Surround search terms with " " double quotes for exact matches e,g, "drops of healing rain"

The thing about idol worship, is that it puts you down.

You can't put someone or something up on a pedestal without diminishing your own value.

Jesus speaks to this many times in ACIM where, for example, we give a gift to another person that we think they 'deserve' or are 'worthy of' and this values them at equality with that gift, and so basically says "you're only worth a box of chocolates".

And our society is actually quite hell bent on putting things up on pedestals, making us chase after objects and possessions and statuses that we seem to exalt 'above us' to make them seem special. All the while making those idols hared to reach and kept apart, in order to give them their appeal and addictive qualities. But if they are special and golden, it's only because we're not.

"We are not worthy" comes to mind, as an idol-worshipping mantra.

So all of industry is pushing this idea that you don't deserve the good stuff because you suck, and yet you should want the good stuff - the big flat screen Tv's on Black Friday - because then you've claimed a right to such treasures. And somehow they are now cherished toys to radiate and beam about. Because you're not as worthy as a television.

Similarly you can't be in a position where you are putting Jesus up on a pedestal without diminishing your birthright of being His equal. It puts you down and positions you as perpetually separate from Him.

Idolizing anyone or anything is a strange psychological condition where you praise and adore and exalt this thing to be so magnificently above you, hoping that it will somehow shower you with its mighty blessings that you barely deserve, all the while diminishing your sense of worth.

Eventually if the 'leader' that you are following becomes such an icon, you turn into a worthless sheep who can't even recognize their own value. In the ego's reasoning, the best idol worshippers are those who believe they will never allow themselves to take anything away from the idol, and so will sacrifice themselves as an offering, hoping to be ignored and attacked, and to then turn around and thank them for doing it.

Nothing is more worthy than a Child of God, which you are.

What's happening with all this projection that everyone is doing, is basically a mass dis-owning of Self and a mass-disowning of responsibility for each person's own experience.

We're all walking around constantly shoveling ourselves and our own stuff onto other people and onto the environment. We're trying to get rid of ourselves all over the place. It's like, we're taking our insides and we're saying to everyone else, here, you take care of this for me, I don't want it. We're saying that we don't want who we are and that we refuse to do anything to change it.

When this gets really strong it turns to gossip, skapegoating, blame, judgement, victimhood, feeling stuck and apathetic. We dis-empower ourselves this way, by giving away this responsibility for ourselves, allowing someone or something else to have 'the power' and the responsibility to decide for us who we are, what we are, what we experience and what our truth is.

We just plain don't want to own our own truth or be true to ourselves. We want to get all lost in everyone else's business, what everyone else is doing to everyone else, and what the whole world is doing to us. We need to take care of our own business and mind our own business. "Be passerby"!

When we're in the irresponsibility role, we are expecting everyone other than ourselves to own up to who we are, for us, and to deal with our upsets and problems for us. And yet at the same time, we don't really want them to do this, because we don't really want this stuff to be fixed. We want to keep believing we are guilty and sinful and yet at the same time demand that other people remove all the experience of that guilt - usually by them having to change. That's the ego's version of forgiveness - continue to suffer while claiming you don't want to. And that's how you be a victim.

So being a victim really means, you deliberately disowning yourself and responsibility for your inner truth and identity, and then shoving it onto someone else's plate and expecting them to change or deal with it for you, while refusing to allow any change to happen, so that you feel like they're not giving you what you need or want. And yet this is all because of your own irresponsibility. This is why taking back that power and responsibility literally makes it impossible to be a victim, because you're getting out of the entire passive-aggressive "I refuse to be me" stubborn resistance.

We're all sitting around complaining about things which we have the POWER TO CHANGE, as if we do not have the power to change, and waiting for someone else to come along and rescue us. You can put a lot of energy into worshipping some idol or teacher or resource hoping for them to be your savior. But at the same time as asserting that you need a savior to 'do it for you' you're also asserting that you refuse to do it yourself, which means you really will refuse to accept that person's help anyway. You'll end up having a clash with the teacher because you are saying you want mega help but really you don't want any. You instead want to hold onto sitting on the fence of your own life and staying stuck and hoping someone is going to be your hero.

You don't think you have the power precisely because you've given it away. And so you don't see your options of freedom because you think they are not available to you. Yet you are only disempowered by giving your power away in the first place and taking back that power/responsibility gives you the tools you need to make any corrections needed. You can get yourself unstuck. You have the power to do it. You have the ability to wake up. You just need the willingness to not be a victim and to OWN your life and your freedom again.

Funny to think you don't own your own life and you think someone else has control over you. This is your life. Own it. Live it.

Although God's kingdom is a state of changelessness and permanence, THIS world isn't. This world is a world of shifts and changes, transformations, beginnings and endings. Nothing here remains the same whatsoever.

In and of itself this wouldn't be a problem if we would LET IT CHANGE. If we would not fight against, resist, or try to control its fundamental changing nature. If we would not hold onto its states and conditions, not want it to be a certain way, not prefer even that it stay in a certain configuration, we would be better off. But to do this we would have to let the entire world go and be attached to nothing.

The world has to be allowed to change because that's all it CAN DO. And it will be a bit of a rude awakening to say this, but, regardless of what you WANT, you WILL NOT be able to stop it changing. And everything that came will go, and everything that arrived will leave, and everything that was born will die.

This is the nature of illusions, of unreality, or dreams. They are not permanent, they are not immortal, they are not eternal. They canont stay the same. They depend on relativity and differences. They have to constantly fluctuate and move and change form in order to seem to exist at all. There is no stillness, no peace, no rest, no constancy of any kind in spacetime.

In order to recognize this and allow the world to be like this, it means you have to stay entirely in the present moment, in which you resist nothing and have no issue whatsoever about how anything else. No resistance against what arrives, no holding on to what is leaving. And that would be enlightenment.

The problem we have is that we tend to live in a way that assumes things can NOT CHANGE. We form relationships, we build houses and cities, we spend time accumulating, we become attached, we develop favorites, we form emotional bonds, we cling to treasures. All of this is an attempt really to DENY that the world IS going to change, to dream a little while that we can find a way to make the world stay the way we want it.

Most of our urges to do something in the world are based on a drive to try to make it permanent in some way. We build the house we want to live in and decorate it and fill it with objects hoping to make a home that will last. We work on relationships and deepening bonds and falling in love with bodies in the hope that they will always be there. But inevitably it all comes tumbling down because the harsh truth is that the world MUST change, and it will.

"It gives but to rescind, and takes away all things that you have cherished for a while. No lasting love is found, for none is here. This is the world of time, where all things end."

The suffering we experience is the direct result of attempting to CONTROL THE CHANGE. To resist it, to deny that the world has a fundamental nature of change, and attempting to keep things how we want them. Every time that we become invested in NEEDING or WANTING something to stay a certain way, we are going to suffer. Because it IS going to change, and then we are going to be unhappy because we've come to depend on it being that way.

We develop expectations that things will stay how we want them. And then our expectations are dashed and smashed. We set the world up to CAUSE US, to give us what we think we want in a certain specific form that we agreed to. And then it changes, and it fails to give, and then we are left hanging.

When there is a disconnect, a gap, a distance of spacetime, a contrast, between how the world IS NOW in its present configuration, and how we WANT it to be, that contrast is LOSS. It is discord and tension and stress and war. The ego says "I want it thus!", and the world just repeatedly says "no". And so the world moves on and you stay in the past, clinging to what once was, hoping it will continue, hoping it will return, and it never does.

"You do not really want the world you see, for it has disappointed you since time began. The homes you built have never sheltered you. The roads you made have led you nowhere, and no city that you built has withstood the crumbling assault of time. Nothing you made but has the mark of death upon it. Hold it not dear, for it is old and tired, and ready to return to dust, even as you made it."

As such, the world disappoints you over and over again WHEN you are expecting it to be a certain way that you prefer. It can't satisfy your wishes. It can't give you what you want. You can manipulate it and control it and manage it and rearrange it to try to fend off change (death), to try to keep an illusion that it is going to stay the same. You can repaint the walls and repair the rotten wood and redo the garden but again and again the onslaught of time - which is change and death - will keep happening.

The degree to which you have strings attached, psychological investment in, and desire to KEEP the things of the world, to that degree you will suffer when it ignores your wishes and changes anyway. Because it can't help it. You hold onto possessions, places, things, relationships, people, bodies. You resist them changing, you don't want to lose them, you fear loss, you try to preserve bodies for as long as possible, and maybe you don't even conceive of your favorite things coming to an end at some point. But they will.

This is not to be morbid. The world is a dream of death and it can't help but keep recycling itself. It transforms from birth to death and back to birth again. It is utterly incapable of staying the same forever. Expecting that it can and trying to live as though it can will make you suffer.

When something changes "against your will", and you cling to how it was, and live in the past, and don't want to accept the change, you will experience loss and despair. In order to "move on" from the perceived loss and stop perceiving it as a loss, you have to let go of CONTROL, and of wanting things to be how you want them. That means, to move on, is to move WITH the change and let it happen, accepting that change HAS occurred and surrendering to the fact that you can do nothing to stop it.

In a way that seems like beign powerless and a victim, in that you have to accept the change and LET IT change. To let go is to let go of the resistance against change, to admit it has changed, and to stop fighting against it. When you fight change you fight the world. When you fight the world you are also fighting reality and moving away from the present. The only way to live, is to live in the present and go with the flow of whatever happens with no resistance to it.

That means letting go of all your wishes, all your wants and desires and needs, all your dependencies, reclaiming all the power you gave to wordly things to affect you how you preferred, letting all bodies go, letting people come and go, surrendering control and allowing whatever happens. Ultimately you can only fully do that in the present, in the holy instant, in the eternal now. And it means relinquishing all attachmen to everything you value here, because the world holds NOTHING that you want.

It's in the present that you really transcend change, and become changeless, as you observe changes come and go without resistance. It's in the present that you find peace, and God, and love, and become open to what is. It's in the present that you gain "reality contact". And it's in the present that you find freedom from suffering. Dropping the "unreasonable expectation" that the world can be something it can never be, sets you free. Accepting how it is NOW, is the only way.

"Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists."

"Real choice is no illusion. But the world has none to offer. ALL its roads but lead to disappointment, nothingness and death. There IS no choice in its alternatives. Seek not ESCAPE from problems here. The world was made that problems could not BE escaped. Be not deceived by all the different names its roads are given. They have but one end. And each is but the means to GAIN that end, for it is here that all its roads will lead, however differently they seem to start; however differently they seem to go. Their end is certain, for there is no choice among them. All of them will lead to death. On some you travel gaily for a while, before the bleakness enters. And on some the thorns are felt at once. The choice is not WHAT will the ending be, but WHEN it comes."

"This aching world has not the power to touch the living world at all. You could not give it that, and so, although you turn in sadness from it, you cannot find in it the road that leads AWAY from it into another world."

"Simply do this: Be still and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false or good or bad; of every thought it judges worthy and all the ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God."

I notice in particular that pretty much anything medical, anything scientific, or anything involving proof in the world, always entails this belief that something external causes something to happen.

It also accompanies the belief that, because the external causes stuff to happen, you can 'fix' the problems you have by carefully selecting which external causes you expose yourself to.

This seems to be a clever ego trick. On the one hand, it says "you are at the effect of external causes and they will destroy you", and then it swoops in with its salvation, saying, "choose an external cause that you prefer, and you will be saved."

Well... its the belief in external causes that's the problem, not whether you're getting the ones you like or the ones you don't like.

Pretty much all medical solutions rely on an external cause, producing effects internally. Really this is a form of attack because it sees the person as a victim. So to the ego, "help" is actually "hurt", and this is why it always has side effects.

I saw a science report just yesterday, on one of the science news websites I sometimes look at, which said, that scientists uncovered the secret to happiness... that happiness is always changing and its never constant so you should be more realistic rather than hoping to be happy all the time. I was like...well... that's depressing.

The course holds out a promise of permanent, constant, unwavering happiness that never changes. But to the ego (ego-based science) that's absolutely an alien and impossible idea.

Happiness comes from within from extending God and being free of all forms of ego suffering, which ALL come about when causality is separated from your self and seen as outside of you attacking you or causing you or affecting you either positively or negatively.

Externally-caused "desirable influences" or magic or medicines or therapies or whatever else, are no different in their psychological damage to external attacks, enemies, victimizers and threats.

This is why there is no such thing as a perfect diet. All dependency on external food, water, air, etc is set up by the ego to be a lose-lose situation no matter what. All foods, if they affect you at all, victimize you, and they all have side effects. And none of them cause health.

I am not at the effect of the world I see.

I am not a victim of the world I see.

It is the world I see that is impossible.

The world holds no causes, being but an effect.

There is nothing the world can do to hurt you or make up ill or weak or upset or afraid.

You are a cause, not an effect.

We need simply to learn how to stop being affected by illusions of causality, and return to a state of being only the cause of everything.

ARTICLE:

Stop seeking

Pretty simple huh.

The ego persona wants to seek because seeking means, you do not already have. Seeking takes you away from what you have.

So let's say, you have a home to live in. You know that you HAVE it. It's yours. You don't need to find a home. You've got one.

You go out the front door and leave the home, exclaiming, "I don't have anywhere to live!".

You've rejected the home that you already have, and so now you seem to be homeless.

So now you have to go off SOMEWHERE ELSE, seeking, to try to find the very same home that's right behind you, which you are sure is not there.

But you can see, plainly, that this is nuts. You do not need to go and find a home, you already have one. But you've shut it out of your awareness and turned your back on it.

You could quite easily lift this 'block to awareness' from your mind and remember, oh wait, I actually do have a home to live in already! And this would cause you to STOP SEEKING.

Instead of seeking, you would ACCEPT what is already yours. Then you'd embrace your home again and be at peace, knowing you already have everything you need.

So really, the whole problem is a) the block to the AWARENESS of the pre-existing PRESENCE of everything you need (God/True Self), and b) you then go off on those 'seeking' activity trying to find it ELSEWHERE. And the problem is, it does not exist elsewhere. It's not outside of you, separate from you, or separate from the place where it already is - where God put it, where God is, within.

So because your pre-existing home, which is already yours, only exists where it is, and if you turn your back on it and go off seeking for a home anywhere but where it is, you WILL NOT FIND IT.

"Seek and do not find" - the ego's motto.

You literally are looking for what you already have, believing that you do not already have it, in every place that is SEPARATE from where it already is, hoping to find it there. And that means, it absolutely IS NOT THERE, and that you absolutely will FAIL to find it.

So the ego is very much into seeking. But seeking only comes about after you've put a block on your awareness. Some kind of sense of separation or shutting out or rejection of, what already is in you - God - your True Self - love etc.

That means, if you lift the block to awareness from your mind, you will become AWARE that the car keys are already in your pocket, i.e. you already have everything you need. You have NO needs. Because God has ALREADY given you everything you could possibly need.

So this has to mean, becoming open to ACCEPT that God has already a) given you absolutely all of Himself, b) you do not need anything other than total dependence on God, c) you have no lack and no needs, d) you share God's power and can manifest anything you could possible want or need instantly, e) you will live forever in perfect peace and satisfaction.

You already have a natural inheritance of unconditional love, absolute abundance, total safety and complete peace. It's already been shared with you by God. You just are in the business of not accepting, allowing, admitting, or seemingly wanting it. You've shut it out. So all you need to do, is open up to receiving, allowing, accepting and knowing it again. Reclaim your inheritance!

God is already here with you now!

It's "pride month" which is a sort of pro-queer celebration and revenge-quest rolled into one. People should be happy to be who they really are, without the need for any validation from anyone. It's not necessary to have other people treat us in a certain way or agree with us or even respect us. Insecure people depend on others for making themselves okay. Immortal beings laugh in the face of all judgements and opinions. The world doesn't do anything to us and other people do not define who or what we are.

Often I hear things along the lines of - the straight heteronormative people have told us this, done that to us, treated us this way, and so now we're going to be extremely "loud and proud" as a kind of counter-protest. That isn't really pride, it's an ego thing pretending to be pride. If people were really proud of who they are they wouldn't feel a need to go to war over it because they'd know that no-one and nothing can take it away from them. The pride must be pretty fragile and NOT pride if it depends on other people to reinforce it.

So as usual like most things in the world there's a whole lot of special-relationship bullshit and ego dynamics around this. Many of the pride posts I've seen are nothing short of seeking revenge against perceived persecutors. People trying to insist on their 'right to exist' as a special kind of person. People 'fighting' for something. Nothing natural has to be fought for, it's given by God with no strings attached.

If we get into any kind of need to have other people change to see us, accept us, recognize us, validate us, respect us, treat us well, stop abusing us, etc... anything at all, we're saying that we do not want to be fully ourselves, do not not accept ourselves, and are shifting responsibility for that onto someone else. We don't want that, it's not an improvement. We should all be happy and proud of who and what we are on the basis that we are perfect in God and have no need to get love and appreciation from anything outside of us.

I know there has been a lot of history and conflict surrounding this, and yes still a lot of people are horrendous and murderous in their attitudes about queer people. But ultimately we have to be responsible for our own choice of whether to be happy or not. If we give anyone the power to determine that for us then we give power away and are asking to be victimized. And then going on a sassy middle-finger quest to try to pretend not to care, isn't exactly a solid foundation.

We should not be wanting or needing other people to 'treat us well' in order for us to be happy and who we really are. This is the problem with the world, everyone's expecting everyone else to "do to them" what they want, to "make them happy", to "cause them" to be this way or that way, which is "positive victimhood". It's a way of giving away power and hoping that the world will treat you nice. If you need the world to treat you a certain way your entire mental health is pretty fragile.

You are an immortal being, you do not NEED anyone to treat you nice. You are invulnerable, you do not NEED people to validate you or be respectful toward you. Let them be as vicious as they want, it's not supposed to affect you in any way if you are owning who you are. There is no strength in surrounding yourself with only the people that treat you well. You are not 'treated' well or not well. You are the one who chooses everything you experience.

"Let them be as hateful and as vicious as they may, they COULD have no effect on you, unless you failed to recognize it is YOUR dream. This single lesson learned will set you free from suffering, WHATEVER form it takes."

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

"4. All miracles mean life, and God is the giver of life. His voice will direct you very specifically. You will be told all you need to know." - ACIM

Holy Spirit is able to speak to you very, very specifically. Although He may not "be" specific Himself, this does not prevent Him from using anything and everything to further His goal of your awakening and your development of trust in Him.

The development of trust can take many forms and can even lead you to do things which you thought were "ego", things which you would not expect to be guided to do, as though they are even "sinful" in the ego's eyes, and yet to do them with Holy Spirit can be a way to help you to trust Him and to include Him in everything you do.

Case in point, I recently have been getting into bodybuilding.

This is an extremely body-focused activity. Like, to do it properly you really have to exercise hard and push the limits of what you think you can do. To make progress you have to even go beyond what you did last time. It takes significant focus and effort and is physically exhausting, placing major emphasis on muscles and how they look and what the body is doing etc. As you do this, the ego jumps in with all kinds of fears and doubts as to why you can't or shouldn't.

For me, I've been doing this with Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit tells me exactly which exercises to perform, exactly how many repetitions to perform, when to do it, and also complements and congratulates me in various ways afterwards. He pushes me to do more than I think I can do, guides me on when I am done, and prompts me to exercise far more often than I would think I am capable of, trying to get me to overcome my objections, fears, limitations and beliefs in "I can't because....". When he said to me recently "there is nothing you cannot do" I was kind of blown away.

You would not think that He would do this, because it seems like it's making the body real or supporting the ego. Each time I exercise my mind becomes very strongly focused on the body parts being moved, on the muscles involved, on correct form and posture and so on. It becomes somewhat meditative. It is helping me to develop trust in Him even in the midst of doing something which traditionally might've taken me away from Spirit towards the body.

At first, I had many misgivings, fears, doubts, judgements, and issues surrounding this adventure. In many ways the ego wanted to get involved or to derail me. I had many fears that I was doing something sinful or wrong or "ego". Many illusions surfaced. This was a good way of bringing those beliefs to the surface, beliefs about my relationship to the body and what it is, in order to look at them and correct them.

Sometimes afterwards, Holy Spirit will then say something simple which seems to throw me for a loop, like, "the body is not real". So then in my mind I'm now having to sort out, what this means.. how the body is not real when it seems so real etc. He tells me often this process is a "lesson". I am learning many things intensively through this activity. And it's fun. And it doesn't prove guilt. And I am allowed to do it. In many ways it has challenged me to undo those beliefs in guilt, unworthiness, not being allowed, limitation and lack. In this regard it is helping me to grow spiritually.

Holy Spirit can use whatever you're doing in your life. It doesn't have to be that you give stuff up and sacrifice. I've even moved "closer" to the body in some ways. I am far more grounded in it, centered in it, and focused on it. This roundedness has had a major positive impact on my over-empathing of others and my general centeredness and confidence.

At first I was worried that this was taking me out of my mind and into illusions. But what it's actually done is quiet down my intellect and has given me a very different perspective on who and what I am (as awareness). My mind has shifted a lot away from intellect-identification, is quieter, I am calmer, happier, more peaceful and feel more "alive". It has been very unexpected but ultimately welcome.

We don't have to give up everything we want to do, or avoid even exploring the things we were always hoping to do but were too afraid to do. Often the fears we have are there because we are avoiding, rather than that the thing is actually evil or bad when you do it. Sometimes we end up living vicariously through other people, as victims, because we are not living up to what we ourselves believe in. We can learn a lot from this, and from placing trust in Holy Spirit to HELP US to do whatever it is that we're doing. He can come into our activities and our pleasures and our bodies and help us where we're at, to even help us with what we're interested in, and to explore everything we could ever hope to experience here.

Be free! Have fun!

The proper use of the body is as a communication device to transmit LIFE.

Communication means extension and creation. The body is to be used by the Holy Spirit as a way to extend past the body, past the body of others, and join with the mind of others. In His mindset, He sees Himself in all Brothers already.

We are to use the body to overlook the "obstacles to peace" which we and our brothers both place in the way of vision. We are to forgive, ie overlook, ie not make real, all of these illusory obstacles, so that our mind can join with the minds of our brothers. Our mind should literally reach out past our body, past their body, and "hook up" with their mind. This allows our MINDS to communicate and SHARE directly.

When we fail to do this, we introduce a form of separation inbetween ourselves and our brothers. This form can be a mere thought of sin or of bodies being real or being deceived by what the eyes see. Anything that prevents us from fully extending to and being one with our brother, implements a separation or attack thought between the two, separating us from each other.

This affirmation of being separate from others, is an attack on BOTH of you, and INDUCES sickness. Since any belief in separation is mental illness and is a block or denial of Unity and Wholeness, it renders the mind believing that it is not whole, and this unwholeness/unholiness attacks the body.

Or rather, it’s an attempt to use the communication device of the body to "communicate attack" to the other mind, which means your body now has to SHOW attack to your brother, which FORCES your body to BE attacked or in a state of "showing you are attacked". To communicate the idea of separation or attack to your brother, the message becomes attack, the communication device has to transmit "an attack", and thus the communication device itself is AFFECTED by the toxic message it is trying to transmit.

This is like pouring acid through a plastic pipe and hoping it will transmit the acid without affecting the pipe. We think the attack will affect your brothers, but it ends up affecting your transmission device. You can’t pour molten lava through a plastic straw, either. The fire and brimstone you try to give or project onto your brother, simply ends up HURTING YOU. This inevitably must contaminate your communication device by sending "harmful messages" through it. This is of course the cause of body sickness, and can lead to death.

Instead of mind moving past the body, as though communicating a perfectly pure transparent stream of life outward and to others, affirming the life in both, the mind is now holding up a picture of attack and separation. This picture now becomes the "message" that is transmitted through the communication device of the body, as a message of attack. The body, as a communication device, must now SHOW that picture. It causes the body to BECOME the message of death.

So essentially, it is totally natural and a holy use of the body, to overlook all bodies to the point where we recognize our oneness with others and join with their true self in the mind. When this breaks down, communication and extension break down, love breaks down, the flow of life is restricted, and sickness appears.

This is the ONLY cause of sickness, of all sickness, in all its forms, whether it’s a suble pain or total death. It’s merely a continuous spectrum of severity of belief, where a mere headache is even a sign of a belief in death and an attempt to die. Even the slightest annoyance, tiniest grievance, slight hint of separation belief, or the subtlest of ways of making forms real, it is still an attack and an attempted murder. "What is not love is murder."

When the mind is ceasing to place obstacles in the way, is overlooking/forgiving the body, is overlooking and forgiving the forms of others, and connecting to their mind to truly COMMUNICATE - because ONLY MINDS CAN COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY - then the mind sees itself as WHOLE, thus holy, and this holiness is unlimited in its healing power.

Believing in and experiencing wholeness, the mind transmits a message of wholeness through the body, causing the body to show up AS WHOLE or holiness in order to exhibit the message, thus inducing TOTAL HEALING of the body. In this mode, when perfected, it is absolutely impossible for the body to become sick or die because the mind is ONLY COMMUNICATING LIFE. It is supernaturally protected and sustained indefinitely as a perfect communication device for transmitting LIFE. This makes it impossible for it to die because there is no death in WHAT is being communicated through it.

A sane mind heals the body. A sane mind communicates fully and directly. "Miracles unite you directly with your brother". "Use it to bring the Word of God (love/life) to those who have it not, and the body becomes holy. Being holy it CANNOT be sick, nor can it DIE."

When you chose to believe in being separate from God, you chose to make a thought system and world opposite to God.

That world did not have any choice of ITS OWN to determine its nature or functioning. You wanted it to be opposite to heaven, and so it is.

It therefore MUST function according to laws which appear opposite to God's laws, of an imperfect nature, and completely unilke heaven in EVERY way imaginable.

"For this world IS the opposite of Heaven, having been made to BE its opposite. And EVERYTHING here takes a direction EXACTLY opposite to what is true."

"The world was made as an attack on God. It symbolizes fear. And what is fear except love's absence? Thus the world was meant to be a place where God could enter not, and where His Son could be apart from Him."

We chose that the world would function UNLIKE heaven, and therefore its foundation of separation and exclusion and lack and limitation is deeply embedded into its entire nature. That is why it devours and destroys, that is why it is limitation and scarcity, that is why it is cruel and dangerous, that is why everything in it dies.

Even right down to the subatomic particles, the illusory laws of physics, space and time themselves, all DEPEND entirely on the separation idea - the idea of opposition to God.

The world therefore CANNOT FUNCTION ANY OTHER WAY.

Its whole nature, its materials, its objects, its gravity and forces, its distances and delays, are all part of how the system MUST FUNCTION in order to be opposite to God's system.

The system itself is not choosing this. It has no choice. It cannot opt to work well, to be perfect, to stop being destructive, to be whole, to give you love or eternal life, to last forever, or to stop having problems.

It was meant to BE a problem, it was meant to OPPOSE God, it was meant to LACK, it was meant to NOT WORK, it was meant to ATTACK, it was meant to DESTROY, it was meant to facilitate SUFFERING AND DEATH.

That's ALL it can do. That's all it has to offer. It cannot change its mind, it cannot function as heaven, it cannot adopt God's laws, it cannot suddenly be free from murder and death, it can't stop having sicknesses, it can't be perfect, it can't last, and it won't ever stop having problems.

It's important to look at this honestly and recognize it. When you DON'T look at this, you will be delusional and in denial. You will believe that the world CAN be like heaven, it can somehow be manipulated to function well, things can last, suffering can be ended physically, accidents can stop happening, and all problems can be permenently solved.

All of this wishful thinking runs COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to the nature and functioning of the world, and if you try to implement it you will be RESISTING (fearing) the world, and causing tension and friction and suffering. It means you're trying to turn the machinery of separation into something that seems to function like oneness, and it's NOT possible. Not at a physical level.

If you can be willing to look at this fact hard in the face, you can drop the pretense and false hopes and silly dreams of making it work, and can ACCEPT that it is not going to ever work. And then you can recognize it for what it is. And you can also then recognize it is MEANT TO DIE. And problems are not meant to be ever solved here.

Once you recognize that, you can actually look for salvation WHERE IT IS, which is in heaven with God. You can then see that the OPPOSITE of this world is the only place where things can work the way you're hoping they could. The only place where there is no suffering, no sickness, no problems, and no death.

And in recognizing that this world HAS NO CHOICE in how it functions, you can forgive it, because thus you can recognize it is not trying to be a problem on purpose. It has no choice in it. It is a machine we made to be problematic intentionally, and that's it's nature. If you can accept that is its ONLY possible nature, then you can stop trying to STOP IT from being the way it is. And then you can accept it and find some peace, and let it go.

Basically everyone is trying to turn this world into heaven SO THAT they do not have to go home to heaven with God. We're looking in the wrong place for salvation and for a solution to the separation. The world cannot be solved or saved in this way, it can only be forgiven for being the way it is. And in your forgiveness you can set your mind free, because you are NOT part of this system, nor do you function like it. You are not of this world.

Jesus says NOT to try to escape all problems here. The world is MEANT to be problematic all the time and it wilL NEVER stop. You don't escape the world by fixing those problems, but by transcending them. Problems are DECEPTIONS that something is wrong that you need to attend to. YOU DO NOT.

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

Here's why having a thought of attack or judgement about someone else automatically includes you and attacks you.

Mind in its natural state is free of all judgements and attacks. It is "empty". It sees reality for what it is with no interpretation.

In order for mind have a 'judgement' about someone, the only way mind can do this is to generate some kind of situation within itself that looks like a judgement. An attack thought.

So within the mind itself, made from mind, mind has to invent images, forms, thoughts, impressions, sensations, which put a judgement into the mind's experience. Otherwise the mind wouldn't be able to PERCEIVE that there is a judgement taking place. Mind can only experience what is within itself and is absolutely blind to anything external (because there is nothing external, really).

So now the mind is having a judgement about "someone", but it couldn't create this judgement outside of itself. It's setting off nuclear bombs about this so-called other person, but the fallout from that explosion is affecting the mind because it's all taking place inside the mind.

Even though the mind is having a judgement ABOUT something that it thinks is outside of itself - beyond the body identity - the actual experience of the judgement and the conditions that this judgement creates, are happening inside the confines of the body-mind.

So that means it's happening to you. Not only is it happening to you just as much as it's happening to someone else, it's actually ONLY happening to you, and not happening to someone else at all!

So to perceptually attack someone else, you have to put attack into your mind. Your mind has to believe in attack, and it goes both ways. The mind doesn't conceive of 'attack on xyz person' hoping to escape how that attack feels, it conceives of 'attack' in general. And that means, the same rules it applies to someone else, applies to itself.

The mind cannot perceive or experience anything outside of itself. It's like, the ocean cannot know what life is like in a desert - it can't go there, it doesn't exist there, it can only be aware of what's in the ocean.

So you THINK that you can use your mind to make up stuff 'about someone not myself'. You THINK you have this ability to objectively sit on the sidelines and judge and attack and have absolutely no effects from this at all. That's absolutely mistaken and a totally ego-based self-deception. Nobody has this ability. It's a myth. If you want bombs to go off against other people, you have to set them off within you, and pretend that they're having an affect on someone else. Good luck with that.

So you have this vested interest in not attacking 'others' because in fact it doesn't even attack others, it attacks you.

Try hating someone or being really angry at them, at the same time as loving yourself. Any luck with that? It's not possible. You can't maintain a state of mind for love to exist while simultaneously having a state of mind where hate/fear/guilt/judgement/attack exists. YOUR mental condition has to degrade in order to generate hatred. Hatred destroys you. Your mental condition has to become unconscious and blocked in order for you not to see love in someone. And by not seeing it in someone, those blocks will block your own awareness of your own love. You put up walls to keep others out, and to keep you in a prison.

So you see you can't do anything to others and think that you're getting away with it, or that you are not going to be affected in some way. You are deeply affected, and ONLY you are affected, when you really get down to it. So it's utterly futile.

You have this interest in not attacking others not because you even can attack others, but because every single time you do this you do not realize that you are ONLY attacking yourself, YOUR mind suffers, YOUR mind changes into a hate machine, YOU are experiencing the hate, and other people aren't even experiencing it.

You think you can generate 'stuff' in you that somehow leaks out and overflows and travels over to other people and does stuff to them. You think you have these weapons of warfare, the power to affect someone else. You don't. It's a total myth. If someone doesn't choose to experience effects they will not. If you're in a judging hateful mood and you're going around believing you're capable of attacking people, and the people are all laughing and not taking it seriously, obviously you don't have the power to affect them. You're deluded.

You are the only one who is upset.

A Course in Miracles - Urtext material - reproduced with permission from the Foundation for Inner Peace (acim.org), and the Foundation for A Course in Miracles (facim.org).
▲
MiraculousLiving.com ©2024 Paul West / OmniLogic Arts