Let's be very, very honest.

God is love.

In your relationship with God, you are meant to be experiencing profound love right now.

Let's be extremely honest.

If you are not experiencing profound love right now with God, you MUST be believing in sin, guilt, fear and death.

There's actually some part of you that DOES NOT believe in love. Just being honest. Its okay to admit this.

Some part of you actually has something invested in a belief in your sinfulness. There's some part of you that feels guilty. You also believe that this sinfulness is true of you and that your guilt is justified.

As a result, you have this belief that you're not supposed to be experiencing love with God right now, and you actually do not want it. You are against it.

While you continue to have a belief in you that you have sinned, that you've really fucked up at some point, and now you are guilty, and this can't be forgiven or undone, you're going to choose not to love God. You will reject God.

Even if you believe that you are quite loving with God already, the fact is, if there is some kind of secret sin or hidden hate in you, that part of you really does not want to love God, or yourself, or others. It's a belief that you are unworthy of love, because of what you did.

If you really did do what you think you did, and if it really did happen, then you really are sinful, and you really are correct in justifying your unlovability. That's why you think you don't deserve God's love. You then disregard God's love, believing that He would not want to love you anyway, because of your guilt.

That guilt in you in keeping you from accepting God's love. It's stopping you from believing in God's love. It's keeping you unhappy and miserable.

Those secret sins and hidden hates are going to stay hidden away in the recesses of your mind, unless you are willing to expose yourself to God. You have to have some willingness to accept God's love, to accept the Atonement, which means that God still loves you beause your sin was not REALITY. You were mistaken in believing that you really did something bad.

Exposing yourself to the truth and attempting to acccept it will force your darkly kept secrets out into the light. These self-hates, which are "your ego", your false idea about yourself, will attempt to prove and exclaim how true they are. They will start to scream at you about how you can't be loved because of what you did. But the only reason they are in your AWARENESS instead of being hidden is because you are willing to seriously challenge whether they are true, be opening up to more love.

But you can't be in denial of this. If there is a belief that sin is real in you, you are NOT fully believing in God's love and are actively choosing to be unworthy of Him. If you really believe deep down that you are sinful and guilty, you will not let yourself RECEIVE the miraculous blessings of God. You won't let Him love you. You will see yourself as some hideous creature that can't be loved, because you sinned.

But sin is not real. You didn't really do what you think you did. It did not really have the consequences that you thought it had. The events didn't even really happen because the world they happened in is not real either. This is the Atonement, the spiritual FACT that nothing's gone wrong with you. And that's WHY you deserve and are entitled to the Atonement, to God's love. You deserve and are WORTHY OF GOD because you are still innocent.

As you attempt to claim and accept this, you can bet your secret sins and hidden hates will fly up in your awareness trying to assert that they are true. You will have to question them and let them go, if you are to accept the truth of God. So you need to be willing and you need to be very honest about where you stand. It's not use pretending you are a lover of God when you are not.

I was almost automatically saying to Holy Spirit that I was a "man of God" and he told me, "no, you are not. You are becoming one." That's honest. I am not a teacher of God yet. I don't teach only what God wills, because I still have an ego, and I still have a belief that I've sinned. Holy Spirit said to me, as I was enjoying an experience of God's love, that I wasn't able to love God fully because I have GUILT. I have to look at that.

My guilt is something that I think is TRUTH. I believe in it. That belief takes me away from believing in LOVE. Honestly. It makes me not only believe that I cannot love, but also that I am not capable of love or being loved. That means I am rejecting God by believing in something else. Our belief in guilt and sin and the world/body being real IS an exchange, a replacement, an attempt to substitute God with something else. We can't keep both. We can't believe in the ego at the same time as believing in God. If you are believing that you're sinful or guilty, or you have self hate which you project onto others, you believe in the ego. You think the ego is great. You love the ego. You don't love yourself or God.

This can be tough truth to hear. But a willingness to even look at this truth - that you honestly are not fully wanting to be with God, and you are trying to overthrow his will, and you're still trying to make your ego world real, and you're still in love with your ego self, and you still don't actually BELIEVE IN permanent love or immortality, deep down, is at least SOME willingness to admit, to allow in, the truth, the light and love of God. Then you can work on healing it, undoing it, reversing it, disbelieving it, letting it go, and opening up your willingness to love yourself and to love God.

Do you really honestly 100% love yourself? Don't fake it, beause faking it is denial and will keep you in hell. Most people do not love themselves and most people do not love God. But it's our goal and aim to return to love, to regain an awareness of the truth of love, to believe in love, and to relinquish everything about ourselvets that claims otherwise. That means we need healing and release. And Holy Spirit is here to hold our hand while we go through this and become willing to SURRENDER it to Him.

"Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore, it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning." - from ACIM workbook Lesson 25 - I don't know what anything is for.

The central theme here is that we have all kinds of convictions that we believe we know what things mean, what is right or wrong, what should or shouldn't be happening, whether something should be encouraged or stopped, whether something is positive or negative, harmful or healing, etc. We think we know. But most of this so-called 'knowing', this reliance on a form of knowledge, is actually not knowledge at all.

When it is coming from our ego, it is really just speculation, imagination, false meaning, interpretation, prejudice, judgement, bias, fear, etc.

What this calls for us to do is to be extremely honest about whether we really, really, REALLY actually KNOW that this is the truth. And this is what it really boils down to - we don't want to really examine whether what we supposedly 'know' is true or false, we want to stay in the realm of good and bad and other opposites of duality. If we were to start examining whether it's true or false, now we're starting to discern with Holy Spirit and that will undo the ego.

So we need to get really honest. Do we actually, honestly, actually have access to such sufficient clarity and truth and 100% absolute information, that we can honestly say, we actually KNOW that this is true? Do we really know that someone's sickness is not supposed to be happening? Do we really know that some apparently 'bad' event is working against people's spiritual growth? Do we really know that some so-called tragedy is actually tragic and un-asked for? Do we really know that the world has gone off the rails and our future safety or continuation has come into question? Do we KNOW it? Not really.

There is such a thing as real knowledge, but it can only be accessed through Holy Spirit, who is aware of everything. Without that total awareness it is not knowledge, because something is hidden. The ego is all about hiding from the whole. From the truth. So as we attempt to 'awaken' we're going to have to become really honest in admitting with great humility that we don't really know hardly any of what we think we know.

We've also accumulated vast amounts of information, learning, education, data, facts and figures, research, opinions, etc.. and we call it knowledge, but it's not really knowledge. It's not real knowing. And none of it can help us to be awake. What helps us to be awake is to question whether it is knowledge at all, so that we can at least 'empty' ourselves of all this clutter that isn't really based in reality, and is just covering over reality with made-up meanings and conclusions. We need to uncover the real knowing, the real meaning - God.

Sanity and awakening is merely a matter of extreme honesty.

Honestly is a willingness to admit to what is true, to accept the truth, to not hide anything. It is visibility and exposure to God.

Honesty flies in the face of things like denial, deception, lies, guilt, shame, fear, confusion, false beliefs, anger, defences, egoic justifications etc.

All the egoic stuff, the false perception stuff, is some form of avoidance of reality, an avoidance of the truth. An unwillingness to admit to something.

In order to push through to reality we have to become ever more honest in admitting to what things are. What we are doing to ourselves.

We use at first a little willingness which then grows into a big willingness. This is a willingness to admit the truth. "Admitting" means to allow access, which opens up the mind to let the truth in. Accepting that truth is honesty - ie, reality as it really is.

The end result is a direct, immediate and accurate perception, which admits only to reality and what is true, and is completely unwilling to go into the various egoic forms of avoidance and distortion.

Honesty is openness, willingness, sanity, recognition, purity, wholeness, awareness. It's a sharp look at what is actually true in preference over all the various forms of dreaming and wishing and denial.

Bit by bit we're stripping away all the ways that we are avoiding the reality of God, avoiding the truth and trying to hide and distort what's there. Honesty reveals to us the "real" world instead of our unreal dishonest world.

It is the proper tool for weeding out all ego motives, all distortions of reality, all denial of God, all unwillingness to accept atonement, all reasons for unforgiveness, all basis for judgment.

Honesty can take you all the way home, as you emerge from the fog of lies and deceit that is the separation from God. End the bullshit, it's time to get real.

"Only within the Holy Instant can an honest question honestly be asked." UrT27E6

"I will be honest with myself today. I will not think that I already know what must remain beyond my present grasp. I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see. Today I recognize that this is so. And so I am relieved of judgment which I cannot make. Thus do I free myself and what I look upon, to be in peace as God created us." UrW243L1

"Be sure you are honest with yourself in making this distinction. You may be tempted to obscure it." UrW9L3

"Only the trusting can afford honesty, for only they can see its value. Honesty does not apply only to what you say. The term actually means consistency. There is nothing you say that contradicts what you think or do; no thought opposes any other thought; no act belies your word; and no word lacks agreement with another. Such are the truly honest. At no level are they in conflict with themselves. Therefore it is impossible for them to be in conflict with anyone or anything." URM5C1

"The peace of mind which the advanced teachers of God experience is largely due to their perfect honesty. It is only the wish to deceive that makes for war." UrM5C2

"God's teachers do not judge. To judge is to be dishonest, for to judge is to assume a position you do not have." UrM5D1

"True faithfulness, however, does not deviate. Being consistent it is wholly honest." UrM5J2

"For honest thoughts, untainted by the dream of worldly things outside yourself, become the holy messengers of God Himself." UrW188L6

"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." UrM11A2

"You have been as selective in your questioning as in your perception. An open mind is more honest than this." UrT12D3

"Against the littleness you see in him you stand as tall and stately, clean and honest, pure and unsullied by comparison with what you see." UrT24C1

"Leave all illusions of yourself OUTSIDE this place, to which you come in hope and honesty. Here is your Savior FROM your specialness." URT24C10v "Be very honest with yourselves about this, for we must hide nothing from each other." URT4D19

"The search for truth is but the honest searching out of everything that INTERFERES with truth. TRUTH IS. And can be neither lost, nor sought, nor found. It is there, wherever YOU are, being WITHIN you." URT14D2

Denial can be used two ways.

1) Deny God's truth and replace it with lies.

2) Deny lies and replace it with God's truth.

One defends the ego and makes God unreal. The other defends God and makes the ego unreal.

Denial of God has progressed very far and is responsible for everything that happens in this world.

Denial of ego is the only way to resurrect and return to safety.

Sometimes, denial is combined with level confusion. When this happens, you use denial incorrectly in the name of thinking that it's making you more spiritual, but instead it's increasing separation.

Denial of the body for example could go one of two ways. You could deny that it is real, which is correct, if done as a recognition that it is unreal and not as an attack on it seeming to be real.

Or, you could be believing the body is real and attempt to PRETEND it is not there, by using denial to attack it to try to make it go away. This will separate you from it and produce sickness, instead of transcending it.

In other words, denial needs to be used honestly and with clarity. If you are "in denial" about how you are using denial, that can be a problem.

Proper use of denial will entail a clear RECOGNITION of what something IS, without avoiding it or pretending to make it into something it is NOT.

Clear perception of what the ego is, what the body is, what illusions are, is all that is needed in order to "deny the ego". MISTAKEN perception will lead to the improper use of denial, because it means you see the ego as real instead of an illusion, and will then use denial to fight with it to try to make it go away.

Honesty is the basic machinery of awakening. It means you have a willingness to accept what is true regardless of whether it suits your ego or makes you look good. It means putting the truth before your own personal position, and being willing to be seen in its light.

All parts of any forgiveness process entail honesty. You have to be honest to admit to and discern what is true and what is false. You have to be honest with yourself in accepting responsibility for having chosen everything you are experiencing. And it takes a lot of honesty to admit that you are not being victimized by anyone but yourself.

So honesty is really all about putting aside all of the ego pursuits, perspectives, and self-serving and face-saving attitudes, which are really all *lies*, and owning up to what's really going on. It's a matter of owning up to what is real rather than what you want to make of the situation.

Honestly also requires us to surrender every ego activity that we're using to try to win favor or defend ourselves or make ourselves look better. It means being what you really are, admitting to what really is, and accepting reality without you changing it.

Honesty is the best policy, because it is sanity. It is awakening. It is awareness of truth. It is allowing and accepting God's nature and presence. Sometimes it will take for you to really examine what you're doing and why and to have a 'little willingness' to admit the ways that you're mistaken or are trying to deceive. So really it all boils down to... is it really true... is it really factually real and true as in Holy Spirit's truth.... or is it false.

Honesty is the truth. Dishonesty is the lies.

So if we're to wake up to God and truth and reality, we're going to have to be really really really really really completely willingly honest at all times. Otherwise we're kidding ourselves, and fooling ourselves, and deceiving ourselves, and then we are the ones who end up suffering.

In all honesty, we are still as God created us. It we are willing to completely admit and accept that, it's game over for the ego.

Honesty gives you access to the truth which sets you free.

The only reason you blame or judge or project or scapegoat or see yourself as a victim or experience effects from others, is because you do not see how you did this to yourself.

If you could see how you ONLY do things to yourself, it would be so obvious you are the cause that you would have absolutely no NEED to even begin to go looking for its source. You wouldn't even need to find out who else is responsible for this. And so you wouldn't even start to step onto the slippery slope of blaming other people for it.

It's solely because you do not SEE, that you did this to yourself, or you chose it, and therefore your vision is obscured, and so you quite literally are now INCAPABLE of seeing who really is responsible.

But you will try TRY to find out who is responsible, you'll search around the room angrily trying to point fingers of accusation and judgement. "Was it you? or You?!"... And beyond even asking if it was someone, which you strongly believe it MUST be because you didn't see yourself do it, you pretty much have found others guilty automatically.

Then you think that if you FIND or have found someone guilty, and can blame them, that you're simply being justified. You're simply pointing out what the cause is. You're just honestly and innocently identifying who is responsible. You think you're just doing the normal honest sane rational thing of finding out who caused you to be upset, and that you're just pointing it out. You don't realize you're totally barking up the wrong tree because the cause isn't out there.

So projection, blame, anger, judgement, scapegoating, it's all simply an effort to continue to recognize who is responsible, but at the same time as being irresponsible yourself. By not being responsible for who you are, you entered into darkness, could not see what you were doing, and now are attempting to find another person to pin it on. And you will be wrong.

You will ALWAYS be mistaken if you EVER decide that it's someone else's fault. Because it is ALWAYS YOU that is doing it to yourself. You don't need to find someone to pin it on. You need to wake the fuck up and SEE CLEARLY, so you can recognize that you only do stuff to yourself.

If you are upset by the world or offended by what people do, you will turn yourself into a false savior. You will make yourself look like you care, and you will become upset and reactionary about what happened. You'll seem to save the world from this "real sin" or sinner, and you'll want some form of revenge which you call justice. You'll position yourself as saving everyone from these injustices and that you're doing so out of the kindness of your heart.

But what's really happening is that you are attacking the world by believing in real sin, you are failing to actually undo the problem, you are using the opportunity to make your own ego bigger, you're not honestly being a representative of real truth, and you're basically using this as justification for denial. You're denying that you have attacked yourself, you're denying that you believe in sin punishable by death, you're denying that you deserve unconditional love, and you're denying that the world IS saved because it doesn't exist.

The ego's version of salvation looks great on paper. It acts great in appearance. But it is completely full of holes. It is a lie. It is fake. It is false. You cannot be upset and be the salvation of the world. You cannot be offended and be helpful. You cannot be hurt by the world and claim that you are making the world better by keeping the hurt and acting based on it. Salvation doesn't come from pain and suffering.

Salvation comes from the truth, which is that nothing can be threatened, nothing real has been threatened, nothing real will ever be threatened, so any offense or upset to the contrary is a denial of the truth and an inability to recognize what is true and thus what is false. Not being able to recognize the illusion that something false is true is the sole reason why anyone would ever justify being upset, or see it as making sense that they should be upset based on what happened.

This is a failure to recognize or see past illusions, believing that something unreal is real, something untrue is true, and therefore something true and real has been damaged. This secretly is an attempt to assert that God has been damaged by separation, which the ego will be glad to believe even if it covers it up with facades of innocently helping or caring or wanting to stop suffering. There is a big difference between wanting to stop suffering and to ACTUALLY stop it by stopping being the cause of it. And it takes a lot of honesty to admit that you are the only cause of suffering, because all suffering is self-attack.

You can see this in stores, where people are standing looking at several shelves filled with basically the same product, wondering which one to pick. And this is also me ;-)

In ego metaphysical terms, what's happening is the ego presents a vast variety of FORMS, each of which presents the ILLUSION that these forms are unique and different. They distinguish themselves as being unrelated to and distinct from each other.

So instead of, you know, going to get the one headache pill, you go and have to wade through 5 different brands each of which has like 10 variations and subtleties, which you were not expecting.

So you enter into confusion. If it's true that these objects are unique and different, then this suggests a great degree of fragmentation. And in order to understand what you're faced with, your mind is going to be in so much conflict, trying to discern or balance the subtle differences as if they are important.

The more ego problems you are given, and the more they seem to present distinctly different options, the more you get lost in trying to find MEANING. Meaning only really comes from oneness, so the more fragmentation there is, the less sense it makes.

It's like being faced with a complicated puzzle, which your mind just doesn't know how to deal with. It scrambles your brain. You are completely befuddled trying to find 'clarity' or 'confidence' or 'certainty' in the face of so many conflicting viewpoints.

So commercialism, in this way, is the ego's way to get people to believe in separate problems. And the more options and choices and 'freedom of choice' there is, the LESS certain you become.

Stores are filled with thousands of brands, millions of products, all vying for attention, trying to prove to you that they are what you want and need, when you really need God. It is a huge ego distraction.

Commercialism and ever increasing choices builds up the ILLUSION that different forms have a different value, or different content. Like, exactly how many different varieties of something does anyone really need?

I work at a company that sells a certain type of product, and there are like over 30,000 products being sold, and honestly, for most people, you would've seen all the majorly 'unique' options within about 50 products.

Take a look at Amazon, millions upon millions of products. Each time I go on there, I can browse for ages and not find anything I want. I'm not too picky ;-)

Anyway, the whole point is, is not to get you to find exactly the perfect item that you really really want....it's to get you so conditioned to think that this is what you want that you end up NOT FINDING ANYTHING. It is another part of "seek and do not find".

If when you feel angry you can actually acknowledge that you really feel afraid, the anger will often deflate in a matter of seconds, if not instantly.

Energetically speaking, the fear energy turns into anger when it intensifies and projects, or when the apparent cause of the fear seems to be getting worse.

Being afraid means you see yourself as a victim and as attacked, which means you also see yourself as unfairly treated, which means you think you are justified in being angry because something's happening that you didn't ask for. So anger arises out of a perceived fearful situation.

Since the anger is based on the fear and doesn't really have its own foundation, and is made to DENY the fear, if you acknowledge that you're actually really afraid, it completely shuts off the generation of anger. It doesn't deny it or hide it, it simply disappears. What this means is you've moved up the ladder, or rewound the chain of cause and effect, to where you are now willing to 'stay with' the fear rather than build upon it. The anger will simply disappear when you admit to this.

So let's say something is happening to someone close to you and it scares the shit out of you. And maybe there doesn't seem to be anything you can do about it. And maybe you depend on that person and if that person has an issue, then .... who is going to look after you, or where are you going to get your ego needs met? So then you perceive that your own needs are going downhill as a result of the other person, which is frightening. And because you perceive that you depend on the other person to save you, and they can't even save themselves, you're going to get angry at them for failing to give you what your ego wants. This will make you snowball into a spiral of fear and anger, as you practically demand that the other person get out of their situation.

Secretly this is based on ego selfishness and your own dependent and fearful ego needs, which if unmet by the special relationship, sends you into a spiral of desperation. As soon as you can admit this and realize that YOU have a problem, YOU are afraid, YOU need help, this will dissolve the entire expression of desperation and demands, deflate all of the 'anger' completely, and put you in touch with what really needs to be healed ... your ego ego attachment and dependency and belief in your OWN inadequacy, which the other person is just triggering off to show you.

Once you admit to being afraid, you might have an emotional release, and this will actually shed a lot of light on the situation and show you that it is not as bad as you thought. The other person was probably being attacked by your dependency on them, and by your fear, and by your own neediness, and this was showing you a worse perception than was really called for. Things are not as bad as they seemed, once you do this. And then you can work with Holy Spirit on healing your OWN issues of desperation, whether they be fear of abandonment or rejection or 'who is going to love me' or 'how do I get my needs met be other people'.

There is a plan for salvation. Honestly is the vehicle, Holy Spirit is the destination.