."

"My brothers, children of our Father, this is a DREAM of death. There is no funeral, no dark altars, no grim commandments, nor twisted rituals of condemnation, to which the BODY leads you. Ask not release of IT. But FREE it from the merciless and unrelenting orders you laid upon it, and forgive it what you ordered it to do. In its exaltation, you COMMANDED it to die, for only death COULD conquer life. And what but insanity could look upon the defeat of God, and think it REAL?"

"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."

There's a radical teaching in the course that the human body should be in a state of perfect health in order to demonstrate a healed mind and symbolize eternal life. This means that if the body is in any way sick or dead it is conveying a message, through example, of attack and accusation. Obviously if a persons mind is healed but their body is not, this would be a conflicted state where the person really lacks conviction in what they claim to believe, because they have not succeeded in healing the body.

If it's true that health and wholeness are real to a person, then the body must portray this physically also, otherwise no-one is going to believe them. As Jesus says, no-one can learn through double messages, so we can't have the mind being healed while the body is sick otherwise we're trying to communicate two different teachings at once. On the one hand our mind says "I believe in healing" while the body is screaming "but here's the proof that I don't".

This isn't a teaching that many see, recognize, or accept.

"Sick bodies are accusers"

"A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Health 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. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

The world is set up such that certain foods seem to cause certain things to happen in the body. And so we all go on this diet obsession trying to find the foods that will 'kill us the least'. Foods which seem to claim some kind of property of 'healing', or 'good for you', or 'purity'. And there are people who are quite celebrated as being very very much informed and aware of the seeming 'truth' of how certain foods do certain things to you, and how there are 'special' foods that you should only eat otherwise you're committing some kind of sin.

Well, that's all well and good. And you can pursue a perfect diet and get to the point where you are only eating lettuce. And you better make sure it's the right kind of lettuce, grown in exactly the right soil in the right conditions and harvested with its roots on and it better have been exposed to real sunlight, or else.

Although this can seem completely sane, and rational, and sensible, at some point you have to realize, this is absolutely nuts.

The more you try to feed yourself only the most perfect, "harmless", "supportive" foods, and the more you focus on this perfection of picking only what the ego says will not hurt you, the weaker you become, the more vulnerable you become, the more you become sensitive to everything, the more you become affected by everything.

If you keep focusing on trying to be "positively affected" by the world, as some kind of idolized goal, where you only allow into yourself the very best the world has to offer, that's persona bullshit. That's the ego pretending that doing so will make you strong or healthy or protect you. It does the exact opposite. It undermines you inner power. It disempowers you and portrays you as so completely fragile and weak and powerless that you NEED the very very more purest foods as input, otherwise you're going to keel over and die.

You don't want this.

What you want is to get your power back so that you are invulnerable, so that you do not have to care about what you eat, so that you do not have to constantly obsess over trying to find this MYTH of a "perfect diet". All foods are deadly. All foods are toxic. And all foods kill, just so you know. All foods, external foods, supply from outside of yourself, WILL create sickness, if you believe in their power to affect you positively or negatively. It doesn't make any difference that you regard certain foods as profoundly positive versus others there are allegedly negative, both perceptions are ego perceptions that weaken and attack your invulnerability.

As an invulnerable, immortal creator, you do not need food at all. You are sustained by the love of God! You should have no regard for the MYTH that certain foods are better than others, which is a completely unmiraculous state of mind. You should pay no attention to the bullshit stories that make certain things out to be better for you than other things. That's ego bullshit. You should be focusing on how you are absolutely invulnerable, how you do not depend on anything outside of you, how you are not negatively affected by food and how food does not have power over you, positive or negative. You should be focusing on undoing this dependency on it and this belief that different hierarchies of the illusion of food do different things to you. Food does not do anything to you! Stop being a victim.

God is the one source of Life, and food is not life-giving. Food will eventually kill you. And just so you know, people who fast and avoid eating as much food live longer. Do you know why? Because all foods are forms of the illusion of separation and have some aspect of attack in them. They are all special, all of them are limited, all of them have side effects, and none of them can make you holy. Even the most 'pure' of foods which other claim are the 'best' for you, will destroy and attack your body eventually. There is no perfection out there. You even have to go to the lengths of becoming a breatharian, feeding off of environmental chi or whatever, in order to try to avoid the toxic effects of this world. And even then you will die.

It's just stuff. It's just materials. It's just external illusions designed to make you dependent on what is separate from you, so that you will stop looking for the source of Life inside yourself. God it your supply, not the world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This world holds nothing that I want".

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

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

These are not laws, but madness. "

"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."

You are one with your brother. What applies to you applies to him, per the Golden Rule. What is true of him is true of you. What you do to him you do to yourself.

Therefore, when you go into separation, you create a separation BETWEEN you and your brothers. You accuse yourself AND YOUR BROTHER of sin, simultaneously.

The result of doing so is that you arrest the extension of the mind, which INDUCES ILLNESS. The body thus becomes sick, as part of your effort to accuse yourself and your brother of being sinful.

This means that YOUR BODY, and its condition, are part of a COMMUNICATION that you are having with your brother. Whatever your body seems to say about you, it ALSO says about him. Sickness is not in isolation, it is a double-edged sword. It may seem only to state that YOU are sick, bit it ALSO states that HE is sick.

You cannot believe in your own sickness WITHOUT believing in your brother being sick. This is why your body becomes a two-sided weapon through which you are attacking yourself AND your brother. This is why sickness takes on forms of contagion, which represent the desire to kill your brother and yourself simultaneously.

Since your body is a "physical message" to him and yourself, which you believe, it is also your attempt to FORCE him to believe the same. Due to the golden rule, whatever you make true of the body, you are claiming is also true of him. Thus your body in is sickened state, actively condemns your brother and attempts to teach him he is not innocent. Thus it imprisons him.

More to the point, when your mind is reunited with your brother in joint union, and the gap of separation if healed away, the body in fact becomes a messenger of healing. It now symbolically communicates to BOTH of you that you AND your brother are innocent. In fact it now becomes a way to TEACH him that HE IS HEALED, and therefore prevent him from believing that he has sinned.

Through a demonstration of a physically HEALED body, there is no longer proof of sin, no longer tangible evidence of accusation, and now your brother is exonerated. This has a HEALING EFFECT on his mind and HE IS HEALED ALONG WITH YOU.

The body sends a MESSAGE to your brother, with a power greater than a thousand tongues, TEACHING HIM of his innocence OR his guilt, depending on what you are teaching yourself. When your mind is healed it WILL NOT teach sin, and will NOT make the body sick, and WILL heal your mind, and your body, and his mind, and his body.

"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."

The body is used to PROVE that you have forgiven your brother! Which is why "a broken body shows (proves) the mind HAS NOT been healed."

"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."

Your body must demonstrate "because you did not sin against me, my body is not attacked, and we must both therefore be innocent." And in order to accomplish this, MIRACLES ARE REQUIRED THAT HEAL THE BODY, so that the body CAN be FIXED AND HEALED, in order to allow it to teach ONLY innocence.

That means even if your brother attacks and damages your body, YOU RESURRECT IT, in order to PROVE TO HIM that you have forgiven him. When there is no sin, there are no effects of sin, and all sickness and death disappear.

Here are FIVE passages from ACIM telling us about a body which is not sick, cannot suffer, cannot die, and symbolizes immortality.

"****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.

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."

-----

"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. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. ****He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.****"

-----

"****Now is the body healed**** because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

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

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. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

-----

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. It is the dream ****in which the body functions perfectly****, having no function except communication."

"You are God’s Son. In IMMORTALITY you live forever."

"The Son of Life cannot be killed. He is IMMORTAL as his Father. What he is cannot be changed."

"Miracles fall like drops of healing rain from Heaven on a dry and dusty world, where starved and thirsty creatures came to die. Now they have water. Now the world is green. And everywhere the signs of life spring up, to show that what is born can never die, for what has life has IMMORTALITY."

"You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of IMMORTALITY."

"Beyond the bodies that you interposed between you, and shining in the golden light that reaches it from the bright endless circle that extends forever, is your holy relationship, beloved of God, and holy as Himself. How still it rests, in time and yet beyond, IMMORTAL yet on earth."

"Salvation is God’s justice. It restores to your awareness the wholeness of the fragments you perceive as broken off and separate. And it is this that overcomes the fear of death. For separate fragments must decay and die, but wholeness is IMMORTAL."

"Yet time has still one gift to give in which true knowledge is reflected in a way so accurate its image shares its unseen holiness; its likeness shines with its IMMORTAL Love."

"Your present trust in Him is the defence which promises a future undisturbed, without a trace of sorrow, and with joy which constantly increases as this life becomes a holy instant, set in time, but heeding only IMMORTALITY."

"To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in IMMORTALITY, and Heaven knows it not."

"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."

"Whatever is perceived as means for truth SHARES in its holiness, and rests in light as safely as Itself. Nor will that light go out when it is gone. Its holy purpose GAVE it IMMORTALITY, setting another light in Heaven, where your creations recognize a gift from YOU, a sign that you have NOT forgotten them."

" In your brother is the light of God’s eternal promise of your IMMORTALITY. See HIM as sinless, and there can BE no fear in you."

"Faith in the eternal is ALWAYS justified, for the eternal is forever kind, infinite in its patience, and wholly loving. It will accept you wholly, and give you peace. But it can unite only with what ALREADY is at peace in you, IMMORTAL as itself."

"Yet for all the wild insanity inherent in the whole IDEA of sin, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. For the wages of sin IS death, and how can the IMMORTAL die?"

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of IMMORTALITY upon it. This is the Will of God for all creation, and all creation joins in willing this."

"In the temple, holiness waits quietly for the return of them that love it. For the Presence knows they will return to purity and to grace. The graciousness of God will take them gently in, and cover all their sense of pain and loss, with the IMMORTAL assurance of their Father’s Love."

"For you will remember His guiltless Son, who did not die because he is IMMORTAL."

"You are IMMORTAL BECAUSE you are eternal, and always MUST be now."

"But the guarantee of your continuity is God’s, not the ego’s. And IMMORTALITY is the opposite of time, for time passes away, while IMMORTALITY is constant. Accepting the Atonement teaches you WHAT IMMORTALITY IS, for by accepting your guiltlessness, you learn that the past has never been, and so the future is needless."

"IMMORTALITY is HIS Will for His Son, and His Son’s will for HIMSELF. Yet God’s Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM ."

"IMMORTALITY is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL."

I am going out on a limb a bit to say, that Holy Spirit is a powerful healer and is the medium of miracles. He is quite capable of healing all forms of sickness on all levels including the physical. He shares the power of God. There is nothing that your holiness cannot do, and there is nothing that His holiness cannot do.

Holy Spirit doesn't just sit there on some throne winking at you while you watch thoughts go past or while you gently hand over little bits and pieces of ego. He isn't idle. He isn't there to just be some administrator or to sit and watch while you do all the work. And he's definitely not some intellect-friendly 'metaphor'.

Holy Spirit is an active agent of God who is perfectly capable of performing literal miracles, miracles which anyone on this planet would agree is a miracle. Miracles that include extraordinary healing of body parts, the growing of new limbs and organs, the removal of toxins and metal plates and artificial attachments, the correcting of unbalanced body proportions, weight loss, removal of scars, giving you hearing that you never had since birth, providing you with an entirely new set of internal organs... I mean.. there is NOTHING Holy Spirit cannot do.

Ok, this is a bit radical. This is not your ordinary A course in wimpy miracles. This is not "Oh a miracle is just a change in perception" or "a miracle is looking at things in a different way". Fuck that.

This is a course in MIRACLES, folks. It really is what it says on the can - learning how to perform real, powerful miracles. Not some watered-down nice safe little mind-training exercise program to listen to on your headphones. We are talking about the Holy Spirit wielding the POWER OF GOD to perform absolutely any correction to ANY consequences whatsoever that may have stemmed from your belief in separation, sin, guilt or fear.

The ONLY thing that is 'stopping Him' for enacting this power is YOU. Your willingness.

"Holy Spirit will correct all of the consequences of your wrong decision if you will let Him." - ACIM

ALL of the consequences. Not just little mental thoughts and psychological faux-pas.

Ok.. sounding a bit evangelical or something?

Well... the ACIM community is rather sparse and doesn't have a whole lot of leadership and doesn't also have a whole lot of experience in the 'supernatural' aspects of the Course. Most people want to sweep it under the carpet. I have suspected things about it for a long time but felt awkward saying so because it seemed like I was just sticking my neck out and nobody else seemed to agree.

Well. You go watch some videos somewhere of these supernatural churches etc where certain branches of Christians have, over the centuries, come to learn not only how to access Holy Spirit's power but how to wield it in such ways as to perform literally 'real miracles'. Their theology might be riddled with errors but they are STRONG in their application of Holy Spirit to really heal serious problems.

People getting out of wheelchairs. People being cured of cancer. People having completely new organs grown in place of diseased ones. The complete removal of blindness and deafness. Sure some of it is faked, but in many cases it is very genuine. These are the kinds of things that the disciples of Jesus did when they went about their Father's business. These are the kinds of things Jesus Himself performed, WITH Holy Spirit, to raise the dead and change water to wine and feed the 5 thousand and cure the blind and all the rest of it. THE SAME HOLY SPIRIT IS IN YOU, waiting for you to to LET HIM TEACH YOU TO HEAL. He's not some intellectual substitute version of Holy Spirit. He is the power of God!

"I will heal as I let Him teach me to Heal" -- doesn't just mean, oh, I'll sort of have some nice comfortable tidying up of my insides. It means, Holy Spirit can HEAL ANYTHING and He will teach you how to do so with Him, "AS I LET HIM". There is no limit to what you are capable of.

How will you overlook your brothers sins and your own and demonstrate that His attack has had no effect on you, literally, physically, if you do not have the power of Holy Spirit to reverse all physical ailments and cure all diseases and evidence of attack? Are you going to do that on your own with your little ego self? Nope. But with Holy Spirit, you can become absolutely invulnerable.

Yah I know.... sounds far fetched. Sounds "out there". Too radical. This is what A Course in Miracles wants for us. Do you think Jesus only gave us a nice watered down Course that doesn't have the real 'meaty' stuff in it? No. Jesus wants us to do what He has done and more. And that means, pretty big fricking powerful miracles. You are a miracle worker, not a receptionist.

It is possible to be completely unaware that you are participating in something abnormal, if everyone around you is also participating in it and believing it is normal.

It is possible to have a "shared" experience where multiple individuals are having the same delusion, are all agreeing with each other, and all believe the same thing. To everyone involved, it seems as though nothing is mistaken, because there is no contrast to tell them otherwise.

Many people having the same subjective experience is not objective reality, but it can pass for it.

When you can question what's happening and step outside of it, coming to a different belief and perspective, suddenly you will notice that many things you always assumed were normal or natural, are not.

This happened to me in a big way for example when I immigrated from the UK to the USA. Having grown up in one country, surrounded and immersed in a culture, where everyone else took on the same collective sense of identity and normality, as soon as I left it I started to see things differently.

Suddenly many many things which I thought were completely normal, that were the same everywhere, that were natural and inherent not only to the culture but to who I am as a person, were not necessarily so. It means having to start to sort out what is true about me, versus what is not actually an inherent part of my "self".

And so I started to have to "let go" of various aspects of identity within myself which I had come to relate to as "me", which were commonalities shared with other people, and to sort out... well, was this actually part of me or was this just something I assumed and took on because it's what everyone was doing?

I had to actually go through quite a grieving process for the loss of my "old identity", the sense of self that was being shown to be not actually who I am, and instead something that was somehow made up - baggage and unconscious identifications, which I absorbed from the collective subjectivity I and my fellow countrymen lived inside of.

It's the same with the ego in any situation. When we are immersed in it we do not see it. We don't even know it's there. It's like we're living in a bubble of unconsciousness, assuming that it is normal and natural and meant to be this way. We don't even see a need to question it. We just accept it and allow it into ourselves as if it's totally normal.|

But you step outside of that and start to gain a sense of contrast, that something else may be true, or there is a bigger picture, or this isn't the way people are everywhere, and you'll soon start to *recognize* the illusion of isolation and false identity for what it is. That is is not natural, or normal, or a given. It's not something to assume is the "way things are" everywhere. There is more. There is more to who you are that you didn't even realize, because it was buried under this blindness.

We become blind when we're lost in a collective, shared delusion. We're blind because there is nothing contrasting to show us, this isn't the whole truth, this isn't the way thing are, or this isn't the way to exist naturally. Without a sense of a bigger perspective or a larger truth, and having lost touch with the truth of God, we become lost in illusions. We don't suspect them because there's nothing to say, hey, there is another way.

When we are surrounded for example by friends who we are close to and have a lot in common with, there is very little "resistance" with these people. They don't likely push and challenge or upset us. The ego keeps these alliances in order to not threaten its beliefs. If we are surrounded with like-minded people it can be a trap because it gives us the illusion that there is no conflict. We're simply all agreeing to share the same state of sickness, and thus not see a sense of separation between us.

When you are surrounded with people you do not get along with or who upset you or you don't like their vibe or whatever, you notice the contrast more and you see the separation more. This can be helpful in identifying where you are unconscious and what issues you haven't forgiven. It's simply that you are then confronted with evidence that what you thought was a nice little cosy bubble of agreeability was in fact a prison, isolating you from and hiding you from the truth.

Ignorance is bliss. 1000 people agreeing that something is normal and natural does not make it normal and natural. But none of them will see its abronmality until they find the courage to step out and question what's normal and come to see, to recognize, that what we thought was true is false, and what we thought was false is in fact true.

Don't be a sheep. Be a leader.

This is a simple idea. Since the world is neutral, and since you are having a subjective view of it, your mind is able to see it in different ways. And this means that there is always more than one way to look at something.

Sin is the idea or state of mind in which you see an illusion and combine it with reality, resulting in the perception that it cannot change. That perception is fixed. But this suggests there is only one way to look at something. And here it's meaning seems locked into the form it takes.

In truth there is another way to look at everything, because the Holy Spirit and Christ has given an alternative dream. There is always a "bright side to life" which is different to the "dark side of life." There is always another way to see it, other than how the negative ego sees it.

No matter what it is, how severe it seems, what form it takes, there are always at least two interpretations of it. One of them coming from ego makes the things seem dark and stressful and dangerous and unpleasant. The other provided by Christ Vision through Holy Spirit sees the same thing in a very different light.

The higher way to see, Christ Vision, is what the workbook lessons are geared towards developing. The whole process of forgiveness is of shifting from one thought system to another, or simply making a choice between seeing heaven or hell reflected in what you see.

For everything you see that you do not like, there is a miracle of sight which can look on this exact same thing and see it as beneficial and harmless. For everything which seems to be locked into meaning based on its form, there is another view which frees meaning from its form and uses it for a higher purpose.

So in all things, you can simply say to yourself, that you want another way to look at this. There MUST BE a higher way to look at everything. And when that way of looking is what you do consistently and what you choose to move into regularly, you'll develop Christ Vision.

Since Christ Vision is a gift of Christ that you share with him, your alignment with the Holy Spirit to see how HE sees grants you a viewpoint which is much more charitable and benevolent, which then sees this benevolence reflected back to you.

"What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"There is another way of looking at the world."

"There is another way of looking at this."

"Since the purpose of the world is not the one I ascribed to it, there must be another way of looking at it. I see everything upside-down, and my thoughts are the opposite of truth. I see the world as a prison for God's Son. It must be, then, that the world is really a place where he can be set free. I would look upon the world as it is, and see it as a place where the Son of God finds his freedom."

"The Holy Spirit is one way of choosing. This way is in you BECAUSE there is also another way."

"I came to your minds because you had grown vaguely aware of the fact that there is another way, or another voice. Having given this invitation to the Holy Spirit, I could come to provide the model for HOW TO THINK."

"I WANT another way to look at this."

"Perhaps there IS another way to look at this. What can I LOSE by asking?"

"Yet can he learn to look on it another way, and find the peace of God."

"For you have learned of Christ there is another way for them to walk."

"Who would be willing to be turned AWAY from all the roadways of the world, UNLESS he understood their real futility? Is it not needful that he should BEGIN with this to seek another way instead?" "Belief that there IS another way is the loftiest idea of which ego-thinking is capable. This is because it contains a hint of recognition that the ego is NOT the self."

"Yet reason looks on this in another way."

"How COULD there be another way to solve a problem which is VERY simple, but has been obscured by heavy clouds of complication, which were MADE to keep the problem unresolved?"

"Alternatives are in your mind to use, and you CAN see yourself another way."

"No one who has learned from experience that one choice brings peace and joy while another brings chaos and disaster needs much conditioning. The ego cannot withstand the conditioning process, because the process itself DEMONSTRATES that there is another way."

"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."

"Against this sense of temporary existence, the Soul offers the knowledge of permanence and unshakeable BEING. No one who has experienced the revelation of this can ever fully believe in the ego again. How can its meager offering to you prevail against the glorious gift of God?"

"You look for permanence in the impermanent; for love where there is none; for safety in the midst of danger; immortality within the darkness of the dream of death."

What God created is permanent. What you create is permanent. It has eternal life and exists forever, unchanging and unwavering. Nothing real can be threatened or changed, nor does it change, because reality is a constant state. It is permanently the same. Absolutely unchangeable, unassailable, unaffected.

You cannot change what is permanent. You cannot establish the truth. You cannot decide what is real. You cannot change God's mind. You cannot define what you are. You cannot change what you are. You cannot destroy anything real. You cannot truly be sick or die. You cannot leave Heaven. You cannot modify what God has created. And you cannot make yourself mortal.

BUT...... you can be in denial. You can be delusional. You can be trying to use belief to pretend to convince yourself that this isn't the case. You can TRY to effort to make what is permanent, impermanent. This is an attempt, by immortal beings, to pretend to be mortal.

In every way that you attempt to prove to yourself and others that you and they are not permanently as God created us, those are futile attempts to convince yourself that something else is true. That you are not permanent. Every time that you attack your body and make it sick, you are trying to prove that you can be hurt, even though it is literally impossible to hurt that which is permanent.

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

Similarly death is an attempt to prove the permanent Son of God can be made impermanent and dead. It does not work. It has NO EFFECT on the Son of God. Death does not kill you. It does nothing. Therefore attempting to prove you can die, by committing suicide, by hurting and attacking yourself and your temporary illusory body, is clearly a demonstration of someone who is strongly trying to PROVE that they are NOT permanent.

The further someone goes towards having this amassed stockpile of "evidence" for why they are not permanent, the further they are in denial. This is why death itself is total denial. It's a total blind inability to accept the TOTAL futility of trying to die. Immortal beings, are trying to prove they can be dead. And the more they are delusional and believe in death's possibility, the more they bring about suffering and sickness and death in themselves and others.

Those who are saner, who are less in denial, and who do not believe in attack because they know that nothing real can be threatened so attack is pointless, automatically produce healing and demonstration of miraculous reversal of "sickness", the stockpile decreases and their demonstration of mortality diminishes and is reversed. Resurrection happens, which is nothing less than the demonstration and symbolic use of the body to show that you truly believe, and can prove, that you cannot die, because you have the POWER to do so.

Resurrection is a demonstration of acceptance of atonement, the sheer truth that what is permanent is STILL permanent, NOTHING has happened to change it, there IS no sin, there IS no attack, there IS no sickness or death, and therefore to PROVE beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are under NO laws but God's. That you are ARE permanent. The body then, in the hands of a sane person, is healed. "The mind, being sane, heals the body." And the body in the hands of someone accepting atonement is UNATTACKABLE. "It cannot be sick, nor can it die."

The body now TEACHES by EXAMPLE, symbolically, to those still dreaming, that the soul is permanent and the Son of God represents eternal life. The body becomes a symbol of eternal life and a breath of immortality in the dream, communicating to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death, that death is futile, pointless exercise, sickness is ridiculously unnecessary, and HEALTH is representative of living forever.

The Holy Spirit has now repurposed what you made, as something unattackable, to demonstrate you CANNOT BE attacked. That harm has never happened, and you are beyond all causes that could possibly ever make you or the body damaged. It is a supernatural demonstration of UNLIMITED POWER. It is truly miraculous. You become invulnerable (aware of your invulnerability) and you USE the body to symbolically demonstrate it to others.

To accept the atonement truly means the TOTAL unconditional acceptance of the total state of PERMANENCE of your reality. It means the complete surrendering and letting go of ALL things temporal or temporary, which includes the body and the world. It requires your transfer or rather, resumption, of Heaven, to resume recognition of your self as permanently Christ, and to remember the truth about you. This resuming or rather continuing of your uninterrupted creative extension, is an awakening, the only awakening, to the experience of eternal life, beyond the body and beyond the dream of death, beyond this world, not of this world, nor in it.

This total awareness of absolute permanence, dissolves the body and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to be in this temporal world. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge." It restores the perfect knowledge that you are STILL perfect, nothing EVER happened, there IS no dream world, and bodies do not exist. It is not merely a compromise between staying in the dream and being awake, it is total immersion in reality, in God, in Heaven, where you have never stopped being permanently eternal. It is the awakening to the soul.

In this awakening, there is no remaining memory of even the dream or the world. It is gone. It never existed or happened. There is only the total unlimited experience of total immortality and permanent life. This requires nothing less than the absolute 100% unconditional willingness to will with God, to do His will, to share His mind, and to extend His being forever. In this awareness, there is no Earth, there is no dream, and there is no separation.

Nothing has happened. Only that which is permanent is true. Only that which lasts forever exists. Nothing real can be changed or threatened and never has been. Once you return to being an immortal being, you will realize, you ALWAYS HAVE BEEN and always will be, and now anything of fantasy dream worlds where people die will be complete unbelievable nonsense to you.

You are immortal. You are pretending not to be. When you are done pretending not to be, you will accept your immortality and return to Heaven.

"There is no death, the son of god is free."

You are not a body because you are as God created you which is a soul with a mind. Your soul/spirit has no need for a body whatsoever. But your mind is DREAMING of one.

Where did the body come from? Who is responsible for putting it there? It didn't show up on its own or as a result of any other causal power.

"The body is the idea of sin made flesh and projected outwards."

That means the mind, which is the realm of ideas, has an idea of sin, and projects it, which PRODUCES the body. This isn't a one-time affair, it doesn't just happen at birth, it is a constant projection all the time, like a movie projector projecting a movie.

"Love did not create the body" means a mind in total sanity does not produce/project a body, but an INSANE MIND does, because "the body is a device for separation."

Thus "The mind is responsible for every condition of the body" because the mind is the MAKER of the body. It determines whether it shows up or not, and in what condition, at all times. If it weren't for the mind making the body *constantly*, the body would vanish.

It seems to suggest the mind can be "free of the body" while the body STILL EXISTS, which is false logic. SOMEONE has to maintain the body or it simply will not show up at all. It does not have its own existence, its own life, or its own reality. The world does not maintain it "on its own". Some mind SOMEWHERE has to be projecting it constantly in order for it to keep showing up at all.

We cannot simply "escape" from sickness of the body by disappearing off into the mind and pretending that WE are not responsible for the body showing up. If it is still showing up, we are still putting it there, and to put a sick body there from a sane state of mind is utterly nonsense. No-one in their right mind would EVER demonstrate that "sickness and suffering are true", because it teaches your brother and communicates to him that he is a sinner.

When the mind is sane, it projects a healthy body. When the mind is sick, it projects a sick body.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"A broken body is proof the MIND has not been healed."

Mind is where healing is truly needed. "All sickness is mental illness." But that does NOT mean that if you heal the mind, the mind is completely separate from the body and can be healthy while the body remains sick. That is an ego belief in separation and is disassociation. The mind is always responsible for the body.

Jesus says re resurrection "I came to demonstrate the mind that made the body can make another. They did not understand."

So you can't have "I am not a body I am free and I'll just be sane and healed in my mind and KEEP MAKING a sick body"... a sane mind WOULD NOT produce sickness. Sickness is a defense against the truth. The body MUST be used to demonstrate a symbol of immortality otherwise you teach your brother by example, "brother at your hand I die", because all physical sickness is an attack and an accusation on others. "Sick bodies are accusers." What shows up in your body as being "true of you" is also an attempt to say what is "true of others". The golden rule has no exceptions.

When you are sane and recognize that you are not a body because you are the CAUSE of the body and it is your EFFECT or projection, THEN you will temporarily project a healed body which is a picture of perfection and a symbol of immortality and holiness. Then you will simply choose to STOP PROJECTING IT and it will disappear. This is the ONLY way to leave the dream of death, which can only be left through truth not death. Holy Spirit can help you to materialize a body that is free of sickness on all levels:

"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 (as your sick body), 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 (your body) you show YOURSELF, and give it all your faith. The Holy Spirit offers you, to give to him, a picture of yourself (a healed body) in which there is NO pain, and NO reproach at all (no form of illness, breakage, damage, suffering, disease etc). And what was martyred to his guilt becomes the perfect witness to his innocence."

and "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."

and here is the final stage of resurrection: "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."

It is only possible to teach your brother through physical demonstration that he is not a sinner by not accusing him of sin, which means not using the body for attack, which results in the body being fully healed. "What you use the body for it becomes to you".

And Jesus re his resurrection and body disappearing:

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it.. It merely became what it always was. And that is what 'rolling the stone away means.' The body disappears, and no longer hides what lies beyond... To roll the stone away is to see beyond the tomb, beyond death, and to understand the body's nothingness. I did assume a human form with human attributes afterwards, to speak to those who were to prove the body's worthlessness to the world. This has been much misunderstood. I came to tell them that death is an illusion, and the mind that made the body can make another since form itself is an illusion. They did not understand. "

"Leave it behind. It cannot enter Heaven. But I can take you there any time you choose. Together we can watch the world disappear and its symbol vanish as it does. And then-and then-I cannot speak of that. A body cannot stay without illusions, and the last one to be overcome is death."

A Course in Miracles is a teaching us to leave a dream of mortality, and return to a state of immortality. Everything in the course points to this. You are not merely substituting one limited illusion for another. You are literally substituting DEATH for ETERNAL LIFE. That is why the curriculum culminates in RESURRECTION.

Resurrection is the return to ETERNAL life. The atonement is your acceptance of the fact, that you already have eternal life, eternal life is the only thing true of you, and you have always been immortal. Immortality is your natural state of being. God created you to live FOREVER, without ever suffering, being sick, afraid, dead, or unhappy.

Every single part of ACIM is geared towards you disassociating from illusions of death, vulnerability, victimhood, being affected, being hurt, sickness and all forms of suffering, and re-associating yourself with your IMMORTAL SPIRIT.

As the Course states.

1) You are immortal and you cannot die.

2) You already have eternal life, given by God, and it is permanent.

3) You cannot change your immortality.

4) You are always immortal but when you deny your immortality, you PRETEND to be mortal. You dream of being attackable, suffering and dying, but this has NO EFFECT on your immortality.

5) Those who are sane would never use the dream body to demonstrate SYMBOLS of attack, suffering, sickness or death. To do so is a mixed teaching combining PROOF of belief in attack, with an attempt to teach otherwise. The teaching is only PURE when you are demonstrating the immortality of the body, at least as a SYMBOL of immortality. The body can become a symbol of eternal life, a breath of fresh air to those grown sick of the fetid stench of death.

Life is eternal life. There is no life that is not eternal. This is why there is no life outside of heaven, and life "in the dream world" is an illusion of life.

The entire course is trying to get you to own up to being immortal, invulnerable, completely beyond all forms of attack. You are absolutely permanent. And any time that you ACT as if you are not, as if you have been hurt, affected, caused, damaged, made to suffer against your will, you are LYING, you are in denial, and you are PRETENDING that you are not immortal.

You can see this truth throughout all of ACIM's teachings. e.g.

Deny anything not of God the power to affect you (you cannot BE affected, you are immortal)

Nothing in the world can bring oppression or make you ill or sad or weak or afraid (you cannot be ill or weak or afraid or upset because you are immortal)

There is no cause in the world, it is just an effect (the world cannot cause you in any way because you are unchangeable)

You are not a victim of the world you see (you are incapable of being a victim because you are immortal)

Your attack thoughts are attacking your *invulnerability* (your invulnerability cannot BE attacked because you are immortal, but you can pretend it can)

You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself (because you are immortal, and even your hurt of yourself is fake)

You are immortal and cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do (simply, you are immortal)

My self is ruler of the universe. Nothing comes to me unbidden by myself (because you are immortal)

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. (because you are fucking immortal)

It is impossible that anything should come to me unbidden by myself. Even in this world, it is I who rule my destiny. (because nothing can CAUSE YOU, because you are NOT AN EFFECT of anything but God, and you are immortal)

If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this. (because the mind has immortality)

He MUST deny the world of pain, the instant he perceives the arms of love around him. (deny the world because it is an attempt to prove you are not immortal, and its a lie)

This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. (you must deny all illusions of death, because you are immortal)

Teachers of God choose to look upon dreams a while... they are not deceived by what they see. (because they are immortal and know "death is the CENTRAL ILLUSION from which is all dreams stem" and you cannot die, because you are immortal)

I am not weak but strong. I am not afraid but all powerful. (because you are immortal, nothing has power over you)

YOU ARE IMMORTAL AND YOU CANNOT DIE. And any attempt you are making to PROVE otherwise, is futile and pointless and a form of self deception. When you stop deceiving yourself and others with this denial, you will stop trying to kill yourself, will stop making the body sick or dead, and will OVERCOME DEATH FOREVER.

Immortality is the only truth about you. Ask yourself, why am I trying to prove I am not immortal? Why am I accusing someone of being ABLE to hurt me? Why am I BELIEVING that I have BEEN hurt? Nothing can affect you. It is your own mis-belief that it CAN, that affects you. You hurt yourself, and nothing in the world can cause you suffering of any kind.

Owning up to your immortality is the key to the atonement, the resurrection and the life. THIS is A Course in Miracles. This is the way home to God. Accept your immortality, live by your immortality, demonstrate your immortality, and deny everything else any reality.

Nothing real can be threatened, and YOU ARE REAL. So YOU CANNOT BE THREATENED. Because you are immortal!

So any attempt you make to act as if you are not immortal, to believe someone affected you, something happened to you, something went against your will, you're victimized, you're suffering, etc... it all you PRETENDING TO SUFFER by pretending you are the body, making *IT* suffer, to try to prove that "you" are suffering. Your immortal is unaffected by suffering, sickness and death.

There is no REAL death. The son of God is FREE. But the Son of God can PRETEND to die, by using ILLUSIONS of things that seem to die, to try to prove he is NOT the son of God and not immortal. It's a lie. Do not believe it. Own your immortality and use it to contrast what you are doing that betrays your immortality. Compare your immortality to your victimhood. Can you REALLY have been affected if you have immortality? Can you be justified in TRYING to prove you can suffer?

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt". "A damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed." ie if the mind believes it is NOT immortal, it uses the body to TRY to prove that "it" is attackable and vulnerable. And this is always a self deception. You hurt yourself on purpose to try to prove you are not yourself. That has to end in order to accept the atonement and live the resurrection. Your return to ETERNAL LIFE is the goal fo this course.

We made a meaningless world. Not a world that means bad things or good things, but which means nothing at all. A world devoid of meaning, being the opposite of God which is all meaning.

"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."

"The world you see does not exist BECAUSE the place where you perceive it is not real. The gap is carefully concealed in fog, and misty pictures rise to cover it with vague, uncertain forms and changing shapes, forever unsubstantial and unsure. Yet in the gap is NOTHING."

The world became an empty mirror, having no identity or truth of its own, and able therefore only to reflect that which is projected upon it. We can project heaven onto it just as easily as hell, and it will reflect what we put there to see.

"Recognition of meaninglessness arouses intense anxiety in all the separated ones. It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written in the empty space which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that the void may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality. And on this alone it is correct."

Notice how Jesus refers to the world or "gap" as essentially an empty VOID, onto which you project things to try to "fill it". You can see here that the ego attempted to ADD its meanings TO the world, once the world had been made. It tried to write pictures of hell and interpretations of cruelty onto it. It condemned the world and accused it of sin, and of proof of hell.

"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 test of EVERYTHING on earth is simply this: "What is it FOR?" The answer makes it what it IS for you. It has NO meaning of itself, yet you can GIVE reality to it, according to the purpose which YOU serve."

"You think that what upsets you is a frightening world, or a sad world, or a violent world, or an insane world. All these attributes are given it by you. The world is meaningless in itself."

The world, therefore, arose to hide the original error or idea of separation in the mind, along with the guilt it produced, and since it was an idea of a lack of meaning, it projected a meaningless world. This meaningless world becomes an EMPTY SCREEN, onto which meaning could then be projected.

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that."

Note that it also says that once the screen was made, as the world, as Earth etc, as form, the idea of separation was PROJECTED ONTO it. On top of it. This again is referring to what was mentioned in the prior quote about the ego rushing in to try to fill the empty meaningless space with its own meanings of attack and sin and guilt.

The idea of separation was projected ONTO a false world. Since the separation idea was an idea of opposition to reality and God, and was an attempt to distort the truth, and to swap what is true for what is false and vice versa, the projection of this idea ONTO the screen of the world produced a FALSE PERCEPTION of the world. This false perception is what you get when you interpret truth as lies and lies as truth. It is what turns the UNREALITY of the empty meaningless world into a seemingly real living hell. It is a faulty interpretation of what the world IS and what it means.

We are asked then to take these projected meanings away from the world, lift the IDEA of separation, sin and guilt and death, OFF of the world, which SAVES THE WORLD from your sinful use of it. From trying to make it be really sinful. We are asked then to lift all separation-oriented meanings (judgements, attacks) off of the world, so that it is recognized again as an EMPTY SPACE, a mirror, upon which temporarily the meaning of God himself is projected, and seen as reflection, as the real world.

"An empty space that is NOT seen as filled, an unused interval of time NOT seen as spent and fully occupied, become a silent invitation to the truth to enter, and to make Itself at home."

"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."

"The reflection of God 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."

"This loveliness is NOT a fantasy. It is the real world, bright, and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun." "Could you but realize, for a single instant, the power of healing that the reflection of God, shining in YOU, can bring to all the world, you COULD not wait to make the mirror of your mind clean, to receive the image of the Holiness that heals the world."

"You can REFLECT HEAVEN here. But no reflections of the images of other gods must dim the mirror that would hold God's reflection in it. Earth can reflect Heaven or hell; God or the ego. You need but leave the mirror clean, and clear of all the images of hidden darkness you have drawn upon it. God will shine upon it of Himself. Only the clear reflection OF Himself can BE perceived upon it."

Notice here how it says that the world can REFLECT THE EGO. And there is also a contrasting of heaven vs hell. Meaning in essence that THE EGO IS HELL, NOT THE WORLD. The ego is that which produces false perception, believes in guilt, condemns, attacks, and turns everything into a nightmare. The ego is the insanity. It is the false perception. It is the twisting of the trust and the denial of God.

The WORLD was a projection outward of the idea of separation, an idea which gave rise to the ego WITHIN the idea, as a kind of spokesperson for the separation. And then the ego took ahold of the separated state (lower order reality etc, spacetime), and USED it for its purposes, producing a mindset that perceived the world AS hell, only because of its focus on death and destruction, and not because of what the world is. It is the ego (egotism) that makes an illusion of a meaningless world turn into a nightmare.

That same world which the ego has tried to make out to be hell, by projecting hellish ideas onto it, can also have God's meaning of love projected onto it, which renders it very differently and interprets its contents very differently. That's is the forgiven world or real world. The reflection of heaven, where God is seen in everything I see because God is in my mind. And here you become ready to go home to him.

"What is meaningless is neither good nor bad. Why, then, should a meaningless world upset you? If you could accept the world as meaningless and let the truth be written upon it for you, it would make you indescribably happy. But because it is meaningless, you are impelled to write upon it what you would have it be. It is this you see in it. It is this that is meaningless in truth. Beneath your words is written the Word of God. The truth upsets you now, but when your words have been erased, you will see His."

This is a radical teaching in A Course in Miracles which is often denied or distorted, simply because it seems too radical to be true. The BODY must be healed otherwise the mind IS NOT HEALED. "Only the mind AND body need atonement." "Damaged bodies are accusers." "A damaged body is PROOF the mind ***has not been healed***."

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing (OF THE BODY AND MIND) to your brother AND yourself. YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU (no evidence of physical attack), to **demonstrate** (physically!) they were not real. How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS ***his sins have no effect*** (no damage to show for it) to WARRANT guilt? Sins (physical attacks) are beyond forgiveness just BECAUSE they would entail ***effects which CANNOT be undone*** (physical damage) and overlooked entirely (because if you can still SEE IT there is proof of sin). ***In their UNDOING lies the proof*** that they were merely errors. LET yourself be healed (mind AND body), that you may be forgiving, offering (in person, physically) salvation to your brother AND yourself. A broken body (YES, mind AND BODY must be healed) shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing (physically) ***proves*** that separation is WITHOUT effect.

What you would prove to him you will believe (!! if you SHOW him a sick body, YOU **MUST** BELIEVE IN SICKNESS!). The power of ***witness*** (seen visually, physical healing) 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 (A PHYSICALLY HEALED BODY DEVOICE OF ANY SIGNS OF ATTACK!!!) that can speak with power greater than a thousand tongues. For here is his forgiveness PROVED to him. A miracle (producing PHYSICAL healing!) can offer nothing LESS to him than it has given unto you. So does your healing (OF THE BODY!!!) show your mind is healed (as well), ***and has forgiven what he did NOT do***. And so is HE ***convinced*** (by PHYSICAL PROOF) his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you.

Thus does the miracle undo ***all things the world attests can never BE undone*** (all physical damage/effects, all sickness, all hurt, all wounds). And hopelessness ***and death*** (physical 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.*** (REQUIRES that the physical body be fully RESTORED TO HEALTH AND WHOLENESS SO THAT YOU CAN *SHOW HIM*) He thinks ***your blood*** (literally, physical blood) is on his hands, and so he stands condemned (by your physical sickness - "damaged bodies are accusers"). But it is given you to ***SHOW him, by your healing (OF THE BODY!!!), that his guilt is but the fabric of a senseless dream."

YES, IT DOES MEAN THIS FOLKS!!!!!!!!!!

Here is Jesus backing it up further in another part of the course.

"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.**** (a perfectly healed, whole, unharmed body with no signs of sin or attack or sickness!) IT (this "picture of health body") witnesses to the eternal truth that **you can not BE hurt**, and ***points BEYOND itself to both YOUR innocence and HIS.*** (indicates, teaches, demonstrates, SHOWS, symbolized, your brother's innocence).

Show THIS unto your brother (a healed body!), who will ****see that every scar is healed**** (literally all physical scarring is gone), and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And ***he will look on his forgiveness there*** (sees he is forgiven because there are NO EFFECTS OF SIN), and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it (because it's a symbol pointing to the mind's healing), to the innocence that he beholds in you (in your healed mind). Here is the proof (PHYSICAL!!!) that he has NEVER sinned; that NOTHING that his madness bid him do (attack you, damage your body, harm your body, make you sick, wound you etc) was ever done, ****or ever had effects of any kind**** (ALL PHYSICAL EFFECTS ARE HEALED!!!!!). That NO reproach he laid upon his heart was EVER justified (no reason for guilt cus the body is not hurt), and NO attack can touch him with the poisoned sting of fear (the healed body proves he cannot have really attacked). Attest his innocence (physically) and NOT his guilt. YOUR (body and mind) healing is his comfort and HIS health. BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true." (the health of himself AND HIS BODY are now restored as a result of his exoneration by YOUR healed mind and body!)

Also

"The body can become a sign of life (symbol of eternal life and invulnerability), a promise of redemption, and a ***breath of immortality*** to those grown sick of breathing in the fetid scent of death (literal physical stinky death). Let it have healing as its PURPOSE (use by the holy spirit for healing). Then will it send forth (communicate VISUALLY through PHYSICAL PROOF) the message it received, and by its (physical) health and loveliness (!! Yes the body's loveliness and health) proclaim (communicate, teach!) the truth and value that it represents. Let it receive the power to represent (symbolize, to be a symbol of immortality) an endless life, forever unattacked. (the body shows up AS IF it is immortal!) And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."" (because the body now PROVES that as a consequence of your brother's INNOCENCE, YOUR BODY IS NOT ATTACKED, proving HE is forgiven.)

Reference "the fear of healing" and "the picture of crucifixion" sections for more information.

Now, pause a moment, and watch out for an ego reaction of guilt. My intention is not to make anyone feel guilty. Nor is it Jesus' intention. But he is trying to educate us with deep honesty about what sickness is and is not so that we can be more easily freed from using it to hurt ourselves. We need to be willing to look at this, it's part of the course. We are adults here, right? We can handle it.

Jesus's statements simply tell us that all forms of sickness are part of an attempts to make our body sick, in order that we can hold it up as proof that our brother is a sinner, accusing him of having caused the effects/symptoms. We show him sickness, evidence of attack and sin, to imply that we have been affected against our will, thus able to scapegoat him and accuse him of sin. Scapegoating isn't just psychological, it is physical.

And furthermore, Jesus is clearly teaching that the body, as a symbol, CAN symbolize innocence and forgiveness, through its physical healing. A healed body teaches and demonstrates and proves that there has not been sin, it exonerates your brother, AND it helps to heal his mind. Your physical health, stemming from your psychological health, becomes your brother's health. When the body is sick, it accuses your brother "Brother, at your hand I die". This happens are psychological, physical, and metaphysical levels.

If you want to love yourself and your brother, the body MUST depict only a symbol of heath and wholeness. Otherwise it is serving the ego's purpose of making sin real. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

*** Physical sickness is a symptom of an unholy relationship with your brothers! ***

Jesus demonstrated this principle through the resurrection. Here's what he says in passages from "The picture of crucifixion" and "The fear of healing." These are POTENT teachings not often accepted in ACIM circles.

"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 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."

"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."

"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 brother's eyes."

"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 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 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."

"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."

"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 mind, being sane, heals the body."

"The mind makes this decision as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

"Sickness is a defense agains the truth."

"If you arrest the extension of the mind, it fosters separation and induces illness."

"A damaged body is PROOF the mind has not been healed."

When the mind is whole, it is undivided, of one will, has no conflict and its perceptual content is wholeness. Wholeness is love, and love is mental health. This wholeness brings perfect peace because there is no conflict.

When the mind starts to entertain ideas of inequality, difference, separation, specialness, attack etc, the mind itself becomes split. It forms one area which seems to house your idea of "holy and pure" and another area is sectioned off to house "sinful and evil".

While one part of the mind is believing that e.g. "I am the innocent one" and another part of the mind is believing "they are the guilty one", this literally requires YOUR mind, all within itself, to maintain BOTH states. And this means your mind is now having a war with itself. It is conflicted, its will is split against itself, and there is therefore a disturbance of peace.

This lack of equality, this disruption of peace, is dis-ease, turmoil, stress and suffering. It is a state of mental illness. A mind that believes the truth is different for you and others, is trying to maintain multiple truths at once. One truth for you, and one truth for everyone else. This inevitably is a conflicted state where the mind is just all over the place in contradiction.

The result simply is mental illness, ie lack of health and sanity, which is also a lack of wholeness. This means the mind is attacking itself, having a private war. This war may well be projected onto the world or others, but it is a war with yourself, which the secret of salvation reveals.

The thing is, this inner conflict, produces an outward picture of an inward condition. And the result is that this mental self attack attacks the body and the world. This produces distortions, which manifest as PHYSICAL sickness.

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."

While the mind is sick, it FORCES the body to represent that sickness, because the body is ALWAYS a symbol in a dream. It symbolizes whatever the mind believes is true. When the mind is believing in self attack, it pictures itself as an attacked illusion, a body image, which depicts the attack through the materialization or production of physical symptoms.

A mind which is heavily in conflict with itself, is attempting to destroy itself. It projects this onto or AS the body, and the body now shows up MATCHING the state of mind. It correlates. "The mind makes this decision, as it makes EVERY decision responsible for the condition of the body."

Just as "a damaged body is proof the mind has not been healed", "a sane mind heals the body." Never is the body truly healthy when the mind is sick, and never is the body capable of being sick OR dead if the mind is healthy. A healthy mind PROJECTS a healthy undefiled body image. A sick mind projects a damaged, suffering, aging, weak and sick body, and eventually a dead one. The body is the PROOF of what you're trying to communicate to yourself and others.

This boils down to a very simple mechanic.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

Sick mind, sick body.

This always applies, even if it is not apparent. Even if the attack doesn't seem to have obvious symptoms. That DEATH occurs eventually is a SYMPTOM of mental illness.

If you want to be free from death and free from sickness, your mind needs to be healed to the point where it no longer is at war with ITSELF, and thus has no inner conflict, no inequality, no belief in multiple truths, and therefore is not disturbed or distortable. A SANE mind heals the body, because "a sick body makes no sense."

Any form of physical sickness IS PROOF of a defense against the truth. ALL physical sickness is a defense agains the truth, indicating the presence of denial. This denial is an attempt NOT to awaken. ie

"All forms of sickness (physical or otherwise), even unto death, are PHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS of the fear of awakening."

That all encompassing statement is hard to refuse. EVEN death is merely a state of denial, an attempt to AVOID the truth. Which indicates just how unnatural death is and why it is not supposed to be happening, not even at the body level.

"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 (it will show up as HEALED), and by its health (HEALED!) 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 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 (REQUIRES PHYSICAL HEALING!). And in its healing (BODY 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 (WHICH CAUSES YOUR BODY TO HEAL AS WELL!) 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."

ie, your healed body PROVES to your brother, teaches him, demonstrates to him, with a power greater than a thousand tongues, with CONVICTION, that HE CANNOT HAVE SINNED because there ARE NO EFFECTS OF ATTACK in your body. Your body becomes a device by which to PROVE the innocence of your brother and thus HEAL HIS MIND. He cannot believe in his own sinfulness if he cannot find evidence for its effects in YOUR body image. Your HEALING IS HIS HEALING! Your demonstration of harmlessness weakness HIS belief in HIS sickness.

****"And so is HE convinced his innocence was never lost, and healed along with you."****

"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?"

***"A miracle of healing (MENTAL AND PHYSICAL) proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."***

A collection of A Course in Miracles quotes...

"The body can be made a home like this, BECAUSE it lacks foundation in the truth. And yet, BECAUSE it does, it can be seen as NOT your home, but merely as an aid to help you reach the home where God abides.

With THIS as purpose IS the ***body healed***. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease. Nor is it idly blamed for what it did not do. It serves to help the HEALING of God's Son, and, for THIS purpose, it cannot BE sick. It will not join a purpose not your own, and you have chosen that it NOT be sick. All miracles are based upon this choice, and GIVEN you the instant it is made. No forms of sickness are immune, because the choice cannot be MADE in terms of form. The choice of SICKNESS seems to be a form, yet it is one, as is its opposite. And YOU are sick or well, accordingly."

----

"Healing will flash across your open mind as peace and truth arise to take the place of war and vain imaginings. There will be no dark corners sickness can conceal and keep defended from the light of truth. There will be no dim figures from your dreams, nor their obscure and meaningless pursuits with double purposes insanely sought, remaining in your mind. It will be healed of all the sickly wishes that it tried to authorize the body to obey.

Now is the ***body healed*** because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

----

"The miracle returns the CAUSE of fear to you who made it. But it ALSO shows that, HAVING no effects it is NOT cause, because the function of causation is to HAVE effects. And where effects are gone, there IS no cause. Thus is the ***body healed*** by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT of what it made."

----

"I am as God created me"

"Holy indeed is he who makes these words his own; arising with them in his mind, recalling them throughout the day, at night bringing them with him as he goes to sleep. His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his ***body healed***, because he sleeps and wakens with the truth before him always. He will save the world because he gives the world what he receives each time he practices the words of truth."

----

"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."

----

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

----

"A gentler dream, in which his suffering was healed, and where his brother was his friend."

----

"Very simply, the resurrection is the overcoming or surmounting of death. It is a reawakening or a rebirth; a change of mind about the meaning of the world. It is the acceptance of the Holy Spirit's interpretation of the world's purpose; the acceptance of the Atonement for oneself. It is the end of dreams of misery, and the glad awareness of the Holy Spirit's final dream. It is the recognition of the gifts of God. It is the dream ***in which the body functions perfectly***, having no function except communication."

----

"Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity to heal the Son of God. And he is healed BECAUSE you offered faith to him, giving him to the Holy Spirit and RELEASING him from every demand your ego would make of him. Thus do you SEE HIM FREE, and in this vision does the Holy Spirit SHARE. And since He SHARES it He HAS given it, and so He healed THROUGH YOU. It is this JOINING Him in a UNITED purpose that MAKES this purpose real because YOU make it WHOLE. And this IS healing. ***The BODY is healed*** BECAUSE YOU CAME WITHOUT IT and joined the Mind in which all healing rests."

----

"If the mind can heal the body, but the body cannot heal the mind, then the mind must be STRONGER. Every miracle demonstrates this."

----

"Health 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. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

----

"The body, then, is not the source of its own health. Its condition lies solely in your interpretation of its function."

----

"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."

----

"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."

----

"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.""

----

"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."

----

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

----

"***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."

----

"The body needs NO healing (directly). 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."

----

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

----

"The removal of blocks, then, is the only way to ***guarantee help and healing***. Help and healing are the normal expressions of a mind which is working ***THROUGH the body*** but not in it. If the mind believes the body is its goal, it will distort its perception OF the body, and by blocking its own extension BEYOND it, will ***INDUCE illness*** by FOSTERING SEPARATION. Perceiving the body AS A SEPARATE ENTITY cannot but foster illness, because it is not true. A medium of communication WILL lose its usefulness if it is used for anything else."

----

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."

----

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

----

"A guiltless mind cannot suffer. The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Sometimes doing ACIM seems very difficult. It boils down to a simple fact. Everything in the world is opposite to the truth. And that means you're going to have to become opposite to everything in the world!

"This IS the "natural" condition of the separation. And those who learn that it is NOT natural at all, seem to be the UNnatural ones. For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

This is no easy feat. Everything in the world is totally backwards, inside out, and upside down. It is opposite to heaven's laws and nature in EVERY way.

"...earth the other's sorry outcome which is Heaven's opposite in every way."

So it's calling for you to totally go against the grain in order to be sane, to deny and defy the whole nature of this entire world and not believe a single thing about it. The world is insane, and you want sanity.

"What does this prove except the world is mad? Why share its madness in the sad belief that what is universal here is true? Nothing the world believes is true. It is a place whose purpose is to be a home where those who claim they do not know themselves can come to question what it is they are."

"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."

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity. There is no area of your perception that it has not touched, and your dream IS sacred to you."

Our position in "false perception" is one where we have reversed or swapped cause and effect. We've also swapped what is true and what is false. Everything is totally back to front. We now believe the world is happening to us, causing us. And yet, we are immortal beings, causers, creators, rulers of the universe, to whom nothing is supposed to be happening.

There are very strong empowerment themes in ACIM to do with you learning to re-adopt the position of having power OVER the world. Over even sickness and death. Over all problems and forms of suffering. In which you are the cause of the dream, and not its effect. Where you are invulnerable and incapable of being hurt. Where you would show and demonstrate to others that you cannot be hurt even physically.

"Show your brother you've had no hurt of him."

"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."

Whenever our mind believes for a second that cause and effect have been swapped, we see ourselves as at the effect of the world and other people. They're doing it to us. We're being affected. We are now passive victims, suffering against our will, experiencing things we seem to have not chosen or wanted. But then the course is saying, absolutely everything that happens you must have chosen and wanted, and you did it to yourself.

This is reflected in the secret of salvation "you're doing this to yourself." It doesn't even matter what form it takes or who seems to be the victimizer. If you see yourself as an effect of the very thing you made, you are playing a role of victim and are positioning yourself to be hurt by it. And yet you are an immortal being, who cannot be hurt.

"Nothing real can be threatened."

The real meaning of this is that you are an immortal being and you are CAUSAL. You caused this world. You are the dreamer of it. It is nothing but an effect and it cannot do anything to who or what you really are. You've dreamed up dream figures and set them about attacking your body.

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

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

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

And then Jesus even goes on to say that you cannot suffer or be sick or hurt or killed or anything against your will. That even death is CONSENTED to in all its forms.

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

So we've got the world seeming to function backwards, in which it seems capable of causing your body, making it an effect of the world. You've got random chaotic events "happening to it". You've got all manner of inescapable problems, people attacking you, stuff going wrong. And you're supposed to fly in the face of it all exclaim, THIS IS DOING NOTHING TO ME.

That's not easy. You're asked to act like an immortal being in a mortal world. And that means if you are not vigilant, you're going to be constantly drawn into the world's ways, tempted to believe what it shows you, deceived by its illusions and frightened by its images. You have to constantly be on-guard and vigilant in your willingness to take a forgiving attitude instead.

Forgiveness means little more than looking at the world from a point of view of it BEING NOTHING LIKE YOU, and therefore that you are immortal and it is not. Forgiveness symbolizes your immortality and points to your invulnerability. You can accuse no-one of sin if it is impossible for you to be sinned against. If the world can do nothing to you, you cannot be angry at it. You can only be benevolent by recognizing that you cannot be changed.

That's difficult work. Being confronted with a totally backwards world all day every day, and being asked to totally go against it and deny it in every way. That even your body lies to you. Even your planet is a false world. Even the events that sure as hell look like they're happening aren't happening. That even the suggested proof of sin that your body can be crucified is a total deception. The world is COMPLETELY UNNATURAL.

"as it seems to be the most unnatural and difficult for the untrained mind."

"Deny your own identity and you will not escape the madness which induced this weird, unnatural and ghostly thought which mocks creation and which laughs at God."

"The ego wants to teach you that you want to OPPOSE God's Will. This unnatural lesson CANNOT be learned"

"Miracles seem unnatural to the ego"

"To you the miracle CANNOT seem natural, because what you have done to hurt your minds, has made THEM so UNnatural that they do not remember what is natural to them. And when you are TOLD about it, you cannot UNDERSTAND it. The recognition of the part as whole, and of the whole in every part, is PERFECTLY natural. For it is the way GOD thinks, and what is natural to Him, IS natural to you."

"Guilt is a sure sign that your thinking is UNnatural. Perverted thinking will ALWAYS be attended with guilt, because it IS the belief in sin."

For you to become your natural self, you're going to have to stop believing anything the world says or does. That's not exactly easy if your'e used to being in false perceptions where you buy into the entire system and think it's the truth. You're quite literally stuck in hell and trying to get back to heaven. And the only way to get back there is to become heaven-like while you're in the midst of evil.

You're being PULLED in two different directions. The world is trying to pull you into hell and darkness and death. God is trying to pull you into heaven and light and happiness. The two are irreconcilable. They are totally opposite. You will have to abandon the world if you want to go home to God. You will have to turn your back on death and reject sickness and choose away from sin and guilt and fear. And most of all, you will have to learn to see yourself as the RULER of the universe, in no way a victim, and entirely equipped with the power of God.

You are not of this world. This world isn't the only world.

You are of another world, the Kingdom of God, in which you have immortality - eternal life as given by God Himself.

This world is an illusory world. It's kind of like a layer on top of reality. A pretend world, a picture, of a form and nature opposite to reality.

The things in the illusory world can appear to change, shift, grow, die, etc. But it really has no effect at all on the deeper underlying world of God. God's Kingdom is completely permanently unassailable and impenetrable and perfect forever. It is "the living world of light."

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

"Let your Guide teach you their unsubstantial nature as He leads you past them, for beneath them is a world of light whereon they cast no shadows."

What you are, as an immortal spirit, is firmly anchored in Heaven. Nothing can attack you or change you in any way.

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

For you as an immortal being, death is not possible. It's not an option. You cannot choose it to happen to your spirit. Your spirit is invulnerable.

So what is it that can ever die, or seem to die? It can't be you. A body is an illusion, part of the illusory dream world of death. Everything in the dream world is made of illusions and all illusions are the idea of the opposite of reality. Since reality is life, all illusions are the idea of death.

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

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."

So we know that every illusion, whether it appears to show up as a healthy body, or a sick body, or a dead body, or no body, or even just an environment, or a planet, is still essentially made of the idea of death. Even Earth is the idea of an opposite to God's Kingdom.

"Earth, Heaven's opposite in every way."

So from the outset, since what you are cannot die whatsoever, the things that can seem to die cannot even be who or what you are. You are spirit, not a body. You exist on an entire other level.

So really you do not need a body, it adds nothing to you, it doesn't improve you, it doesn't allow you to do things that you couldn't do already, and it only essentially was designed as a limit. It can be used in different ways, by an immortal spirit, but the body is not ever what you are.

As spirit, and being on a higher level, you have power over everything on the lower level of the illusory world. All of the world's laws are secondary and once-removed. This world is not primary reality, or the starting point of anything. It is not a cause but an effect of a higher mind's dreaming.

So this means, you on the level of Christ, have power over, total power over, everything in the world. That includes the body, it includes all states of sickness and death, it includes matter and energy, it includes all of the so-called laws of physics and biology, and in effect you have power over everything in this universe.

"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."

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

Since you have power over everything in the universe, "there is nothing my holiness cannot do", "what the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world.", you get to dictate what happens to the body. You, from a higher more vertically causal level, get to choose how to USE any aspect of this secondary world.

You can choose to use the body to attack through, which is a toxic idea which affects the body and attacks it. This produces sickness and death of the body on this level. The body then conveys the idea that being dead is the only truth.

You can choose to use the body to heal through, which is a healing idea which affects the body and heals it. This produces a picture of a healed body, an illusion of a healthy body, which then demonstrates the thought/belief that being alive is the only truth.

So your mind gets to decide whether or not the body dies. And this depends entirely on what you use the body FOR. If you use it for attack it will be attacked. If you use it to heal it becomes healed. And in its healed condition, sustained by the mind, sickness death cannot "happen" to the body against your will and your power.

"You cannot die unless you choose to do so."

"No one dies without their own consent"

"You cannot be hurt unless you hurt yourself."

"The mind being sane heals the body."

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

So in effect, you could choose to use the body for healing and to symbolize eternal life, resulting in it being healed. By the power of your mind, the body is not allowed to be in a state of sickness, yet alone physical death.

The body can be sustained indefinitely, at least in time. It can't be eternal because the mind has to constantly maintain it and it is not natural to constantly project bodies. It could stick around for a million years if the mind so chose. Aging can be reversed and halted. But eventually once the purpose of healing is fulfilled in the help of others, there is no longer a need for a body to use to reach those who dream of death. Its purpose of healing is part of the atonement plan.

"Illusions recognized must disappear"

"Eternity will shine away the world."

"A forgiven world cannot last."

"The body cannot remain without illusions."

When the entire idea of death, which the world and body is founded on, is recognized, it must disappear. When it is no longer useful for the atonement plan, and all souls have returned home, there is nothing more to keep the world intact. Nor is there any need or will to maintain it.

"A world forgiven cannot last. It was the home of bodies. But forgiveness looks past bodies. This is its holiness; this is how it heals. The world of bodies is the world of sin, for only if there were a body is sin possible. From sin comes guilt as surely as forgiveness takes all guilt away. And once all guilt is gone what more remains to keep a separated world in place? For place has gone as well, along with time. Only the body makes the world seem real, for being separate it could not remain where separation is impossible."

You don't have to automatically go towards physical death. Death is a choice made by an immortal being pretending it can die. You cannot die. "Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt." "Swear not to die, you holy son of God. You've made a bargain that you cannot keep."

"You are immortal and you cannot die. But you can confuse yourself with things that do."

There is no point choosing to make death happen when you acknowledge that you already have eternal life. What sense would it make? It would be not only futile but a completely pointless waste of time. If you knew you could NEVER die, would you CHOOSE to attempt to make death happen? That's what we do when we cause sickness and death. And if we were to never do that, would sickness or death happen?

No. Because there are no other causes of it. The only cause of death is your mind's power to choose to attack through the body. If you don't do that, the body cannot physically die or become sick.

"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 responsible for the condition of the body"

"hTe 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."

I used to have the view, like most people, that the death of the body means death, and when the body is moving around, it means life. That death is something we all want to avoid, and we want to keep bodies alive.

And then I read ACIM and I thought, okay, death is an illusion, so things aren't supposed to die, meaning that the body supposed to be kept in a state of life. I read support for the idea that a sick body represents attack, and death is failure and an attempt to be unconscious. So it makes sense to say that we should "swear not to die" and try to make the body symbolize eternal life.

But while there is some truth to this and support for it in the course, there can also be mixed in a kind of spiritualization of bodies. We might start to think that a repurposed "holy body" is full of life and totally natural. But this can also disguise an underlying desire to have the body "always be alive" and to still avoid states of death. As if bodily death is still death, and being good at avoiding it is more spiritual.

But there is a deeper teaching in the course. Things which pass for life in this world are not really life, either. And we have arbitrarily decided that certain forms or states mean death. We've decided that a dead body means death, and that moving bodies mean life. But these are really separation-based judgements, designed to take one single illusory world and split it into acceptable and unacceptable parts.

In fact, it must be an illusion that a healthy vital youthful "living" body, is in any way really different to a decrepit diseased broken dying body. Their forms present illusions that they are not the same, as a deception. Their forms are disguises designed to tempt you to believe they are not the same one thing. A decoy, so that you won't realize they are both really the same dream. "The body neither lives nor dies, because it cannot contain you who ARE life."

Jesus teaches in the course that bodies do not really live, OR die. That they are not really even remotely similar to life in heaven. Real life is immortal eternal life. A vitality and livingness of the mind, almost like an excited energy, which can spontaneously spawn new life by will alone. And any such life is permanent and lives forever in an immaculate and formless state.

So-called "life" on Earth is not like this. Bodies are inherently etremely limited and limiting. They anchor us into tiny little locations in space and time, inhibit our abilities, and make it difficult to create anything. They appear to be born and to grow and change, all of which cannot happen in reality, where life is a constant state. And then they seem to grow old and wither and die and decompose, something which is utterly unnatural with regard to life in heaven.

What Jesus really says is that so-called "life" in this world is not really life. Nor is it really death, but a dream of death. It is in fact nothing. It is nothingness, an illusion of the ABSENCE of existence (heaven), the opposite of reality. It is an unreality and a lack of either real life OR real death. Real death is impossible because it does not exist at all. So at most this world represents only illusions of living and dying, and neither of them are true.

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

"Life and death seem to be opposites because you have decided death ends life."

So in this world, "life" is an illusion of life, which is not really life. And death is an illusion of death, not really death. Because this world itself isn't really a "something", or an anything. It's actually a nothing, pretending to be a something. And in fact Jesus calls the whole thing a "dream of death" with varying degrees of death symbolized in different forms. "Without the idea of death there is no world." Even "life forms" are "forms of death".

As a Teacher of God our task is to recognize that there is NO DIFFERENCE between "living bodies" and "dead bodies", in the big picture. In truth they are just images of bodies, forms, whose appearance is temporary and symbolic at most, and which cannot really be alive or dead. Walking bodies are not really living bodies. Bodies in a morgue are not really dead bodies. In truth, they are EXACTLY the same ONE illusion, pretending to be many illusions. There is no life OR death in a world of fiction.

"They recognize that to behold a dream figure as sick and separate is no more real than to regard it as healthy and beautiful."

"But this you do not see; that you made death, and it is but illusion of an end. Death cannot be escape, because it is not life in which the problem lies."

"God made not death. Whatever form it takes must therefore be illusion."

"Even in time you cannot live apart from Him, for sleep is not death. What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die."

At first it might seem as if this means there's not much point "healing" bodies. Or trying to preserve their health. Or raising the physically dead. Or restoring broken limbs. Or any other act which might seem like it is siding with "the illusion of life" versus the illusion of death. Why try to steer bodies towards what we think of as "a living state" rather than a dead state? If all their conditions are the same one illusion, what is the point in avoiding sickness or death in any form?

The clear teaching in ACIM is that, nevertheless, even though a "healthy living" body is just as unreal as a dead one, bodies ARE symbols. And they are communicators. And their form "means" something to those who look upon it. And so the body's form can communicate something. It can communicate for example that there has been attack, or that sin has happened. But it can also communicate that attack has not happened, and therefore symbolize eternal life.

"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."

It is in fact by recognizing that bodies don't live or die, that the body is no longer "attacked" by thoughts and laws you make up to try to preserve them. When you stop trying to believe that a body is alive, or can cause sickness, or be healed, the mind in fact "heals" it, or corrects the image, removing symbolic appearances of attack and death. And now the body seems to resurrect towards "looking like life", because the mind cannot conceive of illness and ceases to project ideas of death onto it.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. 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."

A healed healthy body, even if an illusion of health, CAN symbolize eternal life in the world, CAN teach "with a power greater than a thousand tongues" that its harmlessness proves your brother's innocence, and CAN teach innocence. This is a repurposing of the FORM of the body, for a higher purpose, to USE form to symbolize actual eternal life, as best it can, rather than symbolizing the idea of attack and death. It is to this end that we aim to "heal" the body and make it be "more alive". A such, physical health comes from a healthy mind.

"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."

When we are greatly distracted by, tempted by, and lost in the world, it is hard to recognize the secret of salvation.

"The secret of salvation is but this: That YOU are doing this UNTO YOURSELF."

But the real key part of this isn't just that you are doing things to yourself, rather than it being others who do it. It's that it can ONLY BE YOU who can hurt yourself.

Jesus describes many times that you have hurt yourself. You have hurt your mind. You have attacked yourself.

"Because you had attacked yourself, and BELIEVED THAT THE ATTACK WAS EFFECTIVE, you behold yourself as weakened."

"Although you have attacked yourself, and very brutally, you will demonstrate that NOTHING HAPPENED. Therefore, by attacking, you have NOT DONE ANYTHING."

"By doing this UNCONSCIOUSLY, you try to keep the fact that you must have attacked yourself FIRST out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe."

"You HAVE attacked him, and you MUST have attacked yourself first."

It is easy to place a lot of focus on other people. On forgiving the world. On healing the body. On world events and problems. It is easy to spend a great deal of time caught up in relationships and dramas. But all of these forms of suffering are really quite far down the line in terms of what came first, and where the real power is.

What comes first happens quickly and so close to home, that it is easy to miss. YOU .... attack yourself....... BEFORE. ... the entire world happens.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

You accuse yourself FIRST. You attack your invulnerability FIRST. You try to undermine your immortality FIRST. You position yourself as afraid FIRST. You make yourself a victim FIRST. You see yourself as lacking FIRST. You condemn yourself FIRST. You accuse yourself of sin FIRST. You do everything to yourself FIRST.

THEN ..... having attacked yourself, the whole thing starts to cascade into projection and blame and dissociation and denial and displacement and various other ways to "disown" responsibility for what you have done to yourself.

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

It then becomes possible to become confused as to WHO did this to you. You deny that you did it to you. You pretend that someone else did it to you. You shift the responsibility. You hide from your own self attack. You don't want to look at the fact that YOU are trying to self destruct. All self attack is an attempt to kill God's son - which is YOU - which is suicide. And eventually this results in suffering, sickness, and death, ALL OF WHICH are self inflicted.

"It means that you cannot be hurt, and do not want to show your brother anything except your wholeness." "YOU CAN BUT HURT YOURSELF. This has been oft repeated, but is difficult to grasp as yet."

"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."

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

This doesn't have ANYTHING to do with anyone else, or the body, or the world, or spacetime. It's entirely to do with. ... do you love yourself or not? Do you accept and live in your IMMORTAL nature which is given by God, or do you DENY that you are immortal and TRY to make yourself mortal? The only ambition of trying not to be mortal, is that you try to destroy (kill) yourself. But since your immortal self cannot die, you confuse yourself with a body and kill it instead, as a representation of yourself dying.

"If to love oneself is to HEAL oneself, those who are sick do NOT love themselves"

"Yet you CANNOT crucify God's Son, for the Will of God cannot die"

"What He created can sleep, but it CANNOT die. Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

The attack upon YOURSELF, is all the only problem. You thinking that you attack others, is YOUR problem of being confused, and you are mistaken. You thinking that others attack you, is you being confused, and you are mistaken. NO ONE has ever attacked you against your will. You have never suffered against your will. You have never been sick against your will. You have never died against your will.

"Would you not rather live than choose to die?"

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

Salvation, and the secret of salvation, is simply that ANYTHING you experience other than immortality, YOU are doing to yourself. You are the SOLE cause of it. There are no external causes of suffering. There are no external causes of sickness or death. "There are no accidents in salvation." Nothing in the world can do ANYTHING to you against your will. No one can vioalte you or offend you or hurt you against your will. You CANNOT BE A VICTIM unless you deliberately decide to be one.

So this really has nothing at all to do with anyone else. It is entirely to do with .... are you going to forgive yourself, or not? Are you going to love yourself, or not? There is another subtle part to this though. Your soul and your mind are two different things. Your soul is your self, your identity in christ. But your mind is a medium that your soul uses for expression. Your soul does NOT need salvation because it is permanently immortal. It has never been attacked and never will. But your MIND is confused and HAS tried to hurt itself. It DOES need "healing" or correction.

This means that, even your own self attack, even your mind's efforts to destroy you, even your belief in sin and evil, even your death wish, in truth has NO EFFECT on your immortal soul. Nothing changes about the truth of you. Even your self induced suffering is not REAL suffering. Even your self inflicted pain is not real pain. And as you try to kill yourself off, you as the son of God is totally unaffected.

This means that EVEN IF you attack yourself, you are not REALLY attacking yourself. You have not REALLY ever done anything to yourself. "I am still as God created me."

Recognize first that ALL attack is SELF attack. This is not easy when you have slipped down the slipper slope into projection. It has to all come back to YOU being totally responsible for sin. BUT, you must not stop at being responsible for sin because it is not real. You need swift correction, so that you will recognize you HAVE NOT even sinned against yourself. You must admit that YOU are the ONLY cause of ALL your suffering, and decide to STOP HURTING YOURSELF. And then you can receive healing.

This simple truth, that YOU are the only one hurting yourself, and YOU can decide to love yourself instead. .. is the CORE of A Course in Miracles. Once you love yourself, or. .. seek first the Kingdom of God (which is you) .... your way will be made straight. Everythign else will fall into line naturally, including performing miracles, healing the body, and undoing the world.

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

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son."

"It can be but myself I crucify."

All that I do I do unto myself.

If I attack, I suffer. But if I

forgive, salvation will be given me."

"As prayer is always for yourself, so is forgiveness given you. It is impossible to forgive another, for it is only your sins you see in him."

"I repeat again that if you ATTACK error, you will hurt yourself."

"To see a body as anything EXCEPT a means of pure extension is to limit your mind and HURT YOURSELF."

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

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

"When he thinks that he is hurt in any way, it is because he has forgotten who he is, and that he is as You created him." "If ever I am sad or hurt or ill, I have forgotten what You think, and put my little, meaningless ideas in place of where Your Thoughts belong, and where They are. I can be hurt by nothing but my thoughts."

"I will not hurt myself today."

"His thoughts can frighten him, but since these thoughts belong to him alone, he has the power to change them, and exchange each fear thought for a happy thought of love. He crucified himself. Yet God has planned that His beloved Son will be redeemed."

"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."

It may not be obvious, but A Course In Miracles is basically trying to get you out of a state of mortality, into a state of immortality. Think about all the ways that it does this.

That you are not at the effect of the world.

That nothing in the world causes you or brings oppression or makes you sick or afraid.

That you have the power to dominate everything you see.

That your body has no power over the mind and mind is stronger than the body.

That in the rusurrecetion you overcome death entirely.

That all forms of suffering are forms of mortality/death.

That you are to dis-identify from being an illusion such as believing in the body or the world.

The fact you are at home in God, immortal and permanent, merely having a dream of death.

The teaching that your attack thoughts attack your invulnerability, that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts, and that without attack thoughts you are invulnerable.

The secret of salvation, that you realize you are doing everything to yourself, have made a wrong decision which caused you to not be at peace, and now you want to choose immortality again.

The application of forgiveness which is the same thing as atonement and true perception and salvation and resurrection, nothing short of overcoming death and becoming absolutely transcendent of all suffering.

"Swear not to die, you holy Son of God", clearly indicates that you as an immortal child of God should never be choosing death, which means never choosing mortality. Which means claiming your immortality.

"Sickness is an attempt to prove you can be hurt", the entire teaching about what you use the body for, that death is a choice and you cannot die unless you choose to, and the use of the body to demonstrate your brother’s innocence or sinfulness, is all geared towards you acting like an immortal being not a suffering sinner.

Every single aspect of the Course is geared not merely towards you becoming peaceful and dying, or happier but sick, but in fact is aimed at taking you totally beyond all forms of suffering, death, sickness, unhappiness and vulnerability of every kind. To never again be affected by anything. Nothing short of immortality. Never again to suffer, never again to die.

This is the central core of the course. "There is no death, the Son of God is...." IMMORTAL!

Every lesson, every quote, every paragraph, is all speaking to the vast collage of illusions we have invented to try to PRETEND to be mortal in a dream of death. To pretend it is possible to die. To make-believe things that seem to crumble, decay, erode and end. An entire fiction of a world that seems to come and go, having beginnings and endings which clearly are not eternal.

"The world you see is an illusion of a world, God did not create it, for what He creates MUST BE ETERNAL as himself."

It’s not merely a matter of whether the world is real, it obviously cannot be because nothing in it has immortality. It is a dream of death, and there really is no world.

This is all over the course. Immortality, invulnerability, not being affected, permanence, peace that lasts forever, God’s creations and minds carrying on uninterrupted forever, nothing being able to attack or sin against God/reality, nothing real being affected, the Son of God being beyond death, it all points to IMMORTALITY being your totally natural state of being.

"You cannot die, but you can confuse yourself with things that do."

This is also why "the body cannot contain you who are life". It’s also why "God cannot enter a body, nor can you join him there." This is why God’s Kingdom is an IMMORTAL LIVING FOREVER WORLD OF LIGHT.

Any time we entertain ideas of suffering, sickness, death, fear, being affected, caused, threatened, anything that suggests or even hints at us not being invulnerable and immortal, we are "playing dead". Any time we take illusions of attack, vulnerability, suffering, or any kind of non-immortal activity seriously, we are believing we are NOT immortal. And we believe this about others too when we fear for their life. That condemns us both to death, or at least tries to. No-one can really die!

Because your are immortal, you ARE still as God created you. God did not create you capable of death. Or sin. Or attack. OR murder. You cannot do any of these things in reality. So you DREAM of being in a world where all FALSE things are possible, where IMPOSSBILITIES seem possible, where everything is subject to attack and impermanence, and where death seems to strike at every thing that moves. An entire fantasy world that runs against every law of God and opposes His Will, trying to prove His children can die.

"The laws of this world go against your nature." This world goes against your IMMORTALITY.Your natural condition is to live utterly free of all attack, impervious to all suffering, incapable of death, incapable of unhappiness, and absolutely permanent in all your ways. Absolutely incapable of being attacked ever! You are not RELATIVE to life, you are ABSOLUTELY ALIVE. Forever. Nothing can affect you against your will unless YOU WILL TO BE AFFECTED. And then you are FAKING IT, because your immortality CANNOT be affected. All sickness, suffering and death is FAKE. A huge lie.

You are as permanent as God. Any attempt to believe, perceive, suggest, portray, act, think, or live otherwise, is a denial of your immortality. It’s an attempt to make believe that you are not immortal and that you can suffer. And every single form of non-immortality or vulnerability is a self-chosen, self-inflicted attack and an attempt to prove you are not immortal. And because all such attempts to change your unchangeability can never work, they are absolutely futile make-believe.

Death is futile. It has no causal effect whatsoever upon the Son of God. It does not work. Everything you are doing to make yourself suffer is a waste of time. It has no effect on your immortal spirit. And you are only your immortal spirit. Every single way that you pretend to be afraid, sick, suffering and dead, is absolutely 100% chosen by you as part of your attempt to ACT AS IF YOU CAN DIE. It’s an attempt to prove death is real and happening to you. How can death happen to someone who is IMORTAL? How can an immortal being be SICK or suffer or even unhappy in any way, thinking that something can disturb its permanent peace?

Potent questions to ask oneself:

1) Am I using this to pretend to not be immortal?

2) Why am I trying to prove I am not immortal?

3) Why am I believing that my immortality can be affected by this?

4) Does this have any power whatsoever to change what God created?

5) Why am I lying by pretending I can suffer?

6) Why am I denying that I cannot be affected by anything?

You are an immortal being, temporarily hanging out in a dream world where everything is an illusion of mortality. A world of death is obviously not the natural environment for a being of eternal life.

Yet the body can become a sign of life to those grown tired of the fetid stench of death. It can become a symbol of immortality, representing eternal life. Through its loveliness and health it can teach by demonstration with a power greater than a thousand tongues that there has been no attack, no vulnerability, no damage, no mark of sin, no evidence or proof of viciousness and no sign of evil effects. It can represent wholeness and healing and innocence and invulnerability, and thus teach this to everyone.

To awaken fully is nothing short of waking up to immortality, to eternal life in Heaven, the end of all sickness and death, the cancellation of sin and guilt, and a return to unlimited permanence. It requires the end of the body, which is nothing. "Indeed, you cannot remain in this world, with this knowledge."

NOTHING REAL CAN BE THREATENED, because it is immortal! YOU are real. You cannot be threatened! You are totally permanently alive. Forever and ever. Why do you believe you can or have been affected by anything or anyone ever? You have done nothing but attack your own inherent invulnerability, trying to pretend you can suffer. Isn’t it time to own up to being immortal?

Often it is thought the Holy Spirit merely represents a state of right mindedness. As if to say, he is sitting on a cloud as "the truth" and inviting you to join him. This then suggests that if you will take certain steps in his direction, you'll eventually meet with him and share dinner.

Perhaps he might send you a little message, a hi-how-are-ya from above the clouds. Maybe you'll get a little inspiration or thought that points you in a new intuitive direction. Or maybe even a vision or feeling. But this is by no means the extent of the Holy Spirit's power.

"The Holy Spirit will undo all the consequences of my wrong decision if I will let Him."

"What the Holy Spirit enables you to do is clearly not of this world."

"The Holy Spirit is the mechanism of miracles."

The Holy Spirit meets you wherever you are at, uses whatever communication you are able to trust and feel safe with, and can relate to you even in your darkness. Even in the midst of ego, suffering, sickness and despair, the Holy Spirit is there. He knows everything you are experiencing and why.

But He goes beyond this. He is literally capable of reaching down into your illusions, into your mind AND body, and can ALTER the physical, emotional and mental conditions that you have produced as a result of your wrong decision. He can correct physical sickness. He can move mountains. He is unlimited in His ability to express God's power.

So we need to open up to this idea, that moving towards God isn't just about you figuring things out with your ego, or saying the right words, or having the right thoughts. It's not just about removing some blocks to awareness so that you will ACCESS the Holy Spirit's state of mind. By all means that is the long-term goal, so that you can become miracle minded. But before that, you can benefit from the HELP of the Holy Spirit, where you are.

This means, the Holy Spirit can literally do FOR YOU, of His own power and will, that which you CANNOT do. He can reach into your body and reverse sickness. He can remove symptoms. He can heal anything at any level. He can heal your mind. He can remind you of what you are. He can undo ALL OF THE CONSEQUENCES of your wrong decisions. Even your most heinous ego decisions which led to all kinds of manifestations, symptoms, effects and problems, can ALL be undone BY the Holy Spirit, IF you will let Him.

And in this undoing, there is very little that is asked of you. In fact, all that this requires is a LITTLE WILLINGNESS. It also requires the development of some trust, because naturally if you are about to expose yourself to a supernatural POWER, and are wanting to have this power do something seemingly "to you", even at a physical level, manipulating your body FROM SPIRIT, you're going to have to develop some trust and comfort with that. And if this idea of a spirit being coming into your body and doing stuff on its own, with your permission, seems freaky, it may take some time to develop this. If the idea of a discarnate spiritual entity operating on you is frightening, you do NOT really have the trust yet. And so trust is needed.

Trust can be developed not by your proficiency with ACIM or with mind correction or anything that you necessarily do yourself. It is developed by SURRENDERING CONTROL. This means surrendering ego, giving up fighting, dropping special relationships, being WILLING to let go of a position of victimhood, relinquishing control over events and essentially just letting go of everything.

This letting go of ego, allows you to OPEN UP TO the Holy Spirit. It means you are being WILLING, because now you're saying, I am here, do whatever you want to me. It means I will not stand in the way, I will not try to control things, I will not resist, I will relax, I will allow, I will trust, and I will let you do this for me, through me. You have to make ROOM for Him. You have to give him PERMISSION. Because this is a matter of free will. He cannot help in areas that you are not willing to allow him. Your free will determines how open you are.

A willingness to move in the direction of forgiveness, is an invitation to Him. A willingness to admit to being mistaken. A willingness to drop the ego war. A willingness to consider your brother is not guilty. A willingness to WANT HELP, genuinely, without fear, in such a way that you actually are willing to receive it. If there is fear, the fear says NO. The fear says stay away. It says I don't want that. You have to therefore move away from fear of the Holy Spirit, into TRUST of the Holy Spirit. This is what the whole process of awakening is really about - stopping trusting the ego and learning to deeply trust the Holy Spirit.

If you trust YOURSELF, if you trust YOUR ego, your mental ability, your intellect, your strength, your figuring out, your understanding and learning, your doing it all alone, you are NOT asking for help. You are saying you don't need help, you can do it yourself. You have to admit that you CANNOT do this yourself. You have to fail, at doing it yourself. You sometimes may even have to hit a wall of destruction and suffering before you're going to be WILLING to seek a better way, to admit you simply CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS on your own, and to reach out for genuine help.

Until your dependence and reliance on yourself is brought into question, you will not be willing to be open to the Holy Spirit. Fear of what He might do to you "against your will" will keep him away. Love does not enter where it is not welcome, and love and fear are incompatible. Miracles cannot be performed in a spirit of doubt and fear. TRUST is absolutely essential, and that means throwing up your hands in a moment of surrender, waving your white flag, admitting you can't do this, and therefore being ready to LET HIM. To let go and let God.

It is then that He can be received. You are inviting Him in with your trust. You are allowing Him. You are experimenting with this relationship. Will you let Him in a little more? Will you let Him heal something in you? Will you invite Him to come into your body and do something to it, while you watch on the sidelines, so that you can learn it is safe? Will you really let Him into you? And even further, will you let Him work TROUGH you for others?

The Holy Spirit is EAGER to help everyone in this way. To help you recognize, you do not NEED to do this all on your own. He is fully present, willing, and able, to heal you FOR you. To reach down from above, scoop you up, and raise you up to a higher state of healing and wholeness. He is a Mighty Companion, there to HELP. He's not just some long-distance romance who sends you love letters.

He wants to get in your face and express through you. He wants to use your body. He wants to turn your body into a picture of eternal life so that it can symbolize immortality in the dream, to demonstrate to those grown tired of the fetid stench of death, and with a power greater than a thousand tongues, that there IS NO SIN and there is NO PROOF. The symptoms are gone, the suffering is gone, because of Him. Not because of mental gymnastics, not because of our prowess at thinking course thoughts, but because we LET HIM IN and HE SAVED US from ourselves. With our permission of course.

As Jesus says do not place a limit on what he can do through you or you place a limit on what he can do FOR you. FOR YOU. Means, HE DOES IT, not you. He does something TO you, FOR you, on your behalf. "Miracles are intercessions, they intercede for your holiness." You need an intervention! DIVINE INTERVENTION. You are not alone and God has sent POWERFUL HELP. USE it, allow it, let it do its thing.

This isn't all about being an amazing student or an amazing thinker or speaker. It's about surrendering the ego, TRUSTING God, DEPENDING ON God, and letting yourself BE HELPED. To receive love and healing, the likes of which you have NO IDEA how it works. You do not understand miracles. He does. Get some help! Going to the atonement isn't a lonely wandering journey like some kind of heroic quest. Help arrives, LONG BEFORE you get there. God has sent His angels. Use them. God has sent the Holy Spirit to HEAL YOU. This is HIS FUNCTION. Until you have allowed him to heal you, you cannot SHARE His function. And if you try to "heal yourself alone", you will fail.

"Fear not the Holy Spirit will fail in what your Father has given Him to do. THE WILL OF GOD CAN FAIL IN NOTHING."

"The Holy Spirit is the ONLY therapist."

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

The Holy Spirit is here, with you, right now. Waiting for you to say, come in, heal me, I accept you, i receive you, heal me, love me, I trust you, I allow you, I receive God's healing love, I surrender, I let go, I relax, come Holy Spirit, come into me, heal me. I trust you.

"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."

When your mind is filled with love, it projects a perfectly healed body, free of pain, symptoms of sickness, suffering, damage of any kind. And it especially does not produce death. This healthy body is a symbol in the dream, pointing towards innocence and representing a sign that attack has not occurred. It teaches anyone who looks upon it that they must be innocent, because the absence of harm of any kind in this body image proves their sins have not produced effects. This weakens your brother's belief in his own sinfulness and facilitates healing.

"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."

When your mind is not filled with love, you are unloving towards yourself and towards your brother simultaneously. This attack is an attempt to create a gap of separation that comes between you. The body itself represents this gap and symbolizes the attack. It is the wall that you use to try to demonstrate that you are separate, as a separation device.

Having used the body for attack, the body itself now depicts your attitude towards yourself and others, which is a sick attitude of attack, thus showing up as what the world terms sickness, symptoms, damage and physical suffering. This body image now symbolizes death, and it does not point towards or represent innocence and life any more. It instead points away from it and accuses your brother of having produced effects in you, proving to him that he must be a sinner. This strengthens his belief that he is a sinner and imprisons him further, rather than healing him. It is an attack.

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The god of sickness obviously demands the denial of health, because health is in direct opposition to its own survival."

In order to thereby exonerate both your brother and yourself, and to prove and demonstrate with absolute conviction that forgiveness has truly occurred, in which there is no sin and therefore no effects of attack, the effects themselves must be removed from the body. The body HAS TO BE HEALED. It must be restored to a condition that it was in prior to the attack, and it must only teach and symbolize life and innocence.

If it is kept with conditions of sickness or damage or broken malfunctioning parts, the body remains an accuser. And because the body is proving and teaching and symbolizing sin and attack, it proves that your mind is not TRULY forgiving your brother and yourself. If you were to truly be healed, on the mental level, your body would be healed also.

"The mind, being sane, heals the body."

"A broken body is PROOF the mind has NOT been healed."

The fact is that if sickness or damage remain in the body "after forgiveness", the mind DID NOT complete the forgiveness. The forgiveness MUST bring healing to the body image also, so that it can symbolize and teach and depict a representation of, and point towards, innocence, harmlessness, healing and wholeness. If the body stays damaged, it continues to teach your brother of his sinfulness and does not heal him, and therefore proves that you also are not healed.

"Forgiveness is not real UNLESS it brings a healing 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."

"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."

The final result of forgiveness MUST BE that not only is your brother's mind healed, AND his body is healed of anything you did to him, but also that your mind is healed, AND your body is healed of anything you did to it. Until that occurs, forgiveness has not been completed and the mind is still sick.

"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."

"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."

If you do not PROVE that your BELIEVE that health and wholeness and healing and life and harmlessnes are the ONLY TRUTH, and you fail to DEMONSTRATE it with your body, by healing the body of all signs and symptoms of sickness, all disease, all damage, then your belief is UNATTESTED and WITHOUT CONVICTION. You have not put your money where your mouth is and you are lying, because the only way for the body to BE in a state of sickness if for you to MAINTAIN ATTACK, without which the body could not stay sick. The body MUST be healed in order for your mind's healing to be complete, because they are intimately related.

"Health (physical health) 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."

When the body is healed and is no longer sick, it now COMPELS BELIEF in another that they must be innocent. It has a healing, teaching power. It is a demonstration of miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this."

The signs of accusation and blame are the physical symptoms. They will be taken away by the Holy Spirit, if you will let him. So that he can restore the body to the picture that HE WANTS IT TO SHOW, to teach the healing that HE wants to use it to teach. The picture of innocence. The picture of immortality.

"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."

This is what you must USE the body for, within this dream, WHILE you have one, before you disappear off to awareness of Heaven. When you are a teacher of God, fulfilling a function of "awareness of dreaming", and using the body only for communication (which is healing), the body must be healed and it must not show any sign of damage or attack or effects or consequences of sin or guilt in any way. To do so is an attempt to teach two things at once: 1) healing is true, 2) attack is true. And through such a demonstration no-one can learn anything because it is contradictory. The body is now showing a different PROOF than the person is CLAIMING.

"No-one is healed through double messages. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

Jesus is black and white about this. Either you heal TOTALLY on ALL LEVELS - mind, emotions, body, OR the healing is not complete.

Sick bodies and dead bodies are not part of the aim of A Course in Miracles and are not something that Teachers of God are supposed to teach or demonstrate to others, or themselves. You are only to demonstrate symbols of LIFE and immortality through the body, so that it can become a sign of life and a witness and testimony to healing and harmlessness. Sickness and death of the body are a failure to accomplish this, and a dream of death cannot be left by death only by truth, which is first approached through mental and physical health. The happy dream must entail a healed body as well as a healed mind, not merely a state of mental "transcendence" of sickness that keeps the body sick and continues to teach death.

"Only the mind and body need atonement."

"We said before that the purpose of the Resurrection was to "demonstrate that no amount of misperception has any influence at all on a Son of God." This demonstration EXONERATES those who misperceive, by establishing beyond doubt that they have NOT hurt anyone."

Summarized in this classic statement - the CENTRAL LESSON, 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. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy.God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is.He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

Oneness and sickness cannot coexist."

And this classic from "sickness is a defense against the truth":

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

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. Give instant remedy, should this occur, by not allowing your defensiveness to hurt you longer."

The body is a symbol. It teaches either healing and life, or it teaches attack and death.

The body symbolizes and represents the attitude of the MIND that is using the body. The body is a SYMBOLIC MESSAGE.

When the mind is loving, its message is love and healing. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as healed, whole, unharmed, free from attack or pain, devoid of all suffering, functioning perfectly, flawless and immaculate, free from all forms of sickness.

When the mind is not loving, its message is attack and death. The body TAKES ON THE FORM of this, by showing up as damaged, broken, attacked, defective, malfunctioning, hurt, diseased, infectious, half-dead and eventually fully dead.

Whatever comes THROUGH your body FROM your mind, CHANGES your body's form. Your body, as a FORM, takes on a form that represents the message. Healed minds automatically result in bodies showing up in a healed configuration. Attacking minds see themselves as vulnerable victims, project this onto the body, attack the body, and thus make it sick.

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body."

It's not possible to USE the body for a purpose beyond the body, WITHOUT having an attitude about the body ITSELF. If your attitude toward your brother is love, through the body, the body ITSELF will be loved. And being loved it will be healed. If your attitude toward your brother is attack, through the body, the body ITSELF will also be attacked, and it will show up as sick and damaged.

Bodies do not choose their own condition. The condition of the body is NOT determined OR caused by ANTHING in the world.

"The mind makes this decision as it makes ALL decisions responsible for the condition of the body."

"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."

Nothing in the world can injure you. Nothing in the world can CAUSE death. Nothing in the world can make the body sick. Nothing in the world has ANY POWER OVER your body because YOUR MIND has total power OVER your body.

"That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind proves the mind must be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this."

Your mind's decision and attitude is the SOLE CAUSAL POWER determining the health or sickness of your body. When your mind is loving, your body becomes lovely and healed. When your mind is attacking, your body becomes sick and dead. This is LAW. There are no exceptions.

The reason it is law is simple. It's all based on cause and effect. When you are CAUSAL, you simply do not regard yourself as "effect", so you don't PERCEIVE yourself BEING affected or "at the effect of" anything else. Not seeing yourself as a weak vulnerable attacked victim, you simply do not radiate this through the body, and the body is HEALED by your forgiving attitude.

"Now is the body healed by miracles."

"Being sane, the mind heals the body because it has been healed. The sane mind cannot conceive of illness because it cannot conceive of attacking anyone or anything."

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

When your mind sees itself as EFFECT, not cause, its entire attitude and approach to itself and others and to the body changes. It now sees itself as CAUSED from the OUTSIDE IN. This is experienced as being attacked, as being WILLED AGAINST, and as being CHANGED against your will by others.

This automatically sets up a situation where you now perceive that all your brothers are SINNING against you, CAUSING you, HURTING you, affecting you against your will. This is really your own mind at war with itself and split in its ambitions. But you PROJECT SIN onto your brother BY HURTING YOUR BODY, so that you have a way to SHOW HIM that he has affected you.

What happens here is simple. Your mind, manufactures attack, projects it onto your body, MAKES YOUR BODY SICK, by believing it is AT THE EFFECT of your brother, who is simultaneously ACCUSED BY THE BODY, of making you AFFECTED. Seeing cause in him rather than in yourself, your mind INVENTS EFFECTS that come FROM his causality, and holds them in place, as judgement upon your brother, so that HE IS RESPONSIBLE for your health.

You either can believe and experience that YOU are responsible for the body's health, OR that OTHERS are responsible for YOUR body's health. These are your only options. If you choose to believe your body is NOT caused by you, you MUST believe it is caused by someone ELSE. And THEY now stand ACCUSED, responsible, sinful, for causing your body's condition "against your will." And in this belief your body WILL be sick because YOU are attacking.

Sickness in the body now becomes PROOF OF SIN. It forms what Jesus calls "a picture of crucifixion." You HOLD this picture in front of your brother's physical eyes so that he deliberately SEES IT, SO THAT he stands accused. By the mere fact that your body HAS a physical malfunction, damaged, harm, disease etc, IT IS ACCUSING HIM.

It does not matter what you THINK your mental state is. It does not matter how much you claim to be at peace. It does not matter how much you think you have forgiven him. The ONLY WAY your body BECOMES sick, the only way it STAYS sick, and the only way its sickness is NOT OVERRIDDEN by another cause, is by YOUR MIND NOT BEING HEALED.

This is why "damaged bodies REMAIN ACCUSERS."

Doesn't matter who you are or how advanced you think you are in the course. IF the physical body still shows up as damaged, somewhree in your MIND there is an UNFORGIVENESS. And there is STILL A DEFENSE against the truth. Because sickness is ALWAYS held in place by DEFENSES against God and therefore against love. Loving minds do not have sick bodies.

"If they loved themselves they would heal themselves."

"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 brother's 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 your brother AND yourself*** (this includes BOTH YOUR BODIES!). 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."

Realize this. Jesus here is literally saying that if you RETAIN THE PROOF OF SIN in the physical body, if the body is still damaged and sick, IT IS STILL accusing your brother, and YOU HAVE NOT made forgiveness real. You are not done with forgiveness if the physical body has any TRACE of attack in it. And when it DOES NOT have a trace of attack in it, it now serves a higher purpose.

"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."

Jesus actually is stating here that your PHYSICAL BODY has something to do with whether or not you are accusing your brother or sin or whether you are finding him innocent. That's because PROJECTION makes your body sick as part of the accusation process! You must PHYSICALLY FORGIVE HIM and PHYSICALLY RESURRECT and PHYSICALLY HEAL, otherwise your psychological condition CANNOT be one of healing and love.

"Only the mind AND body need atonement."

"Show THIS unto your brother, who will see that ***every scar is healed*** (that's PHYSICAL HEALING!), and every tear is wiped away in laughter and in love. And he will look on his forgiveness there (with physical eyes), and with healed eyes will look BEYOND it, to the innocence that he beholds in you (symbolized in the body). 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."

In order for his madness to have had NO EFFECTS of any kind, and if his madness was stabbing your body 50 times with a knife, it is your responsibility through forgiveness to REMOVE ALL THE KNIFE WOUNDS, otherwise there is still proof of sin and accusation. He MUST be able to look at a HEALED BODY, in order to TRULY BELIEVE that he no longer stands accused. If the EVIDENCE remains, he is STILL BEING ACCUSED. His sin is PROVEN by it.

Just the mere FACT that there is STILL DAMAGE TO BE SEEN, that you can point a finger at, PROVES THAT SIN HAPPENED. You cannot CLAIM to have forgiven him WHILE STILL showing him a picture of PROOF that HE DID IT. If the body PROVES, SHOWS, DEMONSTRATES FOR ALL TO SEE, that "there was an attack", forgiveness is NOT complete and your mind IS NOT HEALED.

"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 body's HEALTH AND LOVELINESS will EXONERATE your brother and PHYSICALLY PROVE he is not a sinner.

While we have bodies, this is what we have to do. WE can't just pretend it does not matter. HERE, among others who look upon our body image, IT matters, because our body is a teaching device, and it IS THE MESSAGE. It takes on the form symbolizing the message. Messages of attack show up as sick bodies. Messages of healing and love show up as PHYSICAL HEALTH.

"Sick bodies remain accusers".

Healed bodies remain HEALERS.

YOUR PHYSICAL HEALTH has an effect on your brother's MENTAL HEALTH.

"Attest his innocence and NOT his guilt. ***YOUR healing is his comfort and HIS health.*** BECAUSE it proves illusions were not true."

"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."

You must show him through your physical healing that HE DID NOT ATTACK YOU. You must undo the wounds.

"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."

Your mental AND physical healing SAVES HIM PAIN.

"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."

This is important. A POWER greater than a thousand tongues. The body, showing your brother HIS innocence, by way of ITS healed condition. A POWERFUL TEACHING DEVICE! He is convinced of his innocence when he sees YOUR INNOCENT BODY, because this MUST MEAN he has never attacked you, and so he is HEALED BY this recognition of your PHYSICAL HEALTH. He is healed ALONG WITH YOU.

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone." In the separation from God, we rejected the meaning of divine order and replaced it with meaningless chaos. Through separation and fragmentation, there was no longer a single truth shared by everyone. Instead, everyone believed their own truth, and now everyone was in conflict.

In a state of fundamental disagreement, this gave rise to an entire seeming universe, or system of thought, in which conflict, clashes, wars, disagreement, argument, inequality, domination, submission, tyranny, attack, fighting, selfishness, hoarding, scarcity, and all manner of separation became commonplace.

This also expressed as the world itself, on a physical level, in terms of the seeming laws of physics and of space and time, which are utterly opposed to the divine laws of God. This produced an environment in which every particle of matter is at odds with every other, all things are different, kept apart, and in conflict, and where one thing can seem to destroy another. In a world without divine order, "senseless laws" seem to govern it.

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

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

"The laws of God work only for your good, and there ARE no other laws beside His. Everything else is merely lawLESS, and therefore chaotic. But God Himself has protected EVERYTHING He created BY His laws. Therefore, everything that is not under them does not exist."

In a chaotic world, the most random-seeming things can happen. They appear to happen without the involvement of any kind of will or mind. Seemingly without the participation or attention of anyone. As if the world is simply on some kind of autopilot, allowing for things to happen which make no sense, for no useful purpose, and producing effects which appear completely random and unintended.

As such "accidents" seem to arise and we enter into a realm of "bad luck", where coincidence seems possible and shit can just seemingly happen "by chance." Physical objects and their interactions seem to trigger a cascading chain of effects, as rocks tumble from a mountain, as people slip on banana peels, as decay sets in, as random wind finally blows the roof off, as meteorites happen to strike a person's body, as the weather happens to be worse, as sick bodies seem to take a turn for the worse, and as you just happened to step on a specific piece of dog shit today.

We think this world is normal and natural but it is completely devoid of divine order and meaning. Utter nonsense can transpire for no good reason. Things can seem to happen, unfortunate events, strange twists of fate, odd unlikelihoods transpire, trees fall on cars, rotten wood crumbles, a person steps on a nail which was left behind 50 years ago, there isn't quite enough energy to keep the phone running to capture that UFO in the sky, and someone's wheel falls off because the bolts on the hub were just slightly loose enough today.

When you look at all the stupid stuff that happens in the world, all the dangers and pitfalls and strange occurrences and injuries and houses falling on people's heads and so on, most of it really boils down to a seemingly lifeless environment, run by chaotic laws. Unfair, mean, cruel laws, where animals starve because they get stuck in a hole between some rocks. Laws which seem to be consistent and make sense, but which are founded on the complete absence of love and belonging and harmlessness and wholeness.

In a way, most of what transpires is "forgiveable" in the sense that, most of it is just the laws of physics playing out, as if it's not "personal". We might yell at the door for slamming on us, but it was just the physics in the hinges and the weight of gravity. We might be annoyed at the handle falling off the saucepan but it was just the rust setting in to corrode the metal. We might stub our toe and swear at the little bump in the sidewalk, but it's just an arrangement of matter sitting there. It isn't transpiring against you, as such, it's just ticking over like a mindless dead program, like some kind of debris that's just left behind from centuries of pointless events.

The world really is kind of like a dead world, a graveyard in which "stuff" just sits around doing next to nothing, until it is disturbed slightly, and seeming forces and energies collude into the mix, resulting in seeming new effects. And now the rock falls on your head and the tree crashes into the car and the tornado throws a random cow through your window.

And then the little stone tumbles off the hill, and bounces off the recently grown leaf, and hits you on the head as you just happen to walk past. All seemingly totally at random. In a world where everything seems to be utterly chaotic, pointless, senseless, meaningless, purposeless, without divine design, orderless and lifeless. Where the dust comprised of the dead corpses of skin cells clog your nose and triggers and chemical reaction.

In heaven there are no such accidents, no things which happen in chain reactions of random collisions. There is no chance or bad luck or probability or likelihoods. There is no unintended consequence, or lifeless discarded piles of trash, or little objects that sit around waiting to be victimized by external forces, or giant "natural disasters" that bring totally arbitrary suffering and completely unpredictable chaos to all concerned. Where who survives and who does not depends on whether a particular piece of wood floats past at the right time.

The world is like an old trash heap where all manner of garbage has just been collected together and piled up, and now the pile is unstable and it topples over, and once in a while just enough gravity affects something to cause a sudden shift, and a landslide begins as particular specific items are involved and others left out, falling and plummeting to their new doom, until they settle and are stifled and end up in a new meaningless ugly formation of rotten stench.

This is the world we made. This is the opposition to heaven and to the divine order. This is how we wanted our life to be - dangerous and victimizing and unfair. And now most of our lives we spend trying to navigate through an obstacle course, barricades on a battlefield, with pokey nails sticking out and nasty sharp corners and little annoying things that just keep breaking and stuff that wears out and even your tangled shoelaces transpire against you.

The entire world has taken shape as an unpleasant and seemingly dangerous, unstable, and untrustworthy torture chamber, just to piss you off on a Monday and to reach out of the blue with its sudden breakdowns. Most of us then spend most of our lives trying to just "manage" to "survive" in such a strange and meaningless environment, angered when the laws of physics dictate that something else random and badly timed happens, trying to keep our frail bodies from being affected, and trying to scrape by unscathed in what effectively is a harsh and unnatural environment.

"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. Not one tree left standing still will shelter you. Not one illusion of protection stands against the faith in murder. Here stands the body, torn between the natural desire to communicate, and the unnatural intent to murder and to die."

Battlefields are places for thorns and spikes and bombs and armies. We have to find a way to rise above and out of the chaos if we are to reconnect with order, with peace and with divine order. There is no peace to be found amongst the twisted thorns and sharp corners of a meaningless world. Only the reality of Heaven offers a safe and meaningful home. And no-one can experience a sense of holy protection while standing on a landmine, which may or may not take them with it.

"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 he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying"

"A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."

"You still could not will against Him, and that is why you have no control over the world you made. It is NOT a world of will, because it is governed by the desire to be unlike Him. And this desire IS NOT WILL. 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."

"The first chaotic law is that the truth is different for everyone. Like all these principles, this one maintains that each is separate, and has a different set of thoughts which SETS HIM OFF from others. This principle evolves from the belief there is a hierarchy of illusions; some are MORE valuable, and THEREFORE true. And each establishes this FOR HIMSELF, and MAKES it true by his attack on what another values. This is justified BECAUSE the values differ. And those who hold them SEEM to be unlike, and THEREFORE enemies."

""Laws of chaos" are meaningless, by definition. Creation is perfectly lawful, and the chaotic is without meaning, BECAUSE IT IS WITHOUT GOD. You have given your peace to the gods you made, but they are not there to take it FROM you, and you are NOT able to give it TO them. You are NOT free to give up freedom, but only to DENY it. YOU CANNOT DO WHAT GOD DID NOT INTEND, because what He did not intend DOES NOT HAPPEN. Your gods do not BRING chaos; you are ENDOWING them with chaos, and accepting it OF them."

""I am upset because I see a meaningless world." Insane thoughts are upsetting, and They produce a world in which there is no order anywhere. Only chaos rules a world which represents chaotic thinking, and chaos has no laws. I cannot live in peace in such a world. I am grateful that this world is not real, and that I need not see it at all unless I choose to value it. And I do not choose to value what is totally insane and has no meaning."

"The "laws of chaos" CAN be brought to light, though NEVER understood. Chaotic laws are hardly meaningful, and therefore out of reason's sphere. Yet they APPEAR to constitute an obstacle to reason and to truth. Let us, then, look upon them calmly, that we may look BEYOND them, understanding what they ARE, NOT what they would maintain. It IS essential it be understood what they are FOR, because it is their PURPOSE to make meaningless, and to ATTACK the truth. Here are the laws that rule the world you made. And yet they govern nothing, and need NOT be broken; merely looked upon and gone beyond."

"Dreams are chaotic BECAUSE they are governed by your conflicting wishes. And therefore they have NO concern with what is true."

"This is the characteristic of the ego's judgments. SEPARATELY, they seem to hold, but PUT THEM TOGETHER, and the system of thought which arises from JOINING them, is incoherent and utterly chaotic. For form is not enough for meaning, and the underlying LACK of content, makes a cohesive system impossible."

"For the ego IS chaos, and if it were all of you, no order at all would be possible."

"To think that God made chaos, contradicts His Will, invented opposites to truth, and suffers death to triumph over life, all this is arrogance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. 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."

"Except he judges this as does a child, who does not KNOW what hurts and what will heal. And bad things seem to happen, and he is afraid of all the chaos in a world he thinks is governed by the laws he made."

"In the world, not even the body is perceived as whole. Its purpose is seen as fragmented into many functions which bear little or no relationship to each other, so that it appears to be ruled by chaos."

"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."

To prove that your mind is restored to sanity and to its truly immortal nature, you must also be willing to prove physically that you are invulnerable. This demonstration of invulnerability requires great confidence, in that even when others attempt to harm you, the consequences of their attack disappears and is undone. You become "bullet proof" and incapable of being hurt by anyone.

You are literally being asked to show your brother, to prove to him visually, that on ALL levels, you have not been hurt by him. This includes and demands the healing of the body, so that it does not transmit a double contradictory message. The body must not be allowed to testify that HE DID attack you or your body, otherwise it continues to PROVE that he is a sinner.

This requires the use of miracles to override all external sources of attack, undoing all consequences of sin, and maintaining the body in perfect condition. Only by reversing or preventing any effects of attack by another, can you truly demonstrate to him that he HAS NOT attacked you OR your body. And only by showing him the complete ABSENCE of evidence to support his belief that he sinned, can you exonerate him and teach him his innocence.

Your body then becomes a SYMBOL of your own innocence, because it now represents your harmlessness and immortality. And by pointing TO your innocence, it also testifies to HIS. It cannot testify to his innocence if it retains ANY trace of harm or damage, which means that until forgiveness has brought a PHYSICAL healing to your body, it is not real or complete. And until it has transmitted healing TO your brother as well, through physical demonstration, forgiveness is not complete.

When you brother attempts to look upon your body which he believes he DID successfully attack, and does NOT see any proof of attack there, because it has been healed and undone by miracles, it becomes impossible for him to CONFIRM his own sinfulness. And in the demonstrated PHYSICAL PROOF that he did not do anything, the body testifies with a power greater than a thousand tongues, and beyond words or claims, that HE MUST NOT have attacked you. And therefore your body's unharmed condition shows him that he MUST still be innocent, and in its harmlessness induces HEALING in him, because his belief in sin is proven false.

This also extends to you demonstrating that your brother has not hurt you psychologically, and is not responsible for your suffering. Which ties into the secret of salvation that "you can be hurt by nothing but your thoughts" and "you did it to yourself." When someone appears to upset you, you are deceiving yourself and are using him as a scapegoat for your self-attack.

What you're supposed to do is assert that NO ONE CAN HURT YOU. Which is a position is great confidence and assertion. Whereby even if someone tries to hurt you, you act as if they have had NO EFFECT on you. Which means you do not hold anything against them.

To forgive therefore means to hold no sense of sin or guilt against anyone, REGARDLESS of what they do or attempt to do. Even if they accuse you or try to hurt you, you stand in the face of their onslaught unharmed and unwavering, like a rock in the river. You do not USE it to hurt YOURSELF, and so do not demonstrate that you can BE attacked. You show your brother, both mentally and physically, that he HAS NOT done anything to you, and you do not make him responsible for your condition, feelings, or physical state. You act as if you are invulnerable, and in fact are. You show him, "you can't do anything to me, not even physically."

If you think ACIM is not teaching you that you HAVE to heal the body in order NOT to accuse others of sin, then think again. The body MUST reflect the healed mind, and until it does, you HAVE NOT healed the mind. Sickness and pain cannot be kept, if you are to PROVE that you are healed and that you have power OVER it. Death and sickness must be UNDONE in order to demonstrate that you are the resurrection and the life.

This doesn't mean you ARE a body OR that the body is immortal, which it cannot be. But the body DOES symbolize your mind, as an outward picture of an inward condition. Its sickness is part of your effort to PROJECT SIN, and you cannot allow it to show up as a picture of crucifixion or proof of attack, if you are truly forgiving.

The pertinent quotes...

"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."

"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 brother's eyes. And thus he MUST have overlooked it, and removed it from his own."

"Health 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. If you wish ONLY to be healed, you heal. Your single PURPOSE makes this possible."

"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."

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

"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."

"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.

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."

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 which are responsible for the body's condition. Yet the teacher of God does not make this decision alone. To do that would be to give the body another purpose from the one that keeps it holy. God's Voice will tell him when he has fulfilled his role, just as It tells him what his function is. He does not suffer either in going or remaining. Sickness is now impossible to him.

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. 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."

"His dreams are happy and his rest secure; his safety certain and his body healed"

"With THIS as purpose IS the body healed. It is NOT used to witness to the dream of separation and disease."

"Now is the body healed because the source of sickness has been opened to relief."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."

"That is why the Bible says "There is no death," and that is why I demonstrated that death does not exist."

"You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"Swear not to die, thou holy Son of God! You make a bargain that you cannot keep. The Son of Life cannot BE killed. He is immortal as his Father. What he is cannot be changed. He is the only thing in all the universe that MUST be One."

Ok. It's time to get honest and stop pretending to be dead!

You are an immortal being, created by God to live forever. You cannot change or be changed, and nothing can EVER happen to you. This is a FACT.

This means you cannot be hurt, damaged, attacked, broken, malfunctioning, decay, degrade, have a dis-ease, be sick, suffer, transform, change, be modified, grow old, or in any way be altered. You are PERMANENT AND ABSOLUTE This is a FACT.

Therefore you must still be exactly the same ORIGINAL SELF that God created, exactly as you were when he created you, and you must not have changed WHATSOEVER. You are STILL as God created you, immortal and unchanged and invulnerable. You have never turned into anything else. This is a FACT.

So what the fuck is this "sickness"? Anything which seems to be so-called "sick" CANNOT BE TRUE. It cannot even exist. How can it be true that you are immortal, and at the same time have it be true that you are a suffering dying self? How can they both be true of you? How can you die if you are immortal? How can you ever be sick? The sickness cannot be true and must be an illusion and a deception. This is a FACT.

"There can be no order of difficulty in healing merely because all sickness is illusion."

"So healing, never needed by the truth, must demonstrate that sickness is not real."

Jesus is stating in ACIM that you are an immortal eternal being with eternal life, endless and unassailable, PRETENDING THAT YOU CAN DIE. You are playing a game of pretending that you are mortal in a suffering body, to cover up who and what you are. To hide the TRUTH! YOU ARE FAKING YOUR DEATH. You are literally using the body as a DISGUISE to make it look like you are dying when you're not. All the while underneath you are totally powerful and perfect still.

"Did God create the mortal and corruptible? What use has God's beloved Son for what must die?"

You use the body as a decoy, to cover up who you are and hide your true nature as the Perfect Christ. You attack the body with your mind and make it show up as suffering, as a victim. And then you use this to accuse others and the world of causing you to suffer against your will, hiding the fact you put it there on purpose. You are literally trying to fake your own death and to make it look like someone else made it happen. So that it can seem that "you died" for reasons beyond your control.

"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."

"The sick remain accusers."

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed."

"For vengeance is not part of love, and fear, denying love and using pain to prove that God is dead, has shown that death is victor over life. The body is the Son of God, corruptible in death, as mortal as the Father he has slain."

So when you are sick, you are lying. When you are sick, you are deceiving yourself and others. It means you are insane and do not know who you are, so you're trying to be something you're not. When you are sick, you are pretending that you are fallible, weak, vulnerable, capable of suffering, diminished, threatenable, hurt, broken, having lost your peace, unfairly treated, victimized, abused and destroyed by anyone or anything EXCEPT yourself. It is a form of irresponsibility, in which you try to claim that death HAPPENS TO YOU AGAINST YOUR WILL.

YOU CHOOSE to make yourself and your body seem to be sick. So that you can DENY that you are NOT SICK. The sickness is a deception and a lie, and cannot be true. Therefore it MUST be an illusion - something appearing to be something it is not. It cannot BE a real sickness, it must be fake. Because you cannot really BE sick ever. The sickness is your attempt to DENY that you are immortal. Death is you being IN DENIAL that you STILL have eternal life. This is a FACT.

"Sickness is a defense against the truth."

"Sickness is a decision. It is not a thing that happens to you quite unsought, which makes you weak and brings you suffering. It is a choice you make"

"For sickness is an election; a decision. It is the choice of weakness"

"If sickness is but a faulty problem-solving approach, it is a decision. And if it is a decision, it is the mind and not the body that makes it."

"Sickness is idolatry, because it is the belief that POWER CAN BE TAKEN FROM YOU."

"No one can suffer loss unless it be his own decision. No one suffers pain except his choice elects this state for him. No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

What are you doing? Why are you going into states of sickness and suffering? Why are you holding up the body as an attacked picture of crucifixion, trying to demonstrate first of all that you "are" the body, and that secondly you have been attacked? Why are you using the body as a picture held up to your brother to accuse THEM of causing it? Or to accuse the world of causing it? When all along YOUR OWN MIND puts the effects into the body and then shifts the blame to someone else?

"The mind makes this decision, as it makes all decisions which are responsible for the body's condition."

You are FAKING BEING SICK. You are faking that you can even be CAPABLE of suffering. That you can even CHANGE or be changed. You are not even changeable. You are so permanent and endless and will live forever, such that you couldn't even really be sick if you wanted to. It cannot be "who you are" that is sick. Even if your mind becomes sick and takes it out on the body, pretending it is a body, and that the body is dying, your soul is STILL not sick.

"But the mind that thinks it IS a body is sick indeed!"

"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."

"Sickness is anger taken out upon the body, so that IT will suffer pain."

"Thus is the body healed by miracles BECAUSE they show the mind MADE sickness, and employed the body to be victim, or EFFECT, of what it made."

YOU CAN NEVER BE SICK. YOU CAN NEVER DIE. YOU ARE NOT A BODY. YOU ARE IMMORTAL.

So what's with this fake game of "poor-me I'm dying"? Why are you playing this game and putting on this fake show? Who are you trying to convince? Why are you making yourself out to be a punished victim, weakened and tormented, disabled and disfigured, diseased and decayed, ripe for the picking and ready to die? Who are you trying to FOOL? Why are you so convinced not only that you ARE a body, but that you deserve to be sentenced to death?

You cannot be guilty because the fact is that you cannot even sin. Sin is the idea that something REAL can be attacked. But "nothing real can be threatened". Reality is NOT attackable. Reality is PERMANENT AND CHANGELESS. "Reality is changeless. It does not deceive at all."

"Reality is changeless. It is this that MAKES it real, and KEEPS it separate from all appearances. It MUST transcend all form to be itself. It CANNOT change."

Nothing real can ever change. YOU are real and can never change. GOD is real and can never change. Your brothers are real and can never change. Nothing real EVER changes because it is ABSOLUTELY FIXED. So you cannot sin against or attack or destroy anything real. That means you cannot be sinned against, nor can you sin, or become sinful. You cannot stop being innocent because "my sinlessness is guaranteed by God." You are PERMANENTLY INNOCENT.

So the idea that you have become evil, have attacked God, are unworthy of love, have committed a crime, cannot be forgiven, deserve to be punished, should suffer, are guilty, should be destroyed etc, is completely unfounded. It's all based on a lie that you even CAN DO these things. You can't. You can never attack or hurt or damage anything real. And anything which SEEMS like it can be attacked or hurt or damaged CANNOT BE REAL.

Bodies show up with their seeming "proof of sin", with their images blasted in your face, with their testimony to your senses, showing you pictures of destruction and crucifixion, to try to tempt you to believe that this is a FACT. That sickness is TRUE. That it's HAPPENING NOW. But this cannot be true at the same time as you being immortal. You cannot be immortal and mortal at the same time. How can the sickness be real? How can the body even be real? How can a person ever actually BE anything less than perfect?

Either you are immortal and you cannot die, or you have NEVER been immortal and you are ALWAYS dead. You either have eternal life and are permanent and absolute, or you are merely some relative dream fiction temporary body story that begins and ends, which is not life and is a dream of death.

"Either all things die, or else they live and cannot die. No compromise is possible."

YOU CANNOT DIE. So why are you pretending that you ARE?

This is the whole issue of the separation from God. Immortal endless beings trying to force themselves to be mortal. Trying to DENY that they are STILL immortal. Pretending they have brought an end to the immortality and that life has been stopped. That you have CHANGED what God created to last forever, and have thus overthrown his will. That you are more powerful than God and have been able to destroy the indestructible.

Let's stop today playing this game of death, playing at dying, playing at suffering and being sick, playing at being guilty and unworthy, playing small and little and weak and helpless, playing at being victimized and paralyzed and struck down and attacked and helpless. We are POWERFUL BEINGS. We can NEVER DIE. When will the game of dying end? When will we bring an end to the illusion of death and proclaim that THERE IS ONLY ETERNAL LIFE?

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you."

"These are specifically first that the body is for attack, and also that you ARE a body. Without this, sickness is completely inconceivable. Sickness is a way of demonstrating that YOU CAN BE HURT. It is a witness to your frailty, your vulnerability, and your extreme need to depend on external guidance."

"This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power PAST omnipotence, a place BEYOND the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. 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."

"Do not look to the god of sickness for healing, but only to the God of love, for healing is the acknowledgment of Him. When you acknowledge Him, you will KNOW that He has never ceased to acknowledge you, and that in His acknowledgment OF you lies your Being. You are not sick, and you cannot die. But you CAN confuse your self with things that do."

"These testimonies which the senses bring have but one purpose; to justify attack and thus keep unforgiveness unrecognized for what it is. Seen undisguised it is intolerable. Without protection it could not endure. Here is all sickness cherished, but without the recognition that this is so. For when an unforgiveness is not recognized, the form it takes seems to be something else. And now it is the "something else" that seems to terrify. But it is not the "something else" that can be healed. It is not sick, and needs no remedy. To concentrate your healing efforts here is but futility. Who can cure what cannot be sick and make it well?"

"I am in the likeness of my Creator. I cannot suffer, I cannot experience loss, and I cannot die. I am not a body. I would recognize my reality today. I will worship no idols, nor raise my own self-concepts to replace my Self. I am in the likeness of my Creator. Love created me like Itself." "I will awaken from the dream that I

Am mortal, fallible, and full of sin,

And know I am the perfect Son of God."

"The body can be healed as an effect of true forgiveness. Only that can give remembrance of immortality, which is the gift of holiness and love. "

"You are God's Son. In immortality you live forever. Would you not return your mind to this?"

"Yet what is it except a game you play in which identity can be denied? You are as God created you. All else but this one thing is folly to believe. In this one thought is everything set free. In this one truth are all illusions gone. In this one fact is sinlessness proclaimed to be forever part of everything; the central core of its existence and its guarantee of immortality."

"The body does not change. It represents the larger dream that change is POSSIBLE. To change is to attain a state unlike the one in which you found yourself before. There IS no change in immortality, and Heaven knows it not."

"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."

"In your brother is the light of God's eternal promise of YOUR immortality." "Immortality is His Will for His Son, and His Son's will for HIMSELF. Yet God's Son cannot will death for himself, because His Father is Life, and HIS SON IS LIKE HIM."

"The miracle of creation has never ceased, having the holy stamp of immortality upon it."

"Immortality is a constant state. It is as true now as it ever was or will be, because it implies NO CHANGE AT ALL."

Okay so, you hear people saying the Earth is flat - the "flat Earthers"... and obviously it's not. But... technically it is.You see, there is this thing called the "hierarchy of illusions". The hierarchy is an ILLUSION that there are differences. All differences are illusions.

So you've got things like different importance, different value, different size and weight, different difficulty, different materials, different appearances, different behaviors, different forms, all of that.

However, the world isn't real, and these differences aren't real.Imagine a canvas on which an artist is going to paint a picture. The canvas itself is just one thing, neutral, empty. There is nothing inherently pictured on it. This is the background of the illusory world.

The artist takes the paint and starts to paint pictures of humans. There's a large body over here, and a small one over there. There's one with two arms, and there's one with only one arm. There's one that's jumping in the air, and one that's laying seemingly dead on the ground.

But the truth always is, that these are all just images, made of the same paint. There is really no difference between the body jumping in the air and the one that appears dead. They're both equal in the sense that any of their difference are an illusion. There aren't really ANY bodies on the canvas, it's just images of bodies.

And so what the illusion of the picture of a world of bodies is, is really a picture of what those things might LOOK LIKE. A body which looks LIKE a dead body, a body which is similar to how a living body might look. And this makes the images on the canvas once removed from the actual thing, from "reality" or "real bodies". They are pictures OF bodies, not actual bodies.

The thing is, the physical world is usually considered to be real, where the "real bodies" are, but in fact the physical world is the realm of the what LOOKS LIKE a world. It's a picturing of a world, an image, like a photograph of some place that you visited. The photograph is not the place itself, just an idea of what it might be like there. That's what the world is. The world is the paint on the canvas, pretending to look like things. A picture OF some OTHER place that doesn't exist.

"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. For mind creates all things that are, and cannot give them attributes it lacks, nor change its own eternal, mindful state. ***It cannot make the physical. What seems to die is but the sign of mind asleep.***"

ie The physical world is not REALLY a REAL physical world, it's a picture of one, an imagined idea of what a physical world might be like. It is like a dream about a far off land that you never really visited.

You have never actually REALLY seen a real body, you have only seem what bodies MIGHT look like if they existed. Because really the world is a dream of, an idea of, what it MIGHT be like IF you were able to separate from God. It remains true that you cannot separate from God because God is everywhere. Nor can you REALLY create bodies. So we've just pictured a world which looks LIKE some OTHER place that we've never been to, trying to form it in its likeness to represent it. To symbolize it. The world is a SYMBOL OF a world OUTSIDE of God, which does not exist.

Now, because the physical world of form is the layer of paint on the canvas, and let's say the canvas is what ACIM calls "the real world" which has no inherent forms or bodies or places or things, when you look at it and recognize it as "all made of the same stuff", or "its all just paint" or "its all an equal image", this FLATTENS the hierarchy of illusions. It's stops it appearing as though one thing is bigger or heavier or more important or different to another. Or that any of it is real.

This recognition that the world has NO hierarchy, and that it is all just one thing appearing to be many things, is what it's like to recognize that the picture is just the layer of paint, and it's all just paint. Which means that really a picture of a living body is just as much equal and just paint, as a picture of a dead body. Neither of them are truly different. They're both illusions.

The form of the living body may appear different to the dead one, but that is the illusion of it. "Nothing so blinding as perception of form." When you focus on the forms and their differences you're being deceived by the painted picture, and are failing to recognize it for the trick that it is. You're not realizing it's only a painting, and are mistaking it for BEING the thing it visualizes. You think the PICTURE OF a body really IS a body. That pictures of death really ARE death.

When you overlook ie forgive the ILLUSION of things being different, and you don't fall for there really being a live body or a dead body, and you see the paint instead of the picture, that is true perception. That is accurate perception. It isn't a perception that looks at paint on a canvas and believes there are real people living there with real bodies. It isn't the way the "brain" sees a photo of a body and believes it's looking at the actual person. It's a recognition that it's JUST a photograph, looking at the grain on the paper and the blots of ink.

This is a "flattening" of the hierarchy. A PICTURE of a dead body is now equal to a picture of a living one. A PICTURE of a body with disease is no different in truth than a picture of a body that seems healthy. Because really they are both just images on a blank canvas. And neither of them is more dead or alive, in truth.

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

There is no more MEANING in a dead body. There is no more "seriousness" in a dead body. There is no more "lack of life" in a dead body than in a supposedly "living" body. Which tells you also that the living bodies are NOT REALLY ALIVE either. The bodies aren't alive, and they aren't dead, they are just pictures of bodies. They are symbols, not ends in themselves. All made of the same illusory stuff.

"The body neither lives nor dies, for it cannot contain you who are life."

"There is no life outside of heaven."

"At best an illusion of life, at worst death."

"The body is not an end in itself."

So what that calls for, in order to see with forgiveness, is to recognize that there is no truth, life, will, mind, power, causality, strength, force, capability, or existence, to either the living bodies or the dead bodies. They are nothing but pictures. They don't have a "life" to be defended against death, and "death" cannot happen to them any more than life can. e.g.

"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."

The body is just a picture, in a painting in your mind, which has NO DEPTH. It is not really three dimensional. And its differences are ALL illusions of the way (form) that it's painted in. See the paint for what it is and you no longer see bodies there, or imagine that pictures of houses are real houses, or that pictures of cars are really cars, or that pictures of death are really death.

This ultimately flattens the hierarchy and means there IS NO DIFFERENCE between illusions. There is only one separation, one illusion, one picture, and it's all equally false. Even the suggestion that something would be more DIFFICULT to change than another thing, is part of the illusion of the hierarchy. It is not true. And this ultimately means that there really is no "orders of difficulty."

"The only effort you need make, to give this world (earth) away in glad exchange for what you did NOT make (heaven), is willingness to learn THE ONE YOU MADE IS FALSE."

From the vantage point of recognizing it all as ONE THING, one dream, one illusion of a world, and ignoring its FORMS, overlooking its differences, and not being deceived or tempted to believe there really ARE any differences at all, there is no "orders" in the world. There are no divisions and levels and parts and pieces. It's all just one illusion, one separation idea. Which means live bodies and dead bodies are the same thing, pretending to be two different things. They are both the dream of death. An illusion.

"Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem."So ultimately THE WORLD IS FLAT, because the hierarchy is flat. When you take away all the illusions of difference, which is false perception - not recognizing it's all just paint - all you end up with is a FLAT world. A world where there is ONE WAY of looking at everything, and it is recognized as ONE THING. And so there is no bigger or smaller or harder or easier.

From that perspective, which is the state of miracle mindedness and true perception, in which everything is given NO extra meaning other than the universal ONE meaning of love, and there is no falling for the deception that a sick body is "a really serious bad thing", and there is no difference in meaning given to "that body seems really healthy" versus "that body seems disease-ridden and ugly", you are now coming from ONE perspective. One vantage point. One loving outlook. One all-inclusive perspective. No longer tempted by form.

From that one perspective, with Vision, for you there is no longer a rough terrain, or a 3D world, or a world where some things are dealt with differently to others. There is one problem and one solution, not many. And there is no hierarchy of orders of difficulty. So now it is ONE ACT, to change the painting, to any given form. It is ONE ACT to perform a miracle which modifies a PICTURE of a dead body into a PICTURE of a living one. One act which can in turn convert a living body into a dead one, and back again. Because all bodies are fake.

To that mind, there is "no order of difficulty in miracles." "They are all the same". Each one is an expression of a spark of life which repaints the picture. A modification to the mind projecting so that the paint on the page changes to SYMBOLIZE something else. Because remember the paint is what something looks LIKE, not what something is. It is all symbolic and once removed. So the body now SYMBOLIZES eternal life, instead of symbolizing death.

It now becomes useful to heal the mind to heal the body, ie to convert the PICTURE of the body into a body free of pain and suffering and damage and death, because this picture in the dream world demonstrates and SYMBOLICALLY communicates an IMAGE of, a representation of, innocence and immortality and harmlessness and holiness. And this TEACHES those who look upon it that they must be innocent, because it does not play by the rules of the laws of a world of difficulty. It does not prove their sinfulness. And proof of sin is not there, breaking the laws of physics.

"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."

"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 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.""

"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."

So you see, the world IS flat, because it is only an ILLUSION that it has any FORM at all. And all its differences are illusions. Bodies and planets and galaxies are not alive, or dead, or anything. They are once-removed PICTURES on a canvas, the underlying canvas of "the real world", and the pictures shift just like the shadows on the wall of the cave. And they are not reality. They are just imagined ideas of what it might be like to go be where God is not. it's not the same place as actually going there. And so the world is just a brochure for hell, not real hell itself.

There is no death, and dead bodies are no more dead than live ones. And live ones are no more alive than dead ones. And all levels of sickness are meaningless. And all degrees of suffering are a lie. And miracles express from a higher vantage point in which the Earth is flat and the hierarchy is flat and every artistic act of "healing bodies" is merely a way of reconfiguring the paint, so that it can symbolize eternal life and point in the direction of heaven rather than hell. As a physicalized symbol of forgiveness.

In this view the body is nothing but an IMAGE in the mind. It has no sickness or health. It cannot be well or dead or suffer at all. I this no will, it has no mind of its own, or instincts, or natural ways. It does not really obey ANY laws of the world, unless your mind believes in the hierarchy of illusions. When you lift away from this PICTURE of a body, the rules and laws and restraints that your mind GAVE to it, trying to make it something OTHER THAN just a neutral image in a dream, it no longer serves the laws of the world.

And now the body is not under the effect of the world. And it cannot become sick on its own, nor can it die against your will. It is now simply suspended in the mind as a figment of imagination, and mind has complete power and control over it, to override any external influences. It cannot age, it cannot get sick, it does not need the world to exist, it does not depend on anything, it just moves around like a puppet for the mind. An avatar in a dream. A figure pretending to be you. A symbol of your immortal self.

Of course, when you throw the painting in the trashcan there is no world, and "heaven is all that remains."

Is there a power OTHER than the mind that can cause things to happen to us? What causes sickness? What makes death happen? Do we actually have any control over this world? Do we have a power, to such an extent, that we can actually determine what happens or doesn't happen? Can we actually CHOOSE to cause or not cause sickness and death?

This is an important issue because if we are not the ones orchestrating everything that occurs, everything we experience, then that places us in a rather vulnerable position. If there is a power or cause or law or something that drives stuff to occur, without our consent, without our choosing it, this basically means we are capable of being victims. Stuff can happen to us against our will.

It may seem SUPER radical to suggest that you could be in a position of having so much deliberateness, so much choice, so much power, that you could be orchestrating an entire dream. That the things that happen are what YOU decide will happen. That nothing else happens, because you haven't chosen it. It really then boils down to, are you actually able to choose not to suffer, to not be sick, to not die? Can you choose that events don't occur at all? Do you have the power to CAUSE these to not happen, and do you have the power to cause them TO happen?

This then really becomes a question of RESPONSIBILITY. Who or what is responsible, in every case, for what happens in your life? Do you shift responsibility and therefore "blame" onto others, onto the body or the world itself? For what seems to happen TO you? Who is responsible for whether you are attacked or not? Who is responsible for whether your body becomes sick, or is healed, or just carries on being sick without hope of relief? Because ultimately someone or some "thing" HAS to be the cause. It's either you, or it's something else. There are NO effects without causes.

If you look at the teachings of ACIM closely you will see that there is a huge theme of EMPOWERMENT. This empowerment is saying that you are so powerful that you literally are the dreamer of the dream. It says that you are ruler of the universe. It says that you can be attacked by nothing but your thoughts. It says you cannot die without your own consent. It says that you are not the victim of the world you see. All of these themes point towards you having POWER OVER what happens. YOU CHOOSE!

"If you give no power to the fog to obscure the light, it HAS none, for it has power ONLY because the Son of God gave power TO it. He must HIMSELF withdraw that power, remembering that all power is of God."

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

Indeed it leads to what ACIM calls "the secret of salvation". This is quite a radical passage because it basically says that unless you were to go into a kind of unconscious state of denial in which you disown power and see the dream as "happening against your will", NOTHING In the world can do anything to you - no matter how vicious it seems. And in fact, that the secret to being SAVED FROM all forms of suffering, is to realize and own fully that you are "doing it to yourself." That takes great OWNERSHIP of power.

We immediately start to bark with objections about how this can't be true in all situations. But the passage tells us that no matter who is the victim or victimizer, it is true. No matter who seems to do what to whom, or what the apparent severity, it is still true. So it's then telling us that despite any appearances, despite what may look like external causes or separate people acting in certain ways, no matter what it looks like on the surface, it is ALWAYS TRUE that you are doing it to yourself.

And it calls this the "secret of salvation" because it talks of how this is the ONE LESSON the holy spirit is teaching to SAVE YOU from ALL forms of suffering. That the cause of ALL forms of suffering, no matter what form it takes, including physical sickness, is the fact that you are the one doing it to yourself. And because you are doing it yourself, you can change your mind and STOP doing it.

"I must have decided wrongly because I am NOT at peace. I made the decision myself, but I can also decide otherwise."

Because in truth, really, UNLESS you are actually the one with the power to CAUSE anything to happen, you would not be in a position to be able to USE that power to NOT cause it to happen, or to undo it. It is because you DO cause it, that there is IS hope for salvation. There is a way out of hell and suffering and sickness and death BECAUSE you are the one that keeps putting it in place. And if you weren't the one putting it in place, you'd be stuck having to tolerate it, experience it, suffer from it, and go through it, without any hope of relief, ie no salvation.

This is quite a radical teaching and it is extremely central to the entire A Course in Miracles view of cause and effect, of who causes what, and of how POWERFUL you are. It rests on the fact that you are an immortal being, a permanent changeless being, who is always the same and is incapable of change or of being changed. A being that is NOT AFFECTED by the world.

"The world does nothing to him. He only thought it did."

Forgiveness rests on this immortal fact, because obviously if you are immortal nothing can happen to you, so you have no grounds for playing at being a victim, no grounds for believing that something is happening against your will, and no grounds for suffering. If you are immortal then you quite literally are invulnerable to the entire world, and there is not a single thing in all the world that has even the slightest power to cause anything that you do not want. In fact it means you have power OVER DEATH, because you cannot die.

This is what the entire teaching of ACIM is leading to. The total identification with spirit as Christ, the immortal son of God. The total owning of RESPONSIBILITY FOR BEING CAUSAL - a causal CREATOR. The total reclaiming of absolute unlimited POWER, which can do literally anything. The reclaiming of the power to work miracles, to heal sickness and to prevent death, and to change the world if needed. It is asking of you to reclaim a role and position of nothing LESS than TOTAL ABSOLUTE POWER.

By having such a power, a power so great that literally the entire dream is being dreamed up BY your mind, a power that puts the world in place and makes it spin, a power that materializes bodies, a power that causes events to transpire, we're talking about you being extremely DELIBERATE and CHOOSING everything that occurs or is experienced. And this does mean without exception. Not one single thing occurs that you do not choose, and because the power of decision is yours, you CAN CHOOSE not to have the body be sick, or die. YOU make the world go round.

This isn't a course in leaving any room open for some kind of fictional "alien will", a separate power, an external power, some kind of power the "dream" seems to have over you, some victim consciousness, some kind of external causation that can do things to you against your will, some kind of power that puts sickness into your body without your asking for it, or some kind of power other than your choice that seems to make death happen.

These are all the views that the EGO has, in its sense of weakness and powerlessness and vulnerability and fear. It sees itself as utterly at war with a separated-off power not within itself, that does things to it against its desires. And it sees itself as having no control or real power over anything, so instead to uses "force" and "doing" to try to make things happen.

"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."

We are being asked to own up to being immortal beings. Beings who are purely CAUSAL and CREATIVE. Beings who express from love and whose expressions come out as what you want, and as what you create and thus as what happens or exists. Where you are constantly choosing WHAT shows up and what occurs. There is no room in the mind of a creator/co-creator for stuff happening "by some other means", or of your choices being unheard, or of your decisions lacking power, or of your causation lacking effects.

This is a course in TAKING BACK YOUR POWER. And that means and includes the total responsibility and ownership of being THE CAUSE OF all your suffering, in every form it takes, INCLUDING the condition of the body, all of its forms and sickness and suffering, and even over death itself. You even have the power to literally move mountains and to make worlds. Only in this extreme of absolute ownership of the POWER OF GOD, which is your inheritance, is victimhood and vulnerability and pain and misery snuffed out forever. There is no power OTHER THAN the power of God that you share with him.

The question is whether you are willing to go all the way to accept this power, to take on this role and position of being ruler of the universe, whether you are willing to OWN this power and regain access to USE it consciously. Whether you are ready to let go of all victimhood roles and all sense of not choosing or not being the one who makes things happen. It's putting you in the hot-seat. If you are to reach the resurrection and FINISH the curriculum, you MUST gain the absolute power over death, which gives you the ability to cancel and reverse and prevent it EVEN on a physical level.

"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."

If you believe that sickness happens through some other reason, by some other cause, something in the world or body, something environmental, something someone else does to you, if events happen on their own chaotically or randomly, if death chooses for you when you will die, if sickness happens to the body, if sickness can remain within the body against the mind's choice, and if you believe that you do NOT have the power to do anything about this, that IS an egoic position of victimhood and powerlessness. And we are all-too comfortable playing this role.

It means you are "playing the game of death", as an immortal being, PRETENDING that you do NOT have the power of God, and trying to pull off a stunt of making it look AS IF you are not the one causing everything to occur. When it appears you did not choose something, it is an illusion. You are ALWAYS choosing what you experience, what you feel, what happens with the body, what events transpire. NOTHING happens without your consent. This is because you are an infinitely powerful being with an extremely powerful unlimited mind capable of creating entire worlds.

"There are no accidents in salvation."

"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."

Owning up to this power - the shared Power of God - which is UNLIMITED, and there is NOTHING that this power (thus your holiness) cannot do .... places you in a position of being co-creator with God. For a creator there is nothing that comes IN to you from the outside, there is ONLY an outflowing from the inside outward. An extension so strong it cannot be stopped. The unlimited will of God.

You cannot have things coming at you, attacking you, changing you, affecting you, choosing for you. YOU are the master. You dominate everything. You are the ultimate cause. YOU are in charge of your destiny. You are NEVER a victim, and NOTHING happens without your choosing it and causing it. OWN THIS, and you will be free from suffering and death forever.

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

"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."

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

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

"When you are weary, remember you have hurt yourself. Your Comforter will rest you, but YOU cannot. YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW, for if you did, you could never have grown weary. Unless you have hurt yourselves, you could never suffer in ANY way, for that is not God's Will for His Son. Pain is not of Him, for He knows no attack, and His peace surrounds you silently."

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

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

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, with futile hopes and devastated dreams, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given you in earth and Heaven. There is nothing that you cannot do. You play the game of death, of being helpless, pitifully tied to dissolution in a world which shows no mercy to you. Yet when you accord it mercy, will its mercy shine on you."

"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."

"Say ONLY this, but MEAN it with NO reservations, for here the power of salvation lies: ... I AM responsible for what I see. I CHOSE the feelings I experience, and I DECIDED ON the goal I would achieve. And everything that SEEMS to happen TO me, I ASKED FOR and received as I had asked. ... Deceive yourself no longer that you are helpless in the face of what is done TO you. Acknowledge but that YOU have been mistaken, and ALL effects of your mistakes will disappear."

There are many subjects in ACIM which can be difficult to understand. When we try to understand anything, we try to "make sense of it". If it makes sense, we're willing to accept it as true, because we can't "see any reason why not". Everything seems to make sense without contradiction so we regard this as "it must be true."

The problem is that our way of making sense, is NOT compatible with some of the subjects in ACIM. And not many people realize this. HOW you make sense of something has a lot to do with WHAT sense comes out of it. The kinds of conclusions you come to is actually hugely influenced by HOW you reason things out.

In the physical world of spacetime, in a world of separation and separate objects, thinking in the way that we typically do "makes sense". It lines up very well with separateness. In this world we have therefore learned to think in a separating way. This versus that, one thing and not another, either this or that but not both. We think of all things as kept apart from each other. Nothing ever overlaps or shares or transcends boundaries.

It works great when you're talking about whether to park your car in the first or second spot. Or whether you'll eat dinner at your house or a friends house. Or whether you want the red or blue shirt. Or when you are doing math. Or when you are choosing which way to turn. Or whose body belongs to who etc. This is all based on a very simple logical idea of "EITHER OR". Or what you can also describe as an "exclusive or".

Something can be this, or that, but not both. Because in a separated world, everything is based on EXCLUSION. A banana is not an apple. An orange is not a pear. Either I have 100% of the money or you do. Either I am at work or at home. Either the license for the car belongs to me or you etc.

This works for just about everything in the known "universe" simply because all of the physical objects in space time are BASED ON SEPARATION. The world around you, all forms of matter, are exact representations of the IDEA of separation. Houses do not overlap. Cars are in different lanes. Trees cannot take root on the same spot. Planets cannot occupy the same orbit etc. Everything physical is separate, and therefore it "makes sense" to think about all physical things in terms of separateness.

Therefore, we have all grown up immersed in, working with, thinking about, talking about, and interacting with, a separation-based environment, in which we have learned that THINKING in a separation-based way is the best kind of language to use to describe it. Our who way of "reasoning things out" is based on separation, and we do this so automatically we don't even realize how unnatural it is.

The rule of separation is that one thing is not another thing. They are different. One thing shares nothing with another thing. The two things are seprate and are kept apart. One thing you can put in one box, another you can put in another box. The two things cannot share boxes, or transcend boxes, or be in two boxes at once. Nothing is allowed to occupy the same space or literally BE another thing. One thing is never in two places at once. Two things are never one thing, and one thing is never two things. And on this basis we perform ALL of our thinking about the world.

But this way of thinking is COMPLETELY INCOMPATIBLE with reality, with heaven, with God's creation and mind, with the Sonship, with anything to do with the PRE-SEPARATION state, anything to do with the sons of God, anything to do with real relationship, and anything to do with the REFLECTIONS of heaven on earth... which includes the atonement, miracles, forgiveness, holy relationships, and so on.

When you think in terms of "either this or that but not both", you don't make any errors, provided you are thinking ABOUT physical stuff. If you take this highly polarizing mindset and think ABOUT non-physical stuff, you IMMEDIATELY FAIL. And to understand why that is, you need to understand why the Kingdom of God operates on an entirely different kind of LOGIC and reasoning. A logic that is NOT based on separation, does NOT follow rules of separateness, and where the seemingly impossible becomes possible.

As soon as we're talking about oneness, or sharing, or transcending limits, or having a relationship in which you recognize yourself in another, or the unity of the sonship, etc we're no longer talking about states of separation. When we talk about ideas being given away and increased and the person who gives it still has it, that's not compatible with separation-based logic. When we're talking about you being one with God, you cannot use separation-logic to describe that. When we talk about how one soul has everything and so does another soul simultaneously, that is NOT compatible with separation logic.

Indeed Jesus speaks of many kinds of overlaps, blends, merges, sharings, equations, and various ways that two things are one thing and one thing is two things, and at first these things will seem to make NO sense.

For example "God has but one son knowing them all as one". Does that mean in separate terms, that God does only have ONE son, OR does it mean that he has many? Before you answer that, you might notice what KIND of thinking you are using. Are you thinking in an "either this or that" kind of way? Are you asking yourself, whether EITHER he has one OR he has many? Because if you are, you are USING SEPARATION to think about something beyond the realm of separation.

When you do that, you will come to false conclusions. You are taking something that transcends separations, and you are IMPOSING separations and limits on it by thinking about it that way. You are POLARIZING something that is not polarized. You look at it and you SEE separate boxes in it, you put "one son" into one box and "many sons" into another box, keeping them APART. But that is a destruction of the nature of what heaven contains. It corrupts the data, so to speak.

God does in fact have one son. And, simultaneously, God does in fact have many sons. BOTH of these statements are true, at the same time, and to the same degree. One is not MORE true than the other. It isn't MORE true or encompassing that God has one son, than that he has many. Nor are the many part of duality - which is another false proof people use to claim "why" God can't have separate parts. Nor does their manyness indicate separation in the physical terms we're used to. What this requires is a leap in the WAY YOU THINK, to think like God, and NOT like the ego.

There has to be a way of reasoning, of MAKING SENSE, that actually does make sense, while also supporting ideas where TWO THINGS ARE TRUE AT ONCE without it being a contradiction. Two things which seemed like two in separate terms, but which are not two things. For example, we're told that God is whole, and that God creates at least one whole son. To create a WHOLE thing, God has to GIVE THE WHOLE of himself.

Separation-based thinking would claim that if God gives 100% of what he has, he has NOTHING LEFT. And thus God disappears as soon as he gives unconditional love. But does that really seem likely?

What actually happens is that God gives the whole of himself, through a oneness act of SHARING it, and now both God AND the thing he created have the WHOLE of everything, and at the same time. That DEFIES the kind of logical reasoning you've been using your whole life. IT DEFIES the separation.

Now we're told that if you want to HAVE everything, you have to GIVE everything. "To have all, give all to all." How can that make ANY SENSE whatsoever to someone who thinks in separate terms? It makes NO sense. If I give everything, I have nothing, right? That's our experience in spacetime in a world based on separation. If I give the whole pizza to you, I get no pizza at all. But that's NOT how it works in God's reality and creation. We are literally being told that if we give 100%, we will still HAVE 100%. And that if we DON'T give 100%, we will LACK 100%. How can it be true that you LOSE when you don't give anything away? Can you see how that SEEMS like it makes no sense whatsoever, in terms of how we normally think?

To put it simply, God, his creation/Kingdom/heaven, the sonship, all our creations, the holy spirit, miraculousness, all of the qualities and properties of ultimate reality, IS NOTHING LIKE THIS WORLD. Nor does it run on the same logic. Nor do the aspects of it interact or relate in the separate ways that we think all things in the physical universe relate - not even remotely. This is part of "earth, which is heaven's opposite in every way." And because heaven is OPPOSITE to a separated world, you have to use AN OPPOSITE WAY OF THINKING if you want to grasp what the course is saying about those things.

The opposite of regular logical reasoning, is paralogical reasoning. Where BOTH AND makes sense, and EITHER OR does not. Either/Or is another way of saying "NOT BOTH". Logically speaking, "not both" or "share nothing" was the ego's assertion in the separation, which led to the separated world of spacetime. "Not both" is the OPPOSITE of "both have everything."

In reality, God can create many things and STILL be one. God can create one son, a billion sons, and STILL be one. EACH created being can be the WHOLE of creation. YOU, can be ALL your brothers, while simultaneously there being billions of brothers. YOU, can be EQUATED to the utmost degree, with another person, to the extent to even say you ARE them, WITHOUT losing your self. Because in reality it is BOTH true that I am me AND I am you. I am one with God AND I am myself.

Another popular line is that "I and my father are one." If you think about this in terms of separation, you will make two boxes - "I" - and "my father." You will then take those two boxes and say, "these two boxes are one box." And then you will say that, because you have merged the boxes, the contents of the boxes have merged. And that therefore, in conclusion, there is only "one thing left". BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE. This is a complete failure in reasoning, as Jesus points out. Just because I am one with God doesn't mean he and I form a singular big "blob" in which I have NO self and I AM HIM. You are NOT equal to God.

"This is because God and man are NOT equal." urtext T1B40AC "This appears to contradict another statement: "I and my Father are one." It doesn't. There are still separate parts in the statement, in recognition of the fact that the Father is GREATER. Actually, the original statement was "are of one KIND."" urtext T1B40AA

Here Jesus clearly states that the father is GREATER than the son. That's because God encompasses MANY sons, just as God has MANY thoughts. That is why you have AWE of God because he IS bigger than you. To say you are one with him does mean you SHARE everything with him, and are PART OF him, but you are NOT equal to him. That is what ACIM says. And to understand that you cannot think in separating terms, you have to think in terms of "both and".

Both I and God are whole. Both me and my brother are God's creations. This is what the golden rule is based on, that the truth is the same for everyone - my truth is the same as your truth, what is true of me us true of BOTH of us. It's true of me AND you. You cannot think about ANY of the topics in ACIM that are on the other side of the separation, unless you are prepared to put aside your ego-based separation-based laws of reasoning and logic, and think WAY outside the box using paralogical reasoning. You will not only not make ACCURATE sense of anything Jesus says, you will also DISTORT IT to hell.

THIS, is why, many ACIM teachers, and MOST ACIM students, have come to false conclusions about a large chunk of the course. They have used the same ego reasoning and thought processes ABOUT things which are NOT ego-like. And when you do that, you project separations onto things that are not separate, and you fail to acknowledge separations where they are natural and present. There IS a separation of sorts between father and son, and between you and your creations, but it's not the KIND OF separation we see in spacetime. SHARING, DOES require multitudes, and does NOT require isolation.

Very few people understand this, so if you've made it this far and are following along, then good for you. Thinking like God is SO ALIEN to how the world thinks that for many people it will take a lot of practice to REASON like God does. His whole mind, his whole thought process, the whole act of creation, the whole dynamics of heaven and the sonship, are NOTHING LIKE this world. And until you learn to recognize when you are thinking like an ego ie "either this or that", separating things out in your mind, versus when you are thinking like God - recognizing their UNION AND SHARING, you will continue to draw false conclusions about what ACIM is saying.

Even as you BEGIN to move away from false perception, ego projections of blame, attack thoughts etc, and move towards God's reality, you will have to start to open up to seemingly ILLOGICAL ideas that you really have a hard time making sense of. What does it even mean that "One brother is all brothers?" Or that "Healing is when two minds recognize their oneness". What does it even mean that my brother is my savior because the christ in him is in me? Any notion of having ANYTHING in common with another is NOT separation idea, and ANY degree of holy relationship TRANSCENDS seeing the two of you are "separate".

The presence of separation in spacetime means, two things share nothing. What is the opposite of this? The opposite IS NOT that "there are not two things". The opposite is that "Two things share everything." That's what a lot of people do not understand about what separation means. Duality and Trans-duality (heaven's nature) are not the same thing. God having many sons is NOT a separation idea. God having parts is NOT a separation idea. Because those separate things ARE ALSO one. The ability for something to be both one AND many simultaneously, is what ACIM refers to as "miraculousness."

Ending separation does not mean erasing all trace of separateness. This is a MAJOR false conclusion with so many people. The reason being that this is still staying within the thought system of the ego while trying to undo it. Trying to KEEP the that something MUST be "either this or that", and then getting rid of "that" to end up with "this". That is NOT what oneness is like. Oneness is about sharing with others, union among many, singularity as multitudes, God having many thoughts which are all one (which is reflected in miracles - they each contain the rest).

You'll be far more accurate and clear about what the course DOES mean when you recognize that heaven has holographic properties, the whole is in every part and every part is whole. God is in all his children. Every son of God is one. I have everything and so do you. God has many sons who ARE all one as christ. Yet they are many.

"Creation is the sum of all God's Thoughts, in number infinite, and everywhere without all limit." urtext W320W111 "The Kingdom of God includes all His Sons and their children, who are like the Sons as they are like the Father. Know then the Sons of God, and you will know ALL Creation." urtext T7L8

"We are Creation; we the Sons of God." urtext W320W114

"God has but one Son, knowing them all as One. Only God Himself is more than they, but they are not less than He is." urtext T9E3

If in any way, at any time, you are "singling out", "isolating", "putting in boxes", "separating off", as you think about these abstract topics, you are making a major mistake and blinding yourself to the truth. Learn to think in such a way that ALLOWS miraculous possibilities. Where there is sharing and overlap. Where the two are one and the one are two. Where we can be joined and be ourselves. Where I can see myself in you, as you, and as myself. And where we can all still be a collective family in UNION without it meaning we're exclusive. Reality is INCLUSIVE, and being included means you are part of everything, it does NOT mean you can't have an individual identity.

FIP 3rd edition: "God, Who encompasses all being, created beings (PLURAL!) who have everything individually (INDIVIDUALITY!), but who want to share it to increase their (PLURAL!) joy. (https://acim.org/acim/en/s/86#5:1 | T-4.VII.5:1)"

I've been wrong about the world. Again.

My view of what the world IS has changed a lot recently. I see now that ACIM is telling me the world itself was projected out as "nothing", or an empty screen, and THEN we projected secondary meaning onto it and "gave" it meaning. We can give it egoic meaning, or we can give it heavenly meaning. And thus it acts like a mirror to REFLECT an outward picture of an inward condition. This is projected on top of what the world IS, which is a veil of illusions.

What I USED to believe was quite different. Some people say there is an "objective world", and that the course is telling us we have "subjective" perceptions about it. In this view we have beliefs ABOUT the world. I never liked this approach because it seemed to imply the world had to be objective, which meant it was real. And clearly other parts of ACIM tell us God did NOT create the world. So then I threw out the idea that we were really having ideas ABOUT the world, which led to believing the world ITSELF was a more direct "belief".

What seemed to make more sense was to say that there is no objective world, especially in light of "there is no world." And there are statements like "the world is false perception" and "there is no world apart from what you wish", etc. These seem to imply, coupled with "projection makes perception", that we literally project out the physical world in one single act, and how it appears to us depends on "how we made it" or what we projected it from. Such that there is no objective world, ONLY subjective fluctuating worlds that live INSIDE of subjectivity.

I thought this made sense for a long time because there is a lot in the course about how you cannot see both worlds, how you can have either false or true perception, how you see what you project, and how forgiveness/christ-vision doesn't look upon bodies. Again, major parts of the course seemed to click into place, but there were always a few things which seemed to not quite line up.

I'd also find that there would always be SOME people who believed certain other chunks of the course, which contradicted my ideas about the world. Maybe they got those parts RIGHT, BUT also got OTHER parts wrong, and so still didn't have the whole picture. Some things they said seemed to side with a partial view, that the world must be objectively real, created by God, and that's why the course talks about projecting ONTO it. But this couldn't be based on what else is written.

So it always seemed like everyone had a big chunk of the truth but not the whole picture. And I thought I had the whole picture too. But apparently I did not. Because what I see in the course now tells me something different. Something which produces far less contradictions and seems to be a more complete picture.

What it says is that in the separation, we came up with the idea of an opposite to God, which is really an idea of nothingness, since God is everything. This was projected out from the mind, which "made the world". We're talking here about the making of space and time and setting the wheels of physical objects/evolution in motion. But because this was an idea of nothing, it really had no meaning of its own. You might also notice that "outer space" is really mostly empty nothingness.

"That was the first projection of error outward. ***The world arose to hide it (a first projection), and became the screen on which it was projected ( a second projection)***, 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."

"***The world is nothing in itself. Your mind must give it meaning.*** And what you behold ***upon it*** are your wishes, acted out so you can look on them and think them real."

"It represents a situation in which God and the ego "challenge" each other as to whose meaning is to be written ***in the empty space*** which meaninglessness provides. The ego rushes in frantically to establish its own "ideas" there, fearful that ******the void****** may otherwise be used to demonstrate its own unreality."

"Yet separation is but empty space, enclosing nothing, doing nothing, and as unsubstantial as the vacant place between the ripples that a ship has made in passing by."

Clearly then, what has taken place are TWO steps. The first is that we projected out the physical world of bodies - really empty nothingness ("the body is nothing" etc). This was a world of nothing and the idea of sin or "absence of love/everything". It's really neutral because it's nothing and has no meaning. A meaningless world. This world then became A SCREEN onto which we SECONDARILY PROJECTED the mind's belief in it, which GAVE it meaning, GAVE it reality, and projected sin and guilt onto it.

In a sense then, there ARE two kinds of layers to the world. What the world IS, and what we MAKE OF IT. This then doesn't mean the world is objectively real, only that it is in some way "separate" from the secondary projections we put ONTO it. The meaning we GIVE to it. This also corresponds to the idea that the world itself is an illusion, which we have further illusions ABOUT.

For example, the world is an illusion and is unreal. When we then project untruth onto it, trying to MAKE it real by GIVING it reality, this is what we call false perception. It makes a world which is actually an illusion, SEEM as if it's is REAL world. And now physical form is believed and appearances deceive and the mind is lost, insane and confused. The alternative is true perception which recognizes the world for WHAT IT IS, "accurate perception", which reveals the world IS an illusion, IS nothing, and does not really exist.

So it all still lines up perfectly with what the course says, provided you now recognize that the interpretation of what you THOUGHT it MEANT, or what it was referring to, might be a little different. That the world is "distinct" from what you project onto it, doesn't have to mean or imply that God created it. And because it IS "separate" from your projections onto it, or beliefs about it, you CAN change your mind ABOUT it. And we are indeed asked over and over again to do this.

"The world you see (false perceptions about an illusory world) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the world (loves the illusory world through truth). God's Word has promised us that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible. But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact (as though, a distinct separate "thing"). You cannot choose what this should be (because it was projected in the first projection). But you can choose how you would see it (per the second projection). Indeed, you must choose this."

So now it becomes possible to reinterpret the "world you made", by reinterpreting the "world you see" ie your psychological interpretation of what you made, or what you "make of" what you made. When you take the neutral meaningless illusory world you made, and you take away from it the projection of sin and guilt, and leave "an empty space", uncluttered from ego projections, UPON which you project God, love, light, holiness, the "world you made" now reflects heaven's light, and you see "God in everything you see." But bear in mind this is a REFLECTION in a mirror which has no meaning of its own, and is STILL just nothing. It does not mean the mirror is God or is heaven.

What this means for me is that I now recognize there ARE two parts to this world. There is the world we made, the physical world of forms, which in and of itself is nothing and means nothing. Then there is meaning we GIVE to it which is what I project ONTO it which produces my perceptions ABOUT it.

This results in my "joining the camp" which claimed that perception was always "about the world", but WITHOUT the clause that suggested "this must mean God created it." Rather than merely think that "the world is in my mind", ie that its contents are my mind's contents, I can now approach "the world I made" but without the false-perception ego baggage.

In a way this means no longer "throwing the world out with the bathwater". The dirty water of ego projections ONTO it can be let go, and I can then become more willing to look at this same world, the physical world, through eyes of Christ. Devoid of the projected sin and guilt, or labels of wrongfulness. Which also overlooks appearances and differences and forms and transcends the hierarchy of illusions.

Recognizing that, eventually, I can still look at "this world" through more loving eyes, WITHOUT it having to mean that God created it, because of the clarity that we DID project it out in a first step BEFORE we projected ONTO it. I notice now many references to how we look UPON the world, project UPON the world, and therefore FILTER the world, depending on where our mind is at, and this can be thought of as SEPARATE FROM the physical world itself.

I can now stop resisting the idea of blades of grass being "a sign of God's perfection", because if seen through loving eyes they are reinterpreted as SYMBOLS that REFLECT God's perfection. Not because they are made of God or are created BY him, but because they are forgiven.

"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."

What this means is that a kind of ... reunion of sorts, between me and the physical world, up to a point of course. A willingness to recognize that it can MAKE SENSE, to suggest I can look at it still but in a way that doesn't take its illusions seriously, OR condemn it, OR needing to make it out to be negative. Because what the world IS is in fact completely neutral and nothing, ultimately.

My egoic false perceptions about it, were mistaken for what the world IS. Guilt and sin and fear we ASSOCIATED WITH the world, thought to be ONE THING, when in fact they are two things. I did this as part of my DIS-association of guilt in my mind, which bound my guilt to the world and made me believe IT was inherently guilty. The world cannot be inherently anything, because it is really nothing. There is no world at all.

If what the world IS is not inherently evil, because it is nothing, then this at least provides the logical basis for being able to project love onto it. Rather than the impossibility of loving an inherently false world. If the world can act to reflect heaven, then it makes it OK to "love it", even if this is a temporary love designed ultimately to dispel it.

I also see that I thought that moving into a higher perception meant "not seeing the physical world", and I had associated the physical world with false perception. I thought it should become invisible and unseen, when approaching christ vision. But I see now that in fact a big part of reaching forgiveness still entails looking upon the physical world but WITH forgiveness, which overlooks its forms and such and gives it a love to reflect back. Recognizing it as a mirror with no meaning of its own. As such blades of grass and leaves can become "things of wonder" and the world can appear beautiful, as it prepares to vanish.

"Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body and mistake it for the Son whom God created (but still looks upon a body). It beholds a light beyond the body (at the same time); 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 (which is still physical), without the slightest fading of the light it sees."

"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."

"Have you wondered what the world is REALLY like? How would it look through HAPPY eyes? The world you see is but a judgment on YOURSELF. IT is not there at all. But judgment lays a sentence on it, JUSTIFIES it, and MAKES IT REAL. Such is the world you see; a judgment on yourself, and made by YOU. This sickly picture of yourself is carefully preserved by the ego, whose image it IS and which it loves, and placed OUTSIDE you, in the world.”

Notice how that paragraph is really talking about your secondary projection onto the world, which places an image INTO the world, seemingly outside of you, which is a picture of your sick self you projected ONTO it. This is what the EGO makes of you and of the world - the void - the emptiness, in trying to fill it with images.

"It is essential, therefore, that you learn to ***recognize the meaningless, and accept it without fear***. If you are fearful (in ego/false perception), it is certain that you will endow the world with attributes which it does not possess, and crowd it (project onto it secondarily) with images that do not exist."

The world we made ITSELF, can be "a thing of wonder." But only if it is seen through "loving eyes".

"There IS another purpose in the world that error made because it has another Maker, Who CAN reconcile its goal with His Creator's Purpose."

"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."

"Again we come to the question of judgment. This time, ask yourself whether your judgment or the Word of God is more likely to be true. For they say different things about the world, and things so opposite that it is pointless to try to reconcile them. God offers the world salvation; your judgment would condemn it. God says there is no death; your judgment sees but death as the inevitable end of life. God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped. It is not the world which makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted world redeemed it and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer. Peace now belongs here, because a Thought of God has entered. What else but a Thought of God turns hell to Heaven merely by being what It is? The earth bows down before Its gracious Presence, and It leans down in answer to raise it up again. Now is the question different. It is no longer, "Can peace be possible in this world?" but instead, "Is it not impossible that peace be absent here?"

"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 world stands like a block before Christ's face. But true perception looks on it as nothing more than just a fragile veil, so easily dispelled that it can last no longer than an instant. It is seen at last for ***only what it is***. And now it ***cannot fail to disappear***, for now there is an ***empty place made clean and ready***. Where destruction was perceived the face of Christ appears, and in that instant is ***the world forgot, with time forever ended as the world spins into nothingness*** from where it came."

Let's talk about sickness purely as a matter of cause and effect. Your mind is causal, and when sane has no confusion about this fact. It does not mistake its own effects for causes, and especially does not believe its effects are causing it.

When the mind is sick, it uses denial to block out of awareness its own causal power. This is a denial of creative power or authorship. The mind REVERSES cause and effect. It believes it is not the cause of the effects, and it believes the effects are the cause of it.

The mind now perceives itself is "at the effect of" an external, separate cause. There are two very important things happening here:

1) The mind now sees itself as being an effect, and begins to distort the body in order to represent those effects. The mind believes it is caused by, and under attack by, an external cause, and that this cause defines the self. And the mind, under this perception, now subconsciously PRODUCES SYMPTOMS in the body. These symptoms are the expected effects that the mind believes "should" be the result or causal consequence of the external cause (which is secretly the mind itself).

2) In order TO believe that the mind is at the effect of the world or another person, the mind HAS to assign causality TO the world or person. And that means, that person is believed to be RESPONSIBLE FOR CAUSING the effects in your body. By being "the causer", they are effectively "the sinner". And so the mind sees "their will" as causing the effects that it, itself, is putting into the body based on this belief. By seeing itself as under attack, the mind thus ACCUSES its brothers of sin SO THAT it can pin the blame for the effects on your brother.

This results in an unfortunate scenario because now the presence of "effects" in the body, put there BY YOUR MIND, are acting as the "consequences" or cause-effect RESULT, of what SOMEONE ELSE DID TO YOU. This belief is inescapable because it's founded on the reversal of cause and effect. You can't see yourself as victimized and "at the effect" WITHOUT a scapegoat to pin the causality on. And that leads to this simple fact.

"Sick bodies are accusers."

The presence of sickness in your body is part of a dynamic of believing that your brother is the cause of you. And there is another way to put that. Your mind is ATTACKING YOUR BROTHER, by believing that he is the cause of you. Your mind ATTACKS HIM through the body, by assigning to him a causal power OVER you, which he does not have. And because causality is closely tied to sin, the idea of "who did it" .... this is nothing short of accusing your brother of SIN.

And we know WHY a person would accuse a brother of sin. "You but accuse your brother of your OWN sins." Which means that as soon as the mind is going into an attack mode, it believes in its own sinfulness and then PROJECTS this onto your brother THROUGH the reversal of cause and effect. The cause effect reversal is an absolutely essential part of the dynamic and it produces a perception that HE DID THIS TO YOU, and now YOU have the effects to show for it, which act as PROOF that he DID SIN. And this leads to a simple fact.

If your body is showing up as sick and damaged, IT IS accusing your brother of sinning against you, and it's doing so because YOUR MIND is accusing him of causing you. In every case. Without exception. The body's state is part of the mind's accusatory condition. If the mind believes your brother is the cause of your experience, your mind WILL MAKE YOUR BODY SICK TO PROVE IT. And you are now WILLING to suffer and tolerate sickness in the body in order to be able to get away with accusing your brother of sin. And in fact, we will even go so far as to KILL the body through "death" in order to ACCUSE the world or a brother of sin, "suggesting" that we "died innocently" against our will.

"A sick and suffering you but represents your brother's guilt; the witness which you send, lest he forget the injuries (that means PHYSICAL!) he gave, from which you swear he never will escape. This sick and sorry picture (body=picture) YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him. The sick are merciless to everyone, and in contagion (that's physical too!) do they seek to kill."

So sickness, all physical sickness, all symptoms, goes HAND IN HAND, with a psychological sickness, which is a condition of believing that cause and effect are reversed. And all such level confusion is EGO. Anyone with an ego is going to attack their own body in an effort to portray themselves as VICTIMIZED, so that OTHERS will stand accused, and thus YOU will appear to be innocent and exonerated. In sickness and damage we then are able to claim, "I DID NOT DO IT, YOU DID". And this is described be Jesus as this attitude:

"Brother, at your hand I die". Ie, because my brother is believed to be the CAUSE of me, and because I have secretly manifested EFFECTS in my body to PROVE it, I now die BECAUSE of my brother. And there IS NO death that isn't "caused" by this precise mechanism. It happens because of the MIND choosing to USE the body for attack against others, which results in sickness and death. This is explicitly stated by Jesus:

"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."

"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."

So we're talking here about the assumption that you HAVE a body. I'm not talking about whether the body is real or not. *IF* you have a body, HOW YOU USE IT is vital. If you use it for attack, ie belief in sin, thus denial and projection, thus reversal of causality, you are using it to attack THROUGH towards your brother. And he now is seen as the CAUSE OF your sickenss. Or at least, he is now the scapegoat onto whom you BLAME for causing your sickness. And your BODY is forced to be sick BY YOU, and accuses him right along with your mind.

Now the question becomes, what happens if you DO NOT DO THIS?

What happens if you stop using the body for attack? What if you stop reversing cause and effect? What if you stop seeing yourself (mind) as "at the effect" of the very things you are causing? What if you recognize:

"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."

Nothing in the world has POWER OVER YOU. Which means nothing in the world CAUSES you. Which means nothing in the world SINS against you. Which means, if you accept this and SEE this way, if your mind is SANE in recognizing IT is the cause of everything ("my self is ruler of the universe"), then it WILL NOT enter into the above described dynamic of USING the body for attack.

This means the mind will now NOT see your brother as causing you. It will NOT see itself as being "at the effect" of the world. It will NOT BELIEVE IN EXTERNAL CAUSES OF SICKNESS. It will not attribute to the world ANY power to cause it to be in any state. It will not see itself as "affected". And what are the CONSEQUENCES of this?

"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 mind, being sane, heals the body."

In other words, because YOUR MIND was the ACTUAL cause of THE EFFECTS in your body, as a result of ITS misperception of your brother, and as part of USING the body for attack (to accuse him physically), the removal of this attacking attitude HEALS the body. It takes AWAY from it all the signs of attack and sickness. It stops seeing itself AS "effect". It stops believing in effects. And it stops making itself suffer. This CAUSES love to flow through the body to others. This joins minds. This then RESULTS IN the disappearance of the SYMPTOMS, as PROOF and CONVICTION, that the mind no longer wishes to attack, and therefore **REFUSES** to display signs of attack in the body.

You have to at this point let go of the belief, which is wrong, that the body is CAUSED to be sick BY anyone other than YOU. You also have to let go of the belief that the body can become sick as a result of some cause or power IN THE WORLD. NOTHING in the world has that power to make you weak or frail. Death does NOT OCCUR by accident, NOR does it occur "because of" ANYTHING in the world. Death occurs ONLY by a mind using the body for attack, sending attack through the body, making the body DEPICT ATTACK, and thus destroying it for the sake of some scapegoating.

If there is any shred left in your mind of a belief that sickness is caused by ANYTHING other than your mind's mis-use of the body, you will NOT be able to accept the next step. Which is to realize that when the mind USES the body FOR HEALING, to bring the Word of God to others, to shine light through it, to extend the mind PAST the body, the body actually GETS HEALED. Not only does it get healed, it CANNOT AVOID IT, has no will to choose not to, and MUST heal in order to NOT scapegoat. It cannot be retaining proof of sickness and CLAIM to be coming used by a healed mind.

Once again, explicitly stated by Jesus here:

"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."

So when you withdraw from your brother in attack, when you see separation in him, when you ACCUSE HIM OF SIN, when you scapegoat him, and when you try to make YOUR body sick so that HE is the accused sinner, you arrest the extension of the mind. The mind begins to fixate on the body and sees itself as the body. The body now is attacked and becomes SICK. Illness is the result, and this illness is a part of the mechanism of accusing OTHERS of sin as part of the scapegoating mechanism.

ALL SCAPEGOATING MAKES YOUR BODY SICK.

ALL FORGIVENESS HEALS YOUR BODY'S SICKNESS.

When the causality is corrected, the mind now USES the body for extension of love, this de-emphasizes the body, it lifts away from the body all PHYSICAL PROOF of attack and pain, and the body now is restored to literal physical heath.

"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." What are the signs? PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS OF SICKNESS. The holy spirit REMOVES the sickness from the body, so that it can ONLY depict health. It now becomes a SYMBOL of eternal life, in the world, which ONLY TEACHES that your brother is INNOCENT. Which means, a HEALTHY body, DEMONSTRATES, PROVES, that the MIND occupying that body IS HEALED, that mind IS NOT STILL attacking, and so the symptoms and signs of attack are gone. If the signs remain, the mind HAS ABSOLUTELY NOT been healed, because the signs ONLY show up when the mind is sick.

The Holy Spirit LITERALLY wants you to SHOW YOUR BROTHER a HEALTHY BODY. A healthy body is a symbol of innocence and forgiveness in this world! This again is EXPLICITLY stated by Jesus:

"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."

Let's repeat it.

"the Holy Spirit lays a picture of a DIFFERENT you. It is a picture of a body still" ... "THIS one has NOT been used for purpose of attack, and therefore never suffered pain at all."

That literally means that the Holy Spirit will heal all physical sickness so that your body can ONLY SHOW symbolic innocence and total lack of harm or attack to your brother. Add by doing so, the body now becomes a teaching device, which PHYSICALLY relays a message of healing to your brother.

"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*** (no physical sickness). And to your brother let its message be, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I live."

THIS is the ONLY appropriate state of the body for a HEALED MIND. God's teachers, God's miracle workers, WILL always have a healed body. If they don't, their mind is not healed.

"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. (all physical effects are GONE, miraculously!) 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."

This is what A Course in Miracles teaches. A sick mind WILL attack the body and make it sick and dead, ALWAYS in an effort to ACCUSE others of sin. Sickness is scapegoating! And when the mind STOPS doing this, it sends healing and health through the body which REVERSES the effects and straightens out the cause-effect relationship, thus TAKING AWAY the sickness which the mind put there in the first place.

"They can heal the sick and raise the dead because man himself made both death and taxes (strain and sickness), and can abolish both."

Your mind CAN MAKE SICKNESS.

Your mind CAN REMOVE SICKNESS.

If your body is sick, your mind IS STILL using it for attack. Which is why "a broken body shows the mind has not been healed."

If your MIND is healed, it MUST AND WILL ALWAYS heal the body. Because "a sick body makes no sense."

The mind WILL NEVER keep the body sick on purpose unless it is attacking. The body cannot stay sick on its own. There are NO causes of sickness beyond your mind. Nothing in the world MAINTAINS body sickness. The body is not an end in itself, or a thing, or a living entity. It is a SYMBOL.

"The body is the symbol of what you THINK you are. It is clearly a separation device, and therefore does not exist."

"Regarding the body as an end, it has no real use for it at all, because it is not an end."

The body only EVER SYMBOLIZES what the MIND is doing. It does not have its own STATE or continuity. The mind is AT ALL TIMES determining the health of the body. And the only way to have the body be constantly sick is to be constantly attacking with it. As soon as you stop attacking yourself, the sickness MUST DISAPPEAR to SYMBOLIZE forgiveness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" - no defense, no sickness!!! If you want TRUTH, you will NOT have defenses, and thus NO SICKNESS.

There are no exceptions.

Healthy mind, healthy body.

Sick mind, sick body.

This is the central lesson.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I am forever an effect of God."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"My attack thoughts are attacking my invulnerability."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is hard to recognize that thought and belief combine into a power-surge that can literally move (cause) mountains. It appears at first glance that to believe such power about yourself is merely arrogant, but that is not the real reason why you don't believe it. People prefer to believe that their thoughts cannot exert (cause) real control (effects) because they are literally AFRAID of them."

"And here They join, for here the face of Christ has shone away time's final instant, and now is the last perception of the world without a purpose and without a cause. For where God's memory has come at last there is no journey, no belief in sin, no walls, no bodies, and the grim appeal of guilt and death is there snuffed out forever."

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

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

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

This will be a touchy and controversial subject. But we need to be more honest about death and what exactly is going on when spiritual people keep getting sick.

When someone's body dies, and when people have believed that the body IS the person through body-identification, there is a sense of loss. And this makes sense.

Something "real" seems to have been destroyed. If this were true, it SHOULD induce grief. If a real being has ended, it is definitely grounds for grief. This perceived "real death" can induce horrifyingly intense feelings of loss, massive waves of grieving and anger and hurt and loneliness etc.

All of those experiences and feelings can be extremely difficult to go through. Pangs of grief that come out of nowhere. Constant floods of emotions causing huge amounts of crying. A sense of missing and longing, an unfairness, and a justified anger. All of this accompanies the belief that something real has died.

Because of this, it then becomes very difficult to say ANYTHING about death, about what the person chose, about how the sickness came about, or to QUESTION in any way whether the person themselves had something to do with it. To even suggest that someone wanted to die, caused it to happen, chose it, or used it on purpose, seems like a horrible slander against the central character in the dying.

Indeed, when some body person dies, the dying, as the ego interprets it, appears to be the loss of an innocent victim. Ego beliefs tell you that they did not ask for this, they could not stop it, they did not want it, it could not be avoided, it happened unfairly, it victimized them, the person suffered greatly, it was horrible to watch, it was so sad and such a loss, etc. All of this appears to be true when a person is regarded as a body.

In light of this, when we are framing a person as the face of innocence, an innocent helpless victim of death "happening to them" or of diseases being "acquired" from the world, or the environment hurting someone etc, we make it look like the person is "untouchable" in their innocence. We start talking about them as if they were an angel. We go into a total denial of anything they seemed to do wrong. And no-one then dares to say a single word which might imply the person was anything OTHER than absolutely pure and perfect.

As a result of this behavior and this "falling for" the APPEARANCE that the person died against their will, death itself becomes protected. It becomes shielded by a facade of innocence and victimhood, helplessness and powerlessness. As if the person couldn't lift a single finger to influence anything that happened, and as a result was completely unfairly ripped away by forces beyond their control.

Death itself benefits from this view. By framing "dyers" as innocent victims, it puts up a powerful shield of denial, which seems impenetrable. And because it is framed as innocence, everyone suddenly is watchful of anyone even remotely suggesting that the person was "not innocent" in any way. There is a protectiveness that suddenly comes over people, which then justifies immense anger and projection, if anyone should dare to even HINT at the idea that the death was not how it appeared to be. As if death is an innocent baby that no-one can touch with a bargepole.

To even then question death at all, to suggest a person might've chosen it, that they caused it, or wanted it, or made it happen, or used it to try to kill the Son of God, would be considered a kind of blasphemy. And anyone who speaks out against death then is considered some kind of horrible insensitive accuser, victimizer and attacker, who has come to trample on the very carefully laid picture-frame of death-encrusted jewels that surrounds the tomb. To question death then seems completely off-topic, inappropriate, un-asked for, unwanted, and an act of war. How dare you suggest death is a lie or that all death is suicide?

By doing do, we never really get to question death itself. We keep hiding it behind this shield of illusions. We keep framing people as innocent victims who never wanted what happened. We keep denying that anyone ever chose any of it. And all that revolves around false perceptions, perceptions of a person AS a body, and AS a victim of the world.

It is a fact, however, that A Course in Miracles takes a radically OPPOSITE view of death than this. A view which would actually reveal a lot of activities taking place by the egos of not only those who die, but by those who mourn for them also. Those who are in grief and loss, as horrible as those experiences may be, are revealed to nevertheless be mistaken. Jesus even goes so far as to quite blatantly point out that those who attend funerals and who grieve over dead bodies, are completely going against God's will. He basically calls them death-worshippers.

"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."

"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."

So the way Jesus describes this is that, those who die, AND those who react to the death on the basis of body-identification and ego loss and "something real died", which is a mistaken perception, are death worshippers. They are people who are themselves dead. The walking psychologically dead, who are actually worshippers of death and sickness, who make bodies real, who react to body deaths in horror, but whose egos are secretly celebrating the proof that yet another Son of God has been slain.

These truths are underneath the grief and the loss and the horrible aftershocks of "someone dying", and as such remain buried in the minds of most people. These truths are so opposite to "how terrible it is that someone died" attitudes that it would embarrass and likely induce guilt in someone to whom it were revealed. And that's because people who are circling around death like vultures are trying to perpetuate death and keep it going.

Jesus is very clear in A Course in Miracles that this is a course in life, in living, in resurrection, and in the surmounting of death. We are being asked to "swear not to die", and to be so committed to the goal of LIFE, that we completely blot out and make death IMPOSSIBLE. Even that our bodies should enter a state of completely healthy functioning, not merely devoid of sickness but actually INCAPABLE of becoming sick or dead. Where they are locked into health because the mind is healed.

Jesus once told me personally, that the entire purpose of this life, is "to eradicate death in all its forms."

Such a teaching is obviously completely diametrically opposed to death, to sickness, to suffering, and to any kind of pity party about someone's body seeming to come to an end. We're even told that the Holy Spirit will produce a "picture of you" (a body) which has never been hurt or suffered pain in any way, and therefore symbolizes eternal life and immortality, teaching your brothers who look upon it that they are sinless.

"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."

"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."

There is even an entire radical teaching in ACIM about the fact that when you project sin or use the body for attack in any way, the body itself becomes sick. And the body is thus used as a messenger to try to communicate to those who look upon it that they are the CAUSE of its sickness. Thus, a body which is sick, broken, damaged, diseased, or in any way defective, in fact physically ACCUSES others of being sinful. It is what the course calls "a picture of crucifixion", which you show to your brothers in order to condemn them and be contagious in negatively affecting them.

"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."

As a result, Jesus is EXTREMELY clear that any amount of sickness in the physical body at all IS PROOF that the mind HAS NOT been healed. That if there is still physical sickness, there has NOT been a forgiveness. The forgiveness is not REAL, unless it has brought a healing to your body and to the body of your brother. That if the body remains broken, it CONTINUES to accuse your brother of sin, and teaches by double messages. That no-one can learn from this contradictory demonstration because a) mind is claiming to be healed and b) body is proving otherwise. No-one will listen to such a hypocritical assertion.

So basically Jesus is saying that we need to put our money where our mouth is, and we need to become genuinely healed in the mind, SO THAT the body is FORCED to be healthy. And by doing so, we make all physical sickness and death IMPOSSIBLE. So much so, that the body can no longer become sick, be made to be sick, be caused to die against your will, or in any way decay. That it cannot even age and grow old, or become decrepit over time, or malfunction as a result of "natural processes."

Jesus wants us to learn that we are NOT at the effect of death. That we have power OVER death. And in fact that we MUST gain power over death if we are to reach atonement and resurrection. If there is any way, any loophole, any exception, in which the body could potentially still be made to be sick WITHOUT your consent, there is still a power in the separation that can KEEP the son of God in hell forever. The notion that there is a force in the world that can MAKE you die, against your will, is nothing more than a fantasy belief in death and an attempt to GIVE it power over you.

"No one can grieve nor fear nor think him sick unless these are the outcomes that he wants, and no one dies without his own consent."

Whether you are an ACIM person or not, if the body is sick, it is simply because the MIND is sick. And if the mind is sick, it projects its sickness onto the body. And therefore the mind has to be healed. And when the main is healed, the mind DOES ALWAYS heal the body. And the body cannot resist this, it cannot maintain its own sickness, it cannot keep dying on its own, and it cannot stop the mind from forcing it to be well. A guiltless mind HEALS the body and makes sickness and death impossible.

"It is the dream in which the body functions perfectly, having no function except communication."

THIS ..,. is what everyone is supposed to be achieving...

"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.""

If you do not reach this state, then you have not reached the resurrection, and you have not finished the curriculum of ACIM. The curriculum of ACIM ends in resurrection, NOT death, and resurrection means LIFE, which is the opposite of death. Anyone who produces sickness in the body HAS in truth CAUSED it to be sick on purpose, for the purpose of hatred and attack and murder, in an attempt to prove that the son of God is guilty and deserves to die. Anyone who HAS died as a seeming "effect" of physical sicknesses such as cancer, HAS NOT HEALED THEIR MIND fully.

So to put it simply, people keep dying because they have not reached resurrection. They keep dying because they keep identifying with the body. They keep dying because they have not fully healed their minds. They keep dying because they are not done with the curriculum. A person can become closer to not dying, for sure, and can still cause death while being mostly healed. But until a person is fully healed the body will be attacked. Only in TOTAL RESURRECTION does a person reach a state in which they can be said to be "fully awake" and able to leave the dream permanently. "A dream of death is not left by death but by truth."

In such a state, the body is INCAPABLE of being sick or becoming sick. It cannot rot or decay. It cannot contain cancers or any other malfunctions. In fact, the only way to remove it then is to make it disappear. And this is precisely what Jesus did in his resurrection, causing his body to DISAPPEAR because he recognized it was NOTHING. This happened because recognized that the body IS an illusion of death (separation) and that it was not true. He erased the body and erased the separation in his mind, attaining total resurrection.

We need to drop the idol worship, we need to stop thinking that death is natural and inevitable, we need to stop buying into body identification which is guaranteed to induce grief and loss, we need to stop thinking that death is God's will, we need to stop believing that you OR your body can die as a result of causes outside of your control, we need to question death and recognize it as a lie, and we need to STOP CHOOSING IT. You do NOT have to die!!!

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

"The guiltless mind cannot suffer. 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."

"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 (a sick body) he is not REALLY innocent. The sick remain accusers. They cannot forgive their brothers AND themselves as well."

"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."

"The resurrection is the denial of death, being the assertion of life. Thus is all the thinking of the world reversed entirely."

"Here the curriculum ends."

"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."

"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."

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

Here is an ACIM teaching which many will find controversial or unacceptable. This is often overlooked or disbelieved. Surely it can't be claiming what it's claiming? Let's find out.

Basically, Jesus says that your body must be healed, so that it can teach life and resurrection and innocence to your brothers, in the dream. When it is not healed, it presents a "picture of crucifixion" to him, whose symptoms of sickness or damage actually accuse him of sin. Jesus also states that it is by healing your body, that you PROVE to him that he must be innocent, and therefore your health heals him. This is not figurative or metaphoric.

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

Healing by the way typically means the actual transformation of the mind AND body from a state of sickness to a state of health and wholeness.

"YOU must attest his sins had no effect on YOU, to demonstrate they were not real."

How will you attest this? How will you demonstrate, visually, that your brother's sin did not affect you in any way? Only by healing the body of any damage or consequences of sin/attack is this possible.

"How else COULD he be guiltless? And how COULD his innocence be justified UNLESS his sins have no effect to WARRANT guilt?"

So if your brother attacks you, sins against you, seeming to damage your body, and if you maintain the symptoms of attack, these symptoms testify that your brother DID SIN. They prove it, and you hold this proof before him to demonstrate to him, he IS a sinner. Only by forgiving AND REMOVING the signs of attack do you prevent him from having grounds for guilt. He cannot be guilty if his attack DID NOT WORK.

"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."

As the effects of sin/attack are undone, in your mind and body, overlooked by forgiveness, healed, reversed, you prove that sin IS REVERSIBLE. This occurs through a miracle of healing. The undoing of the symptoms proves that he did not sin, he was just mistaken, and there is no evidence to back up his claims.

"LET yourself be healed, that you may be forgiving, offering salvation to your brother AND yourself."

So you heal your mind, which also heals your body, which OFFERS salvation to your brother, by showing him that because YOU are saved from the effects of sin, SO IS HE. Your healed body testifies to his innocence and TEACHES him that he is NOT a sinner.

Now, you might be skeptical and are wondering, maybe this applies only at a mental level of perception, that you must heal your mind only. But Jesus clarifies, this is not so...

"A broken body shows the mind has NOT been healed. A miracle of healing proves that separation is WITHOUT effect."

He's clearly been talking about the BODY being healed by a miracle, all along. And so yes, he does mean, that the physical body must be healed by a miracle, in order to NOT accuse your brother of sin. You are either accusing your brother of sin or accusing him of innocence, by the depiction of your body, which is a teaching device. You either teach him "I am hurt, therefore you are sinful" or "I am healed, therefore you are innocent."

Jesus goes much further into this teaching by talking about how the body, in a state of sickness, accuses your brother of sinning against you.

"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."

You send the picture of your human body to your brother, by showing it to him. This bleak picture attempts to suggest, "look what you've done to me." Because you have damage, he must have caused you. Because you are at the effect, he is the sinner. Your symptoms attempt to convince him of his sinfulness.

"And everything that it has shown to him have you believed, BECAUSE it witnessed to the guilt in him, which you perceived and loved."

He elaborates further:

"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 human body is a witness. It testifies. It represents something. It symbolizes, either eternal life, or death. What you use it to symbolize, teaches that to your brother. It is a communication device which takes on the form of its message. And so as your body is sick, it is holding sin against your brother.

"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."

Don't think that sickness is in isolation. It is never "just you" that is sick. It is not "just your body" sitting there sick. There is cause and effect at work. If your body shows effects of sickness, your mind MUST be believing that an EXTERNAL cause put the effects there. This external cause is your sinful brother. By making your body sick, you accuse him of sin. Your body now witnesses to this and attempts to find him guilty. If he looks upon this and believes it, he stands condemned.

"This sick and sorry picture YOU accept, if only it can serve to punish him."

What this means is that you deliberately make your own body sick, in order to be ABLE to accuse your brother of sin. You are willing to ACCEPT this broken image, in order to reap the side effect benefits, which is that it assuages YOUR guilt and projects it onto him. You allow some amount of physical suffering SO THAT the "cause" of the sickness can be displaced onto your brother. In your physical sickness, you believe you are now innocent. That your death is caused by the world. You would even go so far as to KILL the body, in order to be able to displace ALL your sin onto another. You believe the payoff is worth it.

"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."

Jesus is not holding anything back here. He's literally saying that we make our bodies sick in an effort to be contagious. Sickness is an attack, not just on ourselves, but on our brother also. It attempts to come between brothers and prove them different. To separate them. "Arrest the extension of the mind and you foster separation and induce illness." Your physical sickness then becomes a witness to HIS guilt, and the death of your body prove HIS sinfulness. Your death is thus a huge accusation that everyone BUT you is a sinner. That THEY caused you to die, and not you. And all the while YOU put the death in place to accomplish this lie.

In another passage, Jesus says much the same thing.

"Is healing (of the body) frightening? To many, yes. For accusation is a bar to love, and damaged bodies ARE accusers."

When the body is damaged, it DOES ACCUSE, beacuse the damage is an EFFECT of external causes. So long as the effects are showing up, physically, they testify that there WAS a cause, and this accuses your brother of sin.

"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?"

By the body being sick, it claims that you cannot trust your brother, nor can you be at peace. It gives justification to NOT LOVING your brother. A sick body is a finger you are pointing at others, condemning them to death.

"He HAS attacked, and will attack again. Protect him not, because your damaged body shows that you must be protected FROM him."

Here Jesus says that you are justified in revenge, because your damaged body shows that you need protection from HIM. And by the way, this is true EVEN IF he did not seem to have ANYTHING to do with your body becoming sick. Your brother is FALSELY accused regardless of his participation.

"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."

Here Jesus is basically saying that you might pardon your brother or pity him, on the basis that you think "he did it", but by keeping the sin real, and keeping the effects to prove it, your pardoning of him will induce MORE guilt because he'll feel you are forgiving him for something he DID do, and so he won't be able to believe in his innocence. Your pardoning is a guilt trip.

And here, Jesus gets explicit again that you must remove the sickness.

"The unhealed CANNOT pardon. For they are the witnesses that pardon is unfair. They would retain the CONSEQUENCES of the guilt they overlook."

The consequences are the physical effects, the symptoms and signs, which PROVE "sin happened." So long as the symptoms remain, pardon is UNFAIR and unjustified.

"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."

If you can SEE the EFFECTS of sin, symptoms, sickness, damage, then you cannot forgive this. Thus you cannot forgive your brother. Thus he cannot forgive himself.

"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."

If your hurt remains, mentally, emotionally, or physically, your brother is still accused.

"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."

If you retain the proof, ie the body is STILL sick, this MUST imply, that your brother is NOT really innocent. The appearance of "seemingly real sickness" proves, if believed, that he is a sinner.

Jesus now instructs us to REMOVE THE SICKNESS. Get rid of the proof. Cancel the evidence. Demonstrate physically that there is no damage, therefore THERE IS NO SIN.

"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 brother's 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 (mind and body) 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."

Pretty dam literal here. If you hold a picture of crucifixion (crucified, attacked, damaged, sick body) in front of your brother's eyes, you apparently are STILL CONDEMNING HIM. Your mind MUST still be using the body to attack and accuse him. Your mind CANNOT BE HEALED, because it if WERE, it would have healed the body and STOPPED PRODUCING effects, accusations, sickness or death. "The mind, being sane, heals the body."

Not one single trace of condemnation must remain in the body. Sickness is condemnation. And here Jesus is suggesting to you, something very powerful.

"You made sickness and death and therefore can abolish both."

You PUT the condemnation there, which made the body sick. You can REMOVE IT.

But this goes on to indicate something even more profound. You absolutely MUST remove it if you are to NOT BE CONDEMNING. If your mind is healed, it WILL heal the body. No one in their right mind would CONTINUE making the body sick, if they are teaching and demonstrating harmlessness. And the Holy Spirit CAN ONLY use the body to teach healing by SHOWING that the body is healed. "Thus is the body healed by miracles." The Holy Spirit intends to HEAL THE BODY, so that you can use it to SYMBOLIZE your brother's innocence to him, which teaches him his own belief in sin is mistaken, and heals his mind.

"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."

The holy spirit heals the body and presents a picture (body image) of you, representing your innocence.

"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."

And there it is. He heals your body SO THAT it is a picture of health, a demonstration of having NEVER been hurt, a PROOF that BECAUSE it has no damage, suffering or pain (no symptoms of sickness), it CANNOT be attacked. That YOU have never been attacked, YOU believe in healing, YOU CAN PROVE IT, and you are giving an EXAMPLE for all to see.

"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."

You see, your healed body now becomes a teaching device, for your brothers. HE looks on it, and because of its LACK of damage, he sees only harmlessness and innocence in it. He sees no PROOF of sin. Especially if HE was the one who seemed to attack your body, to put the effects there, the effects are GONE, reversed, undone by the power of the Holy Spirit through miracles. "The mind must be stronger than the body, every miracle demonstrates this." And so this says to him, YOU DID NOT SIN. He sees His forgiveness in YOUR healing, shown to him physically.

"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."

This is powerful, because your healing, your body being healed along with your mind, COMFORTS HIM, and MAKES HIM HEALTHY. It denies HIS belief that he sinned, proves he is mistaken, and proves he MUST be innocent. Your body thus teaches him, "brother, at your hand I live." ie, "you have caused me to be innocent, you have forgiven me, you have healed me, so you too must be innocent, healed, and forgiven."

We can USE the body to TEACH INNOCENCE in this world, by reversing sickness and demonstrating ONLY healing and health. To SYMBOLIZE eternal life, rather than to symbolize death.

"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."

"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."

By the body's HEALTH and loveliness, it relays the message of holiness it RECEIVED from the mind, and PROCLAIMS that holiness by REPRESENTING it symbolically.

"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."

Here is why the body is powerful as a testament to eternal life, WHEN used by the Holy Spirit to DEMONSTRATE immortality.

"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****."

This is the proper USE of the body to EXTEND HEALING to your brother. This cannot be done while the body maintains sickness. Because if the sickness remains, the mind HAS NOT been healed. There SHOULD NOT BE SICKNESS IN THE BODY.

"Thus does the miracle undo all things the world attests can never BE undone. (sickness, death, disease, attack, damage) 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."

You give the miracle you receive. You AND your brother are healed through your healing.

"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."

"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."

Love your brother that YOU AND HIM may be healed together, and both your bodies may testify to the whole world that forgiveness is complete, there is no sin or sickness or death, and nothing can happen against your will.

Resurrections means life. This is a course in returning to the LIVING. The reversal of death in all its forms. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

A total CURE.

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"

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."

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."

When the mind dreams, it is capable of projecting any kind of image at will. It does not require time in order for anything to "evolve" within the mind's projected images.

The mind doesn't have to wait for time to pass, for its projected images to develop certain states or conditions. It is able to project NOW, absolutely any image.

It can project NOW an image of sickness, an image of a body which seemed to have aged, an image of a baby which was just born, an image of a body in great condition, or any kind of body at any point in "time", with absolutely NO NEED FOR TIME TO PASS in order for that body to ARRIVE AT that condition. It is projected in its "whatever state", RIGHT NOW.

You can easily see this at work when you dream at night. When your dream BEGINS, an entire environment can show up complete with what appears to be qualities and properties which, in time, would have to have taken many many years to establish.

That environment isn't "brand new" looking. It isn't the beginning of evolving an environment. It isn't the start of civilization. It isn't the beginning of the universe. Instead, the mind projects NOW images of bodies already in a state of decay, environments which must allegedly have been "built" by people over time, trees which must have "grown" in order to become as large as they seem, and events which allegedly could only come about through an entire sequences of prior events.

The mind puts all of this in place NOW. It does not take for you to dream for 100,000 years in order to have a dream of a planet Earth in which you are walking around. The dreaming mind INSTANTLY projects what APPEARS to be forms at a certain point in time, with a certain condition. It therefore instantly also invents HISTORY, all of the prior events which SEEM like they must have happened in order to lead to THIS moment. And yet, you only started sleeping an hour ago, and here you are dreaming of a world which has been around for a billion years.

With this in mind, realize this about your current mind also, in your waking states. As Jesus says, your waking dreams and nighttime dreams differ ONLY IN THEIR FORM. The mind that you have now is dreaming NOW, it is projecting an entire universe NOW, it is making images of stuff which "must have taken a very long time to arrive at" NOW, without having to go through ANY of that time.

Therefore, realize this. Whatever is showing up NOW, is an ILLUSION of something which took a very long time to evolve. ANY state of existing in form can be projected INSTANTLY. Any environment, any body state, any experience, any condition, any sickness, any objects, any condition of objects which allegedly have developed wear and decay and weathering can all be projected NOW, afresh, to LOOK LIKE they have been around for a million years. It makes you wonder, if history really exists, doesn't it?

And guess what.... your mind is projecting YOUR BODY in exactly the same way. The way that your body is showing up NOW, HAS NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH THE PAST. And the key to understanding this is to understand what a decision is.

The ego's illusion is that, at some point in time, you make a decision. You make this momentary decision and something happens. This decision is then "locked into" in the past and cannot be changed. This is the idea of irreversible sin which you can do nothing to undo, and have to just suffer the consequences going forward. The consequences of this decision then seem to carry over into the future, over a long period of time. For example, it may SEEM as if, in time, you hurt your leg, and thereafter, your body had "leg problems", which seemed to sustain over time, and was "because of" this event which happened in the past. THIS IS NOT HOW DECISIONS WORK.

When you decide something, it means that you are typically choosing a new BELIEF. You are, essentially, making a change of "direction". Like turning corner. You establish a belief in your mind, which you have made be your "new truth", and then you KEEP THAT BELIEF. Because that belief is kept in your mind, it is CONSTANTLY REPROJECTING whatever that belief would produce.

So if a situation comes around where you choose and create an illusion of your leg being hurt, and you then put in place a belief that your leg is hurt, that there were "real consequences", you will KEEP THE BELIEF OVER TIME. Your mind will then continually REPROJECT a damaged body over, and over, and over, and over again.

At any given moment, the body has no existence of its own. At any given moment, the mind is projecting a BRAND NEW IMAGE, an out picturing of an inward condition. At any given moment, the body you had "just now" has DISAPPEARED, and it has been REPLACED with an entirely NEW PROJECTION.

An analogy to this is a digital movie. Movies are comprised of "frames", which are still images. Each frame is a snapshot of a given state of images. The projector (mind) SHOWS one image at a time. It shows a picture of a body in a certain state, then the frame ends, and is removed, and then the NEXT FRAME REPROJECTS an entirely *separate image*, nothing whatsoever to do with the previous image, showing a DIFFERENT PICTURE of a body.

Since this happens very very quickly, at every quantum of time, this creates an ILLUSION OF ANIMATION. Also, and this is the really key point... if the mind keeps projecting a very SIMILAR IMAGE across multiple frames or moments, it creates ****AN ILLUSION**** that there is something "consistent" or "continuous" present "over time".

This ILLUSION leads you to believe that there is some object, some form, which exists "through time". And because it seems to exists through time, YOU start to believe that IT HAS A LONG-TERM EXISTENCE OF ITS OWN. That somehow it is a "thing", an "object", a discrete ENTITY, that somehow continues on existing ON ITS OWN. *This is entirely an illusion*!

The course tells us that at NO point in time does the body really exist, being either an anticipation of the future, or a memory of the past. This is the illusion I am talking of. The *appearance* that some "thing" continues over time and therefore, is a consistent "thing" IN TIME, being maintained OVER TIME, that has ITS OWN EXISTENCE. The body does not have its own existence. It is a temporary IMAGE, which is SWITCHED OUT constantly, BY THE MIND, and replaced with a new image, every tiny instant of time.

Now. Realize then, that when you make a decision, forming a belief, you KEEP that belief in place OVER a long period of time. You keep it in the mind. The mind is a projector of the body "image", and the presence of a false belief in the mind will project an image of that false belief. It is not projected ONTO the body. It is projected AS the body. The body is not a discreet thing in its own right. Therefore, the mind DISTORTS its perception and PROJECTS a distorted, malformed, corrupted, disabled, limited, damaged picture. It therefore shows up as a picture of a BROKEN BODY, proving that the mind has not been healed because the mind believes separation is truth.

IF YOU KEEP that belief "over time", your mind will keep continually REPROJECTING body IMAGES (yes plural, over time, billions of them), which will create the ILLUSION that there is a "long term sickness". It will also create the illusion that the "cause" of the sickness was way in the past, at some single moment in time. IT WAS NOT. This is the ego's attempt to pretend that sin is in the distant past, you can never go back to the past to change your momentary decision, and therefore you are stuck with the consequences FOREVER. This is a bullshit lie, because this is not how decisions work and you can CHOOSE AGAIN AT ANY TIME.

The cause of the sickness is the content of the mind *NOW*. The mind NOW has a belief in sickness and NOW it is projecting a sick body. And the mind is perfectly capable of creating ANY ILLUSIONS OR IMAGES necessary in order to make it seem consistent, justified, believable, obeying "ego laws", even showing seeming evidence from "the past", or changes "over time", because the mind - just as when you DREAM at night, is perfectly capable of creating an ENTIRE UNIVERSE RIGHT NOW as an INSTANTANEOUS PROJECTION. Th year 2017 IS NOT the result of all previous years of "evolution", it is being projected NOW, including every sign and "evidence" that it SEEMS like it took billions of years to evolve to this point. That's an ILLUSION. The dream is being dreamed IN THE PRESENT and automatically INVENTS pictures of "there must have been a past" AT THE SAME TIME.

So, in terms of miracles of healing, what needs to happen is that the mind is healed of ITS BELIEF in some lie, some false ego belief. This false ego belief had been MAINTAINING LONG TERM SICKNESS showing up AS a sick body, because the MIND was "sick" for a long time. It had nothing to do with moments in time or one-off decisions. Decisions ARE CONSTANT. You change your mind by changing which ROAD you start walking down, and a you KEEP walking down that road ENDLESSLY until you change your mind and take a different direction. That's how decisions really work.

So if you seem to have "long term sickness", it has absolutely nothing to do with the body itself, it has nothing to do with the past, it has nothing to do with anything that happened outwardly over time, it has nothing to do with the world, it WAS NOT CAUSED BY ANYTHING EXTERNAL, it is ONLY being caused "now" by the beliefs that you are holding onto NOW, REPROJECTING that body image to look "similar to before", because the BELIEF is still similar to before. If the belief has not changed, what is projected is not going to change either. And that creates the illusion that the body is a "thing" in its own right which gets "its own sickness" and "has a mind of its own".

This ILLUSION of long-term sustained bodily conditions is responsible for deluding people into the belief that the sickness exists ON ITS OWN, or that the body ITSELF gets sick, or that something happens TO the body, or that the body is happening TO the mind. It is also entirely the reason why people who believe THE ILLUSION of continuation of the body, also believe that the body's condition WILL CONTINUE TO BE SICK, when the mind wakes up. This is EGO BULLSHIT! It is not true whatsoever. It's entirely an illusion.

There is NO REASON why the body should stay sick if the mind is healed. The ONLY REASON the body is even appearing WHATSOEVER, is because the mind is projecting it. The body is not showing up as a result of you "being born in the world." Your parents did NOT create your body. Your MIND put YOUR BODY into your mother's womb and manifested its form entirely ON ITS OWN, without any "real" processes occurring on the part of the mother. Everything to do with "having babies" is part of the ego's ILLUSION that what you are is born FROM THE WORLD, and not from your mind.

Since your mind is PROJECTING your body image RIGHT NOW, afresh, every moment, a complete new projection, complete with all the "stored beliefs" and "kept self-attack" which the mind is holding onto, causing the body to SEEM to show up again and again and again in roughly the same "form".... there is absolutely NO REASON WHY your mind could not project a COMPLETELY PERFECTLY HEALED BODY RIGHT NOW. This is what miracles are capable of showing!

That the mind can heal the body but the body cannot heal the mind, proves the mind MUST be stronger than the body. Every miracle demonstrates this!

The mind PROJECTS the body. Every instant. Every moment. As an outward picturing of what the mind believes IN THAT MOMENT. The body does not show up FOR ANY OTHER REASON or as an effect of ANY OTHER CAUSE. The body is not caused by the world, or by matter, or by forms, or by anything external. Mind makes the body.

So guess what happens when you change your beliefs in your mind? Guess what happens when you undo your belief in separation from God? Guess what happens when you stop believing in attack? The body will CONTINUE to SHOW UP AS a projection of the content of your mind, but because your content has changed, the body that shows up WILL BE DIFFERENT!

It is entirely possible, therefore, for ANY AND EVERY alleged form of sickness, TO BE HEALED INSTANTLY! Jesus says this himself: "The patient could merely rise up without their aid and say, "I have no use for this." There is no form of sickness that would not be cured at once." Realizing that your mind's projections are occurring IN THE PRESENT, and that the past DOES NOT EXIST and has no influence over the present, should show you (if you get this), that when your mind changes, your body image MUST CHANGE. Your mind WILL project a different image, to reflect the change in beliefs.

The body CANNOT STAY SICK if your mind changes its beliefs. It cannot stay sick because IT HAS NO LIFE OF ITS OWN and it is purely a mental projection. Nothing else can make the sickness stay. Nothing else in the world or in time can cause the sickness to stay. THERE ARE NO CAUSES outside of the mind. The body is a results of YOUR DREAMING IT!

This should tell you that there is absolutely no grounds whatsoever for believing that sickness in the body will "stick around on its own" when you wake up, that somehow you will become "at peace with sickness", that you can be "happy about dying", that "sickness will stay" when the mind is healed, that you need to learn how to be at peace "in spite of sickness", or that it's even the teaching of the course that sickness is real and will CONTINUE ON ITS OWN when the mind is in a state of enlightenment. ABSOLUTE LIES! Makes no sense whatsoever, is absolutely untrue. This is NOT what happens. This is not how the mind works. Believing any of this bullshit demonstrates that your mind HAS NOT BEEN HEALED, because it means you believe in a reversal of cause and effect, your mind is continuing to maintain defenses against truth, and therefore the mind CANNOT BE AWAKE.

The state of the body is a DIRECT REFLECTION of what the mind PUTS OUT THERE, based on ITS BELIEF SYSTEM and the content of its sense of SELF. The body is a depiction of "this is what I think of myself". ALWAYS. It never deviates from that, it has no will or mind or power of its own to choose otherwise, NOTHING can make it change against the mind's will, and there are NO CAUSES external from the mind that can influence it's condition. NONE. Mind is cause, body is effect. Period.

THIS HAS TO MEAN, that when the mind TRULY and genuinely overcomes its obstacles to peace, is TRULY genuinely healed of beliefs in separation, uses of the body for attack, defenses against truth, long-term false beliefs and so on... the body that "shows up" being projected out from the mind's inner condition, MUST, *ABSOLUTELY MUST* show up as in PERFECT UNDISTORTED HEALTH!

I quote:

"The central lesson is always this; that what you use the body for it will become to you. Use if 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." - ACIM

Key term here.... "CANNOT BE SICK" when the mind is holy. CANNOT. Will not maintain sickness, has no sickness, literally is IMPOSSIBLE TO BE SICK PHYSICALLY if the mind is healed. I know many people have resistance to this idea and think it's either not important or an incorrect focus or not what atonement is for. But atonement WILL BRING HEALING TO THE BODY because the mind that is holy will only project a holy image, i.e. an image of wholeness - a body which is not lacking or limited or broken in any way. If the body continues to show up as sick, something IS WRONG WITH THE MIND. Or to put it more accurately, the mind will STOP PROJECTING A SICK BODY and will only project a healthy body. Healing doesn't happen TO the body, it happens to the mind and the mind projects the body form to match.

This is law. This is how mind functions. The body is the mind's projection, it's dream. It ALWAYS CORRELATES to the state of the mind. Healed mind MUST only project a healed body, a sick mind MUST only project a sick body. This is also why Jesus teaches that we are meant to DEMONSTRATE THAT WE CANNOT BE HURT BY OUR BROTHER, by only ever showing him a HEALED BODY, proving that whatever he did or even tried to do, HAS NO EFFECT on your body because it has no effect on your mind, and your mind is totally in charge of what kind of image it projects. This therefore proves, if you are holy in mind, showing only a holy body, that your brother IS INNOCENT, through PROOF, because his attack DID NOT CAUSE YOU OR YOUR BODY TO CHANGE!

For miracles, there are no orders of difficulty, there is no hierarchy of illusions, and there is no PAST that has power over the present. Bodily states have nothing to do with time, and nothing to do with history, and nothing to do with the body seeming to be a "discrete thing" that someone can point to over time and say, that's a consistent object in its own right. It is not. It is a freshly projected DREAM, right now, this instant. When the instant is being projected from a mind of holiness - the miracle of the mind will completely dissolve and NOT PROJECT an image of sickness.

When the miracle occurs therefore, which is a movement towards God and an undoing of separation beliefs in the MIND, the body MUST SHOW THE CHANGE in some way. It can't refuse it, it can't block it, it can't prevent the projection of the mind's healed condition. The body has NO POWER over the mind whatsoever. It has to OBEY. And so this means it is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE, as Jesus said above, that if there is an instant of a miracle, shifting to a vertical perception and undoing the illusion of separation, which means letting go of a long-term belief, the mind CAN be healed INSTANTLY, and therefore it CAN project an image of the body having been healed *INSTANTLY*. One moment there was terrible sickness and suffering, the next moment it was simply not there. One moment the body seemed practically DEAD as a picture of the mind's belief in death, the next moment it was showing up as "alive", to represent the fact the mind is now ALIVE.

Instantaneous! No delay whatsoever. Miracles in this way produce a skipping of TIME, they completely ignore ego laws, pay no attention to the past, have no regard for illusions of difficulty or severity or importance, and create an interval of time in which there is a shift towards God, into invisibility, which is why they heal THE MIND, which then projects a healed body IMAGE. This can happen absolutely instantly. One instant there was terrible sickness, the next, gone. Healed. Boom!

The illusion of a continuous body with continuous sickness is entirely within the LEVEL of the ego's dream. Miracles and the power of the MIND OVER MATTER, extends from an entirely higher LEVEL where the mind is the CAUSE of everything that shows up AS THE DREAM. Bodies that move, mountains that move, planets that move, is all being DREAMED by the mind. It has no will of its own. It has no effects of its own. There is literally nothing that your HOLINESS cannot do. There is nothing your MIND cannot do. Mind NEVER LOSES its creative power, even IF it is mis-creating images of false bodies on false planets in a false universe. Even IF it is creating an illusion of time, history, the past, a future, or anything other than realizing WE ARE PROJECTING ALL OF THIS ENTIRE UNIVERSE THIS INSTANT. It did not come from the past. It is happening in this illusion NOW.

Just as in our dreams at night, which differ only in their form, the waking world, planet earth, and all the people in it, are being projected NOW, in whatever condition they seem to be in, because the mind projecting them has false beliefs NOW, which MIGHT be similar to beliefs it had "just a moment ago", creating an ILLUSION of things being maintained over time. Nothing is being maintained over time but a KEPT BELEIF which has not been let go of. Time is an illusion. There is nothing keeping us asleep and nothing keeping planets in motion other than the mind CHOOSING TO DO SO OVER TIME.

There is no reason whatsoever in all the universe why you cannot be completely healed and whole in physical form and mind, RIGHT NOW. If you were to choose this, it would happen for you, right now. If you are showing sickness, and if you've had sickness for 30 years, it is because you are believing in sickness RIGHT NOW. It's got nothing to do with the past or anything that came before. NOTHING. You create your "reality" by creating your DREAM of what you want to be true RIGHT NOW. History has no power over the present - that's an ego illusion.

At no point in time does the body really EXIST, because it is only ever a projection in the NOW, not in time, and it does not even really exist in the now. A mind which has BELIEFS IN SEPARATION, will project a picture of a self WHO IS SEPARATE. This is what we call "the body". It's not a body. It's the MIND showing up with "body-formed" CONTENT, AS its BELIEF in being a separate individual. Such thoughts take "form". The body APPEARS because the mind is regarding ITSELF (spirit) as limited and separate in some way. It has false beliefs and a false sense of identity. This is what MAKES THE BODY.

To put this even more clearly, how you think of yourself is how you will SHOW UP. If you regard yourself as sinful and guilty, you will show up with a FORM OF SIN AND GUILT. As the course says, "the body is the idea of sin made real then projected outwards"!.... Literally this is what I've been saying in this post. if your mind believes "you" are "made of sin"... YOUR MIND will manifest an "image" of a "sinful self", which will "appear" as what people call "a body". That image is not really who you are. But it's what you think you are. Whatever you think you are, you will show up AS! If you think you are AN ILLUSION, you will show up AS AN ILLUSION. That's what makes the body appear. If you do not believe you are an illusion AT ALL, you will show up as - HAVING NO ILLUSORY BODY AT ALL - pure spirit.

WHEN the mind no longer has *ANY* false ideas about its identity, has no beliefs whatsoever, is aware of God, and does not believe in ANY form of victimhood, reversal of cause and effect, that the world is ANYTHING but your OWN DREAM, and that it is ALL coming from YOUR MIND, THEN.... what happens to the body? IT DISAPPEARS COMPLETELY!

A mind which is being entirely true to spirit, true to the true nature of YOURSELF, will show up as. .... TRANSPARENT! Transparency means total honesty. Total willingness to be aware of and ACCEPT WHAT IS, as it is, which means, no distortions, no illusions, no thoughts to the contrary, no limitations placed on SELF, and therefore the mind PROJECTS ETERNITY, projects LOVE, projects abstract God, projects LIGHT, projects absolute total lack of "forms of error", and therefore, STOPS PROJECTING A BODY. To those in the world, this will appear as though the body DISAPPEARS ENTIRELY. To the mind that is disappearing the body, IT IS NOW AWARE that the body WAS ALWAYS based on false beliefs, and has NO REALITY of its own, and NEVER EXISTED, and HAS NO TRUTH, and is not being KEPT by the PAST or the WORLD or any other cause outside of the mind. Therefore the mind stops supporting it, stops MAKING IT, and it stops showing up at all!

This is how Jesus made his body DISAPPEAR, as given in the "extra notes to Helen" after the course, where he stated that he finally recognized the last illusion - that death was not real, and therefore, had no further need for the body, and therefore, caused it to DISAPPEAR, because all that was TRUE, all that could REMAIN, was pure spirit at one with its mind, fused with God, in absolute eternal truth and atonement. This is how YOU LEAVE THE DREAM. Through truth, not through death, not through sickness, not through suffering, not through the body going through a death process. Through making it VANISH, because the mind HAS NO ILLUSORY CONTENT IN IT, and therefore STOPS PROJECTING THE BODY!

There is no body. There is no world. There is no sickness. There is no death. There is no sin. There is no guilt. There is no fear. There is no separation. There is no time. There is no space. There are no forms. There is no planet earth or physical universe. There is no consistency over time in the world. There are no sicknesses which last on their own. There is no life or power or will or mind in the body or in the world. The world has no effect and is not the cause or the birthplace of anything.

You do not need a body to exist because you are IMMORTAL SPIRIT. You are as God created you, AS SPIRIT, not as an ILLUSORY BODY IMAGE. You are not a projection of a sick mind. You are ONLY IMMORTAL SPIRIT. This is the only truth about you. Everything to do with the body is a lie.

The body will and MUST become "healthy" BEFORE you awaken. It cannot stay sick if the mind is to be healthy. A healthy mind WILL project a healthy body. The body must go through "becoming healthier" "over time" as the mind gradually is healed. Sicknesses must fall away "over time". A sick body is proof that the mind IS FURTHER REMOVED from God than a healthy body. "A broken body is proof the mind has not been healed." This is why, before awakening, bodies WILL and MUST become healthier, and therefore health will be enjoyed more, and healthy bodies feature in HAPPIER DREAMS, which precede awakening.

Making the body healthier per-se is not the ULTIMATE goal, because the body ITSELF is a picture of separation and sickness. But before that ultimate goal is reached, the body WILL BE HEALED and sickness WILL be undone and the dead WILL BE RAISED and all forms of "things which cannot be undone" will be undone.

I quote:

"You who perceive yourself as weak and frail, born but to die, to weep and suffer pain, hear this: All power is given unto you in Earth and Heaven. There is nothing you cannot do."

Miracles CAN DO ANYTHING, CAN HEAL ANYTHING, CAN REVERSE ANYTHING, even death. If miracles could not undo death, we would be STUCK HERE FOREVER. There is NOTHING your holiness cannot do. You are the Son of God! You are not at the effect of the world and you are IMMORTAL.