When you are a people pleaser, it means that you hide yourself from others. You do this by putting a mask or "persona", a facade or "face" over the top of yourself, showing to the world only what you want them to see. You present yourself to them as all smiles, nothing going wrong, everything is great, as if you're amazing and happy and "fine" when in fact you're dying inside.

It may seem that in this effort to please others you're trying to please them, but you're not. You actually are trying to hide yourself from them so that you only show them what you think they will approve of, in order to hide what you think they will not approve of. It stems from secret sins and hidden hates, self condemnation and self judgement, by which you perceive yourself as flawed. You're not making them be pleased with YOU, you're making them pleased with a FAKE person that doesn't even exist.

The persona you put on as a fake self, a cover over your hideous insides, cuts you off from others and from yourself. It is the most horrible state to experience, emotionally. A sense of embarrassment, shame, being harshly judged. By you.

Make no mistake, what happens when you people please is you separate yourself from your oneness and openness with other people, and you also separate yourself from yourself. You lock yourself in an internal prison where no-one ever really sees who you are and you don't let anyone in. You don't share anything with anyone and you are too afraid to be vulnerable.

The funny thing is that by being exposed and vulnerable you become invulnerable. It's only when you think you need to hide that you develop something that needs hiding. Your dark secret sins are nothing in the light. They don't exist.

But hiding yourself behind this mask is your idea of an attempt to protect yourself. You think that it is shielding you from the threats of others, that if you will just show them a smiling face that seems agreeable and not upsetting, they will not hurt you. It's a coping mechanism to try to defend yourself. The problem is, you are attacked by your own defenses.

Because by believing that someone else is judging you harshly and that you have to put up the smiling-face shields, you are also condemning yourself harshly. And that self condemnation can result in the most horrendous deep emotional pain way beyond anything another person could seem to inflict on you. Deep, deep shame and embarrassment and the sense that you are very wrong. It hurts you. You hurt yourself, by pleasing others.

And newsflash, other people do not want your pleasing, and they do not want to be pleased. Not if they are unconditionally loving. They didn't ask for you to defend yourself or present yourself that way. You're not really doing it for their benefit. You just think you are. You think they are the one who judges you, when all along it is yourself judging yourself indirectly through what you think they think of you.

The simple truth is, you cannot be yourself, while you people please. You are not being honest or authentic. You are not free. You're not free to simply express yourself and let the chips fall where they may. You're not free to open up and be vulnerable or hurt or emotionally upset or to let people help you. It's a state of being very cut off and alone. It's the opposite of health and the opposite of life.

By hiding behind a persona/facade all you do is feel ignored, judged, not-belonging, dissociative, and wishing you were somewhere else. Because you are somewhere else. You're not present. You're not being yourself. You're trying to be something you're not. You're trying to portray yourself as some kind of image that has nothing to do with who you are. And this image is destroying you. Because so long as it stands in for your identity you are imprisoned and trapped and weak and afraid.

No-one can be happy when they are not being true to themselves. No-one can be happy and relaxed and free from fear when they are trying to show up as "always positive" when that's totally unrealistic. That persona, puts you into the darkness. It puts you in the shadows and turns you into a shameful guilty sinner lurking behind this public image of yourself that hides your dark evil ways. And if only you'd come out into the light you'd see that you are not even remotely evil. It's the darkness that's the problem, not you.

Learning to simply just BE YOURSELF is the entire curriculum of spiritual awakening. To be as God created you. To be so accepting and natural in being who you actually are, free of pretending and cover ups and denial. Pleasing others denies your soul. Learn to tell the world to fuck the hell off. You don't need to be pleasing anyone, not one single person. And if they don't approve of you, that has nothing to do with you. You will make yourself suffer far more through your rejection of yourself than anyone else ever could.

Be free. Be you. Be visible.

If judgement and forgiveness are opposites ("he who would not forgive must judge, to justify his failure to forgive"), then judgement is the condition of being unforgiving.

Being unforgiving really means that you are looking at the appearance of illusions and are believing what you see. This means that we don't recognize that we're being faced with an illusion, and instead think that it is somehow the truth. We've fallen for the trickery, for how it 'appears', but are not overlooking appearances to see the truth.

This is the same thing as not seeing Christ in others, because you can only see Christ in others when you are overlooking the illusion. i.e. you have to see past appearances, and that means also seeing past the body, seeing past how things seem, and being very clear about the fact that people are actually Christ.

If they are Christ, they are immortal, powerful, have freedom of choice, cannot be victims, and cannot die. They are also the ones dreaming their dream. If we lose sight of that we fall for the illusion they're creating and take it to be real. Doing so is 'judgement'. We are 'judging' what we see, evaluating it, engaging with it, instead of overlooking it.

It doesn't just mean we are judging harshly, labelling people, pointing out flaws or condemning. Even if we believe for a moment that someone dying of cancer is 'real' and that the person isn't choosing it, that is judgement.

So what is a failure to forgive? How does judgement justify that failure? What is forgiveness? Forgiveness is a state of mind in which you are so forgiving that you see only innocence, truth, Christ, and do not for a second fall for any illusions. You know the truth, you know who is behind all this, and you can no longer believe the trickery - appearances.

When you fail to do that, you are attempting to explain to yourself why you stopped being forgiving. So you have to point out that it was 'because of' things that you are not responsible for. It was because of other people. I mean look at them?! And so we become tangled in appearances, forgetting to overlook appearances, because we are trying to make out that we were right to not forgive, and that the person actually 'is' or 'deserves' what you're seeing in them.

What we need to realize is that this entire world is an illusion, which means, someone somewhere is deliberately creating something for the sole purpose of pretending to be something else, for portraying that author as 'not the author', to try to convince him/herself that it's actually true, and to make-believe that this story is really occurring. It's nothing more than like when a child plays make-believe and pretends that stuff is happening.

This story is what is being shown to us all around us all the time, including our body. And it's our challenge to see through the make-believe, not take it seriously, know that it is not true or real, and be aware of who it is that is making all this seem to happen. It's only because we do not recognize the author of it (and therefore do not recognize ourselves) that we think it is real. And not recognizing Christ as Christ (as the dreamer of all this) means to fail to overlook the illusion and instead fall for it, which means we are judging it to be the truth - that it is truly awful, truly deadly, truly upsetting.

It's not true. The dream is just a dream. We need to wake up to realize who is dreaming all this.

When you perceive yourself as being at the effect of an external power, that it has the power to do something to you or cause you, you will experience fear and weakness.

You may not realize that it is the way you are perceiving yourself in this 'role' of victim, where someone else owns the power, that makes you experience fear.

Then when you are in this state, you've disassociated from that power and think that it is not yours. You think someone else can use it against you, against your will, and you have no power to stop this. It's terrifying. But untrue.

That power you perceive as not yours, which goes hand in hand with experiencing fear, IS your power. You've disassociated from it. You need to reclaim ownership of it.

You reclaim it by changing how you perceive yourself. You must stop seeing yourself as playing a victim role, where that power is separate from you and threatening you. Instead you must integrate that power, reclaim ownership of it, recognize it as your own, realize what you're doing to yourself and stop doing it.

What you're doing to yourself is you've basically chopped off your arms and legs and are holding them out in front of you at a distance threatening to hit yourself with them. And now you feel that you have nothing to defend yourself with because you have no arms and legs. And so you are terrified. This is how ridiculous it is.

Take your arms and legs back.

And then what happens when you've taken it back?

Now there is no power outside of you. There is no separate alien will about to use that power against you. You are not a victim. And therefore you have no grounds for fear because you don't perceive an enemy.

Now you are empowered.

And guess what? When you are empowered... *paradox alert*... when you are empowered, you will not perceive that there is anything you NEED to have power over. There IS nothing out there that you need to have a lot of power to conquer. Because that power was your power, and so there is no other power.

This is the same as saying, love has no opposite. When you love yourself and stop disempowering yourself and stop projecting and disowning your power, you take it back and return to love and now there is no enemy out there. So you are safe. You are powerful, with no enemy.

When you are in situations where you think you have an enemy and where you 'need' power and have to muster enough courage and power to fight then.... that's all entirely a bullshit ego game. That's the ego fighting itself. Both sides are losers. That's got nothing to do with empowerment. "War" is nothing to do with real power, it's to do with artificial power, which is always weak and limited because it always has enemies that threaten to destroy it.

Real power has no enemies. Real power has no threats.

It is the same as the fact that true forgiveness means... being in a state of 'forgivingness', such that you do not even SEE that there is anything that NEEDS to be forgiven... because your fore-giving is pro-active and prevents the arising of errors in your awareness, so you have a forgiving attitude toward everyone and do not see anyone as judged harshly.

It's the same with true power. When you are truly empowered, there IS NO ENEMY, and there is no external cause of terror, and there is no alien will out there doing stuff against your will. The power ensures that you see yourself empowered, invulnerable, immortal and eternal, SO THAT you do not see yourself as dis-empower-able. It fulfills its own prophecy.

Take your power back. It's still yours.

Judgment is a fairly large topic in ACIM. The course teaches us to basically "not judge". But that's not the whole story. Judgement can relate to evaluating the meaning of something, but also can in its lower forms mean condemnation. It can devolve into hate and attack and sin, or it can elevate to true justice and forgiveness.

Judgment is tied into perception, which "selects and evaluates" the meaning of things. And because it's based on perception, it is uncertain and unstable. That is, until it is stabilized by the Holy Spirit.

He has correct judgement because he, in part, has perception, but he also has knowledge. You have to know EVERYTHING in order to correctly discern what anything is. It thus requires vision, based on knowledge. He is the only one who can judge correctly, until you can learn to share his judgement in place of the ego's judgment. The ego always judges harshly, producing what we call "condemnation" or "being judgmental."

This is because the ego does not know anything, and is always wrong. Its judgements are always harsh and attacking, accusing everything of sin and guilt. It cannot recognize the "true" judgements of the Holy Spirit, and so its judgements produce false perceptions.

If you let the Holy Spirit judge for you, and then you match, accept or align with his judgement, your own judgement will line up with his and be accurate. If you try to judge on your own, and given you lack knowledge, most of the time you will judge with the ego and make false judgements. These judgements will be attacks and they will hurt yourself.

As you learn to let your judgement rest upon the Holy Spirit's judgement, your own judgement aligns with the truth, causing your perception to become "true". You judge with the ego less and trust the Holy Spirit to judge for you. Eventually your own judgement becomes "as true" and equal to his, shared with him.

Only when your judgement is perfected, and your perception aligned with knowledge, are you in a position to judge correctly without ego. This is an advanced state.

Jesus doesn't entirely write off all judgement. He does want us to stop using our ego to judge, and to instead depend on the Holy Spirit to judge for us until we are better able to judge with him correctly and share his judgement. His judgements are not condemning, they are healing and forgiving.

Thus to him, true judgement or "the final judgement" is a way of evaluating everything as forgiven and innocent, in which judgement becomes "non-judgmental." In this way, the attacking judgementalism of the ego becomes repurposed and is used to cancel itself out. By using judgment to not attack, the need for judging at all is undone, and so the need for perception ends.

Ultimately, by using the Holy Spirit's nonjudgmental judgement, we escape from the world. The world was made BY judging, ie as an attack on God, as a condemnation of his son. The ego aligned with the world's nature (both based on separation) and judged the world harshly.

The Holy Spirit judges the world fairly and without condemning it. You thus escape from the world by not playing the world's game of condemnation and attack (which is also sin). By not attacking what is rooted in attack, by not judging those who condemn, by seeing sinners as innocent, judgement is repurposed as a way to evaluate that the judgmental attack-world is forgiven. Thus is our investment in its nature undone, and the world is gone with it.

When judgement is perfected, ie shared with and in agreement with the Holy Spirit, ego and the body and the world disappear. Perception ends and we return to a state of knowledge, waking up in the reality of the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no condemnation and no sin and no ego, and no need to judge or evaluate the meaning of anything. Everything there is inherently meaningful and means everything, which thus gives way to cognition and knowledge.

This all boils down to:

1) Do not condemn (hate, attack, sin, make guilty, attack-thoughts, grievances etc).

2) Do not evaluate anything on your own, recognizing you cannot (let Holy Spirit judge through you - extend his judgement).

"The intrusion of the ability to perceive, which is inherently judgmental, was introduced only after the Separation. No one has been sure of anything since then."

"Can this be judgment? You have often been urged to refrain from judging, not because it is a right to be withheld from you. You cannot judge. You merely can believe the ego's judgments, all of which are false. It guides your senses carefully, to prove how weak you are; how helpless and afraid, how apprehensive of just punishment, how black with sin, how wretched in your guilt."

"No-one who loves can judge, and what he sees is FREE of condemnation."

"How can His Son AWAKEN from the dream? It is a dream of judgment. So must he judge NOT, and he WILL waken. For the dream will seem to last while he is PART of it. Judge not, for he who judges WILL have need of idols, which will hold the judgment off from resting on himself. Nor CAN he know the Self he has condemned. Judge not, because you make yourself a PART of evil dreams, where idols are your "true" identity, and your salvation from the judgment laid, in terror and in guilt, upon yourself."

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is."

"When the Bible says "Judge not that ye be not judged" it merely means that if you judge the reality of others at all, you will be unable to avoid judging your own. The choice to judge rather than know has been the cause of the loss of peace. Judgment is the process on which perception but not cognition rests."

"Yet will his perfect sinlessness RELEASE you both, for holiness is quite impartial, with one judgment made for all it looks upon. And that is made, not of itself, but through the Voice that speaks for God in everything that lives, and shares His Being."

"We will receive but what is given us from Judgment made beyond the world."

"Judge not, for you but judge yourself and thus delay this final judgment. What is your judgment on the world, teacher of God? Have you yet learned to stand aside and hear the Voice of Judgment in yourself? Or do you still attempt to take His role from Him? Learn to be quiet, for His Voice is heard in stillness. And His Judgment comes to all who stand aside in quiet listening, and wait for Him."

"How CAN specialness be just? Judge not because you cannot, NOT because you are a miserable sinner too."

"We cannot judge ourselves, nor need we do so. These are but attempts to hold decision off, and to delay commitment to our function. It is not our part to judge our worth, nor can we know what role is best for us; what we can do within a larger plan we cannot see in its entirety."

"Love cannot judge. As it is one itself, it looks on all as one."

"The Savior's vision is as innocent of what your brother is as it is free of any judgment made upon yourself. It sees no past in anyone at all. And thus it serves a wholly open mind, unclouded by old concepts and prepared to look on ONLY what the present holds. It cannot judge because it does not know. And RECOGNIZING this, it merely asks, "What is the meaning of what I behold?" Then is the Answer given, and the door held open for the Face of Christ to shine upon the one who asks in innocence to see BEYOND the veil of old ideas and ancient concepts held so long and dear AGAINST the vision of the Christ in you."

"Father, we wait with open mind today, to hear Your Judgment of the Son You love. We do not know him, and we cannot judge. And so we let Your Love decide what he whom You created as Your Son must be."

"Take this from me and look upon it, judging it for me. Let me not see it as a sign of sin and death, nor use it for destruction. Teach me how NOT to make of it an OBSTACLE to peace, but let You use it FOR me, to FACILITATE its coming."

"Good judgment" in these terms, does not mean anything. No more does "bad." It is necessary for the teacher of God to realize not that he should not judge, but that he cannot. In giving up judgment he merely gives up what he did not have. He gives up an illusion; or better, he has an illusion of giving up. He has actually merely become more honest. Recognizing that judgment was always impossible for him, he no longer attempts it. This is no sacrifice. On the contrary, he puts himself in a position where judgment through him rather than by him can occur. And this Judgment is neither "good" nor "bad." It is the only Judgment there is, and it is only one: "God's Son is guiltless, and sin does not exist."

"Remember how many times you thought you knew all the "facts" you needed for judgment, and how wrong you were! Is there anyone who has not had this experience? Would you know how many times you merely thought you were right, without ever realizing you were wrong? Why would you choose such an arbitrary basis for decision-making? Wisdom is not judgment; it is the relinquishment of judgment. Make then but one more judgment. It is this; there is Someone with you Whose judgment is perfect. He does know all the facts, past, present and to come. He does know all the effects of His judgment on everyone and everything involved in any way. And He is wholly fair to everyone, for there is no distortion in His perception."

"No-one can escape God's final judgment. Who could flee forever from the truth? But the final judgment will not come until it is no longer associated with fear."

"The final judgment on the world contains no condemnation. For it sees the world as totally forgiven, without sin, and wholly purposeless. Without a cause, and now without a function in Christ's sight, it merely slips away to nothingness. There it was born, and there it ends as well. And all the figures in the dream in which the world began go with it. Bodies now are useless, and will therefore fade away, because the Son of God is limitless."

"The aim of the Final Judgment is to RESTORE Right-Mindedness TO man. The Final Judgment might be called a process of Right-evaluation. It simply means that finally all men must come to understand what is worthy and what is not."

"Nothing the Son of God believes can be destroyed. But what is truth to him must be brought to the last comparison that he will ever make; the last evaluation that will be possible, the final judgment upon this world. It is the judgment of the truth upon illusion, of knowledge on perception; IT HAS NO MEANING AND DOES NOT EXIST. This is NOT your decision. It is but a simple statement of a simple fact."

If someone tries to attack you, they have a problem. They are not sane. They are attacking themselves, but they're doing it in such a way that they think they are attacking someone else. Whatever they accuse you of, they are accusing themselves of.

Anyone who attacks is not in their right mind. No one in their right mind would attack, because they'd recognize that part of themself is in the other, and to attack them is to attack themselves. This is the law of God, the Golden Rule. Also the right minded are not split minded, and do not act against themselves or other.

If someone is attacking you, or it seems like they are, they are not really attacking who you are, they are attacking an image in their mind of what they think you are. And this image is really an image of what they think they are.

They target your body because they are being unforgiving toward themselves, and in this unforgiveness they can't help but focus on the form of objects. This mean they are not really seeing you, your spirit, or your real identity. The target of their attack is themselves, driven by guilt.

It can look like the attack is upon you, because in their dissociated state they separate off the part of their mind that attacks itself and see it as "outside themselves". They attack "it", to try to maintain the split minded state. And in dissociating from it, they tend to associate it with someone other than themselves. And that may seem to be you.

Even if they call your name, even if they speak of you and what you've done to them, even if they hurl abuse at "you", it is really nothing to do with you. Not even remotely.

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

"It can be but myself I crucify."

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

So in no way has this attack got anything to do with you at all. It might seem to play out that way, or it might even seem that they physically attack your body as if that really is an attack upon you, but it is still themselves they are trying to attack.

"Let them be as vicious and hateful as they may. They could have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is your dream."When you yourself are not in your right mind, you will attack yourself. You'll accuse yourself of sin and judge yourself harshly. This means you believe it's true that you are guilty.

When this is happening, and if it is happening at the same time as another insane person fighting with their own shadows, you will fail to recognize that their attack is entirely a self attack. You will fail to realize they are calling out for love, and you will think that their hallucinated "attack on you", which is really on themselves, is actually about you.

Since what they accuse you of taps into what you have accused yourself of, you won't be able to discern between the two. This will create a kind of blind-spot in your mind. A block to awareness. And because of the block, you will be deceived. And being deceived you'll "read into" what they're doing, failing to see all of what they are doing to themselves. And due to this lack of recognition, you'll think that some of what they are doing, they are doing to you, and that it's really about you.

Because of your own self attack, you see yourself as vulnerable and affect-able. And you'll see yourself as being able to be accessed by the cause-effect relationships that seem to play out physically. And you will have confused yourself with your body, and now it may seem that because it can be attacked, you can be attacked. And so you're going to take their attempted attack personally as a threat to your identity and existence.

That means you're failing to remember it's your dream, and have entered into dreaming, or a state of greater unconsciousness. And in this state you'll think that someone else "is attacking you" and is "having an effect on you". It's really you having an effect on you, but you confuse it for them being the cause. So you blame them for it.

It can seem as if, what they do triggers pain in you. And its really your own pain that you put there, being raised to awareness. Because it resonates with what they are expressing and agrees with it. And then you'll think they caused the pain in you because it arose when they attacked, but its really your own self inflicted wound that is unhealed, resurfacing in resonance with their insane behavior.

You then are in the position of having to apply forgiveness processes to sort out "what is yours" and "what is theirs". And ultimately this has to lead to the undoing of the self attack, otherwise you won't be able to recognize that the other person was not the cause of your upset. And their innocence can only be recognized if you can see how they are solely attacking themselves.

The blinds spots and blocks to awareness in your own mind have to be removed, otherwise you cannot see the full picture. And without the full picture you can't tell whether what someone is doing is really about you or not. You can't tell your sin apart from theirs. You have to find your own innocence in order to recognize the innocence of others.

Once you do, what seemed like a call for attack, or seemed like an obvious selfish attack upon you, is now recognized as a call for love. It's calling for love because the person is solely interacting with themselves, within their mind, in a private world. And they are attacking themselves, believing it is not coming from them. And they seem to falsely accuse you of it, which you must not buy into, for your sake and theirs.

In recognizing the secret of salvation that people can only attack themselves, and no one ever really attacks anyone else, you take responsibility for your own choices and give them back responsibility for theirs.

Everything they are experiencing they are doing to themselves. Everything you are experiencing you are doing to yourself. And never the two shall meet. People are asking for love, in an attacking way, because they are denying their own love. The only thing that can truly be shared or communicated between you, is love.

Love is joining in peace and recognition. It facilitates sharing and communication and transfer. Without love, the breakdown of communication and separation of mind and relationship ensures that all attack is self contained. Just as trying to will against God disables all will and is an attempt to will nothing, trying to attack places you in a prison in your mind and stops any transfer to others. Attack is always separation between others and self. This happens because God does not will that attack between beings be possible.

No-one is ever affected by anyone else. No-one else is the cause of you. You have not caused anyone else, other than your own creations. And God is the only cause of you and your equal siblings. There has never been an attack on you, by anyone but yourself. And anyone who believes otherwise is not in their right mind.

Everyone has free will. If someone uses their free will to choose to be mistaken, that's up to them. If they use their free will to try to be a sinful evil-like person, that's up to them. If they use their free will to be angry and violent and abusive, that's up to them. If they use their free will to wage war and murder, that's up to them.

It's actually not a 'right' of ours to judge that the choices people have made are sinful. The choices they have made might be very mistaken, very ineffective, very backward or confused, but it's still their free will to make that choice. We don't actually have a right to hold their mistakes against them or to decide that they are sinful because of what they've chosen.

This means that we have to allow people the freedom to be very wrong, the freedom to attack, the freedom to hurt and damage, etc. That is their free will right. This is not to say that they are sane in those choices, or that it's 'morally right' or justified or loving behaviour etc. But it is still their freedom. If they want to suffer, if they want to produce suffering, that's their freedom.

We therefore have to find a way not to judge such choices as sins. We have to be more like, okay, if that's what you want, then you're totally allowed. Whether or not there are actions or counter-measures or defences or protections or whatever after that point, is another matter. Whether there are consequences of legal actions or imprisonment or whatever, that's another matter. But the person does have the free-will right to do what they want.

What this means is that regardless of how someone is different, regardless of the form it takes, what choices they make, what they seem to want, we have to have an attitude that these differences don't define them as guilty sinners. We can't be judging them for it.

If we start going into modes of like... you did this thing, it's a bad thing, therefore you are sinful, therefore I'm justified in blaming you and shaming you and punishing you .... now we're on shaky ground.

What it means is that we actually want people to have poor choices so that we have an opportunity to see them sin. If they sin, then we can find them guilty. Then we can project our own guilt onto them while making out that they're the guilty one, and it'll all seem nice and tidy and covert. We ourselves as "with sin", and we are trying to cast stones at people we want to be sinful.

As Jesus says in the bible "He who is without sin should cast the first stone." In other words if we're busy judging people and hurling stones at them to punish them for 'sin', we should be a bit more honest and look at the ways we ourselves are being sinful before finding other people to be sinful. We don't really have a leg to stand on. And only those who are forgiving and sinless would be in a position to judge, and would refrain from doing so.

In effect, if we are judging people for making poor choices, seeming to suggest that we think that shouldn't be acting that way, we actually DO want them to act that way, because we get a great opportunity to scapegoat. And that means we can shove some of our guilt onto them and justify it on the basis that they are the one who deserves it, and our anger is justified. Thank God they chose to sin so that we could have a chance to be innocent.

To be more honest we have to stop judging people as being sinners for what they've chosen. But this also does mean that even in the face of people seeming to do what we might classify as horrible things, abusive things, evil things, we have to STILL find them not guilty. We have to still not judge them as evil or wrong or bad people. They are just mistaken.

Criminals, murderers, rapists, child abusers, terrorists, war-mongers, thieves, bullies, you name it... yes they are making quite poor choices but they are not sinful for it. Nor are we supposed to be pointing a finger of blame and saying they are the guilty ones. Or holding it against them, or shaming them, or wanting to counter-attack them, or punish them for it.

If we're doing that, trying to use the things in the world that seem less than holy as justification for revenge and hate and accusation, then we're in our ego. Because the ego loves to judge harshly and find guilty and make wrong. That means we are being "judgey". As "judges" we act like "judge and jury", some kind of God or authority that has the 'right' to determine who is innocent and who is guilty, and to sentence the sinners to death.

We're judgemental and unforgiving. Instead of being forgiving toward them for their mistakes, we step out of forgiveness and go into judgement. We reason that we're not being forgiving BECAUSE the person is judged to be wrong. The judgement tries to justify NOT forgiving, by pointing out how the person is obviously sinful and MUST be judged. So then we're justifying unforgiving attitudes on the basis that people are doing wrong all over the place, which is itself the perceived result of not forgiving them in the first place.

Bottom line is, we are not supposed to be judging anyone or anything. Judging is just another form of attack and projection. At times it can seem to not be angry, maybe just a subtle annoyance, but it's still a way to project guilt. All the things we judge against, we have to find a way to stop doing that. All the ways we say people are wrong, and hold their acts and choices against them, we're being unforgiving.

So ultimately it means that in order to be forgiving, we have to forgive everyone and everything. There mustn't be anything that we single out for punishment, no-one that we call names, no one that we hate or are offended by, no-one that we see as deliberately evil, and no-one that justifies our anger or revenge.

People in their differences need to be allowed to be different. It doesn't mean differences are true or real, but if people are choosing to be different that's up to them. If in any way we categorise their choices as wrong, we're being judgemental. No matter how weird their choices, how strange, how unnatural, how fake, how immature, how selfish, whatever.... we have to still let them have the freedom to make those choices and not accuse them of being stupid, sinful, evil, bad, wrong, guilty, or any other negativity because of it.

We don't have to agree with the differences, we don't have to choose the same things, we don't have to condone it or support it, we don't have to go along with it or let ourselves or others be in the line of fire. We don't have to go into inaction or being carpeting or a martyr or letting people walk all over us etc, but at the same time we must not be having such unforgiving attitudes towards them.

It requires infinite patience. And it requires a willingness not to be at war. In judgement we are unforgiving and cold and heartless and unloving. Only in forgiveness - an earthly form of love - can we be kind and supportive and truly helpful.

"Forgiveness, on the other hand, is still, and quietly does nothing. It offends no aspect of reality, nor seeks to twist it to appearance that it likes. It merely looks and waits and judges not. He who would not forgive must judge, for he must justify his failure to forgive. But he who would forgive himself must learn to welcome truth exactly as it is." UrW220W14

"Whenever you question your value, say, "God Himself is incomplete without me."

"God is incomplete without you, simply because His grandeur is total, and you cannot BE missing from it."

"YOU are the work of God, and His Work is wholly loveable and wholly loving. This is how a man MUST think of himself in his heart, because this is what he IS."

Worth, is really a question of value, but even moreso a question of whether something QUALIFIES or "deserves". It's also related to appropriateness. Is it right, that you be loved. So we're also talking about your "rights", or what you are entitled to. Which also relates to what you are allowed, or what is yours, or what belongs to you inherently.

When we form any idea of having sinned, believing in separation, we are actually saying that we no longer qualify. If we have become sinful or guilty, instead of innocent, we have kind of "dropped out" of the running. We've positioned ourselves as not worthy or not capable or not of a quality sufficiently high or appropriate enough to meet the "requirements". By changing the premise to "I'm sinful", the logical conclusion is that you are no longer worthy. And the only sense of unworthiness is a sense of sinfulness against God.

Those who are innocent do meet the requirements of heaven, and so are entitled to heaven. They are entitled to the inheritance of God, and everything belongs to them. But when they attack themselves, they undermine their authority or "permission to access" the benefits which correlate to innocence. By stepping out of innocence we step out of deserving the love of God. At least, we believe this is the case.

If you believe you have sinned, are criminal, are evil or guilty, have done something wrong, messed up, or failed in some way, you will regard yourself as a failure. This is a view of yourself as weak and frail, powerless, hopeless, lost, alone, valueless, incapable, ineffective, not deserving freedom or love, and generally feeling horrible about yourself.

Feeling "unworthy" is kind of a logical conclusion based on the supposed evidence of what you think you did, or what you failed to do. If you see yourself as innocent you see yourself as deserving all of heaven. If you see yourself as guilty you see yourself as deserving all of hell.

This ties in very strongly to the victim role. If you feel unworthy, you will feel deflated, defective, lacking, having nothing much to offer, having very low "value", having no rights and no freedoms. You will feel like a prisoner, as though everyone else gets to decide your fate, as if you have no say in your own life. You'll feel like a kind of slave, undeserving of having any of your needs met, yet feeling very much in need.

Impoverished and empty, you'll regard yourself as not worth being given any attention, or anything. You'll also be afraid all the time because you'll see the whole world as defining your fate on a whim. Secretly this is an attempt to project self-blame onto the world, believing it is blaming you. The world will now seem like it's taking everything away from you and having power over you, because that's what YOU are doing to yourself.

If your value is so low, you will regard yourself as having failed, and therefore as being a failure. If you are a failure, you will feel like there is no point in trying to do anything, because not only do you see yourself as very likely to fail, you'll believe you have already failed before you even begin. This will stop you from doing many things on the basis that you "can't", rooted in some belief that "no-one wants me." Secretly this is your belief that YOU don't want you, projected and reflected back at you.

Of course, being unworthy, you have to believe no-one loves you. That everyone is against you and can "use you" for whatever purposes they see fit, for their own gains, with no regard for yours. This of course is a state that also results from such things as abuse, violence, attack, sexual assault, trauma and so on.

It can leave you feeling helpless and powerless and very "low", like you don't mean anything and have no value. That, even in your own eyes, you don't deserve anything because you aren't worth anything. Like something to be discarded and thrown away which no-one wants. Of course this is how YOU feel about yourself, because it's really you who has decided you are worthless. But by asserting "you're not worth anything" to the world, it reflects back to you from the outside in. A projection of self-hate.

Clearly when you're in such a state, although it feels unfair, and imposed from outside of you, much more likely you are actually the one who has decided that you are unworthy. You have in some way depleted your own idea of your own value. And we're not so much talking here about self-esteem as we are about God-esteem.

The only real value is the value God has of you, regarding your true nature. And so really the only thing in your mind that you care about is whether or not you qualify or meet God's "standards". Whether you are worthy of his love. Whether you deserve forgiveness or punishment. If you believe you are a weak and miseable valueless sinner who isn't worth anything and should be punished and hurt, then you are trying to decide for God what God thinks of you.

You'll do this on the basis of what you think you did. ie, which sins you think you committed, the reasons why you are guilty, the faults and lacks and insufficiencies of your personality or body or mind. The various value systems you yourself have invented and then judged yourself harshly by. Systems which God doesn't even use, because he simply ALWAYS finds you worthy of him.

If you are feeling unworthy, it's really kind of a severe case of a pity party. It's self-inflicted, just as the secret of salvation says. It might seem like it was induced or enforced by someone outside of you but really you went along with it and believed it. You allowed it to affect you and decided to comply with it, because deep down something far worse than other people condemning you is YOU condemning yourself. Only you can hurt yourself so deeply. And it's really just a matter of a lack of self-love.

We have to own up to this because really it's not God who is thinking of you as a miserable sinner or a worthless piece of shit. It's you. It's your self-talk and your self-attack. It's your self-destructiveness. Which when you think about it is quite weird because there you are, feeling utterly shit about yourself, while simultaneously having the total freedom and power to choose to feel that way. And you must've made a wrong decision because you're not at peace.

Taking ownership of your decision to reject God's evaluation of you, and your attempt to overthrow his will, and to ignore his unconditional love, is the only way out of it. You have to be willing to see that you are the one who has decided that your value is extremely low. That you're so worthless you pretty much just deserve to die, because no-one would want you. But hey, even if it seems true that no-one DOES want you, that's their problem and not yours. And it has nothing to do with whether YOU want you.

While you may think well, I can't do this or that because I am a failure and no-one would want me or anything I do, it's really you telling yourself this. It's you not wanting what you do. It's you being hard on yourself. And you shouldn't even be giving other people power over you to decide for you whether you are worthy or not. It's none of their business. God is the only one in the privileged position to determine your real value, and he finds you to be permanently worthy forever. It's not even really up to you.

You can't therefore really obliterate your value or worth, or decide that you deserve to die against God's will. You can pretend to do this, and you can believe in it, but even underneath your utter self-hate there is total self-love. You can't change what is really true of you, no matter how hard you try to destroy yourself. God has guaranteed your sinlessness forever. Your value is inestimable and infinite. And you are worthy and qualify for everything he has to offer. You qualified in your creation!

So if you're feeling low, down, bad about yourself, unworthy, not good enough, undeserving, a failure, weak, powerless, barely worth wiping a shoe on, recognize that this can't be true of you. It's absolutely not true in God's eyes. And it doesn't even matter what other people think of you or how they fail to properly value you. Everyone should be loving you, unless they themselves have failed to love themselves. It says nothing about your worth.

You have to decide to accept your perfection, your innocence, your value, your worth to God, your infinite credibility, your integrity, your divine honor, your holiness and your entitlement to the Kingdom of God. And that means you have to put aside all of the abuse and hurt and pain and misery and reasons "why" you deserve suffering. God does not will that you suffer, and nor should you.

"I who am host to God AM worthy of Him. He Who ESTABLISHED His dwelling-place in me created it as He would have it be."

"The truth about YOU is so lofty that nothing that is unworthy of God is worthy of you."

"But you COULD not make YOURSELF unworthy because YOU ARE THE TREASURE OF GOD. What HE values IS valuable. There CAN be no question of its worth, because its value lies in God's sharing Himself with it and ESTABLISHING ITS VALUE FOREVER."

"EVERY mind that God created is equally worthy of being healed because GOD CREATED IT WHOLE."

"You should know that all God's children are fully worthy of COMPLETE courtesy."

"He always teaches you the inestimable worth of EVERY Son of God, teaching it with infinite patience born of the Love of Him for whom He speaks."

"The Atonement is the only gift which is worthy of being offered to the Altar of God. This is because of the inestimable value of the Altar itself. It was created perfect, and is entirely worthy of receiving perfection. God IS lonely without His SOULS, and THEY are lonely without Him."

"A miracle is a service. It is the maximal service that one soul can render another. It is a way of loving your neighbor as yourself. The doer recognizes his own and his neighbor's inestimable value simultaneously."

If you see yourself as being victimised in any way, mistreated, not respected, attacked, hurt, threatened, judged, abused, terrorised, not recognised, hated, left out, invalidated, accused, misrepresented, subject to racism or sexism or homophobia, in any other way somehow slighted or offended by anyone OTHER than yourself, they your ego has formed a FACE OF INNOCENCE, and you ARE in heavy denial!

This face of innocence is a facade the ego wears to DENY AND COVER UP the internal guilt, to hide itself from itself in self-hate. The internal guilt is denied, so that it is not even recognised as existing at all within you, and is then projected. It is then seen IN AND AS everyone else other than oneself. It then appears that everyone but yourself is doing something TO YOU against your will that is un-asked for and undeserved.

This projection of guilt and ego frames you as an innocent victim of it in OTHER people, which in turn justifies an angry counter-response - since you see yourself as doing absolutely nothing wrong at all, which points a further finger - a second layer of projection - designed to hide the first, to further reinforce the ways that other people have obviously sinned, been guilty, committed evil acts, failed to live up to standards, or any other way that they are defective.

The "mask" of innocence is worn as a face psychologically, really a disguise, as part of the ego. And it is especially part of the spiritualised ego. Having denied that oneself believes oneself to be guilty - which is still an ongoing internal belief - on sees oneself as "not guilty", and thus innocent. But this is a fake innocence covering up a persistent guilt. The guilt is then projected onto others and associated with them, as though attached to them and part of them.

It is particularly viciously reinforced by an increased level of anger and resentment, as a REACTION to what is now perceived as something other people are doing to you and not you doing to them. The more you feel justified in anger the more you project even more separation and increase the sense of dis-association between you and the guilt. This is designed to make sure it seems that you have nothing to do with the guilt, and it is entirely associated with someone other than yourself. The more this is believed the more unconscious you become as a helpless victim.

What this entails really is self attack, which began long before the projection of guilt. Self and self innocence were denied, producing an accusation against oneself as an attack upon oneself. This is a denial of self as God created you. This is an opinion of oneself - an ego view of oneself - that is far short of the divine holy self that God created you as.

This vicious self-attack produces guilt, inferiority, judgement, self-hate, and various other forms of self destructive behaviour. This is DENIED, which makes it seem largely unconscious or at least disowned and "not part of me". And the result of this is projection. It is given away in order to try to make it not be a part of oneself, or within one's mind. It is seen as "outside" the mind, external to the self (body perimeter), as though literally someone other than oneself, seen as an inherent built-in permanent PART OF someone else. And now it is THEY who are guilty and full of sin.

The result of this is then the formation of a face - a facade - a persona - a cover-up face of innocence, which sees itself AS innocent, but with fake innocence. This fake innocence is shallow and is merely a smokescreen to hide the self-hate that is behind it. Thus self-denying person then believes they are doing no wrong, asking for no harm, doing nothing to hurt others, and are completely benevolent, yet conveniently also are experiencing being "unfairly treated" as a victim. And this of course, if it were true, means anger is completely justified and everyone else should die for THEIR sins against the innocence.

The fact is however that this still remains a SELF ATTACK, because the mind is still hating itself, still believes it is guilty, does not want to admit to this, is IN DENIAL, and refuses to even look at what is being denied. The unwillingness to look at the denied guilt is because of the belief that IT IS THERE, and that it is dark and real and terrible. And the ego DOES believe that you are full of sin. So instead of looking within, it looks without, to find the guilt there instead.

Once the guilt is denied and projected there forms an extremely long lists of all the sins, errors, guilts, mistakes, faults, weaknesses, defects, horrors, and various other forms of unholiness that are regarded as the truth about OTHER people, and not oneself. And THEIR guilt and sinfulness is kept apart from YOURS, so that you are in no way associated with it, and can maintain an illusion of being the innocent one.

Being subject to an incredibly long list of things other people are doing wrong, and thus attacked and victimised BY, is DESIRED AND CHOSEN, so that the face of innocence can be maintained. Even if it seem to hurt oneself to do so, and even if one has to be willing to BE victimised - or so it may appear on the surface - this is ACCEPTED as the natural cost of being able to find someone else to be the fall guy for the guilt.

We even in the extremes are willing to be attacked, hurt, made to be sick, destroyed and killed off, if it will mean that someone ELSE can be accused of sin. And then we can say, "brother by your hand I die." This means that we literally are willing to suffer, be sick, and die, if it means the sick body can accuse someone ELSE of causing it to be the way it is, so that the mind can be exonerated of the sin IT believes it has committed against self, others and God.

But not for an instant does the guilt leave your own mind, not for an instant does your mind truly become healed of it, not for an instant do you escape what is being denied, not for an instant do your accusations of other people's wrongfulness NOT target you, not for an instant do you escape the murderous consequences, and not for an instant do you get away with NOT being hurt by the projections. Yet alone the fact that you then hurt yourself through other people due to the way that you see them as causing you to be hurt, which you want.

Ultimately this means that this whole mechanism is STILL a way of attacking and destroying yourself, of hurting yourself, and that you are doing this to yourself. This is the secret of salvation. Recognizing that it is YOU who is accusing yourself of guilt, it is YOU who is projecting the guilt, it is YOU who is in denial, it is YOU who does not want to admit to wearing a face of innocence, it is YOU who wants to be a victim, and it is YOU who keeps using people to attack yourself. And not once do you really WANT it to stop, because that would mean having to be more honest, stop scapegoating, look within at the guilt, and undo it. Those who are dissatisfied with OTHERS, are incredibly dissatisfied with THEMSELVES.

"Only the self-accused condemn."

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

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

And if you think you are not condemning yourself and it is only others that are condemning you, you ESPECIALLY are doing this. Your denial can be very strong and it can make it seem like you are not doing anything wrong AT ALL, that you have never chosen or provoked the slightest attack, and it is entirely everyone ELSE on your list of sins that has failed to measure up to God's standards.

Admitting to all this takes a greater willingness to be honest, to stop attacking yourself, to stop hating yourself, to stop projecting blame onto others, to stop believing that other people are the guilty ones, to stop judging others as the ones with egos, and to be far deeper in the willingness to look at WHAT YOU ARE DENYING. Because only by admitting that you are denying how much YOU hate yourself, are you going to ever stop finding a thousand ways to encourage others to hate you FOR you.

Projection of guilt simply keeps the separation going, and the ego absolutely loves that, as it hides behind its wall of "I'm completely innocent, I'm not doing anything to myself." You are trying to destroy yourself. Look at that! And stop doing it.

"The concept of the self the world would teach is not the thing that it appears to be. For it is made to serve two purposes, but one of which the mind can recognize. The first presents the face of innocence, the aspect acted ON. It is this face that smiles and charms and even seems to love. It searches for companions, and it looks at times with pity on the suffering, and sometimes offers solace. It believes that it is good, within an evil world. This aspect can grow angry, for the world is wicked, and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears, at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good.

This aspect NEVER makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse. The face of innocence the concept of the self so proudly wears can tolerate attack in self-defense, for is it not a well-known fact the world deals harshly with defenseless innocence? No-one who makes a picture of himself omits this face, for he has need of it. The other side he does not want to see. But it is here the learning of the world has set its sights. For it is here the world's reality is set, to see to it the idol lasts.

Beneath the face of innocence there is a lesson that the concept of the self was made to teach. It is a lesson in a terrible displacement, and a fear so devastating that the face which smiles above it must forever look away, lest it perceive the treachery it hides. The lesson teaches this; "I am the thing you made of me, and as you look on me you stand condemned, because of what I am." On this conception of the self the world smiles with approval, for it guarantees the pathways of the world are safely kept, and those who walk on them will not escape.

Here is the central lesson that ensures your brother is condemned eternally. For what YOU are has now become his sin. For this is no forgiveness possible. No longer does it matter what he does, for your accusing finger points to him, unwavering and deadly in its aim. It points to you as well, but this is kept still deeper in the mists below the face of innocence. And in these shrouded vaults are all his sins and yours preserved, and kept in darkness, where they cannot be perceived as errors, which the light would surely show. You can be neither BLAMED for what you are, nor can you CHANGE the things it makes you do. And you are each the symbol of your sins to one another, silently, and yet with ceaseless urgency condemning still your brother for the hated thing you are.

That you are what your brother made of you seems most unlikely. Even if he did, who gave the face of innocence to you? Is this YOUR contribution? Who is, then, the "you" who made it? And who is deceived by all your goodness, and attacks it so? Let us forget the concept's foolishness, and merely think of this; there are two parts to what you think yourself to be. If one was generated by your brother, who was there to make the other? And from whom must something be kept hidden? If the world be evil, there is still no need to hide what YOU are made of. Who is there to see? And what but is attacked could NEED defense?"

When I came to A Course in Miracles, it was largely based on "non-duality" teachings from certain ACIM teachers.

The books spoke of the world as being a shitty place, a hell hole, psycho planet, a world of death and suffering, spinning its wheels and going nowhere. A world which you would not want and should want to leave behind. This seemed to provide a kind of motivation to want to escape it.

The solution that was presented then was a form of forgiveness which largely entailed maintaining the view that the world sucked, but realizing that it was not real. That it was just a dream. This formed a picture where, you're in the world, dreaming of the world, the world STILL sucks, but you recognize it's not real. There was nothing positive about this, it was a very clinical view.

More importantly, in this view there was NEVER a single mention of the "real world". There was no mention of saving the world, the great crusade, being a miracle worker, performing miracles to help others, healing others, healing bodies, or anything else which could be construed as "making the world better".

It was kind of an attitude of, the world is hell, so let's jump straight out of hell into heaven. And that the way we do this is by remembering it's a dream of hell, will always be hell, and once you can just "not believe it" you'll be saved. This basically reinforces a view that the world still is hell, it can only ever be hell, and there is no point or way to actually come to love or forgive the world. It was more like a message of, the world it shit, let's escape it.

In fact part of what made those books popular was the self-proclaimed "brutal honesty" about the world, which acted to judge it harshly and point out its flaws. This was supposedly a refreshing honesty but at the same time portrayed the world as only CAPABLE of being a negative place. And that therefore you had to do what you could, psychologically, to try not to be affected by it, by remembering it's just a dream of death.

The problem as I see it now, is that this model was largely fostered by the non-duality conceptualization of the course, which is deeply flawed. That is, this idea that there's either heaven as the only reality, or earth as the opposite ie hell. And nothing in between. Either duality, or pure non-duality. Either you're in the shit world, or you're in God's arms. But that's a major issue, because it COMPLETELY ignores a vast majority of what ACIM actually teaches.

In particular, there is absolutely no mention made of the real world. There is no presentation of the idea that the Holy Spirit has MADE an alternative dream world which is seen through the eyes of Christ, is a forgiven world, has no sin or guilt in it, and is not seen as hell. It's true also that the real world does not contain bodies, since it transcends forms. And it's also true that we're supposed to be learning to SEE the real world, by learning to LOVE the world.

If you were to try to present the idea of loving the world to the non-duality folks, they would run the other way. It's incompatible with the cold, clinical view of the course's structures, which attempt to maintain that the world is hell at all costs - kind of a form of false forgiveness really in which the world is made real and then you try to forgive it. If we BYPASS the real world, as a VITAL stepping stone on our way to awakening, we're NOT really getting the course's message.

The course isn't asking us to love hell. It's not saying hey, this world has ONE form, one nature, and you need to learn to love it. Rather, it's saying that, the world of form seems like hell because of HOW you are looking at it, and WHO you are looking at it with. Which yes btw means a HUGE emphasis on looking WITH the holy spirit, with christ vision, which was more or less obliterated from these teachings about non-duality (because certain teachers do no like the idea of the Holy Spirit having anything to do with this).

It is telling us that the reason you see bodies, forms, objects, planets, is because this is how the BODY was made to see, and it can ONLY see falsely. Everything it sees is a false INTERPRETATION of the world ladened with sin and guilt. It's not capable of seeing the world as it is. The body can never see the real world. But that does not mean you should not attempt to see the real world. In fact, this is what the ENTIRE course is aimed towards.

You are meant to awaken another form of vision - the spiritual eye, which does not use the body's eyes, and sees BEYOND what the physical sees, so that you are not really looking at or distracted by forms, bodies, appearances of sickness and death, etc. You temporarily use the body to allow you to interact with "the world", but "the world" as you have known it is actually a combination of a neutral world + false perceptions. And without the false perceptions, the neutral world becomes the FORGIVEN world - the real world. And this real world is beautiful, lovely, forgiving, shining and sparkling like new, innocent and free from all sense of sin and guilt. You are meant to be learning to SEE THAT in place of the physical separations of form. An underlying, transcendental unity BEHIND all forms.

And when you do this, instead of seeing "the world is a shit hole", which focuses on the closed box of being blinded by sight of form, you start to see a "world" beyond the physical, a canvas of love, which IS LOVABLE, and which God loves, and which the Holy Spirit sees as the face of Christ. This is a VITAL step in the course. Becoming able to see that happier dream. The happy dream is the forgiven world. A reinterpreted world, reinterpreted by the Holy Spirit, where sin and guilt and fear no longer exist and where you have forgiven yourself and everyone. ie not simply a "hell recognized as a dream" world, but a world which is practically almost the same thing as HEAVEN, because you see PAST its illusory forms and separations.

I was fooled by this omission. I bought into it totally, that yes it's true, the world of bodies is a world of sin and death and suffering and victims and war and murder. As Jesus himself even tells us in the course, THAT world IS a cruel world, a world God did not create, a world opposite in its nature to heaven, basically hell on earth. A nightmare world. That IS what you see when you have NOT forgiven. The UNFORGIVEN world. That's the hell you'll see when your mind has sin and guilt in it. That's NOT the world you'll see when your mind has forgiven itself. Because it will now look within, see love, and extend love TO the world, seeing love IN IT.

This is why we're supposed to learn to see God in the world. Not to see God equated at the same level as forms and physicality, but to see that God is "in" or rather BEHIND or UNDERLYING the illusions of forms and objects. That this "Real world" is there, a world of love, which can be seen INSTEAD of the world of bodies. This is what the whole teaching about "you cannot see both worlds" is about. "Beyond this world there is a world I want" speaks to this also - there is a "real world" that you should WANT TO LOVE (not heaven), which is hidden behind the illusion of form. And developing "vision", the entire function of the workbook, is what allows you to see it.

So if someone had told me years ago, hey, the world you see seems like hell but only because you have sin in your mind, and when you remove the sin in your mind you'll see PAST the world and see a world that you can love and forgive.... that would've painted a very different picture, and would've set things up quite differently to come to different conclusions about the world. It would've changed my attitude, and I would've have become so negative about the world's faults.

We are to learn to forgive and love the world FIRST, to approach the happy dream of the holy spirit's christ vision, which looks upon OUR wold WITH forgiveness to show us an underlying love that we didn't see before, in it... and THEN transition to heaven. We can't get there by making the world's sinfulness real to ourselves and to then attempt to forgive it. This is exactly what we do in false perception - body perception. There is another way of looking at the world, this is a VITAL piece of information. And it means you no longer have to hate the world or think of it as "inherently hell."

Change your mind about what you want to see IN the world, and it's transform into a reflection of heaven. Not physically as such, because the physicality ONLY exists in FALSE perception, but psychologically and perceptually you'll see the truth.

"Vision already holds a replacement for everything you think you see now. Loveliness can light your images, and so transform them that you will love them, even though they were made of hate. For you will not be making them alone."

"The world you see (with false perception) cannot be the world God loves, and yet His Word assures us that He loves the (real) world."

"God's Word has promised that peace is possible here, and what He promises can hardly be impossible."

"But it is true that the world must be looked at differently, if His promises are to be accepted. What the world is, is but a fact. You cannot choose what this should be. But you can choose how you would see it. Indeed, you must choose this."

"God's Word assures you that He loves the world; your judgment says it is unlovable. Who is right? For one of you is wrong. It must be so."

"Peace is impossible to those who look on war. Peace is inevitable to those who offer peace. How easily, then, is your judgment of the world escaped!"

"It is not the world (as neutral) that makes peace seem impossible. It is the world you see (in false perception of the neutral world) that is impossible. Yet has God's Judgment on this distorted (false) world redeemed it (neutral world seen with true perception) and made it fit to welcome peace. And peace descends on it in joyous answer"

"Knowledge (flipping to a non-duality level 1 viewpoint) is not the remedy for false perception since, being another level, they can never meet. The one correction possible for false perception must be true perception (a third state which we should focus on attaining first). It will not endure. But for the time it lasts it comes to heal. For true perception is a remedy with many names. Forgiveness, salvation, Atonement, true perception, all are one. They are the one beginning, with the end to lead to oneness far beyond themselves. True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees."