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When we typically experience the world from an ego viewpoint, we might encounter lessons and people and problems. And then we attempt to forgive these things. And we think we are then done with forgiveness. And then another one comes along. And then we do another forgiveness. And this gives you the impression that you are doing forgiveness.

But over time, you are really moving horizontally through the world, encountering obstacles, one at a time, and these obstacles always seem specific. The form of the obstacle is what deceives you. The problem with your mother, the problem with the plumbing, the problem with the sick brother, the problem with your boss. Each one seems specifically different and unrelated to the rest. And so you perform a string of seeming forgivenesses through time.

But as you perform each forgiveness and move towards truth, you are in fact moving UPWARDS, towards the light. And this upwards movement may seem to be more subtle and gradual, such that it isn't even specific and it may be difficult to realize whether you are making upwards progress. But over time, it will start to occur to you that each of the seemingly different "forms" that problems take, is itself an illusion.

You will start to see that each of these forgiveness opportunities have something in common. Common characteristics. There's always some problem with your belief in who is causing who. And there's always some issue of authority and power. And there's always fear and reaction involved. And there's always the same stresses. And as you progress you start to generalize the learning and start to transcend the forms and differences. And then it starts to occur to you that these are not all different situations.

What forgiveness reveals to you, is that you aren't really in fact having to deal with a multitude of totally different problems, but that in fact the whole world, ALL of the problems, are doing the same thing. And ALL of the problems have the same characteristics. And ALL of them are forgiven in the same way. And this starts to show you that it's not really a specific problem with specific people, or specific groups, or specific situations, it's a problem with THE WHOLE WORLD.

And then you start to question the nature of the whole world. Maybe the WHOLE world is a collection of attacks. Maybe all of it, regardless of the form it takes, is ONE problem. And now you are starting to not fall for the illusion of form or the shape that a problem takes. You are realizing that either you move downwards into the darkness of hell, or upwards into the light of heaven. And either you are lost in the battlefield of stress and misery, or you are above the WHOLE battlefield in light and happiness.

Forgiveness starts to now take on a different direction. Its not so much to do with having a DIFFERENT way of handling each situation, but of developing a SINGLE "way" of dealing with them all. And you start to see through the deception or form that each one presents. And you stop falling for the obvious temptations. And now forgiveness is seen as vertical, in which either you are moving into hell or out of it, as a whole. And the qualities of the whole WORLD are now being brought into question.

You are now asking yourself, whether ANY of the things that happen are real. Whether ANY problem is really happening. Whether ANY person's attack has anything to do with you. Whether there even IS anything specific or different about any of it. And as you broaden your horizons to learn very large abstract truths such as that there is no world, this is just a dream, NONE of it is happening to you, loving everyone equally is the way to holy relationship, unity is the truth, sharing with everyone is unconditional love, etc... you move away from the specific towards the abstract.

And now it boils down the real "root cause" of the WHOLE of suffering, the reason for EVERY reaction, the purpose behind EVERY sickness. And you discover there not only really is only one problem, there is also only one solution. One solution to rule them all. And only one lesson that the Holy Spirit is teaching. Either the world is real or its not. And if it is real, you will suffer. And if it's not, you are free. If it's a dream, you have no basis for reactions or fear. If it's not a dream, you cannot help but react in fear. This is a fundamental lesson in the generalization of the teaching. That every form the illusion takes is just as DECOY to distract you from realizing that it's ALL the same.

This causes you to also start realizing that the hierarchy of illusions is a lie. Some things are NOT harder or more difficult than another. The form of a problem lies about its severity. You start to question whether a giant cancer is really any more threatening than a headache. You see how the ego tries to correlate the seriousness of a cause with the appropriate level of reaction, and you stop falling for this lie. The hierarchy starts to flatten, and all of the deceptions that make it seem like a world-sized maze of confusing corridors and disjointed pieces, simply start to fuse into each other as they're all seen as ONE DREAM. One problem, one solution.

"Miracles entail a sudden shift into vertical perception".

"Yet they are all the same and must be recognized as one if the one solution which solves them all is to be accepted."

"Without the values from the past you WOULD see them all the same"

"We will try to realize that we have only one problem, which we have failed to recognize. We will ask what it is, and wait for the answer. We will be told."

"Today I would remember the simplicity of salvation by reinforcing the lesson that there is one problem and one solution."

"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."

In the separation from God and yourself, all that's happened is a part of your mind has believed in being separate. This "split mind" believes things which are not true, and not of God.

We call it the ego, but it's just a part of your mind's faulty belief. It believes in all forms of separation, suffering, specialness, exclusion, attack, destruction and death. It believes in everything opposite to God's nature.

In every way imaginable, with every attribute of God, it has opposed God and come up with its opposite. This egoic mind wants nothing to do with heaven, wants to destroy God's son, wants to kill God off, and wants to rule its own kingdom.

That mind which believes such insane things is in your mind, as part of your mind. You do believe this. That's why you have "an ego", or a part of you that is acting against you, against God, against life. When you, as a whole, attempt to approach God, heaven, light, the Holy Spirit, anything true or good or holy, this OTHER PART of your mind will object. It does NOT want it. It does not understand it, misinterprets it, sees it as an enemy, is threatened by it, hates it, and wants nothing to do with it.

You basically have this anti-christ in your mind, this "devil", this evil-seeming self, which wants to run away from God and go live in hell in its own little kingdom of death and suffering forever. It does not want help, it does not want salvation, it does not want healing, and it definitely does not want your real identity.

That part of mind is very confused, lost, alone, sick and afraid. It is weak and powerless. It is offended by everything and loves nothing. It is backwards and twisted, deprived and depraved. It believes it is at war with God, even though God isn't remotely at war with it, although God is opposite to its nature.

When you try to bring "yourself", your mind, any part of mind, into the light, this part of you will object. This part of you will feel offended by you reading A Course in Miracles. It will feel upset about what it has said and what it implies. It will believe that the truth is out to destroy it. It will hate the course. It will not want to wake up.

This egoic part of mind will resist the truth. It will dig in its heels and produce feelings of overwhelm, tiredness, blockage to energy flow, unwillingness to see or hear or read, avoidance, procrastination, disobedience, and all manner of defenses. This mind can also very much induce all forms of sickness as an attempt to escape from exposure to the truth. It does NOT want health or happiness.

Every time you "do the course" therefore, this part of YOU, this part of your mind, is like a belligerent unwilling child that you're dragging screaming and kicking into the light. It is terrified of God and does NOT want anything to do with ACIM. It will literally feel hurt and upset and offended and scared by what ACIM says.

As a result, very very often, you will find that when you try to do the course, you will have rebounds afterwards. You will feel upset, afraid, angry, hurt, offended, left out, ignored, as if the course hasn't acknowledged your existence or your specialness. You will feel like your very existence is threatened and will take steps to defend against it.

This happens simply because the mind is split. One part of you is trying to become more whole, the other part is putting up a fight and does not want anything to do with it. As you step into the light, the ego screams ever louder in its fear that you're torturing it or trying to make it encounter God. It sees this intimacy with God as a sure sign that it will be exterminated. It sees your efforts to be spiritual as offensive hateful attempts to destroy it.

It is absolutely no wonder then that as you take steps towards the truth, the egoic part of you that still believes wrongly will OBJECT, and sometimes strongly. It will try to reinforce and re-emphasize what is not true. It will tempt you to stay body identified and possessive of your physical treasures. It will try to get you to separate more. It will do whatever it can to preserve itself. Or in other words, YOU will try to preserve yourself because you think you are opposite to God.

We have to learn therefore that we are kind of "wounded people", and our wound is not very happy with the "remedy". It's like rubbing salt in the wound. Or it is painful to the touch. It's like a bruised part of mind which needs careful handling. Sometimes that means you have to go slow, take a break, and "throw your ego a bone." Do something normal, enjoy something physical, indulge or whatever. Just because that "addicted to hell" part of you believes that it NEEDS these things to maintain a sense of peace.

When you are seeming to appease the ego it will calm down, become quieter, relax, hide its defenses, pretend to be your friend, seemingly approve of your unsavory self-destruction, and even help you with your bad choices. It's when you start to move against it, in the direction of the light, that it will decide to no longer pretend being your friend. This doesn't mean it's becoming stronger, but it just means that PART OF YOU does not want to wake up.

"What if you looked within, and saw NO sin? This "fearful" question is one the ego NEVER asks. And you who ask it now ARE "threatening" the ego's whole defensive system too seriously for it to bother to PRETEND it is your friend." UrT2E12

So we have to do what we can, at a gentle pace, to try to awaken from this self-made nightmare, keeping an eye on the fact that we DO NOT WANT TO, and that part of us is still addicted to hell and suffering and death. Part of us wants to die. And that part is going to take some convincing. But while we have these two parts - a willing part and an unwilling part, we're going to keep encountering the fact that whenever we try to purify ourselves by moving toward God, the unhealed part of us is not going to like it.

Eventually of course this will wear off as more and more of the mind heals, the egoic nature becomes lighter and less believed in, less offended and less upset by what we are becoming exposed to. It takes time and trust and patience. Be gentle on yourself and don't push too hard.

This is a long and winding road, with many ups and down, and hopefully overall steady and sure movement towards the light. The ball and chain around your ankle will gradually lighten as you courageously learn to let go of death and destruction. Two steps forward, one step back, is understandable. Keep going, you'll get there. It's guaranteed.

Lately what I've been trying to focus on is what can be *experienced*. The truth can be described in thousands of words but really it is an experience. We're really talking about you getting to the point where you can experience happiness, experience love, experience peace, experience God. God is an experience.

So what this means is looking at what you are experiencing NOW, and looking at what tools you can practically USE to actaully shift your experience to a happier, fuller, more truthful/authentic one.

And this has nothing really to do with what you are thinking about what you're experiencing or what's going on around it or what you should be experiencing, but the actual direct immediate experience - your feelings, your psychological reactions, your perception of reality, your union with God. What is reality to you right now, in honesty and not trying to 'please' Jesus?

This isn't done on a mental level or in terms of theory or discussion. What you really need is practical tools that WORK that bring about a real TRANSFORMATION of what you are experiencing. You are meant to LIVE the truth, not just talk about it. You're meant to actually feel God's love, live in God's love and be God's love.

What I've been seeing also is that when you try to be or attain a goal or theoretical truth that is too far beyond what you can actually EXPERIENCE, all of your energies start to flow into the intellect because they aren't grounded or rooted in what is real to you. You try to grasp at it and affirm it and think about it and make it seem like you understand it but you're not actually *experiencing* it because it's outside your envelope. It's very easy to conceptualize 'oneness' but, are you actually fully omnipresent and experience absolute unlimited psychological access to every part of existence? Nope.

I can testify that I went to great lengths in my mind and intellect in understanding the Course and the metaphysics and the high-level statements of truth and how it all fits together and all that. I was looking for some kind of a way to experience truth by having the biggest or best thought about it, or the widest grasp of where it fits, or the most abstract or subtle aspects of what Jesus has taught about the truth.

But even when I thought I really really really was getting it and understanding it, mentally, it was NOT followed by a result of experiencing love, or experiencing God. It did not bring peace. And it was like getting to the end of a path that you thought would lead you to the truth or to God only to find out that it does NOT lead there.

It doesn't lead there because its a journey in thinking and intellectualizing rather than the much more real, direct EXPERIENCING of truth. So I had to learn this, the hard way, that it can't be all about the talk or all about the theory or all about the metaphysics. It IS okay to seek for understanding (ACIM says understanding is appreciation of the truth), but you can't EXPERIENCE it on a purely theoretical level.

When we're not actually dealing with what we are experiencing - the immediate interaction of you vs what's in front of your face right now and how your mind is having a RELATIONSHIP with it - then it moves away from here-and-now and becomes removed and distant, turning into just a theory or concept.

Your head, your intellect, is quite capable of handling concepts and theories and thoughts about them, but its as though the intellect is an artificial ego device to be separated from reality, from the here and now. I would find myself tending to even intellectualize my feelings, transferring emotional energy into my head and trying to process it there through thought. Instead of feeling. Instead of experiencing.

I've also seen people get caught up in what they 'should' be doing or are supposed to be believing, launching into 'trying' really hard to force yourself to be those things, without ACTUALLY being able to do so. It creates the spiritualized ego. And when asked questions about what they are experiencing now or what they are really feeling, they are disconnected from it.

They will respond about what they think of it or what it means or what they think they're supposed to say or what lofty course idea they're meant to believe, but they don't REALLY believe it. They don't REALLY mean it. And they're out of touch with where they're really at, cut off from FEELING. Feeling is much closer to being than intellectualizing. But people don't want to feel. They don't want the immediate experience of reality, preferring to be buffered against it by all of these intellectual walls of thought and guilt and shame and force and pressure and ... using the wrong tool for the job.

What you may find as I have, as well, is that what I can experience has certain boundaries that prevent me from experiencing anything too far outside my 'comfort zone'. My mind won't stretch that far. If there's a suggestion to be or do something that I'm just not ready for, there's no way I'm going to be ABLE to do it yet alone willing to do it.

You can be willing enough to take small steps from where you actually are to where you want to get to next, but giant leaps are next to impossible. And when you try to make giant leaps before you're really ready, you will BYPASS, which means you're in denial about what you're really believing and experiencing and are pretending to be further along than you want to admit to. It's the ego that tries to throw you into 'advanced spirituality' before you are really ready or willing or able to actually BE it, because it wants the prowess of 'mastery' without ACTUALLY letting go of enough ego to experience it truly.

So you need to stop, go within, and look much closer to home, much closer to where you are realistically at right now. What are you experiencing right now. What are you feeling. And this is where you have to be really honest. Do you REALLY believe what the course is saying? Probably not. What do you believe instead? You have to work through this stuff. You can't pretend not to have blocks to awareness, you have to ACTUALLY look for them and acknowledge that they're there and then work on transforming your beliefs/viewpoints/attitudes so that you can ACTUALLY be free of these blocks.

They don't go away by sweeping them under the carpet, or by using denial, or by shutting them out, or making yourself unconscious, or bypassing to a level of advancement you're not ready for. There is nothing to be ashamed of in admitting that you are NOT the advanced spiritual successor to Jesus just yet. If you don't acknowledge what you're actually experiencing then you aren't going to be able to change your experience. And I think that's what this is all about - transforming what you are experiencing so that you can experience something better. And this means dealing with the 'reality' of your situation, not some ACIM-driven fairytale about how spiritual you are or how lofty the concepts are or what you are 'supposed' to be like.

How do you feel? Where are you at? What is honestly true for you right now? Have the courage to look at it, feel it, experience it, be with it. Acknowledge how fucked up you are. Then re-interpret your evaluation of yourself and transform your experience of yourself into a genuinely higher version of yourself.

Authenticity.

All sense of loss arises from believing that a changing world is real. If it is real, and if something goes away, a part of reality has been lost. If it is real, there has been a real separation. And if that's true, you absolutely must be in a state of deprivation. Time itself induces loss every second, and time is death.

"The world you see is merciless indeed, unstable, cruel, unconcerned with you, quick to avenge and pitiless with hate. It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

Something that you thought was real and valuable has been taken away. A part of reality or God itself has been destroyed and kept apart. The mind reasons that, because it's real and because it's not there, there is an absence, and a part of yourself has been ripped away.

The feelings of grief then rise up to correspond to that belief that something real is lost. The mind invents them to make sense of the situation. Then people in the world who believe in bodies will tell you that it's completely normal and natural to grieve. It does make perfect logical sense, given the premise that this world is real and loss has happened, but it is not natural at all.

In God's immortal reality nothing real can ever be lost, suffer attack, be ripped away or destroyed, forgotten about or separated from. No-one can suffer or be sick or die. Everyone is a part of everyone forever, by God's will. Impermanence of any kind is impossible, and nothing real can be threatened.

"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."

What it then boils down to is, that if you to any degree believe this world or bodies is reality, you will be constantly in varying degrees of loss. If anything at all so much as moves an inch, it implies a separation. If something bigger and more important seems to go away, you will miss it. If a body person dies off and stops being around, you'll notice it intensely. And then there will be the logical conclusion of a loss of something real - a real loss and a real grief.

The problem we have is that we're still working on waking up to God's truth and we still believe in bodies. We still confuse people for their physical bodies and still regard this world as reality. And that sets us up for the consequences of our wrong decision. It means that we're primed to experience losses before they even happen. We've set ourselves up for a fall, by choosing to believe that something temporary can be depended upon forever.

It's our attachment to bodies, our valuing of bodies, and our confusion of bodies with souls/minds, that lays the foundation for devastation and despair and grief. If and when they do go away, which everything in the world of form does eventually, its cruelty will induce all manner of egoic reactions.

"They appear to lose what they love, perhaps the most insane belief of all. And their bodies wither and gasp and are laid in the ground, and seem to be no more. Not one of them but has thought that God is cruel."

An important dynamic that I've experienced is the belief that the person dying is causing you to be upset. If they have gone way, they have attacked you and caused you to grieve. How dare they die. And how dare they stop being there. This will produce anger and resentment. And of course this means you will scapegoat the dead person and project guilt onto them to blame them for causing a loss, which will have nothing to do with them at all and everything to do with you trying to get rid of your own guilt.

Then even further, underneath the anger will be a sense of hurt, as though you have been hurt by the death. And of course that boils down to a belief that the death of anything can infect you and cause you to die along with it. And so now the person who has left the body has returned to life in heaven, and you are left behind in a state of death and suffering, and you are the one who is dead.

"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."

Death isn't real and doesn't really exist. It doesn't do anything to anything real and nothing real can ever die. But if you believe in a world that dies all the time, you can be sure you'll be upset before long. This is why the world is a constant disappointment, because you expect it to last forever. You'll be torn between efforts to wake up and acknowledge God's truth, and the continued belief that death is real which constantly pulls you back into hell like an anchor.

To try to forgive death really means forgiving the entire world of space and time and everything in it. To focus on the reality that a person has not really died, still lives on, and is still a part of me in communication and sharing is of course helpful. But at the same time, the other part of me which is ego aligned and trusts death, is continually pulled into the consequences of that belief. And that means the constant nagging reminder of "yes she really is dead isn't she!"

Feelings of grief, loss, absence, deprivation, anger, etc arise. The seeming "fact" that a person has died slaps you in the face, telling you that you have "suffered" a serious loss. As if the serious loss has happened to you against your will. You might be in grief and feeling like a victim, but at the same time it's true that nothing has really happened. And how can you have been caused to grieve against you will?

But this focus on truth can cause a hurdle to the grieving, because while you try to align yourself with God's truth of immortality, the rest of you is pulled horribly into a dark place of sadness and hopelessness and loss. You can't properly deal with the loss, in a typically dysfunctional way at best, because trying to be holy and perfect all the time makes it seem like a guilty sin to give it any time and attention. And yet it calls to you constantly to deal with it.

At some point then, if you're going to persist in believing in the world, you have left yourself with little choice but to go through a grieving process. If you are not yet ready to completely eradicate all belief in death and thus spacetime ("without the idea of death there is no world"), you're probably going to have to settle at least in part for second-best, failure, impossible struggle, and forced grief that seems pointless. If the world is real and the body is real and the body is lost, your ego is going to suffer about it.

So then at some point you have to turn to the grief and just go through it and feel the horrible shit, acknowledge it and be terribly upset. And this is the part that people call natural, but it is far from it. It's like being stuck in a state that you're not supposed to be in and having to deal with it in a totally conflicted way. And even when you egoically have a total spaz about it, which seems to make it go away for a while, it still doesn't solve it completely.

You can't possibly find peace and acceptance about the situation if the situation is real. There is no atonement there, so there is no cure. Grief will keep regurgitating and producing more upset emotions. There is no freedom while the world is still a reality. So then you're in a situation where you can't find peace and are forced face-to-face with a horrible loss, and all you can do is cry and feel unhappy and be a victim.

People will tell you that you then must allow yourself to grieve - embrace the victimhood, as though this is healthy, and perhaps it is at least better than bottling it up or going into less healthy forms of handling it. You are just going to have to feel it, grieve, and go through the loss. And that does indeed totally suck because it's not really a sane solution. And that means turning away from the constant barrage of God-truths and forgiveness statements and just letting yourself feel the horror for a while. Sometimes you just have to do something even if it's bullshit.

So then you cry, and you cry again, and you do some more and you have a huge catharsis. And somehow this is what the world calls healing. And supposedly you adjust and adapt, as though that's some kind of transformation or coming to terms with it, but that really isn't an awakening either.

It's more like a putting up with and a tolerating and a gradually undoing of the special relationship dynamics, attachments and so on. It's more like learning to let the person be ripped away and trying to just tolerate the pain of that until it stops hurting so much. And until the separation is truly undone it will keep coming back and haunting you for years to come.

It then seems like you pretty much have to grieve and be miserable and mourn and all that, which is a total course failure given that it means you're now part of the "black draped mourners" who are in the funeral procession and not doing God's will, per ACIM's teaching. But since you are where you are with this whole thing, and are not ready to totally surrender into atonement, you just have to go through the bumpy road rollercoaster of despair until it eases up somehow. Hopefully you can use all this as an opportunity to forgive and let go of the belief in death and the world.

"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."

I'd like to say I personally am beyond all this but I'm definitely not. Last week was horrendous, entering into states of victimhood and terrible strong emotions and crying and being bedridden for several days trying to avoid vertigo and sinus stress. The body wasn't too happy about the grieving process either - feel the feelings and it becomes stressed out - don't feel the feelings and it develops physical symptoms instead. It's a lose-lose situation until you somehow just get through it. And it keeps coming.

Moral of the story is, if you're not enlightened it's going to suck. And that's your fault because you chose it, and you're not ready to stop choosing it, so get ready to suck. And then hopefully after some severe sucking you can free yourself from death's nipple and actually find some sense of happiness again.

You'll have to just deal with an impossible situation as best you can until it sucks less. And meanwhile do your forgiveness shit and hopefully someday you'll find true salvation about it all. You can't avoid the inevitable production of grief feelings if you believe there has really been a loss, and until you can face the fact that you do believe there's been a loss and feel through it, you'll just be in denial.

At least something we have to look forward to is the day when we remember to laugh at all this and realize that none of it was ever true anyway.

God has given you free will. Anything you choose is yours to choose. No-one else has any say in what your choices are. No-one has any right to decide for you what your choices are, to make commentary about your choices, to judge your choices, or to accuse you of making the wrong choice. It is none of their business.

Each person is solely responsible for their own personal freedom, which means that anything that a person experiences is entirely chosen, and not induced by anyone or anything else. God is the only cause of anyone. "I am forever an effect of God." One brother does not cause or create another brother. All brothers are equals as siblings precisely because they are not the cause of each other. No one else has EVER been the cause of anything you have experienced. If you believe otherwise you are confused.

You do not have the power to cause anyone else. No one else has the power to cause you. Being entirely responsible for your own freedom can only arise when you grant everyone else total responsibility for their own freedom. If you attempt to control, manipulate, judge, coerce, persuade, condemn, or otherwise alter other people's freedoms, you are denying your own and imprisoning yourself. It will not help you.

When you are entirely responsible for your own perfect freedom, which is a gift from God, you will recognize that absolutely nothing happens against your will. Not suffering, not sickness, not even death. "The power of decision is my own." Your sole responsibility is acceptance of atonement for yourself, so that you can offer it to others. But it is not for you to shove it down their throats, nor can you force anyone to be at peace, or to be loving, or to choose what you think they should.

When a person begins to lose sight of their own freedom, they lose touch with responsibility for the power of choice. And they begin to believe that causation and power are outside of them. They disempower themselves by blaming others. And then they automatically begin to try to make sense of why things are happening seemingly outside of their choosing, and it starts to make sense that someone else is choosing for you. And now you have assigned responsibility for your freedom to someone else.

When you think that someone else is responsible for your freedom, you are being irresponsible, and you will now depend on them making decisions that you approve of. You will encourage them to choose for you, provided it's the right choice that you indirectly want. If they do not choose what you want, for you, you will attack them for failing to give you what you want.

This then becomes the ego's mandate of "forgiveness to destroy", in which responsibility for freedom and for change is assigned to someone other than yourself, instead of you taking the responsibility to make your own decisions. You also cannot claim total responsibility for your own decision-making, while simultaneously believing that other persons are responsible for your decisions. Which means you have to allow other people to be entirely responsible for whatever decisions they make.

When you enter into coercion, control, blame, judgement, accusation, condemnation, taking sides, demanding that people comply with your beliefs, trying to force people to act a certain way, requiring people to make certain choices that you think are the right choices (for any reason), or have expectations or "needs" relating to what they do to or for you, you are entering into insanity, a special relationship, and false perception.

"God does not coerce".

"Your will is lost to you in this strange bartering, in which guilt is traded back and forth, and grievances increase with each exchange."

"Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

You can easily spot when someone is moving into ego. Instead of being responsible ONLY for their own free will choice, they begin to displace responsibility onto other people. Causation is placed outside of them. They then begin trying to manipulate or "guilt-trip" others into acting certain ways, to comply indirectly with their wishes. The seeming "boundary" of freedom between them and others is disrupted, they trespass on the sacred territory of another, and the invasion of war begins.

When people are arguing about whether they should or should not do something, or what is the right thing to do, or who did what to whom, or who is responsible for causing other people to be sick, or who is putting who in danger, or any other dynamic where one person is accused of being responsible for another, the ego is involved. The two people are becoming tangled in a special relationship, anchored at the body level of insane illusions and fictional causes.

Interestingly, when someone is doing this, which always involves projection and anger, which is an attempt to make someone guilty, the person is claiming to be acting in the interests of freedom and the good of all, but are simultaneously rejecting their own freedom by trying to control the freedom of others. Or rather, they place their own freedom into the hands of other people and then try to accuse them of mis-handling it, meaning you don't really believe that other people are free to use YOUR freedom as they see fit.

To make a long story short, what other people choose to do is absolutely none of your business. This is why Jesus asks you to "be passerby". You are only free when you recognize that your brother is free. You cannot recognize his freedom if you are trying to control him, trying to get him to side with you, are waging a war and trying to win allies, or when you're accusing him of inappropriate choices (sin).

If you reject the freedom of others you are in fact shutting down your own freedom, but you do this in the name of trying to uphold your freedom, which is insane. You clearly cannot increase your freedom, or secure your rights, by taking freedom and rights away from other people. If other people are making poor decisions, then the consequences of those decisions are their responsibility only. You cannot be affected by them, unless you yourself personally make a poor choice as well. You cannot be cursed unless you curse yourself first, and other people's poor decisions DO NOT affect you against your will.

"Casting spells" merely means "affirming error", and error is lack of love. When man projects this onto others, he DOES imprison them, but only to the extent that he reinforces errors they have already made. This distortion makes them vulnerable to the curse of others, since they have already cursed themselves. The miracle worker can only bless, and this undoes the curse and frees the soul from prison."

When you move into an area of believing that other people greatly affect you, can destroy your life, can interfere with your health, can threaten your family, or can in any way do anything to you by their free choosing, you yourself have a mental health problem. You are denying your own freedom to such an extent that you think other people are the owners of your freedom. You have given them the power to do this to and for you, meaning also that you do not love yourself. And yet you accuse them of acting against your love.

You in fact want other people to be responsible for you, and in fact you want them to do things to you against your will, so that you can maintain that you are not free. You therefore use your enemies as devices to keep yourself imprisoned, and the more you hate them the more you succeed in imprisoning yourself. The only way to be free yourself is to grant freedom to everyone. Blaming people for imprisoning you or violating your rights is a great way to violate your own rights.

You might think that if you were to do this there would be anarchy, you would be vulnerable, idiots would run the country, fools would steal your possessions, stupid nutjobs would try to hurt your family, and the broken would try to infect you with their diseases. But these are actually part of your own attempt to reject health, reject life, reject protection, reject invulnerability, and reject safety. None of this can happen without your psychological consent.

You can't have it both ways. You can't be in the business of disempowering yourself and disowning your supernatural power of immortality, while at the same time claiming that other people are responsible for your wellbeing and are able to hurt you. You do in fact have a mind-over-matter power innate to all children of God, capable of rendering you immune and invulnerable to all the things of the world. You have an automatic God-given miraculous ability to heal anything and overcome anything. And nothing can prevail against you.

"Today it is the ego which stands powerless before your will. Your will is free, and nothing can prevail against it."

"Nothing can prevail against our united wills, because nothing can prevail against God's."

"NOTHING can prevail against a Son of God who commends his Spirit into the hands of His Father."

When you are in the business of making other people's business your business, you are not in business. You are out of business, which is why you are trying to get the business of others by being involved in their business. You busy yourself with their business because you have no business doing so. And by doing so, you have no business at all.

The people who are having an utter shit fit about whether or not to vaccinate need to pay attention to sanity and reason. You are immortal and you cannot die. No-one and nothing can happen against your will. So who are you accusing of being responsible for things happening to you? It is in fact you who is disempowering yourself and setting yourself up as a victim, and you want to have victimizers in your life who you believe oppose you, to pretend that you don't want their opposition, so that you can keep being a victim about it.

All forms of sickness are illusions produced by an insane mind, acted out upon a body. This is something that you do to yourself. "The mind makes this decision as it makes all decisions responsible for the condition of the body." Your mind has the power to decide whether or not to live or die, to be sick or well, to be happy or unhappy. No one has the right or the responsibility to take this power or freedom away from you. And no-one can. Only you can give it away, disown it, or try to lose it, by your own free will. That's your choice.

If you fear that you can be infected by another's contagion, or by some random environmental evil, then your mind is already sick and needs help. If you are not willing to receive the help, then you are in a bind. It means you do not want to be healthy and you want to die. And yet in this condition you will claim that you want to be healthy and not be sick. But you cannot be even believe that you can be sick while simultaneously bringing about the ONLY decision capable of making you suffer. Nor can you be blaming the cause of your suffering on a speck of particles, or a car crash, or any kind of external causation.

"No-one can die, unless he chooses death. What seems to be the FEAR of death, is really its ATTRACTION."

The real deeper issue behind all this covid panick, is the fear of death and "how to be safe". However...

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

"There IS no safety in a battleground. You can look down on it in safety from above, and NOT be touched. But, from within it, you can find NO safety."

"The world provides no safety. It is rooted in attack, and all its "gifts" of seeming safety are illusory deceptions. It attacks and then attacks again. No peace of mind is possible where danger threatens thus."

When we are body identified, we place ourselves on the battlefield and accuse ourselves of weakness. Then we set ourselves up for being subject to a warzone and threaten ourselves with causes on the same level. We then try to escape this threat with magical means and silly maneuvers which are supposed to somehow make you invulnerable and safe, as if this solves the problem. The problem is not whether or not you are susceptible to a disease, the problem is that you are choosing to believe in disease in the first place, therefore threatening yourself with inducing it.

It then does not matter whatsoever whether you choose to get a vaccine or not. Getting one is insane. Not getting one is insane. Both are insane because they are based on a false premise. If the premise is "sickness is real and I am vulnerable to death against my will", then you are already insane. And making the decision to be vaccined OR not vaccinnated are both equally insane outcomes based on a lie.

"The world was made that problems could not be escaped." You cannot go either way and claim to be making a sane decision.

You cannot escape from or have external salvation from sickness, while looking for external solutions to an externalized problem. If the world does not exist, who is doing this to you? Who is deciding that you are weak and vulnerable and attackable and destroyable? This is nothing other than your resposnibility and your belief. "I can be attacked by nothing but my thoughts." ...

"It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain. Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in any way. There is no cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. No one but yourself affects you. There is nothing in the world which has the power to make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. But it is you who have the power to dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are."

If you are not able to accept total responsibility, which is atonement, then you are in a predicament. You say you want salvation but you don't. You say you want life but you keep choosing death. You say you want health but you believe in sickness and then panick in fear trying to scramble to find ways to defend agaisnt it, knowing it cannot work. What are you going to do? If you are not willing to entertain a miracle, then you are left with no other option. If you are not willing to forgive and rise above the battlefield, you have no other option.

The only remedy you are then left with is a solution which can at best seem to partially work, and at worst destroy you. This is true of any vaccine as much as it is true of ANY magical solution. No magical solution will ever induce wholeness, nor will it make you invulnerable, nor cause you to be what you are. Magic will not correct your mind, it will likely have no effect on your insane beliefs, and it will not ultimately save you from death. It is your thoughts alone that decide whether or not you are choosing to die, and this overrides all magic, and the world.

So you are then in a predicament because you cannot possibly choose a remedy that truly works, all the remedies are broken, the only action you can take is incomplete, and nothing external can truly cause you to be peaceful. "salvation comes from nothing outside of you."

"THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE YOU. That is what you must ultimately learn, for it is in that realization that the Kingdom of Heaven is restored to you."

A vaccine is, at best, an illusion of a solution. It might seem to work for some people and not for others. It may seem to work to a degree, but not totally. It absolutely MUST attack the body in some way as all magic does. It will not stop any virus from entering your body and beginning to take hold.

It will not prevent your body from being vulnerable. It will not ward off death nor will it cause you to feel safe. It might, potentially, seem to manipulate the body so that it might, perhaps, if your mind consents, avoid contagion or transmission of a disease some of the time. But it will not bring peace to your soul. God doesn't live in a syringe. Nor does God need booster shots.

If all you can choose is a senseless insane choice, a partial choice, a choice which you know cannot truly work, which can at best produce an illusion of health, and which may in fact hurt you, what are you to do? This is where you need to ideally be willing to turn to someone who knows better than you. Ask the Holy Spirit. Ask Jesus. Ask your angels. Get some guidance from a higher perspective. If you are not willing or ready to go there yourself, get their input. Let them decide for you.

And this again is where we must acknowledge the freedom of your will. No divine being is ever going to mandate a vaccination, nor are they necessarily going to always advise against it in a given situation. What is right for YOU, is dependent upon every speck of your mental state and what is appropriate, not only for you, but in the atonement plan and in the script for your life.

There may be a reason for you to elect temporary sickness. There may be a reason for you to meet certain people. There may be a good reason for YOU in particular NOT to choose a vaccine. There may be a cascade of outcomes that are only possible if you do, or do not, get medicated. There may be a good reason why you SHOULD, just as there may be a good reason you shouldn't. And it has absolutely NOTHING to do with anyone else, solely because the curriculum is individualized.

The Holy Spirit knows what is best for you given YOUR situation, where you are at and what you are ready for. He knows where your trust is. He knows what you are capable of and will accept. Turn to his advice rather than that of fear or the ego. And especially beware of the egos of other well-meaning people especially the ones who are religious about the "reasons why" you should or should not make a certain choice. EVERY reason on this level is fiction.

If you cannot or will not turn to the advice of a wiser counsel, and if you refuse health, and if you actively are choosing sickness, and if you are living therefore in fear of contagion, then your options are limited. Love does not enter where it is not welcome. You can be prayed for. You can be loved. But you may reject all support. You may have a death wish. You may want to die. It might be "your time", based on your plan. Who knows. I do not know and no-one else likely knows either. Matters are far deeper than some "statics" about viruses or medicines.

Long story short, if you made it this far. .... you are always absolutely free to make any choice you want to make, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else. If anyone is trying to control your decision for ANY reason at all, they are denying their own freedom and are trying to make you responsible for them. They are like children looking for a parent to depend on, to decide everything for them.

This is because they have become undependeable and irresponsible. It's up to YOU to decide how to discern where they are at, and to be responsible yourself for your own choice. And whatever you choose, God loves you.

At the end of the day all you can do is make your own choice in freedom, and free from guilt, and do so decisively and with conviction. But not a conviction that turns into tyranny, or the attempt to recruit others to your cause. Let people be where they are at. Let them make their own decisions. Let them be mistaken and recognize that they are.

Not because they don't do what you want them to do, but because they are free of you. You have no business trying to coerce people to agree with YOUR fearful belief in laws that are not of God.

What I decide to do is none of your business, or anyone's. What guidance I receive regarding my own choices, is none of your business either. What I decide to do or not do has nothing to do with you either. And if you think that my choice affects you, you are deliberately disempowering yourself, because nothing happens to you against your will. This is not supposed to be a selfish free-for-all, or a war, where people are opposing each other and digging in their heels thinking they know what's true. Nothing in this world is true, it's just a dream.

Go within, and go above. That's the only place where there is any sanity.

T4B

Section 2 - Right Teaching and Right Learning

T4B1

We have spoken of many different human symptoms, and at this level there IS almost endless variation. But there is only one cause for all of them. The authority problem IS "the root of all evil." Money is but one of its many reflections, and is a reasonably representative example of the kind of thinking which stems from it. The idea of buying and selling implies precisely the kind of exchange that the Souls cannot understand at all, because their own Supply is always abundant, and all their demands are fully met.

T4B2

Every symptom which the ego has made involves a contradiction in terms. This is because the mind is split between the ego and the Soul, so that WHATEVER the ego makes is incomplete and contradictory. Consider what a "speechless professor" means as a concept. It literally means a "non-professing professor," or a "nonspeaking speaker."

T4B3

Untenable positions such as this are the result of the authority problem, which, because it accepts the one inconceivable thought as its premise, can only produce ideas which are inconceivable. Bill may claim (and has certainly done so in the past) that the PROFESSORSHIP was thrust upon him. This is not true. He wanted it very much, and also worked hard to get it. He would not have had to work so hard either, if he had not misunderstood it.

T4B4

The term "profess" is used quite frequently in the Bible, but in a somewhat different context. To profess is to identify with an idea and offer the idea to others to be THEIR own. The idea does NOT lessen; it becomes STRONGER. The teacher clarifies his own ideas and strengthens them BY teaching them.

T4B5

Teacher and pupil, therapist and patient, are all alike in the learning process. They are in the SAME order of learning, and unless they SHARE their lessons they will lack conviction. If a salesman must believe in the product he sells, how much more must a teacher believe in the ideas which he professes. But he needs another condition; he must also believe in the students to whom he offers his ideas.

T4B6

Bill could not be afraid to teach unless he still believes that interaction means loss, and that learning means separation. He stands guard over his own ideas, because he wants to protect his thought-system as it is, and learning MEANS change. Change is always fearful to the separated, because they cannot conceive of it as a change toward HEALING the separation. They ALWAYS perceive it as a change for further separation, because separation WAS their first experience of change.

T4B7

Bill, your whole fear of teaching is nothing but an example of your own intense separation anxiety, which you have handled with the usual series of mixed defenses in the combined pattern of attack on truth and defense of error, which characterizes ALL ego-thinking.

T4B8

You insist that if you allow no change to enter into your EGO, your SOUL will find peace. This profound confusion is possible only if one maintains that the SAME thought-system can stand on two foundations.

T4B9

NOTHING can reach the Soul from the ego, and nothing FROM the Soul can strengthen the ego, or reduce the conflict within it. The ego IS a contradiction. Man's self and God's Self ARE in opposition. They are opposed in creation, in will, and in outcome. They are fundamentally irreconcilable because the Soul cannot perceive, and the ego cannot know. They are therefore NOT IN COMMUNICATION, and can never BE in communication.

T4B10

Nevertheless the ego can learn, because its maker can be misguided, but CANNOT make the totally lifeless out of the life-given. The Soul need not be taught, but the ego MUST. The ultimate reason why learning or teaching is perceived as frightening is because true learning DOES lead to the relinquishment (NOT destruction) of the ego to the light of the Soul. This is the change the ego MUST fear, because it does not share my charity.

T4B11

My lesson was like yours, and because I learned it I can teach it. I never attack your egos (in spite of H's strange beliefs to the contrary), but I DO try to teach them how their thought-systems have arisen. When I remind you of your TRUE Creation, your egos cannot BUT respond with fear.

T4B12

Bill, teaching and learning are your greatest strengths now, because you MUST change your mind and help others change theirs. It is pointless to refuse to tolerate change or changing because you believe that you can demonstrate by doing so that the Separation never occurred. The dreamer who doubts the reality of his dream while he is still dreaming it is not really healing the level-split.

T4B13

You HAVE dreamed of a separated ego, and you HAVE believed in a world which rested upon it. This is very real to you. You cannot undo this by doing nothing and not changing.

T4B14

If you are willing to renounce the role of guardians of your thought-systems and open them to me, I will correct them very gently, and lead you home. Every good teacher hopes to give his students so much of his own thinking that they will one day no longer need him. This is the one real goal of the parent, teacher, and therapist. This goal will not be achieved by those who believe that they will LOSE their child or pupil or patient if they succeed.

T4B15

It is IMPOSSIBLE to convince the ego of this, because it goes against all of its own laws. But remember that laws are set up to protect the continuity of the system in which the law-maker believes. It is natural enough for the ego to try to protect itself, once YOU have made it. But it is NOT natural for YOU to want to obey its laws unless YOU believe in them.

T4B16

The ego cannot make this choice because of the nature of its origin. But YOU can, because of the nature of YOURS. Egos can clash in any situation, but Souls cannot clash at all. If you perceive a teacher as merely a "larger ego," you WILL be afraid, because to ENLARGE an ego IS to increase separation anxiety. Do not engage in this foolishness, Bill. I will teach with you and live with you, if you will think with me.

T4B17

But my goal will always be to absolve you finally from the need for a teacher. This is the OPPOSITE of the ego-oriented teacher's goal. He is concerned with the effect of HIS ego on OTHER egos, and he therefore interprets their interaction as a means of ego preservation. This is no less true if he is afraid to teach than if he is frankly out to dominate through teaching. The form of the symptom is only a reflection of his particular way of handling the separation anxiety.

T4B18

ALL separation anxiety is a symptom of a continuing will to remain separated. This cannot be repeated too often because you have NOT learned it. Bill, you are afraid to teach ONLY because you are afraid of the impression your image of yourself will make ON OTHER IMAGES. You believe that their APPROVAL of your image will exalt it, but also that your separation anxiety will be increased. You also believe that their DISAPPROVAL of it will lessen the separation anxiety, but at the cost of depression.

T4B19

I would not be able to devote myself to teaching if I believed either of these ideas, and YOU will not be a devoted teacher yourself as long as you maintain them. I am constantly being perceived as a teacher either to be exalted or rejected, but I do not accept either perception for myself.

T4B20

Your own worth is NOT established by your teaching. Your worth was established by God. As long as you dispute this, EVERYTHING you do will be fearful, and particularly any situation which lends itself easily to the superior-inferior fallacy. Teachers must be patient, and repeat their lessons until they are learned. I am willing to do so, because I have no right to set your learning limits for you.

T4B21

Once again, - NOTHING you do, or think, or will, or make is necessary to establish your worth. This point IS NOT DEBATABLE except in delusions. Your ego is NEVER at stake because God did not create it. Your Soul is never at stake because He DID. Any confusion on this point IS a delusion, and no form of devotion is possible as long as this delusion lasts.

T4B22

Bill, if you will to be a devoted teacher rather than an egocentric one, you will not be afraid. The teaching situation IS fearful if it is misused as an ego involvement. If you become afraid, it is BECAUSE you are using it this way. But the devoted teacher perceives the situation AS IT IS, and NOT as HE wills it. He does not see it as dangerous because HE is not exploiting it.

T4B23

The ego tries to exploit ALL situations into forms of praise for itself in order to overcome its doubts. It will be doubtful forever, or better, as long as you believe in it. You who made it CANNOT trust it, because you KNOW it is not real. The ONLY sane solution is not to try to change reality, which is indeed a fearful attempt, but to see it as it is. YOU are part of reality, which stands unchanged beyond the reach of your ego, but within easy reach of your Soul.

T4B24

Bill, again I tell you that when you are afraid, be still and KNOW that God is real and YOU are His beloved son in whom he is well pleased. Do not let your ego dispute this, because the ego cannot know what is as far beyond its reach as you are. God is NOT the author of fear. YOU are. You have willed, therefore, to create unlike Him, and you have made fear for yourselves.

T4B25

You are not at peace, because you are not fulfilling your function. God gave you a very lofty responsibility which you are not meeting. You KNOW this, and you are afraid. But your egos have chosen to be afraid INSTEAD of meeting it. When you awaken you will not be able to understand this, because it is literally incredible.

T4B26

DO NOT BELIEVE THE INCREDIBLE NOW. Any attempt to increase its believableness is merely to postpone the inevitable. The word "inevitable" is fearful to the ego, but joyous to the Soul. God IS inevitable and you CANNOT avoid Him any more than He can avoid YOU.

T4B27

The ego is afraid of the Soul's joy, because once you have experienced this, you will withdraw all protection from your ego and become totally without investment in fear. Your investment is great now, because fear is a witness to the Separation, and your ego rejoices when you witness to it.

T4B28

Leave it behind. Do not listen to it, and do not preserve it. Listen only to God, who is as incapable of deception as are the Souls he created. As teachers and therapists, release yourselves and release others. Do not present a false and unworthy picture of yourselves TO others, or accept such a picture OF them yourselves.

T4B29

The ego has built a shabby and unsheltering home for you, because it cannot build otherwise. Do not try to make this impoverished house stand. ITS weakness IS your strength. Only God could make a home that was worthy of His Creations, who have chosen to leave it empty by their own dispossession.

T4B30

His Home will stand forever, and is ready for you when you choose to enter. Of this you can be wholly certain. God is as incapable of creating the perishable as your ego is of making the eternal.

T4B31

Of your egos you can do nothing to save yourselves or others. But of your Souls you can do everything for the salvation of both. Humility is a lesson for the ego, not for the Soul. The Soul is beyond humility, because it recognizes its radiance, and gladly sheds its light everywhere.

T4B32

The meek shall inherit the earth because their egos are humble, and this gives them better perception. The Kingdom of Heaven is the right of the Soul, whose beauty and dignity are beyond doubt, beyond perception, and stand forever as the mark of the love of God for His Creations, who are wholly worthy of Him and ONLY of Him. Nothing else is sufficiently worthy to be a gift for a creation of God Himself.

T4B33

I will substitute for your ego if you will, but NEVER for your Soul. A father can safely leave a child with an elder brother who has shown himself responsible, but this involves no confusion about the child's origin. The brother can protect the child's body and his ego, which are very closely associated, but he does not confuse HIMSELF with the father because he does this, although the child may.

T4B34

The reason why I can be entrusted with YOUR body and YOUR egos is simply because this enables YOU not to be concerned with them, and ME to teach you their unimportance. I could not understand their importance to YOU if I had not once been tempted to believe them myself. Let us undertake to learn this lesson together, so we can also be free of them together.

T4B35

I need devoted teachers as much as I need devoted priestesses. They both heal the mind, and that is always my own aim. The Soul is far beyond the need of your protection OR mine.

T4B36

The Biblical quotation should read "In this world you need NOT have tribulation BECAUSE I have overcome the world." THAT is why you should "be of good cheer."

T4B37

B's course was very carefully chosen, because "abnormal psychology" IS ego psychology. This is precisely the kind of content which should never be taught FROM the ego whose abnormality should be lessened by teaching, not increased. You, Bill, are particularly well suited to perceive this difference, and can therefore teach this course as it should be taught. Most teachers have an unfortunate tendency to teach the COURSE abnormally, and many of the students are apt to suffer considerable perceptual distortion because of their own authority problem.

T4B38

Your teaching assignment (and I assure you it IS an assignment) will be to present perceptual distortions without either engaging in them yourself, or encouraging your students to do so. This interpretation of your role and theirs is too charitable to induce fear. If you adhere to this role, you will both engender and experience hope, and you will inspire rather than dispirit the future teachers and therapists I am entrusting to you.

T4B39

I promise to attend myself, and you should at least credit with me with some dependability in keeping my own promises. I never make them lightly, because I know the need my brothers have for trust.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
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