If you know what the secret to the magic trick is, you know that there is not really any magic happening. But if something is hidden, if there is information missing, it becomes possible to enter into an alternative state of awareness - a state of deception and misperception.

In that state, where you don't know that information is missing, or that something is hidden, you believe that you're seeing the whole truth. You therefore make sense of it, and it seems to be what it is, based on its appearance. You think you're seeing the truth because you think you are seeing fully.

But if you are not seeing the whole of the information, and some information is hidden, you aren't seeing the real truth. So when you then believe that you are, you're inside a hallucination.

In other words, you're seeing meaning where there is none, you're convinced you're awake but you're not, you're certain you are making complete sane sense out of what's happening but you're mistaken, and you don't even realize that you're nuts.

This state of insanity is automatically a state of imagining truth where there is none - a hallucination of the truth, which is a state of believing the truth is something it is not.

Puzzles are another good example. When you first encounter a new puzzle, you do not see the answer. It seems obscure, hidden. At first you are confused, and you don't understand it, and it makes no sense, and you can't "see" how it is possible. And yet it seems to be possible that the unsolved state of the puzzle is truth, because you see no way to solve it or see additional truth beyond that. But over time, as you question your perception, you gradually might realize that by undoing your own assumptions and reversing your own conclusions, i.e. collapsing the hallucination, the answer suddenly becomes obvious.

Once you have solved the puzzle, it's because you've seen some information, really a state of greater awareness, which has burst the illusion and suddenly you are seeing outside of it. You are no longer fooled, you've found the answer, it seems clear as day and now you kick yourself for the apparent stupidity of having not seen it earlier. In other words, you realize you were mistaken the whole time and its pretty embarrassing.

Bringing this around to A Course in Miracles, it is the same with the "illusion" that this world is a reality. There is an illusion here, in front of your face, which if you were able to see ALL of it clearly, you'd see past the hallucinations and the misinterpretations and the misunderstandings, and suddenly realize, in a state of greater awareness, that what you THOUGHT was true before, was actually false. And you'll understand why. Because now you have revealed some kind of awareness of information that was hidden before, and this information is vital to being able to see the illusion correctly. Ie to overlook the deception, to overlook the delusion and insanity, which was telling you that all kinds of other stuff was true.

So right now, unless you're in full awareness, you're still inside what seems to be a puzzle. And because there's some stuff you are blocking from awareness, there's some information you are not privy to. And because of that limitation, and because you don't even know that the extra information exists yet, you believe that you're seeing the entire truth as it appears to you. That's in spite of the fact that you're only seeing part of a scene, are coming to false conclusions, are seeing "truths" which actually aren't quite true, and are therefore having hallucinations about the meaning of what you see.

You see a dark shadow behind a door, and because you lack information - awareness of "God facts" - in your belief that you are seeing correctly you believe that "its true" that there is a scary monster behind the door. However, if you turn on the light, which reveals to your awareness extra information, now it becomes obvious it was just clothing, and you once again kick yourself for falling for the silly belief that there was a real monster there. But before that, you really believed there was a real monster, and you were therefore frightened. Frightened by an hallucination - a false belief about the truth.

When there is enough awareness of "what is here", of what this illusion IS, its structure and purpose and functioning, and the ways that it deceives, it is no longer possible to believe the magic trick. You've seen through and past all of the mistaken perceptions which you thought were showing you reality.

All of the horrifying mis-truths that you believed in, such as that sin and death were real, are revealed to be completely false. All of the reasons you ever had to be afraid, suddenly have no foundation whatsoever because the truth emerges and shows you that the things you thought were frightening were not TRUE, they were delusions and hallucinated meanings, and thankfully there is a larger explanation for them. When you don't understand what is happening or why its happening, it will scare you, because the illusory truth it presents makes it seem real. When a correct explanation is given, you're like, oh... okay then. Then you drop the false belief, with relief that you no longer have a valid reason to be afraid.

So a blockage placed on awareness leads you to believing that the meaning of reality is obscured, the truth no longer quite makes sense but still seems true, you see things IN and ON TOP OF the illusion that are not even really there (thereby hallucinating), and the sense that you make of it is actually a deception. When the blockage to awareness is lifted, you can no longer be deceived. It's like hearing the punchline to the joke, and never again can you hear the joke and have quite as much of a laugh because you know the answer. Knowing the real answer, the real truth, is revealed by awareness.

So here's a question. If there is a grand illusion of a physical universe, a world, and a body, and if the only reason that you believe you're even seeing them is because you are lacking awareness, then doesn't it suggest that if you had enough awareness, you might suddenly see past that illusion and realize the world does not even really exist? It was just a kind of twisting of consciousness, a distortion, which you could only experience while insane and hallucinating? Maybe the world you thought existed was your misinterpretation of reality, and only existed as a hallucination based on a lack of awareness. Maybe there is no world.

Jesus said in relation to seeing through illusions, "What is understood as nothing must disappear."

and

"My body disappeared because I had no illusion about it. "!!

It's not just that there really is an illusion. It's only even an illusion because you believe there is one. Really, you are just misperceiving reality. That misperception shows you an illusion that there is a world. Once the puzzle is seen through and the truth is revealed, you will no longer be able to perceive that there really is a world. You will not believe it. You will recognize it was just an illusion, and nothing about it was ever really true. Like a dream. Not a real dream, but a dream-dream.

Form, matter, bodies, the universe, events, people, places, sins, guilts, death, sickness, it's all an illusion, a deception that APPEARS TO MAKE SENSE or appears to be real and true, ONLY because we lack awareness, and ONLY be cause there is some hidden information. When all is revealed, all of these illusions must disappear into the perfect omnipresent light of God, in which they DO NOT EXIST.

In reality, the world does not exist. We're dreaming it, hallucinating it, imagining it, reading into it, and are TRYING to make it a reality. It's just what you get when you haven't solved the puzzle yet, because the truth is obscured. When the truth is revealed, it will be obvious that there isn't really a world there. It was part of the puzzle while you fell for it. And now that the light has come, it is gone.

Lesson 75, "The light has come":

"The light has come. You are healed and you can heal. The light has come. You are saved and you can save. You are at peace, and you bring peace with you wherever you go. Darkness and turmoil and death have disappeared. The light has come. Today we celebrate the happy ending to your long dream of disaster. There are no dark dreams now. The light has come. Today the time of light begins for you and everyone. " - ACIM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes when an old hurt is coming out, you'll start to project it onto someone else. It's kind of as if you switch on a movie projector, you fetch an old tape from your vault, load it up and press play. The movie starts to project and you start to see it and experience it. Except now it's mapped onto other people who probably were totally unrelated to causing it, which starts to make it seem like they are causing it.

As you project, you are kind of hurling the pain at someone else. Whatever the issue is, let's say you are angry at someone for how they treated you or that they acted a certain way that was hurtful. As this hurt comes up in your mind, it will find a target and project toward it. It actually tries to turn that person INTO the person that you are upset about, and you start interpreting their actions as though they're doing exactly what that person did.

And as you do this projecting, it's kind of like you are judging, condemning and attacking the person with this stuff. You're trying to turn them into this stuff, to fill the role. And for most people this actually influences them and may cause them to start acting in a way that fits the 'role' that you are projecting. And this makes it even more plausible that all of this upset is because of them.

In the midst of such hallucinations you can really get to believing that this person is doing this to you, and at the same time you are feeling the old hurt, and putting two and two together you think its because of them. But what's really happening is the person is just triggering your old hurt and you're not really dealing with it.

Whatever the person seems to be doing, it likely is similar to what someone else did in your past. Form-wise it may not be similar at all. It could be that the person has the same attitude, or reminds you of how someone was a certain way when around you, even though their physical behavior and appearance may be different. The psychological 'content' seems to match and this creates a connection.

In this state of semi-consciousness it's pretty hard to realize that this is what is going on, especially when you're convinced it's all to do with this other person. But what you're feeling is your own stuff, for which you are responsible, and this projection is just hurting the other person. You are accusing them of what you believe someone else did to you so that you have a way to scapegoat the energy and seem to get it out of your mind. Which doesn't work.

The only way is to realize that you are triggered, you are reacting, you are re-experiencing old stuff, it's nothing to do with anyone else, and you need to own it and heal it. Taking the burden off the shoulders of the other person is a good start.

Holy Relationships occur when a person recognizes that the other does absolutely nothing to them, nether good nor bad, neither beneficial or harmful, neither special or hurtful.

In specialness, you believe the other DOES things to you, causes you to feel a certain way, pleases you, attracts you, helps you, loves you for you, etc. But along with that they will hurt you, offend you, annoy you, attack you and reject you.

It's always a package deal, because to be at the effect of another you MUST be in the victim mindset even if those effects are something you think you want. You will select someone as special who SEEMS to give you as much of what you want as possible, and as little of what you don't want, but the illusion is that they MUST give you both if you are to be at the effect of them.

If they can do anything to you at all, if you are to "receive" from them "against your will", so that you can be changed by them and affected by them, you are a victim, regardless of whether it seems like a positive desirable effect or a negative hurtful effect.

You do not want to be at the effect of others whatsoever. To do so means you are vulnerable and attackable and dependant and in the ego thought system.

You are meant to be invulnerable, completely causal, never affected by anything, and certainly not at the effect of someone else, no matter how special they seem to be.

If you are to relate to the person in a holy way, you must be whole and complete in yourself, not trying to have them complete you or make up for your lack or do stuff for or to you that you can't do yourself.

It's okay to be with someone and to have support and encouragement and to learn lessons together, etc, which can take a lot of time. That's why you come together, to learn how to love yourself (lol). But the unraveling of that specialness will be the lesson you need to learn, and it may be upsetting at first as the specialness comes into question.

One way or another, special relatioships can turn into holy relationships by the undoing of the "relationship" based in the ego, which is really NOT a relationship. You are not communicating or relating to someone, really, unless you are whole and coming from love. There is a fiction of communication and sharing but its based on mutual hallucinations and private worlds.

Real communication and real relationship and real sharing can only ever be based on love, because only love can be shared. An absence of love is an absence of sharing and is isolation. You can have a special relationship and believe that you are so profoundly affected by another person, yet in actual fact be completely isolated from them and not really genuinely joining with them at all.

To relate from holiness you need to relate to yourself with holiness, and to God with holiness. Then you can relate to the other's holiness and join with their mind. Joined minds are real relationships. Love is the only connection. This is why the Holy Spirit, who is love, is the "highest communication medium", being completely open to share and extend love.

When we are introduced to this world, it is through false perception. That means we SEEM to "see it with" the body's eyes, and we believe the body's way of seeing. And the body shows us the world of form, which is cruel and dark and a place of death.

We do not even realize our mind is in any way making, or interpreting, how the world is. We observe. We see its suffering and carnage. And we decide the world is an inherently bad place.

Jesus then tells us:

"The world is false perception".

"The world IS perception."

"There is no world apart from what you wish"

"Projection makes perception."

What this suggests is, when your mind is in a dark attitude, it projects a world which it simultaneously perceives as a dark place. And when the mind is in a light attitude, it projects a world which is simultaneously perceived as a light place.

What it also suggests is, there IS no world, beyond your mind's dreaming and projecting of one. Ie the world is in your mind. And Jesus agrees to that.

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts."

"Projection makes perception; the world you see is what you GAVE it, nothing more than that. But, though it is no more than that, it is not less. Therefore, to you, it is important. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outside picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive."

What this tells us is there is not really an objective world. The world doesn't exist without someone dreaming of it, in their mind.

It may appear, conceptually, that there is a neutral, meaningless world, like a mirror, waiting for you to project whatever kind of images you want onto. And it might suggest this neutral world is a receiver of either your dark projections or your light projections. And that you see this darkness or light "in" "it" accordingly.

But He is also telling us that at no time does the body or world exist. That it is an hallucination.

"Perception is a result, not a cause."

"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?"

"Hallucinations serve to meet the goal of madness. They are the means by which the outside world, projected from within, adjusts to sin, and seems to witness to its reality. ***It still is true that nothing is without.*** Yet, upon nothing, are ALL projections made. For it is the PROJECTION which gives the "nothing" all the meaning that it holds. ***What has no meaning, cannot BE perceived.*** And meaning always looks within, to find itself. And THEN looks out. ***All meaning that you give the world outside, must thus reflect the sight you saw within.*** Or better, if you saw at all, or merely judged against."

You look within your mind first, and then you project. And what you see, is only what you have projected, because projection MAKES what you perceive, and perceiving is the RESULT of what you projected.

Therefore you see only "a world" "out there" because you are projecting it inside your mind. It is not really out there at all. It is nothing. There is nothing to project onto. Only what you project AS.

This tells you essentially that the world you see in false perception, when your mind is dark, when you look within and see darkness, and then project it outward for perceiving, is seen ONLY in the dark of mind.

And this tells you that, essentially, there is ANOTHER WORLD, another "version" of a world, unlike what you saw in false perception, which is seen in light. It is seen only by looking within, seeing the light of Christ, and then projecting outward as Christ Vision. That "real world" has no resemblance to the world of false perception.

In fact, because there is no objective world, and you maintain it entirely in your mind, and because your mental attitude "tunes you out" of one world and "into" another, the Holy Spirit's happy dream, seeing one makes you unable to see the other.

"This world you see MUST BE DENIED, for sight of it is costing you a different kind of vision. YOU CANNOT SEE BOTH WORLDS. For each of them involves a different kind of seeing, and depends on what you cherish. The sight of one is possible because you have DENIED THE OTHER."

"Both are not true, yet either one will seem as real to you, as the amount to which you hold it dear. And yet their power is NOT the same, because their real attraction to you IS unequal. You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began."

It's kind of like saying, when you are in a bad mood, you project a hellish version of a planet Earth. When you are in a good mood, you project the real world, which contains no forms, no suffering, no sickness, no death. They are like tuning into different TV stations. Investment in the spiritual eye weakens investment in the physical sight.

"Everything looked upon with vision is healed and holy. Nothing perceived without it means anything. And where there is no meaning, there is chaos."

The world, which we call Earth, seems to exist only so long as we dream of it. A forgiven world, is how Earth appears to be when seen through forgiving eyes. It is not the real world, because in the real world there are no forms. But it may appear close.

Earth is a veil, hanging in front of the real world, and must be seen through to the light. This is what Christ Vision does, overlooking the world. And eventually this veil lifts entirely to reveal the real world/face of Christ in its fullness. And in this Vision, the world - Earth, is completely forgotten, and disappears from sight entirely.

"This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself."

"Forgiveness lets the veil be lifted up that hides the face of Christ from those who look with unforgiving eyes upon the world."

"the veil of sin that hangs between you and the face of Christ."

"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."

The Earth, hell, the forgiven world, the real world even, are all dreams in your mind. The real world offers you an entirely different outlook, vision, and something to look at, beyond the world of bodies and sin.

"This is the shift that true perception brings: What was projected out is seen within, and there forgiveness lets it disappear. "

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all."

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

"Vision is the means by which the Holy Spirit translates your nightmares into happy dreams; your wild hallucinations, that show you all fearful outcomes of imagined sin, into the calm and reassuring sights with which He would replace them. These gentle sights and sounds are looked on happily, and heard with joy. "

"When you have looked on what seemed terrifying, and seen it change to sights of loveliness and peace; when you have looked on scenes of violence and death, and watched them change to quiet views of gardens under open skies, with clear life-giving water running happily beside them in dancing brooks that never waste away; who need persuade you to accept the gift of vision?"

"Damnation is your judgment on YOURSELF. And this you WILL project upon the world. See it as damned, and all you see is what you did to hurt the Son of God. If you behold disaster and catastrophe, you tried to crucify him. If you see holiness and hope, you joined the Will of God to set him free. There is no choice that lies between these two decisions. And you will see the witness to the choice you made, and learn from this to RECOGNIZE the one you made. The world you see but shows you how much joy YOU have allowed yourself to see in you, and to accept as YOURS. And, if this IS its meaning, then the power to GIVE it joy MUST lie WITHIN you."

"You HAVE been wrong about the world, because you have misjudged YOURSELF. From such a twisted reference point, what COULD you see? All vision starts WITH THE PERCEIVER, who judges what is true and what is false. And what he judges false, HE DOES NOT SEE. You who would JUDGE reality CANNOT see it, for whenever judgment enters, reality has slipped away. The out of mind is out of sight because what is denied is THERE, but is not recognized. Christ is still there, although you know Him not. His Being does NOT depend upon your recognition. He lives within you in the quiet present, and waits for you to leave the past behind, and enter into the world He holds out to you in love."

Nothing real can be threatened. It should not possible to threaten anything, anywhere. Yet here there is seemingly a world, which is filled with things which can seemingly be threatened. Somehow it has been arranged that there are objects which can collide, obstacles to hit, explosions to damage things, and all manner of weapons to attack with.

But how can there be one single ounce of attack if nothing real can be threatened? What can this world be made of that it can seem to be attackable? Surely it must be that the attack is not really attack, and nothing actually is hurt, and it's all just a big illusion made to look like such things are happening? How can any of it be a real attack if attack is not possible?

Jesus says in the course that there is no safety in the world. He also says bodies can clearly attack bodies. He also says problems were made to not be escaped. He also says you are immortal and cannot die but you can confuse yourself with things that do. He also says the world has no safety to offer, everything visible will perish, and everything you built has the mark of death upon it.

So what is this world, where there is no safety, riddled with problems, everything can be attacked, and the seeming impossibility of "attack ability" seems to be rampant?

If you look you'll notice that everything physical in this world seems to be attackable. Nothing is truly protected from anything. Anything can attack anything. The myth of safety on the level of form is everywhere, the desire to avoid physical attack, injury, harm, death, sickness etc. Yet none of these things should even be possible.

If reality cannot be attacked at all, and there is nothing else, if there appears to be something else that is attackable it cannot be real attack ability. It has to be some kind of deception, formed from the very same fabric as the rest of reality, in which strange shapes, appearances, images, concentrations of thoughts, temptations and so on, are made to look "as if" attack is possible.

So one person kicks another person in the leg. Has there been an attack? Not in reality, for sure. So whatever this is, it must be some kind of strange twisting of make-believe images, hallucinations, warped to make it "appear" that not only does something attackable seem to exist, but it has indeed attacked and been attacked. But no matter how it appears, it cannot be true that attack is real, has happened, or that anything is truly harmed.

Any sign of harm MUST be some kind of extraordinary smoke and mirrors deception. Any hint of damage to anything must be an illusion of death pretending to exist. We don't have anything to make the world from other than our thoughts. The same thoughts that we create eternal life with. The same mind. What do we make the world with except our mental processes?

"You maintain the world in your mind with your thoughts"

"I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts"

Therefore you use thought to attack thought, in the form of a giant thought in the shape of a planet. Or a body.

The laws of spacetime, the made-up physics, largely governs the "workings" of this illusory world, what makes it possible for it to seem as if materials can attack materials. It's all set up fundamentally to make it seem as if attack is possible. The world was made to try to prove sin is real. And it was made as an ATTEMPTED (and failed, impossible) attack on God. "It is the world you see that is impossible."

Real attack must be impossible. It simply cannot actually be attack. It must be a lie, a deception, an unreality. It cannot really be there. Nor can it have real consequences. Nor can it be irreversible in its effects. Nothing about it can be permanent. All attack is an illusion in a dream of death. The world is nothing but a disguise over the truth, and nothing about it is true at all.

"You HAVE carried the ego's reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is TOTAL CONFUSION ABOUT EVERYTHING."

When we believed in separation from God, we entered into a very confused and backwards way of thinking. We shut out reality. We denied truth. We split and narrowed our minds and drove ourselves insane.

"Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh. In his forgetting did the thought become a serious idea, and possible of both accomplishment and real effects."

"This IS an insane world, and do not underestimate the actual extent of its insanity."

"The world you see is the delusional system of those made mad by guilt."

We swapped the meaning of everything. What was true became false. What was false became true. Innocence was considered a sin. Sin was considered innocence. God was regarded as an evil dictator. Ego was regarded as your saviour. Death was believed to be life, and sickness was believed to save you from God. Darkness was light and punishment was atonement.

You no longer recognize what anything actually is. When you look upon things you do not see what they are, you see what you made of them. You see the twisted meanings and deceptions that you made of them. You don't believe that God is love. And you think death is your friend. You do not even recognize your own self.

"There is no statement that the world is more afraid to hear than this: I do not know the thing I am, and THEREFORE do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world and on myself."

"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."

So now we have a world filled with crazy people. People who do not know which way is up. People whose priorities are all over the place purely because they think they've made a really great decision, when in fact they have poor judgement.

If your whole belief about what something is, is wrong, it changes how it looks to you and what it means to you. If it's something which in truth would hurt you, and you see it as helpful, you might choose it on purpose believing it will help you.

This is the case with sickness. "Sickness is a defense against the truth" tells you that you mis-perceive God. You think God or Truth is a threat to you, an enemy. You see attack and vengeance and danger in him. Having hallucinated these lies, you then react to them. And you reason, if God is trying to destroy me, I need to get away from God.

Then you will try to create a distance between you and God. And this is a problem because God is, in the big picture truth, life and wholeness and health and happiness. So you resist God, thinking God is your enemy, and by doing so choose to go away from these things. So you head towards sickness and death and limitation and weakness, all under the belief that you are saving your life from a real threat.

Then you end up suffering and you hate it and you think you didn't choose it. You don't want it because who could want it really, but you did want it because you chose it. And you chose it because you made a wrong decision.

"I must have made a wrong decision because I'm not at peace."

The decision was based on you thinking that you knew what everything is, when you didn't, and were misinformed and deceived. So you deceived yourself and lied to yourself and then followed that lie as guidance and ended up hurting yourself. But you didn't think it was going to hurt, you thought it was helpful.

So literally the people in the world believe that suffering is salvation. Punishment is seen as justified and right and a form of healing and education. More suffering for the guilty is seen as atonement. And people literally choose to die, in an attempt to claim their innocence. If someone else is to blame, you get to be exonerated, and you think this will save your life, but you die instead.

"Death seems an easy price, if they can say, "Behold me, brother, at your hand I die."

It's all to do with having a faulty guidance system. A screwed up navigation. The map is all wrong. The signposts are all backwards. You think you're going towards stuff which is truly good by choosing things which are definitely not. And all because you do not know what the fuck you are doing.

You do not know who you are, what you are, where you came from, how you got here, why you are here, what you are doing, why you are doing it. You even doubt whether you were even ever really created and suspect that you are an illusion that doesn't even exist.

"The dispute over authorship has left such uncertainty in the minds of man that some people have gone so far as to doubt whether they were ever created at all."

So this is the problem we all have. We do not correctly recognize what anything actually is. And so we keep being in a state of self-deception. And then we make choices based on this deception, which turn out to move us towards "what we want", just as all choices do, except the stuff we've chosen is not in our best interests. But we thought it was.

So we keep hurting ourselves. We know not what we do. We are lost. We are insane. We need to be straightened out. We need help from outside the insanity (Holy Spirit etc). We need to be corrected. We need to be willing to be mistaken. We need to examine the beliefs and meanings we've given to everything and look for a better way.

"Do not, then, think that following the Holy Spirit's guidance is necessary merely because of your own inadequacies. It is the way out of hell for you."

Every strategy. Every form of problem solving. Every way of relating. Everything you think you'll gain or lose. Every scenario. It all has to be brought into question and re-evaluated by the One who knows. Your mind needs to be corrected and trained to line up with what is ACTUALLY TRUE, and what you can actually have, and want, and what is fully in accord with God's will.

"ALL real pleasure comes from doing God's will. Whenever it is NOT done an experience of lack results. This is because NOT doing the will of God IS a lack of self."

Recognition is the key. Properly discerning what something is or isn't. Being not deceived by anything. Correct clear accurate perception. Proper categorization of things. Is something true on God's terms, or is it false? Can it be real in God, or is it unreal? It is really what it appears to be, or is it something else? Are you mistaken? If you are not enlightened, you are mistaken.

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

If you could fully recognize what everything actually is, to see it clearly, without distortions of reality, without hallucinations, without fake meanings and artificial values, without wishful thinking or delusion, without denial and without attack or resistance, you would be enlightened.

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

When everything false is finally seen for what it is, recognized to be unreal and nothing, with no value and no further purpose, it will disappear.

"Illusion recognized must disappear. Accept not suffering, and you remove the thought of suffering. Your blessing lies on everyone who suffers when you choose to see all suffering as what it is."

"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."

"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? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are."

"Healing, then, is a way of APPROACHING knowledge by THINKING in accordance with the laws of God and RECOGNIZING THEIR UNIVERSALITY. WITHOUT this recognition, you have made the laws themselves meaningless TO you."

"Yet what makes them God's teachers is their recognition of the proper purpose of the body."

"In fact, the recognition that you do not understand is a prerequisite for undoing your false ideas."

"The ego will NEVER let you perceive this, for this recognition WILL make it homeless. For, when this recognition dawns clearly, you will NOT be deceived by ANY form the ego takes, to protect itself FROM your sight."

"Today we would experience ourselves at one with Him, so that the world may share our recognition of reality."

"He overlooks the mind and body, seeing only the Face of Christ shining in front of him, correcting all mistakes and healing all perception. Healing is the result of the recognition, by God's teacher, of Who it is that is in need of healing. This recognition has no special reference. It is true of all things that God created. In it are all illusions healed."

"Let us try to recognize this today, and experience the peace this recognition brings."

"The light is come today to bless the world, for you have recognized the Son of God, and in your recognition is the world's."

"That is why the recognition of your OWN invulnerability is so important in the restoration of your sanity."

"The recognition of God is the recognition of yourself."

"For recognition comes of vision and SUSPENDED judgment."

"The full awareness of the Atonement, then, is the recognition that the separation NEVER OCCURRED."

"The aim of our curriculum, unlike the goal of the world's learning, is the recognition that judgment in the usual sense is impossible."

"Your inheritance awaits only the recognition that you have BEEN redeemed."

"Think of the freedom in the recognition that you are not bound by all the strange and twisted laws which you have set up to save you."

"Your function here is only to decide AGAINST deciding what you want, in recognition that YOU DO NOT KNOW. How, then, CAN you decide what you should do? Leave ALL decisions to the One Who speaks for God, and for your function as He KNOWS it."

"The real world is all that the Holy Spirit has saved for you, out of what you have made, and to perceive only this is salvation, because it is the recognition that reality is ONLY WHAT IS TRUE."

"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."

"The recognition of the real creative power in yourself AND others brings release because it brings peace."

"Truth must be all-inclusive if it be the truth at all. Accept no opposite and no exceptions, for to do so is to contradict the truth entirely. Salvation is the recognition that the truth is true and nothing else is true."

"Miracles are merely the sign of your willingness to follow HIS plan of Salvation, in recognition of the FACT that you do NOT know what it is." "Awaking unto Christ is following the laws of love OF YOUR FREE WILL, and out of quiet recognition of the truth in them."

"Defenselessness is strength. It testifies to recognition of the Christ in you."

All our lives we've given the world meaning.

"I've given the world all the meaning that it has for me."

The world in and of ITSELF has NO meaning whatseover.

"The world is meaningless in itself."

"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."

You thought the world was SOMETHING, and that therefore it MEANT something. That it had value, purpose, places to go things to see, people to meet, important stuff that had to be done, cities to build, achievements to attain, items to posses, idols to worship, civilizations to conquer.

But this is all fake. The world itself does not mean anything because it is actually nothing. It is an illusion of a world. It is an idea of nothing pretending to be something. An impossibility, pretending to be possible.

Nothing in the world makes any sense because the world is not made of sanity. It is a rebellion against sanity and against existence. Rebelling against existence means it does not exist and is an attempt not to exist.

By trying to go from being everything in God, to being nothing on your own, you are attempting to die. But even your death is nothing and meaningless. Death doesn't mean anything whatsoever because it isn't real and has no existence. It is nothing.

"There is no death, the Son of God is free."

This entire cosmos, all of the universe, every expansive galaxy, all the stars and the sun and moon and the earth, is all absolutely nothing whatseover.

And instead of recognizing this FACT, perhaps the ONLY FACT in the whole world, we instead have set about BELIEVING that the world is something, that it exists, has importance, has merit, is created, is alive, is doing something for a reason, can be lived in, is your home, and somewhere to spend your existence.

But all of this is nothing but a fantasy in a dream. We are walking around in dream bodies inside a dream world pretending to be dead.

"The body is a dream." "All your time is spent in dreaming." It can seem extremely difficult to entertain the idea that the world is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WHATSOEVER. That it isn't even really there, and as such is some kind of psychological massive hallucination which WILL disappear when you wake up to sanity.

"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? Could you have FAITH in what you see, if you ACCEPTED this? AND WOULD YOU SEE IT? Hallucinations disappear when they are RECOGNIZED for what they are. This IS the healing and the remedy."

"It takes great learning to both recognize and accept that the world has nothing to offer." "The world holds nothing that I want."

It can't GIVE you anything because it IS nothing. This is why giving up the world and returning to God is to give up NOTHING WHATSOEVER, and to GAIN EVERYTHING.

Because in truth you have hidden yourself from everything and have tried to accomplish nothing. And you have been successful in that, because you HAVE DONE NOTHING AT ALL. This is why "there is no sin." You can't do what isn't possible in God.

"It is the world you see that is impossible."

The world is not there. Space and time are fake. Bodies don't exist. There is no human race. There is only the Kingdom of God and the Trinity, the souls he created, the angels and our creations, and the Holy Spirit, hanging out with God in an endless choir of celebration and thanks as we extend real creation and real existence.

"There is no world. This is the CENTRAL LESSON the course would attempt to teach."